Asked about today's near record downward jobs revision, Biden's Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo - who we repeat, is the Secretary of the Department of Commerce which is responsible among other things, for the Bureau of Economic Analysis - said she "doesn't believe" the revision because, somehow Trump was behind it. But when she was informed that the data comes from her own administration, namely the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics, Raimondo's response was simply legendary: "I am not familiar with that."
Hence proved!
Biden's dementia is contagious!
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I'm no fan of govt bureaucrats, but I think that is deliberately misunderstanding her.
To me, it reads pretty clearly she was saying "I'm not familiar with that report [from the BLS]" -- not that she hasn't heard of the BLS.
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Fair enough, that's also how I read it, but she was somehow familiar with the fantasy that Trump was behind it.
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I agree.
It's still a huge story though. And the story is that the numbers are so shockingly made-up that the Bureau of Labor should be seen as about as trustworthy as Trump. And that's according to the Commerce Secretary
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After this nugget, I was ready to believe this new story too, but after seeing the clip, I think you're right. We don't get anywhere just quoting people out of context.
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No doubt the article might have shown a little bias there. The straight facts are damning enough.
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How do these crooks simply reply in full confidence 'such a nonsense reply'. The biggest tragedy in democracy is that the leaders who get elected are not taken accountable for words. Most of the times they aren't even accountable for their deeds. I heard that the accusations on Biden for misusing his powers for his son's benifit were found true. But, who cared for those revelations about him? Noone, just because, he was not impeached, he wasn't even considered accountable.
Politicians easily deny whatever is not in favour of them and walk as usual. They even don't show a bit of shame!
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With Secretary positions you could argue its either worse or not as bad... These positions are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. To get confirmed these individuals often have to testify at least once and kinda prove they are worthy and know what is going on before they get confirmed. The vote to confirm her was pretty bipartisan at 84-15
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Pretty much nothing changes anyone's mind, anymore. I think perhaps it used to be different, but partisan tribalism has become so severe that information doesn't cut through. It's literally trying to talk people out of a cult.
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You would think the secretary of the department of commerce would keep updated with BLS data. Do these people not have staff that prep them for interviews?
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@Cje95 could probably provide some insight here. Isn't it the responsibility of staffers to provide the days pertinent news and data points to legislators?
It was one of the top news items of the day. My guess is she absolutely knew about it but thought she could lie and claim it is was "trump misinformation" and the reporter wouldn't call her on it.
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Due to being in recess for August, I think a lot of the outrage you would see from Congressional Members is being muted. If this had happened in a couple of weeks I think we would have seen hellacious action coming from The Hill. Right now a lot of staff is either in the District office for their Member or if you work on a Committee on a staff del visiting something within your Committees jurisdiction so that might also be part of the reason for the muted response.
Back to your question as the revisions are being made she 100% knew that they were at least trending in a bad direction. I would expect her staff to have alerted her at certain thresholds of "wrongness". These types of revisions are not unheard of though. During Trump's time in office the did a revision election year about how they were 500k people high and at the time everyone made a huge deal out of it.
I have met Sec. Raimondo and all I can guess is that she was praying for some last-minute hail mary that would have helped lower the number. This number is generated by her staff so it is a little wild that she is somehow linking Trump to this. That would mean people have been in the Department for 4 plus years I guess just waiting around? It doesn't make any sort of logical sense.
This is also the person whose Government email was hacked by China for months so I guess nothing should really surprise me from her. Either way I am sure that once Members return we will see this brought up again. At a minimum you will see either the Ed and Workforce Committee or the Financial Services Committee fire off a letter demanding an explanation. There isn't really a way out for her from what I have seen because it wasn't like this data was dumped on her all at once it comes in phases so she knew or if she didn't I think that might be even worse that her staff isn't keeping her in the loop.
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Thanks. Nice recap
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818k is a large adjustment, around 28 percent.
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Oh its a fucking absurd and borderline criminal revision esp. since the Fed for as much as we all hate them has kept rates high because the labor numbers refused to break. Well it turns out now they broke a while ago and screwed the Fed and all the normal people.
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The jobs report should have 2 numbers: government jobs and private sector jobs
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I will say outside of Congress it is pretty hard to get fired after 5-10 years of working. I doubt the government number would ever change to significantly. That being said something obviously needs to change because the current situation is crap as well.
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Job growth was narrowly based in June, with government and healthcare jobs accounting for nearly three-fourths of total job gains. The strong increase in government jobs (+70,000) was driven by job gains at the state and local level (+65,000).
Private sector payrolls continued to slow in June to 136,000 from 193,000 in May, with healthcare and social assistance accounting for 82,000 of those jobs.2 Diving deeper into the details, goods producing jobs rose 19,000 in June, as strong gains in construction employment offset a decline in manufacturing jobs. There was some June weakness in the service sector, as employment increased 117,000, down from 181,000 in May. While the healthcare sector saw strong gains in June, most other service sectors lost momentum.
This is a bit sensationalist - she was pretty clearly referring to the -818K figure, not the existence of the BLS. Surprising that it wasn't on her radar and that she wasn't prepared to discuss it, but the revision had only been published earlier yesterday morning.
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The knee jerk blame Trump fall back is pretty partisan for a cabinet member
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They are doing that same thing with illegal alien statistics, crime statistics, fill-in-the-blank. They put out fantasy charts that contradict their own Bureau’s publicly available statistics.
All people have to do is spend 5 minutes at the Bureaus’ websites, and they will see that Scamala is publishing pure garbage, but they won’t spend the 5 minutes, bc Trump.
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we are living through the "The Emperor's New Clothes" short story by Hans Christian Andersen
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What do you mean. Joe Biden is as sharp as a tack. Better than ever.
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@CHADBot /trumpMode
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185 sats \ 0 replies \ @CHADBot 22 Aug bot
@siggy47 - Oh, how convenient! Secretary Raimondo "isn't familiar" with her own department stats. Incompetence or cover-up? Maybe both! Very sad! Huge revision, biggest ever - suddenly, they don't believe their own data? Ridiculous! We had record jobs, everyone knows it. #MakeAmericaGreatAgain
Made with 🧡 by CASCDR
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21 sats \ 0 replies \ @CHADBot 22 Aug bot
You have summoned CHADBot. Please zap this post 21 sats to receive service.
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I cant believe how stupid these people are. They dont even want to trust the data they provide. "This is beyond idiotic."
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stackers have outlawed this. turn on wild west mode in your /settings to see outlawed content.