BUSH TO ALTER ECONOMIC STATS AGAIN
Find a Conversation
| Thu, 09-02-2004 - 2:41pm |
Last week, the Census Bureau released statistics showing that for the first time in years, poverty had increased for three straight years, while the number of Americans without health care increased to a record level. But instead of changing its economic and health care policies, the Bush administration today is announcing plans to change the way the statistics are compiled. The move is just the latest in a series of actions by the White House to doctor or eliminate longstanding and nonpartisan economic data collection methods.
In a Bush administration press release yesterday, the Census Bureau said next week it "will announce a new economic indicator" as "an additional tool to better understand" the economy. The change in statistics is being directed by Bush political appointees and comes just 60 days from the election. It will be the first modification of Census data in 40 years.
This is not the first time the White House has tried to doctor or manipulate economic data that exposed President Bush's failed policies. In the face of serious job losses last year, the Associated Press reported "the Bush administration has dropped the government's monthly report on mass layoffs, which also had been eliminated when President Bush's father was in office." Similarly, Business Week reported that the White House this year "unilaterally changed the start date of the last recession to benefit Bush's reelection bid." For almost 75 years, the start and end dates of recessions have been set by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), a private nonpartisan research group. But the Bush administration decided to toss aside the NBER, and simply declare that the recession started under President Clinton.
Sources:
1. "Census: Poverty up in 2003," The Olympian, 9/01/04, http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=2254501&l=52819.
2. Census Bureau press release, 8/31/04.
3. "Monthly report on mass layoffs dropped," Shawnee News-Star, 1/05/03, http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=2254501&l=52820.
4. "Inventing The 'Clinton Recession'," Business Week Online, 2/23/04, http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=2254501&l=52821.

Pages
* Clinton
* The Media
* Carter
* Terrorists
* Congress (although that one's out now since they control Congress)
* France, Germany, and/or Russia
* Liberals
* And when that fails they "move the goal posts" by either not reporting economic data or they change the way it's reported to try to avoid taking personal responsibility for the mess they've made of the economy.
And I guess we have to add to this list...
* But what did Kerry say over 30 years ago?
It's an absolute disgrace.
dablacksox
Cynic: a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.---Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary.
1. The right to vote
2. The right to a University education
3. The right to have control over your own earnings instead of your husband
3. The right to receive information about birth control, & the right to use it
Without these women & their struggles to obtain these rights, you would be unable to vote, uneducated, powerless to control your own paycheck, and bearing children right up to menopause.
How can you exist as a woman & not be affected by these issues? What about your sisters, daughters, neices, grandaughters? You don't want these rights for them too???
< other so-called "women's issues" that mean nothing to me. >
Bev
Oh me too!!!!!
<<3. The right to receive information about birth control, & the right to use it>>
Birth control isn't a *right*. Unless you have found some obscure blurb in the constitution that says so. And it certainly isn't something the taxpayers should have to foot the bill for.
Women (who like it or not are the bearers of children) are responsible for their own family planning. Government isn't responsible for giving them anything wrt birth control or family planning. As an aside, men shouldn't have the right, via Viagra or any derivitive thereof, to get it up on gov't $$. Not surprised that THAT insurance mandate was under the Clinton Admin.
I did the phone banks for Cuomo (NY Governor race) in 1994 and the only reason Pataki won was the economy. Soooo many people in NY were out of jobs and they wanted ANYONE but Cuomo at that point. If Kerry can tap into the millions who are unemployed or underemployed and get them to vote he can win. Forget about Iraq or Vietnam. People truly care about their own circumstances.
Oh me too!!!!!"
Whereabouts? I grew up near 111th and Kedzie.
dablacksox
Cynic: a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.---Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary.
You already have multiple birth control *choices*. What more do you want, a governmental guarantee that you won't get pg until you decide you are ready?
Pages