Congratulations Cleveland on no longer being the most impoverished city in the nation. According to the latest U.S. Census figures (story here), Cleveland dropped to a tie for 12th place in this distinguished category. Receiving the crown this year is Detroit Rock City. The census shows that the poverty rate in Cleveland dropped from 31.3 percent to 23.2 percent in the past year. OK, what that really tells me is that these census figures are really whack. Unless I missed the day where it rained money, something like that doesn't just happen. Smells like some bad data to me.

Hopefully this new figure is more accurate and that 31.3 percent was just some crazy number that some overpaid idiot bureaucrat pulled out of a hat. Apparently the margin of error is 4%. What they call a "survey" doesn't even deserve to get published with garbage data like that. If I had done in survey in my 5th grade math class and reported that the margin of error was 4%, I would have gotten an F. So given that margin, Cleveland might actually have a 27% poverty rate, or maybe just a 19.4% poverty rate. Yeah, no real difference between those two...

This entry was posted by Brad, on Tuesday, August 30, 2005. You can leave your response.