Scotty's a job-killer- the rest of the story

The April release of jobs info from the Wisconsin DWD has a few other interesting kinks to it, in addition to the obvious headline that is the continued failure of Scott Walker's policies (as outlined in the first part from earlier Thursday).

The first is where a huge amount of the revisions from March comes from. Now Scotty's TeaBag supporters might say the data isn't as bad as advertised, but the major reason that may be so is because of STATE GOVERNMENT JOBS BEING REVISED UP BY 6,600! And when compared with last year, Mr. "Small Government", Scott Walker has actually added 900 jobs to state government since Act 10 was passed in March 2011. It proves once and for all that Walker's not about cutting state government spending, he's just about cutting where that money goes (look at all the money he's giving away to the road builders).

Where government has been cut has been at the local level, by 10,500, and that's your cops, road workers, and teachers. And again, this is by design by the Walker boys, because the goal is to cut funding to local communities without giving them any way to make it up other than privatizing and cutting services, all while telling people that Walker's policies had nothing to do with it. The cynicism of such a move is beyond disgusting, but par for the course for an Administation that thinks the average Wisconsinite is a stupid as the average talk show listener.

Also worth mentioning is the drop in manufacturing jobs by 1,300 for April, which happened despite a nationwide increase in manufacturing jobs in the same month. This is especially concerning since Wisconsin is tied with Indiana for having the highest percentage of its jobs in manufacturing out of any state. But even in this important metric, Wisconsin lags behind the nation, with fewer jobs in the sector than there was before Walker's budget was signed in June, and that's while manufacturing has made a steady comeback under President Obama.

The other drop worth mentioning is the collapse in construction work, which is down by a seasonally-adjusted 6,000 jobs in the last 2 months (due to slower than usual seasonal hiring), and 7,300 since Act 10 was signed in March 2011. Hmm, you think that cutting the take-home pay of hundreds of thousands of public sector workers might put a crimp in the home-building and road-work market? Of course it does, and now you're seeing the results.

There are other sectors to go after in this report, including the slower-than-normal seasonal hiring in the "Hospitality" sectors (resulting in a seasonally-adjusted "loss" of 5,000 in April), which bodes poorly for the upcoming tourism season. But the bottom line is that the failure of Scott Walker's policies cut across numerous sectors, and it has rendered this Wisconsin austerity experiment as a setback that has hit this state in almost every corner. And unless we stop it on June 5, it'll only get worse.

P.S. Here's great work from UW Professor Menzie Chinn further showing how dreadful Walker's record truly is, and how BS his "new jobs metric?" is.

No "controversy" J-S, Scotty's a job-killer

What hopefully was the final jobs report of the Scott Walker governorship came out today, and Scotty is going out with a BANG. 6,200 private sector jobs GONE and 5,900 overall. And while some of the Walker apologists at the DWD are mentioning of the upside revisions for March, 6,600 of that upward revision was government jobs, and we all know that government jobs don't count (right, AM talk radio?).

You knew this number was going to suck when you saw Walker and his propaganda machine start releasing that "alternate metric" for job growth, and it sure did. But that ref-playing by the WisGOPs caused the Walker-backers at the Journal-Sentinel to call the figure "disputed" in their spin-filled story in today's paper. 49 other states don't dispute the BLS' figures, just the failures in Walker's administration, and it is gutless and shameful for the J-S to play the false equivalency game and give Walker's people any creedence whatsoever in this argument.

But I guess the Guv and his buddies do have to make up new stats, because the Walker jobs gap keeps growing in the real one. What's remarkable with this release is that the private sector job gap now has basically matched the public one, with both over 65,000 jobs.

Wisconsin vs. U.S., all jobs

Wisconsin vs. U.S., private sector jobs

So for the 16 months of Scott Walker's tenure, Wisconsin has lost 8,400 jobs overall and the Walker's "freed up" private sector added...400 jobs. Less than 1 a day.

Any questions? Other than "is 19 days too long to wait to end this disaster?"

I'll have more on the details, like April's drops in construction and manufacturing, and the fact that one of the few sectors that have grown in the last 12 months in Wisconsin is....state government jobs (by 900). But for the time being, enjoy the charts, and I'm off to the Malt House to enjoy the good weather, and a couple of high-quality beers with my grilfriend.

