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IMAGINE HOW MAD THE AUTHOR WOULD BE IF THE REVIEWER DIDN'T LIKE THE BOOK

February 23, 2005

David Cay Johnston works the tax beat for The New York Times. His stories have led to IRS and congressional action to shut down tax shelters; only Janet Novack of Forbes has done similar heavy lifting on the tax beat.

Mr. Johnston is the Times at its best: a smart and capable full-time specialist on an unglamorous beat that would hardly rate part time coverage from almost any other daily.

Mr. Johnston also seems to have some of the foibles of the Times culture: a thin skin, a touch of arrogance, and inability to admit even the possiblity of ideological slant.

Last February Sheldon D. Pollock, a Tax Professor, reviewed Mr. Johnston's book Perfectly Legal for Tax Analysts. The review found the book enjoyable and informative, but overly simplistic and ideological (go here for the full review text*). This paragraph gives the flavor:

If the reader can get past the hype in the subtitle and opening chapters (which publishers encourage because it sells books), there is to be found an important account of the IRS's declining state of health and its increasingly moribund capacity to enforce our tax laws. In that respect, Johnston's book is incredibly depressing to those of us who worry about the possible collapse of the income tax as the principal source of revenue of the federal government. If Perfectly Legal is infuriatingly simplistic in its political assumptions, it nevertheless makes a positive contribution to the public discourse over our troubled tax system. On top of that, it's fun to read.

Tax Analysts today - a year later - has a response from Mr. Johnston (click here for full text)*. It's an extraordinary, bitter document. I have excerpts and commentary below, but you should read the whole thing.

It starts:

Authors are wisely advised to ignore reviews, so when I
saw red after reading Prof. Sheldon D. Pollack's review
of my book Perfectly Legal I set it aside. A year has passed
and on rereading I am still steamed.

While praising my book, Prof. Pollack ignores important facts and in so doing builds a false case that I am motivated by ideology rather than facts garnered through nine years of pioneering work for which I won a Pulitzer Prize and was a Pulitzer finalist three other times.

Paraphrase: "I won a prize, and lost three others, so I can't be biased."

Taxation based on ability to pay -- progressive taxation --
and the birth of democracy are intertwined. Plato,
Aristotle, Adam Smith, Karl Marx, David Riccardo, John
Stuart Mill -- every classic worldly philosopher has
embraced that principle, which I show from official
government data no longer applies in the world's
longest-surviving democracy.

That sentence on the essence of democracy really would have been stronger without the "Karl Marx" part.

Mr. Johnston goes on to say that the review misses the "core finding" of his book, "that our tax system forces the middle and upper middle classes to subsidize the highest-income Americans." He provides two paragraphs of data to support his point. But rather than letting the argument do the talking, he goes after the reviewer:

Yet on those hard facts not a word from the professor, further evidence that he is either a careless reader or deliberately ignores inconvenient facts.

Paraphrase: "It's not a considered disagreement. My reviewer is either sloppy or dishonest."

Finally, the professor says I view Washington "through a simplistic political model. The rich control politics, big corporations and special interests dominate Washington. . . . "

I did not write that the rich "control." What I point out is
that most Americans never meet members of Congress
except for a handshake on the hustings, while what I
call the political donor class gets private meetings to
explain what they want from our lawmakers.

Every politician, I wrote, says donors cannot buy their
vote, and that all those campaign gifts buy is access. I
accept that. But when the only people who get
meaningful access are donors then their concerns are
at the forefront in Congress.

Paraphrase: "I didn't say the rich control the process; they just have their way with it."

Nowhere do I fault the rich for exercising their First Amendment right of petition. I specifically say they have every right to seek policies that favor them. I lay fault at the feet of the tens of millions of Americans who know the name of Jennifer Lopez's lover but not of their representative or senators. I call for Americans to put time into the work of being informed citizens instead of amusing themselves with trivia to the detriment of our wonderful nation. I also urge reform of how we finance campaigns.

Turn off that television, you lazy ignorant people! Study the Code!

There is a lot of other news in Perfectly Legal.
Appreciating it requires an open mind about our national
myth -- in the classical sense of that word -- that our
tax system is progressive.

Perfectly Legal uses hard facts to cut through that myth
and show how the system really operates. I wish Prof.
Pollack had read my work with care and then judged it
on whether the many new facts support a new
paradigm, rather than ignoring those facts and
retreating to the comfort of his ideological assumptions.

Paraphrase: "I'm not biased, you're biased!"

By the way, Perfectly Legal, a national bestseller, also won an award. It was chosen Investigative Book of the Year by the 5,000-member organization of my peers, Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE). And instead of the usual paper certificate they gave it a medal.

Paraphrase: "And I won a Pulitzer! And I lost three others! So there."

It's a good thing the reviewer liked the book, or Mr. Johnston might have been angry.

For a calmer dissent from Mr. Pollack's review, read this* from Paul Streckfus. Interestingly, Mr. Streckfus doesn't seem to think that Mr. Pollack missed the point; instead, he thought Mr. Pollack was wrong to disagree with it:

Pollack also accuses Johnston of viewing the world "through a simplistic political model: The rich control politics, big corporations and special interests dominate Washington, and the political stooges of the wealthy and powerful write the tax code for the benefit of their masters." Simplistic maybe, but how does this view differ from reality? Has Pollack not watched the Republican Congress in action in recent years? And Democrats in their heyday were not much better when it came to pleasing their wealthy contributors.

*We thank Tax Analysts for permission to reproduce this copyrighted material.

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