Why Prof. Franklin MacIvered the Marquette poll - because the righties paid him to (Part 2)

So the question becomes, "Why did Charles Franklin allow such as obviously flawed poll to be printed?" And this is the scary part- he did it because printing pro-Walker polls is what he's really paid to do.

And it's happened before in Wisconsin. UW-Madison had to withdraw its name, students and logo from polls conducted by UW professor Ken Goldstein when evidence surfaced that WPRI was compromising the integrity of the polls. In this case, the WPRI "guidance" came on the subject of school vouchers, as polls weren't going the pro-voucher way the Bradley boys wanted it to.

Scot Ross, a liberal muckraker who runs the group One Wisconsin Now, was critical of the deal from the beginning. He said his "worst fears were confirmed" after he obtained e-mails under the open records law showing WPRI President George Lightbourn lobbied Goldstein to publicize results from one question in a way favorable to its agenda.

The question asked whether government funding should be used for school vouchers, which WPRI supports. A majority of residents statewide were opposed, but those surveyed from Milwaukee County were in favor.

Lightbourn wrote Goldstein he was concerned critics would portray the data as showing a lack of support for vouchers and asked for the Milwaukee County results to be emphasized. The university's press release read: "School choice remains popular in Milwaukee."

With that in mind, check out this great post from Ed Garvey at Fightin' Bob, which explains how Franklin left UW to do this similar project with Marquette Law, in no small part because it let him get around the Open Records Laws that allowed Ross to expose Goldstein's unethical setup.

The key participants in this drama were Lightbourn, Ken Goldstein and Charles Franklin. It should be noted that Mike Gousha is part of the Marquette poll and that pro-voucher former MJS education reporter Alan Borsuk has joined Team Marquette as well.

When WPRI found to its dismay that open records laws applied to its deal with UW, because the UW is a public institution and the public has a right to know what the UW is doing, that killed the partnership. Instead of fighting the decision, Goldstein and Franklin took leaves from UW Poli Sci while they proceeded to pursue their plans. Goldstein formed a company, and Franklin went to Marquette Law School to "provide unbiased polling results in a volatile political year like 2012."

How would Marquette define Franklin's role? Who would pay for the expenses of polling? Who would frame the questions? Who would have final say? Does MJS still have an exclusive?

We asked the MJS several times if the paper knew who was funding the polling, who had final say on questions, and what Franklin's title would be. We never got an answer. Nada, nothing, no-way.

And then Garvey's concerns are backed up in the column by an interesting comment from "Gareth".

My wife's elderly cousin in Milwaukee received a phone call from the Marquette poll last week. She is very skeptical of the poll and asked the caller "What part of Marquette, The MacIver Institute?" After a pause the caller said "Yes" at which point the cousin hung up the phone.

So Charles Franklin is clearly in partnership with the Milwaukee right-wing bubble world notorious for organizations like WPRI and the MacIver Foundation releasing flawed studies which magically support positions that favor their points of view. And given that Franklin's paycheck is reliant on keeping the bosses happy, it would make perfect sense for him to put his fist on the scales toward the favored candidate of WPRI, MacIver and Bradley- Scott Walker. Add in the uncritical, pro-Walker antics of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, and it is no surprise that they joined in to get exclusive interviews with Franklin to go over the data, and spread these "scientific" polls to an unaware public.

It's much like how the Koch Brothers set up shadow organizations and think tanks in D.C. to create an echo chamber that tries to tear down our social fabric. A great illustation of how this works is described by the awesome Sen. Bernie Sanders in the movie Koch Brothers Exposed



A related story is how the Koch-funded Heartland Institute tried to set up Operation Angry Badger to make up stories about the "success" of Act 10 with Wisconsin schools to support Walker's pro-voucher policies.

Given the evidence of Charles Franklin's connections to right-wing organizations like MacIver and WPRI, why would I not believe this new Marquette Law polling outfit is nothing more than a disguised propaganda outlet? Especially when I know and the Koch/Bradley leaders know that our state's lazy media is likely to run with any results that come out of this Marquette Law poll to mold their storylines?

