NO, THEY CAN'T! Why Government Fails, but Individuals Succeed (also the title of my new book) airs again this Sunday on Fox News.

Politicians say "Yes, we can!" and claim they solve our problems.

When the mortgage market crashed, the President said their new law, Dodd-Frank, would create a "new financial system" so such things would never happen again.

After 9/11, Senator Tom Daschle declared "you can't professionalize if you don't federalize!" The Senate voted 100-0 to create the TSA to run airport security.

Politicians' promises are endless. They say they'll: create jobs, "make college affordable for all," protect the disabled, give disadvantaged kids a head start, and invest in "cutting edge innovation."

But they can't achieve what they promise.

Billionaire Mark Cuban and other job-creators explain why government's rules now prevent the job creation that was once America's hallmark.

Dodd-Frank, instead of stopping fraud, added layers to already incomprehensible banking laws. Stossel shows how simple rules in the Cayman Islands not only stop fraud, but they also create prosperity.

While the TSA creates long lines, misses actual terrorists, and angers passengers, screeners working for a private company at one big airport work faster, more cheerfully, and find more contraband. We show how the private company does it.

Did you know that the U of Missouri is proud to have a "leisure resort" on campus? Naomi Riley, author of The Faculty Lounges: And Other Reasons Why You Won't Get the College Education You Pay For, explains how government aid led to massive tuition hikes.

Since the Americans with Disabilities Act took effect, fewer disabled people have been able to work.

Lisa Snell from the Reason Foundation explains how the government's own research found that Head Start did not help poor kids. Government's response? Spend even more.

Government grows, despite its repeated failure.

Politicians are wrong when they say "Yes, we can", but the fact that government can't doesn't mean that we can't. Free people accomplish wonderful things. While government wastes billions on boondoggles like Solyndra, X-prize founder Peter Diamandis explains how private investors have created cars that get 100mpg, space ships, and much faster ways to clean up oil spills, all without charging taxpayers a penny.

Without big government, life can be great.

Kids who open lemonade stands are now shutdown by police. I tried to open a lemonade stand legally in NYC. That was quite an adventure. It takes 65 days to get permission from the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

With government adding 80,000 pages of rules and regulations every year, it's no surprise that regular people break laws without even trying.

A small businessman spent 6 years in federal prison for breaking Honduran regulations (and, to make it worse, the Honduran government said he didn't). A family in Idaho can't build a home on their land because the EPA says it's a wetland-but it only resembles a wetland because a government drain malfunctioned and flooded it.

TAXI TROUBLE: Want to start a taxi business? Too bad - it's illegal. Illegal, that is, unless you buy a government-issued "taxi medallion" that can cost as much as a million dollars. One city has a free market for cabs - Washington, DC - but lobbyists there are pushing to regulate.

ILLEGAL FOOD: Increasingly, government tells us what we can and can't eat -- bans on trans-fat, happy meals, "raw" foods. California officials raided a raw food club, and arrested clerks for selling unpasteurized milk. Farmer Joel Salatin, author of "Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal," explains why Americans DON'T have the freedom to choose the food they eat.

ILLEGAL DRUGS: Drug use is illegal - but should it be? Where drugs are legal, businessmen replace gangs as the dealers and pay taxes. Portugal decriminalized all drugs 10 years ago--including crack, ecstasy, and heroin. What has happened since then? We go to Portugal and get the facts from police, politicians, and drug addicts.

ILLEGAL SEX: Our government bans prostitution because people think it's a dirty, dangerous business. But in brothels where prostitution is legal there is no crime or disease. On this show, three sex workers confront a prosecutor.

One bit of good news is that while there may be so many laws that no one knows if he's a lawbreaker, it has never been easier to "watch the watchmen." Tiny cameras in our iPods and cell phones allow citizens to film law enforcement and hold our government accountable. But in the last few years, cops have arrested and jailed people for taping in public. The arrests are not legal, but they happen anyway. Fortunately, arrests are caught on tape.

Pistole claims that private screening at San Francisco International Airport is no better than TSA and comes "at a higher cost than federal screening."

As I note in today's WSJ, the opposite is true. A Congressional Transportation Committee Report (2011) found that if Los Angeles International Airport switched to private screeners similar to those at San Francisco, screening costs would fall by 42%.

Private screening is less expensive because each screener processes more passengers and there is lower turnover (screeners' salaries are the same.)

Pistole was likely referring to an internal TSA study. In 2007, the TSA determined that private screeners were 17% more expensive.

But the GAO looked into that study and found 10 different problems with it, noting that the TSA had simply ignored many costs, including "workers' compensation, general liability insurance, certain retirement costs..."

After the GAO report, the TSA came out with a revised study last year that found that private screeners were 3% more expensive.

The GAO says that the TSA's revised study is better, but that it still fails to address four concerns. "TSA needs to take additional actions... to address the remaining four limitations," the GAO said, noting that the TSA makes assumptions about some costs in their study that they were unable to justify.

Perhaps the TSA bent reality because bureaucrats don't like having competition any more than private businesses. Imagine if McDonalds did a study comparing their own food to Burger King.

Pistole also points out that "shoe bomber" Richard Reid boarded a plane just 30 days after Congress created the TSA, so the TSA shouldn't be blamed for that. That's a fair point.

It's also true that Richard Reid and the "underwear bomber" boarded flights in other countries, where TSA doesn't actually do the screening. That's true, but the TSA does set the screening standards.

