John Stossel stories, Page 3

I hate waiting at traffic lights. There’s a solution: traffic circles, or roundabouts. Traffic circles terrified me when I first confronted them in Europe. A movie, “National Lampoon’s European Vacation,” captured my experience when it portrayed Chevy Chase driving in London, unable to exit a rotary all day. Besides being...

Home prices keep climbing. It’s another reason to let people build housing. But corrupt politicians sometimes prevent that. The little town of Edgewater, N.J., sits right across the Hudson River from Manhattan. A developer, Maxal Group, bought a dump site there and proposed building more than a thousand new waterfront...

America has a record 8.1 million job openings. The media call it a “labor shortage.” But it’s not a labor shortage; it’s an incentive shortage. “No one wants to work,” says a sign on a restaurant drive-thru speaker in Albuquerque, N.M. “Please be patient with the staff that did show...

Congress passed the $2.2 trillion Heroes Act. House Democrats said it gives money to “governments who desperately need funds.” But it also gives lots of money to people who don’t need funds. Maryland, which even The Washington Post admits is “flush with cash,” got enough extra money to pass a...

Americans took out $1.7 trillion in government loans for college tuition. Now, some don’t want to pay it back. President Joe Biden says they shouldn’t have to. He wants to cancel at least $10,000 and maybe $50,000 of every student’s debt. “They’re in real trouble,” says Biden, “having to make...

Do I live in an alternate universe? The media tell me my side is winning . Salon claims, “We all live in Kochland, the Koch brothers’ libertarian utopia.” Tucker Carlson says, “Our leadership class remains resolutely libertarian.” What? Who? Not President Biden. Biden already spent $1.9 trillion on covid-19 “recovery”...

On Thursday, Earth Day, politicians and activists shouted more about “the climate crisis.” I don’t think it’s a crisis. Covid-19, malaria, exploding debt, millions of poor children dying from diarrhea — those are genuine crises. But global warming may become a real problem, so it’s particularly absurd that Earth Day’s...

The most viewed conservative commentator on YouTube is Steven Crowder with his channel, Louder with Crowder. His fans love his politically incorrect jokes. He also sets up a table at college campuses, invites people to debate and airs the debate unedited. One such video, titled, “There Are Two Genders: Change...

I was surprised to read (in The Los Angeles Times) that the Biden administration’s “role model for America” is … California! He wants to “Make America California.” That’s is a terrible idea. Californians now rush to move out of California. Some hopeful folks still move there, but so many more...

Did you take the SATs to try to get into college? Your kids may not have to. More than 1,300 schools have become “test optional,” meaning students need not submit SAT scores. Some, like the entire University of California system, now won’t even look at scores. There are seemingly legitimate...

Before dawn, dozens of union activists invaded a strawberry farm, shouting through bullhorns. This frightened workers and infuriated the farm’s owner, Mike Fahner, who thought that in America, owning property means you have a right to control access to that property — your home is your castle, and all that....

Oscar nominees were announced this week. The AP highlighted the record number of nominations of “actors of color” and “a record year for women.” Today, such declarations are important in this “woke” media world. Future Oscars will have actual quotas for minority groups. Actor David Oyelowo praised the new standards,...

The vaccine rollout crawls forward. Most of us will spend weeks, or months, waiting. Great Britain did better. As of today, one-third of the English already are vaccinated, twice as many as in America. Why? A big reason is that our government decided to rigidly follow its regimen for the...

Politicians have too much power over our lives. Many used the pandemic as another excuse to take more. Early on, politicians declared that they would decide who was “essential.” Everyone else was told to stay home. Much of the economy stopped. Millions were laid off. Then politicians relaxed the rules...

Today’s environmental activists are so hostile to capitalism that they end up killing animals they want to protect. Like the African rhinoceros. Poachers kill them to get their horns, which can sell for as much as $300,000. Poachers mostly sell in China and Vietnam, to people who carve them into...

I love my digital devices, but people keep telling me to worry more about my privacy. “Encrypt your emails!” “Drop Google and use search engines like DuckDuckGo that don’t track us!” I probably should. But I don’t. I’m lazy, and I like that web companies know me and show me...

Last week, I reported on two myths about socialism. Today I’ll cover three more. Myth No. 3: Socialism works if it’s “democratic.” As the Democratic Socialists of America put it, “Society should be run democratically — to meet public needs, not to make profits for a few.” Sounds nice. If...

People hate America’s big disparities in wealth. It’s a reason why, among young people, socialism is as popular as capitalism. The Democratic Socialists of America want a country based on “freedom, equality and solidarity.” That sure sounds good. But does socialism bring that? One reason for socialism’s continued appeal is...

After Joe Biden’s inauguration, he ordered everyone on federal lands to wear a mask. That night, he and his family posed for pictures at the Lincoln Memorial — none of them wearing a mask. California Gov. Gavin Newsom told Californians it’s “essential” to avoid “mixing with people outside of your...

Joe Biden says he’ll “advance racial equity” by making “bold investments” in “affordable housing,” aiding “businesses owned by Black and brown people,” establishing an “equity commission,” etc. Gosh, that’ll do it. Economist Thomas Sowell says, “I haven’t been able to find a single country in the world where policies advocated...

Is your child’s school open now? Probably not — because teachers unions say that reopening would “put their health and safety at risk.” They keep schools closed by lobbying and protesting. “If I die from catching covid-19 from being forced back into Pinellas County Schools, you can drop my dead...

Islamic terror has been trending down for five years. Some American officials said this would never happen. America has failed to properly fight terrorism, said former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, so it “has spread, gaining countless new adherents.” Others said fundamentalism’s demand for religious obedience over individual freedom means “peace...

Was 2020 the worst year ever? The media keep saying that. We did have the pandemic, a bitter election, unemployment, riots and a soaring national debt. But wait, look at the good news, says historian Johan Norberg. His new book, “Open: The Story of Human Progress,” points out how life...

Who was on Santa’s naughty and nice lists this Christmas? If I were Santa, I’d have given lumps of coal to: • Federal bureaucrats whose rigid rules delayed covid-19 tests. The CDC wouldn’t allow private companies to sell covid-19 tests until the CDC’s own test didn’t work. • President Trump,...

President Trump should pardon Edward Snowden. Who? I know, it’s embarrassing — Assange, Manning, Snowden … . Who did what? I got them confused before I researched this topic. National security isn’t my beat. I finally educated myself this month because I got a chance, via Zoom, to interview Snowden,...