Thursday, November 18, 2010

Abuse by numbers

About a month ago the guardian of one of my clients at work directed my attention to a study performed by the GAO on the rampant abuse of power of DD and elderly clients by their court appointed guardians.

The study was supposed to give an accurate portrayal of just how bad the abuse of power was. Now normally a study like this focuses on the amount of people who abuse power and those that don't coming to a general average and coming up with a result.

However what did the GAO do? They fucked the general model in the ass. They didn't come up with a fucking average. Instead they took 20 cases where abuse occurred and showed their findings as an amount of money that had been swindled and a looming crisis of guardians being appointed without background checks. Without ever mentioning in the study that there are in fact guardians who don't abuse their clients.

So now there is a big media storm about another way our government fucks us. All because Some piss poor researchers decided it was better to wear their own ass as a fucking hat rather than do some actual work.

It got me thinking about studies and polls in general. We all quote scientific studies we have heard about to prove numbers and what not so we can win some piss poor debate with a friend. I certainly have. But for every fuckass study that proves one theory, there is another one that proves the opposite. How are we expected to know which one is right and which ones are proved under more dubious circumstances?

We aren't. We are supposed to swallow these answers and spew them out to people as truth so we can sound smarter than we are. Then we feel the smug satisfaction of some victory that isn't real.

Poll numbers are the exact same to me. every time I see a poll all I can think is that I don't fucking care. I have my own opinion. Why do I give a shit what the chickendicked cornholers who watch CNN or Fox news think about an election? Am I supposed to care simply because it is a mass of mindless cuntfungus who have nothing better to do but to call Wolf Blitzer or Sean Hannity and give there useless opinion that others may not agree with, much less care about?

All I am truly saying is that we need to be smarter than this. Polls are generated numbers that mean exactly fuck all to the reality of life. And studies don't show anything. It is all useless knowledge that we probably paid for. A few years later another study will show that the study before didn't know what it was talking about.

People...stop looking for answers to be simple. With almost 400 million people in the United States, no answer is going to be simple or all encompassing. And anyone who tells you different is lying to you and just wants to prove to you another bullshit study.

The GAO study showed that in 20 cases where abuse had been proven 5.4 million dollars had been stolen from 158 victims. These numbers are terrible and mean nothing if you take into account that there are approximately 4.3 million developmentally disabled clients and exponentially more elderly clients. these numbers are meant to confuse and create anger and possible action on the part of the public. but going off half cocked like that is going to create a huge mess. Especially for guardians who treat their clients with respect.

Well done people. Once again we prove my theory that even the smartest people who have power and money to fund such things are incredibly fucking stupid at times.

With deep and abiding affection,
Gabriel

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