Partisan Nitwit Writes Hit Piece on Drew Johnson

Even if you are not a Tennessee resident, you are probably familiar with the work of Drew Johnson. Johnson is the President of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, and he is best known for exposing Al Gore's sky-high electric bill after Gore had just won an Oscar for his global-warming polemic "An Inconvenient Truth."

That story earned Johnson left-wing scorn on a national level that he had previously enjoyed primarily on a local level here in Tennessee.

Yesterday, Jeff Woods of the Nashville Scene had this to say about Mr. Johnson. Woods' article is loaded with sarcasm, puerile commentary on Mr. Johnson's physical appearance and orthodontal history, and is clearly designed to destroy Mr. Johnson's credibility. To hear him tell it, Johnson is "brashly defiant," "self-important," and even had the audacity to -- get this -- pay himself $60k a year so he can "finally afford braces for those crooked teeth."

There's a "partisan nitwit" in all of this, to be sure - but it's not Johnson.

Johnson's main offense would appear to be that he is bothering state workers with silly requests for open records:

Johnson has dispatched aides with scanners and copiers to state offices to demand immediate access to documents that just might (but rarely do) reveal terrible misdeeds. On fishing expeditions under Tennessee's open records law, he's ordered up thousands of emails from state agencies. Frustrated state workers say fulfilling his requests wastes untold hours. Johnson alone is responsible for 16 percent of all requests to the administration this year, officials say.

Funny how Woods does not elaborate on Tennessee's Freedom of Information Act. If he did, his readers might be reminded that there is nothing at all wrong with requesting - even "demanding" - documents from public officials and employees which by law every citizen has a right to access. I wonder where most of the other 84% of requests come from - could it be the media, perhaps? Surely, Woods isn't suggesting the media should back off the government, is he? In any event, government misdeeds maybe indeed be "rare" - at least I would hope they are, in the grand scheme of things - but obviously, they still occur frequently enough to provide TCPR with plenty of fodder for its annual Tennessee Pork Report.

Does Woods has a similar ax to grind with the national media and left-wing bloggers who have recently descended upon Alaska, "demanding" documents from the governor's office and the City of Wasilla in an attempt to unearth any hint of misdeed, scandal, or hypocrisy involving Sarah Palin? I doubt it.

For the record, I met Mr. Johnson once, just a few weeks ago at a gathering of several Tennessee right-of-center bloggers. To me, he came across as a perfectly reasonable guy - articulate, intelligent, and with a passion for his work. He has an agenda, but it's not hidden - it is to expose government waste of taxpayer dollars and to promote free markets. If that makes him Phil Breseden's "#1 Nemesis", then that is more a reflection on Breseden than it is on Johnson.

Hat tip: Blue Collar Muse.