I received an email this afternoon challenging parts of my endorsement for President Bush. Below, I have included the email and my responses to it. I have deleted the name of the individual that sent me this since the issues are of primary focus, rather than the author.

I put writing that is mine in bold in order to distinguish my writing from the author’s.

Hi [first name of the author] - Thanks for your feedback. I have a few responses to what you wrote, and I have written them inline below.

~Mark

—-Original Message—-

From: [email address of author]

Sent: Wednesday, October 27, 2004 3:26 PM

To: mbaumgardner@wisc.edu

Subject: “Re-elect W”

Hey Mark,

Your pro-Bush encouragement was just more rightist spin doctoring.
Don’t bother saying what Bush will do in the future, just focus on irrelevant things that Kerry said earlier in the election cycle.
When he says that it’s good that Hussein has been captured, you call him a hypocrite.

No I didn’t. I agree with what Kerry said before Iowa and New Hampshire. The problem is he changes what he stands for based on what suits him best politically. The conventional wisdom is that activists vote in primaries, and for several months, Kerry was just seeking to out-do Dean with his rhetoric. However, after Saddam Hussein, Dean went over the top, claiming that we were not better off with his capture. Kerry felt that this went too far, even with Democrat activists, and he made the statement that I quoted.

Of course it’s good that a totalitarian regime has fallen, but the main problem is, “When will it stop?” Who’s next? North Korea?
China? France?

Personally, I would like to see a world with no totalitarian regimes. President Bush has relied heavily on Dr. Condoleezza Rice, his national security advisor. (Personally, I think she is one of the most qualified persons we have had in that job.) Together, they understand that use of diplomacy is important in certain cases, and use of force in others. Diplomacy has not run out with Iran and North Korea, and most certainly not with France and China. After years, it did run out with Iraq. Furthermore, 9/11 underscored the need to deal with threats before they materialize.

Many argue that we know North Korea is a threat and has nuclear weapons, and why did we not go into there? It’s a lot more difficult to deal with rogue nations armed with nuclear weapons, and that gives us less ability to use force against North Korea. However, fortunately, we have other ways of dealing with North Korea- multilateral diplomacy (particularly via China). We used force in Iraq to liberate the Iraqi people and to prevent Iraq from becoming another North Korea in a few years.

A strong economy? Since when?!? Under the current prez, there has been a net loss of jobs, and many of the recently created jobs are for wages LESS than what they were 4 years ago - this despite the ever- increasing presence of inflation.

Several things you say here simply aren’t true.

I don’t know if you have a job in the private sector, and if so, whether you attend stockholder or associates’ meetings. Many companies hold these monthly or quarterly, as the company I work for does. We review all the economic indicators both nationally and in our particular market. The economy is simply booming right now- there’s really no other way to describe it.

Regarding job numbers, it really depends on what indicators you use. Kerry has largely focused on the payroll survey numbers. This indicator is criticized by a lot of economists as it has not adjusted for the evolution of jobs in the U.S. The payroll survey considers only payrolls of well-established businesses. The problem with this is that many new jobs are created by small businesses, not included on this survey. The other indicator is the household survey, and this indicator shows a net INCREASE of 1.69 million jobs since President Bush took office. Your statement that there has been a net loss of jobs is very much disputable. Additionally, household wealth is up 11.1%, and personal income is growing at a 5% pace. (Lawrence Kudlow, Wall Street Journal, 10/13/04, p. A16)

Here are the numbers on inflation: Consumer price inflation (December over December) was 3.4 percent in 2000. Since then, it has averaged 2.4 percent (2001, 2002, 2003 and annualized January-August 2004). It’s almost impossible to do any better than that, especially in a growing economy.

Additionally, you say, “the largest economic quarterly growth in nearly 20 years occurred shortly after Bush’s tax cuts.” This quarterly growth happened BEFORE all the jobs were lost. Just more typical spin.

As I pointed out before, we don't know that there was a net loss of jobs during the Bush administration. Also, your statement is true only if you flip it around. Peak unemployment reached 6.4% in June 2003 (Bureau of Labor Statistics), and the largest economic quarterly growth occurred in the third quarter (July, August, September) of 2003.

Ignore the fact that he said, “62 Million Americans received $1100 in tax cuts,” which was a lie. Only 25 million received that much.
Another 52 million received about $300, and another 50 million received no cuts at all. Quick quiz: Were those 50 million from the : (a) Top 1% of wage earners, (b) Top 20% of wage earners, or (c) bottom wage earners. If you said, “C”, you’re correct! The poorest folks in America are, as per the “Wall Street Journal,” LUCKY, because they pay no taxes.

Never mind that they have lost or will lose all forms of funding - housing vouchers, Pell grant funding, funding for public school programs, and funding for single mothers to afford child care.

You can’t receive tax cuts if you don’t pay taxes. I don’t know how else to explain that and I feel I would be wasting my time if I tried.

Furthermore, tax cuts for anyone are good for everyone. The tax cuts jump-started the economy, which was needed. President Bush inherited a recession from President Clinton, due in part to the burst of the dot.com stock bubble. Additionally, September 11 caused massive job loss. The fact that we have as good of an economy that we have now is remarkable.

Finally, as I have stated several times before, politicians don't create jobs- businesses do. The only role that politicians have in job creation is creating the right environment for this to happen. Low taxes are one of the keys to creating this environment. Look at Europe and the problems their economy has in their high-tax, high-regulation environment. GDP there is growing less than 2% and unemployment ranges between 9% and 10% (Kudlow, same as above).

Best,

[name of the author]