Stossel Labels Majority of Americans “Socialists” Who “Hate Capitalism”

[iconoclastNYC]

Watch the clip of ABC "Reporter" John Stossel making a fool of himself on MSNBC here at Crooks and Liars:

http://www.crooksandliars.com/posts/2006/06/29/stossel-attacks-gore-were-all-socialists/

David Sirota nails Stosell in his latest post:

Just when you think ABC News “reporter” John Stossel has publicly embarrassed himself more than any pundit possibly could, he goes and sets a new low. Last night on MSNBC, Stossel labeled those who support measures to decrease carbon dioxide emissions so as to slow down global warming “socialists” who “hate capitalism.” He also claimed that he “has talked to” scientists who deny that global warming is being caused by humans. He then refused to name a single scientist he has “talked to” who said this and was unable to deny that the National Academy of Science directly refuted his claim very recently.

Last I checked, more than three out four Americans - including two out of three conservatives - now tell pollsters they think the federal government is not doing “enough to address global warming and develop alternative energy sources in order to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.” Similarly, more than four out five Americans (83 percent) - including 77 percent of conservatives — said that “in the absence of federal leadership” today, they support the fast-growing number of pushes by “state and local officials to curb global warming and promote new energy resources.” Also, 73 percent want the government to impose higher fuel efficiency standards on automakers. Oh, and a 2006 poll by Stossel’s own employer, ABC News, found 61 percent of Americans support the government forcing power plants to lower their emissions. But to Stossel, this vast majority of Americans are all “socialists” who “hate capitalism.”

On Stossel’s claim about “talking to scientists” who deny global warming is caused by humans - there’s a reason he doesn’t tell us which scientists he supposedly “talked” to. It’s because not one reputable scientist in the United States has said this. As Thinkprogress notes, “Science Magazine analyzed 928 peer-reviewed scientific papers on global warming published between 1993 and 2003″ and “not a single one challenged the scientific consensus the earth’s temperature is rising due to human activity.”

John Stossel is as dishonest as he is smarmy looking. He deliberately spreads industry-created lies so as to shill for the right-wing political organizations he now regularly accepts awards from. Contact ABC News and tell them it’s time for them to fire Stossel and cut off the platform and veneer of “journalism” they are providing this pathological liar.

http://davidsirota.com/index.php/2006/06/29/stossel-labels-majority-of-americans-socialists-who-hate-capitalism/

David's new book is amazing:



http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0307237346/002-0654853-6512052?v=glance&n=283155

Mods: I have written permission to repost Sirota's blog entries in full on DU.

[Mojambo]

1. Sirota does great work. n/t

[cantstandbush]

44. Could it be because "capitalism" has failed them? nt

[niceypoo]

45. Supply side economics is NOT capitalism

and I dare anybody to prove it is......

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. Hey at least he did not call the majority

nmoombats

[TheFarseer]

3. John Stossel is just like the rest of those nut bags

He seems fairly reasonable until . . . . . . . . . . .

Remember when he was revealing 'waste' on Primetime (or was it 20/20)? He seemed really reasonable, but now that they've gotten their way and it's even worse waste, less competence and less common sense they're grasping at straws and looking crazier and crazier doing it. He should crawl back under his rock before he looses all credibility. He's fine doing a report with no one pointing out the enormous holes in his logic and cherry-picking who to blame, but he's freaking bush league when someone is there hammering his "logic" and "common sense"

[Supersedeas]

11. empty rhetoric and not facts or science to back it up--EXPOSE HIM

[LiberalFighter]

40. It's too late... he has already lost all credibility!

[brentspeak]

4. Idiot laissez-faire free trade partisans like Stossel confuse

unregulated free-trade with "capitalism".

[depakid]

5. "John Stossel is as dishonest as he is smarmy looking. "

Sirota telling it like it is.

The fact that ABC allows him to present outright lies as news should be grounds for an FCC fine.

[jwirr]

6. And Stossel is a fascist who hates democracy.

[iconoclastNYC]

7. Ezra Klein blogged it too:

EMERGENT MEME WATCH. Joe Scarborough is a real problem for my channel-flipping habit. Every time I happen across his program, I pause, figuring I've found Friends, only to realize that someone gave Chandler a rightwing talkshow. It's no mere resemblance -- the two look precisely identical. It's such a shame, I never figured Chandler the Republican type.

Anyway, that's all digression. Yesterday, Chandler/Scarborough hosted a global warming segment with John Stossel, who was arguing that worries over global warming are not, in fact, about the logistical issues that will make Bangladesh unlivable, but about a deep-seated hatred of capitalism. Yes, if you're worried about global warming, you're a commie.

