Walker's great deception on Wisconsin's unemployment numbers exposed, used as cover-up for broken jobs promise.

It's been obvious for a long time that Scott Walker has been using the states low unemployment numbers as a substitute and distraction from his broken 250,000 jobs promise.

Relying again the national media, the Washington Post fact checkers has exposed Walker's attempt to cover up his actual uncomplimentary jobs record. They started their expose with a number of Walker claims:

1. “After years of record job loss, Wisconsin has gained over 140,000 jobs under Governor Walker, bringing the unemployment rate down to 4.6 percent, the lowest level since 2008.”   2. “[Wisconsin’s] labor participation is far greater than the national level. Unemployment’s far lower.” 

ABC News correspondent Jonathan Karl: “So one of your central promises was that you were going to create 250,000 private sector jobs in Wisconsin. … You haven’t done it. I mean, you didn’t do it. You fell quite a bit short.”

Walker: “Yeah, we set a big, bold goal. We went from 8.1 percent unemployment December before I took office to last month we nearly cut that in half at 4.4 percent, well below the national unemployment rate. We’re going to continue to aim high both in our state. And if I was the candidate for president of the United States, I’d aim high as well there.”

The amazing truth beneath the deceptive spin:

We at The Fact Checker are critical of politicians claiming success in positive employment trends, which usually can’t be traced to a policy or decision of a single individual. Walker had called 250,000 jobs “my floor, not my ceiling” and “a minimum, just a base.” But now, on the campaign trail, he emphasizes it as a “big bold goal.” 

He points instead to the decrease in the state’s unemployment rate, increase in the labor participation rate, and how they compare to the national average. Wisconsin’s labor force participation rate in July 2015 was about five percentage points higher than that month’s national rate. 

Side note: Wisconsin’s labor force participation rate in July 2015 was the lowest it had been since Walker took office in 2011. But of course that fact did not make it into his talking points. 

BLS officials warn against comparing state averages to national averages. For one, state averages are seasonally adjusted individually on the state level, so the numbers do not add up to the national level. 

Wisconsin traditionally has had a lower unemployment rate than national average, and a comparable or higher labor participation rate than the national average. Wisconsin’s labor force participation rate was higher than the national average even before Walker became governor. And the Wisconsin unemployment rate consistently has been lower than the national average since 1985. 

So while Walker touts the figures as a success, it is not a trend out of the ordinary or unique to his term ... the context in which he uses these figures exaggerate the progress under his term and deflect from his failure to keep a major campaign promise.

I'm sure the "Stand with Walker" trolls were stunned and enlightened. Didn't think so. 

Biden exposes Republican Weakness; Nothing to Backup Empty Policy.

Joe Biden didn't just own the VP debate against Paul Ryan, but he showed how easy it is to debate and discredit Republicans in mid-speech. Make no mistake, what Biden did was set the template for every other Democrat in the country to follow.  It's time to stop the conservative spin machine's disingenuous arguments and phony talking points before they have a chance to take root. When I have filled in on Sly in the Morning, I've stopped guests and callers in mid sentence just to clarify each blatant lie or false premise.

Republicans would like us to get distracted from noticing this important way to stop their propaganda. In the debates format, it didn't hurt to have an actual reporter familiar with the issues to hold both candidates facts to the fire.

The following clips are two of my favorites, among many. First, Ed Schultz presents his case in very much the same way I would have;



This is just an uninterupted section of the debate that I could watch over and over...

Paul Ryan's Lies starting a National Discussion; is there any "Penalty for Falsehoods?"

This NY Times article is sounding the alarm over Paul Ryan's blatantly deceptive speech:

Every four years there are lies in campaigns, and at times a blurry line between acceptable political argument and outright sophistry. But recent events — from the misleading statements in convention speeches to television advertisements repeating widely debunked claims — have raised new questions about whether the political culture still holds any penalty for falsehood.

Since the whole Romney/Ryan campaign has been based solely on fictions and lies, we can confidently answer; there are no penalties...especially from Republican voters. 

But do both sides do it? The example given as proof, basically accepted the outrageous GOP spin that a fired worker blamed Romney for the death of his wife. He never suggested any such thing, and yet, it appears even the reporter here believes it.

An outside group supporting Mr. Obama ran an advertisement giving the unfair impression that Mr. Romney was responsible for the death of the wife of a steelworker who lost his job and his health insurance when Mr. Romney’s old company, Bain Capital, closed down the plant where he worked.

I’ve criticize fact check organizations for never considering known and long standing political agendas. But agendas are squishy things, and not really “facts.” So even though Paul Ryan’s voucherized Medicare plan was meant to fulfill the GOP’s long standing quest to eventually kill the program, the changes don’t wipe it out, so Ryan’s given a pass.

Brendan Nyhan, an assistant professor of government at Dartmouth College, said “The term ‘fact check’ can easily be devalued, as people throw it onto any sort of an opinion that they have.”

Ryan's speech though was so over the top, even the national media is starting to squirm. 

When Paul Ryan made a number of questionable or misleading claims in his speech, even before he stopped speaking, some of his claims were being questioned on Twitter. Soon fact-checkers were highlighting some of the misleading statements. 

Here's where right wing politics flexes it's propagandist muscle:

More partisan sites rushed to Mr. Ryan’s defense with posts finding fault with the first round of fact checks.

For a laugh, you have to read the comment at the Brookfield Patch by Brian Divelbess, who picks a few truthiness like details out of Ryan's lies and turns reality on its head (see picture). If these guys ever took complete control of government, real mistakes and bad policy will become a thing of the past with what they think is justified "down the rabbit hole" logic. 

Here's "Paul's Ryan's Lies" by David Mills, with my collection of Ryan graphics created by me and so many others:

But I found the following factoid unsettling: 

In a recent paper, called “When Corrections Fail: The Persistence of Political Misperceptions,” he and Jason Reifler, an assistant professor of political science at Georgia State University, found that corrective information in standard news articles — compared with separate fact-check pieces — was often ineffective at changing the minds of people predisposed to believe a misperception, and sometimes made the problem worse with what they termed a “backfire effect.” 

Or what is normally refered to as "liberal bias."