What does it mean when someone puts quotation marks around just one word in a sentence? To me, it’s different when someone is the right person, or the “right” person.
Those fluttering symbols strike me the same as a “wink-wink” — pointing to a hidden message.
In a second I’ll show you another e-mail I got from the trove reluctantly sent to me by the Commerce Department as part of my probe of statistical manipulation at the Census Bureau.
In my last column, I explained that a bunch of laptop computers containing the personal information of thousands of Americans related to unemployment, inflation and lots of other things went missing from Census’ Philadelphia office right before the last presidential election.
That alone should give investigators plenty to chew on in Philly and the other five Census offices that provide vital economic data to America.
In case you think this is some remote issue, remember this: those stats are used to determine the Cost of Living Adjustment that every Social Security recipient will get. And, of course, the data on those missing computers could have been manipulated mischievously in an effort to deceive voters.
The e-mail I am featuring today went from Fernando Armstrong, head of the Philadelphia Census region, where one data gatherer has already been caught cheating, to two of his bosses.
The issue: in 2012, Philly was having trouble meeting its quota of interviews on the National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey.
Armstrong wrote to one of his bosses in July of that year that someone whose name was blacked out, “has been working very hard to get our response rate up.” Apparently, that person was successful since Philadelphia, Armstrong proudly reported, was the top performer that month of the six regions.
“A similar situation is HIS (Health Interview Survey),” wrote Armstrong. “After 2010 we put the ‘right’ supervisor on that survey and its performance has improved significantly during the past year.” (To be clear, those quotation marks are Armstrong’s, not mine.)
The right person, of course, could mean someone who is diligent, works hard and is an inspiration to underlings. They could have found their Norma Rae.
Or that right person could mean something entirely different. “A supervisor who is willing to get the numbers by any means necessary,” is the way a source of mine interprets the meaning of that e-mail. It happens all the time on many different surveys, I’ve been told by more than one source.
You can decide for yourself. But hopefully Congress will ask its own questions as part of the investigation that’s been going on at the House Oversight Committee.
I called a Census department spokesman for an interpretation of that e-mail but didn’t get an answer. Armstrong has been refusing to take my calls and is referring me to headquarters.
You might have heard that a judge ruled recently that college athletes are entitled to be paid when schools make money from their images.
And experts think that ruling by California District Judge Claudia Wilken will eventually lead to college players being paid for their efforts, instead of just getting a scholarship.
The case was brought by a former basketball player, Ed O’Bannon, and it became a class-action suit.
Readers already know where I stand on this issue. I’ve written a couple of times that I was appalled that universities were making so much money, and all the student-athletes got was the right to fill a seat in a classroom that would otherwise have been empty.
Yes, I know they also got fed and were given a room. But still, the payment was grossly inadequate considering that college sports is a multibillion dollar business. And while some athletes benefit greatly from colleges, many do not and their scholarships become essentially worthless.
I’ve caught hell from a lot of readers because of this stance. But now I’d like to propose something else that might get a reaction: if college players are soon going to be paid for their efforts, shouldn’t they also be fired when they don’t produce?
Players already can now lose their scholarships for a number of reasons, but most of those reasons don’t have to do with performance on the court or field. But if this new era of paid performance comes to pass, shouldn’t a coach be able to go up to a middle linebacker who continually misses tackles and say, “Kid, we don’t need you anymore. So long.”
OK, let the complaints begin.
Stick this news in the “Who would have guessed it?” file.
A survey of 3,567 drivers by a website that goes by the sleek name CouponCodesPro.com says Americans keep a total of $2.4 billion in their cars. That’s an average of $21.48 per car.
Eighty-eight percent of those who responded said they did keep cash in their vehicle. And in case you are one of those people who break into cars, you’d do best looking in the glove compartment because that’s where 47 percent stash their cash. The ashtray is second at 23 percent, while 8 percent just throw the money on the floor.
Money is easy come, easy go in California, where owners leave an average of $43.11 in their cars, while in New York thieves would have to order off the dollar menus with the paltry $3.66 motorists leave lying around.