Last month saw the rise of poll trutherism, in which some conservatives– alarmed by polls showing a consistent lead for Barack Obama over Mitt Romney, especially in “swing” states– claimed the results were being unfairly weighted in favor of Democrats in an effort to sway the election.
Rush Limbaugh explained:
The purpose of the people right now, most of them doing these polls, they’re trying to make news, not reflect it, they’re advancing an agenda. They’re all Democrats. They’re all liberals. They just have different jobs. The polls are the replacement refs. They see certain things. They don’t see other things. They don’t call certain things, and other things go by. In this case, what they’re trying to do is exactly what they’ve done in your case: frustrate you, make you pull your hair out, say, what the hell’s happening to the country? They want you thinking the country’s lost. They want you thinking your side’s lost. They want you thinking it’s over for what you believe. And that makes you stay home and not vote. That’s what they’re hoping.
Today saw the emergence of “job trutherism” after the federal government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics released a relatively positive report on September employment.
The unemployment rate fell to 7.8 percent in September, the Labor Department said Friday, from 8.1 percent in July, its lowest since January 2009. It is a surprising show of improvement in a job market that had seemed listless in recent months. Unlike in August, the number improved for the right reason: not because people gave up looking for jobs, but because far more people reported having one.
Employers reported creating 114,000 jobs in September, almost identical to analysts’ forecasts, but revisions to data from July and August brought boosted that measure of the job market, as well.
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The unemployment rate fell even though more people — 418,000 of them — entered the labor force. That brought the ratio of the American population with a job to its highest level since May 2010. Some 873,000 more Americans reported having jobs in the survey of households, and 456,000 fewer reported not having a job but wanting one.
Some conservatives refused to take such good news lying down.
The leader of the “job truther” movement: former GE CEO Jack Welch.
“Unbelievable jobs numbers..these Chicago guys will do anything..can’t debate so change numbers,” he said on Twitter.
He had some friends in Congress too. Rep. Allen West (R-FL) tweeted “I agree with former GE CEO Jack Welch, Chicago style politics is at work here.” He added on Facebook that the jobs report was “Orwellian to say the least and representative of Saul Alinsky tactics from the book ‘Rules for Radicals.’”
FOX News’ Stuart Varney apparently sensed where his audience was going. Within minutes of their release he told viewers that “there is widespread mistrust of this report and these numbers.”
“How convenient the rate drops below 8% [for the] first time in 43 months, five weeks before the election,” he added later.
CNBC host Jim Carmer said he was pilloried by viewers for defending the BLS report’s integrity.
“This is very hot. You believe the number, you must be a card-carrying Communist,” he joked on the air.
Betsey Stevenson, a former chief economist at the Department of Labor under President Obama, said in a phone interview… that the conspiracy theories were misguided in just about every way possible. For starters, the Bureau of Labor Statistics isn’t currently run by a political appointee. For most of Obama’s term, the commissioner was a holdover appointed by President Bush. The current acting commissioner John Gavin is a career BLS economist, not an Obama appointee.
The last time I recall anyone accusing the Bureau of Labor Statistics of playing politics with job numbers was when President Richard Nixon was caught on tape complaining that BLS officials deliberately downplayed a drop in unemployment in the summer of 1971.
Nixon imagined the existence of a “Jewish cabal” involving Federal Reserve Chairman Arthur F. Burns [his own appointee] and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The President had expected favorable press coverage on July 2, 1971, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced a big drop in the unemployment rate from 6.2 to 5.6 percent. When Nixon learned that the front-page of Washington’s Evening Star said, “The Labor Department warned that the dip might have been caused by a statistical quirk,” he ordered an investigation to find out who was responsible, saying, “He’s got to be fired.”
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Later, alone with [aide Charles] Colson, Nixon said, “Well, listen, are they all Jews over there?”“Every one of them,” Colson said. “Well, a couple of exceptions.”
“See my point?”
“You know goddamn well they’re out to kill us.”
Before lunch, Nixon gave his chief of staff an order. “Now, point: [White House Personnel Director Frederic V.] Malek is not Jewish.”
“No,” H.R. “Bob” Haldeman said.
“All right, I want a look at any sensitive areas around where Jews are involved, Bob. See, the Jews are all through the government, and we have got to get in those areas. We’ve got to get a man in charge who is not Jewish to control the Jewish . . . do you understand?
“I sure do.”
“The government is full of Jews,” Nixon said. “Second, most Jews are disloyal. You know what I mean? You have a [White House Consultant Leonard] Garment and a [National Security Adviser Henry A.] Kissinger and, frankly, a [White House Speechwriter William L.] Safire, and, by God, they’re exceptions. But, Bob, generally speaking, you can’t trust the bastards. They turn on you.”
It would be more accurate to say that Jews couldn’t trust Nixon, that he turned on them. On July 24, 1971, he mentioned that Colson had found out sixteen BLS officials were registered Democrats, only one a registered Republican. “The point that he did not get into that I want to know, Bob, how many were Jews?” Nixon asked. “There’s a Jewish cabal, you know, running through this, working with people like [Fed Chairman Arthur] Burns and the rest. And they all only talk to Jews.”