It was very early cold outdoors today…somewhere around minus fourteen Fahrenheit. I had to pick up some medicines to keep my happy tomorrow, the next day and so on as long as possible. There was no wind. The sun made the snow super white. The day was quiet out….the snow in tonnage. It’s winter in our Twin Cities.
I often find time to listen to my favorite radio guy, Dennis Prager…..actually my favorite American guy since I met him when he was preaching civility and sensibility at our Minnesota State Fair…..back when sleazy John Kerry was pretending to be an honest creature despite his crimes from Korea and public stupidities he had earned among Dems to
become President in D.C.
I first met Dennis preaching at that State’s Fair by returning around five or more days that first year. I wasn’t alone. He had a reliable following every time I listened. He wasn’t selling food….nor products. HE WAS SELLING HIS AMERICA…and was doing some preaching about American weaknesses, emptiness, and trouble making in manner I had not hear before. I agreed with this Dennis on every topic and front! I usually followed his Mondays and Tuesdays on radio…and occasionally on Friday’s if I had time. I am moving on to my 89th birthday next September and hope I can make it.
I first heard the full Messiah on a Victrola. I think there were five or six discs to cover the full power, melody and message. It was at Fish Trap Lake in North Central Minnesota during World War II. I don’t know whose car we got there. We were there for two weeks at least. I preferred to play the Victrola over fishing at the time. I played the second half of the Messiah most of the time! It was so beautiful!
We attended a small Lutheran Church on Stanford and Cleveland in St. Paul, Minnesota until my college years began in 1952. It was a wonderful place for families to be on “FAMILY SUNDAYS”. I loved singing in children’s choir. The minister would have us listen to the adult’s singing Handel’s best!
I turned on Dennis’ radio program on around 11:30 a time I am usually working in my near acre landscape garden. The December snow was about fifteen feet deep. I like to know what Dennis is up to whenever I can. He mentioned he would be away from his radio until next week……and then he turned to Handel’s Messiah high light!
Perhaps you can find time to listen to it above! from Glenn H. Ray
Lake Superior State University has a year-end tradition of issuing its banished words and phrases list. It usually misses some obvious candidates, like “democracy is on the ballot,” and its perverse variations. That sentiment encapsulates George Orwell’s description of ugly and inaccurate political language to exert mind control.
Even more linguistic gobbledygook is emanating from Stanford University. They spent 18 months to conjure a list of harmful words to ban from their websites and computer code. If they had their druthers, they’d probably prefer this site be renamed “U.S. Citizen Thinker.” You see, in addition to the usual admonitions against “gender binary language,” they also propose to ban the word “American,” replacing it with “U.S. Citizen.” Their doublethink stinks: apparently “American” implies that the U.S. is the most important country in the Americas. Of course it is — migrants are heading north, not south. Duh!
Orwell noted that political language is fraught with deception and manipulation, and community activist Saul Alinsky wrote in his handbook Rules for Radicals that, “[H]e who controls the language controls the masses.” Therefore, we should not let average academicians by a superior lake, or even those from Stanford, insinuate liberal linguistic lunacy into the town square to control the debate. For those who have escaped — or avoided — academia’s mind-numbing waves of thought control with sanity intact, we might counter that not democracy, but “our republic is on the ballot.”
Calls to “protect democracy “obviously resounded with impressionable TikTok users and other low-information voters with liberal-scrambled brains. However, “our Republic is on the ballot” is more compelling, is easy to say, and happens to be the form of government we have. Indeed, it is our Republic to which we pledge allegiance — doublethink Dems should recite it sometime.
A key distinction is that in a democracy the majority can impose its will upon the minority, even willy-nilly like today’s doublethink Dems; in a republic, there are checks and balances and rights of the political minority are protected. In a democracy, the majority purports to know what’s best for all while it sanctimoniously tramples over an individual’s inalienable rights, including making an honest living.
Our Founders obviously abhorred the tyranny of the majority, or mob rule, but that is often what we get from those who spout that “democracy is on the ballot.” Maxine Waters infamously encouraged supporters to confront political opponents. Among others, Senators Ted Cruz and Rand Paul have been accosted by mobs.
