What we now know- Walker destroyed Wisconsin more than we thought (Part 1)

You know how I had the pictures up yesterday on the failures of Scott Walker when it came to jobs? Well, as part of the monthly jobs report from DWD, we got benchmark revisions for all of 2011. And take a gander at how the pictures have now changed vs. what I had yesterday.

U.S. jobs pace vs. Wisconsin, all jobs

U.S. jobs pace vs. Wisconsin, private sector

Right away, you can see the effect of Walker's 2 "bombs." The first was Act 10, removing collective bargaining rights, signed in March 2011. In the 3 months before then, the state had gained 14,100 jobs. Immediately after Act 10, Wisconsin lost jobs for each of the next 5 months, and gave up 34,700 for the rest of the year. Even today's upside surprise of 12,500 still leaves us down more than 22,000 jobs since Act 10 was bullied through the Legislature.

The second bomb is the signing of Walker's budget, which happened in June 2011. If you look at the private sector chart, while Wisconsin had flatlined and fallen behind the rest of the nation's growth, the real damage happened after the budget became law. We lost private sector jobs in 5 of the last 6 months, and threw away 21,700 jobs overall for the rest of 2011 while U.S. private sector hiring was picking up. Sure, we got a nice, seasonally-adjusted boost in January of 15,700 jobs(I'll explain that in a later post- it ain't actually due to hiring), but we're still not back to where we were when the budget was signed, and are way behind the strengthing U.S. economy.

In fact, even with the bump up in January, the Walker jobs deficit has grown from the 40,000 I estimated it to be yesterday, because the 2011 revisions are that bad. Given the revisions, January's figures mean that if we had no revisions and the same total jobs numbers, we'd have LOST 7,200 jobs and 1,100 in the private sector. The deficit is currently near 53,000 in overall jobs, and 46,000 in private sector jobs, and amazingly that is DOWN from the deficits of 60,000 overall and 56,000 private that existed at the end of 2011. Frightening figures.

And the worst revision of them all? The June numbers in the report. You know, the ones I immediately had suspicions about and the ones that Walker's DWD told him were tourism-based and sketchy, but he took credit for anyway. Well, turns out the pros were right, it was bullshit.

Wisconsin June jobs
June reported total jobs +11,000
June revised total jobs -9,000 (-20,000 revision)

June reported total jobs +14,800
June revised total jobs ZERO (-14,800 revision)

Amazing how those figures came out right before the recall elections, and now these nice numbers come out near a Walker recall election. That alone should make you question the increase. But even if the state is finally catching onto the Obama recovery, it still doesn't come close to making up for the damage that Walker and WisGOP inflicted on it in 2011, and we'll going to have to work extra hard just to get out of the hole these guys have put us in.

P.S. The revisions also reiterate that Walker landed in a pretty good situation when he took office. Check out the Wisconsin jobs numbers for the last year of the Doyle Administration and Dem-controlled Legislature, and compare it to 1 year of Walker and WisGOP being in control.

2010- +51,500 private sector jobs, +42,000 total jobs
2011- -9,700 private sector jobs, -20,600 total jobs

That's a fall of over 60 THOUSAND JOBS in one year, in a time when the rest of the nation improved. How are these guys not getting torches and pitchforks for what they've done?

Walker jobs gap at 40,000, to grow tomorrow?

Tomorrow's the long-awaited release of the January Wisconsin jobs report. Now, if the state was a normal part of the U.S.'s 243,000-job increase, we should be in pretty good shape, with a few thousand jobs put back into our state's economy. However, I'd be surprised if we got there, as we saw Wisconsin lead the Midwest in mass layoffs in January, and had tax revenues fall 1.9% vs. January 2011.

And it's not like Wisconsin isn't already massively in the hole in the time of Fitzwalkerstan, as we've shed the most jobs in America the last six months while the country has consistently added 150,000-200,000 private sector jobs each of those months. In fact, if Wisconsin had added jobs at the same rate as the U.S., we'd have had 40,000 more jobs than we had at the end of 2011. What I've done in these two charts is take Wisconsin's January 2011 job totals (when Walker took over), and then (1. show how much we would have gained had we added jobs at the same pace as the rest of the country up through the Jan. 2012 report. Then I (2. Compared it to what we actually got in Fitzwalkerstan through our last job report in December 2011. Once Walker's budget took over on July 1, well, you'll see the result.

