Is arithmetic really that hard?

[charibdis]

Ok, I'm a bit unusual. I do most math and arithemetic in my head, and, partially because of this, whenever I see figures I tend to double check them.

There's a lot of subtleties which anyone could miss, but I thought this one was pretty obvious. Here's the article. Apparently congress has, surprise, surprise, voted themselves a pay raise this

Comments

[pylocatabasis]

If I correctly recall, Congress voted themselves a 2.1% cost-of-living increase and all OTHER federal wokers a 4.1% wage increase. This contradicts GWB's plan, in which, ummm, federal workers get nothing*, but there aren't any signs that GWB's going to veto it. I think CNN is just misreporting the bill. All things considered, it's pretty fair -- 2.1% is probably less than the actual change in CoL.

* He said the federal government couldn't afford it. Well, no shit. Maybe if we hadn't added a million fucking people to an already blated federal government, or perhaps hadn't waged a few wars, or maybe if we'd scaled back a senseless war on drugs we'd BE OKAY.

[charibdis]

A friend pointed out that there's an amendment (27? 28? 29?) which prevents a government worker from voting themselves a pay raise. If congress wants to legally vote in a payress for congress they have to do it for the next congress, not this one.

Of course, since next year is an election year it may be that that pay raise doesn't go into effect until after elections, or they may have just done something blatantly unconstitutional.

numbers are evil.

[cuteybutt]

Well, with the way Members of Congress were bouncing checks and how great we know the IRS is with tax returns... perhaps it's not math they are bad with, it's money.

I wonder if it's CNN who's bad with math or they are just publishing numbers given to them?

Either way... I'd be willing to make $154,700 a year. They don't even have to give a raise.

*grumbles under her breath*

Re: numbers are evil.

[charibdis]

Well, we know they're bad with money.

How are the Canadian government officials with this sort of stuff?

Re: numbers are evil.

[cuteybutt]

I try not to pay that much attention. *grins*

[caughthalo]

Government math is lolltastic.

[charibdis]

Maybe that ought to be a new branch of math. Pure Mathematics, Applied Mathematics, and Government Mathematics.