The President made sweeping assumptions and claims in his economic speech today trying to help people feel better as they surrender the fruits of their blood, sweat and tears to the IRS. His rhetoric reminded me unfortunately of the frustratingly inaccurate sweeping grandosity of many scientists at conferences I attended, where people want to be seen that they're making a difference when in reality they're not doing much of importance.
I made myself unpopular at those conferences by challenging colleague's conclusions. I basically asked the same questions, all pointing to statistical relevancy of their results. More often than not, their experiments lacked sufficient rigidity to support their sweeping generalities. Some people tested too few subjects. Others ignored variables or had poor controls. Some obfuscated results, omitted errors, or fabricated data. Usually the proof was in the probability and statistics, and their histograms didn't support their conclusions. Unfortunately for my career mine didn't either, meaning that I appear to have accomplished very little in a research capacity.
I want the president to prove to me how his policies have created the outcomes he claims.
- How has he spurred economic growth? He's been threatening to raise taxes and regulation for over a year. How does that encourage businesses to invest, hire people, and venture?
- How has he made us safe? He closed GITMO, ignored the pirates in favor of pizza and puppies, and ordered 10% cuts to the military, but he did declare conservatives enemies of the state via DHS.
- How has he alleviated our tax burden? He spoke yesterday about making tax day less arduous and easier. What has he done to do that? He gave us all $1 a day in tax cuts. Big whoop.
- How has he sacrificed? he wears designer suits and flies in a personal pizza chef and ordered a ton of special marine helicopters. He did however manage to give 6% of his income to charity last year, but I still give more per capita. Plus, he earned $2.5 million last year, making him uberrich since he earns 10x the $250K/year that makes one "rich".
Obama is the ultimate in hypocrisy. For him it's do as I say, not as I do. You can't take credit for every little thing that goes well and distance yourself from every HUGE thing that goes badly. That's actually the opposite of what I learned in my Organizational Behavior class. We learned that if it turns out poorly, I did it; if it turns out OK, we did it, and if it goes well, YOU did it. He takes all the glory to him and ascribes all the error to his enemies. Sorry Mr. President, but this knife cuts both ways. If his policy causes good things, something must be causing the less good things too, and the only thing different from the previous administration is his policy, ergo, if he causes the good, he also causes the side effects. Anything good that happens he did. Anything bad that happens is someone else's fault. I can't go for that. No can do.
If this presidency made it through the FDA Drug approval process for salving the nation's wounds, I propose the following addendum would of necessity by way of warning be included in any sweeping statement.
President Obama, from Democrat Pharmaceuticals. Making you better than you really are. Possible side effects may include recession, depression, general discomfort, criminal allegations, higher taxes, headaches, blurred or distorted vision, loss of balance, dry mouth, numbness, periodontal disease, lockjaw, tremors, climate change, heart palpitations, varicose veins, liver damage, legal damages, kidney failure, business failure, loss of taste, loss of smell, loss of sight, loss of pension, loss of job, loss of limb, early Alzheimer's, cardiac arrest, criminal arrest, and in extremely rare cases...death. Obama. Making you better than you really are.
He's like a bad scientist who assumes correlation implies causality, as long as it's good. They get apoplectic about serendipitous coincidence that they didnt cause and can't reproduce to save their lives. how many people have PhDs on bad science? How many presidents do we have on false hope? Enough bad science.
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