Disaster Capitalism/Great Recession: Birth Rate Declined = Future Workforce Shortage; Business owned Rental Housing!

The Great Recession's results are in: Thanks to the lack of critical thinking by the news media, as predicted, this has now come back to haunt us in so many different ways. Starting with Republicans like Scott Walker, who blamed the Great Recession on Democrats, while completely ignoring the error in capitalisms "free market" thinking, admitted to by Alan Greenspan in the clip below:

Great Recession = Labor Shortage in Wisconsin: Note: Scott Walker focused all of his attention on passing hard GOP policy theories, and not on any of the real problems facing the state's labor shortage, even while the business community sounded the alarm.

That labor shortage coming out of the Great Recession is only starting to become a problem after years of much slower increases in population...

The U.S. Census Bureau released its population change estimates for the year ending in July 2018 … the national rate of population growth is at its lowest since 1937 … declines in the number of births, gains in the number of deaths, and that the nation’s under age 18 population has declined since the 2010 census … geographic mobility within the U.S. is at a historic low … nearly a fifth of all states displayed absolute population losses over the past two years … The delayed impact of the Great Recession … the aging American population is the broader cause, a factor that the nation will have to cope with for years and decades to come.

…A labor shortage not only affects employers, but a workers taxed income used to support current Medicare recipients. A big problem for retiring baby boomers:

From Sept. 2017, a few notable comments from a series of articles:

Workers Wanted: Wisconsin's Looming Crisis:  Wisconsin businesses grapple with a growing worker shortage. Wisconsin is expected to need 45,000 workers in seven years but it simply lacks the people to fill them … expected to worsen over the next decade, according to Wisconsin State Journal interviews with dozens of employers, economists, advocacy group experts and state political and economic development officials. "We are right at the brink of the crisis," said Ann Franz, director of the Northeast Wisconsin Manufacturing Alliance in Green Bay. "I would call it Wisconsin's mega-issue," said Kurt Bauer, president of Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, which recently found 77 percent of members surveyed had difficulty finding workers, up from 53 percent two years ago.

"We have the potential of losing some of our business sector to other places where skilled labor is stronger, where there's greater population base," said Susan May, president of Fox Valley Technical College in Appleton. "The more we lose our economic base, it affects education and transportation and everything else. … It really presents a scary future for our state."

These are all symptoms screaming for attention. Believe it or not, Walker actually tried to turn lemons like this into lemonade:

"It's a good problem to have, but it's a challenge for sure," Gov. Scott Walker said in an interview.

Housing wealth in Milwaukee is being transferred to out-of-state investors: Yesterday, we found out the Great Recession resulted in this:

The Great Recession hit Milwaukee hard ... a tidal wave of foreclosures ... Simply put: Thousands of residential properties in Milwaukee are no longer owned by city residents (but) instead by individuals and companies. Housing wealth in Milwaukee is being transferred to out-of-state investors: Half of all rented properties are now owned by someone outside Milwaukee. From 2005 to 2019, suburban landlords grew 70%, from nearly 7,700 properties to more than 13,000. Landlords outside of Wisconsin quadrupled from 1,300 to more than 5,800 ... properties owned by someone outside Wisconsin grew from 77 to 573 in 2019. Landlords with Illinois addresses own more than 1,600 residential units ... Landlords in California own 1,400 units ... Texas landlords own nearly 700. Keep in mind that none of these figures includes large apartment buildings.

Build the Wall/Stop Immigration-The final Straw: Just by coincidence Trump Republicans want to shut down the border. Seriously, you couldn't devise a worse economic plan. And voters want Republicans in charge of the economy?

This leaves immigration as an ever-more-important contributor to national population growth. Because of the recent decline in natural increase, immigration now contributes nearly as much to population growth, and is projected to be the primary contributor to national population growth after 2030 as natural increase continues to decline. Thus immigration—its size and its attributes—will be an important contributor to the nation’s future population that is growing slowly and aging quickly.

Free Market Failure and the "returning over-taxation back to the people, it's their money" cliche: George W. Bush set the template with this:

In the late 1990s the federal government ran a budget surplus. The Brookings Institution called the surplus “one of the supreme budgetary accomplishments in American history.” Bush, took a clear stance on the issue: 

Bush: “Today, our high taxes fund a surplus. Some say that growing federal surplus means Washington has more money to spend. But they've got it backwards. The surplus is not the government's money. The surplus is the people's money.”

Let's hear from Bruce Bartlett, Treasury official under George H. W. Bush, about the current Trump Republican Party failure. His bottom line: Had we kept Clinton's tax policy after he left office, we would have paid off the national debt by the time George W. Bush left office. We might have had the working capital to pay for universal health care, free K through college education, tax reform, infrastructure investment...etc. But as Bartlett says, using deficits to cut spending on people, but not the military, is the ultimate goal that keeps Republicans in power:

While Scott Walker, a Trump supporter now, chants Bible verse suggesting he's got the higher calling while still claiming success for doing nothing, he can't erase how Trump exposed the real Walker legacy...

