The issue of "Spin"...

Numbers Game...

"The numbers can say anything you want them to say"....
That is one of the first things I was told when working as a Buyer\Operations manager for a Six Flags park Merchandise department during college years... I remember going into meetings each day before the park would open to go over prior days financial numbers. Each dept would have a print out with the "Percapita" spent in each dept as a guide to how well they did. Afetr a rain day the merch dept would have a very high percap number due to the bump in $5 rain ponchos sold that day. $5 retail at a cost of $0.35 did well for the profit margin also... Problem was the amount of people in the park would be less due to the rain and thus total revenue would be down... My retail Vice-President would lean over and say "The numbers can say anything you want them to say, it all depends on how much $$$ you put in the bank at the end of the week"...

Recently I linked to a story that appeared in the "Sun" newspaper about the violent death rate in Iraq as compared to cities in the United States. This resulted in numerous responses as to what numbers were used to obtain the rate and led to debate(s) on how numbers & info are spun by both sides to get the desired effect... I posted that story to highlight the problem we have with both the violent death rate in a war zone and here in the states. The amazing thing is that the debate went to proving or dis-proving the numbers used to get the rate instead of discussing the problem as I thought it would... Just this past week we had a guy go into work and kill two other workers before killing himself. No war zone here, it was in Harrisonburg Virginia just down the road from where I work...

This whole thing made me think about how numbers\info can be "Spun"...
Remember a few years back when Rosie O'Donnell would claim that hundreds(?) of children were being killed by guns each week? The spin here was that when she said "Children" she was also counting anybody under the age of 18 in her numbers. Many of the "Children" killed were gang members involved in drive-by's and drug wars....

"44 million un-insured Americans" is also another statement that can be looked at. How many of these people are covered under a parents insurance program not in their name? How many are 18 year olds that feel "Invincible" and choose to spend their money on I-pod's, CD's, toys, etc? There are many that can't afford insurance that they need but how many of the 44 million choose to spend their money in other places?

This past week Congress approved extending the Bush Tax-cuts to the year 2010 and somebody in the media did a spot on the street with the reporter waving a $20 bill and saying this was all the taxcut meant to the average person on the street. No data as to what the average person income or tax bill on the street was but a broad statement to back that reporters view. This reminds me of back in 2001 when then Senator Tom Daschle stood in front of a Lexus and said “If you’re a millionaire, under the Bush tax cut, you get a $46,000 tax cut, more then enough to pay for this Lexus. But if you are a typical working person, you get $227 and that’s enough to buy this muffler”. Now I was living in Key West at the time and some guy wrote into the local newspaper and stated that Daschle should have been standing in front of a $390,000 house to represent the amount of tax that millionaire pays in taxes for each million earned…

There have also been many polls out there recently and these numbers can be manipulated to get the desired result. There have been numerous polls that show that the majority of those polled want the U.S. out of Iraq. The % ratio changes a lot if you re-phrase the question by asking the question “Do you want the U.S. out of Iraq before the Iraqi government is secure and able to protect themselves?” With polls it’s all how you ask the question sometimes…

Also last week senate minority leader Harry Reid got up in front of the senate to pull out the race card again when they were voting to approve a amendment to make English the official language of the United States.
“This amendment is racist. I think it is directed basically to people who speak Spanish” The amendment was passed on a vote of 63-34 vote.

The issue here is that many media groups did not include the fact that the amendment proposed english being the official language of Government Operations in the United States.

84% of Americans say that English should be the official language of government operations and 77% of Hispanics agree…

As the photo below shows. Everybody can see something different when looking at the same thing...