Deceit

People often say a "study" can be found to support any argument. Of course one can. And, if there isn't one, just make it up.

I read a letter-to-the editor in the newspaper the other day that confirmed that. A week or so ago, the newspaper ran an op-ed piece claiming Michigan citizens were reluctantly amenable (is that oxymoronic???) to higher taxes. (Of course, anyone paying attention would find this pretty incredible.) The op-ed piece cited a study/survey taken at some conference (in Grand Rapids?) supporting this. The letter came from a conference attendee. He said, that in his "focus group" and other about which he was familiar, the opinion was heavily in favor, if not unanimous, of no higher taxes. He went on to say the "moderator," that is, the spinner, went on to rephrase things among the larger group to justify saying, "Michigan citizens will support higher taxes." C'mon, who would believe that????

It reminded me of the public schools. They make up crap all of the time--and, of course, people either believe it or don't care. I'll cite an example. The accreditation process for public schools is a sham. It's a scam that someone thought up years ago to make money. There's no other rationale behind it. Anyway, it has turned into a "self-evaluation" process. Oh, oh. I remember, in the "self-evaluation," one dept at our schools rated itself and the school pretty low in a number of areas. The "steering committee" then "steered" the survey back to the dept asking it to raise its ratings, that the place wasn't really that bad. The dept got the message and just filled out a bogus higher rating. My own dept had several, I think, honest evalutions that were "negative." The steering committee didn't even need to do anything about that. The dept head, who might have sat on the committee, merely didn't counted the negative ratings. Pretty good self-evaluation, huh? Sort of like getting to vote yourself a raise.

How have we arrived where we are? What went wrong?