Wisconsin vs. U.S.- total jobs


Wisconsin vs. U.S. - private sector jobs


As you can see in both cases, Wisconsin was holding up with the U.S. growth under the Doyle/Dem budget, and ran ahead of the country with the fluky June jobs report that Walker knew was a one-time deal, but took credit for anyway.

And now instead of gaining over 23,000 jobs since June, we've lost 35,000, and what was our advantage now has left us more than 40,000 in the hole for both all jobs as well as the private sector. So now we need to gain 5,200 total jopbs and 5,600 private sector jobs in tomorrow's report JUST TO KEEP FROM FALLING FURTHER BEHIND.

This is the biggest danger of keeping this disastrous administration on any longer than this Summer. Every month we keep from recovering from our Wisconsin recession, we fall further back from a U.S. economy that seems to be not only recovering, but picking up steam. Anything less than several thousand jobs created should be considered another loss for the Walker Administration, and with Friday's U.S. jobs report for February's also predicted to be strong, the Walker jobs deficit will only grow unless things are turned around NOW.

And a pathetic corporate giveaway of a mining bill that's written by industry lobbyists isn't going to be the magic pill, Scotty. Maybe instead of acting like a Confederate low-tax, low-wage, low-skill state, you need to try something that actually improves consumer demand and improves the workers coming into the pipeline.

But since you aren't paid to know that, we'll just get a new governor and a Legislature that does understand these things, and throw your underperforming corporatist asses out.

How the RW propaganda machine works

The story I saw last week talking about how the Koch Brothers are trying to take over the Cato Institue, another right-wing ideology factory, reminded me of how interconnected a lot of these groups and the GOP are.

With that in mind, check out this video. It shows how the Koch Brothers create fake organizations and produce "experts" that spread their BS to uncritical media, which allows their lies to get exposure that they do not deserve. It also shows how they conspire with politicians and RW media to complete the circle. Narrated by the always-excellent Bernie Sanders, with a special appearance by Wisconsin's own Paul Ryan.


There's a quote in the Koch/Cato story that should be especially resonant here in Wisconsin.

“They said that a principle goal was to defeat Barack Obama,” remembered Levy. “The way David [Koch] put it was, ‘We would like you to provide intellectual ammunition that we can then use at Americans for Prosperity and our allied organizations.’ AFP and others would apply Cato's work to advance their electoral goals.”

If this sounds familiar, it should, because it's the exact same type of move I described 3 weeks ago with the Heartland Institute's Operation Angry Badger, which is an anti-public schools propaganda campaign heavily funded by the Kochs' "group of philanthropists" and Milwaukee's Bradley Foundation. See, the Kochs' and the right-wing network try to use these shadow organizations to give legitimacy to illegitimate politicians and positions, and our media frequently fails to disclose this reality (if they're even aware that these "think tanks" are nothing more than lie machines).

And at the state level, we see how this works as well. Look at James Rowen's excellent work on the mining bill, where he reveals how Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce lobbyists and Scott Fitzgerald's office constantly got inside info on the bill, and how Charles Sykes and Fitzgerald worked together on messaging to smear Dale Schultz when he objected to this one-sided, ridiculous bill.

Lastly, look at the recent article from Rebecca Kemble in the Progressive, which showed how Walker donors were given spots on the state's judicial commission to "interpret" laws and ethics for judges. You may also remember that one of the original members of that selection group was none other than Eric McLeod, who had to step down from his post after being part of Michael Best, & Friedrich's "free advice" group for Justic Michale Gableman.

You can see how a small, insular group that relies on ideological solutions over fact and reality can gain a foothold in this type of environment, and how an unknowing media will give that group credibility when they are worthy of none. What we have to do is constantly expose these back-room connections and lies, and make them pay for hoisting these falisities into public debate. You can bet that the Cato takeover and Operation Angry Badger won't be the last times the Kochs or other right-wing lie machines will try to misdirect people. But if we're in their face at every turn, we can certainly turn them back, and have solutions based on reality instead of corporate pocketbooks and campaign contributions.

PPP poll shows Walker will lose if real Wisconsin votes.

I wanted to give a recent Scott Walker/ recall polls the same treatment I gave to Marquette University's faulty January poll. And no, I won't county the absurd Rasmussen poll that got released, because they are documented propagandists with a huge GOP bias and they fixed a poll in Wisconsin last year to exaggerate support for Walker and Act 10.

Instead, I'll look at the Public Policy Poll in Wisconsin, which showed Walker behind Tom Barrett, Kathleen Falk and Ron Kind (Barrett led by 3, and Falk and Kind led by 1), and I'll break it down a few different ways, to see what's really going on. (you can check out the poll yourself, as PPP is very transparent about what they release.)