Now Charles Franklin may be tricking the foolish transcribers at the Journal-Senintel and State Journal (or just appearing to fool them, I bet some of them are in on this sick joke), but those of us on the ground in Wisconsin are not fooled. We know that Charles Franklin chose his paycheck over credibility, and MacIvered this poll so that it could appear on the surface to show Scott Walker comfortably ahead.

Walker's has recently released panicked, fear-filled ads, which tells me they know they are in serious jeopardy of getting blown out of power. And combined with the massive and increasingly pathetic spinning Walker continues to do on John Doe, I'm becoming convinced that if the real Wisconsin continues to march over to the polls, and especially shows up on June 5, that we will end the age of Fitzwalkerstan. And there isn't anything Charles Franklin's MacIvered polls can do about that.

MU Law poll massively rigged to favor Walker. Ignore it. (Part 1)

Given the clear momentum that Tom Barrett seems to have grabbed, you just sort of knew there would be a garbage poll coming out to try to show Scott Walker ahead to try to blunt the movement. And Marquette Law Professor Charles Franklin did not disappoint, throwing up a poll today showing Walker up 52-45 among likely voters, and 49.93- 44.35 among all voters. So given that Franklin and Marquette notoriously skewed their last poll to show Walker up 5, I figured I'd go inside the numbers and test this out as well.

Immediately what jumped out at me was this question.

What region of the state are you from?
Milwaukee City 13%
Rest of Milwaukee media market 33%
Madison media market 17%
Green Bay/Appleton media market 18%
Rest of state media markets 19%

That's right, this sample is based on 46% of the state being from the Milwaukee media market. Immediately, this seems like bullshit, but I wanted to test out this theory with the 2010 final results from the Walker-Barrett governor's election, which had a relatively high Milwaukee (and especially 262) turnout. So I took the results from Dodge, Kenosha, Milwaukee, Ozaukee, Racine, Sheboygan, Waukesha and Washington Counties, and compared it to the rest of the state.

Total votes cast in "Milwaukee media market", 2010- 866,576
Total votes cast for state- 2,160,832
Percent of votes cast from Milwaukee media market- 40.1%

So Franklin's oversampling them by 6%, and probably more than that given that other parts of the state (like the Madison market) will probably have higher turnout than we saw in 2010. Now interestingly, Walker only leads 48-45 in this part of the state, but that's still is a whole lot better than the 54-40 he's losing by in the Madison media market (which is equally undersampled at only 17% of all respondents and even 54-40 seems low for Barrett, because Walker might be lucky to hold Barrett to 54% in ANY county in the Madison media market.) This move to emphasize Milwaukee seems sketchy at best, but there are more obvious ways to show how skewed this poll is.

And the best is through ideology questions. As mentioned before, the the 2010 Wisconsin exit poll showed ideology at 21% liberal, 43% moderate and 36% conservative. So how does Franklin measure up? Check out question number 13 on the cross-tabs.

Ideology, Marquette poll
Very conservative 9
Conservative 33 (42% total)
Moderate 32
Liberal 16
Very liberal 7 (23% total)
Don't know (v) 2
Refused (v) 2

Somehow a 42-32 con-to-mod breakdown might go a bit better for Walker than the 36-43 one like he had in 2010, don't you think?

So let's turn these numbers and match the responses to the actual 2010 turnout (which is itself is more favorable to Walker, as the 60-65% predicted turnout on June 5 will probably skew more moderate and liberal). And we get...

Walker 48.62 - Barrett 46.11. Very close race, even with the pro-Milwaukee skew allowed. And do you really think any undecideds would vote for Governor John Doe?

On a realted note, Franklin also makes the same mistake last week's St. Norbert poll made- underpolling 2010 Barrett voters compared to 2010 Walker voters.

(Among those answering) Who did you vote for in 2010?
Walker 50.34%
Barrett 42.36% (actual result, Walker 52.25%, Barrett 46.48%)

So that's 2.2% of a higer gap than the real result. A 2.2% drop in Walker's edge among possible voters would lower Walker's advantage to 3.3%, and would be portrayed as a near toss-up, which wouldn't sound so good if you wanted Walker to stop Barrett's momentum now would it? Strangely, Franklin refuses to give cross-tabs on this question, and you can't see who those people are voting for specifically, but it's probably a good guess that they'd be more likely to favor Walker. And while Franklin includes a lot of interesting questions about attitudes and how people may have done things like discuss politics and yard signs, but he mysteriously dropped a question he had a month ago on whether a person had signed a recall petition. Makes you wonder why. Maybe a low number of voters woud expose this sample as even more GOP-leaning (remember, the equivalent of 42% of the 2010 voter turnout signed a Walker recall petition).

