There is a saying... There are liars... There are da#n liars... There are politicians... Then, there are statisticians... But I agree that this is good news and any good news is welcome right about now.
Last year… President George W. Bush discusses jobs and the economy at the Timken Company in Canton, Ohio, April 24, 2003. Today… Bush said at the time, the "greatest strength of the American economy is found right here, right in this room, found in the pride and skill of the American work force." Last week, Timken announced that the folks right there in that room are getting fired. Timken, the world's largest industrial bearings maker, whose chairman is a major donor and fundraiser for the Republican Party, plans to shut down three factories in Canton and eliminate 1,300 jobs.
It's interesting to me that when there finally is some good news about the economy (and if you ask me, it may well be too late to really help Bush in the election. The idea that the economy is bad will linger longer than the economy actually being bad. Ask the President's father) and then the gloves come off to find a way to make it out to be bad. The unemployment number is suddenly a bad statistic. No one talked about the actual unemployment rate in the mid-1990s, but suddenly it's very important. Layoffs happened during the boom times, as well. It's unfortunate that 1,300 people are losing their jobs at that particular plant, but people lose their jobs every single year. The goal of the economy is to create more jobs than are shed. Personally, I don't think Bush has done a very good job with the economy. Even though I think the President has a limited ability to affect the economy, I think he's done a poor job with what he can do when considered overall. But 288,000 net jobs created is a good thing, and I'm glad to see it. I hope it continues, and I can't imagine why people would like to complain about the job market making a strong showing.
I don't think anyone's complaining about the job numbers in the sense that adding jobs is, without question, a positive thing. I have questions about the numbers themselves because time and time again we've seen this administration come out and trumpet loudly preliminary numbers only to quietly release the official numbers a week or so later... inevitably, the official numbers are not as good as the preliminary ones. In short, the Bush Administyration has been politicizing a process that should be beyond politics... basic numbers that reflect the health of our economy should be beyond misrepresentation... but then again, so should basic scientific conclusions, budget numbers, medicare numbers, etc. Another reason people are critical of the job numbers is that the Bush Administration has consistently predicted highly positive numbers that are nowhere near reality. Worse, they have based policy decisions on these known fabrications. If JVG came in and said the Rockets will win 65 games and they only won 17, we would all call BS if he claimed 17 wins is really good and shows that the turnaround is happening and his system is working.
It just comes across to me as no matter the news, there will be a negative response. If Bush comes out tonight and says the sun will come out tomorrow (and does it without singing like he's in Annie), I'd expect threads on here to talk about how bad that was that the sun did indeed rise the next morning. It's like listening to my Aunt Fairra. No matter the news, she'd find a bad thing to say about it. If you told her you won a million bucks, her first reponse would be "Yeah, but the taxes are going to kill you" or something to that effect. The economy added 288,000 jobs in April. - Yeah, but a lot of people gave up looking for work so the unemployment number is flawed. - And Bush gave a speech at a factory and now they're closing down. - The real unemployment number is closer to 20% because of all those people who gave up. - They're cooking the books by using the same number that they've always used. I have questions about the numbers themselves because time and time again we've seen this administration come out and trumpet loudly preliminary numbers only to quietly release the official numbers a week or so later. The March numbers were revised upward when the final numbers came in, just FYI. And every administration talks about the preliminary numbers and don't make the big deal when the revised numbers come out (since that's old news by then).
i hope the economy is improving, but this doesn't take away from the fact that bush is a very bad man.