First, let's break down the ideology breakdown of the polls, and then compare it with the 2010 Wisconsin exit poll given by CBS News. The PPP poll has it go 29-31-40 liberal-moderate-conservative, while the 2010 exit poll was 21-43-36. At first glance, this would seem to underplay Walker's support, as the liberal amount in the PPP Poll is 8 points higher than the 2010 exit poll. But let's run the numbers and find out for sure.

Walker's approval level in the PPP Poll is at 47%, but it changes greatly based on ideology. Basically, the only people that approve of Walker are righties, and even moderates can't stand him.

Walker approval-disapproval by ideology
Liberal/ Very liberal- 11-89
Moderate - 29-69 (!!!)
Conservative - 82-15
Very conservative - 93-6

So now you turn that into the Wisconsin exit polling weights, and we get- Walker at just under 46% approval. So he actually does 1 point WORSE under the actual turnout in the 2010 election, even with fewer liberals in the group and with an election that featured motivated Republican voters and much less motivated Dem voters.

Let's do the same with party ID. The PPP poll has it 33% Dem, 31% Republican, and 36% Independent. As you'd imagine, Dems and GOPs view Walker completely differently, but Independents tend not to like the guy.

Walker approval-disapproval by party ID
Dem 7-91
GOP 92-6
Ind 43-55

Now, I'd argue that you should drop a few points of Walker's approval on the Independent side because we know Teabaggers call themselves "Independent" when they're really far-right Republicans. But we'll leave that part out of it for now, and compare it with the 2010 exit poll of 37% Dem, 36% GOP, and 28% Independent.

The result? This time the number ends up just under 48%, so a minor INCREASE, but around the 47% of the PPP poll's totals.

Now let's go to some of the matchups in a possible recall guv election, and we'll go to the ideology cross-tabs to see if Scotty would get sent home. Again, we'll take the PPP answers and use the 21-43-36 liberal-moderate-conservative 2010 exit poll, and I'll leave off Feingold because I'm convinced Russ isn't going to run.

Walker vs. Barrett- Barrett leads 49.54 - 45.59
Walker vs. Falk - Falk leads 47.97 - 46.02
Walker vs. Vinehout - Walker leads 45.17 - 44.05
Walker vs. La Follette - Walker leads 45.60 - 44.26
Walker vs. Kind - Kind leads 45.69 - 44.74
Walker vs. Barca - Walker leads 47.38 - 45.55

So the PPP numbers are more or less in line, but the numbers also show that Walker loses moderates by at least 25 points among all opponents, and loses mods to Barrett by 35. This is why Barrett has the biggest lead, and exposes Walker's largest vulnerability- he only has his base, no one else supports Walker.

Walker also has an age problem- only old white guys favor him. Walker loses in all age ranges under 65 against Barrett, and is down 30 points (33-63) to Falk among voters under 30. Even against Vinehout and La Follette, Walker can only draw even with the 46-65 Boomers, and loses both groups in the 18-45 age range. The only reason he's even close is that he wins people over 65 by 15 points or so against all opponents.

18-29 year-olds were only 10% of the PPP sample, and 30-45 were 28% of the sample, and that's notably different than the 2010 exit poll which was 15% 18-29 and 23% 30-44. The PPP sample also has 20% of voters be over 65, while the 2010 exit poll had it at 17%.

So adjust the ages to fit the 2010 exit poll, and let's see what we get.

Walker vs. Barrett- Barrett leads 49.38 - 46.00
Walker vs. Falk - Falk leads 49.13 - 45.63
Walker vs. Vinehout - Walker leads 44.93 - 44.51
Walker vs. La Follette - Walker leads 45.51 - 44.43
Walker vs. Kind - Kind leads 45.77 - 45.15
Walker vs. Barca - Walker leads 47.08 - 45.48

Among other things, Falk's lead goes from 1 in the PPP poll to nearly 4, and the Vinehout race becomes a virtual toss-up. In fact, Walker doesn't get above 47.08 in ANY of these polls when weighted for age, which means if he doesn't get 1/3 of undecideds, he can't win any of these races (and good luck having Walker bring in any undecideds to his way at this point.)

So when you break down the PPP numbers and compare it to the 2010 Wisconsin turnout that put Scott Walker into office, it is probable that he would be tossed out, and that's especially true if young voters and non-conservatives turn out. Too bad for Scotty that a big side benefit to getting all the recall signatures is the huge database of voter contacts that the Wisconsin Democrats will have to make sure these people stay engaged and get to the polls.