Supreme Court justices, providing some circumspection against the unfettered desires of “democratic” mobs, have also been threatened. By Chuck Schumer at a rally before rabid “birthing people” after the Dobbs decision; by a loony with a gun near justice Kavanaugh’s home; and by Harvard Law School professor Alejandra Caraballo, who stated that the justices who overturned Roe should ”never know peace again.”
That’s democracy? One can only imagine the apoplectic open borders cabal now that the Supreme Court has temporarily blocked Biden from lifting Title 42, somewhat stymying the invasion of migrants-cum-illegal aliens into our republic.
Clearly, it’s not the liberal definition of democracy that needs protection, but our republic. Remember, ObamaCare was passed without a single Republican vote. Even Great Society legislation garnered some bipartisanship. In that convoluted sense, they are right: their version of democracy — mammoth political overreach and intrusion into our lives — was/is on the ballot.
James Madison was prescient when writing in Federalist No. 10: “Hence it is that democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and in general have been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.”
The so-called Inflation Reduction Act is another example of Dem doublethink. An effort to manipulate political language in Orwellian fashion, it is really just a slimmed-down version of Build Back Better. Overwrought liberals — that’d be just about all of them, these days — also want to run roughshod over the minority in the Senate by scuppering the filibuster. Sure, elections have consequences; unfortunately, under the Dems that means our republic is in double jeopardy.
Can we keep it? Or are we going to be polite as loud liberals inculcate gullible voters with other ban-worthy phrases, such as “Voter Suppression” and “Jim Crowe 2.0,” both of which are preposterous doublethink given very high voter turnout, particularly in Georgia. Online dictionaries should update their examples of doublethink to include Stacy Abrams’ insistence that despite record voter turnout there is still voter suppression.
What about the overly used bromide “diversity is our greatest strength,” and the delusional assertion that “there is no border crisis“? Both are egregious examples of doublethink, suspending disbelief in the logical contradictions. A review of the composition of Biden’s incompetent cabinet and inner circle, a tip of the hat to just about every protected identity, disproves the tired mantra about diversity. As for those who claim our border is secure, it’s not Orwell’s Animal Farm but the funny farm where they belong.
Diversity can be a strength, but when it comes to Biden’s diverse enablers and entourage, one might as well proclaim “ignorance is strength.” Probably only defiant school boards are as intellectually incestuous and abusive of language. They engage in extreme Orwellian doublethink by deviously rebranding banned Critical Race Theory to sneak it on the curriculum when it’s otherwise illegal.
Legacy media likes to engage in Orwellian mental manipulation by asserting another banable phrase: “democracy dies in darkness.” Therefore, they shouldn’t mind when Republicans in control of Congress shine the investigative light into the dark, Democrat swamp. Unfortunately, when one wrestles with a Democrat pig sometimes one gets dirty. Conservatives are generally much happier and nicer people than malcontent liberals, but we cannot lurk above the fray, even if some of us risk being accused of “white savior complex” for trying to help.
Our Founders risked it all to bequeath us a vibrant republic. Where’s the respect? One small way we can keep it is by correcting the liberals’ contorted language that pervades the sensory worlds of immature voters. For example, when Martha Raddatz of ABC News incredulously blamed Republican rhetoric for the border crisis, the guest (Texas governor Abbot in this case) should be ready to point out that in 2019 Biden said migrants should come to the U.S – instead of letting her skate with a vague response.
The liberal linguists missed it, but it’s time to promote the phrase “our republic is on the ballot.” Let’s protect the inalienable rights of the minority lest we succumb to a dystopian Animal Farm with mud-covered, cunning pigs who co-opt the language, as in Orwell’s masterful allegory.
Because Donald Trump knew that many of his supporters would be in Washington, D.C., on January 6, 2021, he asked the Pentagon to call out the National Guard to provide added security. The Pentagon failed to act despite known threats. And today, we learned that, over at the Capitol, Nancy Pelosi was behind a security plan that denied the Capitol police the resources they needed to ensure the Capitol was safe in the event people headed its way.
