Originally published at: Trump Escalates GOP War on Data - TPM – Talking Points Memo
President Trump’s firing of Commissioner of Labor Statistics Erika McEntarfer last Friday brought into laser focus how willing he is to manipulate federal data in his favor. McEntarfer’s dismissal came just hours after a monthly jobs report showed the labor market performed more sluggishly than previously reported. The revisions were large, but not without precedent.…
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I don’t get it: with everything, “so totally rigged,” against him, how does Donnie succeed at anything, let alone get his policies enacted?
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Hey, it’s only lying and finding a way to get away with it.
And lying and getting away with it has been Trump’s primary, if not sole, “business plan” throughout his “professional” life.
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Wow - If those milquetoast statements are as strong as they get, Dump will dump all over them without skipping a beat.
Really? Some nameless individual somewhere in the Trump WH “ought to grow up,” said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), who has spoken out more frequently against Trump since announcing he won’t seek re-election. Dump must be quaking in his boots at such a bold stance. However will he get through the day?
Perhaps these edifices of mealy-mouth vagueness will finally learn to take a stand, but I think they are much more likely to collapse into puddles of acquiescence instead.
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It’s the same thing he did with Covid. Too much testing, too much reporting - just stop doing those and Covid will go away.
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So if the numbers were “rigged” show us the “real” numbers.
Don’t get sidetracked, Dems. Stay on this.
Make every Republican own Trump’s demented claim that the numbers were rigged.
Because he’s either demented or the numbers were rigged. Make them choose the hill they want to die on. They must either prove that their clown prince is demented or prove that the numbers were rigged. Make them show their work. Because besides the one woman who lost her job, the nation has lost yet more credibility with domestic and foreign interested parties. We can’t give up. They must own his dementia or make a clean break from him. Should be fun. Don’t take you pedal off the metal. Stay focused and crucify him and his mindless robots over this.
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In case anyone was wondering, you are currently here:
"Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered…”
- Orwell, 1984.
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The need to lie and cheat has its obvious reasons. The need to destroy everything, even if it has nothing to do with these disgusting sores on humanity, is more maddening and mystifying. Jr Kennedy wants half the population to perish from preventable diseases. They want to live in a world without satellites, and weather information, and air traffic control. The “let’s ruin everything, just because” mentality is a nationwide insanity run amok. It will not be undoable in time to prevent millions from perishing, including them. But they don’t care. Truly an incredible event of self-extermination we’re all in, because of them.
I’m thinking if this jesus fellow were real, and here, he would say “Kill them. Quickly.”
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Off topic, but they just announced no more new Covid vaccines right when we need them most.
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"William Beach, the former commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics – nominated by President Trump and who led the agency during his first term – has disputed Trump’s claims that any data was manipulated in bad faith.
"Beach told ABC Senior White House Correspondent Selina Wang that it’s “impossible” for a BLS commissioner to manipulate the data.
“The commissioner does not even see the numbers … until the numbers are completely done and they’re loaded and ready to be distributed,” Beach said. “Then the commissioner is briefed Wednesday afternoon prior to the Friday release. And that’s the first time the commissioner sees those numbers.”
“Beach also flatly rejected the notion that recent revisions to the May and June jobs reports were politically motivated.” ABC News.
I doubt Beach gets his old job back.
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Trump thinks the firing will make a difference. People know the economy is starting to sputter by looking at their latest grocery bill or looking at all the office vacancy signs. Has there ever been a country that self-destructs on purpose? These people want to live in the 1700’s, in the much more brutal past, where survival of the fittest ruled.
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When you go back to the 1990s, a time when a Democratic president and a Republican House actually created some budget surpluses, you’ll remember that it was the Republicans who were pleading for “honest numbers”. Their mantra ( yes, mantra) was something like “ give us honest numbers from the CBO, not the OMB”. Because they didn’t trust the president’s OMB, they wanted the non partisan Congressional Budget Office and the Government Accountability Office to supply the numbers.
Fast forward to today, 180 degrees different story.
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I was a small cog in the Federal data system for a couple of years plus between my MS and PhD.
I don’t have words to express how sad this whole episode makes me. Even though that ended up not being the career I pursued, I met and got to know a lot of people in that system. The numbers were everything: nobody worried about whether the numbers looked like good or bad political news. We wanted to get the numbers as right as we could–there were political appointees to worry about the fall-out.
Later in my life, my Dean (and later University President) had been an Undersecretary of Agriculture. His perspective as a political appointee was exactly the same: he wanted accurate numbers. Figuring out the political consequences and handling were his problem, not the data team’s.
How things have changed for the worse.
"“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” --Luke 23:24