John Stossel: Keep the Bush tax cuts, ax some programs

...the stupidest thing said about tax cuts is the often-repeated claim that "they ought to be paid for." How absurd! Tax cuts merely let people keep money they rightfully own. It's government programs, not tax cuts, that must be paid for. The tax-hungry politicians' demand that cuts be "paid for" implies the federal budget isn't $3 trillion, but $15 trillion -- the whole GDP -- with anything mercifully left in our pockets being some form of government spending. How monstrous!

If cutting taxes leaves less money for government programs, the answer is simple: Ax the programs!

Blown call at 1st base is baseball's business, not government's

Many sports fans are outraged by the blown call that cost Detroit Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga a “perfect game." Heartbroken fans, players, and coaches have called upon the league to reverse the call. But when MLB Commissioner Bud Selig refused to overturn it, enter the grandstanding politicians:

Michigan Governor Jennifer M. Granholm claims that Armando Galarraga did, in fact, pitch a perfect game. And her office sent out a shiny press release to prove it:

“Now, Therefore, be it Resolved that I, Jennifer M. Granholm, governor of the state of Michigan, do hereby declare Armando Galarraga to have pitched a perfect game, and I join Tigers fans all across the globe in saluting his unassailable accomplishment — the first perfect game in Tigers history.”

Thank heavens for Governor Granholm. Without her declaration, we’d never know that it was a perfect game.

I’m surprised Congress isn’t getting involved. Oh, wait, they are:

Upon his return to Washington following the current district work period, Congressman John D. Dingell (D-MI) will introduce a resolution calling on Major League Baseball to overturn the call on the field that spoiled Armando Galarraga’s perfect game.

…“This is the right thing to do.”

No, it’s the wrong thing to do. The MLB’s decision is their decision. Baseball is a private business. If Selig’s decision was bad, it will hurt his business. Fans will protest.

Congressman Dingell has the right to be upset in private, but Congress has no business meddling with private business.

John Stossel on the magic nuclear energy bullet

Congress now spends your money on a host of intrusive new programs designed to make America "energy independent." President Obama recently announced $8 billion in loan guarantees for nuclear power plants.

I smiled when I heard. Finally, even Democrats woke up to the benefits of nuclear power. But Cato Institute energy analyst Jerry Taylor set me straight:

"If nuclear power made economic sense, we wouldn't need to subsidize it."

Affordable nuclear power, says Taylor, is a Republican fantasy. Promoting it makes no more sense than Nancy Pelosi's promotion of wind and solar power. "Take a Republican speech about nuclear power, cross out the phrase 'nuclear,' and put in 'solar' — you've got a Democratic speech about energy."

All these "alternative" fuels are economically impractical. Natural gas is practical. And plentiful.

We're hurtling down the road to serfdom

According to the Tax Foundation, 60 percent of the population now gets more in government benefits than it pays in taxes. What does it say about a society in which more than half the people live at the expense of the rest? Worse, the dependent class is growing. The 60 percent will soon be 70 percent.

Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin seems to understand the threat: He's worried that "more people have a stake in the welfare state than in free enterprise. This is a road that Hayek perfectly described as 'the road to serfdom.'" (Tomorrow I will ask Ryan why, if he understands this, he voted for TARP and the auto bailouts.)

Kurt Vonnegut understood the threat of government-imposed equality. His short story Harrison Bergeron portrays a future in which no one is permitted to have any physical or intellectual advantage over anyone else. A government Handicapper General weighs down the strong and agile, masks the faces of the beautiful and distracts the smart.

So far, the Handicapper General is just fantasy. But Vice President Joe Biden did shout at the Democratic National Convention: "Everyone is your equal, and everyone is equal to you." If he meant that we're all equal in rights and before the law, fine. If he meant government shouldn't put barriers in the way of opportunity, great. But statists like Biden usually have more in mind: They want government to make results more equal.

John Stossel: statism, not freedom, is winning

When colleges innovated by having students use Kindle e-book readers instead of expensive textbooks, the Justice Department sued them, complaining that the Kindle discriminates against blind students. The department also is suing the Massachusetts prison system because it makes prospective prison guards take a physical test. Since women don't do as well as men on that test, Justice claims the test discriminates against women.

Arthur Brooks, who heads the American Enterprise Institute, says statism is becoming the "central organizing power in our economy," and that the battle between free enterprise and statism will shape our futures. He remains optimistic because a recent poll showed that 70 percent of Americans want free enterprise. I'm less sanguine. In that same poll, 54 percent of Americans said government should exert more control over the economy.

John Stossel ObamaCare reflects the "bone-headed audicity" of central planners

The 1,990-page bill is breathtaking in its bone-headed audacity. The notion that a small group of politicians can know enough to design something so complex and so personal is astounding. That they were advised by "experts" means nothing since no one is expert enough to do that. There are too many tradeoffs faced by unique individuals with infinitely varying needs.

Government cannot do simple things efficiently. The bureaucrats struggle to count votes correctly. They give subsidized loans to "homeowners" who turn out to be 4-year-olds. Yet congressmen want government to manage our medicine and insurance.

Competition is a "discovery procedure," Nobel-prize-winning economist F. A. Hayek taught. Through the competitive market process, we producers and consumers constantly learn things that force us to adjust our behavior if we are to succeed. Central planners fail for two reasons:

First, knowledge about supply, demand, individual preferences and resource availability is scattered -- much of it never articulated -- throughout society. It is not concentrated in a database where a group of planners can access it.

Second, this "data" is dynamic: It changes without notice.

Good for us: John Stossel moves from ABC to Fox

"It's time for a change. Next month, I leave ABC News to start a weekly one-hour prime time show with Fox News.

When I announced that on my blog, plenty of viewers said they were happy to have me leave.

"Goodbye. You suck. You have found a much better home for your garbage reporting and backwards politics."

"Congratulations on the move to the network intellectually suited to your quasi-libertarian corporate-apologist hackery!"

Oh well, you can't please everyone. I don't expect that my libertarian beliefs will please everyone at Fox, either."