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Posts tagged ‘John Stossel’

John Stossel Op-ed: Are You a Maker or a Taker?


John Stossel / @JohnStossel / January 03, 2024

Read more at https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/01/03/are-you-a-maker-or-a-taker/

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Inc., speaks at the Atreju political convention on Dec. 15, 2023, in Rome. (Photo: Antonio Masiello/Getty Images)

Politicians are often takers.

They take our money (and freedom) in the name of achieving goals they rarely achieve.

Elon Musk and Sen. Elizabeth Warren may be the best examples of maker and taker. They’re the stars of my video this week.

Warren shouts, “Tax the rich!”

She especially wants to tax Musk, the richest man in the world.

In her eagerness to grab his money, she spun a scandal in the media, claiming Musk paid no taxes. She went on TV again and again to tell people that in 2018, “He paid zero!”

It was true. In 2018, Musk paid no federal income tax. But that was only because his pay was entirely in the form of “stock options,” and that year, they gave him no income.

But at the very moment Warren launched her “zero tax” screed, Musk was paying the U.S. government $12 billion—more tax than anyone has ever paid in history.

Warren didn’t mention that.

I wish Musk paid much less tax. It would be better for the world if he spent the $12 billion himself—rather than giving it to Warren and her cronies.

I say that because Musk, a maker, does so many useful things. That includes things that government is unable to do.

NASA has given up building spaceships. Even NASA bureaucrats now understand that they don’t do things very well.

In 2008, NASA Administrator Mike Griffin said, “We can’t keep doing the same old things as before,” and invited private companies to join the space race.

That got results.

By 2020, Musk had sent astronauts into orbit, something NASA hadn’t been able to do for nine years.

Musk lowered the cost of nearly every component of space flight. NASA spent $1,500 on door latches. Musk’s team built the part for $30 by modifying a latch from bathroom stalls.

Musk developed reusable rockets, which drastically cut costs.

“Reuse the rocket, say, 1,000 times,” said Musk. “That would make the capital costs of the rocket per launch only about $50,000.”

Why didn’t NASA do that? Because in government, people do what they’ve always done. Lowering costs isn’t important. They’re spending other people’s money.

Musk also created Starlink. Starlink satellites now provide low-cost internet service to people all over the world. He’s so successful launching satellites that most satellites now orbiting Earth are Musk’s. He’s given more poor people access to the internet than any government ever has.

Musk develops the world’s most popular electric car, gives poor people internet access, reinvigorates space exploration, and creates 110,000 jobs.

So, Warren wants to punish him?

She sent a letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission, demanding the government investigate Tesla for “not properly representing shareholders.”

Seems like a bizarre accusation, given that Tesla’s stock has increased in value by $790 billion.

Warren didn’t like that Musk became CEO of Twitter. She demanded that “conflict of interest” be investigated.

But it’s great that Musk bought Twitter. He told Joe Rogan that he’s lost money on the company, but that taking over Twitter was still worth “everything,” because he’s protecting open debate.

I agree. Twitter’s previous owners censored political views that didn’t conform to left-wing bias.

They even reduced the number of my Twitter followers. Only when Musk took over did the total climb back above a million again.

Now Musk’s company, Neuralink, is trying to help paralyzed people access the internet and operate artificial limbs—just by using their thoughts.

Neuralink, Tesla, SpaceX, Starlink. Musk is a maker and a hero!

Warren, the taker, attacks people who create wealth.

She pushes a skewed narrative about “greedy” corporations.

Of course,corporations are greedy! Greed works. It motivates people to try harder.

But (outside of government) greedy people can only satisfy their greed by pleasing customers. Unlike politicians, they can’t force anyone to pay.

Our world needs fewer Elizabeth Warrens and more Elon Musks.

COPYRIGHT 2024 BY JFS PRODUCTIONS INC.

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Opinion, Political

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John Stossel Op-ed: Canceling Cancel Culture


John Stossel / @JohnStossel / November 08, 2023

Read more at https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/11/08/canceling-cancel-culture/

“I self-censored,” says 23-year-old Rikki Schlott about how she handled being a right-leaning libertarian at New York University. Pictured: People walk past NYU on Oct. 30, 2023, in New York City. (Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

“I was not genuine in my own beliefs,” says 23-year-old Rikki Schlott in my new video. “I self-censored.”

Why? What did this college student believe that was so unacceptable that she felt she had to hide it?

The fact that she’s a right-leaning libertarian.

“I was afraid to have Thomas Sowell and Jordan Peterson books on my bookshelf.”

