Comments by "Scott Franco" (@scottfranco1962) on "PragerU" channel.

  1. Simple proof: why did Elisabeth Warren try to get herself classified as a minority if it didn't confer special privileges on her?
    361
  2. There are so many distortions of fact here it is hard to know where to begin. First, "the car emits 1/3 of its emissions when produced". This is a comparison with zero, since, as the announcer details, gas powered cars emit %64 of the same emissions to make. Further, the emission costs to make a car are themselves highly dependant on the energy source of the factory that makes them. Thus Tesla, made in northern California, is largely powered by natural gas. Third, the "extra" emissions said in the video come from Lithium mining, which comes primarily from countries with little emissions controls on mining. Thus, there is every expectation that this will improve. Forth, the "emissions" of an EV are highly dependent on the power source, and conversion of power in the USA is moving towards natural gas. In California it is the primary source. As pointed out elsewhere, the major source of coal based power in California is because of imports from other states that still use coal. Fifth, the lifetime and scrapping of an EV is based on the idea that EVs have the same lifetime as gas cars, for which there no basis. There is every reason to believe that EVs will last longer than gas cars due to less wear and complexity. Sixth, "renewables will only advance %3 in the next 25 years, meanwhile those fossil fuels will still generate %64 of power [in 25 years]". This is an incredible mixing of different facts to "prove" your point. Even IF that is true it discounts the rapid move away from coal to natural gas power generation. remember "EVs are coal powered"? your central thesis falls simply because of the changing mix of power generation, and you navigate around that fact. Summing up, your misstatement of facts and conclusion based on navigation of the facts you like vs. the facts you don't like qualifies you perfectly to report for the Wall Street Journal, but it does not qualify you to lecture US.
    331
  3. The proper verb is: Californication. Its even a song now.
    23
  4. Agreed, we need higher quality leftist trolls.
    16
  5. Less than $52,800 would pay no income tax Why should anyone who makes money be let out of paying taxes? I started at minimum wage in the 1970s, and I paid taxes. What purpose does it serve to let anyone contribute NOTHING to their government? It only makes sense if you are trying to buy votes.
    16
  6. This is a sickening whitewash. I could not watch it all. Read Ida Tarbell if you want a real account of Rockefeller. He didn't invent or discover anything. He just operated a goon squad that forced companies to sell and become part of the monopoly. He used every dirty trick in the book to accomplish those ends, and was not above arranging accidents for companies that would not sell to him by the dark of night. And finally he spent a good deal of money trying (and apparently succeeding) to buy peoples admiration. Rockefeller's one good thing was to educate america on the problem of having one runaway monopoly shut down all competition. Unfortunately the efforts by Roosevelt to stop it led to the crony capitalist system we have today.
    15
  7. Yes, unlike the propaganda, Arabs were not forced to leave by the Israelis. Many were TOLD to leave by the Arab states that attacked the new state of Israel, and some refused.
    12
  8. Bill gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, Larry Elison, michael Dell... What do they have in common? In general the companies they created require their engineers to have degrees and discriminate against those who don't.
    11
  9. 1. No, they won't. Fracking has put decades of oil back on the table, and there is no reason to believe we won't discover more. There are centuries of oil left. 2. Of course. In fact, they will cost far less than gas cars, because they are simpler to make with less moving parts, have no need for smog controls, and will take advantage of volume pricing at the same time gas cars drop in volume. 3. True, but get ready for most of the oil to go to the third world, which by definition trails in technology. that is going to happen for many decades to come.
    8
  10. The real situation is not that nobody will work if overtaxed (they would try). When government tries to take too much out of the economy, it gets sicker and sicker and starts to die. Government is like a tick that gets bigger and bigger and starts to take so much blood from its host that it cannot survive. And both die.
    6
  11. Ok, but I am also suffering their decisions, as a lifelong republican who was born in California and have lived here my whole life. CA is still about %40 republican, but you would never know it. And our one party state as started fixing the vote in their favor. I got bumped off the voter rolls even though I have been registered to vote for 45 years and have lived in one place for 20 years. Democrats legalized vote harvesting and are using it to overturn the last places Republicans control, like San Diego and Bakersfield, and actively practice gerrymandering. What is your advice for how to deal with it? Without abandoning my lifelong home state?
