The Greatest Threat - part the ninth

The Office of Data Integrity has the bit between its teeth and galloping along. This report lays out the threat explicitly. Not that I'm surprised, naturally. It's the playbook of the Dictator.

It should be no surprise to gentle reader that I predicted that Kim Don-Felon and his Merry Band of Fascists (so says this Tesla investor) would brazenly set out to fudge the data to make Mad Dictator Don always look good.

Comments from a member of President Trump's cabinet over the weekend have renewed concerns that the new administration could seek to interfere with federal statistics — especially if they start to show that the economy is slipping into a recession.

Of course they will. That's the purpose of the Office of Data Integrity: to make the Dictator look good.

Federal statistical agencies have long operated with a degree of autonomy from the cabinet departments that they are nominally part of, following methodologies developed by technocrats inside and outside government. But experts in recent years have warned that independence rests more on norms than on statutory protections, and that the agencies could therefore be vulnerable to political interference.

Ah, "norms" raise their evil heads yet again. And, once again, we run headlong into the egregious failure of the Founding Fathers: that only moral folks would be elected, and would govern in the interests of all Americans without need for explicit statute restraining their corrupt natures should any emerge. As if. It's not well known (and not mentioned in the report) that almost all of the surveys are conducted by Census, no matter which department/agency name is on the resulting report. Lutnick controls Census.

Nancy Potok, who was appointed chief statistician for the United States by President Barack Obama and remained in the role for much of President Trump's first term, said Mr. Lutnick's comments were a sign that those fears could be becoming reality.

"It's very concerning," she said. "It puts the U.S. in the company of countries that are notorious for fudging the numbers to support failed economic policies."

Ah, the United States of Bananas? And, it gets better. For some definition of 'better'.

More recently, the Commerce Department moved to kill off several advisory committees that provided feedback and guidance to federal statistical agencies.
[FDA is doing similar]

"It's very disconcerting," said Mary Jo Mitchell, who was a member of a Census Bureau advisory committee. "These committees were important avenues for ensuring that the bureau was receiving input from experts and stakeholders who care about these issues."

Ah, but everybody knows that Mad Dictator Don knows more about anything than those stupid experts (he's told us often enough), especially math stats and survey design. Piece of cake for such a polymath as Mad Dictator Don.