But Stossel is something of a laughingstock anyway, so I didn't take the segment very seriously. Jonah Goldberg, though, has changed my mind, offering up nearly the same argument over at The Corner. Jonah's formulation is less accusatory (you're not necessarily a Communist) and more affirmative: Our massive overproduction of greenhouse gases is simply because the "American economy sustains the planet, pulls millions out of poverty, keeps the sea channels open, develops most of the medical breakthroughs, provides most of the funding for international institutions (including the finger-waggers at the UN's environmental divisions), offers the best higher education to the world's leaders, and generally provides a blanket of security for much of the planet." The trick here is to set global warming advocates in opposition to, say, cancer researchers, whom we all know work in a field deeply dependent on fossil fuel combustion. It is, of course, crap. Our disinterest in renewables, absurdly low CAFE standards, weak public transport system, and overuse of automobiles explains our greenhouse production -- our higher education infrastructure does not.

I take on Jonah's argument a bit more fully at my other place, but the logical refutation is scarcely the point. The science of the issue is largely settled. More importantly, the American people are largely convinced: 60 percent think the issue requires action, while only 9 percent believe concern is unwarranted. So here comes the right's next tactic: Redefine global warming as the inevitable result of a strong, innovative, and growing economy, and smear efforts to curb emissions as too punitive to contemplate. This effort is no more honest than their last, and I'll leave it to the eminent economist Paul Krugman to refute:

There's some dispute among economists over how forcefully we should act to curb greenhouse gases, but there's broad consensus that even a very strong program to reduce emissions would have only modest effects on economic growth. At worst, G.D.P. growth might be, say, one-tenth or two-tenths of a percentage point lower over the next 20 years. And while some industries would lose jobs, others would gain.

[Blue_Tires]

41. oh dear

"sure, we won't be able to drink the water or breathe the air, but look at our bottom line net profits!"

Goldberg is a piece of shit

[TheCowsCameHome]

8. Isn't stossel something that grows in your buttcrack if you don't wash?

Maybe I'm thinking of santorum....................

[unkachuck]

22. so that's what that is....

....it's too stosselish to be santorum....

[otohara]

9. I Hate Stossel

what an ego this guy has - loud, obnoxious and WRONG!!!!

[SaveElmer]

10. Stossel is an irrelevent moron...

Who has to make increasing outrageuous statements to get even his amen corner in the right wing fascist community to pay attention to him!

[liberaldemocrat7]

12. I believe in capitalism but not most Republican's version of Laissez faire

I believe in capitalism but not most Republican's version of Laissez faire irresponsible capitalism.

Frame the capitalism debate in that you love capitalism and that you abhor the deathbringing hardship creating version of capitalism that George W Bush and the REPUBLIKLAN Party believes in. They want to party like it's 1929.

Join the Liberal Democratic Party of the United States of America.

http://groups.myspace.com/liberaldemocraticpartyoftheunitedstatesofamerica

[Mr_Spock]

13. Stossel is an ass hole

What more needs to be said.

[burythehatchet]

14. Majority of Americans support giving Stossel

The Congressional Medal of Douchebaggery

[alcibiades_mystery]

15. I wish they would be "laissez-faire" on immigration

Isn't it, after all, just a matter of the labor market adjusting itself globally, with the outrageous non-market regulation known as a "border" and "citizenship" disrupting the free operation of the labor market??? (This is the ONLY capitalist/free market economic reading of immigration in a global economy: all other readings favor control economies for labor markets, period).

[grannylib]

16. IF that were true, how the HELL would Chimpy the Unelected Imbecile

ever have wound up in office by legitimate means?
If the majority of Americans really were anticapitalist, Chimpy would've gone down in flames in 2000 and never have made it to Election Theft 2004.

[rucky]

17. He's just trying to get into Ann Coulter's knickers. n/t

[Odin2005]

18. Ugh, I'm sick of the Free Market Fundimentalists.

These people are obvious because they mix up the terms "market economy" and "capitalism" (the two are NOT synonyms, The US during WW2, as well as Nazi Germany, were both capitalist command economies to a large extent, and you can have a socialist market economy, co-ops basically, as well). They also rant on how regulations on bussiness are somehow a slippery slope toward totalitarianism (basically parroting Fredrich Hayek, the father of Neo-Liberalism). :eyes:

[OutNow]

19. Why yes, I am a socialist

Don't let people like John Stossel get away with it. I am a socialist and proud of it. And someday soon, actually about 5 months from now, there will be a senator from Vermont who will answer the question the same way. Why yes, I am a socialist. We need about 50 more Bernie Sanders in Congress.

[Odin2005]

33. Here, here! we need more socialists like me, you, and Bernie.

[Blue_Tires]

42. welcome to the site!