    6
  12. Dennis goes undercover as a gang member...
    5
  13. The issue is that government agencies will do ANYTHING to protect their jobs. Reagan came into office with the idea that you had to cut the budget of federal agencies to get them to shrink, like you cut off blood to a tumor. And it worked. The second part of that equation was that government can and will spend every dollar that it gets in taxes and then some. Thus you have to cut taxes FIRST before cutting budgets. Government will never willingly leave money on the table it has got through taxes. Did the Reagan revolution increase the debt? you betcha. Government continued to overspend even with the cuts. But by the end of the 1980's and into the 1990's, the economy was growing at such a rate, and the government was NOT growing at such a rate, that by the end of the century the budget balanced and even went into surplus, which of course the democrats took credit for. That's probably the last surplus budget I will see out of the government in my lifetime. Perhaps yours too.
    5
  14. "there is no way to store solar and wind power" Not true, PSH (Pump Storage Hydroelectric) has been around for decades, there is a lot of it being created, and there is virtually no limit to its use. Further, much of the present hydroelectric and water storage can be converted to PSH use (anytime a higher dam feeds into a lower one). Also the "why solar power is expensive" is a canard. Solar panels have only been around for a few decades, and are now riding an incredible cost reduction curve. Evaluating that would be like drawing conclusions about fossil fuels a few decades after they were found in Pennsylvania.
    4
  15. Thanks, that was good for a laugh.
    4
  16. Yes, "but fracking is wrong"... This whole thing just demonstrates that the left is impervious to facts and reason. I think talking to a rock is actually more productive.
    3
  17. By the way, I am conservative and don't regret the dropping of bombs on Japan, and even I don't believe the common explanation of nuking Japan. What the dropping of the bombs did is convince Japan that we could move from fighting a conventional war to fighting an almost "free" war that involved no men or materials, but simply flying over the island of Japan and slowly reducing it to a glowing pile of rubble. Remember that in those days nuclear bombs were not that powerful, and it would have taken dozens of nuclear weapons to bring Japan to its knees. The dropping of the second nuclear bomb was necessary because Japan, which by the was NOT stupid or without spies and probably knew something about the a-bomb before it was dropped on them, had reason to doubt that we had more than one of the weapons. They would have been right. In fact, to drop a third one would have been a problem for us. The idea of being able to fight wars with pushbuttons was short lived. With proliferation of nuclear weapons, even to just the USSR, meant that even the "unthinkable" conventional wars would be fought under a nuclear umbrella and in fact by proxy, as was exactly what happened. Thus the cost of war actually went up, not down (as it should be). As for the current crop of crybabies wringing their hands over nuking Japan, the answer is simple. Nuke 'em again. They have been getting uppity of late, and that would put an end to this whole argument.
    3
  18. Nice try, won't work. You don't need to look to south/central America. I have a lot of French friends, and virtually all of them say they came here because the French economy was stagnant, lacking in opportunity and overtaxed. Yet many were cheering Obamacare. At last! They were going to have it all! The low taxes and opportunities of the USA, married with government run healthcare just like good ole France. This cognitive dissonance was and is hard for me to fathom. I even try to point out that America does NOT have government health care BECAUSE we are less taxed and have better opportunity here, but the answer is just "j'aime les duex". I want them both.
    3
  19. some are rich ,but most of us are not. Way better with socialism, where everyone is poor.
    3
  20. Speak out.... you are kidding right? I live in California. The thought police are everywhere here.
    3
  21. I like the fact that several complained about the Israel government. Lets see the citizens of Gaza or the West bank complain about their government.
    3
  22. Mmmmm, shoelaces with rats, yummmm
    2
  23. I'd love to watch a fair debate between the two. Its unlikely to be arranged.
    2
  24. So this is saying the current leftist tilt in education happened all on its own. That is not so. The conservatives were in charge during the same years as the schools were moving left. Go back to Animal Farm. The ultimate takeover of the farm is because the pigs were allowed to separate off newborns and educate them to be (literally) attack dogs to enforce their power. The point here is that the conservatives are just as much at fault for letting our education system drift as the left is. There is virtually no balance left in the education system. I read my kids textbooks. Our fundamental economic system, capitalism, is not a required subject even in high school, and social studies and government studies have become leftist guilt textbooks to educate white children in self hatred. Who allowed this to happen? And better still, what is to be done about it?
    2
  25. Nice try. Stop looking at other women. If you can't manage that, then at least make sure your wife does not see you doing it. Most men develop the ability to see traffic cops through walls. Being able to see if your wife is looking at you looking is trivial.
