Party of No

Say What? Letters to the Editor of the DR

The Letter to The Editor section of The Daily Record is home to just about every form of right-wing smear and paranoia. We do our best to set the record straight. Our purpose is not to make an example of any individual, but to try and correct obvious factual errors and illogical arguments that go virtually unchecked in the editorial section of the paper.

3/3/10: Still waiting on stimulus package by State Senator Bob Gibbs

State Senator Bob Gibbs' letter can be summed up this way – you are entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts. But since Mr. Gibbs is running for Congress in the 18th District as a Republican, he must play the part — which means criticize anything President Obama does, even if the facts are not on your side.

One year ago, President Obama signed into law the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA or "Stimulus Bill"), which passed the U.S. Congress with a "yea" vote from Zack Space. The Bill was supposed to bring jobs to an ailing economy in Ohio and elsewhere. Today, I ask if you have seen the jobs were promised. I haven't.

This one is just too easy, and it was in Mr. Gibbs' first paragraph. In the fourth quarter of 2009 alone (October-December), Ohio received nearly $6.4 billion worth of stimulus money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, accounting for 24,614 jobs. According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, approximately 2.1 million jobs were created by the Recovery Act in the fourth quarter of 2009 alone across the country.

More specifically, the 16th congressional district, which includes Wayne County, had 7,300 jobs created from stimulus money in 2009. The 18th district, which Mr. Gibbs is running for Congress in, had 7,100 jobs created in 2009. Sounds like Mr. Gibbs needs to look a little harder, don't you think?

Of course, Mr. Gibbs could just visit the recovery.gov Web site for details about stimulus money being spent across the country, and recovery.ohio.gov for specifics about Ohio.

Today, it's hard to tell what the difference between passing so-called Stimulus Bill and just doing nothing would have been, as the only thing that's happened to unemployment in Ohio is that it's gone up to near record levels -- 10.9 percent at last check. Zack Space and the rest of the Congress have some explaining to do for going along with this boondoggle.

Again, another easy one. For simplicity, we can just refer to this chart, which shows the massive rate of job losses over the last several months of the Bush administration, compared to the steady recovery of jobs under the Obama administration. What Mr. Gibbs fails to point out is what the unemployment rate would look like if we didn't pass a stimulus bill. Maybe Mr. Gibbs doesn't realize the Recovery Act was not intended to return all the jobs that were lost or never created under the Bush Administration, but to stop the bleeding of jobs that was occurring when President Obama took office — over 700,000 a month. Now we are just over a year into the Recovery Act, and we are nearly breaking even in terms of job creation vs. job losses. And by the time the April 2010 jobs report comes out on the first Friday in May, the economy will almost certainly be adding jobs.

Zack Space criticized those of us who thought this kind of federal spending was foolish, lashing out at opposition he accused of being "partisan." Now, he and his cronies in Washington bragging that by passing the Stimulus Bill they "rescued" the country from economic disaster.

Mr. Space is correct to tout the Recovery Act as saving the country from economic disaster. Every reputable economist agrees. I wonder what Mr. Gibbs would recommend. Tax cuts for the wealthy? More de-regulation of banks and financial institutions? Didn't we just do that under the Bush administration? How did that work out? I encourage Mr. Gibbs to review these charts, comparing the Bush presidency with that of President Obama and President Clinton. We'd be curious how he would explain these FACTS. Of course he could start by explaining how 91 Republican members of the House of Representatives could vote against the stimulus, trash it, then take public credit for the jobs created by the Recovery Act in their home district?

Addition: On March 10, 2010, an article was published in Bloomberg.com titled "Obama Defies Pessimists as Rising Economy Converges With Stocks." It is recommended reading for Mr. Gibbs and anyone else who questions President Obama's work on the economy.

2/13/10: Has freedom been dimmed? by Mr. John Lytle

This is a hard one to make any sense of, but we'll try our best.

The Obama administration is reminding me of a cuckoo clock. The cuckoo bird pops out cuckoos and disappears behind closed doors. Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid cuckoos, pass this 2 trillion page bill or the sky will fall. It is a crisis.

I'm guessing Mr. Lytle is trying to refer to the health care bills in Congress? Even allowing for a slight exaggeration to make a point, he isn't even in the ballpark. The bill that passed the House, H.R. 2962, was 1,990 pages. A more accurate way to determine the length of a bill is by the number of words it contains — in this case 234,812. For comparison, this is less than the length of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (257,000). The Senate bill, Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, was 2,409 pages, although it contained less words. And the assertion by Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) that the bill was “longer than Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace?" It is isn't even half that long. So yes, the bills are long, some of the longest of the past 10 years, but Democrats are trying to tackle probably the largest domestic problem we face, and which has not been addressed in any significant way in 60 years.

