John Stossel is an idiot.

[Swede]

John Stossel is an idiot, where's wrestler Dave Schultz when you need him?


It's the price "gougers" who bring the water, ship the gasoline, fix the roof, and rebuild the cities. The price "gougers" save lives.


http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/JohnStossel/2005/09/07/155361.html

[Canuckistanian]

1. By that reasoning, it's corruption that makes goverment work

Or child abuse that makes a good family.

[dave123williams]

2. If you really want to get angry, Google up on his defense of big tobacco.

[gardenista]

26. or his attack on organic food. nt

[swag]

3. Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal!

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

18. Now...

THAT'S a scary picture. She looks like she's having a smoke after a lunch of chopped baby.

[swag]

20. She probably spots her force-fuck victim, Nathaniel Branden.

"Our relationship is nothing if it isn't sexual!"

I wonder if she steered her chthonian maw in the direction of disciple Greenspan's little sparrow.

[leveymg]

4. The problem is he's a liar, not an idiot. He's convincing, which makes

him a dangerous liar because he has apparent credibility until you start to analyze what he's saying.

He's either a mercenary or a committed neocon, but he's effective at what he does.

[bryant69]

5. Stossel is pretty off yeah

So long as the wealthy get what the wealthy want, I guess everything will be fine.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[Justitia]

6. Yup, he's been "outted" as an irritating idiot for a long time. -eom

[highplainsdem]

7. Unbelievable stupidity by Stossel:

"By charging $20, the price gouger makes sure his water goes to those who really need it."

No, by charging $20, the price gouger makes sure his water goes to those who can afford it, whether they really need it or not.

[klook]

8. Stossel is a Libertarian

and a believer in 100% laissez-faire free-market capitalism. Whatever the market dictates is the way it should be, according to that worldview. So if water is $20 a bottle and you have only $18, tough luck. Your baby dies. Making the world a better place for Libertarians.

[highplainsdem]

11. Every Libertarian I've ever known personally has been someone who took

advantage of some government aid while young, but once older and more comfortable didn't want others to have the same benefits.

[calmblueocean]

24. And not just when he was young, either.

Read his "Confessions of a Welfare Queen" piece in Reason magazine from last year.

The thrust of the piece is that taxpayer-funded flood insurance is a boondoggle because it encourages people to build in risky locations. Including John Stossel himself. He relates how he purposely built his home too close to the ocean, and when it was washed away, he collected a quarter mil or so from Uncle Sam to rebuild it. "I’m not proud that I took your money," he says with a wink, "but if the government is foolish enough to offer me a special deal, I’d be foolish not to take it."

What's especially revolting about this is that federal flood insurance was meant for poor people who often end up buying homes in low-lying areas because they can't afford a better location and need to house their families.

Stossel has shown again and again, but never as vividly as he does here, that he's a vile human being who cares little about others or about being true to his own so-called philosophical principles.

[mac56]

25. It's called "pulling up the ladder".

nm

[bluedawg12]

29. Goes with the kiss-up, kick-down school of ethical behavior. n/t

[bluedawg12]

28. laissez-f*ck people capitalism.

laissez-faire free-market capitalism = anarcho capitalism.
interesting winkipedia read that.

[Teaser]

9. We should make a bot

that posts "John Stossel is an idiot" threads daily. It'd always be true, and always get some discussion. :)

[Ms. Clio]

30. LOL I'd read it every single day n/t

[Patiod]

10. OP just in from the front page of "Duh" magazine

Stossel is a total shill for the right wing.
:puke:

[endarkenment]

12. Lying idiot

Just google 'John Stossel liar'. He has been caught at least once in outright deliberate fibbing.

[mmonk]

13. and I thought it was a demand and supply issue

Silly me.

[tex-wyo-dem]

14. Stossel is also part of the lying counter-environmentalists...

http://outside.away.com/outside/features/200505/counter-enviroment-power-list-13.html

Stossel, 58, was once a crusading consumer advocate, but he found real fame after doing an about-face in the 1990s and becoming a foe of government regulations that affect business, both big and small. Today he's the de facto king of regulatory debunking, commanding some of the highest ratings of any ABC correspondent while regularly using his Give Me a Break segments and prime-time specials to ask questions like "Are We Scaring Ourselves to Death?"