So no wonder Walker and the WisGOPs passed voter ID and other measures to suppress the vote- they know that if a real cross-section of Wisconsin turns out at the voter booth, THEY CAN'T WIN.

When does 7.5% unemployment show improvement over 7.4%? In Walker World!

I've used previous posts to rip on DWD Secretary Reggie Newson and his silly spin jobs over the Walker Administration horrible record on jobs, but I understand it's part of the job. And you're failing like the Walker boys are on jobs, you sometimes need to reach really far to put a good face on things.

But this reached new levels yesterday, after the Bureau of Labor Statistics released the state-by-state averages for unemployment for 2011. Newson sent out a press release that included the following.

Wisconsin's annual average unemployment rate dropped a full percentage point to 7.5 percent from 8.5 percent in 2010, ranking us among the 10 states with the most dramatic decline in unemployment rates in 2011," Secretary Newson said. "In addition, Wisconsin's average unemployment rate ranking of 20th lowest represent a drop from 24th in 2010, and is the state's lowest ranking among the states and District of Columbia since 2000.

Today's report reaffirms that over the last year, when compared to other states, Wisconsin's employment rate has been heading in the right direction under Governor Walker's leadership.

This release is a classic case of trying to use statistics out of context to confuse the ignorant. Because the BLS's "average" unemployment rate uses the average of all 12 months a state had, it does not reflect where the state began or ended. So while Wisconsin's "average" unemployment was 8.5% in 2010, you have to remember that the state's unemployment was 9.2% in January, and ended at 7.5% in December. Not bad when you look at it like that.

In fact, when Walker took over in January 2011, unemployment had dropped to 7.4%. So using the BLS stats, I could argue that Wisconsin unemployment went UP in 2011 from a starting point of 7.4% in 2011 to an average of 7.5%, while national unemployment fell from a starting point of 9.0% to an average of 8.9%. And I'd probably be a lot more accurate in describing the bad performance of the last year in Fitzwalkerstan, wouldn't I?

That BLS report shows more behind the numbers, as the unemployment rate can also go down due to fewer people in the work force. So it can be useful to go to the Employment-Population ratio (EPR) to see if more people are truly working. EPR shows how many people are employed vs. the entire population, instead of just those working and looking for work. So people who have stopped looking for work, retired, went back to school, etc. are reflected in the EPR.

And when you look at EPR, Wisconsin trailed most of its neighbors, and actually had a lower percentage of people working under Walker than we had under Doyle.

2010-2011 Change in average EPR, Midwest
Minn +0.5%
Ind. +0.5%
Mich +0.3%
Ohio +0.2%
Wisc -0.1%
Ill. -0.2%
Iowa -0.4%

So as much as Reggie Newson in DWD may try to spin the BLS report, it only reiterates how well Wisconsin bounced back in 2010 under the Doyle/ Dem budget, and then stalled and went in reverse under the Walker/ WisGOP policies. And given the mass layoff stats for January and the large amount of local government cutbacks at the start of this year, don't count on it changing in the near future, even with the Obama Recovery going on in much of the rest of the country.

Mass layoffs and job loss mean Walker shouldn't be ripping on the FIBs

You might have heard by now that Wisconsin led the Midwest in mass layoffs for January, and the Walker Administration should be rightfully ripped, as much of the Midwest and the country continues to rebound while Wisconsin goes backward.

One of the states that Wisconsin had more mass layoffs than in January was Illinois, which is quite an accomplishment given that Illinois' job base is more than twice that of Wisconsin, and should be higher based solely on that. But it was not the case last month.

Mass layoff stats, January 2012
Illinois 55 mass layoff events, 4,823 first-time unemployment claimants
Wisconsin 78 mass layoff events, 6,014 first-time unemployment claimants

Wisconsin had 23 more events and 25% more first-time unemployment claimants than our neighbors to the south, despite the fact that Illinois has twice the population. No, that's not good.

And those stats are extra noteworthy because Walker and squawk radio were using Illinois Governor Pat Quinn's plan to cut Medicaid by as much as $2.7 billion and major Corrections cuts as a reason to say Walker's Way was better and "working." But what is not mentioned by Scotty and co. is the fact that Quinn chose not to gut Illinois' K-12 or college education funding, and is in fact wants to put in a bit more money to early childhood classes and low-income college scholarships to keep up with demands. It is no different than Walker choosing to cut BadgerCare, K-12 education, the UW System and aid to local communities while giving away hundreds of millions to the Road Builders. It's just a matter of what Quinn has chosen to cut and tax vs. Walker.

