Can we impeach Bush for stupidity?

[Imran Siddiqui]

What's better than a picture of the Iron Lady? A picture of the Iron Lady with The Reagan

BRILLIANT!

[Gibsie]

Can we impale Bush for stupidity? On a pointy stick? Please?

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Verto
On average, Congress spent 2.8% more than Reagan asked for, while the cumulative (yearly compounding rate) was a whopping 24.5% more.

That's very bad math.

[Evil Knevil]

Voodoo math?

[Agathon]

Verto got taken in by the compounding trick. IIRC it's from Sean Hannity's book.

Al Franken has a good laugh about that in his book Lies and the Stupid Conservatives Who Tell Them. That statistic is completely meaningless. I'll have to dig up my copy.

[Agathon]

Yep. I looked and that's Hannity's stuff all right. That cumulative difference column is just horse****. The average difference between Proposed and Actual spending during Reagan's term is only 2.8%. The cumulative difference column is completely meaningless.

Look in Franken's book pp. 96-101

You've been taken in by fuzzy math Verto.

[Verto]

As I said when I posted before, take it for what it's worth.

[MRT144]

which is nothing verto, nothing

[Verto]

I assume you speak for The American People on that, as well?

[Verto]

Speaking of Al Franken, how's Air America? Still financially inept?

[Agathon]

It's worth nothing and the figures aren't even right.

What happens is that Reagan proposes X amount of spending and Congress approves Y amount, then Z amount is actually spent (due to unforeseen costs and other economic factors). Neither Reagan nor Congress was responsible for the differences between their spending goals and Z.

But Hannity flat out lies. He compares Reagan's spending proposals with what was actually spent (figure Z) instead of with Congress' approved amount (Y).

That's lie number one. What he then does is multiply the percentage differences between each year (sometimes more was spent than Reagan approved, sometimes less) and comes up with 24.5% "cumulative difference". But the "cumulative difference" is a completely meaningless figure. It seems to suggest that Congress spent 25% more than Reagan proposed over the whole period. But they didn't. If you add up the percentage differences for each year the average percentage was only 2.68% greater than what Reagan proposed. In fact because that is figure Z it isn't even telling the truth about Congress. The average percentage increase of Congress' approvals (figure Y) was only 0.6 percent higher than Reagan's proposals.

Hannity conveniently omitted a column from the table he used so as to confuse the issue. The whole thing is 24 carat bull****.

[Agathon]

Don't even try to defend Hannity on this one. Either he's an ignoramus or a liar.

[Verto]

Can't he be both?

[Agathon]

So are the people who used that graph.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Verto
Can't he be both?

He probably is. Don't be fooled by that bad math. I added all the figures myself and the total difference in spending over the whole period was 2.68 percent. The total percentage difference between Reagan's budget and Congress approval was only 0.6 percent. You can't blame Congress for massively overspending based on those figures.