As a heavy user of many government databases, I can attest to the fact that one doesn’t draw data “from two different data sources” by accident. Far, far from it. As good as most government databases are (and they are good), it can be a bit of a laborious undertaking to drill down to exactly what one is looking for.
Its not an accident that the two different datasets Perry’s been abusing have been mixed – they need to be accessed separately and then combined; mined from two very different locations at BLS.gov.
The takeaway here is that Professor Perry has been a dishonest broker of information on Seattle’s minimum wage hike from the very start. This was only the most recent, and most egregious, affront to honest, objective and reasoned analysis of data.
To the NY Post, Fox News, Stuart Varney, Dori Monson, Jazz Shaw, Tim Worstall, IBD, AEI, and myriad other outlets, know – if you didn’t already – that you’ve hitched your wagons to a fraud.
This will change nothing to many of these folks, because neither facts nor fraud matter to ideological zealots. The record will now reflect beyond a shadow of a doubt that data abuse and manipulation are simply business as usual to advance that agenda and pursue an ideology.
