In this budget poll series, we had red fish and blue fish and catfish and Bad Fish.

You will note three little pictures in this article.  The catfish links to Poll 1, the red ink to Poll 2 and the lima beans to Poll 3.

Fake Social Science noted that the revered test subjects were much more ideological in this series. (Tricky little devils, seemed to have sensed that Fake forgot to screen for political rabidity.)  Please note, we don't pay you to have strong opinions.  Shape up rodents.

Same drill as in the other articles, the cute little pictures link back to the original polls: Part 1 (aptly) is a catfish.  Part 2 is red ink. And the link to Part 3 is (ta da) lima beans.

Part 3

Question 19 - The IRS is still the most fearsome government agency on the planet. (I find the Mossad more fearsome, but then they have to be.)   Of the five choices available, only two were chosen revealing the respondent cohort's  over-focus on taxes and sex.

Question 20 - the respondents picked up on the twin financial weaknesses in the economy of excessive debt and currency devaluation. (This question was contributed by independent consultant, backroads, who has demonstrated the spirit that guides Fake Social Science.  Mr. Roads, with minimal throat clearing and head shaking on the part of staff, also waived any thought of a stipend.)

Same drill as in the other articles, the cute little pictures link back to the original polls: Part 1 (aptly) is a catfish. Part 2 is red ink. And the link to Part 3 is (ta da) lima beans.

Part 2

In both Parts 1 and 2, we asked the respondents to pick out the bogus Federal agency. On day 1, 13% of the respondents were correct (Southeast Asia Commission) and on day two 14% were correct (Center for ADD, ADHD, Autism and other DSM-IV Disorders).  It's a tribute to the federal government's intrusiveness into every corner of our lives that we can't pick out the ludicrous from the merely ridiculous.  I'm sure that a Southeast Asia Command and an ADD Center are on the drawing board.

Question 13, Which is more annoying, the amount of money each member of the House gets for expenses each year or the way they use up any 'extra' at the end of the year.  I was pleased to see that most (60%) chose the latter.  This helps to underscore that trying to cut the federal budget with baseline budgeting in place is a fool's errand.

Some people think government spending is too much, some think it's too little; almost no one thinks it's 'just right'. The core question becomes: Should we decrease spending/services or increase taxes/revenues? Fake Social Science hopes to address this question in a three part poll on the federal budget. [Part 1 here, Part 2 here.]

 Well, we've had fun for a couple of days mocking the Federal government and its, er, various and sundry, expenditures, but if you were paying attention, and we know our lab rats always pay attention because they've been trained to fear the uncomfortable but usually not fatal electric shocks that result when they don't, you know that for all the jokes about lawn mowing and NASCAR sponsorships, the gummint won't balance its books without Big Cuts in Big Programs, or Big Money to fill it in.

Some people think government spending is too much, some think it's too little; almost no one thinks it's 'just right'. The core question becomes: Should we decrease spending/services or increase taxes/revenues? Fake Social Science hopes to address this question in a three part poll on the federal budget. [Part 1 here.]

Today we look at how the government does its budgeting.

Currently, the budget is done by a process called Baseline Budgeting.

In a one-sentence description, a baseline government budget involves carrying over the current spending level from year to year and treating it as the floor on which to build additional spending changes. The major assumption in this approach is that the existing spending level of the agency is correct and needs no adjustment. Any new change should be on top of the existing level, not into it.

Baseline budgeting grandfathers in all of the mistakes, waste, fraud and obsolete programs of the preceding decades, while assuring a significant annual budget increase, based partially on those factors. (This method gives members of Congress and Senators incentive to go prospecting for earmarks - $130 Billion in 2011. If the departments really needed funds that are earmarked for programs previously not in their budgets, they would protest the takings by earmarks.

Some people think government spending is too much, some think it's too little; almost no one thinks it's 'just right'. The core question becomes: Should we decrease spending/services or increase taxes/revenues? Fake Social Science hopes to address this question in a three-part poll on the federal budget.

Our Fake Social Science theme this week (or longer?) is gummint spending.

Yes, the First Aid kits have been re-stocked at the Institute, thanks to we here getting in on some of the First Aid Kit money the Federal government has available ($27,800,829 since 2004 excluding the Dept. of Defense), which allows Fake Social Science to proceed with it's valuable research now that critically needed First Aid funding has been secured. We ordered Eeyore-only band-aids, but ended up with a bunch of Tiggers anyway. Federal gummint can't do anything right.

These are terrible times in the world of Think Tanks. With the advent of Super PACs, rich folks who want to manipulate public opinion no longer have to launder their money through "education"- or "policy"-oriented think tanks. They can just do tens of millions of dollars of media buys on their own, skipping right past think and going straight to tank. Or, rich folks already funding think tanks can decide that they want their toy back from those they hired to pretend to do "education" or "policy," as in the Koch brothers lawsuit to regain total control of the CATO Institute. Or, most tragic, think tanks are actually going bankrupt, like Newt Gingrich's Center for Health Transformation. The thought of those poor Members of the Boards of Trustees or Directors going without their six-figure sinecures and luxury junkets just makes you want to weep, huh?