And the last skew I want to bring up goes to another major problem I've had with Franklin's polling all the way through, the Marquette Law School's habit of weighting certain groups if they can't get them on the phone. As Marqutte Law explains in their methodology statement

Post-stratification, or weighting, compensates for patterns of non-response that shift sample characteristics from
known population values. In telephone surveys it is common for potential respondents who are younger to
exhibit higher rates of non-response resulting in these groups being under-represented in the sample. To
compensate for these non-response effects the sample is weighted to bring sample characteristics into line with
the population values.

And they sure lived up to it in this poll, as they talked to virtually nobody that wasn't near Boomer age in this poll.

Unweighted average of Marquette Law poll
18-29 6%
30-44 16%
45-59 34%
60+ 43%

That's right, 77% of respondents were 45 or older. Sure, the Marquette people tried deflating down from that with their weighting, but let's be real about this, it's going to be flawed. You can't get anything close to a representative poll with that lack of age diversity, especially when you realize that more than half of the voters in Wisconsin in 2008 were under 45. Does anyone really believe that Walker leads 47-46 among voters under 30, when that same demographic voted 64-35 for Obama in 2008? That doesn't pass the "Bullshit" test, but that's possible when you have such a small sample size of young voters.

I'm going to make this into two parts now due to length, because in Part 2, I'll explain why Franklin let this faulty data in. And the evidence points to propaganda, and not necessarily shoddy research. But be sure, this poll is basically junk, and that's without any suspicion of the motives behind the poll and the pollster.

What we Recall- The hiring of cronies and incompetents

You know how you can tell a leader isn't very smart? They hire dumb, manipulative, incompetent people like them. And Scott Walker has lived down to this truth in several ways.

For example, check out how the Walker campaign's press secretary handles simple "yes or no" questions from reporters. Hooters girl Ciara Matthews may know the 2 or 3 lines she's been given by WisGOP, but that doesn't mean she has a clue.



Of course, the Hooters girl from Nevada is hardly the only one that's benefitted from Walker's affirmative action program. Do you remember Valerie Cass, a 20-something who did some campaign work up to 2010, and then got a nice gig at the Department of Regulation and Licensing and got paid $12,000 more than the previous person in the job? Of course, it also didn't hurt that she was banging State Sen. Randy Hopper.

Val wasn't the only young 'un to get promoted. You also have this guy.

Remember Spaulding Smails, I mean Brian Deschane? The 2-time DUI-convict and college dropout son of the main lobbyist for the pro-Walker Wisconsin Builders Association was given an 81,000-a-year job dealing with environmental and regulatory oversight, despite having no apparent expertise on the subjects.

Among other members of Walker's suck-up kiddie corps include the under-immunity Cullen Werwie, who hasn't cracked 30 years old but landed the $61,000 chief spokesman position with Walker, probably in no small part because of the fund-raising prowess that Kelly Rindfleisch crowed about in her Walkergate criminal complaint.

Also can't forget Keith Gilkes, Walker's former Chief of Staff who's also named in the Rindfleisch complaint. He quit within 8 months, and his tenure is probably best marked by letting this guy get through to the boss. "Hi, this is Scott Walker."



Oh, and what about the high-school educated developer Cathy Stepp running the state's DNR, and having former GOP hack legislator Scott Gunderson take a high-ranking job below her? What could possibly happen? Oh, how about allowing a GOP contributor to deposit illegal amounts of raw sewage onto Jefferson County lands and then cover up the violations by minimizing the fines that the contributor could face? James Rowen also relays the report that the Walker Administration's response to those who live in the area and need to get their wells tested due to this negligence is to tell the innocent homeowners to pay for their own damn test! But hey, average Joes don't give donations and therefore we shouldn't really expense any extra effort to help them out, right Cathy?

