BLS BS
Trump fired BLS commissioner Erika McEntarfer for allegedly manipulating statistics to make him look bad. In support of the firing, he pointed to what he said were exaggerated jobs numbers in the Biden administration that had to be revised downward by—wait for it—BLS commissioner Erika McEntarfer!
“How could downward revisions released during Biden’s presidency have been part of a plot to hurt Trump? And if this year’s revisions are suspect, why should we trust revisions from prior years, the most substantial of which were produced under McEntarfer’s leadership?
“The White House is trying to bend reality to fit President Trump’s preferences for economic data. Any economic data that is positive is true and the same report is fake when it produces results he doesn’t like,” Jessica Reidl, an economist with the conservative Manhattan Institute, told HuffPost. “There’s no rhyme or reason.”
Looking for reason or logic from Trump is a fool’s errand. This is a guy whose casinos went through bankruptcy proceedings multiple times. Casinos are essentially money minting machines; how incompetent do you have to be to bankrupt casinos? His understanding of labor statistics is similarly bankrupt.
Trump can’t explain McEntarfer firing
“How could downward revisions released during Biden’s presidency have been part of a plot to hurt Trump? And if this year’s revisions are suspect, why should we trust revisions from prior years, the most substantial of which were produced under McEntarfer’s leadership?
“The White House is trying to bend reality to fit President Trump’s preferences for economic data. Any economic data that is positive is true and the same report is fake when it produces results he doesn’t like,” Jessica Reidl, an economist with the conservative Manhattan Institute, told HuffPost. “There’s no rhyme or reason.”
Looking for reason or logic from Trump is a fool’s errand. This is a guy whose casinos went through bankruptcy proceedings multiple times. Casinos are essentially money minting machines; how incompetent do you have to be to bankrupt casinos? His understanding of labor statistics is similarly bankrupt.
Trump can’t explain McEntarfer firing
Remember when there were only 10 or 15 cases of Covid in the United States and there would be none in a a couple of weeks? He deliberately mislead the American people and the result was 1.2 million Americans died. Magical thinking and public relations campaigns could not obscure people dying and firing the head of the BLS is not going to magically make more people employed. I do not expect the MAGA folks to get it but I sure hope everyone else does before the midterms.
@Terry,
There was plenty of stupidity going around at the time. Here’s Nobel Laureate Micheal Levitt in 2020:
“Stanford University biology professor Michael Levitt, winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize in chemistry, said his models do not support predictions the coronavirus will stick around for months or years and cause millions of deaths. He says the data do not support such an extreme scenario.
“What we need is to control the panic…we’re going to be fine,” Levitt told the Los Angeles Times.”
Levitt also predicted no more than ten COVID deaths in Israel. He was off by over two orders of magnitude.
My chair said the pandemic would peak in April of 2020. I bet him a fifth of single malt that he was wrong. I won a bottle of Macallan.
In humans, the traits of high intelligence and good judgement are unlinked.
Exactly. Charlie Munger has spoken and written extensively on the causes of misjudgement, incentives (e.g., motivated reasoning & wishful thinking) being chief amongst them.
Joel:
The lies from Tr__p and the lack of self-awareness by people in general. Congregate, no masks, and the lack of awareness took a toll on those who failed to hunker down or minimize their exposure to others. I still remember going to Kroeger for food supplies and zipping through it like a madman while others were strolling. I was already compromised and this would definitely make it worst.
I do not recall panic. I do remember stupidity.
@Bill,
“Panic” was the word COVID denialists used to describe the well-founded fear of COVID-19 expressed by healthcare professionals and others who understood the amply-documented facts. Some of those folks died from COVID. Some of the folks who listened to them died from COVID.
The most abundant things in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity.
Joel:
It really was and is scary . . . people believe Tr__p rather than science or logic. We would eat out, by ordering. picking up the food, and eating t in our home. Face Masks were worn.
You want your freedom of choice? Ok, you can have it. Just not around me. Damn those people.
Joel:
And we are still here talking . . . I believe we took the right precautions and also did the right things.