Etiquette



DP Etiquette

First rule: Don't be a jackass. Most people are good.

Other rules: Do not attack or insult people you disagree with. Engage with facts, logic and beliefs. Out of respect for others, please provide some sources for the facts and truths you rely on if you are asked for that. If emotion is getting out of hand, get it back in hand. To limit dehumanizing people, don't call people or whole groups of people disrespectful names, e.g., stupid, dumb or liar. Insulting people is counterproductive to rational discussion. Insult makes people angry and defensive. All points of view are welcome, right, center, left and elsewhere. Just disagree, but don't be belligerent or reject inconvenient facts, truths or defensible reasoning.

Tuesday, September 2, 2025

Data wars: The rise of the fake unemployment rate

Recently a DP post focused on djt and MAGA elites getting rid of federal data collection and analysis. Those analyese were used by policy makers, businesses and various kinds of forecasters in planning all kinds of things. The main point of that post was to make people aware that djt and MAGA elites are going to hide inconvenient truth as much as possible whenever possible. They will constantly lie about empirical reality whenever it is inconvenient to them or their dictator-kleptocrat agenda.

On August 1, 2025, djt fired Dr. Erika McEntarfer, the Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), after she released a bad July jobs report. The report showed only 73,000 jobs were added in July. That was way below expectations. The analysis included substantial downward revisions to May and June employment figures totaling 258,000 fewer jobs than previously reported. Being the vicious spoiled brat he is, djt took it personally and flew into a rage. He fired McEntarfer for telling the truth as best the data allowed. As usual, the enraged brat had no evidence there was anything wrong with the BLS jobs analysis.

djt's replacement for running BLS statistics is a radical MAGA authoritarian crackpot, E.J. Antoni. This sleazebag has openly criticized the BLS and its analysis methods. Just before McEntarfer's firing, Antoni appeared on Steve Bannon's podcast calling for her firing. He and Bannon both lamented there wasn't a "MAGA Republican" in the chief BLS statistician position. He previously said that "DOGE needs to take a chainsaw to the BLS" and called BLS data "phoney baloney".

One of the things we can expect MAGA to lie to us about is the unemployment rate. Honest data gathering and analyses are necessary to get a grip on that critically important information. The BLS used to put out reliable employment data and analyses. But djt recently killed, corrupted and MAGAfied it.

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