And I didn't even talk about Walkergate criminals Tim Russell, Brian Pierick and Darlene Wink, all of whom are long-time friends of Walker who clearly got their positions not because of their great brainpower or dedication to public service, but because of their dedication to furthering the career of Scott Walker, whether they did it legally or not.

Then again, when you don't think government can be a force for good, why not fill the ranks with cronies, dingbats and morons who don't know what they're doing? That way, you can shrug your shoulders when they incompetently let things drop or bad things happen, and then say "See government doesn't work!" This allows you to sell off those services, hopefully to campaign contributors, who give you a nice kickback with a campaign contribution. The only people that lose in the matter are the everyday citizens.

So where did Walker learn this method of management? From another guy with Walker in his name who put a guy who used to head the U.S. Arabian Horse Association to run FEMA. What could go wrong, right Brownie?



And re-electing Walker would do to Wisconsin what re-electing Bush did to America in 2004- set it back years, if not decades. The past history of brutal hires will only get worse if Walker is given a free pass for the next 30 months, just like it did with George Dubya, with the damage becoming more permanent. Which is why Scotty Dubya needs to be cut off NOW.

Philly Fed sure doesn't think "It's working", only failing governors do

Today's when the companion report to last week's Philly Fed survey on state coincident indexes gets released, with the Leading Indicators report for states. This measures the expected economic growth in the next 6 months, or through October 2012 in this case. And the more the months change, the more they stay the same in Fitzwalkerstan- we have the worst economic growth in the Midwest since Walker took office, and we have the worst outlook in the Midwest as well.

In fact, Wisconsin is slated to only grow by 1.07% in the next 6 months, and when you put together Fitzwalkerstan's bad past and the dim outlook, you'll see that every other state in the Midwest, as well as the U.S. in general, is slated to triple Wisconsin's growth since Walker took office. And that gap really began to widen when Walker's budget became law in July 2011.

This is bad enough, but there's one other item of note to discuss related to the leading index report, and it relates to the upcoming recall elections in another way. Walker has been having a few out-of-state governors show up in support of his policies and to rally the troops in a "we really like what that boy in Wisconsin's doing," sort of way. Included in that was a visit from New Jersey governor Chris Christie on May 1, Lousiana governor Bobby Jindal last week, and Walker's scheduled to have a Koch-infused fund-raiser/event with South Carolina Governor "Darling" Nikki Haley this Friday.

What do these governors have in common with Walker? Union-bashing GOP media whores? Well, that's true, but not the biggest similarity. No, the biggest thing they have in common is that ALL OF THEIR STATES' ECONOMIES ARE EXPECTED TO SUCK - all 4 are in the bottom 10 for expected growth the next 6 months!

Exepcted growth next 6 months and national ranking, Philly Fed

U.S. 1.70%
South Carolina 1.12% (41st)
New Jersey 1.10% (42nd)
Wisconsin 1.07% (43rd)
Louisiana -0.68% (49th)

So apparently one of the things these out-of-staters like about Scotty is that it makes them competitive in a tallest midget contest when it comes to "who's screwing up our state more?" In other words, if the governors of losing states like Louisiana and South Carolina like what you're doing, a real leader might reconsider their strategy.

Call me crazy, but I'd rather be hanging out with people who excel and push me higher than want me to take a ride on a race to the bottom. But then again, I'm not a divisive professional grifter like Scott Walker, and I actually want Wisconsin to improve and become better instead of using the conflict that I created as an excuse to raise money and my national profile. The self-absorption and unquestioned failure of the Walker Administration is a huge reason why he has to be taken out in a week, because unlike the bubble world of RW talk radio and GOP rallies, results (or the lack thereof) DO MATTER in reality.

Beer taxes- let's raise em!

I'm in the mood to write about something a bit lighter to end the weekend that officially starts Summer. And that's our state's beer tax.

What tipped this off was an intriguing article in today's Cap Times going over declining beer tax collections in the state. However, the judgment that the article makes is that this is an indication that the state's beer industry has been hit by the recession, and I don't see it that way at all.

