Biden Has His Numbers Wrong

by Rush Limbaugh - Oct 21,2011

RUSH: I mentioned FactCheck.org in the first half hour of the program running down the numbers on Vice President Bite Me and his claims on rape, and the FactCheck.org story documents that Biden is just lying brazenly, and so are Dick Durbin and anybody else who happens to be supporting Biden in any of this. FactCheck.org: “Joe Biden falsely claimed on multiple occasions that the number of reported rapes in Flint, Mich., has skyrocketed since 2008 — providing different accounts at different events that do not square with FBI data. He started at a 152 percent increase, and since then has said rapes in Flint have tripled and even ‘quadrupled.’ But FBI data show the number of rapes in Flint has gone down 11 percent, from 103 in 2008 to 92 in 2010.”

And something that’s not mentioned and Bite Me doesn’t mention is that in Flint, Michigan, they alternately open and close the jail. It’s not always open. Sometimes they don’t have the money to keep it open, sometimes the townspeople vote to shut it down. There’s all kinds of variables. But the number of rapes in Flint, Michigan — and Biden is clearly saying, we’re losing cops, we don’t have as many cops on the street as we used to. The rapes are skyrocketing. They’re not. It’s a total, made-up farce. “Biden also said the cityÂ’s murder rate has ‘tripled.’ The city says there were a record-high 66 murders last year — double, not triple, the 32 murders that occurred in 2008.” So while the number of murders have gone up, not nearly as high, or as much as Bite Me says.

“The vice president has been touring the country delivering his pitch for the American Jobs Act, President Barack ObamaÂ’s $447 billion plan that includes $35 billion to prevent the layoff of police, firefighters and teachers. On Oct. 12, Biden visited Flint, Mich., which has had the highest violent crime rate in the nation for the last two years. The cityÂ’s violent crime rate has increased from 20.2 violent crimes per 1,000 residents in 2008 to 22.1 in 2010, a jump of about 9 percent, our analysis of FBI reports shows. Crime is bad in Flint, no doubt, but Biden makes it out to be worse than it is.


“Biden, Oct. 18: ‘I was up in Flint, Michigan, last week. Their police departmentÂ’s cut more than in half. The murder rate, close to triple. The number of rapes have quadrupled.’ A day later, Biden was asked by a reporter for Human Events, a conservative website, if he regretted ‘using a rape reference to describe Senate opposition’ to the bill. Conservatives, including Rush Limbaugh, have criticized the vice president for suggesting that rape and murder will rise if the Republicans donÂ’t pass the jobs bill. Biden replied: ‘I said rape was up three times in Flint. Those are the numbers. Go look at the numbers.’

“We have looked at the numbers. We started with the number of reported rapes, because Biden makes three claims that donÂ’t add up: that rapes have gone up from 91 to 229 (a 152 percent increase), that rapes have ‘quadrupled,’ and that rapes have tripled. HeÂ’s badly wrong on all counts. The FBIÂ’s Uniform Crime Reports for those years show that the number of reported rapes declined from 103 in 2008 to 92 in 2010, or a nearly 11 percent drop.”


So will we get an apology from Biden and Jay Carney and Obama? FactCheck.org “also calculated the rate of reported rapes per 1,000 residents to account for the cityÂ’s declining population. Even then, the rate has declined from .91 rapes per 1,000 residents in 2008 to .84 rapes per 1,000, a decline of 8 percent. We asked the vice presidentÂ’s office to explain such a gross discrepancy. It referred us to the Flint mayorÂ’s office — saying the figures came from the city. In response to our questions, Flint Public Safety Director Chief Alvern Lock put out a statement saying the city ‘stands behind the crime statistics provided to the Office of The Vice President.'”
So Biden got on the phone to Flint and said, “You’re backing me up, nobody messes with me.” You know, Moammar Khadafy also had hair plugs. I don’t know that there’s a connection. They say that cell phone use can cause cancer. What about hair plugs? What percentage of people who died last year had hair plugs? What percentage of people with hair plugs are essentially insane? We know two of them, Bite Me and Moammar Khadafy. Seriously. They’re just out there making this stuff up. FactCheck.org finds out.


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