Reactions to Walker's cooked jobs figures

Late here, but I'll pass along Phil Scarr's excellent takedown of Scott Walker's fake jobs report. I'm particularly drawn by this passage

One of the challenges in any political system is to detach the data and analysis from the political process as much as possible. Dispassionate technocrats are what you need to crunch numbers and give you the information you may need to steer the ship of state whether it’s a town, a state or the nation. My father was one of these technocrats. He was the deputy director of the United States Census. He was a consumate statistician who reveled in gigantic datasets.

He told me that once the technocrats become political, it’s game over. The data no longer serve a purpose to help guide policy, but become a tool to enforce ideology. Welcome to Wisconsin.

And this is my fear as well. If you are allowed to lie and create context-free data out of thin air, and not have the media critically confront you with it, this state and this country is in deep trouble.

Another good response on Blogging Blue is from Zach Wisniewski, further exposing the fraudulence of Walker's claims. And he and Workforce Development Secretary Reggie Newson then say with a straight face that the release of this new metric has nothing to do with the upcoming recall elections. Riiight.

But it also tells you a couple of other things. As blogger Jeff Simpson pointed out to me on Twitter, if Walker was really up 6 points, he wouldn't have to make up bullshit like this. I'm liking my theory of Barrett really being in a slight lead, despite what faulty public polls are saying. I just don't get why Barrett and the DPW are afraid of calling these guys scummy LIARS. And no, that won't turn off voters, but it will wake a lot of them up, perhaps just in time to save this state.

And the funniest part of Walker's whole tricked-up jobs release, even if you're a dullard Sykes listener and accept it as fact? THE NUMBERS STILL SUCK! Walker's "magic stat" says a little over 23,000 jobs were created in 2011, but we should have been up nearly 40,000, if we kept up with the U.S. pace. So even when Scott Walker cooks the books and claims tens of thousands more jobs than the usual stats show, it's still 17,000 jobs short!

Of course, the real numbers get released tomorrow, with the Walker jobs gap already at 65,000 jobs. And given the timing of these releases, I'm guessing they won't be that good, because why would the Walker folks step on their own "turnaround" theme if the April numbers were strong?

Garbage Marquette poll alert! It even contradicts itself.

Seems like I gotta do this every day now. I had a feeling Charles Franklin just might adjust things in Scott Walker's favor in his latest Marquette University poll, and he sure did. Franklin's latest poll says Walker leads Barrett 50-44, and by an even higher 51-43 among registered voters. And it doesn't take very long to look at the crosstabs to see exactly why.

The first tip-off is the same as yesterday's faulty PPP poll- Party ID and ideology.

Marquette Law poll, May 2012
Party ID
Republican 28
Democrat 29
Independent 40

Independents' "Leanings"
Republican 41.4
Democrat 36.0
Neither/Indpendent 21.5

Ideology (among those answering)
Conservative 49
Moderate 31
Liberal 20

49-31-20 is a whole lot different than the 2010 exit poll breakdown of 36 con- 43 mod- 21 liberal. And it also tells you that a lot of those alleged "Independents" are really Tea Baggers who refuse to admit they're Republican. An experienced pollster like Franklin should be seeing that poll's right-wing leanings and adjust poll respondents accordingly, but he chose not to.

So let's use that 2010 exit poll and see what the results change to.

Walker 46.52, Barrett 45.66, virtual toss-up.

Pretty different scenario, isn't it? So why the difference? Well, Franklin insists that Walker supporters are more fired up to vote.

“While both parties show unusual levels of involvement in the campaign, Republicans appear to hold an advantage in likely turnout, although Democrats are more likely to have been contacted by a campaign. In a close election with so few undecided voters, enthusiasm, turnout and campaign contact with voters may make the difference.”

Except that Franklin's own numbers don't say that when you go into ideology.

Do you plan to vote in recall election?
Very conservative- 88.2% absolutely, 5.2% very likely
Conservative- 82.5% absolutely, 9.0% very likely
Moderate- 88.6% absolutely, 6.6% very likely
Liberals- 82.5% absolutely, 4.9% very likely
Very liberal- 89.6% absolutely, 7.0% very likely

Seems like all classes of voters are planning to get out to the polls, so why make the poll sample heavy on conservatives? Again, Franklin made a choice to do that.

