Jobs

Reprinted with permission from Huck/Konapacki Cartoons .

Actually, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s agenda is an unqualified success. Everything Walker has done over the last two years was designed to keep wages low and ensure employers a weak and desperate labor force. It’s simple supply and demand, high unemployment ensures low wages.

The March 2013 BLS statistics rate Wisconsin 44^th in the nation in job creation. Wages fell by 4.1% and unemployment rose to 8.4%. Critics blame Scott Walker’s austerity policies. Walker blames the “uncertainty” of peaceful protests and recall elections.

The reality is that Walker’s agenda is an unqualified success. Everything Walker has done over the last two years was designed to keep wages low and ensure employers a weak and desperate labor force.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel editorial board is entitled to its opinions, but not its own set of facts.

In a review of President Obama's nomination acceptance speech Friday, the newspaper's editorial writers had some positive words to offer about Obama but knocked him around a bit on two specific points. Said the Journal Sentinel: "Job growth is picking up though Obama still has the worst record on that score of any president in the post-World War II era."

A new commercial by the Greater Wisconsin Political Fund highlights that newly released independent statistics continue to show that Wisconsin ranks dead last in the country in job creation. 

As I'm sure you're aware, this morning the Walker administration introduced a new set of job numbers that have miraculously found new jobs around the state. We'll ignore the various different interpretations that have been made of this -- cherry-picking statistics to find ones that are favorable, comparing apples to oranges (really, how do they manage to keep finding new measures for jobs and the budget all the time, all of which are favorable, while ignoring the measures they used previously?) and counting jobs from people who are now working in other states.

We've figured it out here.  They're just doing the job count in Base 8.  As a computer professional, this all makes sense to me, and for those of you who are old enough to remember the "new math" Tom Lehrer explains it all. Just substitute in "It's so simple than only a Republican can do it!" in the refrain.

State Sen. Terry Moulton, facing a recall challenge from Kristin Dexter, is asked at a public event what bills the Republican legislature passed to promote economic development and create jobs.

What follows is painful to watch -- almost a full minute of silence, hemming and hawing, after which Moulton veers off into a discussion of a bill about wolves in northern Wisconsin.

Today the Greater Wisconsin Political Fund launched a major television and internet advertising campaign highlighting Scott Walker’s worst-in-the-nation jobs record. The effort is the first substantial paid media campaign of the year to highlight Walker's failed policies after months of pro-Walker advertising funded by his extremist ideological supporters like the Koch brothers and the Swift Boaters. 

Pour me anotherWisconsin's dismal economic and job-creation performance during Scott Walker's first year in office -- worst in the nation, actually -- doesn't mean a damn thing. At least not if you're Scott Walker, who is working overtime to hang onto his own job. Because he's doing it to us again.

Remember the original June 2011 estimate that the state had created 15,000 jobs in that month? The job creation spike that Walker loudly touted over and over? Turns out, according to adjusted state figures, the actual number was near zero. Whoops.

Here in Wisconsin and nationally, Republicans have spent the past three years attacking President Obama and Democrats for not returning the country to the high-flying times that preceded the Big Crash of 2007-'08.

Scott Walker, in particular, simultaneously claims he's creating lots of jobs while criticizing the federal government and national economy when people inconveniently point out that Wisconsin badly lags the nation in job growth. As in, there's hardly been any job growth here since Walker crafted his draconian budget removing billions of dollars in aid, salaries and program funds for state, county and local governments. The cuts included drastic reductions in public employee compensation, which in turn has led to massive early retirements statewide, and lay-offs in some local units of government.

And what has all this wrought in just a few months? A national economy that actually has been doing pretty well given all that happened in the Bush era is being dragged down and held back by public-sector cutbacks: