Friday’s blog entry set forth the text of an e-mail that I sent to J.D. Roth, the owner of the Get Rich Slowly blog, on May 21, 2009.

While we were exchanging e-mails re my mental illness or lack thereof, we were also exchanging e-mails aimed at solving the problem that gave rise to the discussion — the fact that my comments were not appearing at J.D.’s blog. After the e-mail set forth in Friday’s blog entry, J.D. was able to get a comment of mine to appear properly. In response to his e-mail letting me know this, I sent him the following words:

J.D.:

Thanks.

I’ll try to find a blog entry to comment on in real time tomorrow and see if I can get that to work.

I posted several responses to your comment at my blog. They contain some strong (but I think fair and hopefully helpful) words. Please let me know if they inspire thoughts in you that might help us bring this matter to a positive and constructive resolution.

I am having a very hard time figuring out where you are coming from re all this. I am trying hard.

Rob

I followed that up the following morning with this one:

J.D.:

I reread the e-mails and comments from last night in an attempt to develop a solution that is more satisfying to you while not causing me to feel that I have “doctored” an old post (my view is that words that have been said should remain said and that statements giving false impressions should be corrected through the addition of new words rather than through the subtraction of old ones).

I have added the following language (all in bold) to the end of the paragraph in question:

“[Note (added May 22): Subsequent events have shown that J.D. did NOT block my comments — the posting problem turned out to have been caused by a technical problem afterall]

I hope that helps a tiny bit.

Rob

J.D. responded by saying: “I think this should work fine. And I think this is a reasonable compromise: to add words in the appropriate spots… Thanks!”

I wrote back saying: “It makes me feel better to hear you say that. I also want to express my gratitude to you for your handling of the comments on Bill’s thread. Given the way that it’s been handled, I believe that people holding all points of view feel safe offering their sincere thoughts.”

And everybody lived happily ever after.

Kinda, sorta.

Yesterday’s blog entry contained the text of an e-mail that I sent to J.D. Roth, owner of the Get Rich Slowly blog, on May 21, 2009. Set forth below are the texts of J.D.’s response to that e-mail and then my reply.

Rob,

You continue to ignore my requests to take down the defamatory remarks. Why is this? I’m asking politely, and it’s a reasonable request. You’ve obviously read the e-mail that I sent you about the problem, yet you choose to not even address it. This is a very real concern for me. It is not a trivial matter.

I don’t want updates or link to future posts. I want the words removed. They are false. They damage my character and my reputation without merit. Please remove them immediately.

–j.d.

J.D.:

I have not ignored you. I have done everything in my power to help you out.

My sense is that you don’t want to “be involved” in the Campaign of Terror matter. I don’t want to “be involved” in it either. All I have ever wanted to do was to post my honest views on investing on the internet. The Goons “involved” me against my will. They involved thousands of others too.

Now they have done the same with you.

You obviously fear what they will do to you if you do your job as a blog owner and alert people to the problem. I am of course sympathetic. But the fact remains that for so long as a ban on honest posting remains in place anyone who writes about investing is affected by it. A ban on honest posting on matters of such importance affect the environment in which you write, J.D. That’s just the reality here. I don’t like it either.

It’s the reality all the same.

You are not writing what you would be writing if you did not fear the Goons. So your work has been affected, whether you like it or not.

You are part of the story because the Goons made you part of the story (they have made everyone who writes about investing part of the story), not because I made you part of the story.

I have an obligation to my readers to tell the story that is taking place (and that is causing them great financial devastation) as clearly and honestly and fully and fairly as possible. That’s my job.

I can assure you that I am happy to do anything in my power (short of posting dishonestly) to help you out. That’s all fine. You are asking me to cross a line that I cannot cross.

Reasonable people are not going to believe that you are concerned about my mental health, J.D. You know that. I know that.  That’s the sort of tactic that I have seen a lot of the Goons employ. Look where it has gotten them. In every case, I reached out and tried to help. I extended the hand of kindness and tried to persuade them that this was not the path to walk. Money questions are serious questions. People who take these questions seriously simply do not behave in this way.

