Jerrold E. Johnson's response to my column

Dear Mr. Johnson,

I read your recent response to my editorial with interest. Permit me the opportunity to address the points you raised. I will interlace my responses to you in bold.

"As I near 80 I need something to get my blood moving, so I should thank Rich who makes it pretty hot." I would suggest, sir, that you do not write letters when you are upset. This impedes reasoning ability and reading comprehension, which I will explain below.

"I looked up S** in the Oxford English Dictionary. Definition #1 is a private detective, #2 is a person remarkably adept at solving mysteries, esp. by using insight and logical deduction. His insight is obviously lacking when he whines about Democrats controlling our lives." It escapes me as to why you are writing about my supposed whining about Democrats. However, I didn't even mention Democrats. This is what I mean about reading comprehension. I discussed the political left, and those who self-identify as progressives. There is a substantial difference.

I note that this single sentence is all you actually say about my column. You do not refute my premises, analyze my logic, or offer a rejoinder of any kind. You simply change the subject and throw the charges over to the Republicans:

"He seems oblivious that the Republican presidential candidates and party are obsessed with passing laws to control whom we marry, outlawing birth control despite the value for women’s health, controlling women‘s decisions, and snooping in our bedrooms — one could go on." Oblivious? How can I be oblivious to something when it isn’t even the subject of discussion? What Republicans do is of little importance to me since I am not one, and was not talking about them. My single reference to Republicans was to complain that they are also leading the country to disaster. Did you not read that, Mr. Johnson?

And what Republicans do does not change what leftists and progressives do.  I wonder if you might take the time to refute what I actually wrote?

"I have yet to hear any of their candidates or leaders of Congress offer a cogent plan for creating new jobs." For some reason, I guess we are still discussing Republicans. This is a persistent bit of misdirection. Apparently you are uninterested in dealing with the subject at hand, preferring to rail about a bunch of stuff unrelated to my column.

"Were Rich to check the Wall Street Journal for January 2009 (a conservative paper), he would find an article stating that George W. Bush has the worst track record of any president since Hoover for creating jobs." Ok, fine, so now we're talking about Bush. Having clearly stated my disagreements with Bush in prior columns, particularly his failure to embrace conservative principles, I am not inclined to defend him now.

"Despite his record tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, he created only 3 million jobs and put us in the 2008 recession, the worst since the great depression, and left us with the worst national debt of all time." Sir, presidents don't create jobs. Governments don't create jobs. Jobs programs don’t create jobs. Businesses create jobs.  

As far as who might be at fault for the recession, my money is on Congress, which is the entity that has the sole constitutional authority to appropriate and spend money. Government sets fiscal and monetary policy, it regulates business, intervenes in the economy, and forces private businesses to engage in practices that make no business sense.

100% of the national debt is the fault of big spenders in Congress, whether Democrat or Republican.

It is worth noting that it was Democrats that had a majority in Congress between 2007 and 2010. They presided over the financial meltdown, along with a large number of complicit Republicans. Not only did the Democrats do nothing to stop it when they held both houses of Congress and the presidency, they doubled down on the foolhardy practices of the Bush administration and added trillions of dollars to the national debt.

"Clinton raised taxes and created 23 million jobs." Well, Clinton should have raised taxes even more and created 100 million jobs, right? You make a truly embarrassing assertion, based on a simplistic correlation between two unrelated factors. In an economy measured in the trillions of dollars, to reduce thousands of economic factors into a glib bumpersticker factoid is simply puerile.

"From the low of 2008-2009 the Congressional Joint Economic Commission revealed that between 3.1 and 3.6 million jobs have been created under Obama and this with the elimination of many federal jobs." It is actually a committee and not a commission. "The Joint Economic Committee (JEC) is a bicameral Congressional Committee composed of ten members from each the Senate and the House of Representatives." In other words, it is a political body, not an economic one. These committees can report whatever they want. They are not economists, they are politicians with their own agendas.

However, the government does have a department that actually provides employment statistics, the Labor Department. They report that the economy has added only 417,000 net jobs since the official end of the recession, after losing nearly 5 million. You can look it up on the government’s website. And President Obama didn’t create a single one of them.

"Of course, the reality is that Rich’s mind is made up and I shouldn’t confuse him with facts." Of course, confusion is a bad thing. But I wonder who really is confused, since you still haven’t written anything regarding what I wrote. My column was devoted to big government types who love to control people. Do you have an opinion on that?

I do appreciate you taking the time to write your letter. Feel free to respond to me if you have the time. 

Have a blessed day.