As much as I disagree with Obama on all sorts of things and wish he was never elected, I'm not sure he actually is lying about unemployment.
Lying about unemployment could mean several different things.
1 - He made a lie about what the government stats say - This probably didn't happen at least not to a significant extent over and over again. But it may have, if it did it shouldn't be hard to point out when it happened as some people probably would have been all over it.
2 - He caused a change in what the stats measure, and/or how the stats are calculated, that causes a result that you think understates unemployment. Doing so could be dishonest (and so "lying"), or not. Either way it doesn't seem that any such change was made.
3 - He directly or indirectly, ordered or pressured, the relevant government agency to produce a report (or multiple reports) that deliberately under counted unemployment as defined by the existing methodology (changing the official methodology goes back to number 2, it doesn't fit here). If that happened I would be ok with calling that "Obama lying about unemployment". But I haven't seen any evidence that it actually happened. That doesn't mean it didn't happen, but I can't support the claim that it did without seeing some evidence.
4 - You think the existing official measurement (or really multiple measurements, U3 is the headline rate but you have U1-U6) counts misses many unemployed people. That might or might not be the case. If it is, its not a change by Obama, it wouldn't be his action or lie.
5 - He cherry picked his presentation of stats in his speeches, press releases, etc. to give a more positive impression then the reality. - I think he did do this but he's far from the only one, and it isn't quite lying even if it can be dishonest.
More generally, while I agree with you that Obama's actions have been bad for the economy both short term and long term, I think presidents get too much credit and blame for economy. You can have a strong economy with bad presidential policy and its even easier to have a weak economy with good presidential policy. There are always other factors, and normally there are bigger factors than what the president decides. Which is not to say that presidential policy and performance is unimportant, for one thing those other factors can go in different directions and to an extent cancel each other out at least over time, so even if they are bigger factors in isolation good or bad government policy can still have a noticeable effect esp. if sustained. |