The poll also has other demographics that are skewed and favor Walker.

Age of respondents
18-29 8%
30-44 13%
45-59 33%
60+ 45%

In 2010, the 18-29 vote was 15% of the total, and more than 1/3 of the voters were under 45 years old, instead of the 1/5 that Franklin thinks they'll be. Doubly hilarious is Franklin's assertion that a majority of those under 30 will vote for WALKER. The only people under 30 who support Walker are the no-talent hacks that work for him and other right-wing political organizations. No real person under 30's voting for that guy. Pathetic.

Who did you vote for in 2010 election
Walker 51.6%
Barrett 40.8% (actual result, Walker 52.25-46.48)

Franklin assumes that nearly 90% of the people who will be replaced in the recall election are Barrett voters. That is an absurd assessment on its face, because if you voted for the other guy, I'm guessing you might be a bit pissed off at Scott Walker these days, and I don't think you'll be the one who bails on the election. Amazingly, Franklin has no cross-tabs on this question, and left off a question that he had last time asking how many respondents had signed a recall petition. Both of these things make the poll seem even more fishy.

And the last one that's worth mentioning is the geography of the poll respondents, which shows another pro-Walker Franklin skew.

What region are you from in Wisconsin?
City of Milwaukee 12%
Rest of Milwaukee media market 30%
Madison media market 17%
Green Bay/ Appleton media market 20%
Rest of state 21%

Franklin also deflated that Madison media market number from an actual of over 18% of respondents. Well, if nearly twice the amount of voters come from the 262 vs. the Madison area, well yeah, Walker will do well. But does anyone honestly think that will happen, especially when past data shows that there are more voters in Dane County than Waukesha County? Then again, the fire that we have here in the Madtown area has been underestimated from Day 1, so why would this be any different?

What's discouraging about all this is that there's no pushback, and no replying polls that use actual turnout data, so the brain-dead media runs along with these figures and is now going to try to convince people "Walker's ahead." It's frustrating when you're a person who lives off of numbers and raw data, but instead find an administration and a right-wing propaganda machine that is allowed to try to create their own reality.

The goal with both these flawed polls and Walker cooking the job books is to trick the average bystander, and drive down our pro-recall enthusiasm. They're doing this because they know, behind the misleading topline results, the crosstabs show that if the good guys show up at the polls in 20 days, Tom Barrett will be elected Governor. We need to stay strong, fight back, and make this happen.

Fake and faulty polls deny Barrett the lead he has

Apparently I'm getting a reputation, as one of the readers asked if I have a breakdown of today's PPP poll which showed a Walker 49, Barrett 45 result. (I use people who can, you know, vote. "Likely voters" is a near-worthless filter). Well, glad you asked, because I do have a breakdown. And like other polls, it's understates Tom Barrett's support.

When you go into the cross-tabs, there's no secret why Walker's winning. More right-wingers answered the poll than left-wingers, and not by a little.

Respondents to May 11-13 PPP Wisc. poll
Republican 35%
Democrat 28%
Independent 37%

Conservative 41%
Moderate 41%
Liberal 17%

Well, if that's who actually shows up to the polls on June 5, then yeah, it looks pretty good for Scott Walker. Too bad for Scotty that this is NOT the breakdown that happens in actual Wisconsin elections, and I'll use the on-target 2010 CBS exit poll as a proxy. Those numnbers were 36-37-28 GOP/Dem/Indy and 36-43-21 Con/Mod/Lib. Change the party and ideology numbers to match that, and check out what you get.

By party- Barrett 48.77, Walker 47.14
By ideology- Barrett 48.41, Walker 45.92

Barrett by 2 or 3 makes a very different scenario than Walker by 5, doesn't it? Again, Kos makes the same mistake they made last month, where they assume Dems and liberals won't vote because it's a "special" election. This is absurd on its face, because the only reason we're having this "special election" is largely because of the efforts of left-leaning groups and individuals (with an assist to moderates and conservatives with a sense of decency). After all the work we've done and engagement that we've had, we're gonna shut it down at money time? THE HELL WE WILL!