7 years later, Scott Walker can't stop talking about, and still blames Gov. Doyle for Republican Great Recession, Job Losses, and State Deficit...Part 2!

Here we go again.

Yes, Scott Walker is once again blaming the Great Recession on the Democrats, and this time he's throwing in higher taxes for the heck of it. From WISC TV:

Walker: "Tony's taxes would be a recipe for a RETURN TO RECESSION. We can't have that mistake. We saw in this county when I was running 8 years ago, unemployment was over 11 percent..."

Walker has been blaming the Democrats for the Republicans Great Recession for years, something I've been documenting right here time and time again, with little or no effect. The news media doesn't think it's important to correct him, so he just keeps repeating the lie. Here's what Walker said last year:



It's surreal watching Walker try to brand the greatest deregulatory-"free market"-economic-global collapse since the Great Depression all on the Democrats.

Politifact set the record straight back in March of 2014 when Walker lied about it, and then blamed the GOP's Great Recession job losses on Gov. Doyle/Mary Burke:

Did Burke, as state Commerce secretary under Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle, throw Wisconsin for a six-digit jobs loss?

A September 2013 item from PolitiFact Wisconsin, we rated Mostly False a Walker claim that Doyle’s policies cost the state 133,000 jobs in his second term, from 2007 through 2010. Walker, we noted, got the number right. But experts said the national economic crash had far more to do with Wisconsin’s job losses during that period than any state policies. Indeed, Wisconsin actually fared somewhat better than the rest of the country.

Scott Walker hasn't deviated one bit from the same policies that brought us the Great Recession. Even a shaken Alan Greenspan realized his ideological principles failed miserably. Here's that moment of sanity I'm still clinging to:



For Walker, it's more tax cuts and borrowing, all the while the public lets another service or social benefit slip away. This is what energizes their base. But one Republican and vocal opponent of these policies said it best below. Bruce Bartlett explains how the Clinton tax increase would have wiped out our debt by now:

7 yrs later, Scott Walker can't stop talking about and still blames Gov. Doyle for Republican Great Recession that produced Job Losses and State Deficit.

Scott Walker recently said Wisconsin's economy is "on fire," so that's why he's still falsely blaming former Gov. Jim Doyle for job losses and high deficit resulting from the failed Republican free-market experiment that gave us the Great Recession?

Without that false comparison, Walker would have nothing, basically no villain to blame to make his numbers look good. Walker could thank the economy in general but instead will take credit for Obama's "slow" recovery.

From Upfront with Mike Gousha, far to the right Scott Walker said:

Walker: "To me, they're all the same, they're all far to the left, they'll all take us back as we said before, to the kind of policies we saw, that lost us 133,000 jobs in the four years before we took office..."

And again, if you were still not sure... "we don't want to go back to those days"...you know, when we had the Great Recession:

Fact # 1: Democrats make things better, Republicans don't.

Republicans will continue to win elections by souring Americans on the economy; lower wages foster resentment and keep people from sharing in the recovery.

So despite a rather brisk economic recovery, the public overwhelmingly disagrees with the way Obama has managed it. You can thank the fabricated and constant GOP attacks. And yet, the following figures overwhelmingly show Obama killing Bush's supply side recovery. The facts don't lie, but Republicans do:

I have to laugh though, because even these figures will spur on an avalanche of tweets asking me to "prove" my point with facts. Kinda makes you wonder what the right considers a "fact," not that anyone should spend much time trying to burst their bubble. It ain't gonna happen.

But reality seekers rejoice, here are some of the details. This is just a FYI, and something to pack away until Democrats are called on to save the economy again. Mother Jones:

The Obama recovery isn't just a little bit better than the Bush recovery. It's miles better. But here's the interesting thing. This chart looks only at private sector employment. If you want to make Bush look better, you can look at total employment instead. It's still not a great picture: Bush got a nice tailwind from increased hiring at the state and federal level. Obama, conversely, was sailing into heavy headwinds because he inherited a worse recession. States cut employment sharply—partly because they had to and partly because Republican governors saw the recession as an opportunity to slash the size of government—and Congress was unwilling to help them out in any kind of serious way. If you want to credit Bush for his tax cuts and malign Obama for his stimulus program and his regulatory posture, then you have to accept the results as well. And by virtually any measure, including the fact that the current recovery hasn't ended in an epic global crash, Obama has done considerably better than Bush. 

Governors Perry and Jindal warn Americans: "If you just give us one more opportunity...we won't fritter it away."