If her classmates at NYU saw that, she says, she might have been “verbally attacked on social media, maligned as whatever ‘ist’ or ‘ism’ people might attack me with.”

So Schlott kept her mouth shut, eventually dropping out of NYU.

I ask her, “If you were doing it again, you’d speak out?”

“I did speak out! Here I am!” She responds.

By “here,” she means my TV studio, where I interviewed her about a new book she co-wrote titled, “The Canceling of the American Mind.” It details how cancel culture grew into a serious problem on campuses.

Examples:

  • A teacher in Virginia lost his job for calling a transgender student “she.”
  • At Hamline University, an art history lecturer lost her job simply for showing a painting of Muhammad.
  • A University of Virginia med student was banished from campus for merely questioning the importance of “microaggressions.”

Then such idiocy spread beyond campuses.

  • A Levi Strauss executive felt she had to resign because employees objected to her tweets criticizing COVID-19 school closures and mask mandates for children.
  • The Philadelphia Inquirer’s top editor was forced to resign after approving an article titled “Buildings Matter Too,” after Black Lives Matter rioters burned down buildings. Some at the paper called his headline “extremely inappropriate” and “tone-deaf.”

And so on.

Now some want to punish people who defend Hamas. Others want to silence Israel’s defenders.

Schlott argues that America needs more free speech, even if it’s hateful. “Being a true free speech champion does require that you defend speech that even you disagree with.”

Schlott’s co-author on “The Canceling of the American Mind” works for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. FIRE argues that everything can be said, as long as it’s not direct incitement of violence, willful negligence, or defamation.

Schlott tells me, “You are well within your First Amendment rights to cancel people and to malign them on social media. But the question is, ‘Do we want to live in a culture where that is our first reaction?’”

She points out that her generation started tweeting when they were kids, and many posted stupid things.

“Young people need to be able to screw up.”

Maybe. But based on what I see on my news feeds, it’s people her age who are most eager to “cancel” people.

“It is true that younger Americans tend to be more pro-cancel culture,” she replies. “Millennials have the most positive view, and as you get older, it goes lower and lower. But Gen Z (ages 11 to 26) completely switches that around. Only 8% have a positive view of it. That’s because if you’re a young person who grows up in a graceless society, you’re always looking behind your back. You see friends torn down on social media. You’re not going to want to live in a world like that.”

I push back. “But they perpetuate a world like that!”

“It’s a tyranny of the minority,” she replies. “One squeaky wheel scares the life out of everyone else. Then we self-censor.”

She did that in college.

Students like her kept their mouths shut because they didn’t want to be reported as “biased.” NYU officials, like the secret police in East Germany, even encouraged students to report on others.

She tells me, “When I got to NYU, the first thing I had to do was go pick up my ID card. I found on the back the emergency number, in case you’re in danger, and a bias response hotline in case you’re offended. The university itself sanctioned the idea that you can snitch on your peers.”

She says it’s time for students to push back against school censorship.

“We need to say we want to live in a free speech culture. … Courage is contagious. As soon as I spoke out at NYU, people came out of the woodwork to say, ‘Thank you for saying that! I completely agree with you.’”

COPYRIGHT 2023 BY JFS PRODUCTIONS INC.

COMMENTARY BY

John Stossel@JohnStossel

John Stossel is the creator of Stossel TV videos, and author of “No They Can’t! Why Government Fails—But Individuals Succeed.”

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Culture, Opinion

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How That ‘Scientific Consensus’ on Climate Change Was ‘Manufactured’


By: John Stossel / @JohnStossel / August 09, 2023

Read more at https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/08/09/fake-climate-change-consensus/

President Joe Biden—seen here Tuesday discussing conservation near the Grand Canyon, south of Tusayan, Arizona—is the climate change alarmist-in-chief. (Photo: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images)

We are told climate change is a crisis, and that there is an “overwhelming scientific consensus.”

“It’s a manufactured consensus,” says climate scientist Judith Curry in my new video. She says scientists have an incentive to exaggerate risk to pursue “fame and fortune.”

She knows about that because she once spread alarm about climate change. The media loved her when she published a study that seemed to show a dramatic increase in hurricane intensity.

“We found that the percent of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes had doubled,” says Curry. “This was picked up by the media,” and then climate alarmists realized, “Oh, here is the way to do it. Tie extreme weather events to global warming!”

“So, this hysteria is your fault!” I tell her.

“Not really,” she smiles. “They would have picked up on it anyways.”

But Curry’s “more intense” hurricanes gave them fuel.

