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judgesmales

The Sun's math is wrong. On the current bill, the items in the right-hand column add up to: 100.10, not $101.10. The correct figure should be $100.10. The individual line items are correct, but they don't add up correctly on the bottom line.

I also think there's a math goof on the proposed bill, but I'm still checking it. By doing all the calculations, I keep coming up with $111.93, not $111.77. I'll get back to you later.

Either way, good story, Sun. Good useful information, even if the math is shaky. Will the Sun check their math?

Schwartz writes: "The state's Welfare and Supportive Services Division, which gives out Medicaid, food stamps and welfare, had 1,247 workers approved for the upcoming two years, the same number it had this year."

"Gives out" Medicaid, etc.? No, it ADMINISTERS those programs. That's the problem with welfare. Everyone think it's just "given out," like those dollars must have come out of Obama's "stash," right?

Could it be that Restrepo's clients no longer want his services because he's a lousy economist who wrote uniformly bullish analyses, telling those clients what they wanted to hear, instead of the truth that they needed to hear?

A lot of those companies were probably caught flat-footed when the crisis hit, likely because Restrepo's invariably sunny predictions led them to that stance.

Most of these local "crystal ball" happy-talk types have yet to be correct about any prediction or trend. But that doesn't stop the local media from continuing to quote them, regardless of how discredited or compromised they are. Maybe this Restrepo episide will make the Sun look elsewhere for "expert" economic analysis, though I doubt it will.

Restrepo is just another pumper who thinks that if you keep lying and telling people the economy is in recovery, it might trigger an actual recovery. Because his livelihood depends on it, his default position is to be rah-rah about the local economy. He's no different from Sunshine and Lollipops Reza, only with a fancy title.

Of course, they're too dumb to figure out that the loss of easy real estate equity withdrawals and massive consumer credit contraction (12-percent unemployment, too) have made anything resembling "recovery" impossible. That's the easiest prediction to make, and these clowns can't even get that right.