Fox Business host: Cut government because ‘no one’ died of starvation before welfare

[phantom power]

Fox Business host John Stossel on Thursday declared that government programs should be cut based on the false assertion that “no one” died of starvation in the Great Depression before the modern “welfare state.”

Stossel told the hosts of Fox & Friends that he had taken his cameras out on the streets of New York and no one he spoke to had any idea about how to fix the nation’s growing national debt.

“You cut whole departments,” the Fox Business host explained. “Why do we have a Commerce Department? Commerce just happens! Agriculture, farmers do that! You don’t need bureaucrats.”

He added that the Department of Education was also unnecessary.

“Isn’t that part of what the government does in a lot of people minds?” Fox News host Steve Doocy asked. “They need to help people rather than let people help themselves?”

“And when people are needy you want them [to get] help,” Stossel agreed. “But think about the [Great] Depression. That was before there was any welfare state at all. How many people starved? No one.”

“Right, good point,” Doocy agreed.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/05/30/fox-business-host-cut-government-because-no-one-died-of-starvation-before-welfare/

[Aristus]

1. His source: political expert Archie Bunker.

[deutsey]

2. Sigh

[nadinbrzezinski]

3. The we love national security right forgets the

National security rational for food stamps...and yes John, people starved

[The Magistrate]

4. Damn, Sir, That is One Special Kind Of Ignorant Stupid....

[RockaFowler]

5. He really is an idiot

He has always hated Public Schools - I wonder why

He should go back to being a consumer reporter. This political stuff just isn't his forte. Especially when he can be called out whenever he talks like an idiot!!

[HiPointDem]

6. President Herbert Hoover declared, "Nobody is actually starving. The hoboes are better fed than

they have ever been." But in New York City in 1931, there were 20 known cases of starvation; in 1934, there were 110 deaths caused by hunger. There were so many accounts of people starving in New York that the West African nation of Cameroon sent $3.77 in relief.

http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/learning_history/children_depression/depression_children_menu.cfm

just in nyc, mind you -- the place where they'd be most likely to be noticed by the media.

[Incitatus]

8. Then there's all the deaths that result from being undernourished.

Like deaths caused by a combination disease and weakened immune systems from a lack of food.

Is being a sociopath or an idiot a requirement to work for FOX?

[LeftInTX]

20. Exactly!!!!!

[laundry_queen]

31. Especially little kids

their little bodies don't tolerate malnourishment very well. How many died of pneumonia, measles, vitamin deficiency, diarrhea, flu when the reason underlying reason was malnourishment? How many were recorded as malnourishment?

Yes, I do think being a fucking moron is a requirement for working at fox. I think it's just incidental they are all sociopaths. The ones with empathy probably get weeded out pretty fast.

[sinkingfeeling]

7. But, heaven forbid, we cut any fat from the gluttonous 'Dept. of Defense'!

[magellan]

9. Do people have to die of starvation for these asshats to care?

How many deaths before it would be "enough" for them? Have Stossel and Doocy ever seen a malnourished child? Do they think THAT doesn't do enough harm?

Maybe they should both try what many parents in this country have to do each week: get their kids off to school with one meal a day in their bellies, if they're lucky. Maybe when their kids start crying and getting sick and bringing home poor grades they'll understand what food insecurity is, and stop looking at this with their predictable, dismissive tombstone mentality.

[phantom power]

14. it's all bullshit -- they don't really care if people actually die, either

[magellan]

18. True. n/t

[Starry Messenger]

10. Scary fact: Stossel has an education unit he hawks with his twisted economic views.

"Stossel in the Classroom". I'm not even joking.

Here's a gem from his website:

"GREED
The rich keep getting richer. Is there anything wrong with that? We're taught that greed is bad. But consider where we would be without it. "Enlighten (sic) self-interest" may be a better word than "greed."

[Blue_Tires]

11. +1

Stossel is trying to rewrite history...

[Starry Messenger]

13. I just pray that kids switch off and zone out when they see his creepy little porn 'stache...

"Would you buy an economic theory from this man?"

[Skittles]

29. WHAT are you talking about?

[haele]

12. Didn't read "The Grapes of Wrath", did he?

Nor has he ever looked into the situation, plenty of people starved to death before the 1940's and afterwards. Especially in the cities, where they died in the streets of starvation and exposure, or of simple sicknesses or injuries their starved bodies were too weak to fight off. Just look in the archives of the public health offices in New York City - full of reports of people dying of starvation. Look at the change in the mortality rates from starvation that occurred after food stamps and other welfare programs kicked in. It's easy enough to research, Mr. Stossel, especially since you're supposed to be a "crack" investigative reporter...

Heck, the History Channel even did most of the work for you...
http://www.history.com/topics/tenements

And a book with pretty pictures, too - "How the Other Half Lives" by Riis. True, it's about NYC before the Depression, and as one reads, one is struck by the casual cultural prejudices (racism, anti-semitism, patronizing of immigrants and women) in the writing - but it's a very accurate observation about a situation that had not changed much for the poor of NYC until the New Deal.

http://www.bartleby.com/208/

I suppose you think it's alright to just do away with food stamps and go back to the good old "Gilded Age" of culture, wealth, and high Society - when 9-year olds at the bottom of the economic ladder commonly prostituted themselves to get just one meal a day.
Of course, they're just low animals that are too lazy or stupid to pull themselves up with their own bootstraps, right?

