Quote of the Day from Staid AP
Steep drop in unemployment rate spawns conspiracy
CHRISTOPHER S. RUGABER and SCOTT MAYEROWITZ
Published: Today
FILE – In this Sept. 27, 2006 file photo, former General Electric CEO Jack Welch addresses students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in Cambridge, Mass. Conspiracy theorists came out in force Friday, Oct. 5, 2012, after the government reported a sudden drop in the U.S. unemployment rate one month before Election Day. Welch tweeted his skepticism five minutes after the Labor Department announced that the unemployment rate had fallen to 7.8 percent in September from 8.1 percent the month before. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) – Sasquatch might as well have traipsed across the White House lawn Friday with a lost Warren Commission file on his way to the studio where NASA staged the moon landing.
via Greg Sargent
I stress this isn’t some alt weekly or newspaper fond of light hearted
irony like say The New York Times.
that’s what happens to one who spends his whole life manipulating quarterly numbers to impress stockholders; he now thinks all numbers are faked…
Rumors floating around the vast right wing conspiracy are that at least two BLS economists donated to Obama’s campaign.
True? If so, bad appearances.
There are hundreds of BLS economists,
so I would be amazed that only two donated to Obama’s campaign.
I bet some donated to Romney’s campaign as well.
It is not illegal for civil servants to donate to candidates. However, it is virtually impossible for two civil servants to cook the books of BLS (if not totally impossible).
Look at the dang reports people. BLS has always put in an overload of explanations on the integrity of the data. They even give examples like what is included in a 90% confidence band and what it means.
Anyone that questions the integrity of the BLS statisticians over the CEO of GE types is, frankly, not very smart.
By the way, BLS career employees reported the same sort of stuff in the previous administration. I remember they once gave stronger than usual warning about over-interpreting a single survey datum.
Isn’t the raw data public?
Yes, Repubs are suspicious.
the BLS numbers suggest that while the economy created just 114,000 jobs in September, the number of people employed somehow rocketed up by 873,000 and the number of unemployed plummeted by 456,000.
And let’s also ignore the fact that this “employed” number has jumped that high only four times in the past 64 years
http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/100512-628432-jobs-numbers-are-not-good.htm#ixzz28XBKmTTj
“Yes, Repubs are suspicious.” sammy
And Repubs have good reason to be suspicious given their propencity for deceipt and deception. After 90 minutes of virtually the exact opposite of pre-debate Romney it appears that Repubs, especially those who are at the forefront of the party, understand the integration of politics with fantacy. Freud referred to the process as projection. When one views the world through glasses with a tint one sees all things as colored by distortions.
Jack,
It is possible that the report is true, but being the biggest jump in 29 years 1 month before the election raises suspicions.
I think you all overestimate the robustness of the data. My business has been chosen to be in the BLS survey. I tried to get out of it but was told I represent “small business in the State of Oregon.”
So every month I get a call from Washington DC and they ask how many full time and part time workers I have employed. Sometimes I am not careful in my response, and sometimes there are gray areas. Furthermore, my answers are verbal to the survey taker.
This system is not very accurate, and would be easy to corrupt.
sammy:
“So every month I get a call from Washington DC and they ask how many full time and part time workers I have employed. Sometimes I am not careful in my response, and sometimes there are gray areas. Furthermore, my answers are verbal to the survey taker.”
OMG! You are part of the conspiracy! Back, Satan!
π
Min,
You know on the last survey I think I overcounted my employees because I was really rushed.
Maybe I will be the cause of Obama’s reelection. Arggh!
sammy
i doubt very much anyone gives a damn about the statistics. people “perceive” a bad economy and vote against the incumbent, or vice-versa.
i am tolerably good friends with people of a conservative persuasion. i don’t argue with them because in my heart i agree that “gummint” is a damn nuisance. But I also know it is an unpleasant necessity or the likes of Welch and Romney would eat us alive. No point in arguing with my friends about that. Only reason I bother to argue with you is that you show up here and and present the lies you have been told with such childish credulousness.
coberly,
You don’t argue. You just call people names.
“You just call people names.”
Actually, if you read Dale’s comment about you, sammy, and if you have a reasonable understanding of the English language, you know that he didn’t call you any names.
His statement that “. . . you show up here and and present the lies you have been told with such childish credulousness” strikes me as generous. I’d always credited you with more nefarious motives.
Don’t trouble yourself Sammy.
In about 5 weeks it will be clear that nobody did more to get Barack Bogama reelected than one Mitt Romney.
Of course this is going to inspire a whole new series of paranoid right wing delusions but that’s another post.
(Drudge Ca. Dec 2012: MITT ROMNEY WAS A MODERATE BLUE STATE GOVERNOR IN A SECRET PREVIOUS LIFE!!!! BREAKING!!!! )
The Republicans simply cannot believe that their efforts to trash the economy aren’t working as well as they hoped. Therefore, it must be a conspiracy.
Well I could also be wrong. Now that the Ryan Romney machine has expanded their show biz firepower beyond Mr. Eastwood he might take the prize.
http://youtu.be/v0PeBwzvQds
This is just the kind of pop culture buzz that will win the day for the R team. Springsteen must be shitting himself.
to be fair to sammy, i did say
“it’s the payroll tax stupid”
i wasn’t calling him names, but he wouldn’t have recognized that i was playing with words and Bill Clinton’s “it’s the economy stupid.”
thing about that is all our professional word experts have managed to use that to mean that Bill was calling someone else stupid. Actually the phrase was used to remind himself not to go off on tangents that no one else cared about.
Sammy and the R’s are pretty sensitive about people thinking, or maybe thinking, they are stupid. But they are hardly the only ones.
@Jack, You are dumber than you write. If you understood anything about statistical sampling, you might understand that reporting errors, as well as, other types of errors, are part of the methodology that BLS uses. Which, if you actually had the acumen, might understand by reading it on their web site: http://www.BLS.gov
Fatmex comment above @Jack should have been @Sammy.
Sorry, Jack. FU, Sammy.