Conservatives can't count

[marmar]

from OurFuture.org:



Conservatives can't count
Submitted by Rick Perlstein on November 26, 2007 - 3:09pm.


Counting is important: anyone who grew up watching Sesame Street knows that. Our friends in the Bush administration must have missed that part of the lesson. They hate to count. Especially when the results might make them look bad.

Some of Paul Krugman's most eye-opening columns in his collection The Great Unraveling—they're in section two, entitled "Fuzzy Math"—concern the way, once Bush became president, the government stopped counting certain things, or changed the methods of tabulation in order to score public relations points.

When Campaign for America's Future did our report on Toxic Trade, we wanted to know what percentage of America's toys are imported from China. We were forced, however, to take the toy industry's word on the matter—the Bush administration doesn't keep count.

....(snip)....

Now I come upon this.

CBS news wanted to learn more about the problem of suicide among returning Iraq veterans. Here, first, is what they learned:

It turns out little information exists about how widespread suicides are among these who have served in the military. There have been some studies, but no one has ever counted the numbers nationwide.

"Nobody wants to tally it up in the form of a government total," Bowman said.

Why do the families think that is?

"Because they don't want the true numbers of casualties to really be known," Lucey said.

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., is a member of the Veterans Affairs Committee.

"If you're just looking at the overall number of veterans themselves who've committed suicide, we have not been able to get the numbers,” Murray said.

.....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://commonsense.ourfuture.org/conservatives_cant_count?tx=3

[Richard Steele]

1. K&R

[sutz12]

2. They can count....they just don't nt

[angrycarpenter]

3. They only count money nt