Why? Only 30 percent of Americans have a college degree. People with degrees are relatively elite. Government shouldn't force the remaining 70 percent to subsidize them.

Many students took on too much debt, but stealing more money from the public is not the solution. Allowing colleges to compete for students is. Universities will lower tuition if students make decisions based on price.

In my syndicated column this week, I ask:

Who should decide what you can eat: you? Or the state?...

It is no coincidence that the push for more food regulation came at a time when Congress obsessed about the rising cost of medical care.

When government pays for your health care, it will inevitably be drawn into regulating your personal life. First, politicians promise to pay. Then, they propose to control you.

Where does it stop? If we must control diet to balance the government's budget, will the health squad next ban skydiving and extramarital sex? How about another try at Prohibition?

But was about reasonable-sounding policies like forcing businesses to post calorie counts?

Often the Food Police strike an innocent pose, claiming that they just want to give people information. Information is good. But it's not free. Mandated calorie signs in restaurants cost money. Those costs are passed on to consumers, and the endless parade of calorie counts and warning labels make us numb to more important warnings - like, "This Coffee Is Scalding Hot."

It's not as if dietary information isn't already available. Health and diet websites abound. Talk shows routinely discuss the latest books on diet and nutrition. TV diet gurus are celebrities. That's enough. We have information. We don't need government force.

For more, see my syndicated column, or the segment about the food police in my recent special "Illegal Everything."

If you want to make your own sign to remind politicians to stay out of our lives, the image is online here.

First Lady Michelle Obama claimed that at the "Food Desert Summit" in Chicago a few months ago:

"If folks want to buy a head of lettuce for a salad, or some fruit for their kids' lunch, they'd have to take two or three buses, maybe pay for a taxi cab in order to do it, to go into a different community just to do the basics for their kids. And a lot of people don't have the time, and quite frankly, they don't have the money. That adds to the cost of doing the right thing for your family."

I also heard this argument in February at the Intelligence Squared debate, "Obesity is the government's business." My debate opponents said that government ought to make sure that people in disadvantaged neighborhoods have access to grocery stores where they can buy fresh produce, and parks where they can exercise. Then everyone can be happy and skinny!

Oops. Now even the New York Times reports that "food deserts" don't exist.

Poor urban communities have nearly twice as many supermarkets as richer areas.

Sure, they also have more fast food restaurants and convenience stores. But as I say in No They Can't, unless politicians decide they can force you to eat broccoli, some people will choose to eat junk.

Let them.

It's exciting to see and hear people talking about why individuals succeed where government fails. My show tonight was filmed with an audience at Florida State University.

Some students shared how my Stossel in the Classroom videos helped teach them economics. They learned more about free markets from their professors, Joe Calhoun and Jim Gwartney, who join us to explain how politicians disregard the laws of economics.

We also cover free speech on campus with Greg Lukianoff of FIRE, along with Eric Philips and Chris Morbitzer, students who faced censorship at Auburn University and the University of Cincinnati.

Brian Yablonski shares another counterintuitive idea that I write about in No They Can't: the best way to save animals is to kill them. Yablonski, who's on the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission describes how hunters are the best environmentalists. They do a better job preserving land and animals than government.

Elizabeth Foley of the Institute for Justice joins us to shed light on stupid laws in Florida--like the one that shuts down businesses that provide teeth whitening services. The state dental board claims that's illegal "unlicensed practice of dentistry."

The House Committee on Financial Services has published the Dodd-Frank Burden Tracker, since "The Paperwork Reduction Act [requires] estimates for the labor hours needed for affected entities to fulfill new requirements set out by the rule."

Here it is.

The summary explains:

TOTAL BURDEN HOURS FOR 185 RULES: 19,443,045 initially and then 24,035,801 hours annually. 5,320 pages of regulation.

To put that in perspective, that's more hours than it took to build the Panama Canal.

What else could be done with that time?

Assuming the cost of each hour worked was about $25 an hour, that would be over $600 MILLION. What could we do with that much money that would be more productive?

-Go to outerspace with Richard Branson 3000 times (for $200,000 a pop).

-Buy 37 MILLION copies of my new book on Amazon.com (for $16.20 each.)

And for all that, the bureaucrats say they are only 46% done writing the Dodd-Frank rules. There will be thousands of pages more.

One of the most important questions in politics should be: 'Would the private sector have done better things with that money?'

A healthy economy does not just create jobs of any kind, it creates productive jobs. The pharaohs of ancient Egypt created plenty of jobs building pyramids, but who knows how much better the lives of ancient Egyptians (especially the slaves) might have been had they been free to engage in other work? They would all have had better housing, more food or snazzier headdresses. Even as smart a person as economist John Maynard Keynes seemed to forget about that when he wrote in his "General Theory" back in 1936, 'Pyramid-building, earthquakes, even wars may serve to increase wealth.'

By that logic, government could create full employment tomorrow by outlawing machines. Think of all the work there'd be to do then!

Think about the two other methods to "increase wealth" that Keynes lumped in with pyramid-building: earthquakes and war. Now, sure, after a war or earthquake, there's plenty of construction to be done. After the Haitian earthquake, Nancy Pelosi actually said, "I think that this can be an opportunity for a real boom economy in Haiti." New York Times columnist Paul Krugman made a similar error. On CNN, he said if "space aliens were planning to attack and we needed a massive buildup to counter the space alien threat ... this slump would be over in 18 months." Before that, he said the 9/11 attacks would be good for the economy.

This is Keynesian cluelessness at its worst.

You can read the rest of my column here.