When I was a kid I remember seeing John Stossel on 20/20 and thinking he had some good points. Then I grew up. As a Fox News contributor John Stossel has taken to only presenting half of the story. This is true with his most recent report: Politicians top 10 promises gone wrong.
10. Cash For Clunkers.
John stands in a junk yard breaking things to acting like he is creating stimulus. Well to some extent he is. An environmental consulting firm recently reported that cutting down Christmas trees was a better than owning a fake one. One of the big reasons? It creates jobs to destroy perfectly good trees. Rather than putting out facts to support his point Stossel takes on Paul Krugam'sstatement that the 9/11 attacks will be good for the economy. Stossels view: you think it creates jobs because you can see the jobs it creates. John Stossel actually believes that Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman is just making an off the cuff statement about the economic impact of destruction. John you are no economist and you embarrass yourself with this mind numbingly simple minded belief.
John goes on to claim that the increase in used car prices proves it was bad. Really? So keeping house prices high is good while car prices should be low? You can't have it both ways John.
Cash for Clunkers created jobs and put money into the economy. Was it the best stimulus program ever? No. But it was better than the Estate Tax cut or the tax cut for the super rich. Yes.
9. Minimum Wage
John makes the argument that having a minimum wage is bad and finds people ordinary people who either start off making less than minimum wage or want to hire people at less than minimum wage as his proof. John, these people have a stake in this. They are not reliable sources. The real problem here, which John repeats a couple of times on this list, is he uses the results of the legislation to show that we don't need it. What I mean by this is similar to Glenn Beck claiming we have the safest food in the world and uses that as proof why the government should stay out of food safety. The food is safe because of the FDA, not in spite of it. Similarly, American wages are higher because of minimum wage, not in spite of it.
John points out that more people would be working it companies could just pay less. Apparently John is OK with corporate greed where big business overcharges just as long as none of those profits are handed down to the working class. After all only the super rich deserve a big bonus.
If John was right and having no lower limit was good then the foreclosure epidemic in the US is a good thing. Just ask people who need to sell their house how the foreclosures have affected their ability to move and take a new job.
8. Title 9
John claims that the women's movement has already take care of any inequality issues, after all, his college had gone co-ed a full three years before title 9. Hey John, isn't is possible that your school saw what was coming and acted proactively because of title 9? Also to suggest that everything would be equal void of title 9 shows a complete lack of connection with reality given that women are still behind in many areas including pay for the same job. Weird that a white male wouldn't see the value of title 9.
Clearly this legislation has some issues but don't we want our elected officials to make improvements as issue arise? Do you really expect perfection right out of the gate?
7. New stadiums using tax payer money will increase jobs
I imagine there is some small amount of truth to this idea but the funny thing here is that Mr. Stossel blames politicians for this. This shell game was created by the super rich who want someone else to pay for a stadium they will use. The only reason politicians get involved is because pushing the agenda of the super rich is good for their political career. All John does is further the Fox News narrative that government is bad and business is good by blaming a big business idea on politicians.
6. Tax breaks for farmers
John finds a bunch of people who are taking advantage of the situation by being rich and looking for a way to get a tax break. Odd that John would chastise a tax cut for rich people looking to hide their money. The tax cut is not designed for these people. It is designed for small farmers to compete with industrial farms. I'm not sure if it is good legislation but John is really distorting the truth with this one. John is all for less taxes and this legislation does that. I actually agree with John that this legislation should be fixed. The only problem is that the beneficiaries of this legislation are the rich and that means the Republicans will block any changes and claim that it is a tax hike or kills jobs.
5. Credit Card bill
John claims that thanks to the credit card legislation less people have access to credit cards and interest rates are higher. This is like an abusive parent blaming the kids for their abuse. The credit card companies have many unsavory methods of making money. That is their free market right. The government is fighting to protect the abused by limiting some of the worst practices. But when the abusive company find a different way of abusing their customers John makes the argument that the government is acting poorly? This is complete lunacy.
4. Health Care for all
Again John is making the case for the abuser. Medicare has lower costs than private insurance. That is a fact. Private insurance companies raising rates and dropping participants doesn't prove that health care for all is bad. It proves that private insurance companies put wealth above health. That is the free market system so I don't blame them. But John Stossel should know better. These are issues with the private insurance companies and if Republicans hadn't fought against the public option we could have eliminated some of these issues. John is completely wrong here. Not only does he blame the abused for being abused but his support for the conservative stand made the problem worse.
3. Ethanol
This one is a shameless distortion of the facts. ADM wanted increase profits and diversify into renewable energy. They paid lots of money to convince politicians that this was a good thing. The only people ethanol helps is big corn companies like ADM. This has been obvious for quite some time yet people like Chuck Grassly defend it because that is a big chuck of change he stands to lose it the government mandate for ethanol disappears. John, this was big business at work, not bad politicians. It would be nice if you could mention that in your smear campaign.
2. Home ownership
John blames the housing bubble on the push for increased home ownership. This may have started the problem but the blame for the bubble lies at the feet of the big businesses that asked for the ability to prospect in homes, over sell an under educated populous, and create a false reality of housing prices. Flipping houses and artificially increasing value wasn't a result of the home interest tax credit. It may not have hurt, but putting all of the blame on the government misses the whole story.
1. Fiscal responsibility
John claims that we expect our politicans to be fiscally conservative yet they spend more money every year. There is a lot of issues here but this one I actually agree with to some extent. I just wish John would point out that historically this is a problem with Republican Presidents not Democratic ones. The other big problem I have with blaming government for this is that our electoral system relies on outside money and big business buys these "bad deal". Republicans have fought changing how campaigns are funded at every turn so I'm not sure that John gets to complain about the results of a policy his organization supports. Second, the American people support almost all the spending that we currently do. Why? Because every piece of legislation is designed to help someone and who wants to end a program that they benefits from?
I think John would have been better served if he had called this list what it really is: Fox News top 10 slants that make Democrats look bad.
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