BUSH TO ALTER ECONOMIC STATS AGAIN
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| 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.

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Bev
Donna
It was called Mt. Greenwood when I lived there, my family left in 1963. It's right next to Merrionette Park. I still consider it "home". You can take the boy out of Chicago.....but you can't take Chicago out of the boy....
Is your area actually in the city?
dablacksox
Cynic: a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.---Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary.
Of course they claimed it was an innocent error. They sure make alot of those when it comes to facts and figures.
From a WAPO article:
"The "Patterns of Global Terrorism Report," released in April, had said that the number of terrorist incidents worldwide had dropped last year to 190, which would have been the lowest level in more than three decades and a decline of 45 percent since President Bush took office in 2001.
But State Department officials conceded last week that the report was in error, in part because it omitted acts of terrorism after Nov. 11, 2003 -- including a suicide bombing in Istanbul that killed 61 and injured more than 700. The original report's accuracy had been challenged by Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), and the Congressional Research Service urged a review of the report's "structure and content."
The complaints about the terrorism report are the latest in a series of controversies over the accuracy of information compiled and distributed by the U.S. intelligence community, including ongoing debate over faulty reports of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Bush administration officials, including Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage, had praised the State Department terrorism report as evidence of the country's progress in the war on terrorism."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38339-2004Jun13.html
So information is a right.
Use is a right.
Never said the taxpayers should fund the use. Never said I wanted the government in charge of the information (horrors!), or that I wanted the gov to pay for anything.
I'll pay for my own information, from my own sources & my own birth control, thanks.
Did you know Margaret Sanger was imprisoned for giving women information about birth control?
You said;
As as woman, I absolutely agree with most of the issues you put forth. I do take exception to the following:
<<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 don't know how you reached the conclusion that "the left" focuses on abortion & welfare to the detriment of larger more significant womens issues.
< You are right. THOSE are the women's issues that matter .... not abortion and not welfare, which is what the left defines as "women's issues" today. >
< 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?
>
Bev
No, but I can see it quite nicely from 159th!!!! For a few years I lived up at 68th and Western, it was totally awesome. Like over 20 years ago, it was the corner that met up with many different nationalities and there were always fights. I just stay down close to home in the Orland area, and I love it. I love Chicago!! I know exactly where that is, my father used to live up near 95th and Western. In that area so many cities come together I was also thinking maybe it was Oak Lawn.
One question, what do you think about Mayor Daly? I personally think he is the greatest thing to happen to Chicago next to Michael Jordan and Walter Payton!! He can talk his way into or out of anything!!! Have you been to Millenium Park? I did not get a chance to see it before I left, but I heard it is absolutely beautiful. Those damn Cubs, I dislike them sooo much!!! :)
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