corrente

Now, when I suggested that Karl Rove was going to leave a horse's head in the bed of every BLS statistician that was just a Lambertism. Just a little rhetorical excess.... We do but jest, poison in jest.... No offense in the world!

After all, the integrity of the nation's economic statistics gathering institions is beyond price: Many thousands of businesspeople use those statistics as a resource every day. So it would make no sense for Acting President Rove to tamper with that system—not even for short-term political gain. Right?

Well, slap my monkey and call me Bonzo—yet again, I just wasn't cynical enough!

Get this from John Crudele in (amazingly) the NY Post:

It may not have looked like the Labor Department did the White House any favors in last Friday's employment report, but it did.

Unfortunately, the gesture by the bureaucrats at the Labor Dept. went totally unappreciated.

The story starts a week ago today when Treasury Secretary John Snow hinted that the jobs report — due the next day — might be disappointing because of all those hurricanes down South.

Having an excuse handy is always a good thing right before an election.

But when the weak jobs report was released last Friday, the Labor Dept. went out of its way to say that it couldn't determine whether the hurricanes had a helpful or harmful impact on the report.

That wasn't the favor. But what went on behind the scenes was.

A source who works on the jobs calculation tells me that ordinarily, the Labor Dept. simply sends a fax to companies that haven't replied to the monthly employment survey.

This time though — no doubt trying to placate the nervous White House — the Labor Dept. placed phone calls to businesses that might not have reported jobs because of the weather.

The source in Labor says this was done "despite the expense."

In the end, the response to the September employment survey was better than normal, thanks to the additional cost and effort.
(via the covering-the-story-fer-gawdsake-New-York Post)

"Better than normal" and still it sucked. (back)

So, do we put an asterisk beside the stats for this September, or all the other ones?