And the scary part is that the 2010 turnout model was high for GOPs. As noted in my article last month, Kos's correct predictions for the Senate recalls ended up the way they did because the results went right between the Obama/Dem landslide in 2008 and the Walker/GOP landslide in 2010. So if anything, Barrett could well be up by 4 or 5 with an accurate voter turnout model.

There's also been 2 BS polls by right-wing propagandists in the last week showing Walker with a lead. One of those making the poll was Rasmussen reports, who is hired by Fox do to do polls that fit the station's agenda, and Nate Silver pointed out that Raz was GOP +4 vs. reality in his final polls in 2010, the worst of the major pollsters he tracked. Silver adds that Rasmussen also tried to rig a poll to make it look like Walker had more support than he did after dropping the bomb in Feburary 2011, and if you've followed Razzy over the years, you know this is the point of a campaign where he tries to do "agenda-setting" hammering his fist on the scale for the GOP. So when he says Walker +5, it's probably closer to Barrett +5.

The last poll that has to be called out is "We Ask America", who did a poll for the FIB version of WMC- the Illinois Manufacturers Association. Madison-based Ruth Coniff does a great takedown of this garbage poll in the Progressive.

The text that introduces the "Recall Fever" poll on We Ask America's web site tips the pollsters' hand, calling the law that allows Wisconsin law "loopy" because it's "comparatively easy to recall a governor" (tell that to the 30,000 volunteers who stood out in the snow to gather 1 million signatures).

The numbers are "fluid" and the race is "far from over" the same text says. "Still, some of Walker’s detractors have been vocal about the fact that Walker was duly elected in 2010 and in most states would not be able to be challenged with a recall without greater cause." (Ed. Note: Total weasal words, allowing these gys to double back when reality strikes and Barrett "takes" the lead he already had.)

The poll, of 1,219 likely voters, came in for some harsh criticism by Daily Kos which challenged its cheap methodology, small sample size, difficulty checking the group's polling track record, and obvious Republican bias.

We Ask America also has a record of producing horribly biased polls in Wisconsin, as they said last August that crazy Northwoods Teabagger Kim Simac was within 2 points of Jim Holperin, and she lost the election by 10. Well, if they're GOP +8, then it means that Barrett-Walker is a toss-up, which matches most polls when you use real turout models. Also interestingly, "We Ask America" tried to throw out a poll during the Wisconsin Uprising, and despite a a snarky and pro-right wing narrative that tried to blame President Obama for saying something about the events, still couldn't find a majority of Wisconsinites to support Act 10.

But here's the part that bothers me about these faulty polls. When they come out saying Walker leads when he doesn't, lazy media reports Walker as being ahead without looking behind the numbers, they slant their coverage with that in mind, and casual bystanders may become likely to want to vote for Scotty solely for the selfish reason of wanting to say they supported the winner. I certainly believe bad polls that overstated Ron Johnson's and Walker's leads in 2010 helped them greatly, and both Tom Barrett and Russ Feingold overperformed final polls by 2-3 points on Election Day, even with Dems discouraged because of "GOP landslide" projections.

On a scarier point, inaccruate pro-Walker polls open the door for the Kathy Nickolauses of the world to plausibly cheat and throw the election to Walker. That's why we have to be pushing on these companies to get these polls accurate and matching real Wisconsin voter turnouts, because if they're showing Barrett +5 (like it could conceivably be)and all of a sudden Walker is reported to win by 3 n Election Night despite exit polls showing a Barrett win, a lot of people might find it fishy and not allow the fraud to happen. They might be more likely to shrug their shoulders if the polls show Walker up or even, and allow the cheating to go unpunished.

Bottom line- MAKE DAMN SURE YOU GET OUT TO VOTE ON JUNE 5, and that every decent person you know does the same. If we do that, I think we'll be throwing a helluva party 3 weeks from tonight.

