Comment by 💎 pista
Re: "Public Officials Held to Lower Standards"
What planet have you been living on where you think any self-reported numbers by any government are remotely in line with reality?
2025-09-10 · 8 months ago
9 Later Comments ↓
🚀 stack [OP] · 2025-09-10 at 15:21:
There is a limit to what even the Soviet Union considered acceptable level of lies...
🚀 ingrix · 2025-09-10 at 15:42:
BLS has been doing that sort of crappy estimation/revision thing over and over for years, even before the Trump era. I am not that surprised that a political agency screws up numbers. What does irritate me is the reporting on it. There has been a ton o coverage of the latest 911k downward revision, but the other *major* revisions they've done over the last few years flew right under the radar. Selective coverage sucks.
🚀 ingrix · 2025-09-10 at 15:45:
And re the Fed governor issue, that is Trump using the same accustions that were leveled at him in one of his cases where they accused him of overstating property values to get better mortgage rates. He is using that to get his way with the Fed, and probably as revenge for someone on the prosecutorial side of things. I'm not familiar with Ford in particular but the whole accusation stinks of being less a legitimate concern and more of a legal tool to get to political ends.
👻 darkghost · 2025-09-10 at 15:59:
Given the obvious and naked political meddling, the numbers should be even less trustworthy. I also don't think this admin will reform the BLS into a better, more accurate organization. At best, they'll be just more breathless cheerleaders.
Firing for cause usually has a procedure instead of the guilty until proven innocent thing we as a nation seem to be doing more of. But don't worry, we will get that rate cut. Even though bond markets are what sets the mortgage rates. One wonders if pedophilia before you were President is impeachable. Or the selling of a "fully depreciated <insert human being's name here>" which sounds a lot like an admission to human trafficking.
🚀 stack [OP] · 2025-09-10 at 16:07:
I wonder if the depreciation was on a 5-year schedule or you can deduct the entire cost in one year as Section 179 deduction?
Also, do the "idle property" rules apply?
There are additional IRS rules for "property used by other persons"...
🚀 stack [OP] · 2025-09-10 at 17:11:
There is the classic "X gazillion jobs created" in the headlines, with the president boasting about his administration creating more jobs than Y, followed by ignored-by-the-press negative adjustment.
You would think statisticians would notice the upward bias and introduce a deflator to further confuse us.
I also get really annoyed when GDP adjustments erase recessions. Does anyone remember Q1 and Q2 of 2022, with inflation over 9% and a technical recession? Nope.
👻 darkghost · 2025-09-10 at 20:23:
I have always said the president doesn't control jobs except federal jobs. The tariff thing may make me rethink that but in fairness to myself, tariffs aren't supposed to be controlled by the president.
🚀 stack [OP] · 2025-09-10 at 21:29:
The subject of presidential tariffs goes way back... in an 1890 case the right of the president to levy tariffs was affirmed. Later, in 1934, Congress passed 'Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act' which allowed FDR (the worst president ever) to change tariffs and negotiate bilateral trade agreements without congressional approval.
A surprising amount of authoritarian crap usually associated with the far right comes from the left. Or perhaps I should say, Democrats, because they don't realy qualify for liberals or anything left, really.
That includes extreme deportation-- there are some nice videos of Obama and Hillary saying that Republicans screwed up the border policy and they will kick all the undocumented immigrants out.
And now that president can pardon his children, just you wait.
👻 darkghost · 2025-09-10 at 22:03:
In the case of past tariffs they were all either levied by presidents who were given express authorization by Congress through act of law or the Congress itself. In 1890 it was known as the McKinley tariff act, however he was a member of congress and not yet president. Congress did not authorize these tariffs and they were done under an emergency declaration. The pretextual reason being stopping fentanyl. What stopping fentanyl has to do with tomatoes and European cheese I simply cannot say.
Original Post
Public Officials Held to Lower Standards — It really roils me when people in public office show that they can do whatever the F they want, and probably not even get fired. The entire BLS should be disbanded immediately, and those in charge -- charged with treason. It is not rational to think that a large government agency staffed by degreed statisticians would inadvertantly make an error of recording 1,000,000 jobs that no one had, and announcing it publicly. These people are actually paid for...