And given the results of the last few months, maybe we should conisder that Quinn is handling the situation in a better way, because Illinois' has done laps around Wisconsin in job creation since Walker's budget took effect last Summer.

Private sector jobs since June
Illinois +7,500
Wisconsin -28,100 (Illinois up 35,600)

Private sector jobs since July
Illinois +22,400
Wisconsin -16,900 (Illinois up 38,300)

Not that I'd ever want to be a FIB instead of a Cheesehead, but I sure would not be comparing our "50th out of 50" job performance with the Flatlanders around now, Scotty. Although given the pay-to-play corruption and pathetically one-sided gerrymandering, I'd say Walker and the WisGOPs have done a fine imitation of Illinois-style governance, haven't they?

Walker deserves the Costanza response on pensions

Looks like Gov. Walker is starting to hear the concerns that he's going to try to steal the state's fully-funded public worker pensions in order to balance his deficit-ridden state budget. On Friday, he had his cabinet secretaries release an email to employees trying to convince people that the pensions would not be touched. My notes are in bold and parentheses.

Questions have been raised by some of our employees regarding a study currently underway to review the structure and benefits of the Wisconsin Retirement System (WRS). Gee why would they think that? Because the employees aren't stupid and know Walker will screw them in a heartbeat. The Wisconsin Department of Employee Trust Funds (ETF) prepared a brief memo, which provides a technical summary of the details of the study. Please click here to read the memo. The memo basically says the state is working on a study which will be released by June 30, and that one of the options is to turn the system from its current defined-benefit approach to allowing employees to "opt-out" and take part in a 401K-type of system. If that doesn't freak you out, given what we've seen out of the stock market the last 12 years, it needs to.

I would like to emphasize the following points:

§ WRS is a healthy, fully-funded system.

§ Wisconsin law does not allow elected officials to modify already-earned benefits. And 2 years ago public employees had collective bargaining right guaranteed. They can always be changed through legislation. In addition, Governor Walker has repeatedly expressed he has no intention, nor does he have the authority, to change already-earned benefits for current state employees. what about future benefits?

§ By providing policy-makers and agency staff with new research, this study will contribute to the strength of the WRS, by ensuring that the state continues to support retirement security for public employees across Wisconsin at a reasonable cost. i.e- we're trying to cut what we pay into the system for our employees even more and leave you out on your own when it comes to getting benefits.

§ We have a responsibility to study options to safeguard the long-term sustainability of the fund for the future of Wisconsin public employees. And help our pro-Wall Street campaign contributors by giving them more fresh meat for customers.

You really need to take a tip from the George Costanza School of Decision-making when you see Walker officials discussing matters. Take what Walker says, believe the complete opposite, and you'll probably be right. Look at the history:

1. The revealing of Act 10: "We're broke and have nothing to offer." Turned out that the state had a budget surplus on the way, not a deficit, and that union officials told them they would accept Walker's increased health care and pension contributions in exchange for keeping bargaining rights, and Walker turned them down.

2. Walker and paid hacks like Christian Schneider of WPRI like to claims Walker's "tools" have allowed schools to function the same despite hundreds of millions of dollars in cuts to K-12 education. This simply is not true, as the Wisconsin Association of School District Administrators said that the vast majority of school districts have lost staff and cut classes, because the "tools" did not coome close to making up for the budget cuts, even in schools that could use them. And the 2012-2013 year looks even more dire than last year.

3. Walker and his supporters are still claiming that the Wisconsin budget is balanced with no tax increases. First of all, we're $208 million in deficit (and would be $233 in million if Walker wasn't stealing money from the mortgage settlement), so strike 1, but strike 2 is that Walker's budget included more than $112 million in added fees, including huge tuition increases for UW System schools.

4. Walker actively complained about Jim Doyle's habit of using surplus funds in one area of the budget to pay for another, including a promise not to use Transportation Fund money to pay for General Fund shortfalls. Except Walker used numerous fund raids in his budget, including $160 million sent away from the General Fund and into the Transportation Fund as a kickback from his Road Builder buddies. Even Republi-fact admitted that Walker broke his promise, and also included moves such as environmental cleanup fees going into the Road Building fund instead of being used for environmental protection.

So when the Walker folks claim that they are not going to mess with employees pensions, you need to use the Costanza rule, and realize that they are absolutely going after the pensions if they get to put together another budget next year. Let's not allow that happen.