In an effort to hype the size of the federal government, the Washington Post's David A. Fahrenthold pulls this bullshit statistic out of his ass:

Measured another way — not in dollars, but in people — the government has about 4.1 million employees today, military and civilian. That’s more than the populations of 24 states.

Maybe. But as Media Matters points out, that's less than the population of the Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, California metro area, and less than half the viewing audience of America's Got Talent. Or even more accurately:

That's approximately 1.3 percent of the total U.S. population, handling all government business, including delivering our mail, serving in the military, inspecting our food, fighting terrorism, etc.

Amazon is a famously data-driven organization, and Jeff Bezos is renowned for his impatience with bullshit presentations that fail to get to the point. So it's hard to imagine that he'd accept that "more than the populations of 24 states" statistic from one of his executives as a data point relevant to making any sort of management decision.

If Bezos were to hold his WaPo reporters to the same standards he holds his Amazon employees, I gotta think WaPo's readers would be better served.

[via Atrios]