This Viewpoint is in response to Sergei Rostov's April 22 Viewpoint "Student for Bush called misleading." If anybody is misleading, it is Rostov. Rostov faults Bush for being "over 2 million jobs in the hole," and cites only the 2001 recession as a reason for those job losses. He fails to acknowledge that the 9/11 attacks and the resulting war most certainly had negative effects on the economy.

Even Sen. John Kerry recently said that wars and "terrible" events negatively affect the job market. On the April 18 edition of NBC's "Meet the Press," host Tim Russert asked Kerry if he would pledge to not run for re-election if he failed to create the 10 million new jobs he has promised for his first four years. Kerry responded, "Well, it would depend on the circumstances. If I don't because there's a war or something terrible happens, of course I'm not going to make that pledge." Although both of those circumstances have occurred during Bush's term, Rostov and the Kerry campaign seem to ignore the economic impact of those events.

Rostov says that all 308,000 jobs created in March were the result of California grocery workers ending their strike. I did the research he recommended and found various estimates ranging from 10,000 to 20,000 for the number of jobs attributable to the returning grocery workers. I wonder how he explains where the other 290,000 jobs came from.

Rostov also states that the "Misery Index" shows the middle class to be worse off, but he fails to let us know which "Misery Index" he is referring to. He is apparently referring to the index created by the Kerry campaign, in which they cherry-picked several statistical indicators in order to create an index that not surprisingly appears unfavorable to Bush.

However, the real "Misery Index," which has been around since the Carter presidency, simply combines the unemployment and inflation rates. The index is currently the same as when Bush took office, and is lower than when Clinton, Bush's father, Reagan and Carter sought re-election. Once again, Rostov is attempting to mislead us.

Perhaps Rostov should follow his own advice and do some research rather than quote from the John Kerry for President Web site. For the record, I did not visit the Bush-Cheney 2004 Web site prior to writing this. I won't call Rostov a liar, as he did Marquette Students for Bush Chair Daniel Suhr. Rather, I will just state that he is ill-informed.

Justl is a graduate student in the master of science in accounting program.

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