Remember Weisman, who threw a tantrum when Brad DeLong chided him (along with fellow co-press-agent Mike Allen, who's also implicated in the present affair) about his kiss-ass presentation of Bush's awesomely mendacious budget? Wonder what Weisman will do now that DeLong is pointing out that Weisman is lying (though DeLong, politer than I, doesn't put it that way) for the administration on the jobs forecast numbers:
[In] the article, we read:
Last month, the White House had to disavow its own estimate that 2.6 million jobs would be created this year...
For the ninety-third time: "This year" is 2004. The administration Troika macroeconomic forecast--the forecast reported in the Economic Report of the President, made and approved by the CEA, OMB, Treasury, and NEC, and that underlies all the administration's budget calculations--is that payroll employment will grow by 3.8 million this year, not 2.6 million. The 2.6 million is calculated by falsely and erroneously misinterpreting the 132.7 million number in the 2004 line of Economic Report of the President Table 3-1 as a year-end number and not the year-average number that it is.
Now the White House wants us to misinterpret the 132.7 million number as a year-end number because the real employment growth forecast--3.8 million new payroll employment jobs in 2004--is ridiculously highballed. To get a complaisant press to misinterpret the table and so cut that number by a third to a less optimistic and more comfortable 2.6 million is a major win for White House Media Affairs.
[...]
Why pretend that that administration's now-disavowed employment forecast was a third lower than it actually was?
"You've got to understand, Brad," said one journalism insider this morning, "The story is already strongly anti-Bush. The story is already astonishingly strongly anti-Bush for this millennium's Post. The story says that the Bush administration has been on the defensive over economic issues like the jobs forecast, and that the administration has panicked and is thinking about pulling Raimondo's nomination. If the story also said that Raimondo's job isn't even a new job just a renamed old job that the Bushies are trying to get everyone to think is a new job. If the story also said that the 2.6 million number they ran away from was already a big step away from their original real 3.8 million job growth forecast. Then the story wouldn't be 'Bush administration on the defensive on economic issues.' It would be 'Bush administration ridiculously mendacious, ludicrously confused, and utterly incompetent on economic issues.'"
Exactly. That is the real story, after all.
You can contact the Post Ombudsman Michael Getler by e-mail at [email protected] or by phone at 202-334-7582, and tell him that we would all be better off if Post "reporters" didn't lie to the public.
Recent Comments