spin

Paul Krugman Calls Out Heritage Foundation

Paul Krugman calls out The Heritage Foundation as propaganda:

Whenever you encounter “research” from the Heritage Foundation, you always have to bear in mind that Heritage isn’t really a think tank; it’s a propaganda shop. Everything it says is automatically suspect.

This is so true! We have a host of organizations claiming to issue studies when they are really glorified marketing pieces with flawed data tables, absurd assumptions and some beyond comprehension bad mathematics.

But if one reads the "math" and the details usually one can locate the buried statistical flaws deep in the data. These organizations bank on Congress as well as your inability to add two numbers together to see their manipulated statistics.

The Spin is In (not)

An Op-Ed in Sundays New York TimesThe Economy Is Still at the Brink really calls out what is so wrong with politics generally.

Isn't not the public relations man, it's the policy

Mr. Obama thinks that the way to revive the economy is to restore confidence in it. If the mood is right, the capital will flow. But this belief is dangerously misguided. We are sympathetic to the extraordinary challenge the president faces, but if we’ve learned anything at all two years into the worst financial crisis of our lifetimes, it is that a capital-markets system this dependent on public confidence is a shockingly inadequate foundation upon which to rest our economy.

Hilarious! Government blames "outreach" on unemployment hitting 5 year high!

Hilarious! Talk about spin city! Now we know that the world has shifted to disposable workers (at least in the United States), contractors, temporary workers who are not eligible for unemployment benefits and a host of other manipulations to keep the unemployment statistics low.

Now check this out! Our government, in response to Weekly applications for jobless benefits soared to 448,000 last week, highest level since 2003 says:

The Labor Department reported Thursday that the number of applications for jobless benefits soared to 448,000, an increase of 44,000 from the previous week. That was far worse than the decline of 8,000 that economists had been expecting.