    2
  26. Sure, but I don't think the way to get traction is to go after atheism. I am an atheist, and a conservative. Don't divide your friends up.
    2
  27. Disagree. "majority tyranny" is why we have a constitution and bill of rights, that is the majority cannot take rights from a minority of people. The electoral college distorts and trivializes my vote. I cannot vote for president in California because it is winner take all and I am republican. This allows candidates, in fact both of them, Democratic AND republican, to simply ignore my vote because California isn't a swing state. The only real purpose the EC serves in our country is to allow a vote for a despot to be overturned, but I believe that capability is already available to congress. We can and did change the way senators are elected (from state elected to popular election). Its time to dump the EC into the dustbin of history.
    2
  28. So I guess I should add: in practice what I said is not true. In actual socialist systems, there are rich, but they are the connected government workers. In the deepest hours of the soviet union, the privileged classes existed, who were the elite party members. Certainly fewer rich, but they were there, and they were the ones that largely inherited the wealth of the USSR when it broke apart.
    2
  29. The perhaps unfortunate, but true, parable of the forest fires applies here. As we civilized america, one of the things we "accomplished" is to TRY to stop forest fires. Smoky the bear and all that. How did that work out? we did indeed suppress forest fires for the most part, but that in and of itself changed the nature of the forests. More old growth occurred, with more bushes and undergrowth between the trees, and dead trees lingered longer in the forests. Did we stop forest fires? No, we simply made them less frequent. The inevitable pileup of debris, dead trees and undergrowth would eventually require a good old fashioned fire to clear them out. What we DID accomplish is to make fires MUCH more deadly. When the inevitable fire did occur, the greater amount of stored up fuel caused an inferno, and also tended to be a completely land clearing event, vs. the old fires that burned through fast enough to leave existing plants and trees to regenerate. We have tried to stop the business cycle, which clears out weak companies and leaves the strong ones. We have simply succeeded in making the inevitable downturns much, much worse.
    2
  30. I addressed your point and you changed the subject ("fossil fuels will run out completely at some point-").
    2
  31. Small correction: I regularly travel to Oregon and Washington, the homeless problem goes all the way up the coast. Portland, Seattle, all have a large and growing homeless population occupying virtually every freeway offramp and similar spaces.
    2
  32. The tired saying is: "democracies don't vote themselves out of existence". Now we have several examples of this. And the way it is done is through the politics of envy. Venezuela won't learn from its own example, it's too late. Latin America seems to be very resistant to learning from Latin american mistakes, so we will see. The real question is will the USA learn from their mistake?
    2
  33. There should be a special award with successfully arguing with a squirrel like AOC.
    2
  34. Put on a unisex uniform and suck it up. Communism, sorry, progressivim, has no place for inequality.
    2
  35. Spoken by an overly cute, privileged white girl...
    2
  36. Love these videos. So sad though that we need to explain capitalism to kids brainwashed by our schools in the joys of social justice.
    1
  37. You are aware that ward cleaver is a fictional character, no?
    1
  38. And none of this is addressed by the republican senate bill nor house bill. Heath care has become an entitlement, folks. All you kids who voted for the democrats to push Obama care get to live (or not) with the results: higher costs, lower innovation in medicine, and a resulting slowdown in improvements in your lifespan and quality of life.
    1
  39. Great. Which religion? Most of them hate the others. A few of them want others dead.
    1
  40. All civilizations fall eventually. At this point in history, dictatorial societies have lasted longer than free ones, perhaps because free societies are relatively new.
    1
  41. And selling South Korea a dozen or so short range nuclear missiles would solve the north/south Korean issue in a day. We could pull all our troops out, save a ton of money in military costs, not to mention get money for the nukes. And North Korea would stop trying to threaten the USA with nukes, since all of their attention would be on the south. This would work on China as well, especially if we do the same with Taiwan and Japan. Yep, just like nutty Donald trump said.
    1
  42. So Dennis has doubled down on his stance that Atheists are responsible for the problems in America. Nice. Guess what. Bible thumpers are not going to save america. I am not fond of you either.