Republican representatives Rodney Davis, Jim Banks, Troy Nehls, Jim Jordan, and Kelly Armstrong released a report today with the results from the investigations they conducted on subjects that the January 6 committee resolutely ignored. Among other things, the Republicans looked at what was happening among Democrat leadership in the days leading to the planned rally.
Just the News summarizes a key takeaway from the report, which is that Nancy Pelosi, with backing from other top Democrats, was the point person who decided not to bring more security to the Capitol:
The report concludes the Capitol was left vulnerable on Jan. 6 as a result of failures by the Democratic leadership in the House and law enforcement leaders in the Capitol Police who allowed concerns about the “optics” of having armed officers and National Guardsmen visible to the public to override the need for enhanced security.
“Prior to that day, the U.S. Capitol Police (USCP) had obtained sufficient information from an array of channels to anticipate and prepare for the violence that occurred,” the report noted.
But its most explosive revelations involved text and email messages showing that two key staffers in Pelosi’s office attended regular meetings to discuss the security plan for Jan. 6 dating back to early December 2020 and that Pelosi’s top aide even edited some of the plans. Most of those discussions and meetings excluded Republican lawmakers in the House, the report noted.
“Then-House Sergeant at Arms Paul Irving—who served on the Capitol Police Board by virtue of his position—succumbed to political pressures from the Office of Speaker Pelosi and House Democrat leadership leading up to January 6, 2021,” the report said. “He coordinated closely with the Speaker and her staff and left Republicans out of important discussions related to security.”
While this was happening at the Capitol, it’s important to remember that Donald Trump was worried that having so many people descend on D.C. could cause problems. To that end, he asked the Pentagon to call in the National Guard to provide extra security. The Pentagon refused.
The Republican report holds that optics drove Pelosi to make the fatal decision to leave the Capitol relatively unsecured. I have a more conspiratorial turn of mind.
When I put the pieces together—the Pentagon’s and Pelosi’s refusal to provide more security despite known risks and the obvious professionals removing fences and warning signs before herding people into the Capitol—let’s just say that I think that one can make a reasoned argument that more was going on than just optics. It’s never seemed coincidental to me that, from the very first news reports, when every media figure had the word “insurrection” on his or her lips, Democrats have successfully weaponized January 6.
Numbers can be boring. So let’s look at Mr. Jimenez from Ecuador and Mr. Singh from India, alongside some numbers, to keep it interesting. Both want to come to the US, one for illegal work, one to take his family to New York on a vacation.
Mr. Jimenez will enter across the Southern Border near El Paso. In 2022 there were 330,037 legal immigrants to the US, or “new potential lawful permanent residents” (LPRs) entering the country. Meanwhile, more than 2.75 million “migrant encounters” occurred along the southwest border since Joe Biden took office. In the Rio Grande Valley sector alone, roughly 10,000 encounters with illegal immigrants occur every week.
Those numbers are expected to rise once Title 42, a Trump-era legal speedbump to immigration, expires, and more people can apply for asylum from inside the US without waiting first in Mexico. Mr. Jimenez will be an “illegal,” i.e., he will not have a US immigrant visa or green card. He’ll be in that clump of 2.75 million encounters. As a comparison, 1.3 million immigrants entered the US during the then-massive influx of immigrants in 1907.
“United States Border Patrol had lost operational control of our southern border. They can’t contain what they have now,” former acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement director Tom Homan said. According to the Texas Department of Public Safety, of the 387,000 criminal aliens booked into local jails between June 1, 2011 and November 30, 2022, 267,000 were charged with more than 450,000 criminal offenses. These include more than 800 homicide charges, 54,000 assault charges and 54,000 drug charges.
The crime rates aren’t the only problem; the amount of money taxpayers spend for illegal immigrants to call Texas home averages approximately $850 million a year. Texans pay an average of $152 million a year to house illegal aliens, between $62 million and $90 million to include illegals in Texas’s Emergency Medicaid program, and up to $717 million for hospitals to provide uncompensated medical care.
