Does the Washington Post ever check its math?
The Washington Post is justifiable skeptical of President Bush's new proposals to spend $1.5 billion over five years to promote marriage. It's not a particularly conservative goal, as the Washington Post points out by mentioning exactly how the Gingrich Republicans would have responded to it. (Incidentally, that should just go to show the shape that the 'radical right' is actually in... but I digress.)
So why does the Post have to shoot itself in the foot by supporting its argument with a 3rd grader's understanding of statistics? After mentioning the $1.5 billion price tag, it goes on to say:
William J. Doherty, a University of Minnesota professor and a believer in government-sponsored marriage maintenance, is planning a demonstration project that will cost $1 million over four years: Do we really need 1,500 such projects?
But of course, no one is recommending a massed army of million-dollar research projects. Unless the proposal is so poorly designed as to be insane, the money includes allocations for research and, more expensively, implementation of the results in concrete social programs. It's inconceivable that the Post doesn't recognize this, so why make a rhetorical point so cheap that it detracts from the rest of an otherwise reasonable argument?