More smackdowns of the attempted alternate Wisconsin economic reality

Looks like the Walker Administration's attempt to convince people that their horrendous job record isn't so horrendous has hit a major speed-bump. And it's Forbes columnist Rick Ungar, who exposes, slices and dices the Walker Administration's attempt to change the job numbers. Ungar's been following the Wisconsin Uprising since the beginning, and has been one of the few national columnists (Greg Sargent at the Washington Post is another) who seems to have a clue about what's really happening, and he hits it on the head here.

I'll give you some key passages, first off where Ungar explains the difference between the two surveys that is the source of Walker's argument.:

Here’s the difference between the two approaches-

The Establishment Payroll Survey involves the DOL calling workplaces-both private and government- and asking how many people are employed. The results of this survey, on a national basis, is the jobs number reported every month for non-farm employment. [ed note: This is the heavily-hyped "jobs number" you see on the monthly employment report.]

The Current Population Survey, favored by Governor Walker, involves calling households to ask people if they are working. This is the survey that gives us our monthly unemployment number—the number that is consistently attacked by Obama foes because it is impacted by factors such as how many people have dropped out of the hunt for a job, expiration of unemployment benefits and other events that skew the numbers. [this is the "8.1% unemployed" number for the nation.] In other words, when people give up looking for work, it actually has a positive impact on the unemployment rate because these people are removed from the counting base, allowing for a better ratio of people who are working to those who are not. This produces a more favorable, but far less accurate, measurement of how many people are unemployed.

The Current Population Survey (household survey) is particularly tricky when applied to determining the job numbers for a state because of the many people who live on the ‘edges’ of a state who are employed across the border in a different state. By way of example, someone living in Racine, Wisconsin may be able to answer in the affirmative when asked if she has a job. However, what is not asked is whether the respondent is employed in Wisconsin or driving across the border into Illinois to go to work. This makes such an individual’s response useful in determining how many people are working on a national basis but perverts the numbers when attempting to determine how many people are actually working in Wisconsin.

For these reasons, the Establishment Survey has long been the primary tool for measuring how many jobs exist in a given state rather than the household survey.

Then Ungar continues, with a great quote from Laura Dresser at the Madison-based COWS:

In the presentation noted above, [DOR economist John] Koskinen argues that were the DOL to use the old benchmarking readjustment standards (the Labor Department uses up-to-date data each year to go back and make adjustments to earlier estimates), involving making corrections to the 2nd quarter job numbers of the previous year rather than the current standards of readjusting the 3rd quarter of the previous year—it would also look better for Wisconsin. Accordingly, Walker is choosing to use the old standards because…well, I think the reason is sufficiently obvious.

Still, every single other state in the union uses the current standards of readjusting 3rd quarter benchmarks and it is that number which is used to compare relative success or failure among the 50 states.

According to Laura Dresser, a labor economist at The Center On Wisconsin Strategy at The University Of Wisconsin, Walker’s new numbers are little more than an incredibly transparent effort to create a false reality just in time to mislead Wisconsin voters who will cast their ballot in a few short weeks. Pointing out just one of the flaws in the ‘new and improved’ Walker method of measuring job growth, Dresser says, “It seems that they’re attributing employment growth in other states to Wisconsin.”

Dresser further points out that even if we were to go along with Walker’s preferred metrics, despite their being completely out of synch with the remainder of the country, we simply end up “dancing around zero.” While the Establishment Survey puts the numbers of jobs lost slightly below zero, the alternative survey preferred by the Walker people puts them just above zero. At the end of the day, we’re talking about zero job growth—even under Walker’s favored, if completely unorthodox, approach.

Basically, the Walker folks want to say that they're oranges when every other state is an apple. No sale here, and the way they're complaining, it sure seems like Thursday's job report might not amount to much. (As a reminder, Wisconsin needed to create 2,500 jobs in April to keep up with the U.S., and to avoid having the Walker jobs deficit increase from its current level of 65,000 jobs.)

There's a related addition to this rightie attempt to change the reality of Fitzwalkerstan's economic failures. Steve Eggleston wrote a breakdown of Koskinen's presentation, and while a lot of it is propaganda, it is worth a read because you can see where the Walker folks reach for these arguments. Ungar's already talked about the jobs part, so I'll leave that out, but I'll discuss Eggleston's arguments about Wisconsin income growth.