Now to be fair, immigrants don’t create such a large cost for taxpayers because they’re lazy. Immigrants, legal or illegal, are just regular people trying to make it through the day. But their relatively low level of education means the kinds of jobs they can get don’t pay much. That, in a best case scenario, means they pay relatively little in taxes and use more in government services.
These costs exist because people in the Biden administration and those who support it believe aliens have a right to enter the US and that taking that right away with a wall or a visa regulation is not who we are. Joe Biden called his immigrant plan part of “securing our values as a nation of immigrants.” He’s claimed reducing immigration has been an “unrelenting assault on our values.” Immigration, says Biden, “is essential to who we are as a nation, our core values, and our aspirations for our future.”
The problem is Mr. Singh from India. Mr. Singh does not want to work in America, nor does he seek uncompensated medical care or Medicaid. He wants to visit New York on a tourist visa, eschewing the wet walk in at El Paso for a first class ticket landing him at JFK. He wants to do things the legal way.
Indians hoping to head to the US for vacations are now faced with huge delays in obtaining the interviews needed to be granted a visa. According to the State Department, the wait time in early December for one of these interviews at the American Embassy in New Delhi was 999 calendar days. In Hyderabad, it was likewise 999 days. In Mumbai, it’s 999 also. Nothing is higher than 999 days, so one suspects the real toll is in the thousands. A note warns, “These are estimates only and do not guarantee the availability of an appointment.” A non-sarcastic reminder states, “Please schedule a regular visa appointment well in advance.” Ironically, if Mr. Singh were to fly into Mexico City and seek a US visa interview there, he’d still face a 711-day wait. And by the way, the fee for that visa, should it eventually be issued, is a cool $160 per person.
According to the National Travel and Tourism Office, part of the US Department of Commerce, pre-Covid India was in the top ten of our country’s tourism market, and our fifth biggest spender. A United States Travel Association study estimates the US is potentially missing out on $1.6 billion in tourism revenue from Indian tourists alone in 2023. “To date, we have not seen the desire at the State Department to get this issue addressed,” the study concludes. Not so: the State Department says it has actually begun an Instagram campaign encouraging Indians to apply for even more visas with what they’re calling the “12 Days of Visas” program (based, yes, on a jaunty Christmas theme). The back-up plan is to train diplomats’ spouses and adult children already in-country to do the visas.
So Joe Biden, time to put up or shut up. If unfettered immigration is part of our national fabric, either deploy the resources needed to properly process visas in India and around the world, or plug the holes along the southern border to slow the rate of illegal immigrants greatly. Trying to have it both ways only leaves the United States looking like a hypocrite on immigration. And that’s not who we are, right?
Peter Van Buren is the author of We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People, Hooper’s War: A Novel of WWII Japan and Ghosts of Tom Joad: A Story of the 99 Percent.
Matt Taibbi’s analysis of FBI-related internal Twitter documents and the Missouri Attorney General’s release of the deposition transcript of FBI censor Elvis Chan have revealed shocking interference by the bureau in the most sensitive political debates leading up to elections.
As many suspected, Taibbi just confirmed the FBI meddled extensively in election-related speech on Twitter in 2020. Separately, Chan confirmed that the FBI’s election interference extended to Google and Facebook. Using a huge team of 80 agents, the joint task force of censors from the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI flagged multiple posts for censorship. Taibbi offered few examples of the types of materials the FBI sought to censor. But some of the examples included obvious jokes, such as one about adding votes to the Democrats’ total in retaliation for posting negative comments on a thread.
Were these rogue agents operating in violation of the FBI’s long-standing policy against interfering in elections? It now appears that the FBI’s censorship of American citizens enjoyed the approval and ratification of FBI Director Christopher Wray himself as the FBI responded to the scandal with this dismissive remark:
The FBI regularly engages with private sector entities to provide information specific to identified foreign malign influence actors’ subversive, undeclared, covert, or criminal activities. Private sector entities independently make decisions about what, if any, action they take on their platforms and for their customers after the FBI has notified them.
Stop for a moment to parse this bureaucratic-speak. Under what authority does the FBI censor non-U.S. citizens in our domestic forums? Censorship injures the rights of the listeners as much as the speakers. Can the FBI legally prevent citizens access to Britain’s Daily Mail or the Russian media outlet RT just because they originate from a foreign source? Legal precedent suggests that the First Amendment includes guarantees of citizen’s access to foreign-based speech. This has become increasingly important because accessing foreign press is sometimes the only way to find reporting on issues that the FBI-influenced domestic media would rather not cover. Don’t we need to know what foreigners are saying about America in order to make informed election decisions?
The permanent domestic security apparatus, led by the FBI, is not terribly concerned about whether information it sought to suppress might be true. Indeed, the call to prevent a repeat of 2016-style “hack and dump,” implicitly seeks the suppression of truthful information that hurts Democrats. The Wikileaks DNC emails accurately depicted Clinton campaign collusion with the press and a pay-for-influence operation run from the Clinton family charity. If it weren’t true, there would be no need for censorship.
The government calls this, “malinformation,” or sometimes, “disinformation.” The former, includes “information that is based on fact but used out of context,” while disinformation includes “information that is deliberately created to mislead, harm, or manipulate.” Truth is not a defense. Mind you, left-wing sources can call conservatives racists and Nazis all day long. But if a dissident offers information that might “harm” Democrats or “manipulate” voters into not voting in the manner approved by the FBI, then the government needs to act to “protect” the election. This is exactly why the Hunter Biden laptop story was censored. It didn’t matter whether it came from the Russians or Santa Claus. The government acted to impose an election result on the American people. Everyone knows that.
Chan all but spelled out exactly that in his deposition.
I remember that the FBI warned—that I or someone from the FBI warned the social media companies about the potential for a 2016-style DNC hack-and-dump operation . . . .
Chan saw the FBI’s role as countering the influence of such information.
Q. And I think you—in your thesis you talk about how in 2016 they had high, high levels of success, right, because there were essentially no countermeasures taken by social media platforms?
That is correct.
The FBI’s “countermeasures”? Directly intervening to flag and encourage censorship to protect the Democratic candidate from a leak like 2016. They called it, “information sharing,” but the tech companies read the creepy euphemism exactly as intended—encouraging censorship. If the FBI “shared” the identity of objectionable speech on a social media platform, social media complied and censored.
Back to Chan’s deposition.
Q. So—so specifically your thesis focuses on information sharing between the FBI and basically Facebook, Google and Twitter, right?
That is correct.
Second, missing from the FBI’s statement is any acknowledgement that it bothered to consider the constitutional rights of Americans seeking to inform themselves before elections. We so often hear members of the Justice Department, which includes the FBI, tell us they have taken a sworn oath to protect the Constitution. It’s usually a response to legitimate oversight or questions about the FBI’s abuse of secrecy. But they never mean what they say or they would have a much better record on protecting free speech.
Third, the FBI did not limit its censorship efforts to foreigners (not that censoring speech originating from foreign sources is acceptable). As Taibbi notes, the censorship included posts which joked about election integrity. Are these crimes? The FBI is supposed to be a law enforcement agency, not a speech moderation (i.e. censorship) agency.
Overlooked by much of the reporting on the Chan deposition is this bombshell: The FBI appears to have also started a secret lobbying campaign to influence legislation.
Among the approximately 140 objections Justice Department attorney Indraneel Sur made during the deposition of FBI censor Elvis Chan was one that involved a particularly disturbing secret communication channel between the FBI and congressional staffers. When Chan was asked “what kind of legislation?” the FBI had made recommendations about to congressional staffers, Sur claimed the FBI had a legal right to keep secret the FBI’s legislative interference. “I am going to object,” Sur said. “The deliberative process privilege extends not just to the executive branch, but all sorts of executive communications within the government.”
Did the FBI’s legislative lobbying “relate to Section 230 of the Communications Act?” Sur refused to let Chan answer. “I stand by the same objection on the grounds of deliberative process privilege,” Sur said. “So I will continue to assert and ask that the witness not answer the question on the grounds of the deliberative process privilege.”
