More 'Fudged' Employment Numbers from Government?
The mainstream media are ecstatic; National Public Radio proclaimed the headline breathlessly this morning: jobless claims are at their lowest levels in four years! New claims fell by an astonishing 30,000 in one week! It's an unbelievable improvement in the national job market--"unbelievable" being the key word.
The problem, as Zero Hedge notes--and as even the Labor Department admits--the numbers are incomplete: "one large state didn't report some quarterly figures." Conveniently, the drop means that new jobless claims are at the lowest levels since Jan. 2008. Back to where we started, right? Just like in the overall job market, where the Bureau of Labor Statistics "found" 400,000 jobs last month to put President Barack Obama at net zero.There is nothing happening in the broader economy--which is slumping towards an anemic 1% growth rate--to justify the "new" jobs picture that the government has presented in the past few weeks. Nothing except the addition of new government workers to state and federal payrolls in spite of extreme debt and scarcity, nothing except the expiration of federal unemployment benefits that may have spurred thousands to take part-time jobs.
There is also a long history to revising the jobs numbers. Again, as Zero Hedge points out, news headlines have dramatically over-reported the drop in jobless claims, while subsequent revisions have put the drop slightly below zero (see graph above, where the red line is the actual, post-revision change in job claims, and the blue line is the change as initially reported by the media). In other words, while the reality is a slow recovery, the media over-report bits of good news to create the false impression of a dramatic rebound. No wonder Democrats--who are more trusting of the mainstream media--also tend to believe that the economy is far stronger than it actually is.
A true dramatic improvement in the economy would be something for all to celebrate. But just as polling data have become more politicized than ever--with one major polling outlet apparently shifting its samples under legal and political pressure from the Obama administration--so, too, have economic data. An administration prepared to set aside federal law to prevent workers from receiving timely layoff notices, one that is prepared to lie for weeks about a deadly terrorist attack, is prepared to lie about anything for political gain.
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Doping: Marist Juices the Numbers to Help Obama
by
Mike Flynn
11 Oct 2012
Never in my life have I seen such obvious, blatant and one-sided skewing of media polls. I've noted before that the media have weaponized polling this election, using their voter surveys to buoy the struggling Obama campaign. Marist and Quinnipiac have been the most egregious polling propagandists this cycle. But, in their latest poll of Ohio, Marist has achieved a new depth. It will go to hell for its cardinal polling sins.
Marist's latest survey of OH finds Obama with a comfortable 6-point lead, 51-45, among likely voters. Among independents, however, Romney is leading Obama by 8 points, 49-41. If you reread those two sentences you'll see that something odd is going on.In Marist's previous survey of OH, conducted before the presidential debate, Obama had an 8 point lead, 51-43 and was leading among independents by 4 points, 47-43. According, then, to Marist's own polling, Romney picked up 12 points among independents, but only picked up 2 points in the overall match-up.
How did Marist achieve this odd result? They packed a lot more Democrats into their poll.
Pre-debate, Marist's poll of OH was D+5, 36% Democrat, 31% Republican. Post-debate, their poll is D+11, 40% Democrat, 29% Republican. Marist would have us believe that, in the immediate wake of Obama's widely panned debate performance, the electorate in OH had a 6-point swing towards the Democrats. Really?
Marist really thinks that Democrats in 2012 will have a larger turnout than in 2008? And that the Democrat surge came in wake of last week's debate? Apparently, Obama's epic debate fail was just what he needed to make Ohioans flock to the Democrat party.
A quick look at early voting in OH shows the lie in Marist's numbers. In 2008, Democrats had a nearly 15 point advantage over the GOP in early voting. This year, their advantage is down to just 6 points. Republicans have already almost reached their total number of absentee ballots from 2008, while Democrats are just around half the level reached in 2008.
It isn't even remotely defensible to argue that this year the Democrat turnout advantage will eclipse 2008. This is nothing more than pure propaganda.
Immediately after last week's debate, I joked on twitter that the media would have to start deploying D+20 samples to maintain Obama's lead. Marist is well down that road.
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We Told You So: HuffPo Busts Gallup Poll Boosting Obama by Tinkering With Sample on Eve of Election
Conservative critics of mainstream media polling are feeling vindicated today after the left-wing Huffington Post revealed the fact that the Gallup poll likely altered the percentage of non-whites in its sample in the weeks after the Democratic National Convention, likely boosting President Barack Obama's approval rating--and, possibly, his poll margin.
The change is significant due to the large majorities enjoyed by President Obama among black voters in particular and racial minority voting groups more generally.Jay Cost of the Weekly Standard notes today that "while Gallup on average had found Obama’s job approval around 47 percent with adults through most of 2012, for the last five weeks it has been regularly above 50 percent." He cites the work of Emory University political science professor Alan Abramowitz, whose analysis in the Huffington Post suggests that Gallup raised the percentage of non-white voters adults in its poll sample from 27 percent to nearly 32 percent--all in the critical weeks at the start of the fall election season.
