BUSH TO ALTER ECONOMIC STATS AGAIN

iVillage Member
Registered: 11-11-1999
BUSH TO ALTER ECONOMIC STATS AGAIN
46
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.

dablacksox


Cynic: a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.---Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-24-2004
Thu, 09-02-2004 - 10:07pm
Orland and Tinley Park area.. So you are near Palos rite or is that like Chicago Ridge?
iVillage Member
Registered: 07-12-2001
Thu, 09-02-2004 - 10:44pm
WOW, talk about intolerant and judgmental and painting with a broad brush! No woman is "self-respecting" unless she agrees with your viewpoints, eh? But since you don't seem to read my posts very carefully, I never called myself a Republican. In fact (and I mentioned it before), I am a registered Democrat.

Bev

girl in chair
iVillage Member
Registered: 08-21-2004
Thu, 09-02-2004 - 10:59pm
You don't sound like one and yes I do believe what I said.

Donna

Donna
iVillage Member
Registered: 11-11-1999
Thu, 09-02-2004 - 11:39pm
"Orland and Tinley Park area.. So you are near Palos rite or is that like Chicago Ridge?"

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.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-31-2003
Fri, 09-03-2004 - 7:35am
I'm afraid this kind of manipulation of data is rampant in the Bush administration. Back in the spring when the Patterns of Global Terrorism report came out, the administration was loudly crowing about how terrorism was at it's lowest point since 1969 thanks to George W. Bush's War on Terror. Some Democratic Congressmen, thinking that just didn't sound right, checked into it and discovered that the administration had handed the job of compiling the stats to a new group of people (a group which included the Department of Defense) and then changed the way they do the numbers. Not surprisingly, the revised report showed that terrorism was NOT at historic lows, but was dramatically up.

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

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-07-2004
Fri, 09-03-2004 - 7:53am
I said THE RIGHT TO RECEIVE INFORMATION ABOUT BIRTH CONTROL first. It is a right to be informed. Then I said the right to use birth control, I never said the right to receive birth control free.

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.

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-07-2004
Fri, 09-03-2004 - 7:54am
The "left" as you call it, does not actually exist anywhere, there are many groups, each with a different agenda, not in total agreement on everything, so that's an inaccurate generalization. There is no one group or person qualified to speak for "the left" much less say what issues matter. Certianly you are not in a position to define or specify what "the left" considers wonens issues that matter.

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. >

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-07-2004
Fri, 09-03-2004 - 7:58am
And those choices are available due to Margaret Sanger & women like her. Did you know that Frist, a repub in power now, is also a Dr, who WILL NOT PRESCRIBE BIRTH CONTROL TO UNMARRIED WOMEN? How long will it take them to put these restrictive views into laws? Do you think they will start charging men with crimes for having sex with unmarried women? No, it's just the women they want to be restrictive with.


< 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?

>

iVillage Member
Registered: 07-12-2001
Fri, 09-03-2004 - 8:41am
If I "don't sound like one" (I presume you mean a Democrat) that's because I do not allow a political party to dictate my beliefs and opinions. In that respect I should probably change my registration to independent (something I've been considering anyway) because that more accurately describes my political philosophy. I must say, nothing you have said so far has convinced me I should remain loyal to the Democrats.

Bev

girl in chair
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-24-2004
Fri, 09-03-2004 - 12:23pm


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!!! :)