• The Stimulus Works...

      Posted by John Stossel | January 20, 2010

      ...at least for one person.  Who?  Penn State University's Michael Mann, a climate scientist whose credibility has come into question.  He's the guy behind Al Gore's famous "hockey stick" graph, which has been discredited.

      Mann was also a central figure in the Climate-Gate email scandal, which showed prominent global warming alarmists to be fudging the data and squelching dissent.

      According to today's Wall Street Journal, more than $2.4 million is "stimulating" the career of Michael Mann:

      Mr. Mann came by his grants via the National Science Foundation, which received $3 billion in stimulus money. Last June, the foundation approved a $541,184 grant to fund [Mann's] work [...] He received another grant worth nearly $1.9 million [...] Both grants say they were "funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009."

      I assumed the deceit revealed by the emails and hockey stick error would mean my tax dollars will stop going to someone like Mann.  I assume wrong:

      The NSF made these awards prior to last year's climate email scandal, but a member of its Office of Legislative and Public Affairs told us she was "unaware of any discussion regarding suspending or changing the awards made to Michael Mann."

      Give me a break.

      TAGS
      Global Warming
      Government

    • JOHN HAS A NEW BOOK! ORDER TODAY

    This Week's Show -- May 16, 2013

    Government is at war against the little guy.

     

    Bureaucrats pass thousands of regulations to "keep people safer" and "make the marketplace more fair." Today 170,000 pages of federal regulations are on the books. Break just one rule, and government may wreck your life.

     

    So Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson started a "Victims of Government" website that features victims of overregulation.

     

    Nevada bureaucrats tell people who teach movie make-up that they must get an expensive license or close.

     

    Stossel has two empty rooms in his house now that his kids moved out. Using sites like Roomorama, he could make a little money and rent the rooms out. But two years ago, New York passed a law that makes most of what apartment rental sites do illegal. Stossel debates Liz Kreuger, who sponsored that bill.

     

    Is there any hope for the little guy? Authors of "Madmen, Intellectuals, and Academic Scribblers", Edward Lopez and Wayne Leighton, point out that deregulation did happen once. Americans pay much less to fly and to ship something because the CAB and ICC no longer exist. And we have cell phones because the FCC finally allowed spectrum auction. They say the only time things change is when the right people, the right ideas and the right circumstances all come together to repeal the bureaucrats rules.

     

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