Perhaps it’s no coincidence that Congress just signed on to an omnibus spending bill without any attempt to rein in the FBI’s election meddling. Once again, Congress lavishes billions on the FBI with no effort to subordinate it to the constitution’s protections against intrusive law enforcement.
We also learned from Chan’s deposition that the FBI was aware that its censorship recommendations were applied to categorically similar users not identified by the FBI. How did the FBI ensure that its recommendations didn’t quash legitimate political speech? It didn’t, instead relying on Twitter to ensure the accuracy of its account takedowns.
Q. Right. OK. But it sounds like sometimes your reports lead to more takedowns than the accounts you have—you flagged, fair to say?
That is correct.
How confident are you that they are not, you know, kind of making mistakes in taking down real user accounts?
So this is just my personal opinion, obviously not based on being able to see any of their data. In my experience, they take account takedowns very seriously because this affects their bottom line. . . . in my opinion, they take it very seriously. And I would say that to the best of their ability, they are very careful before doing account takedowns.
In other words, the FBI would notify social media companies of content it found objectionable. The companies would occasionally apply the FBI’s recommendations to additional accounts that, while not flagged by the FBI, had the same characteristics that the FBI found objectionable. The only safeguard against social media overzealously applying the FBI’s censorship request is whatever miniscule loss of revenue the social media might experience from the overly broad censorship.
In many cases the FBI sought censorship of supposedly foreign-originating posts after significant engagement. In one example, highlighted in the deposition, users reacted 793 times before Twitter deleted the account that originated the post to which the FBI objected.
Q. And then those comments are people who presumably said something, whether they agree or disagree or just want to say something about this kind of political ad, fair to say?
Yeah. I don’t know what the nature of the comments are, but your characterization is probable.
The accounts—I suppose you have talked about account takedowns earlier. If this account that posted this ad is taken down, do all those comments get taken down with it?
I don’t know.
Oh, so you think that the comments may stay up with the account gone?
I—to be honest with you, I do not use any social media.
Incredibly, Chan failed to inform himself, or even care, whether censoring a supposedly foreign-originating post would also delete the many comments and reactions by legitimate Americans expressing protected political speech. This one remark reveals volumes about the FBI’s disregard for the First Amendment.
The FBI should not be involved in “moderating” political speech. But when the FBI does violate this principle, it should be seen for what it is: a deprivation of an essential constitutional right without due process. The FBI should be required to notify the target of the censorship and provide an opportunity to that individual to contest this state action before a neutral third party.
The FBI’s censorship “recommendations” should be reported to Congress and the public. If the target of the FBI’s censorship prevails, he or she should be entitled to damages and attorneys’ fees for the loss of civic participation rights that can never be restored. Without a substantial remedy for the injured, the FBI will continue to meddle in our public speech forums to manipulate elections.
We seem to have reached a point at which the Justice Department has seized so much power that it no longer feels the need to lie about its Chinese-style censorship regime. As I’ve previously noted, international election standards require equal access to a media independent of government censorship. Without that, you can’t have a fair election. No foreign adversary could have so effectively harmed the constitutionally protected interplay between free speech and elections.
The FBI has become what it says it’s trying to prevent. It is, above all rivals and adversaries, the greatest single threat to free and fair elections.
Adam Mill is a pen name. He is an adjunct fellow of the Center for American Greatness and works in Kansas City, Missouri as an attorney specializing in labor and employment and public administration law. He graduated from the University of Kansas and has been admitted to practice in Kansas and Missouri. Mill has contributed to The Federalist, American Greatness, and The Daily Caller.
I wrote here about the fact that the federal government seems to have cranked out absurdly optimistic job numbers just in time to give the Democrats a boost in the midterms. But that isn’t the only puzzle in current job data. It turns out that America’s employment situation is a bit of a mystery. I asked my colleague John Phelan to explain what is going on. This is his response.
In the first two quarters of 2022 the economy of the United States shrank. Under previous administrations a recession would have been declared instantly, but not this time. How could there be a recession, some argued, when employment was booming?
