We all know that math scores have been scandalously trending downward for many years, but the folks in the government should at least be able to count.
We’re finding more and more evidence that the statistics the government is releasing to the public are increasingly suspect and unreliable. It seems like the errors are not random but perhaps manipulated for political advantage. Judge for yourself.
Let’s start with crime statistics. Former President Donald Trump said in the debate that crime is out of control, and Vice President Kamala Harris countered by citing government statistics from the FBI indicating that crime rates are falling.
But Jeffrey Anderson, former director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics, finds a surge in urban violent crime since 2019. He writes in the Wall Street Journal that “the violent crime rate in 2023 was…