When Math Is Worse Than Fuzzy

[Robert Oak]

Whenever the Bush administration wants to sell a costly new program, look carefully before you accept any numbers it puts out. The math isn't just fuzzy, as the current euphemism would have it - it is often downright misleading, and deliberately so.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/10/opinion/10thu1.html?th

cranks the numbers to show ...well, the lies basically. Good article.

[Cha]

1. bush and his band of monkey

handlers are trying to wipe out the Security of Millions of Americans ..to what end?

[EVDebs]

2. Robert Oak, if Dems would only pass laws to protect the SS Admin

whistleblowers, or guys like the FDA guy who was prevented from testifying to Congress about the true costs of the Drug Benefit the Republicans have stuck us with (gone from supposed to be $400billion to $1.2trillion), the country might be able to fight back against this crazed paleo-con scam-artist administration.

I've already heard they are putting the clamps on employees in SS admin and forcing out disinformation to the public from the govt's own sites ! This should be illegal, don't you think ?

Maybe filing a RICO action against our own government would shake things up a bit.

[Robert Oak]

4. i wonder if the AFL-CIO has considered legal action?

or some other grassroots group?

Clearly there are so many things this administration has done...
to me they make Nixon look like a pussycat yet nothing happens
no consequences.

[Warpy]

3. All math is fuzzy to the ideologues running things now

and most of it is faith based, meaning if they actually do come up with numbers unpleasant enough to be close to the truth, they simply change them to fit the ideology.

Consider the job creation statistics. They don't count any actual jobs. What they do is use actuarial tables to tell them how many jobs should have been created in any period.

Consider the unemployment statistics. When people stay unemployed longterm, they drop off the official rolls are are therefore counted as employed.

Consider inflation. When inflation started to hit food and energy harder last year, guess which two things were removed from the market basket of goods and services used to measure inflation? Bingo.

Consider the debt. They decided not to include the cost of a WAR in it. Amazing.

I think the responsible and prudent thing would be to realize that this gang LIES about every number out there, that they are simply not trustworthy in any regard, and to keep passing that information along.