First of all, as mentioned in the Legislative Fiscal Bureau's report on alcohol and cigarette taxes (fun reading if you want to learn about these things, since it goes over laws in other states), the state's beer tax is based on volume (barrels/gallons), not price. And this has been fixed at $2 a barrell (6.5 cents a gallon) since 1969, making Wisconsin's beer tax the 3rd-lowest in America. So when you see the beer tax collection numbers, it shows that the amount of beer drank in Wisconsin, which was a relatively steady number over the last decade, until it declined nearly 6 percent in the last 2 years tracked.

Beer tax collections, 2001-2011
2001-02- $9.60 million
2002-03- $9.52 million
2003-04- $9.60 million
2004-05- $9.77 million
2005-06- $9.76 million
2006-07- $9.53 million
2007-08- $9.62 million
2008-09- $9.91 million
2009-10- $9.61 million
2010-11- $9.30 million

So volumes are definitely down, but which beers are being drunk also seems to be different. In the same time period that total beer consumption has declined in Wisconsin, craft brewing has increased as a share of business nationwide. The Brewers' Association reports that the craft brewing industry was up 13% in 2011, and 26% between 2009 and 2011, while overall U.S. beer sales were down 1.3% in 2011, and down 2.5% from 2009-2011. It is reasonable to assume Wisconsin was part of the nationwide trend of more craft beer sales, as Wisconsin was 7th among all U.S. states with 72 breweries in 2010 (despite being 20th in population), and was 9th in the U.S. for breweries per capita, along with being Number 1 per capita in the Midwest. And Wisconsin craft brewers Minhas, New Glarus and Point are among the top 50 brewers by volume, along with Number 2 Miller/Coors and Number 3 Pabst.

So perhaps the drop in beer tax collections is a reflection of more Wisconsinites choosing to buy smaller amounts of craft beers instead of shelling out for cheap 30-packs of High Life (I'm enjoying a Pull Chain Ale from Milwaukee Brewing as I wrtite this, so I'm doing my part). Which leads to a suggestion that some may find radical.

Double the beer tax in Wisconsin. Hell, raise it to $5 a barrell instead of 2.

Not that this would be a huge revenue-raiser for the state. The amount the beer tax currently raises is only 0.07% of all taxes in the state. But even raising the beer tax to $5 a barrell would still keep it well below the level of inflation of the last 43 years, as the inflation calculator shows that $2 a barrell in 1969 would equal $11.76 today. $5 would only be half that amount. In 2011, if the same amount of beer was drunk, raising the beer tax to $5 would have meant nearly another $14 million in revenues. And if you assume that 80% of the extra beer tax gets passed along to consumers in the form of higher prices (and even that is probably low, do you really think we're going to slow down the amount that we're drinking?), the 5% sales tax that would be paid due to the extra beer tax would be in the neighborhood of another $700,000.

More importantly, this would reduce some of the price advantage many macrobrewers would have over our state's growing microbrew industry. A $5 a barrell tax translates to just over 16 cents a gallon, or about 9 cents a 6-pack or 36 cents a case. Not that this is a whole lot, but then when you remember state law allows a 50% tax credit on brewers who make less than 300,000 barrells a year (which is basically anyone not named Miller or Pabst), half of that 36 cents a case would go right back to the microbrewers. And at $5 a barrell, Wisconsin would still be below att of its neighbors in the Midwest except for Minnesota (which is $4.60 a barrell), so there would be no advantage to going over the border to pay lower taxes.

Sure, the brewmasters may not like the cosmetics of doing so, but I think in the long run, this would be a help to them as a good way to protect our growing beer-making industry. And at the same time it would kick in a little more revenue into the state coffers. So yes, I'll say it on this Memorial Day. RAISE THE BEER TAX!

Thanks vets, and unlike politicians, our actions should match our words.

Like all decent Americans of all political stripes, I want to wish our great veterans and their families a Happy Memorial Day. I appreciate that you have done things that I probably would not have the guts to do, and often in thankless, no-win situations. Your sacrifice and hard work is not forgotten, and I'll also borrow the same picture that Chris has at Cognitive Dissidence.

But in addition to remembering the fallen, we need to create a world where we respect what our troops have had to do, and work to make sure there aren't many more that we have to memorialize the future. And we need our politicians to reflect those values. In the great words of Einstein,

You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.

