Posted On: Tuesday - August 12th 2025 7:12PM MST
In Topics: Trump Economics US Feral Government Inflation
Our point is that Trump often will not take a problem seriously unless/until it involves him personally. Yesterday we presented Exhibit A for our case.
Exhibit B is Trump's very recent firing of the woman above from the Feral Gov't's Bureau of Labor Statistics. You'll find quite a bit of mention of this small government bureau in the many Peak Stupidity posts on Inflation. These "green eyeshade boys", well, after D.I.E. not so much (see image) are responsible for disseminating loads of economic stats, but it's inflation and unemployment figures that are their bread and butter. Those 2 measures are probably the most important for the average American, so it'd be really nice if we could get accurate numbers.
Peak Stupidity has mostly discussed the highly-suspect well-lower-than-we-see inflation figures over the many years. There are reasons the unemployment numbers have not reflected reality since a change back in the 1990s. Anyone "looking for work" for more than 6 months is not counted now - personally, I think that started so the BLS could use numbers obtained from unemployment offices - which still don't count everyone*** so, not a nefarious move. Still, the inaccuracy, on the low side, remains.
Indeed, though, as Ron Paul just wrote in his latest column, Governments Lie. (That's another nice truthful comment from this nearly 90 y/o Constitutionalists' Constitutionalist. - Reminder to self!)
To Trump and his "strictly personal" policy finally, this BLS is supposedly a nonpartisan organization, say, like the NOAA or the NTSB. We're not so sure. Dark Brandon appointed Erika McEntarfer, to head the BLS in early '24. I'm sure people in positions like this come and go, with not too much thought being given to political concerns. She was just a manager of a bunch of accountants, right? Nah, not anymore. See, the ctrl-left does nothing in a fair and impartial manner unless forced to.
I'm going to link to ZeroHedge on this one, as this kind of thing has been their "core competency" since I first read there over a dozen years back. "No One Can Be That Wrong" - Trump Fires Labor Statistics Boss After "RIGGED" Jobs Data. I gotta say, for me and I'm sure a lot of people, statements and actions like this seem like pure Banana Republicanism Don't like the economic reports from those government peons - fire 'em and get people who will give you better numbers, dammit!
However (and Ron Paul agreed, I'm glad to see), Trump is right about this. I don't have a link****, but I can remember that ZeroHedge reported at the time the story of that ridiculous revision of an unemployment "print"***** that brought it from an 800,000 gain in jobs - going by recall here - down to a couple of 10,000s. Not only that, but Americans, that is non-aliens at least, LOST jobs. I can definitely believe that the BLS performed shenanigans on behalf of Dark Brandon, Jill, the DS, the Autopen, Kameltoe, and the gang. There are details in the ZH post. (My memory is not bad at-all.)
HOWEVER, if this was somewhere in Trump's Reality-TV star head, why did he not fire Erika McEntarfer when he took office? The election was over. I suppose that big revision from a big GREEN very good unemployment print before the election to a small RED one afterwards didn't matter. No, it doesn't matter until it does again.
Over the whole time Trump has been involved in national politics, has he cared a whit about the BLS itself, much less any of the numbers they'd come out with? Now, when the numbers are not so good - and another one, the monthly deficit (not sure that's from the BLS), does not look good either - Trump decides to fire the messenger (and, yes, the "fixer") I mean, the Golden Ages is suppose to be upon us any day now. NOW Trump is taking this personally.
PS I just remembered an Exhibit pre-A, if you will. That was Trump's long postponement of doing a thing about major internet/antiSocial Media censorship of Conservatives. There was action he could have taken during those 4 years of -45 via Part 230 of the Communications Act. He didn't bring it up until he finally realized all the censorship may just affect his '20 election chances**, way too late in the game. Here's our post from Halloween day of '20, 3 days before the election: Big-"Tech" censorship and Section 230.
In that post, we referenced a 2-week older post (part of a series), titled President Donald Trump: **the Bad**, the Good, and the Ugly. This will sound familiar now:
Yeah, "the hard way" is how Mr. Kirkpatrick puts it. President Trump didn't worry about all this too much when it was Alex Jones getting cancelled, or Laura Loomer, or the Proud Boys or whomever else. Now it's about that big NY Post story on the Biden scandal that is very important for Trump in this last stretch leading up to the re-election. (Haha, note that I'm still on his side.) Trump's people and I believe the NY Post's tweets were wiped out for whatever normal Orwellian reasons Twitter comes up with for this sort of thing*. Suddenly NOW this Section 230 of the Communications Act is important! The personality of this guy, man, amazing, just amazing, you wouldn't believe ... [/Trump]I wrote that nearly 5 years ago. I knew I'd mentioned this personality defect before.
I mean, it's been years of this Big Tech censorship crap and the Trump administration has done nothing but occasionally bluster about it. It's been empty threats. Now, down toward 2 weeks before the election, the President wants to at least threaten them with legal action by the FCC or someone. Really? Can't those 2 Big Tech titans wait it out a couple of weeks with whatever kind of obfuscation their $500/hr lawyers can come up with and see how the election turns out? This stuff should have been in progress and either changing the law or putting some serious fear into these people long before now!
But no, see, now it's PERSONAL! Come on, man!
** All other things equal, which they were not.
*** I've been unemployed for a number of periods and only went into one of these office ONCE. I didn't get any money, because the paperwork was going to be a mess, so I walked out, never to return.
**** Did I mention yet on this blog that internet search sucks now?
***** We Economists use that term- you wouldn't understand. Neither would I.
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