Reasonable people are not going to believe that you see no problem in people failing to correct retirement studies for seven years after they learn of the errors in them. Reasonable people are not going to believe that you see genuine merit in the decision at the Money Bloggers Network to take down the two threads that dealt with this issue after numerous community members there showed great interest in the learning experience they were enjoying (this was especially so with the thread dealing with substantive matters rather than abusive posting problems). Reasonable people are not going to believe that you did not see merit in the Guest Blog Entry that I sent you showing people that the stock crash was a good thing for many of us (the negative emotion that was caused by the stock crash is obviously a big contributing factor to the economic crisis and a blog entry that helps to dispel those negative emotions is obviously one of the most important blog entries you could publish this year).

I am always going to give you the same answers. I am always going to remain enthused to work with you in any way possible to help you (and your readers and any experts with whom you have connections) out. However, I am not going to myself post dishonestly to achieve this result. It is obviously not reasonable for you to expect that.

I have agreed to post your words explaining what happened. I will do that. If you have concerns about how people are going to interpret your words and your actions, I of course understand. if you give me anything to work with, I will bend over backwards to help you out. There are obviously limits to what I can do.

The games help no one. Absolutely no one.

Rob

I posted in yesterday’s blog entry an e-mail sent to me on May 21, 2009, by J.D. Roth, owner of the Get Rich Slowly blog. Set forth below is the text of my response e-mail, sent that same evening.

J.D.:

I will post the words from your earlier e-mail (the entire thing) as next Thursday’s blog entry (I have items already in line for the days until then, but, if it is a big deal to you to have the words of your e-mail appear sooner, please let me know and I can move things around.

I will also provide a link at the old blog entry to the one that contains the words of your e-mail.

I think it makes sense to post your second e-mail (the one below) as well. The mental health claim is certainly part of the story. If you give me permission, I will run the full text of this one as well. If you do not, I will summarize this one in the blog entry in which I run the full text of the earlier one.

I am of course sorry to hear about your mother.

I certainly agree that the story of the Campaign of Terror that has been waged against the Retire Early and Indexing discussion board communities for seven years now (and against a number of blogs in recent months) is an amazing one. You’ll get no argument from me re that one. I’ve made a living as a reporter for over 25 years now and I have never seen anything else like it. Holy moly!

I am grateful to you for at least being able to say that my message is “interesting.” I of course understand that it is not your particular message. I don’t believe that that at all justifies you in not writing about the FACTS of the matter. If there were other Rational Investors who were engaging in the behavior that some  Passive Investing dogmatists have been engaging in, I would want to disassociate myself from that behavior in every way possible. Such behavior would not necessarily cause me to change my investing beliefs (I think it might give me pause to reconsider some of them). But I certainly hope that I would recognize the need to report about the behavior and about the damage it has done to numerous discussion-board communities and blogs. The behavior is a story of its own and it is one that reflects poorly on the Passive Investing approach. As you note, the behavior is extraordinary. All Passive Investing advocates should be asking themselves what it is about this investing philosophy that gives rise to such behavior and why it is that so many Passive Investing advocates have failed to speak up against it for so long.

I’ll give you a concrete example of why you should be writing about the Campaign of Terror against the Retire Early and Indexing discussion-board communities even though you do not personally endorse the Rational Investing model. The Bogleheads.org forum has banned posting on The Retirement RIsk Evaluator, the only New School SWR calculator available on the internet. Questions about SWRs and retirement planning are common at that board. There are obviously many in that community who would have great interest in being able to see analytically valid retirement-planning numbers. You should be writing about the ban and about the damage it has done to aspiring retirees and urging a lifting of the ban.

Now say that you prefer the Old School studies. Does that mean that you should NOT post about the ban? I sure don’t see it that way. If you prefer the Old School studies, you should still favor discussion of the alternative to the Old School studies. There are two things that can happen as a result of the airing of a discussion of the problems with the Old School studies and of the merits or lack thereof of the New School calculator. It is of course theoretically possible that the discussions could end up affirming the merit of the Old School studies. That would obviously be a good development from the standpoint of an advocate of the Old School studies. The other possibility is that the discussions could show the benefit of the New School calculator. That could cause you to rethink your position, which is ALSO a good development in circumstances in which the advocates of the Old School studies are not able to make an effective case.