And we have far too many politicians who are constantly preparing for it, and not for reasons of security. They shed crocodile tears over the nation's debt, but then people like Wisconsin's Paul Ryan refuse to consider cuts to our military-industrial complex, nor do they want to tax the corporates and rich stockholders who seem to be the only Americans who benefitted from our adventure in Iraq.

And this also goes back to the actions of Wisconsin's governor and his buddies. Scott Walker was more than willing to be part of TMJ's pro-GOP "Support the Troops" posing for Operation Freedom, but when it came to actually helping and caring for the troops and their families, he did worse than nothing. If you read Page 4 of the criminal complaint against Tim Russell, you'll see how Walker decided to take care of his lackeys first.

Due to alleged financial mismanagement, in about 2009, Operation Freedom donations were entrusted to the Alonzo Cudworth American Legion Post. While by all reports thge Cudworth Post discharged their financial duties in exemplary fashion, in October 2009, then County Executive Scott Walker transferred the Operation Freedom funds - some $19,000 - to HGPS, the corporation controlled by [Walker's then- Deputy Chief of Staff] Tim Russell.

Russell actively operated the HGPS entity for the purpose of raising funds for Operation Freedom during 2010. This included having County Executive employees process donation payments for ultimate deposit in an HGPS account that Russell controlled.

In 2009 and 2010, Russell transferred in excess of $20,000 from the GPS accounts into his personal accounts. These funds were used to pay for Caribbean and Hawaiian vacations, at least in part. They were also used to fund a political trip to Atlanta, Georgia for the organization of a presidential campaign [Herman Cain's, which was run by Mark Block, who was banned from Wisconsin politics for illegal campaign activities for Koch-sponsored groups].

And also, Russell used that money for the families of fallen veterans to buy up the doman name of milwaukeecountyexecutivescottwalkerforgovernor.com, which sure makes you wonder what else Walker wanted Russell to use that money for.

Fortunately, Wisconsinites who laid it on the line for this country are seeing through Walker's pose, and are speaking out. Last Friday, Veterans Against Walker presented speeches and gave the real truth about Scott Walker's exploitation and disregard for the lives of veterans. As former Marine and Milwaukee County Supervisor John Weishan put it. Walker "routinely cut funding for Veteran programs, services and for the War Memorial at the Lake Front."

So on this Memorial Day, don't be like a scummy Wisconsin politician. Don't just say that you're happy for what the veterans have done for our country and use Memorial Day as a means to beat your chest and show off your alleged "patriotism". Instead, back it up with actions that truly do show respect to the sacrifice that troops have given, and demand politicians back up their words with serious actions that do more than just use the troops as props, but instead treats them as the valued class of citizens that they are.

Wisconsin State Journal- sinking to new depths with election article

I was just going to do a breezy Sunday note, and then my girlfriend and I had brunch and we had to stumble upon the Sunday Wisconsin State Journal. And just when I thought the Lee Enterprises moutpiece couldn't go further down on Scott Walker, they did.

Read this pile of crap from Clay Barbour on Walker without wanting to throw your phone or computer. Seriously, I dare you.

Let's go over Barbour's claims in the article's sidebar, shall we?

Balanced the state's budget and closed a $3.6 billion hole without a widespread increase in taxes, and without relying on one-time funds to cover big gaps.

ABSOLUTELY NOT TRUE. 1. The budget deficit was never $3.6 billion, that was a number the Walker Administration threw together to create the impression of a budget crisis. As I mentioned yesterday, the real structural deficit was less than half that, at $1.74 billion. 2. We know the budget isn't balanced, as evidenced by the news that came out this week showing the Walker Administration borrowed $558 million over the last 16 months, and kicked the expenses into future years. The Walker budget also built in $899 million in unspecified lapses for this budget, and has several ballooning tax credits and backloaded expenses that'll create masssive budget deficits for 2013-15 and future bienniums. Only a Walker campaign worker would believe this budget is balanced.

And 3. Using the weasel word "widespread" is intentionally done to give cover for the fact that Walker did raise taxes on certain groups of people. Page 3 of the LFB's budget tax change rundown shows this, as the state's Earned Income Tax Credit was cut by $56 million, and refusing to index the Homestead Tax Credit for inflation raises taxes for those people by another $13 million. In addition, Walker's budget builds in $107 million in tuition increases for UW System schools, and I'd like to Clay Barbour tell a parent sending their kid to college that higher tuition isn't the same as a tax increase on them.