Stossel, you're an ignorant talking air-head - and that's the nicest thing I could say about you.

Haele

[starroute]

23. Pulp magazines in the 1930s ran ads for "weight gain" products

You think we have it bad today with those "this one weird trick lets you lose five pounds of belly fat" ads? If you read the old pulps, there were no weight loss ads. Instead, there were ads for products that promised to help you gain weight -- with a skinny, hollow-cheeked "before" picture and a healthy, well-filled-out "after."

Or watch the first few minutes of King Kong, where Fay Wray faints from hunger because she hasn't been able to find work in the big city and hasn't eaten for days.

Hunger and malnourishment were serious problems in 1933, and you didn't need to read the muckraking books to know it.

On edit: Here's one I found online.

[VOX]

15. Stossel is a flaming asshole...

Make that a dumb flaming asshole. Wait, make that a dumb, dangerous flaming asshole.

What he knows about the real world and its history could be fit inside a peanut shell. And there'd still be room for it to rattle.

[Arkansas Granny]

16. I can't find the figures right off hand, but when I watched "Dust Bowl" by Ken Burns,

they mentioned how many children were underweight due to malnutrition. It was a large segment of the population.

I also remember hearing my mother talk about growing up during the depression. Her father died in 1929, leaving her mother to raise two children by herself. My mom was old enough to know that my grandmother went without food on many occassions so she and her sister would have something to eat.

These people are so smug and proud of their ignorance that it just blows my mind. They throw their opinions out there like facts and expect their audience to believe it just because they said it. The trouble is that they are able to convince people that they are speaking the truth.

[Dragonfli]

30. A researcher estimated 7 million deaths, but is controversial because he has a russian name.

A bunch of conservatives rushed wiki to have his research deleted, who knows, conservative bloggers are real smart and stuff so the russian researcher must have been completely wrong

it was Boris Borisov, who also wrote an article titled “The American Famine” if anyone is interested.

[Brigid]

17. So these idiots don't think . . .

A large number of hungry, desperate people with nothing to lose roaming the streets is a cause for concern? Not to mention morally wrong? Jesus help us all!

[Archae]

19. People, this is John Stossel.

Rails against lawsuits, yet he sued the pro wrestler who boxed his ears.

Rails against government programs, yet got a low-interest government loan TWICE to repair his storm-damaged beach houses.

[ananda]

21. Oh dear.

And they think they know that how exactly?
Do they even know how to read?

And if they do know how to read, do they know how to do research?

But then, if they do know how to do research, would they know where to look?

Aaanndd... if they do know where to look, would they?

[City Lights]

22. Idiot. nt

[Initech]

24. I hate Fox News, but words cannot express how much I *LOATHE* Fox Business.

Fox News spreads a toxic narrative, but Fox Business only exists to further the interests of the business hedge fund robber baron class. It doesn't surprise me they'd stoop to this low.

[spanone]

25. stossel is a 100% nutcase....as is the entire faux network

[WinkyDink]

26. High standard there, John! "Starved to death"! So no welfare UNTIL YOU DIE!

[politicat]

27. Say that to my great-grandmother's face, Stossel.

No, her baby brother's death certificate said pneumonia, but the baby would not have died if my great-great-grandmother wasn't widowed in 1928 and spent three years scraping to keep her children fed. My g-g-GM kept five of her six children alive... But to do so, she had to place her three daughters in an orphanage for four years. (The eldest was old enough to work for her room and board at a convent.) Ask my great-grandmother about the orphanage's cemetery and about the monthly services for children whose parents waited too long to relinquish them.

We haven't forgotten. It was sometimes called pneumonia or diarrhea or heart failure, but it was starvation.

[handmade34]

28. that is not how some see it...

http://english.pravda.ru/world/americas/19-05-2008/105255-famine-0/

http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/learning_history/children_depression/depression_children_menu.cfm

"...in New York City in 1931, there were 20 known cases of starvation; in 1934, there were 110 deaths caused by hunger. There were so many accounts of people starving in New York that the West African nation of Cameroon sent $3.77 in relief...)

[LaydeeBug]

32. Don't forget he got CANNED from ABC for MAKING SHIT UP to support his bullshit claims. nt

[louslobbs]

33. I'd say that I'm stunned by their lack of knowledge, their lack of compassion and their complete

and utter ignorance, but I can't and I'm not. And suppose no one dies from the bitter cold in the winter because they can't afford heat when heating oil subsidies are cut by Republicans, and no one dies from summer heat because they can't afford an air conditioner or the electricity to power their air conditioning even if they do have it, and no one dies because they lack health insurance.......no, no one dies when Republicans force austerity measures on the majority while giving continuous tax cuts to the rich and welfare to big corporations who make billions, but pay little to no taxes here in the US as they hide trillions wherever they can, in order to avoid paying those taxes here. The sooner we can get back control of our government from the corporations, the sooner most of the majority will stop suffering at the hands of their own corporate controlled government. All this crap being forced on the majority as the media lies for their corporate masters, is just getting real old.
Lou