Joe Biden's statement, if you're patriotic you are willing to pay more taxes. It took the Obama administration months and months to fill his Cabinet position because of all the exposed tax cheats Obama nominated.

The reason President Obama's cabinet and other Federal positions haven't been filled are due to Republican obstructionism, plain and simple. As of Dec. 29, 2009, over 200 of Obama's nominations had been help up in an unprecedented use of Senate "holds." A candidate to be a deputy United States trade representative was held up because Senator Jim Bunning (R-KY) was worried about Canadians' ability to buy candy-flavored cigarettes. More Republican obstructionism here …

The frantic cuckoo of health care restructuring's mega bill is a closed door spectacular many feared. The crisis alarm of no time for debate. This is too important to fiscal policy and debit reduction. Congressional leaders isn't Social Security, Medicare, two wars enough of a crisis? If the Party of No doesn't know what they are No-ing. Can they be the Party of No?

Notice an accidental slip up of honesty in here? Yes, there is a crisis in social security (although not immediate), Medicare and two wars. Now, who helped oversee the escalation of these problems the past decade? Republicans. As for no time for debate, utter nonsense. The debate about health care has been going on since the spring of 2009. If anything, this debate has dragged on too long. Democrats need not apologize to Republicans who are either too lazy or disinterested in taking this issue seriously. By not providing a health care plan of their own, Republicans left their "No" mark on this issue as well.

2/11/10: Not a stellar first year in office by Mr. John J. Myers

The general premise of Mr. Myers' letter is that President Obama had a poor first year in office. While this is subject to opinion, I think a very strong case can be made that President Obama not only didn't have a poor first year in office, he had one of the best first years a modern president has ever had.

He has turned around an economy that was losing over 700,000 jobs a month when he took office to one that is basically breaking even on jobs and will almost certainly start adding jobs within the next two or three months. He inherited two messy wars, yet has been much more effective in fighting the Taliban and terrorists overseas than Bush/Cheney ever were. But one thing that can't be disputed — President Obama set a new record in 2009 for getting Congress to vote his way, clinching 96.7 percent of the votes on which he had clearly staked a position. That is 4 percentage points higher than the previous record, set by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965.

They voted for a man who couldn't or wouldn't produce his birth certificate to prove his eligibility to hold the office of president; a man who would not admit his socialist agenda for our country.

This assertion is completely false. President Obama produced his birth certificate in June 2008. It is interesting how no one raises questions about John McCain's birth certificate, considering he was born in Panama.

The liberal press and media failed to do their job of pressing this candidate for information ...

Again, this is subjective, but the whole liberal media line is nothing but made up conservative talking points repeated at nauseam by Rush Limbaugh and Fox News, so people just believe it. But a closer look at the evidence leads to a different conclusion. Of course, you don't need a study to recognize that conservatives have an entire cable network (Fox News) plus almost all of AM radio to push their agenda, so the liberal bias seems pretty implausible.

Here was the savior who would make things better for everyone. A man who came off as a well educated speaker only when he stuck to his Teleprompter.

None of his supporters ever called him a savior. It was only his critics who tried to ridicule him with this label. As for the teleprompter, this is grade school stuff, but since Mr. Myers brought it up, here are all the Republicans using them. Of course, how did a teleprompter help President Obama at the summit with House Republicans, where he outclassed every single member there?

Wrapping up his first year in the White House, what did we get? A large threat to our national security, traditional family values and U.S. Constitution. During his first year he seized control of private U.S. industries including banks and automobile companies, borrowed record amounts of money, increased taxes by over $1 trillion, attacked our armed forces and intelligence heroes who fight terrorism, talked down and ridiculed our nation in every foreign country he has visited, apologized for things that needed no apology and handed out billions of our hard earned tax dollars to international organizations that support Hamas and other enemies to America.

Everything in this clip is false. Obama's record when it comes to national security is significantly better than his predecessor. Not only did he not allow a 9/11-style attack on the U.S. like President Bush did in his first year, but his record in capturing and killing terrorists overseas has been stellar. The government took over the banks because failure to do so would have led to a second Great Depression. You should know this, Mr. Myers, since it was President Bush that signed the TARP into law. As for raising taxes by over $1 trillion, that is completely made up. In fact, over 95% of working families received a tax cut, the largest middle class tax cut in history.

He has admitted he will stack the Supreme Court with judges who understand "what it's like to be gay."

Since there isn't a single reference to this comment anywhere on the Web, this can be classified as false.

In the face of all this, reporters are hailing him as a "prince," a "savior" and even a "messiah."

Again, cite a single reputable reporter who has used these terms. This is conservative projection.

His popularity is fading ...

As of February 24, 2010, President Obama's approval rating was 51% by Gallup, only two points lower than the vote total he received. He was also only below 50% approval in nine of 50 states. I think he will take those odds heading into 2012.