Here's two other whoppers from Barbour's article, both relating to jobs.

• Presided over a sustained drop in unemployment, which now sits at 6.7 percent, the state's lowest mark since 2008.

• Is way off pace on his 2010 campaign promise to bring 250,000 to the state by 2014. According to the latest, unofficial numbers, the state has added 33,000 jobs since Walker was elected. Official numbers from the federal government put Wisconsin last in the nation in job growth in 2011.

Note that Barbour leaves out that the U.S. has also dropped in unemployment since Walker took office, from 9.1% to 8.1%, which is the same 1.0% drop that we've seen in Wisconsin, and unlike Wisconsin, the U.S. has done it with a growing work force. The U.S. work force has grown by 1.165 million since January 2011, while Wisconsin actually had 800 fewer people in the work force in the same period. Remember, unemployment is based not only on number of respondents saying that they're working, but also who is in the work force looking for work. So let's take Wisconsin's alleged job growth that this survey shows, and then add in the 0.76% growth in the work force that the rest of the nation has, and see what our unemployment rate would have been.

Wisconsin unemployment April 2012
Wisconsin reported April 2012 rate- 6.7%
Wisconsin April 2012 rate with U.S. work force growth- 7.4%

So Barbour is intentionally deceptive for trying to credit Walker with the unemployment drop, because the main reasons for the drop are the Obama recovery raising all parts of the U.S. and Walker driving people into retirement and out of the state.

Second, Barbour buries the "last in the nation" job growth number further down in the sidebar, while having the unemployment rate drop mentioned at the top. He also accepts Walker's sketchy, unverified jobs numbers. The only people that buy those numbers as legitimate are Walker supporters and campaign workers, but Barbour uses it as a false equivalency to the "apples-to-apples" report that the BLS uses. And by the way Clay, Wisconsin wasn't just last place in 2011, it's also in last place since Act 10 was passed in March 2011, and the decline didn't start until the Doyle-Dem budget was replaced by Walker policies. So yes, this goes directly on Scott Walker's record, and it is an objective FAILURE. When Barbour pulls the false equivalency game, it is being done to intentionally muddy the waters and favor Walker.

But why would I be surprised that Hat Boy Barbour would write a pro-Walker article? Barbour was a co-writer on the disgraceful WSJ article in March that described as "underwhelming" this smoking gun video of Walker lying to the Oshkosh Northwestern in 2010 about his plans to remove collective bargaining rights.



This video is especially damning when you realize that Walker was forced to admit this week that he was working on Act 10's collective bargaining restrictions the day after his November 2010 election. And it's not like that plan came out of the sky on November 3, either. Hmm, wonder why crack WSJ reporters Clay Barbour and Mary Spiccuza or any Journal-Sentinel reporters haven't touched this issue when it's been out in the public for 4 days now? (Dylan Brogan broke the story for 1670AM WTDY on Thursday).

Then again, maybe Clay's just following the orders of his bosses, as State Journal owner Lee Enterprises is allied with a group that bought over $1 million in ads supporting Walker, and has busted unions at several of their work places. And of course, the State Journal infamously went against the wishes of 69% of Dane County voters and endorsed Walker in 2010 (and are probably setting things up to do so again in the mealthy-mouthed fashion the Journal-Sentinel did last week).

Look, we know the State Journal and Journal-Sentinel are in the bag for Walker, and have been intentionally ignoring big stories like Walker's many lies and deceptions over the last 16 months and the $558 million in borrowing his administration pulled. But to take Walker claims at face value and uncritically print this propaganda without any critical analysis is a dereliction of jouralistic duty. When you write down what politicians say and do "he said, she said" pieces with no digging into the claims, you're not a journalist, you're a transcriber. And you're defrauding the unsuspecting public that shells out money to buy your product.

Which is why I don't pay a cent for the State Journal or the Journal-Sentinel, because they aren't newspapers, they're accomplices in spreading propaganda. I'd encourage you to do the same if you haven't done so already, because when you're dealing with corporates, all they understand is the hit to their bottom lines.