[zulchzulu]

20. What Stossel thinks = what the sound of dog intestines sound like shitting

You catch my drift...

[Solon]

21. If the majority of Americans are Socialist and anti-Capitalism...

isn't that a good thing? Note, I'm a socialist and DAMN proud of it!

[pa28]

23. Not even July and there are puddles at the north pole.

http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/gallery_np.html

First "global warming" did not exist. Then it was a natural cycle. Now if you want to take action you are some kind of socialist conspirator!

Stossel's sloganeering may be the opiate of the Kool-aid crowd but does nothing to solve the problem we now agree is real.

[Disturbed]

24. Take away the term Socialist and have a list of

questions regarding the concept and millions of people would score as being Socialists. It's the term that most have been brainwashed to think is negative.

[Odin2005]

32. Including many DUers.

I see many posts with DUers praising what the think is capitalism, but what they are really describing is market socialism. DUers that rant on about Corporatism being perverted capitalism don't really understand what capitalism is because of years of Neo-Liberal and anti-communist propaganda. Capitalism hase nothing to do with markets, it has to do with private investors controlling the means of production. Corporatism is the purist form of capitalism, not a perversion of it, since the market prevents the capitalists from maximising profits by screwing the consumers and the worker so the capitalist eleite would rather do away with markets and instead have a command economy which they control.

[AX10]

25. Stossel is the typical kooky libertarian.

They can be more vile than Repubs.

[Odin2005]

34. Kooky Libertarian is redundant.

[Totally Committed]

26. If we are the "majority" as this a**hole says,

who the hell keeps electing Bush????

Is he admitting that without Diebold "the majority" would have elected someone else?

Hm????

TC

[rman]

27. To socialist and not capitalist enough for Free Market Fundamentalists -

most Americans want universal ("nationalized") healthcare, most Americans don't want Social Security privatized, do want increased minimum wage, etc.

All things that are considered to be socialist my RW hardliners.

Disregarding Stossel's intentions of marginalizing such sentiments, in essence he is correct.

[Joe Chi Minh]

28. Pray God he's right, and the American people have finally

come to their senses.

Sensible Socialism is nothing less than the good sense of the socially aware. It doesn't mean the suppression of capitalism, but harnessing it for the good of the country, as a whole, the benefit of all of its people, the prospering of all of its material and social infrastucture.

In the UK now, people have never been poorer since WWII, and the process of widespread impoverishment is ever gaining momentum. Yet Blair and his far right supporters have the temerity to proclaim that the country - "we" - have never been better off!!!!!

[Joe Bacon]

29. That wrestler didn't beat Stossel enough

A real shame, Maybe if he slapped Stossel more that idiot's brain might have reactivated...

[Vidar]

30. Nah, I've never been in the majority.

[suegeo]

31. SueGeo Labels Stossel “Boob” with "Bad Breath"

[Skittles]

35. Skittles labels Stossel "DICKHEAD" who "MAKES A FOOL OF HIMSELF"

what a TOOL

[stevebreeze]

36. capitalism is a great tool and a lousy religion

capitalism is a great way to motive people to work harder then they otherwise would. More reward for more work is a great tool. However capitalism that lets the wealthy owners of capital do whatever they want to the rest of us is not just bad for the workers, it is terrible in the long run for those same owners of capital. For capitalism to work effectively in keeping a growing economy you have to have a system where working hard lets you get ahead. Henry Ford had this right to have a consumer economy you need consumers with a buck or two to spend. All todays ownership class is about it protecting their own asses through the un "small d" democratic means of buying politicians. Mostly "R"s but enough "D"s to make believe some believe falsely there is not difference in the parties.

[BigYawn]

37. Regardless of Stossel, I know first hand how bad Socialism is.....

since I lived it and experienced it for 20 years during the
time when Nehru governed India and tried to socialize it.
It was a dismal failure.

Now India is embracing capitalism and is prospering with GDP
growing 10-12% for the last several years.

[LostInAnomie]

38. Most rational people would think...

... that if inevitable environmental collapse is the end result of Capitalism, maybe we should think twice. Then again, no one ever accused "The Mustache" of being rational.

With free market crazies it is always an all or nothing proposition. You can either surrender you social consciousness completely, or you're a communist. You either help fully with the destruction of the environment or you hate capitalism. You either believe that every piece of you culture and soul can be bought and sold or you are trying to start a class war.

[killbotfactory]

39. I wish...

Okay, just the socialist part. I don't hate capitalism, I just want it regulated so that corporations don't own our fucking government.

[mrreowwr_kittty]

43. Nah, we just hate Stossel. n/t

[truebrit71]

46. John "porno mustache" Stossel is an embarassment to journalists..

...period.

He is a complete and total tool....