Patterico's Pontifications

11/21/2013

You Can’t Trust *Anything* from This Government — Even “Data”

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 7:30 am



I am late in noting the report about the faked unemployment data just before the 2012 election, but let me now note it for the record, and put it in context:

In the home stretch of the 2012 presidential campaign, from August to September, the unemployment rate fell sharply — raising eyebrows from Wall Street to Washington.

The decline — from 8.1 percent in August to 7.8 percent in September — might not have been all it seemed. The numbers, according to a reliable source, were manipulated.

And the Census Bureau, which does the unemployment survey, knew it.

Just two years before the presidential election, the Census Bureau had caught an employee fabricating data that went into the unemployment report, which is one of the most closely watched measures of the economy.

And a knowledgeable source says the deception went beyond that one employee — that it escalated at the time President Obama was seeking reelection in 2012 and continues today.

“He’s not the only one,” said the source, who asked to remain anonymous for now but is willing to talk with the Labor Department and Congress if asked.

This is the thing: this government lies constantly. Obama lied about ObamaCare not being a tax, and about how you could keep your plan and your doctor. He sent lawyers into the Supreme Court to contradict his pledges on both. He passed the biggest middle class tax increase in ages after pledging he never would.

But these are political lies, almost expected. The problem here is getting worse. Actual data is getting manipulated.

It’s not just the unemployment numbers, although we can start with those. The above article suggests that the numbers were cooked for a very specific report. But the numbers are always meaningless anyway. They don’t track what people actually think unemployment is: what percentage of the population is working? They don’t include people on disability, or people who have dropped out of the workforce. Every report that comes out has a single-digit number (generally with a decimal) which is trumpeted, and then analysts have to pick through the details to see what is really happening: losses in full-time jobs being traded for part-time jobs as a reaction to ObamaCare, increasing numbers of people dropping out of the workforce entirely because they have given up hope finding a job, and so forth. The books are always cooked; it’s just not always this blatant.

Or we have the data on the national debt. But nobody ever talks about our unfunded liabilities, or the effects of quantitative easing, all of which drowns out our relatively piddling (!) $17 trillion debt.

Or these numbers on ObamaCare “enrollment” which count someone as being “enrolled” if they have selected a plan and placed it into their shopping cart. But you’re not enrolled for purposes of the law if you have not paid your first premium, and these incompetents haven’t even built the part of the web site that makes sure the premiums get paid to the insurers. So we’re told about tens of thousands of people enrolling, when nobody has.

See, they’re not just lying about politics now. They’re lying about data. They’re lying about everything. All the time. Constantly.

It’s what you have to do to prop up an unsustainable government based on giving people stuff by creating debt that will never ever ever be paid back. You lie and lie and lie and lie and lie and lie and lie.

And when it all crashes, people will tell the biggest lie: that nobody really saw it coming.

18 Responses to “You Can’t Trust *Anything* from This Government — Even “Data””

  1. Maybe there should be a profession or trade of people that asks questions of the people in power.

    AZ Bob (ade845)

  2. Initial MSM quotes I heard said such claims (about the Census bureau fudging numbers were from the “foil hat” fringe.

    MD in Philly (f9371b)

  3. As opposed to nate silver, who bought the lie, while Jack Welch saw right through it.

    narciso (3fec35)

  4. One of Obama’s first actions as Prez in early Feb – 2009 was to move the Census Bureau under his administration/control. This gin-up of numbers is one of several dishonest, unethical acts that have/will come to light that will one day fully de-legitimize his second term. America will rue the day she saw fit to elect this incompetent nincompoop to POTUS.

    Colonel Haiku (7865e7)

  5. Just more propaganda, aka lies, from the most transparent administration evah.

    All of this will be debunked by the Deputies of the Ministry of Propaganda, aka The White House Press Corpse.

    askeptic (b8ab92)

  6. You need a score card to keep track of all of the lies this administration has said. They can’t even keep track of their own lies. Even though the President said we can keep our insurance and our doctors, over 30 times, he denies making that statement.

    And the sun came up in the East today.

    rochf (f3fbb0)

  7. Thanks for the post Rico. This government cannot be salvaged. Changing the players changes the players not the game.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  8. Move along, folks. The media is all over……what….oh…..never mind.

    East Bay Jay (a5dac7)

  9. Gary, you’re right.
    The country is toast. Let’s just surrender !

    Elephant Stone (6a6f37)

  10. Obama thinks he can divert us from ObamaCare by campaigning now for 2014 the way he did in 2012. Watch out for more fake data.

    DRJ (a83b8b)

  11. Forgot the link for my last comment.

    DRJ (a83b8b)

  12. what this article said was that they are manipulated every month, and not necessarily to make any point, but just to cover up failure to successfully interview people.

    Sammy Finkelman (fe8737)

  13. Well, at least the IRS is apolitical and non-corrupt.

    Beyond the sarcasm and disgust, there are official unemployment statistics, supposedly vetted by the CIA, that show our neighbor to the south, Mexico, has had a jobless rate not much above 4% — consistently — going back to the 1970s. When I saw those stats, my mouth dropped, since they suggested a country of truly enviable, impressive, stable background. Yea, right.

    Banana Republic, here we come!

    Mark (58ea35)

  14. The President called all of his media enablers together to press the new story:

    The insurance companies did not cancel insurance, they did not “renew” insurance. As soon as the Web site is fixed, everyone will see how grand it is and all will be well.

    The President has decided to double down. He thinks he has a winning hand. He holds a media Ace.

    It’s all easy posting on Patterico. So, what are we going to do?

    I made a big joke about running for President. That was fun and all.

    I think it’s about to time to be really involved.

    Ag80 (eb6ffa)

  15. 9. Ah, Stones, again, misses the opportunity to miss an opportunity.

    I will be buying another couple boxes of shells with every other paycheck. Keep your bobblehead on a swivel.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  16. 10. Cali just rejected Cipher’s 404Care fix.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  17. Can somebody point me to a link where the Social Security and Medicare unfunded liabilities are defined and quantified? I’ve searched and can’t find anything with any amount of detail. To me, these $50 trillion and $90 trillion numbers are completely meaningless unless there is a certain degree of understanding associated with them.

    Jim C (35d712)

  18. Another thing the Obama administration did after it took over the Census Bureau was change the criteria for calculating the Federal Poverty Level and add a new category “Near Poverty.” Under the new measure, far more people were near or below the poverty line and far more people qualified for programs that use a percentage calculation of FPL to determine eligibility. Sweet.

    SukieTawdry (a02e10)


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