Review: John Stossel, Give me a break
Provacative book makes takes a hard look at what's what
JoeUser Forums
Stossel has been under fire recently which is something that took him a bit by surprise. He started out as being the guy who exposed all those seedy big corporations. The polluters, the scam artists, the fat cat CEOs. And by doing so won fame and praise from his peers in the media. He's won so many Emmy awards that he needs a couple shelves to hold them all.
But then something happened. He expanded to expose the pet causes of the left as well. He pointed out fraud in Medicaid. He started pointing out the dishonesty in some left wing groups. He showed corruption in the government. And suddenly he was branded a traitor and has suffered great abuse from the very same people who were once singing his praises.
One of the big themes in his book that really got me thinking was lawyers. His book exposes how both the left and the right (but mostly the left) use the courts to bypass the will of the people. Through lawsuits small groups and wield tremendous power. While a law requires a majority of legislatures to pass, a new legal decision only requires one sympathetic judge or jury. Fail once? Try try again until you get the judge who will give you what you want.
He also points out how these events end up harming the people they're trying to protect. Big lawsuits over iffy claims of discrimination by the disabled or minorities has led to higher unemployment rates in those groups as companies become more wary about bringing in a huge potential liability.
But for me, the real meat comes into play when he shows how the media pushes stories that have little factual basis. Take global warming, for example. Environmentalists have cynically been pushing that we're about to destroy the world due to higher temperatures caused by CO2. But are we? In fact for most of the past 10,000 years the earth was warmer than it is today. The world wasn't destroyed then. And if it could be 3 or 4 degrees warmer say in the year 5000bc when there was no industry, how do we know that mankind is affecting the climate?
Where Stossel really stirred things up was a program on 20/20 that essentially showed the whole "Organic food" craze as nonsense. Essentially it boils down to this -- the trace amount of pesticides on non-organic food are likely to be less harmful than the massive amounts of extra bacteria that "organic food" has. Organic food is certainly no more healthy than any other kind of food. He includes interviews with organic food advocates that demonstrate that they too know it's no more healthy. It's a scam.
Stossel's take on poverty is particularly harsh. Stossel, the journalist who has made his career sticking up for the little guy has very little nice to say about government programs that are supposed to help the poor. Rather than helping the poor, Stossel argues that government programs help perpetuate it.
For example, in 1959 the poverty rate was 22.4%. By 1970 it was down to 12.6% just as the "war on poverty" programs were starting up.. But at 1985, when mean Mr. Reagan finally got through some of the elimination of "programs for the poor" the poverty rate had actually increased to14%. In other words, the "war on poverty" had managed to reverse the historical trend in the United States of decreasing poverty. Poverty remained about the same until the mid 90s when welfare reform was passed. By 2000, poverty had declined to an all time low of only 11.3%. Imagine where we might be today if we hadn't lost a generation or two of people to welfare?
Probably the most controversial part of the book (which is saying a lot right?) is the argument over what constitutes "doing good". Do good intentions trump good results? He compared Mother Theresa to Michael Milken. Mother Theresa was the model of humility and devotion to the poor. Michael Milken, by contrast, is the poster child of greed who gave us the term "Junk bonds". But who did more good? Milken's junk bonds were what financed the creation of CNN, MCI, and hundreds of other high profile companies who have created millions of jobs and created trillions in wealth. Without junk bonds, Mattel would be out of business along with Revlon. We're not even talking about the millions Milken gave to charities and education grants. Mother Theresa, while noble in intentions, actually accomplished far less in terms of helping people.
Regardless of whether you're left or right, Give Me A Break is a provocative, thoughtful read. Highly recommended.
