A "great" "debate" is taking place on jsonline over Walker's Jobs Record An Unmitigated Disaster. (Actually, it's the typical uninformed conservatives griping about that which they seem to know little.)
One commenter, Cubcake, has been continually trying to fault the arithmetic in the article. When a professor does an analysis, he/she is just being a devious liberal lying with statistics. But when Scott Walker pulls preliminary "data" from his rectum, which can't be compared to other states' numbers, this is sound statistical analysis.
Ceomrman2 has the definitive takedown(s), "You can view the total seasonally adjusted non-farm payroll here: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/laus.t05.htm . There were about 2,732,000 jobs in Wisconsin in April of 2012. That is 21,400 fewer than in April, 2011. The numbers you're thinking of (i.e. the ones you linked to in previous posts) are not correct for this discussion. You can't blame a politician for the seasons or the rainfall levels, so numbers must be seasonally adjusted and must exclude farm labor. Yes, of course there are more jobs in summer when high school and college kids are out of school and farms need workers. Try taking a deep breath and thinking to yourself "maybe the guy who has spent decades researching employment trends in the industrial heartland of the United States actually knows what basic economic indicators mean?" Cubcake - the numbers you are referencing are not the correct numbers for this discussion. I can see why you might think they are - the profession's jargon can be unintuitive - but the relevant time series for this discussion is the seasonally adjusted non-farm payroll count. You can view that data here: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/laus.t05.htm. You can feel free to disagree with Prof. Levine, but he does understand his basic economics measurements."
The cognitive dissonance of Republicans is breathtaking. No matter the reality (comparative stats, criminal investigations, lying to Congress, stalling investigations, crony capitalism, or dividing and conquering for big-money donors), whatever Walker says or does is correct in the eyes of his followers. This mindset is now de facto for conservatives. Nothing oppositional can penetrate their worldview. Close-mindedness and a penchant for sloppy analysis are not the prerequisites we should want for those supposedly involved in shaping public policy.
WOW! This recall election is big! Vote Tom Barret, Mahlon Mitchell June 5th!
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