Well, it made the Trustees of the Institute of Fake Social Science weep, that's for sure. So much so that they called an emergency meeting to see if there was some Joe Paterno-type around that they could fire immediately so that they could look like they hadn't been sitting on their asses all along. Unfortunately for us, the principal scholars at the Institute, the Trustees seem to have heard from some disgruntled grad student about heated and increasing conflict among the top Fake Social Scientists. But fortunately for us, we heard from a disgruntled clerical employee, who slipped us the following confidential document memorializing the Board's plans. In the interests of transparency (or transparent self-interest), we now present that memo:

The other half, not so quick, poll on election issues 2012:

Just a quick poll on election issues 2012:

Notes of the Proceedings of the Conference of Fake Social Science.

The Board of Trustees of Fake Social Science has determined that the collaborators' agendae are not always in sync. In the interest of avoiding unnecessary bloodshed in the months leading up to November 2012, it was moved (and seconded) that some uncollaboration be effectuated by either or both collaborators.

.... That Fake Social Science is investigating this week. In the space of about 24 hours we saw four stories topping the news and politics sites that featured secret or supposed-to-be-secret meetings.

First, infuriatingly no matter to whom you're more sympathetic, the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman incident started off on the night of the incident with a secret meeting between the lead police investigator and the state's attorney, a meeting no one will know the details of until later this month, when it will presumably be described to the grand jury--under a strict veil of secrecy, so the public still won't know the details.

Fake Social Science mostly wanted to have fun with this poll, as it was done for some treasured others in our lives.  There were one or two times we were trying to actually see how the responders feel about some more volatile issues. (Sports Poll Part 1 and Part 2)

Much like Real Social Science, Fake Social Science does its field work, which is fun, then procrastinates or gets easily distracted when the toil of writing it up comes around. Our publishers are hounding us for at least a chapter and the tenure committee is scowling ominously at our lack of publication even though we told them the work was virtually complete. We weren't lying, really, just exaggerating a little teeny bit.

No. WAIT! We have a better excuse!! We devised our Sports instrument to coincide with the beginning of March Madness, which is typically the only noteworthy sports event this time of year. Football and baseball are out of season, hockey and basketball are in the doldrums in the weeks before the playoffs when we all know who the good teams and bad teams are, NASCAR is just beginning and golf hasn't played a major yet. But this March was extremely eventful. The brackets shook out to produce a Game of the Century next Saturday when Kentucky and Louisville play for a spot in the championship game. Peyton Manning went to Denver, Tim Tebow went to New York, the feel-good New Orleans Saints did a bad thing, Sidney Crosby played to form returning to hockey from a serious concussion, and Tiger Woods had a strong win at Bay Hill.

Dedicated to Mrs. Gillis and our mutual friend Russ (who sat in Ebbets Field)

My sports knowledge is not as in depth as that of my collaborator. I am more of a casual fan, except for the Green Bay Packers.  I pick up most of my sports knowledge peripherally.

I used to follow basketball but found my interest level in the game dropped in direct proportion to the length and bagginess of the players' shorts.  I did, however, acquire a brief interest in soccer during the Super Bowl this year.

In case you missed part 1 of the Fake Social Science Sports poll, you can check it out here. 

Enough of that, no one likes to mix sports and sex.

We move on to the second half of the Fake Social Science Super Duper Sports Poll:

++ Please excuse this entirely unprovoked outburst from my collaborator.

Dedicated to Mrs. Gillis and our mutual friend Russ (who sat in Ebbets Field)

So Fake Social Science is having its weekly pizza with its 80ish Mom. She's had some health problems with her vocal chords lately so sometimes I can't quite make out what she's saying. So we're chatting and my ears are telling me "Sounds like she's talking about Jeremy Lin" but my brain is too overwhelmed by cognitive dissonance to accept that. She barely knows that Boston has a basketball team, let alone who the new starting guard phenom is for the New York Knicks. So I nod genially.

But she's still sharp as a broken beer bottle and instantly challenges me: "You're just nodding at me, aren't you?" I bashfully admit it, then she continues, "You didn't know I was talking about Jeremy Lin, did you?"

With our second annual Fake Social Science poll on the GOP White Knights, we tried out a new technique.  We used photo montages to quickly orient the poll takers to the 'knight's' face and past foibles. And, of course, we tried to prejudice the viewer as much as possible in the process.

We also used as many biased buzzwords as possible to cue the respondents in selecting their answers. Words like 'mob' and 'clan' and 'bunch' all have similar connotations, but each subtly defines a group.  For a long time, the 'mob' led in the polling, but, at the time of this writing, it finished with the Bush Bunch getting the most votes as the 'most hated dynasty'.  I suspect some late gaming of that question (it got the most votes of any question in the poll), but we haven't yet been able to figure out how to detect a multiple use poll-taker.

In our Second Annual Putsch Poll™ of Presidential Preference, continuing our series on Republican White Knights, we come to the question of baggage. For technical reasons having to do with strictly enforced Federal weight limits and severely constrained cargo space, White Knights must travel with only one carry-on bag which must fit in the overhead bin. Burdened with swords, shields, lances and shining armor, White Knights just can't drag a whole lot else into the duel.

We finished off Chris Christie yesterday, so today we finish with the rest the of list we mentioned, Jeb Bush, Mitch Daniels, Marco Rubio, Paul Ryan and Bobby Jindal. Except Bobby Jindal. We like Bobby and, quite frankly, the shelf life for the relevance of this exploitive poll may be tonight.  Mitt Romney could make this all moot and we couldn't come up with any good Jindal stuff before the publishing deadline.

Paul Ryan is the shiniest of the White Knights. He has looks, a great family thing (even a set of twins), he's bright, articulate and hard working as a Congressman. And those are the bad things!  He's my Wally's favorite politician and Wally is a great chooser of people.