More Stossel bashing, on everything BUT education

[Bussardre@aol.com]

John Stossel, a guy a lot of ARNers have raked over the coals for his  
education lies and disinformation, gets prodded in a piece (below) by David  Sirota, 
author of a new book, Hostile Takeover.
 
The curious thing here, however, is he doesn't mention the lies and  
disinformation Stossel spouts on education. And, curiously, absent from Sirota's  new 
book is a chapter about the hostile takeover of public educatin by corporate  
interests.  
 
I've written Sirota to ask him why he has ignored education.  But  then he 
ignored me also when I asked him about his previous ties to the Center  for 
American Progress,  John Podesta's group, which seems to sign on to  many of the 
Business Roundtable school reforms, including a longer school year  and 
year-round school (my area of study). Podesta's group recently held a  special 
program promoting Sirota's book, which was broadcast on C-Span.
 
Suppose ARNers ought to point out to Sirota all the Stossel lies  about 
education that have been posted and ask him why he doesn't write about  those or 
about education issues in his book?
 
--Billee Bussard
 
 
http://www.workingforchange.com/blog/index.cfm?mode=entry&entry=8821C5B9-F5E0-
57BC-CF2C71D3CF168EC5
{http://www.workingforchange.com/blog/index.cfm?mode=entry&entry=8821C5B9-F5E0
-57BC-CF2C71D3CF168EC5}

John  Stossel Is a Pathological Liar

By David Sirota

Webster's Medical  Dictionary defines a "pathological liar" as "an
individual who habitually  tells lies so exaggerated or bizarre that
they are suggestive of mental  disorder." Next to this definition
should be the official ABC News photo of  that network's
self-important, smarmy looking, all-too-coiffed "reporter"  named John
Stossel.

You may have noticed that Stossel is out hawking a  book called Myths,
Lies, and Downright Stupidity purporting to debunk those  things.
Instead, what we see is that Stossel is spewing them - and using  his
media platform as a megaphone of dishonesty. Stossel, in many ways,
is  exactly why I wrote my new book Hostile Takeover - to strip bare
the  opportunists, shills and half-wits who dominate our political
debate and show  them for what they really are: pathological liars.

Here's what I mean.  According to the right-wing, Scaife-owned
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Stossel  appeared on ABC's "The View" to
talk about his book's assertion that the  minimum wage supposedly
hurts low-income workers. The host was surprised that  someone could
make such a ludicrous claim. "Why does raising the minimum wage  --
this one I don't get -- actually hurt poor people?," she asked
Stossel.  "I don't understand that one at all." He replied, "The truth
is that people  on the margins lose jobs when minimum wages go up. We
used to have people  washing windshields at gas stations. We don't
anymore because of the minimum  wage. There's no opportunity for kids,
for entry-level workers."

Mind  you, Stossel is making this claim at precisely the same time
President Bush  is claiming we need a guest worker program because
there are actually too  many entry-level, low-wage jobs that aren't
being filled. But beyond that,  the actual data exposes Stossel's
pathological lying. As I note in my book's  section on this very lie
about minimum wages supposedly hurting the job  market: 

"In a comprehensive 2004 study, the nonpartisan Fiscal  Policy
Institute reported that since 1997, states that had boosted  their
minimum wage above the federal minimum actually created jobs  faster
than those that did not. In higher minimum wage states,  employment
grew by 50 percent more than it did in states still at the  pathetic
federal level. Even in tough economic times, the minimum wage  doesn't
hurt jobs: Princeton University economist David Card found that  even
the minimum wage increases during the 1990-91 recession 'were  not
associated with any measurable employment losses.' As Republican  Sen.
Arlen Specter (PA) once noted, 'history clearly demonstrates  that
raising the minimum wage has no adverse impact on jobs.'...In  Oregon,
for instance, the state raised its minimum wage in 1998, and  the
average earnings of newly-employed welfare recipients climbed by  9
percent, while the percentage of welfare recipients who found a  job
actually rose." Stossel's latest pathological lie followed one from  a
few weeks ago when he used ABC's Good Morning America to claim that  it
is a "myth" that "women earn less" than men for "doing the same  work."
Yet, as Media Matters noted, the Bureau of Labor Statistics'  (BLS)
2004 wage data shows definitively that women earned on average  80.4
percent of men's weekly median earnings in virtually every  occupation
listed regardless of job title. Again, Stossel used ABC's airwaves  to
peddle a pathological lie.

This all may seem surprising. After all,  how could one of the major
networks employ a person with such disdain for the  truth and then
call him a "journalist?" It's a good question - but Stossel  has made
a nice career behaving this way. For instance, Stossel has tried  to
deny the scientific consensus surrounding global warming, despite  928
peer-reviewed scientific papers on global warming published  between
1993 and 2003 all concluding that global warming is real,  and
human-caused.

It was Stossel who penned a column during the  Hurricane Katrina
energy crisis entitled "In Praise of Price Gouging."  Instead of being
a "consumer watchdog" as he is regularly billed, Stossel was  using his
platform to publicize all sorts of reasons why oil  industry
profiteering at the time was patriotic and heroic.

Similarly,  as I note in my book, Stossel has self-righteously used
the airwaves to rail  against people who file lawsuits. "We all have
pain and suffering in our  lives," Stossel has said. "And if each time
we hang onto it until we get some  kind of compensation, society can’t
work." Yet, it was Stossel who filed a  high-profile case himself in
which he sued a wrestler for $200,000 for  slapping him during an
interview. "I asked for as much as I could get,"  Stossel told
newspapers, apparently too downright stupid to see just how much  of a
hypocrite he was showing himself to be.

For his patholgical  lying, Stossel is now regularly honored by
fringe-right-wing groups like the  Heritage Foundation (you know, the
group that has been caught more than once  publicly peddling sheer
lies). And yet, he retains the veneer of  journalistic
credibility/objectivity thanks to ABC's continued willingness to  let
him pollute the airwaves with his "myths, lies and  downright
stupidity" - without giving so much as a smidgeon of airtime  to
experts who would actually challenge this pathological liar with  the
facts.

Because of his unfettered access to the airwaves and the  refusal of
his media sponsors to actually question his factually  inaccurate
assertions, Stossel's book has risen up the bestseller list,  with
consumers led to believe it is a beacon of truth-telling that  will
show us the world as it actually is. The right-wing apparatus  that
fetes Stossel is undoubtedly promoting his book as a  supposedly
virtuous, sincere look at the facts, thus fueling even more  sales,
furthering other media buzz about him and furthering Stossel's  reach.
Meanwhile, Stossel's campaign to turn his pathological lies  into
assumed fact goes on, increasingly debasing our political  debate,
intensifying the disconnect of the media discourse from actual  facts.
It is a sick cycle, indeed - and it highlights why American  politics
seems more and more divorced from reality: because the media  debate
that frames American politics presents pathological liars  like
Stossel as credible voices.

Stossel urges us on the cover of his  book to "get out the shovel" -
he's right, you'll need one to dig out from  the steaming piles of
dishonest B.S. this ABC News "reporter" is leaving in  his wake.