President Obama's purported feats less than characterized

Mr. C.D. Parker's March 23 letter to the editor was rife with inaccurate statements.

His first claim was that eight years ago the U.S. was losing 900,000 jobs per month. Research shows that the number was actually 230,000. Quite a significant difference.

Then he claimed that 14.3 million jobs have been created over the past 72 months. Computer research shows the number to be just over 9 million.

He goes on to make what appears to be his primary point, which is to credit Obama with saving the auto industry, bringing the stock market back and lowering unemployment. All of these claims are highly debatable, especially the auto industry issue.

Go to factcheck.org and see what a complex fiasco the GM bailout was. Also, anyone knowledgeable with regard to economics knows that any president has only a minimal if in fact any direct influence on the stock market.

His complaint is that Obama has not received proper credit for these and other perceived accomplishments because, in his words, of racism due to Obama being half black, another uncalled for and misused playing of the race card.

If racial discrimination was a factor, then please explain how Obama got elected president in the first place? Not once but twice. It took a lot of white votes to accomplish that.

Mr. Parker's last statement is that he would like to see more facts than lies (apparently with regard to Obama) "in the newspapers and on television for a change." Well, considering that the liberal media has done nothing but pander to Obama for almost eight years, this approach to the situation is really hard to understand.

David Altenbach

Bradenton

This story was originally published April 1, 2016 at 12:00 AM with the headline "President Obama's purported feats less than characterized ."