These estimates of the number of new jobs in the United States come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) Establishment survey. As Business Insider explained in 2014:
…data for the Establishment is collected by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics as part of its Current Employment Statistics (CES) survey, which incorporates the payroll records of some 144,000 non-farm establishments and government agencies, covering workers at some 554,000 individual worksites. In addition to determining the number of people employed at the surveyed locations as of the payroll period including the 12th of each month, the BLS collects data on the number of hours worked, earnings and the industries in which individuals are employed at the surveyed organizations.
These data do, indeed, show sustained increases in the number of new jobs in the economy: increases in every month since December 2020, 263,000 in November 2022 alone, or 3.8 million new jobs since January.
But when the BLS puts out its Employment Situation report each month, it provides another estimate from the Household survey of the number of people actually employed. This, as Business Insider explained:
…is conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau, which surveys some 60,000 American households during the week of the 12th of each month as part of its Current Population Survey (CPS). In addition to determining the employment status of the individuals in each surveyed household, which it classifies as employed, unemployed or not in the civilian labor force, the Census collects data on their demographic profiles, including race, Hispanic origin, age, sex, et cetera.
The numerous conceptual and methodological differences between the household and establishment surveys result in important distinctions in the employment estimates derived from the surveys. Among these are:
– The household survey includes agricultural workers, self-employed workers whose businesses are unincorporated, unpaid family workers, and private household workers among the employed. These groups are excluded from the establishment survey.
– The household survey includes people on unpaid leave among the employed. The establishment survey does not.
– The household survey is limited to workers 16 years of age and older. The establishment survey is not limited by age.
– The household survey has no duplication of individuals, because individuals are counted only once, even if they hold more than one job. In the establishment survey, employees working at more than one job and thus appearing on more than one payroll are counted separately for each appearance.
Which is ‘better’? On points 1 and 4 the Household survey would seem to be a better measure. On points 2 and 3 the Establishment survey would seem to have the edge. Either way, to put it in simple terms, the Establishment survey measures the number of jobs while the Household survey measures the number of people employed.
And when we look at the data on people employed from the Household survey a very different picture emerges. The number of Americans employed has actually fallen in four of the last ten months (and both of the last two) and there were 1.3 million more Americans employed in November than there were in January (you can see the same pattern in the state level data, as in my home state, Minnesota, for example).
These are both surveys with different methodologies measuring different things so we shouldn’t be surprised that the two don’t match exactly. But when they diverge so substantially, we must ask why.
But what if there is no discrepancy, or, at least, it is much smaller? Yesterday, John wrote about a report from the Philadelphia Federal Reserve which found that:
…the employment changes from March through June 2022 were significantly different in 33 states and the District of Columbia compared with current state estimates from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) Current Employment Statistics (CES). … In the aggregate, 10,500 net new jobs were added during the period rather than the 1,121,500 jobs estimated by the sum of the states; the U.S. CES estimated net growth of 1,047,000 jobs for the period.
The Establishment survey – the job numbers – are just wrong, in other words.
We should note that, over the period the CES (jobs) was reporting a gain of 1.0 million new jobs, the CPS (people employed) was reporting a fall in the number of Americans employed of 347,000. If the Philadelphia Fed is correct, there is still a discrepancy, but a much smaller one, which could be explained by more people holding multiple jobs to make ends meet – hardly a ringing economic endorsement.
So why might the jobs numbers be so wrong? One can never rule out sheer incompetence where government agencies are involved. But Zerohedge – who deserves a hat tip for his work on this subject – hints at something darker:
As an aside, it appears this is not the first time the “apolitical” Bureau of Labor Statistics has pulled such a bizarre divergence off: it happened right before Obama’s reelection:
And then again: right before Hillary’s “100% guaranteed election (because one wouldn’t want a soft economy to adversely impact her re-election odds).
I do not like to impugn people’s motives. Suffice it to say that when you hear blockbuster jobs numbers, ask yourself how many more people are actually employed.
MN Prager Discussion Group 
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