Control the assumptions, control the outcome

Whether it relates to weather prediction models, polling questions or  even (perhaps especially) "non-partisan" assessments of government budgets, if you control the assumptions, you control the outcome.  Liberals get it, we don't.

I work extensively with statistical models in my day job.  Models can have very strong predictive power if they are created with proper diligence. That means that you must control the assumptions that go into them to avoid creating your own confirmation bias.  If you skew the input variables you skew the outcome accordingly.  For example if you treat a missing value in a row of data as a zero as opposed to ignoring the missing value, you are lowering your overall average and therefore skewing your outcome towards a lower value for that particular income.

Democrats have understood this for decades - controlling "non-partisan" groups in order to control the message that comes out of them to condemn every Republican bill (e.g. the recent tax cuts) and heap praise on every Democrat bill (e.g. Obamacare's fictitious budgetary cost reductions).  They have granted money extensively to scientists to predict weather calamity as a result of global warming, thus incenting them to find problems in order to secure more funding.  Intentionally done or not (it really is intentional), the results are skewed towards the desired outcome.

Democrats have stacked everything in their favor over decades of working their way into positions to do so - not just entertainment, journalism, government bureaucracy but also polling firms, lobbyists and even statistical modelling and supposedly non-partisan  organizations.  The trick in the latter is to find a gullible but well-intentioned Republican to co-found an organization or co-sponsor a bill in congress so the claim of non-partisan can be applied. Afterwards they ensure that they stack the top positions and teams involved with those who will find, or skew their findings to their own liberal liking.

This is an important lesson for conservatives.  It will take decades but we should be working towards undoing those decades of entrenching bias and deliberately skewed findings just as we should be working towards re-balancing journalism and entertainment and all the way down to the assumptions that go into models and forecasts.  It's not just a matter of voting for the right people and hoping for the best, or leaving it to them to do all the work. Progressives understand this and are fighting this way on all fronts, if conservatives do not fight with the same level of intensity, we are destined to lose despite being on the right side of the truth.

Captured for posterity: "Non-partisan" assessment of the Trump tax plan

The Hill quotes a "non-partisan" organization that spells doom and gloom for the that will result from the Trump tax plan.  I'm capturing this from The Hill, because it will be proven wrong:

The GOP tax bill would cost significantly more if tax cuts that are temporary in the legislation are eventually made permanent, according to two new reports.

Most of the bill's changes for individuals sunsets in 2025, even as a cut to the corporate rate from 35 percent to 21 percent is made permanent.

If future Congresses decide to extend the lower tax rates for individuals and families rather than allow them to expire, and also extends other temporary provisions, the bill will end up costing $2 trillion to $2.2 trillion, according to a report by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan deficit hawk group.

Even accounting for economic growth, it predicts the bill would add $1.5 trillion to $1.7 trillion to the debt — bringing debt levels close to 100 percent of the nation's GDP.

Where to begin?  Cutting a budget does not COST anything.  It means collecting less tax  from consumers and producers.  It does not mean the government spends more money.  Quite the contrary, it SHOULD mean that the government is forced to spend less.  It costs the government revenue I supposed - but even that notion is wrong. As has been pointed out, lower taxes means more taxable activity and therefore more tax revenue, not less (see video at the bottom for details).

Most importantly the idea that it is a "Non-partisan" organization is laughable. The "Non-partisan" Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget is headed by Maya MacGuineas, a walking establishment-liberal resume if ever there was one;

MacGuineas has run the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget since 2003, and works mainly on issues related to fiscal, tax, economic, and retirement policy. Senator Mark Warner called her "a trusted intermediary"[4] as she has worked with Democratic and Republican lawmakers.[5] She has also been called "an obsessively nonpartisan, data-driven, well-connected champion of...fiscal responsibility."[6]

She has also published a number of articles, including in The Atlantic Monthly, The Washington Post, The New York Times, the Financial Times and the Los Angeles Times. Once dubbed "an anti-deficit warrior" by The Wall Street Journal[7] and "queen of the deficit scolds" by economist Paul Krugman,[8] MacGuineas has appeared on broadcast news and is often cited by the national press. She also is a regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal 'Think Tank' feature.

MacGuineas also served on The Washington Post editorial board in the Spring of 2009, where she covered economic and fiscal policy and wrote extensively on the health care reform debate.

She was the Director of the Fiscal Policy Program at the New America Foundation—a nonpartisan think tank based in Washington, DC.[9]

Before joining the New America Foundation,[10] MacGuineas worked at the Brookings Institution, the Concord Coalition, and on Wall Street. She has also advised numerous candidates for office from both parties, and works regularly with members of United States Congress on health, economic, tax, and budget policy.

MacGuineas served as a member of the Debt Reduction Task Force[11] at the Bipartisan Policy Center.

Everything mentioned there except the debt reduction task force screams liberal, and indicates that anything to do with responsible budgeting is a cover for the liberal agenda.  She's obviously a progressive mole and has been given cover by her organizations seemingly centric title.

But she's not the only one.  The umbrella organization it operates under is rife with far left liberalism. If you follow the trail of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, besides being co-founded by a Republican, it seems to be housed at New America which is clearly, very liberal. Need I go on with the links? Disproving the absurdity of the non-partisan claim is just too easy.

So I'm not buying it.  I'm holding onto the quotes, so that 5 years down the road these people can be pounded with the truth and exposed for the political hacks they really are.