April 17, 2014
The Huffington Post really deserves to be called on the carpet for this piece. It implies there is a debate going on between Paul Krugman and Joe Scarborough over whether the Obama administration is tampering with Census data to make the Affordable Care Act look good.
There is no debate because Scarborough has no clue what he is taking about. He knows nothing about how the Census Bureau collects data and what is involved in changing questions as it is now doing. He is literally making a completely baseless accusation. He doesn’t even pretend to have a shred of evidence to support his claim that the Obama administration is tampering with the data.
If he knew anything about the way Census worked, he would know it would be incredibly difficult for the Obama administration to alter its processes. There would almost certainly be people willing to talk if this were the case. Furthermore, any competent analyst would be able to recognize doctored data using other data sets.
Anyhow, Scarborough is not taking part in a debate, he is name calling. This is like someone running out on the baseball field and yelling at the stupid players because it would be much quicker to go from second base to home by running over the pitcher’s mound. If Scarborough wants to have a serious debate with Paul Krugman or anyone else about the data coming from Census Bureau he will first have to learn a bit about the subject matter. Until then, he deserves nothing but ridicule from any serious news outlet.
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