    1
  43. I feel triggered by this video.
    1
  44. This is why I don't live in LA anymore.
    1
  45. The answer is a mix of natural gas an renewables. In the USA before the turn of the century, there was a push to switch to NG generation, which was slowed by a rise in NG costs. This set off a big push to build LNG (Liquid Natural Gas) shipping terminals so that we could import more NG, since one of the major issues with it were that some of the most abundant producers, like Quatar, were not reachable by pipeline. Now, with fracking, NG is abundant, locally produced, and perhaps most importantly, there is no "peak NG" horizon in sight. The amount of pollution produced by power generation has gone down in the USA significantly, almost all due to the switch to NG. And NG plants are both cheaper than other methods of power production, nuclear, coal, hydro, etc, but far more flexible as well. Small plants can be built in city centers. "peaker" plants can be used to provide temporary power to cover shortages in renewable power, etc. One of the biggest issues with renewable power is that it is not constant. This is why a mix of renewable power and NG power are a perfect complement for the forseeable future. Someday renewable power will be paramount, but until that day, mixed renewable/NG power will replace coal and nuclear plants and their issues (and yes, nuclear plants have issues). Even after renewables are the norm, NG will be used to cover heavy power applications such as steel and aluminum manufacture.
    1
  46. Now show how the invasion of England by the French helped America. Or how about the Romans. Or modern plumbing. Or......
    1
  47. Disagree that it carries to the next generation. It creates low earner adults, who can't indulge their children, and they grow up wanting good jobs, then they in turn indulge their children because "they were deprived". The cycle is not new, its been going on for decades.
    1
  48. We are reliving the Chinese cultural revolution with different aims and players. It has the same basic principles: Get young people to attack and isolate people from previous generations with the idea that their ideas are so much newer and better than the corrupt older generation. The means are almost identical. Marches, and shouting down anyone who disagrees, and yes, violence. All revolutionaries eventually realize that they need to get ahold of young people with little life experience. They can be educated rapidly to your side, have enthusiasm, and rarely question what they have been told.
    1
  49. Come on, you're a short Jewish guy, that has to be worth something...
    1
  50. How dare you work without a union.
    1
  51. Selecting facts that agree with you, selecting studies that agree with you. These kinds of distortions do not help the cause of Prager U.
    1
  52. The REAL history of Christmas: from prehistoric times, people celebrated the return of the sun in Europe from its southernmost tilt, because they knew that with it would come spring and summer. Realizing that they could not compete with this celebration, the disciples of Christ shifted the date of his birth and hijacked it by rebranding it as Christmas. Carry on.
    1
  53.  @honkyjesuseternal  Elizabeth's smarter sister. :0
    1
  54. e pluribus coetibus
    1
  55. Why do global warming alarmists not want nuclear power? Why, when you ask, do they still drive fossil fuel cars (when alternatives are available)? Why do they not have solar power at home? Simple explaination: they don't really believe the world will end in 10 years. Or 100.
    1
  56. "if California were a country, it would have the fifth largest economy" - don't worry, the California government is working hard to change that.
    1
  57. Soviet playbook. Educate your kids, and use them against you. "does your mommy or daddy not recycle properly? Tell us their names and address...".
    1
  58. Naw, Mao made Stalin look like an amateur at killing people, with at least 30 million.
    1
  59. The answers are "no" to all, but Dave Rubin is, in fact, scary.
    1
  60. Socialism is a religion. It does not like competition.
    1
  61. Bad math from prageru. The "average check from Social Security was $1413", sure, but that means nothing to your individual situation. You might make more, you might make less. It depends on what you paid in (how much was your average salary), when you take SSI (what age). This would be like saying "the average pay in the USA is $50,000, so therefore you make $50,000". Further, it assumes you don't work. At all. In most cases you don't lose all of your SSI income, and in cases you don't lose any of it, when you also work. Thus SSI becomes supplemental income. These kinds of tactics are used to scare people by the retirement planning/investment community, and its sad to see Prageru also do this. Check with the Social Security Administration (or their web site) for the real facts. Be informed.
    1
  62. The order of amendments is also pretty key here. The first amendment, right of free speech, is pretty important. That the founders then turned to the right to bear arms right after that indicates their idea of importance. Its also because those were the very key rights the crown tried to take from the colonies.
    1
  63. The book, despite claims to the contrary, was about Stalinisim. The "simplification of language", was an unfortunate misunderstanding of Esperanto. This started as a European idea of coming up with purposely designed simplified language. It got associated with communism when Russia and China adopted it.
