Quote:Cheney imprisonment sounds like pandering to the progressives, whether or not it's realistic doesn't seem to enter into their philosophy.Dennis Kucinich isn't pandering to the progressives. He *is* a progressive. (I also think he's a loon.) Like I said, the Ron Paul of the left. I'm sure he is entirely genuine in his belief that Cheney should have been impeached. On this much, Mr. Kucinich and I are in agreement.
Regardless, this is very much my point. What Kucinich believes is too far in left field to actually make it into policy. He opposed the Iraq war. He opposed the health care bill - from the left! He very nearly opposed cap and trade as well. He believes in all sorts of hippie stuff that makes no sense. This is not Ted Kennedy. He does not make a lot of policy.
Quote:http://www.federalbudget.com/ I guess it depends how you slice it up. SSI and the department of health and human services are higher than the department of defense.Um, lunatics, much?
They claim their numbers come from here. Their press release indicates what I said is true: interest on the debt, both to government accounts and the public, is 383 billion.
Looking at this chart, debt service is a distant 4th behind the DoD, Health Services, and Social Security. It is around half any of those things - exactly as I said. So, no, it doesn't "depend how you slice it up" - unless you're doing something totally dishonest, like adding all Treasury expenditures (the TARP money included) into the interest on the federal debt, which obviously gives a much inflated, and wrong, figure.
Quote:Also, this table is actual, rather than budget.It all has to go into the budget somewhere, retrospectively, which this is. Last I checked, the DoD can't print its own money, and neither can Health Services.
Quote:But, how about something that is within 2%-3% of accurate?Well, this is just lies, damn lies, and statistics. By measuring a % of different things, you end up with vastly different accuracies. The unemployment correction was less than 0.5% of the total labour market- that is to say, less than 0.5% unemployment. It's maybe 5% of total unemployment, if you prefer measuring it that way. If you measure it as a % of the *change* in unemployment, then yes, it's somewhere around 17%. But that's just a manipulation of numbers to make the problem sound very drastic - we're talking about revising the unemployment rate by less than half a percent, not seventeen percent!
So, in other words, 2-3% of what? Measuring it as a % of the change is a uniquely stupid way to go - if the economy only lost 100 jobs, but they said it had lost 1000, that would be a 900% error! But they'd only have been off by 900. (Incidentally, this kind of "% of the change" statistic is commonly used in poor reporting on medical science to create sensational stories out of trivial results.)
Quote:In my profession, people play this game as well (however I don't to the consternation of some of my colleagues.) Eventually, the deception is revealed. So, I guess for them it's better to confess to an oversight, and then return to the manipulation as usual. I think the motive is to convince people that the recession is over, so back to business as usual.This doesn't make any sense. "Eventually, the deception is revealed," so they might as well cheat, then reveal it themselves within one year? To what? Win an election? There was no election. "Manipulation as usual"? Manipulating what? They report almost everything you'd ever want to know - number employed, number unemployed, number who have stopped looking, whatever you want, broken down by age, sex, race... if they were going to cheat, wouldn't they have to do it consistently?
What do you want, exactly? Other than to accuse the government of vague malfeasance?
-Jester