Letter: ‘Elite world' twists the ‘facts'

Your Oct. 20 editorial "Public employees' elite world" was a good example of how Mark Twain's old adage about lies, damned lies and statistics still holds true. But I'm sure that was the point of the piece — i.e., red meat for your anti-government readership.

Facts simply confuse people whose minds are made up, so your apples and oranges comparison of average pay scales (at least you could have used the statistical mean) met the expectations of your market fundamentalist audience. If you would have factored in years of service, educational levels and or occupational fields in your comparison it might not have been o easy to malign the Veterans Administration doctors and nurses, scientists at the National Institutes of Health and the hard-working civil servants at Beale AFB as overpaid time servers.

On the positive side: for someone who spent 36 years working for the feds, your editorial was a great recruiting tool for those looking for a career with an organization that pays a living wage with defined benefits, so thank you.

Jim Morgan

Yuba City