I wrote about this topic before on 27 June. Assemblyman Rocky Chavez (nominally ‘R’) is pushing a new subsidy for CA state college students, freezing the tuition for a new student for up to six years.
Aside from it being a bad idea, he’s using incorrect numbers to justify this new giveaway, AB 159. Specifically, he claimed that CSU tuition has risen 217% in 5 years — the correct figure is 117%, the result of a common math error involving percentages above 100%. Here’s the link my article:
http://riderrants.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-rocky-chavez-its-for-children-mantra.html
I posted this on a number of websites, including at least one I KNOW his staff monitors — they post for Rocky on such websites. I also emailed the Chavez office, asking that they correct their stats.
Sadly, I was astonished to find that, to date (15 July), they have not. I guess accuracy is just not a priority. Mind you, the BILL is still a priority — apparently the honesty is not.
Here’s the link to Rocky’s official summary of his submitted bills on his Sacramento website:
http://arc.asm.ca.gov/member/AD76/?p=myLeg#
Just click on the “Tuition freeze” link to see the short summary. I suspect all the material circulating around the statehouse on this bill continues to include this “217%” inflated statistic — with no one up there bringing the error to public attention.
Is initially making and publishing an error that important? Not really — as my article said, such percentage math errors are all too common. Disappointing, yes — but there’s no reflection on anyone’s character when honest mistakes are made (and I DO think it was an honest mistake).
But the decision to not CORRECT the error? The uncorrected error has now morphed into intentionally false propaganda, which is being used to impose millions of dollars in future subsidies on the taxpayers. That’s of concern.