Posted on 12/09/2009 4:04:32 AM PST by Kaslin
People keep forwarding me emails and blog posts saying ABC fired me. Internet forums claim I was fired because I aired a story about the downside of government-controlled health care. This is silly. It's not even logical. No one can broadcast anything on "20/20" without ABC's approval.
The truth is that my departure from ABC was by mutual consent.
I left to go to the Fox News Channel and Fox Business Network because I want more time to report on free markets and economic liberty, the kind of reporting I do in this column. With two 24-hour news channels, Fox has more room for that.
Tomorrow, finally, my new Fox Business show begins! It will air every Thursday at 8 p.m. (and will repeat Fridays at 10 p.m. -- opposite "20/20" -- heh, heh, heh).
My first show will be on the "climate crisis." Or it might be on Ayn Rand's novel "Atlas Shrugged." I've prepared both shows because I can't decide which I should do.
What do you think?
I'm partial to an "Atlas" show because I reread the novel recently and was stunned. It was as if Rand had seen the future. Writing half a century ago, she predicted today's explosion of big government in shockingly accurate detail.
The "Preservation of Livelihood Law." The "Equalization of Opportunity Law." The "Steel Unification Plan."
Don't these sound like laws passed by the current Congress?
All were creations of Rand's villain, Wesley Mouch, the evil bureaucrat who regulates business and eventually drives the productive people out of business. Who is today's Wesley Mouch? Barney Frank? Chris Dodd. Tim Geithner? I'll ask my TV audience to vote.
"Atlas" is still a big bestseller today. This year, it reached as high as NO. 15 on Amazon's bestseller list. Pretty amazing.
Clearly there's some magic in "Atlas Shrugged." The Library of Congress once asked readers which books made the biggest difference in their lives. "Atlas" came in second, after the Bible.
Yet elites and the MSM hate Ayn Rand. When "Atlas" first came out, The New York Times wrote that "the book is written out of hate."
Maybe that's why no "Atlas" movie has been made. Angelina Jolie once wanted to play heroine Dagny Taggart, but it never happened. Rand's books still sell millions of copies, yet college "women's studies" courses rarely mention her. One professor says her department head asked, "Why would you study that fascist?"
Why such antipathy?
Rand celebrates business and free markets. The elites don't like business. In every newsroom where I've worked, and at my college, Princeton, capitalism was derided as selfishness.
And lately, as a failure. On one website, someone wrote: "You'd think it was a joke, when the global economy was collapsing because of greed, that anyone might turn seriously to the purple prose of crypto-fascist (!) Ayn Rand and think it was the answer to anything" (http://tinyurl.com/cswqhe).
Well, I, for one, think her prose answers much.
The embrace of freer markets has lifted more people out of the misery of poverty than any other system -- ever. The World Bank says that in just the last 30 years, half a billion people who once lived on less than $1.25 a day have moved out of poverty.
But now, Wesley Mouch -- I mean, Congress and the bureaucrats -- tell us they are going to "fix" capitalism, as if their previous "fixes" didn't hamstring the free market and create the problems they propose to solve.
Who are they kidding? Rand had it right. She learned it the hard way in Soviet Russia. What makes a country work is leaving people free -- free to take risks, to invent things -- and to keep the rewards of their work.
Critics say Ayn Rand promotes selfishness. I call it "enlightened self interest." When free people act in their own self-interest, society prospers.
So there's my first show, maybe.
On second thought, with Barack Obama heading to Copenhagen promising America will cut its greenhouse gasses by 83 percent (not 82, not 84 -- exactly 83), I may do my first show on global warming.
I'll decide tomorrow -- when I begin my new career.
Don’t sweat it John, We really wouldn’t believe the All Barack Channel anyway.
ABC needed to get rid of Stossel. He was the only one left with a brain.
It could be seen as a badge of honor if they had.
I used to be a big Imus fan on the radio and then lost interest in him, probably the MSNBC location. On Fox Business he has been reborn!
The critical 2010 elections are coming up. Let the “Great Leap Forward” purges of token conservatives working for the liberal MSM networks that doesn’t blindly promote ObamaCare, Cap & Tax, and Pelosi/Ried Congress begin.
Does that mean he is replacing BOR on Thursdays?
Stossil ping
It will air every Thursday at 8 p.m.
Does that mean he is replacing BOR on Thursdays?
_____________________________________________________
Two different channels - Stossil will pick up BOR’s defectors. There are a lot of BOR defectors on FR.
I don’t care for Stossel. He’s somewhat pompous and know-it-allish, reminiscent of Bill O’Reilly. Is he an atheist?
Ah, I see....I didn't know about the Fox Business Network because that channel is in Comcast's Digital Classic package which I don't subscribe to.
What does that mean? Is that a code for they asked me to leave and I left?
I’m proud to say I never heard of him
I stream FOX Business live here:
http://www.tvpc.com/Channel.php?ChannelID=1888
I don’t get it as part of my cable package either.
Good one.
All Barack Channel
Communist Broadcasting Service
National Bolshevik Channel
I can’t take credit. I have heard it somewhere around here.
It is fitting though.
Never heard of John Stossel?! He's the one and possibly only real journalist to come out of the networks in the last 30+ years. Before you write him off, go look for some of his work.
Stossel has done some good work exposing the lies of the left. I admit he grates on me personality wise. I do not know his religious background(if any). He is apparently a disciple of Ayn Rand, and I am not. Rand did only one thing well (expose the evil of collectivism). As a human being, I regard her as a sociopath ;-)
And socialism promotes generosity? Not long ago, they did a survey of where the most generous and most stingy people lived. The generous people were concentrated in very conservative states like Alabama, Utah and Mississippi. The stingy people were concentrated in ultra liberal states like Vermont, Connecticut and New York.
Show me one socialist state where the ruling class does not live a whole lot better than the hoi polloi.
You should watch John Stossel. He was one of the VERY FEW conservatives employed at ABC. (George Will was another.)
He does a great job.
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