Commentary By John Stossel

Gas Myths By John Stossel

Plan to drive more this summer? Annoyed by the price of gas? Complaining that oil companies rip you off?

Sublet My People Go By John Stossel

My kids moved out! I have two empty rooms in my apartment. Maybe I can rent them? A tourist visiting New York City could have a different experience, and save hotel money. I'd make money. Wouldn't it be great?

True Grit By John Stossel

Are you a real man (or woman)? Do you have "grit"?

Compare yourself to the man on the $20 bill: Andrew Jackson, our seventh president.

Live Free or Move By John Stossel

Forty-three million Americans moved from one state to another between 1995 and 2010 -- about one-seventh of Americans.

It's good that we can move! Moving provides one of the few limits on the megalomania of state bureaucrats.

Americans have moved away from high-taxed, heavily regulated states to lower-taxed, less-regulated states. Most don't think of it as a political decision. They just go where opportunities are, and that usually means where there's less government.

They're leaving my state, New York, in droves. California, despite its great weather, also lost people, and wealth. Other biggest losers were Illinois, New Jersey and Ohio.

Train Wreck Ahead By John Stossel

Most Americans -- even those who are legislators -- know very little about the details of President Obama's Affordable Care Act, so-called Obamacare. Next year, when it goes into effect, we will learn the hard way.

Many people lazily assume that the law will do roughly what it promises: give insurance to the uninsured and lower the cost of health care by limiting spending on dubious procedures.

Don't count on it.

Consider just the complexity: The act itself is more than 906 pages long, and again and again in those 906 pages are the words, "the Secretary shall promulgate regulations ..."

The Education Blob's Revenge By John Stossel

I wrote recently how teachers unions, parent-teacher associations and school bureaucrats form an education "Blob" that makes it hard to improve schools. They also take revenge on those who work around the Blob. 

A Post-Post Office World By John Stossel

Even parts of government that look like a business never get run with the efficiency of a business. Just look at the post office. 

Government Plays Favorites By John Stossel

People say government must "help the little guy, promote equality, level the playing field." 

Green Tyranny By John Stossel

Environmental activists and politicians would like you to think that we must love their regulations -- or hate trees and animals.

Imperial Washington By John Stossel

The Senate did something this past weekend it hasn't done in four years: passed a budget. The law requires the Senate to pass a budget, but Congress often ignores its own laws. For most of Barack Obama's presidency, a series of continuing resolutions kept the money -- your money -- flowing. Now the Senate wants to add a trillion dollars of new taxes, even more than President Obama seeks. Despite our growing debt, the Senate wants to fund things like the Senate barbershop, which loses a third of a million dollars every year.

The Blob That Ate Children By John Stossel

Shortly after I did my first TV special on education, "Stupid in America," hundreds of union teachers showed up outside my office to yell at me. They were angry because I said union rules were a big reason American kids don't learn.    

Frack to the Future By John Stossel

Celebrities are now upset about fracking, the injection of chemicals into the ground to crack rocks to release oil and gas. With everyone saying they want alternatives to foreign oil, I'd think celebrities would love fracking.   

Sequester: Not Even a Cut By John Stossel

If you're reading this, you've survived the "sequester" cuts!

That may surprise you, since President Obama likened the sequester to taking a "meat cleaver" to government, causing FBI agents to be furloughed, prosecutors to let criminals escape and medical research to grind to a halt!

The media hyped it, too. The NBC Nightly News said, "The sequester could cripple air travel, force firefighter layoffs -- even kick preschoolers out of child care!"

Libertarians' Awkward Bedfellows By John Stossel

Last week, Conservative pundit Ann Coulter told me and a thousand young libertarians that we libertarians are puss- -- well, she used slang for a female body part.

We were in Washington, D.C., at the Students for Liberty conference, taping my TV show, and she didn't like my questions about her opposition to gay marriage and drug legalization.

"We're living in a country that is 70 percent socialist," she says. "The government takes 60 percent of your money. They take care of your health care, your pensions ... who you can hire ... and you (libertarians) want to suck up to your little liberal friends and say, oh, we want to legalize pot? ... If you were a little more manly, you'd tell liberals what your position on employment discrimination is."

To Government, Every Penny Is Sacred By John Stossel

President Obama has new priorities. That means new spending.

In his State of the Union, he said, "The American people don't expect government to solve every problem." But then he went on to list how, under his guidance, government will solve a thousand problems, including some (like climate change and a loss of manufacturing jobs) that are probably not even problems.

A Real State of the Union By John Stossel

We've heard another State of the Union speech, and my president said grand things like:

"Think about ... a future where we're in control of our own energy ... I will not cede the wind or solar or battery industry to China ... I will not back down from protecting our kids from mercury poisoning ..."

Actually, he said that in 2012. I write before this year's speech, but he says basically the same thing every year: With more spending, government can fix everything.

Ban This! Ban That! Ban This and That! By John Stossel

I like to bet on sports. Having a stake in the game, even if it's just five bucks, makes it more exciting. I also like playing poker. "Unacceptable!" say politicians in much of America. "Gambling sometimes leads to 'addiction,' destitute families!"

Well, it can.

So politicians ban it. It's why we no longer see a poker game in the back of bars. Half the states even ban poker between friends -- though they rarely enforce that.

Obama Is Not King By John Stossel

Watching President Obama's inaugural, I was confused. It looked like a new king was being crowned. Thousands cheered, like subjects worshipping nobility. At a time when America faces unsustainable debt and terrible economic troubles, why such pomp?

Maybe it's because so many people tell themselves presidents can solve any problem, like fairy-tale kings -- or gods.

Before America's first inauguration, John Adams suggested George Washington be called "His Most Benign Highness." Fortunately, Congress insisted on the more modest title, "President."

Shopping Around for a Better Life By John Stossel

Thanks, California! Thanks for your monstrous spending and absurd regulatory overreach! America needs you. We need Connecticut and Illinois, too! We need you the way we needed the Soviet Union, as models of failure, to warn us what happens if we believe those who say, "Government can."

Moving to California was once the dream for many Americans. Its population grew at almost triple the national average -- until 1990. Then big government, in the form of endless regulation and taxes, killed much of the dream. In the last decade, 2 million people left California.

First, the Bad News By John Stossel

We in the media rarely lie to you.

But that leaves plenty of room to take things wildly out of context.

That's where most big scare stories come from, like recent headlines about GM foods. GM means "genetically modified," which means scientists add genes, altering the plant's DNA, in this case to make the crop resistant to pests.