Stranger than fiction

[kallend 2,175]

It's almost as good as House of Cards:

“we’re not hatching some bill in a backroom and plopping it on the American people’s front door.” Speaker Ryan, Feb 28, 2017

Then Sen. Rand Paul (R, KY) exposes the hypocrisy:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/03/02/rand-paul-a-copy-machine-and-a-secret-obamacare-bill/?utm_term=.31237216d286

“But the plans were on display…”
“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”
“That’s the display department.”
“With a flashlight.”
“Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.”
“So had the stairs.”
“But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.”

Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[airdvr 210]

Quote

“we’re not hatching some bill in a backroom and plopping it on the American people’s front door.” Speaker Ryan, Feb 28, 2017

The only hypocrite is you John. You point your finger and say "look there". But you did none of that when Barry was president.

Please don't dent the planet.

Destinations by Roxanne

[ryoder 1,590]

I thought of the same HHGG dialog when I read about it.

"There are only three things of value: younger women, faster airplanes, and bigger crocodiles" - Arthur Jones.

[kallend 2,175]

airdvr

Quote

“we’re not hatching some bill in a backroom and plopping it on the American people’s front door.” Speaker Ryan, Feb 28, 2017

The only hypocrite is you John. You point your finger and say "look there". But you did none of that when Barry was president.

Tell us when Obama kept something secret while simultaneously telling us on the record that it was not being kept secret.

I do recall Nixon telling us there were no US troops in Laos when he knew perfectly well that there were. And I recall Reagan denying Iran-Contra when he knew perfectly well that it was going on. And I recall GWB telling us there were no warrantless phone taps when there were and he'd authorized them.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[kallend 2,175]

“We’re not hatching some bill in a backroom and plopping it on the American people’s front door.” Speaker Ryan, Feb 28, 2017

"I have been told that the House Obamacare bill is under lock & key, in a secure location, & not available for me or the public to view. What is the House leadership trying to hide? My guess is, they are trying to hide their "Obamacare Lite" approach." Senator Rand Paul (R, KY) @RandPaul March 2, 2017

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[billvon 3,131]

Your one warning. Cut it out.

[airdvr 210]

We have to pass it so we know what's in it? Remember that? No one knew what the program was...by design.

Please don't dent the planet.

Destinations by Roxanne

[headoverheels 334]

airdvr

We have to pass it so we know what's in it? Remember that? No one knew what the program was...by design.

It was available at that point, even to John Q Public. It was simply too f'ing long for anyone to read.

[normiss 905]

Love how that is always quoted out of context for exactly the reason you did here.

[kallend 2,175]

airdvr

We have to pass it so we know what's in it? Remember that? No one knew what the program was...by design.

Ummmm - NO.

Just because people were too lazy to read it all didn't make it secret.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[billvon 3,131]

>No one knew what the program was...by design.

No one knew what was in it because no one bothered to read it.

Why would any Republican read it to begin with?

[Phil1111 1,193]

Trump's dangerous war on data

While there are plenty of reasons to be disturbed about the Trump administration. Chief among them for financial policymakers is the hubris and blatant confirmation bias that is guiding White House economic policy. It would be bad enough if Trump were simply sticking to his alternative facts and trotting out flat-out lies about the economy, like when he said he “inherited a mess” from President Obama.

The truth is that Obama actually inherited the mess that was the 2008 financial crisis, when Wall Street imploded just before his first election win. The S&P 500 went up 235 percent during Obama’s tenure as president. That’s 16 percent annualized versus a historical norm of around 10 percent. Moreover, the unemployment rate peaked at above 10 percent in Obama’s first year and steadily declined to under 5 percent when he left office.

But Trump is not content to accept the facts and simply lie about the truth. He wants to change the very nature of economic data, all in a desperate effort to change the facts — both past and future — to justify his worldview.

Trump recently instructed his advisers to forecast U.S. growth rates a full percentage point higher than consensus estimates — from the current rate of 2 percent to 3 percent. Predictions are inherently flawed and difficult, of course, and economists often disagree. But as one Harvard economist who specializes in economic forecast told Wall Street Journal, “It is awfully hard to get to 3 percent. I don’t know where a number like that would come from.”

Trump’s alternate reality and self-serving agenda, that’s where. As another economic expert told the Journal, “The risk is that rosy economic scenarios allow us to borrow trillions of additional dollars” and not worry about the real consequences.

Trump also wants to change how the trade deficit is calculated in an effort to pander to the tough-on-trade crowd that elected him. In a nutshell, the White House wants to remove “re-exports” from export data — but not import data. In other words, if Mexico trucks $100 million worth of widgets into California and then immediately puts them on a ship bound for China, we would record $100 million in imports — but $0 in exports. That would artificially inflate the trade deficit in a way that a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations called “duplicitous” and “deliberately dishonest.”

Even his proposed changes to the unemployment rate calculation should be viewed with skepticism. On the surface it looks like a minor tweak, including people who aren’t actively looking for work in the mainstream definition of “unemployment,” but clearly fidelity in numbers is not a core value of this administration.

After all, just before Election Day, Trump’s key economic advisor asserted that the real unemployment rate was 9.7 percent — almost double the rate at the time even using his new and preferred definition. Furthermore, early last year Trump claimed the unemployment rate could actually be 42 percent — a number that would elicit laughter from a freshman economics class.

But as Trump has repeatedly shown, he has no respect for the discipline of economics. Trump is simply trying to alter the statistics for personal gain, to align with his campaign narrative. I have to wonder what the true end-game is here in his mission to recast the current labor market as a hot mess only he can fix.

I am not naïve enough to think that fuzzy math isn’t par for the course in Washington when the truth is inconvenient. And particularly in the realm of finance, where Silicon Valley touts “hockey stick” growth on preferred user metrics while ignoring minor details like profitability and revenue, it’s an occupational hazard.

But there is a tremendous difference between debating the methodology of a study on early childhood education and simply acting like the U.S. economy is fully 50 percent stronger than it actually is.

And there is a tremendous difference between venture capitalists cherry-picking growth metrics in their Series B funding round and a president cherry picking export numbers to start unfounded trade wars.

Contrary to Trump’s assertions, both Main Street and Wall Street we have come a long way since the dark days of 2008. But that success has been hard-fought, and remains quite fragile in a global economy where sustainable growth is increasingly difficult.

Ill-advised economic policies could have a lasting impact to businesses, investors and consumers alike. But under Trump’s proposed changes to economic data, we may never truly understand the true impact of his policies until it is too late.'
http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/economy-budget/322305-trumps-dangerous-war-on-data