    1
  64. Simply look at the majority of Latin American countries. What do they have in common? 50% or more of the jobs are in government. If you look at the high paying jobs, they are in government or government paid jobs. Socialism, in practice, means the government just takes over practically everything.
    1
  65. Not so fast with that "California is not a third world country" stuff. 1. No reliable power. 2. No reliable water. 3. Run by a one party state. 4. Streets full of homeless. What else do you need to qualify as part of the third world?
    1
  66. Too simplified. Europe is (or was) open for immigrants, but the (good) jobs were not. As a result, immigrants were pushed into ghettos, then to a downward spiral of poverty and violence.
    1
  67. See Jack. See Jill. See Jill accuse Jack of inappropriate touching. Run Jack run!
    1
  68. The Hippocratic oath, that all doctors take, is clearly against cutting off healthy body parts.
    1
  69. I went to BLM web site, didn't see any marxist statements. Can anyone cite a place where they support marxisim?
    1
  70. This is the main fact that Nazi.. excuse me Hamas boosters miss. The Arab states made Israel just as much as the jews did.
    1
  71. The problem with rich, nice places to live is that they attract liberals.
    1
  72. Ok, so I guess I have to rebut this nonsense. First, PragerU decided to lump CAFE and electric cars all together with public transport and a borderline black helicopter theory about the government wanting to take everyone's car because it gives you freedom. I'm from LA, I grew up with polluted air, so I back CAFE, and cars generate much less pollution today. That's a good thing. PragerU has an axe to grind for electric cars. The had a previous video ("are electric cars really green"). It was also loaded with distortions of fact. 1. 4 hours to charge. Anti-electric car types love to trot this out because it scares people who know nothing about electric cars. Most EVs can be charged in 30 minutes while on the road. 4 hours or more is the slower rate on a home charger. Notice that you can't have a gas station at your house, so this is comparing apples to oranges. 30 minutes is certainly slower than the 5 minutes it takes to get gas, but it is not 4 hours. And 4 hours is the worst case. You rarely arrive with your battery empty, and so 1-2 hours is a more common case. Further, because you CAN charge your car at home, the correct answer of "how long does it take to charge your car" is 0 hours 0 minutes. As in, you didn't sit around waiting for your car to charge at all. You parked it, it charged overnight. It was ready to go in the morning. This is something you cannot do at all with a gas car. 2. less than 100 miles range. No, there are several cars that have way more range than that, Tesla (for years now), Bolt, and several new cars coming out. 3. Cost $20,000 over time to run an electric car. Complete made up nonsense. 4. Generates more pollution. These kinds of statistics are found by taking the dirtiest power generating states, coal driven, as the power source for charging. Its a standard way to bash electric cars. 5. Rare earth mineral mining is destroying the planet. This is cherry picking articles and statistics that agree with you. Virtually all of these are widely debated.
    1
  73. I feel that driving on the left side of the road is correct. I resent the term "right side of the road", since that implies only one side of the road is "correct". Sadly, the "sideist" police gave me a ticket for driving on my preferred side of the road.
    1
  74. "Life got worse" ... but only for the ones still left alive.
    1
  75. Socialisim means never having to grow up. You just change parents... to the government. Yeahhhh!
    1
  76. If heathcare is a right, food is also a right. If you don't eat, you get sick.
    1
  77. But I notice the snowflakes that get offended have no issue wearing Che Guevara T-shirts, even though he was latino and killed other latinos. Funny world (divertido mundo).
    1
  78. Get one of those doors that swing both ways?
    1
  79. You are suppressed and regularly abused by your husband. You just don't know it. Hang around with liberals and they will cure your happiness problem.
    1
  80. How's that working for you Dennis?
    1
  81. Certainly the participation in religion has declined (as it has in Europe), and perhaps that is a bad thing. But it is not up to the state to support religion. As an atheist and conservative myself, I am not "anti religion", and in fact I think it is idiotic that many atheists define themselves as such. I have attended many church services with my wife, and I generally agree that they are a force for good and agree with their teachings. But as an atheist, I believe I can use my brain to decide what is right and what is wrong without being told I must just accept that "because it comes from god". And I certainly don't want government to participate in that, especially since government increasingly seems to believe they ARE god. I like Prager U. But I have seem enough of your videos to understand that you view me and my being an atheist as "part of the problem". I am NOT the problem. Reserve your fire for the socialists and we will get along fine.
    1