“I was adopted by the environmental advocacy groups and the alarmists, and I was treated like a rock star,” Curry recounts. “Flown all over the place to meet with politicians.”

But then some researchers pointed out gaps in her research—years with low levels of hurricanes.

“Like a good scientist, I investigated,” says Curry. She realized that the critics were right. “Part of it was bad data. Part of it is natural climate variability.“

Curry was the unusual researcher who looked at criticism of her work and actually concluded: “They had a point.”

Then the Climategate scandal taught her that other climate researchers weren’t so open-minded. Alarmist scientists’ aggressive attempts to hide data suggesting climate change is not a crisis were revealed in leaked emails.

“Ugly things,” says Curry. “Avoiding Freedom of Information Act requests. Trying to get journal editors fired.”

It made Curry realize that there is a “climate change industry” set up to reward alarmism.

“The origins go back to the … U.N. environmental program,” says Curry, adding:

Some U.N. officials were motivated by anti-capitalism. They hated the oil companies and seized on the climate change issue to move their policies along.

The United Nations created the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Says Curry:

The IPCC wasn’t supposed to focus on any benefits of warming. The IPCC’s mandate was to look for dangerous human-caused climate change.

Then, the national funding agencies directed all the funding … assuming there are dangerous impacts.

The researchers quickly figured out that the way to get funded was to make alarmist claims about man-made climate change.

This is how “manufactured consensus” happens. Even if a skeptic did get funding, it’s harder to publish because journal editors are alarmists.

“The editor of the journal Science wrote this political rant,” says Curry. She even said, “The time for debate has ended.”

“What kind of message does that give?” adds Curry. Then she answers her own question:

Promote the alarming papers! Don’t even send the other ones out for review. If you wanted to advance in your career, like be at a prestigious university and get a big salary, have big laboratory space, get lots of grant funding, be director of an institute, there was clearly one path to go.

That’s what we’ve got now—a massive government-funded climate alarmism complex.

COPYRIGHT 2023 BY JFS PRODUCTIONS INC.

COMMENTARY BY

John Stossel@JohnStossel

John Stossel is the creator of Stossel TV videos, and author of “No They Can’t! Why Government Fails—But Individuals Succeed.”

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Political

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Facebook Quietly Admits Its Third-Party ‘Fact-Checks’ Are ‘Opinions’


DECEMBER 13, 2021 By Jordan Boyd

Read more at https://www.conservativereview.com/facebook-quietly-admits-its-third-party-fact-checks-are-opinions-2656021526.html/

Facebook Quietly Admits Its Third-Party ‘Fact-Checks’ Are ‘Opinions’

Facebook admitted that its so-called “fact-checking” program is actually cranking out opinions used to censor certain viewpoints.

In its latest legal battle with TV journalist John Stossel over a post about the origins of the deadly 2020 California forest fires, Facebook, now rebranded and referred to as “Meta,” claims that its “fact-checking” program should not be the target of a defamation suit because its attempts to regulate content are done by third-party organizations who are entitled to their “opinion.”

Stossel’s original complaint questioned whether “Facebook and its vendors defame a user who posts factually accurate content, when they publicly announce that the content failed a ‘fact-check’ and is ‘partly false,’ and by attributing to the user a false claim that he never made?” Facebook, however, claimed that the counter article authored by Climate Feedback is not necessarily the tech giant’s responsibility.

Facebook went on to complain that Stossel’s problem isn’t with the Silicon Valley giants’ “labels” on his content but with the obscure organizations that Facebook employs to do its “fact-checking” dirty work.

“The labels themselves are neither false nor defamatory; to the contrary, they constitute protected opinion,” Facebook admitted. “And even if Stossel could attribute Climate Feedback’s separate webpages to Meta, the challenged statements on those pages are likewise neither false nor defamatory. Any of these failures would doom Stossel’s complaint, but the combination makes any amendment futile.”

It’s no secret that Facebook uses its “fact-checking” program to curb information that it wants to be censored, and this November lawsuit gives more insight into the Big Tech company’s methods and twisted rationale.

“The independence of the fact checkers is a deliberate feature of Meta’s fact-checking program, designed to ensure that Meta does not become the arbiter of truth on its platforms,” the lawsuit stated before admitting that “Meta identifies potential misinformation for fact-checkers to review and rate. … [I]t leaves the ultimate determination whether information is false or misleading to the fact-checkers. And though Meta has designed its platforms so that fact-checker ratings appear next to content that the fact-checkers have reviewed and rated, it does not contribute to the substance of those ratings.”

Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist. She graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism.

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Political

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