Edward Hum – 1/4/12

This page was last updated on January 4, 2012.

Not Obama’s recession; Edward J. Hum; Beaver County Times; January 4, 2012.

Mr. Hum has written more than 62 letters since mid-2004, including a 10-month hiatus from September 2007 to July 2008. Nearly three years after George W. Bush left office, most of Mr. Hum’s letters still are no more than exercises in bashing President Bush and/or other Republicans. Mr. Hum’s letters are also flame-throwing exercises. I don’t know if Mr. Hum actually believes what he writes, or if he simply likes to stir things up to call attention to himself.

Mr. Hum frequently includes “fellow Republicans” or something similar in his letters and is one of a group of local Republican impersonators (The group also includes Messrs. William A. Alexander, Arthur Brown, William G. Horter, George Reese, and Oren M. Spiegler) who write claiming to be disgruntled Republicans. You have to give Mr. Hum “credit,” however, for going the extra mile to further his impersonation. As of September 2006, Mr. Hum was actually registered as a Republican despite the fact he’s no more a Republican than is Dennis Kucinich.

Given his body of work, for a while I wondered what Mr. Hum would use for subject matter now that Barack Obama is President. Mr. Hum wrote three letters in support of a government-run, taxpayer-funded healthcare monopoly (here, here, and here), then he reverted to his Bush-bashing habit, as in “Bush earns status as ‘most liberal.’” I guess some addictions are too tough to overcome. The last Hum letter I critiqued was entitled “Ike set the standard.”

Below is a detailed critique of the subject letter.

“I’ve been kidded and criticized because I am a Republican who voted for Obama. Well, I’m an Abe Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Eisenhower Republican who agrees with building the Union Pacific Railroad, land grant colleges, anti-monopoly laws and interstate highways.”

[RWC] I always get a kick out of it when Mr. Hum refers to himself as a Republican (see above).

This is the latest stop on Mr. Hum’s tour of deceased or long-retired Republicans he wants us to believe he liked. You may recall previous Hum letters entitled “Ike set the standard,” “Where’s fiscally correct GOP?,” “Republicans like Reagan needed,” and “We need more John Wayne Republicans.”

I covered Mr. Hum’s Eisenhower comments in some of the critiques noted above.

As for Mr. Roosevelt, though a Republican, he was a Progressive just like Presidents Herbert Hoover (R), Woodrow Wilson (D), and FDR (D).

As for Mr. Lincoln, the Union Pacific was built for military purposes during the Civil War. While I probably would have opposed the Morrill Act of 1862 on the basis it was extra-constitutional, it was a relatively small deviation. All the Act did was – on a one-time basis – turn over some federal land to each state for “the endowment, support, and maintenance of at least one college where the leading object shall be, without excluding other scientific and classical studies and including military tactics, to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts, in such manner as the legislatures of the States may respectively prescribe, in order to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions in life.” There was no ongoing federal funding; just the one-time grant of federal land to each state. In the interest of full disclosure, my mother worked at Penn State (Pennsylvania’s land-grant school) for about 15 years and my brothers and I are PSU graduates.

“I know you can’t trust big business guys whether their names are Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller or Bill Gates.”

[RWC] Does Mr. Hum really believe “big business guys” are any different than the rest of us? It takes chutzpah for someone who claims he is something he isn’t to write about trust.

“Unemployment went up every month in 2007 and 2008, so don’t tell me this is Obama’s recession.”

[RWC] If you’re familiar with Mr. Hum’s body of work, you won’t be surprised to learn his comment “Unemployment went up every month in 2007 and 2008” is not correct. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate for January 2007 was 4.6% and it eventually dropped to 4.4% for March and May. Unemployment for December 2007 was 5.0%. The unemployment rate dropped to 4.8% in February 2008. It wasn’t until May 2008 the unemployment rate consistently increased to its December level of 7.3%.

There’s no doubt Mr. Obama was not President when the recession began, but Mr. Hum apparently wants us to believe Mr. Obama dropped out of the sky to become President and had nothing to do with where we are. Mr. Obama was a U.S. Senator for four years before he became President, including two years when Democrats were the majority in both houses of Congress. How many times did Mr. Obama warn us about the subprime mortgage mess? Zero. Mr. Hum fails to note Mr. Obama supported all the policies that led to the recession. Indeed, when President Obama had the opportunity to address problems via the Dodd-Frank banking regulation bill of 2010, the policies and government-sponsored entities (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) were not included and they were at the core of the problem.

“Maybe you can’t trust Democrats either, but I wish there had been a Senate committee chaired by Harry Truman to investigate Dick Cheney’s Halliburton cost-plus contracts in Iraq. Someone would be in jail now.”

[RWC] Dick Cheney and Halliburton? Seriously? I thought this bogus talking-point died years ago. In any case, Mr. Hum didn’t explain why Democrats didn’t/don’t investigate his talking-point.