This is not a case in which you need to agree with the investing ideas being put forward to help your readers by drawing their attention to the abusive posting problem. The ban on honest posting on valuations-related topics is a PROCESS question. Bloggers on all sides of the substantive investing topics should be united in urging that discussion of all points of view be permitted in discussions of retirement planning. Blogs owners covering all sorts of non-money topics favor free speech as a general principle. Why should the owners of personal finance blogs be so different? I believe that, if anything, the need for free speech is greater in this area. When people are not permitted to hear both sides of the retirement planning story, they suffer concrete negative effects. This isn’t a case where not hearing both sides might cause someone to think that the Yankees rather than the Red Sox are going to win the World Series. This is a case where a ban on honest posting is likely going to cause people to suffer busted retirements. Not good.

Rob

Set forth below is the text of an e-mail that J.D. Roth, the owner of the Get Rich Slowly blog, sent me on May 21, 2009. The background is that I was in the middle of an exciting discussion at J.D.’s blog with Bill Schultheis, the author of The New Coffeehouse Portfolio, when my comments stopped appearing. I made numerous tries to get the comments to appear and contacted J.D. by e-mail to ask for his help; those e-mails were ignored. I wrote at my blog that J.D. had banned me from commenting at his site. J.D. wrote to tell me that this was not so and I posted a correction. J.D. wrote to argue strongly that the correction was not sufficient and that I should remove the earlier comments altogether. I said that I did not feel comfortable removing words that had already been posted but that I would be happy to run a Guest Blog Entry in which J.D. could make the case for why he felt that I had handled the matter poorly.

Hi, Rob.

Thanks for the response.

I do not have time or interest in writing a guest post at your site. What I want is for you to remove the defamatory statements about me and Get Rich Slowly from your site. I’m not trying to be unreasonable, I’m not trying to pick a fight, I’m not trying to persecute you. I’m asking you, as a reasonable adult, to remove the false statements you have made about my actions. They have the potential to damage my reputation. And I’m asking you to do this now, in a nice way, instead of taking other steps. What you wrote crosses a line that ought not be crossed.

You are free to post my previous e-mail PROVIDED YOU POST THE ENTIRE THING AND NOT JUST EXCERPTS. I’m not sure that I have a “take” on anything other than the fact that you claim to have posted comments that have not appeared in my WordPress account to approve, and that you then took this as license for defamation.

Rob, I mentioned in a previous discussion that it seems to me that you might want to see somebody regarding mental health. I was not joking, and I was not trying to be mean. When I read what you write — “A gang of thugs now works virtually full-time posting abusively at discussion boards and blogs to insure that the millions of middle-class workers who need to learn about these issues before they lose more of their retirement money do not find out about them”, etc. — I hear the same sort of things my mother tells me. She struggles with mental health issues. Let me assure you that it is *HIGHLY* unlikely that there is a concerted full-time effort out there to thwart your attempts to share your ideas. This is paranoia, and it needs to be addressed.

Again, I’m not trying to make fun of you and I’m not trying to belittle your concerns. I’m merely suggesting that you might want to seek some help.

So, to summarize my past few messages:

1. I posted a test comment on the thread with problems. Please do the same.

2. Please remove the defamatory comments from this post: http://arichlife.passionsaving.com/2009/05/19/holy-toledo-this-is-great-stuff-the-new-coffeehouse-investor-author-bill-schultheis/

3. Please consider consulting a mental health professional.

4. I have neither time nor interest in contributing a guest post to A Rich Life.

Again, your message is interesting, and I’m glad you’re sharing it. However, it is not *my* message. You’re welcome to share it at Get Rich Slowly, but I’m not willing to pick it up as a crusade.

Please let me know when you’ve posted a test comment and when you’ve removed the defamatory info from your site.

–j.d.