I started writing this in the thick of the controversary over President Trump’s firing of the head of BLS statistics, but set it aside for a while. Given the media’s recent track record, maybe that’s not a bad thing.
But my ultimate conclusion is unchanged — it’s okay to get blown out if you’re not good at your job.
The colloquialism in the entry title is related to the outrage OUTRAGE President Trump used his hammer, firing someone, on the head of the BLS. The reasoning is something like “if the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” I was looking for proper attribution, but it looks like there’s no real good story on it, and it’s something that popped up in the 60s and 70s.
Why might I be looking for the line? President Trump’s catchphrase from his time at The Apprentice is “you’re fired.”
Recently, he did this to the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Some of the things I sample made a really big deal about the repeated employment restatements under the Biden Administration.
The employment numbers are one of the many factors used by the Federal Reserve calculating core interest rates.
Some. of the restatements under Biden were remarkable. The one in early 2023 comes immediately to mind.
Fre^H^H^HChris Cuomo did have a rather-decent take on this on his NewsNation show. (If I’m watching somewhat-regularly, I can joke, okay? Also, what happened to the bird?)
My ribbing is good-natured; as I said, I watch. He got fired for not being good at CNN. This is the way things are supposed to work. People seem to forget that. This is especially true for politicians and union members.
Yes, there’s something generational at work, too. I can remember my dad making jokes about how he lost his job when he was on terminal leave from the Army. While the retirement might have seemed premature to some, it was time for him. The Army continued on without him.
Back to the topic, if I was conspiratorial, I’d look at previous BLS revisions; how close are they to an election. But I’m not that conspiratorial about it.
I was inclined to accept the originally-reported outrage I saw over at Racket News. Don’t I understand that people make their livings analyzing those numbers before anyone else can?
Noted. But when the numbers completely off over and over again, why is it an outrage that someone gets fired?
Outrage actualities won’t fix the problems. Yes, the BLS head is a government employee, but if you fail “bigly” at your job, you should be fired. It doesn’t mean that you’re a bad person, regardless of what the MSNBC analyst might imply. Or what the union rep might say.
Bubuhbut, people rely on those numbers. Whatever. Run your own. If they line up, you can attribute your story to both official sources, and my agency’s sources.
(I think interest rates are artificially-low, and have been since the Clinton Administration. Rate cuts have been used as a king of economic panacea for the past quarter-century. What largely fed the late-90s/early-2000s balanced budgets were tax increases passed by President Bush and the Democratic Congress. Lips read and ignored.)
I think there might be something that ties in with polling. I wrote in one of the discussion threads on WTF‘s chat,
“2024 Iowa was an example, I suppose, but how much attention did it get?
I had to STFW for Ann Seltzer’s name.
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/11/17/ann-selzer-retirement-iowa-poll-0019003
But for a government employee, there’d be a union rep who’d have the name at the ready.”
Anyone who’s worked in the private sector after the fall of the wall just yawns.
(Side note: I did run this through an AI tool for review. It found a couple of typos; unsurprising. But it did catch a few things that were typed-correctly, but confusingly-worded. When I have some spare cash, I will probably purchase that company’s product. No, it’s not ChatGPT…)