“I have directed my Team to fire this Biden Political Appointee, IMMEDIATELY,” US Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social on August 1, regarding Bureau of Labor Statistics  commissioner Erika McEntarfer.  “She will be replaced with someone much more competent and qualified. Important numbers like this must be fair and accurate, they can’t be manipulated for political purposes.”

On August 11, Trump announced his nominee to replace McEntarfer: E.J. Antoni, chief economist and Richard Aster fellow at The Heritage Foundation’s Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget.

Is Antoni “much more competent and qualified” than McEntarfer?

They both studied for, and received, doctorates in economics — she from Virginia Tech in 2002, he from Northern Illinois University in 2020.

They’ve both worked in the field, she for 23 years  in various data-centric government roles, he for five years at ideological “think tanks.”

On those metrics, it might make sense to conclude that no, Antoni is not “much more competent and qualified.”

Those, however, are not the relevant metrics.

“There are three kinds of lies,” Mark Twain wrote in 1907, echoing several prior formulations and (apparently incorrectly) crediting Benjamin Disraeli as the quote’s originator:  “Lies, damned lies, and statistics.”

I’m far from the first commentator to modify that final bit to “government statistics.”

The job of the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics is to make the current administration look good, even if that requires putting lipstick on a pig.

That’s why, at the end of his or her four-year term, a commissioner appointed by a Republican president can expect to be replaced if a Democrat is in office and vice versa.

McEntarfer replaced William W. Beach, appointed by President Trump, when his term expired and — mirabile dictu! — America’s employment reports started looking better for Joe Biden.

Previous presidents who inherited BLS commissioners from  presidents of another party — including Donald Trump in his first term — quietly groused about bad jobs numbers and waited for those commissioners’ terms to expire.

This time, Trump decided against waiting McEntarfer out and fired her to get the books  cooked in the direction he prefers instead of cooked to make him look bad.

What’s the true situation? Who knows? Government manipulation of data starts with deciding what information to gather, how to gather it, and who to gather it from. Then that information gets massaged to tell the story that the masseuse or masseur wants you to hear.

The process isn’t usually as brazen as the Soviet Union’s reports on the “successes” of Stalin’s Five-Year Plans, or Trump’s firing of McEntarfer, but it’s always there. The purpose of government reports is to elicit applause for the government.

I predict that Antoni will prove himself  eminently “competent and qualified” for that particular role.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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On August 7, the Gainesville, Florida city commission voted to make three pedestrian crosswalks less visible, and the pedestrians using them less safe, under threat of funding cuts from Florida’s “Department of Government Efficiency.”

Why does Florida DOGE want to put Gainesville residents at higher risk of injury or death?

If you have to ask why, the answer is usually “money,” and saving money sounds like a reasonable focus for a “government efficiency” project. But that’s not the case here. The costs of painting the crosswalks were borne by a local non-profit. The costs of making the crosswalks less safe will be borne by the taxpayers Florida DOGE supposedly works for.

The real answer is “politics.”

The bright colors in question are the “rainbow” colors associated with the LGBTQ movement, and the local non-profit is the Pride Community Center of North Central Florida.

The Florida GOP’s approach to keeping its based mobilized often consists of currying various kinds of moral panic.

This is just a little opportunistic sprinkle of “OMG TEH QUEERZ ARE HIDING UNDER YOUR BED RIGHT NOW!!!” into the currently more popular “OMG TEH IMMIGRANTZ ARE HIDING UNDER YOUR BED RIGHT NOW!!!” potpourri.

In reluctantly giving in to the state’s demand, the city commission also voted to rename a local street for the late Terry Fleming, a local hero of the LGBTQ community and founder of Pride Community Center. Presumably THAT won’t run counter to the Florida Department of Transportation’s June 30 memo, cited in DOGE’s demand, falsely claiming that highly visible crosswalks jeopardize driver and pedestrian safety.

As of 2023, according to a column by John Henderson in the Gainesville Sun, the city had experienced more than 800 pedestrian and bicyclist injuries in the preceding six years and an average of seven deaths per year. Anecdotally, that problem seems worse around the University of Florida campus, especially at the beginning of school years when thousands of students come to an unfamiliar town and try to navigate unfamiliar streets.

I’m neither especially a fan nor detractor of, specifically, “LGBTQ art” in the public square, but brightly colored crosswalks seem like a cheap and practical way of attracting pedestrians to the right places to cross streets, while also making those crossings more visible to approaching drivers.

I think this might be one of those rare cases where a government program could make things BETTER. My proposal:

Invite local community organizations (not just LGBTQ — all charities, churches, arts programs, etc. welcome) to “adopt a crosswalk” for visibility enhancement with bright color patterns, just like they can now “adopt a street or highway” stretch for periodic cleanup. They pay for the paint and the city’s labor costs. No distracting text, just a little marker next to the crosswalk acknowledging sponsorship.

That would require FDOT and DOGE to get out of the way, and trying to get politics-driven government agencies out of the way is always an uphill fight, but one worth having.

Fewer dead people seems a lot more more important than owning the libs.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

On August 3, NORAD scrambled fighter jets to intercept a civilian aircraft that entered a “Temporary Flight Restriction” zone in New Jersey. What was this very special, very sensitive zone? A golf club. Why was it so special and so sensitive? US president Donald Trump was enjoying a round of golf there.

The day before that, the US Army Corps of Engineers increased the outflow of Little Caesar Lake into Ohio’s Miami River at the request of the Secret Service. Why? Vice-president JD Vance went kayaking on the river and a higher water level was required “support safe navigation of US Secret Service personnel.”

Or maybe not. An anonymous source, The Guardian reports, says the real purpose was to create “ideal kayaking conditions” for the Very Special Important Politician.

At this point, I should mention that I’m only picking on Trump and Vance because they happen to be in office. This kind of thing is far from new … but it got old a long time ago.

In 1992, a woman I didn’t know then, but have now been married to for 25 years, was eating with friends at a hotel restaurant when the Secret Service barged in and demanded that everyone leave. Then-president George H.W. Bush was on his way to that hotel, and The Little People needed to get out of his way.

Over the 12 years I lived in St. Louis, I lost count of the times that air and ground traffic were disrupted for hours at a time because apparently it’s unthinkable for the hoi polloi  to use runways, roads or sidewalks during (or for hours before) a big-name politician wants to fly in on a special plane and proceed by motorcade (without regard to the publicly posted speed limits, of course) to wherever he or she happens to want to go.

America treats its politicians like the kid in that old Seinfeld episode, “The Bubble Boy” — isolated and coddled lest contact with regular human beings harm them.

The rest of us apparently exist only to provide these power-mongers with votes, and occasionally with audiences carefully curated for high levels of adoration and applause. Outside those contexts, we’re to be neither seen nor heard.

Okay, that’s not completely true. We also fork over $3 billion per year for the Secret Service, $800 million for the Capitol Police Department, and heaven only knows how much for military air cover, etc., to ensure that Very Special Important People never experience  discomfort  due to  unintentional contact with us mere mortals. They definitely want to hear from us, or at least our employers’ payroll departments.

To which I retort: MOOPS! (If you know, you know.)

Don’t fall for the fiction that these pampered pols “work for you.”

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY