Pet Peeve

One of my pet peeves is when sportswriters bring their political biases into their articles or columns. This happened today in Peter Gammon's latest column:

What's sad about Cleveland's emergence as a wild-card threat is that the Indians are 28th in the majors in attendance despite a terrific young team. The boom of the '90s was, in many ways, the Perfect Storm -- no football team, bad Cavs, an exciting home run team with stars and a good economy. Now the Browns are back, LeBron James is in town and the economy is in the tank, as the state lost more than 280,000 jobs in the first four years of the Bush Administration.

What's sad is aging baseball writers using their space to get in political jabs.

Gammons would have you believe that President Bush is somehow soley responsible for the economic woes of Ohio. Why is it that when a state has a robust economy - the governor takes credit but when there are problems it is the fault of the federal government?

By this reasoning can we expect Gammons to write something about how the Angels are flurishing under the Bush administration despite the economy of California going into the toilet during the Clinton administration? What say you Peter?

Fact is many experts say that the bulk of Ohio's job losses can be attributed to NAFTA. From a Policy Matters Ohio update:

A new Policy Matters Ohio analysis of data from the Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) program and the former North American Free Trade Agreement-Trade Adjustment Assistance (NAFTA-TAA) program finds that 75 of Ohio's 88 counties experienced job loss as a result of international trade over the last 8 years.

Now I don't know anything about Policy Matters Ohio but their info jives with other articles I read while doing a quick Google search. NAFTA losses started in 1995 - long before Bush took office.

Oh yeah - last month Ohio gained 4,700 jobs. Of course Governor Taft will take credit for that.

For the record - the current US unemployment rate is about 5.1 percent. Many economists view that as full employment. And for the record I would say that a state that keeps re-electing Dennis Kucinich to Congress has deep seaated problems to begin with.

Sorry for the rant but I read Gammons for baseball insights and rumors. If I wanted Bush bashing I would read the Democratic Underground. I would expect Gammons to note that the Indians poor attendence is probably related to the awful start the team got off to this season. Instead I get tinfoil beanie crap.