MacIver Institute's "in-the-tank" for Walker Jobs Numbers...Desperate!!!

I'm not a big supporter of Politifact, but I do like their research. The following analysis is all numbers, and an absolute embarrassment for the "in the tank" for Walker gathering of "fellows," at the MacIver Institute.  Here's the really, really bad news for the big thinking fellows:

"Gov. Scott Walker (is) more than halfway to (his) 250,000 jobs goal."-MacIver Institute on Tuesday, April 9th, 2013 in a web posting

That’s a much larger number of jobs created under Walker than we’ve ever heard -- even from the governor himself. In summary: MacIver’s math nearly doubles Walker job count because it started counting one month later. In effect, they used a lower starting point, which makes the growth seem larger -- by 65,401 -- than it really is. And even that is a bad number.

Like Walker in December, MacIver failed to line up a year-to-year comparison. It measured February temperatures against July. What’s more, the item itself notes that Koskinen, the state economist, told them they should not combine the data sets in this manner … But they didn’t apply any such disclaimer to their headline, or a very large graphic.

The claim was retweeted by Madison-based conservative talk show host Vicki McKenna to her 7,114 followers and Milwaukee talker Charlie Sykes posted it on his Right Wisconsin subscription-based website.

As of February 2013, our latest estimate of the number of jobs created since Walker took office is 63,700.

The jobs promise will be the No. 1 yardstick used to measure Walker’s performance as governor.

To sum it up:

But the conservative group’s number is wrong, two times over. MacIver started with the wrong month of data. That alone nearly doubled the number of jobs they claim were created under Walker. They compounded their error by combining full and partial years of data -- even though they (like the governor himself) were told not to do so.

Pants on Fire.