What isn’t wrong with this chart?

Using the following silly straight line to show continued job losses by quarter from Dec. 2007-June 2010, FOX News on June 28 “reported” that the nation has been shedding jobs like wildfire:

Credit: FOX News

“By quarter” means the number of jobs lost in each quarter, not cumulatively.

But, never the news organization to let mere facts get in the way of some tried and true frenzy-raising, FOX never seems to consult the official word on unemployment, the U.S. Department of Labor, which reported that job losses stopped near the end of 2009 and the beginning of 2010 and have risen since. From the Department of Labor, here is that graph:

Credit: U.S. Dept. of Labor

We, indeed, had about 15 million unemployed in Jun 2010, but the data by no means increases on the scale that FOX says it does. According to Media Matters:

Lest you doubt that Fox News deliberately manipulated its chart to distort the facts, we created our own chart demonstrating that Fox also screwed with the scale of their chart in order to generate that straight red line.

Notice on Fox’s chart that the first interval on the horizontal axis, from December ’07 to September ’08 represents 9 months. The second interval, between September ’08 and March ’09, represents 6 months. And the third interval, from March ’09 to June ’10, represents 15 months, almost all of Obama’s term so far. So the third interval should be two-and-a-half times as long as the second. But in Fox’s chart, it’s shorter!

The effect of this is to flatten out the steep rise in the number of unemployed between September ’08 and March ’09 (before Obama’s policies started taking effect) and to suggest that the increases in unemployment later during Obama’s term were more dramatic than they actually were. To get the line straight, Fox also manipulated the scale of the vertical axis.

Even if you accept Fox’s four random data points –which entirely obscure what has happened since the end of 2009 — if your scale is accurate, you’d actually get something like this:

Credit: Media Matters

Party over people?

The Associated Press has reported that a few governors may opt to refuse economic stimulus money, including this guy, the governor of my home state, Mark Sanford, R-S.C.:

Credit: The Post and Courier

Credit: The Post and Courier

This, despite the fact that many of these states, including South Carolina, are in dire need of extra cash. In South Carolina, cuts in education have come frequently and local school districts are scrambling in attempts to save money, yet not have the local cutbacks affect what happens in the classroom. The state’s Medicaid program nearly dropped hospice care from its coverage to save cash and other areas are severely being short-changed because of the economy.

Thankfully, according to the AP,

… governors who reject some of the stimulus aid may find themselves overridden by their own legislatures because of language (U.S. Rep. James) Clyburn (D-S.C.) included in the bill that allows lawmakers to accept the federal money even if their governors object.

He inserted the provision based on the early and vocal opposition to the stimulus plan by South Carolina’s Republican governor, Mark Sanford. But it also means governors like Sanford and Louisiana’s Bobby Jindal — a GOP up-and-comer often mentioned as a potential 2012 presidential candidate — can burnish their conservative credentials, knowing all the while that their legislatures can accept the money anyway.

This is ironic indeed since Clyburn is also from South Carolina. Sanford’s rejection of any stimulus money, as Democratic Party chairwoman Carol Fowler seemed to imply, would be cruel to people in this state who stand to benefit greatly from the boost:

He’s so ideological. He would rather South Carolina do without jobs than take that money, and I think he’s looking for a way not to take it.

In short, Sanford doesn’t care about the best interests of the people in his state. He cares about upholding the ideals of his own party. Party over people: That’s a nice mantra, albeit, not a very endearing one … or compassionate one.

Sanford’s office responded thusly, as spokesman Joel Sawyer said,

We’re going through a 1,200-page bill to determine what our options are. From there, we’ll make decisions.

But it may not matter. Hopefully, the lawmakers in Columbia will have enough sense help out our kids, our unemployed, our sick and others who could benefit from relief from all the financial bleeding this state has suffered through lately.

Piggy banks, dollar bills, illegals

It’s funny. I can go for days without posting anything — for lack of inspiration or anything that generally hacks me off, I guess — and then watch the news for two hours and come up with numerous things I could write about. Go figure. I’ll include two of those here.

  • Even if it may be, by some accounts, the better of the 24/7 news networks as far as fair presentation, less FOX News-esque garbage, there’s still plenty of garbage to go around. I point to a brief segment with a reporter named Allen Chernoff, where to explain the last stimulus plan given to the banks, Chernoff, like a first-grade teacher, began throwing dollar bills down in front of the camera to illustrate the fact that the feds simply threw money at the bank disaster to attempt to salve the bleeding. Then, and even in a more cartoonish manner, he pulled out a piggy bank to attempt to explain the current proposals under the new $800 billion plan. At least, I think that’s what he was talking about. I sort of tuned out when the pink pig appeared. The female host was right on, probably to the chagrin of the producers — who must of thought having this goofball illustrate the most serious economic crisis in this country since the Depression with airborne dollar bills and a pink piggy bank was a good idea — when she said she felt like she had returned to grade school. I felt the same way. News channels shouldn’t feel the need to insult our intelligence this way, yet they continue with this foolishness. Of course, their ultimate goal is getting increased viewership, not spreading information. If their goal was the latter, CNN and the rest of them would be more like PBS or C-SPAN.
  • Speaking of C-SPAN, I watched some of Washington Journal this morning with Sen. Tom Coburn and Roll Call reporter Emily Pierce. During one of the call-in segments, some wahoo was speaking about the economy and talking about how he was at an unemployment office recently. Clearly frustrated by the problem of illegal immigration, he made a comment that all the illegal aliens in the particular office he visited were taking good jobs from legal Americans. First, I doubt he went from one Hispanic person to another, asking for their green cards and documentation, thus factually proving each person in there was illegal. Second, he’s one of a unfortunate many who see brown skin and equate them with either holding illegal status in this country or with crime in general. This was a commentary of racism the hosts and the guest were glad to sidestep. When are folks going to become reasonable and compassionate in their dealings with other human beings? Will it take a whole other century? While it’s true that some Hispanics got into this country illegally and probably get government services via fraudulent documents, Hispanic people aren’t inherently illegal aliens or criminals, and this person had no proof that any — and in all likelihood, not even one — person in that office he visited was actually illegal. He simply made an irrational assumption — and an offensive one — based on fear, racism or whatever.