Today I debate “consumer advocate” and radical libertarian John Stossel on FOX at 2:30 pm ET (1:30 pm CT/11:30 am PT).

Remember this?

Watch the clip from 6 minutes in to the end.

It was June 1, and I said to Mike Gallagher:
“Repeat after me: Government regulation is often necessary. You can’t trust corporations to police themselves.”
(Mike wouldn’t repeat.)

The segment ends with me saying, “Newly minted socialist Mike Gallagher and Bobby Jindal. Now
you want the Government to clean up your mess.”

This clip frames the debate today with John Stossel. Does John Stossel agree philosophically that Government regulation is often necessary? That you can’t always trust corporations to police themselves? Or does he think the free market always solves these problems?

Today, Obama is signing the most sweeping financial reform regulation since the Great Depression. Does Stossel think that the SEC was working just fine under Bush? That Wall Street adequately policed itself in that era?

Today, we have finally a capped a will spewing more than a million gallons of oil daily into the Gulf. Does Stossel think that BP adequately policed itself? Or did we need more effective Government regulation?

I remember watching John Stossel at one point target the FDA. The FDA! Does he really think the free market can handle tainted meat? Does he really want arsenic to be sold openly to the public (next to the candy aisles perhaps)?

Maybe he’s against traffic lights too? (damned Government regulation!) And laws banning lead in children’s toys? Laws banning air and water pollution?

Is there anything he thinks the Government does right?

I will readily concede there are times when Government regulation — like any good thing — goes too far. But, as a general principle, repeat after me, “Government regulation is often necessary. You can’t trust corporations to police themselves.”

C’mon Stossel. You won’t say it. Will ya?

The article below was published by CNBC:

Ordinary Americans are the Engines of the Economy,

Not the Superrich

On CNBC’s “The Call” today, I appeared with Ben Ferguson to discuss the wisdom of extending the Bush tax cuts. Like President Obama and the Democrats, I believe in continuing the Bush and Obama tax cuts on the 98% of Americans who earn under a quarter of a million dollars. I think ordinary Americans need the money, along with Government infrastructure spending, to spur us out of the Bush/Wall Street Recession. Ben, in contrast, supports the Republican plan of borrowing $678 billion from the Chinese and your social security taxes to extend massive income tax breaks to the super-wealthy.

Ben argues that America must go deep into debt to give rich people oodles of cash because it will spur economic growth. But I argue it’s the 98% of Americans that received Obama’s middle-class tax cut — giving us the lowest tax burden since 1950 (thank you, President Obama!) — that are the engines of the economy.

Who’s right? As a matter of logic, economics, and history, is it the superrich or the other 98% of us that make the American economy grow? Read the rest of this entry »

Is the tea party racist?
Do they support ending social security?
Will Republicans endorse these views?

Mark debates Monica Crowley on the Bill O’Reilly Show:

Mark discusses why we need Government Spending, why the Arizona law is unconstitutional, and why we need Superfund.

Tony West, the lawyer in the DOJ suit against the unconstitutional Arizona law, is being attacked personally for once representing John Walker Lindh, an American citizen who trained with the Taliban, pled guilty, and was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Frankly, I don’t get the criticism.  There’s no allegation West has done anything in the slightest that is wrong or unethical, just that he represented a bad guy, which is in the finest American tradition of due process. (John Adams once represented the British Soldier who shot Americans at the “Boston Massacre.”) If no lawyer  had stepped up to represent Lindh, a lawyer would have been required to have been appointed for Lindh under the Sixth Amendment.

Why do conservatives hate our Constitution and the rule of law so much?  If they don’t like our Bill of Rights, they should seek to get rid of it by amending the Constitution.

A primer on the Financial Reform Bill, the Disclosure Act, the renewed Stimulus Package, and other bills before Congress this July.

 

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Mark on the Leslie Marshall Show

 

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