Holy cow, John Stossel is really outdoing himself in the "media whore" category

[brentspeak]

Check out his latest 20/20 paid-propaganda piece, entitled, "Gouged by Gas Prices? Give Me a Break
When It Comes to High Prices, You Only Hear One Side of the Story".

Highlights:

1) Stossel says that "media claims" of record-setting gas prices are wrong because 1981 gas prices, adjusted for today's inflation, were higher by five cents on average. Therefore, he says, consumer complaints about today's gas prices being "ridiculous" are (in his word) "silly".

That's a neat bit of sophistry Stossel is employing there. Because consumers were gouged back in 1981 at a slightly higher rate than they are today, the oil companies are, therefore, not gouging consumers. It's apparently all in everybody's minds!

:crazy: :crazy:

2) Stossel:

"I wish the oil executives would come out of their bunkers once and face the media. They could say something like: 'Why are you complaining about our profit? What do you think we do with it? Buy fancy cars and homes? Well, we do actually, but nearly all of the money goes to looking for more oil and in following the environmental rules that you want us to follow. You should want us to make more profit. Anyway, the government takes billions more in taxes from the gas you buy than we make in profits. If anyone's gouging, it's the politicians!'"

The "government takes billions more in taxes from the gas you buy than we make in profits"? Uh, idiot? The government gives some of those billions that the taxpayers pay when they purchase gas over to the the oil companies!

There's a lot more where that came from in Whore Stossel's piece.

http://www.abcnews.go.com/2020/Story?id=3234692&page=1

[bbgrunt]

1. does anyone even listen to this guy? he is a national disgrace.

[Blueberry_raspberry]

2. I wouldn't be surprised is Stossel doesn't go totally rightwing like Michael Medved did.

I recall when Medved use to just review movies. Then he showed up on RW radio shows getting a little more opinionated. Now he's 100% RW talk radio.

I see Stossel taking the same career path. I once heard him on a far right wing radio program.

[Warren Stupidity]

6. "go totally rightwing"? he started there. He doesn't need to go anywhere. nt.

[pretzel4gore]

3. why aint stossel scared of us?

to the extent he edit his baldfaced lies a little, etc?
cuz he knows this society only murderous when it comes to kittens, whales and the powerless...

[valerief]

4. He truly wins the MediaWhore Award of the Year along with the Seventies' Porn Star

Face Award of the Decade.

[AlCzervik]

5. i have one good thing to say about John Stossel--

he is pro-choice. I watched him speak at some college republican club last year on cspan and when it was Q & A time some girl got to the mike and upbraided him about his views on abortion. he defended his position and wouldn't back down.

[Kagemusha]

7. Oh those 1981 prices were damn high, yes.

And the US dollar has gone down a lot so even these high oil prices are getting slightly deceptive in relative terms but... um so what? It's more an indictment of the entire national policy that has led to these prices - including the war in Iraq - than of what is strictly, narrowly defined as "gouging". And if we throw out the loaded word "gouged" we get to consumers complaining about "high" gas prices. What's wrong with complaining about that? Free speech, geez.

But no, these high prices are not unique.

So what.

I'm not so sure about his math re: taxes vs. those profits but... big whoop. Gas taxes in the US are laughably low compared to those of European countries, but Stossel wouldn't touch them with a 10 foot pole anyway so he doesn't care.

[Bitwit1234]

8. There is a website

that will calculate the price you pay today....or the price paid in years gone by. It will correlate them.....If you put in 3.26 and then ask what it would be in 1972. It says .73.....where do the nutcases get their comparison. Of course it only goes thru 2005 but that makes it even worst.

http:www.measuringworth.com/calculators/compare/index.php

I don't know how to make the link click able you will have to cut and paste. I think it is fun to compare prices of everything.

[Sabriel]

9. Why is he still trying? He has it locked in.

I thought he was voted "MW for Life" last year.