As Cost notes, the change renders Gallup's tracking poll less reliable, because past numbers have not apparently been adjusted to reflect the new methodology. He notes that "it's problematic to alter one's methodological approach to polling elections just five weeks before the biggest election in a generation....It is even more problematic to make the shift but not spell out in detail the political effect of it."
Cost guesses the effect has been to boost Obama's job approval rating by 3 percent, and says its effect on the head-to-head number is unknown.
Cost and Abramowitz both note that Gallup had come under pressure from the left to change its methodology. Cost concludes that "the left got what it wanted." And the left agrees. The new sample is more in line with the population figures from the 2010 census--which may include non-citizens and non-voters, including both legal and illegal immigrants.
That's not how Gallup explains the change: it mentions an increase in the number of voters with cell phones as opposed to land lines, for instance. But the fact remains that Gallup changed its methodology in the midst of an election season--and while under considerable political and legal pressure. READ MORE
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Libia: No hubo protestas, sólo un atentado terrorista
El relato de la administración Obama sobre el ataque que le costó la vida al embajador Chris Stevens ha cambiado una vez más.
Se han filtrado más detalles con anterioridad a la celebración de la sesión de hoy sobre seguridad diplomática en el Comité de Reforma del Gobierno y Supervisión de la Cámara y el gobierno está diciendo ahora que nunca pensó que el ataque ocurrido en Bengasi fuera provocado por un vídeo de YouTube.
“El Departamento de Estado dice ahora que nunca creyó que el ataque del 11 de septiembre contra el consulado de Estados Unidos en Bengasi, Libia, fuese una protesta por una película que se fue de las manos”, informa Associated Press. “Se les pregunto a algunos responsables del Departamento acerca de la explicación inicial de la administración (y de la cual se han retractado) que unía la violencia con las protestas por un vídeo antimusulmán de origen americano que estaba circulando por Internet. Un responsable respondió que ‘Esa no fue nuestra conclusión’. Y dijo que era una pregunta a la que debían responder ‘otros’, sin especificar quiénes”.
Esos “otros” son altos cargos de la administración Obama, que mantuvieron durante días que el ataque provenía de una manifestación espontánea contra el vídeo La inocencia de los musulmanes. Estos altos cargos son ahora, como suele decirse, el chivo expiatorio.
Un responsable de seguridad de Estados Unidos llamado Eric Nordstrom, que testificará en la sesión de hoy, ha comentado que pidió dos veces a sus superiores del Departamento de Estado mayor seguridad en las instalaciones de Bengasi, pero que no recibió ninguna respuesta. Reuters informa de que “Nordstrom argumentó la necesidad de contar con más elementos de seguridad americanos en Libia al citar una relación cronológica de más de 200 incidentes de seguridad en aquel país, desde tiroteos con la milicia hasta atentados con bomba entre junio de 2011 y julio de 2012. Cuarenta y ocho de esos incidentes fueron en Bengasi”.
La analista de Fundación Heritage Helle Dale ha trazado la cronología de los sucesos, incluyendo las diversas cuestiones de seguridad, que llevaron hasta el ataque de Bengasi y el torpe mensaje de la administración que llegó después. Lo cierto es que el Departamento de Estado tiene ya una cronología completa del ataque sucedido en Bengasi el 11 de septiembre.
La respuesta del presidente Obama al ataque (que se transformó en un embarazoso discurso ante las Naciones Unidas con una defensa poco firme de la libertad de expresión) ha sido un auténtico desastre.
La semana pasada, el analista de la Fundación Heritage James Carafano comentó acerca de una declaración del Director Nacional de Inteligencia que esta parecía que trataba de “proporcionar aún mayor cobertura política a la Casa Blanca, en lugar de responder a las graves preguntas suscitadas en torno a las erróneas declaraciones por parte de los voceros del presidente”.
Carafano comentó que:
La línea oficial de la administración sobre los ataques a las embajadas ya estaba debilitada, tras los mensajes en Twitter, las declaraciones de prensa y otros pronunciamientos oficiales relacionados con el ataque a la embajada de Estados Unidos en El Cairo que fueron lanzados desde las páginas web del Departamento de Estado.Ahora la historia oficial es que nunca hubo en Libia una protesta contra el vídeo de YouTube. Fue simplemente un atentado terrorista.
Pero lo peor fue la defensa de la administración realizada por parte de la embajadora Susan Rice la semana pasada en televisión. Rice afirmó categóricamente que el ataque de Bengasi no estaba “premeditado”, incluso cuando ella debía haber sabido que altos cargos libios ya estaban declarando que los ataques sí habían sido planeados.
En todo el mundo, hay americanos que ponen en riesgo sus vidas todos los días para proteger a sus compatriotas y nuestros intereses. Sabemos que son objetivo de los terroristas. Sabemos que no podemos ganar todas las batallas o impedir todos los atentados terroristas. No esperamos que nuestro gobierno sea perfecto. Sin embargo, sí esperamos que sea honesto. También esperamos, tal y como es el mundo tras el 11 de septiembre, que nuestro gobierno haga un mejor trabajo a la hora de “atar los cabos” y de compartir su información antes de que ataque el enemigo. La lección de Bengasi es clara. Pero de un modo u otro, nuestro gobierno nos ha fallado.