The Bureau of Economic Analysis said that per-capita personal income in Wisconsin grew by 4.8% in between 2010 and 2011. That is not only significantly higher than the national average of 4.3% growth, but was the 11th-highest in the country.

In part because of that, and in part because the Republicans repealed the “millionaires’ tax” and combined reporting instituted by the Democrats when they had total control of state government in 2009, general-purpose revenue increased by an adjusted 4.3% for the first 10 months of FY2012 from FY2011 (that adjustment is downward from 6.0% due to more pay periods this time around). That includes an adjusted 4.5% increase (7.8% unadjusted) in individual income taxes, a 4.8% increase in sales taxes, and 5.4% in corporate taxes. Of note, FY2012 started in July 2011, when the CES measure of employment began to wildly diverge from the other two measures.

Makes some sense, until you take a look at the BEA report on personal income, and what happened to it in Wisconsin once Walker's policies took hold. Remember that Act 10 was passed at the end of Q1, and Walker's budget became law at the start of Q2.

State personal income % change by Quarter, Wisc. and Midwest 2011
Iowa 3.1, 1.1, 1.0, 0.9 - +2.92% last 3 quarters
Ohio 1.6, 0.9, 1.0, 0.6 - +2.52% last 3 quarters
U.S. 2.1, 0.9, 0.8, 0.8 - +2.45% last 3 quarters
Ind. 2.2, 0.9, 0.9, 0.6 - +2.45% last 3 quarters
Ill. 2.3, 0.8, 0.7, 0.7 - +2.19% last 3 quarters
Wis. 2.3, 0.7, 0.9, 0.5 - +2.17% last 3 quarters
Minn 1.9, 0.7, 0.2, 0.7 - +1.68% last 3 quarters
Mich 2.8, 0.0, 0.9, 0.7 - +1.54% last 3 quarters

So Wisconsin was 5th out of 7 states in the Midwest for income growth and below the U.S. average. But even that is masked by the fact that more than half the income growth happened in a time when Jim Doyle and the Dems' 2009-2011 budget was in place and public employees had collective bargianing rights. So once that 1st Quarter of 2011 drops off, Walker's numbers are awful the rest of the time, and Eggleston's theory that Walker policies have grown incomes looks to be completely wrong.

Eggleston's other argument worth hacking apart is the argument that unemployment claims are down compared to when Walker took office.

Perhaps the data that is most damning of the CES “job loss” is initial unemployment claims. The DOR produced a chart showing that those claims are the lowest in 5 years.

First of all, just because there are fewer jobs doesn't always mean there has to be higher unemployment claims. Remember the record retirements from public workers in 2011? Those people never filed for unemployment. Neither did people who may have moved or gotten work in other states, and we know about half of the drop in unemployment in Wisconsin from 7.6% to 6.8% under Walker have been from people leaving the work force (i.e. not because they got a job).

And as we also know, after Act 10 was passed, Wisconsin lost the edge it was having on the rest of the nation, actually seeing the change in their year-over-year unemployment claims rise vs. the rest of the nation, instead of staying well below the rest of the U.S. like they did in 2010.

So the Walker folks can continue to try their deceptions and claim they're right while the measures for every other state are wrong. But the data tells otherwise, and if our media gives this even a modicom of analysis (instead of "he said/ she said" bullshit), Walker's going to look even more foolish than he already does.

Quick announcement- Righties trying to flood the zone

Those of you who were on here last night might have noticed three piles of talking-point filled trash polluting the comments section, so as a result, I'm putting on comment moderation. I apologize for the delay this'll cause in getting things published, but it has to be done.

Also, it's a good example of what right-wingers are trying to do with this recall- Rasmussen and the Illinois version of WMC have released polls showing Walker ahead, both of which are suspect at best and total bullshit at worst. These polls and the giving away of "Stand with Walker" signs are trying to drive an agenda of "Walker has huge support and is ahead," so bystanders will be fooled enough to jump on the bandwagon, or not be as fired up to recall this disgraceful administration.

In reality, it means they are frightened out of their wits, and it's why they're pulling all these lies and stunts out of their backsides. Because they can't win on the facts. My advice: Push back harder, and let em know that there's a lot more of us than there are of them. Because there are.