Usually his answer is yes, even as he profiles dioxin and asbestos (the dangers of which are overblown, he says). Though Stossel goes after a broad range of targets—in one show he exposed American "freeloaders," including wealthy business owners who enjoy government subsidies—he reserves much of his vitriol for safety laws, fear-mongering greens, and institutions like the EPA.

Critics charge that Stossel oversimplifies reality and makes sizable reporting gaffes, pointing to a 2000 exposeé on organic food in which he suggested that "buying organic could kill you" and cited a test that "proved" that conventional produce is as pesticide-residue-free as organic. (No such test existed, and he later apologized on the air.) But his fans keep the faith. The Competitive Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington, sponsors a "Support John Stossel" online petition to counter what it says are "ongoing environmentalist" attacks against him.

SOUND BITE: "Stossel starts with a conclusion he wants to arrive at and looks for the facts to support it," says Peter Hart, a media analyst at the New York City-based group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. "You end up with a very compelling and very incomplete version of reality—not journalism."

NEXT UP: ABC is busy marketing Stossel's videos and DVDs (his 2005 TV special Myths, Lies, and Nasty Behavior went on sale in January). He'll also be speaking for organizations like Young America's Foundation, an outreach group for conservatives.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

15. He's been an idiot for years.

I don't even know what to make of his jabber any more.

[shrike]

16. And the sky is blue

And bears sh*t in the woods, and the sun rises in the east.

[Vinnie From Indy]

17. Stossell should try out his theory on price gouging after the next

disaster by taking a truckload of water to the scene. He could sell the water at $20. a bottle to all the desperate people. The funny thing, of course, would be the sight of Stossell getting his ass kicked all up and down the street by people that want his water and have no money. Does he honestly think that ANYONE would hesitate for even a minute to bash him in the head and take his water if their children or parents were in the street dying of thirst?

[Birthmark]

19. Stossel is about average for a Randroid

[chaska]

33. Oooh, like that "Randroid". Two thumbs way up.

:thumbsup::thumbsup:

[newportdadde]

21. No not who NEEDS it most but who HAS THE MOST gets it.

The gouger makes sure whoever has the biggest pocketbook gets it. His analogy with the baby and the $20 bottle of water is garbage. If I walked in with a roll of$100s the gouger will simply sell me the bottle for $100 at which point the mother of the baby or the father will then attack me. Or if he has a bunch of water and I a bunch of money I'll buy all his water for 100 a bottle.

Of course a true gouger would simply sell me one bottle for $1000, marking the current fair market value of his water $1000 then when noone else has that and he sells another bottle for $100 I pull a gun because I got ripped off and away we go into anarchy.

As a side let me tell you if someone needs water for their kid and you out bid them you had better armed because they are coming for that water. And if the parent is armed someone will end up dead because all the money in the world isn't stopping a parent from protecting their child.

Wasn't Stossel at one time a sane human being who did consumer advocacy type stuff?

[Meatwad]

22. I could've told you he was an idiot years ago.

[woodsprite]

23. I chalk him up to a Geraldo Rivera wannabe. IMO, he's succeeding. n/t

[bigmonkey]

27. This comes from the definition of "wanting".

Crazy axiomatic economists _define_ the person who is willing to pay the most for something as the person who wants it the most. The theoretical structure completely fails when dealing with poor people competing with moneyed people for basic needs. Economics needs to get back to its original purpose of descriptive science.

[ProfessorGAC]

31. Liberterian Idiot

Yes, big and small "L" liberterian and he's proud of it. He's a Randian of the first order and actually believes what he says, which tells me he's far less intelligent than he thinks he is.
The Professor

[SeattleRob]

32. A lot of us have known he's an idiot for years! N/T

[stevietheman]

34. Exxon Mobil just reported $10 billion profit... that's proof that Stossel

is lying through his teeth.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051027/bs_nm/energy_exxon_earns_dc_3

The "story" (and that's all it is) that the higher prices stem from scarcity and the need to ensure the supplies don't run out is EFFING BOGUS. Oil/gasoline is not scarce today, even with recent disasters. It's all a storyline intended to create a political environment where high prices (and thus high profits) can be slipped in without too much a fuss by the public.

The $10 billion profit by *one* big oil company proves that point.