Wednesday, July 16, 2003

What Other Indicators?   Part of what I have found in looking around the blogsphere and elsewhere is that people do seem to publish out of a certain lack of understanding of all the facts.  It is naturally hard to keep up with things since everything is so darned complicated.  People can not seem to remove their blinders.  I see bloggers rallying around the idea of stock market profits as a key indicator as to how good things are in the country for example.  The fact that most stocks are often highly over valued and that profits can be manipulated by a little fudge here and there makes me highly suspect of their own ability to see the big picture.   We need new indicators.  My own exploration of some of the data used to drive our predictions has led me to believe that the science behind the collection methodology is largely suspect.   Perhaps we can come up with some better indicators.  As to war Army recruiting may be a good example.  Some reports have shown at least up to now that recruiting has not suffered but there are also indications that this trend will not continue.    Beyond that we have spent the last many years building up the guns portion of our military budget while placing less and less emphasis on the butter portion of our military readiness.  As we look at a protracted occupation we may have to boost pay, recruitment bonuses, etc. to retain soldiers and bring new ones in.  If that happens the private corporations that profit from war readiness will have to do with less further eroding domestic jobs in defense areas.   Isn’t keeping the peace better in the long run?   12:49:21 PM    Talk back! []

Scott Rosenberg wrote the following that I feel worthy of reposting in its entirety. Nice, clean, surgical lies Today's news about the ballooning federal deficit should come as no surprise to anyone. If you cut taxes and increase spending, what else could possibly happen? The brazenness of the Bush administration's number-fudging has been obvious ever since it took power: today the pattern of outrageously lowballing the deficit figures continues, as the Bush budget office refuses to consider future costs of operations and reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan in its forecasts, ostensibly because "it's impossible to know." (C'mon, guys, you can take a guess! Any guess is likely to be closer to the truth than "zero.") Between the deficit forecast, the continuing doubletalk on WMD and the worsening situation on the ground in Iraq, shouldn't Bush and his team begin to be held accountable for their deceptions? You'd think so. Those of us who were appalled at the partisan exploitation of Bill Clinton's stupid but fundamentally insignificant lies about his sex life keep wondering why lies about war and peace and the future of the economy don't seem to generate much outrage. I'm beginning to think that it is the very significance of Bush's lies -- the fact that he is lying about things that are genuinely important, that are matters of state, that involve our livelihoods and our servicepeople's lives -- that protects him. There is no taint of tawdriness to Bush's lies, the way there were to Clinton's, with their prurient scent, or to Nixon's, with their late-night skulduggery. Bush's lies -- like those of his predecessor Ronald Reagan -- live in the rarefied realm of macroeconomics and global strategy rather than in the gutter of personal misbehavior, and that seems to place them in a kind of realpolitik "get out of jail free" zone. Whatever forbearance Bush fails to earn on these grounds, he wins -- again, as Reagan did -- on the basis of our assumption of his incompetence, his out-of-the-loopiness. (Is there any other way to explain the way Bush has gotten away with claiming, absurdly, contrary to all fact, that Saddam Hussein didn't allow the arms inspectors back in?) If things keep getting worse, though -- if the economy continues to refuse to budge on the basis of Bush's half-baked economic plan, if the soldiers continue to be picked off one by one in Iraq, if it finally dawns on the American public that this administration is driving the nation into a ditch -- maybe the public will come to its senses. We can certainly hope. [Scott Rosenberg's Links & Comment] 12:25:05 PM    Talk back! []

© Copyright 2003 Marie Foster.