A very nice reminder...a little late though:

Politico: Texas Gov. Rick Perry said the message Republicans should take away from the election was: “Lord, if you’ll just give us one more opportunity to govern, we won’t fritter it away this time.” 

And Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal warned the day after the election: “The American people have given us an opportunity. We have squandered the opportunity before when we’ve been in power.”

Mary Burke lost 130,000 jobs after she caused the Great Recession.

Okay, this is an obsession of mine and I can't stop posting stories it. I'm talking about Scott Walker's unbelievable lie: Former governor Jim Doyle and Mary Burke caused the Republican Great Recession that wiped 130,000 jobs in Wisconsin.

It's ridiculous of course, but the media has resisted correcting Walker for the last 4 years...yes, a whole 4 years. Only a few times was Walker asked about the absurdity of the claim, like this from Upfront with Mike Gousha, but even then he was able to word salad his way out of it:



Here's the latest attempt to get people to forget how the Republicans caused the Great Recession, and shift the blame to Mary Burke. Maybe it's her fault, says Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce:

Walker's Big Lie: Blames GOP's Great Recession on Doyle, Burke and Democrats.

Our "no answer" Governor Scott Walker is one slick career politician. "Stand with Walker" yes men nod in agreement with the governors word salad responses. They even liked the following Walker stumble over the Great Recessions job losses caused by deregulation and free market principles. Yes, trickle down failed miserably.

Watch slick Scottie quickly change the subject when asked about the lunacy of blaming the recession on former Governor Jim Doyle. He knows it's bullshit, but nods yes, a standard body language response by Walker that magically works like a Samantha Steven's nose twitch.

The press should have hammered Walker on this jobs loss lie years ago. Hell, it's been the focus of his never ending run for a second term, and a ballsy in-your-face lie that proves Republicans can successfully created an alternative reality that can get them reelected. Upfront with Mike Gousha:

Gousha: "Are you saying it's the Doyle policies that caused us to lose 133,000 jobs?"

Walker: "Not all alone, but I said that was the time frame we were in, what we focused on...but again I would say, go back to people, go back before all that happened..." 

Catch that little "not all alone"...that still blames Doyle. Strategically, Walker picked a "time frame" where his party tanked the global economy so they could blame the Democrats and Doyle for it. Walker's one of many governors pulling this stunt:



Whether Walker likes it or not, Wisconsin is still a part of the U.S.. Along with the other 49 other states, Wisconsin is riding the wave of good economic news. Even here, Walker is enjoying Obama's supposed disastrous record, and taking credit for it in his meager jobs count.

Walker's best friend Chris Christie is another failed Republican voters love to embrace as a possible presidential candidate. Bloomberg: 

New Jersey had its credit rating cut one step by Standard & Poor’s, handing Chris Christie his eighth downgrade, the most ever for a Garden State governor ... the lack of progress in fixing budget gaps.

And like Walker blaming a past governor, Christie isn't to blame, it’s the credit agencies?

A potential 2016 candidate for president, Christie said, “We’re trying to address the budget situation, but the fact is that it is not something that should leave them lying awake at night worrying,” when asked whether people should be concerned about the downgrades. “This is, again, I think the ratings agencies going back and being significantly overaggressive because they were such bums back in ’08 and ’09 and they left everybody hanging out to dry.” 

Walker cut Tech School Funding during Recession and Peak Enrollment. Restored Funding is up now and enrollment is down.

While a few areas of our state are blessed with low unemployment numbers, others aren't so lucky, and fading tech school enrollment is a sign many are just giving up. Wisconsin’s thriving manufacturing climate is now part of a bygone age, replaced by supposed “free market” global trade agreements, offshoring and an expansion of the new low wage service economy.

Who can take Republicans like Scott Walker and Paul Ryan seriously when they talk about lazy low wage people in poverty not trying, while strongly supporting businesses that wouldn't have it any other way; low wage labor dependent on taxpayer funded social safety nets equals high profits. That’s what makes the next wave of safety net cuts so cruel. Ryan’s “everybody can be rich, everybody should be a business owner” delusion is nurtured by an unquestioning media willing to treat bad ideas like real alternatives.

Declining tech school enrollment might be expected after it peaked during the Great Recession (our brainy governor cut tech school funding at the worst time), but it also might be a sign a skeptical public isn't willing to invest in retraining when jobs have become so disposable. The WPR news headline tells that story:

Wisconsin Technical Schools See 2-Year Decline In Enrollment: Drop Comes As Schools Try To Increase Number Of Students In Technical, Vocational Training - Census data shows that enrollment at technical schools around the country declined for the second year in a row.

Conor Smyth, the director of strategic partnerships for the Wisconsin Technical College System, said … over a two-year period starting in 2008 the number of full time students jumped 16 percent. As the economy improved, however, enrollment dropped by 5 percent in 2011 and a little less in 2012.

Admit it, we’re in a Service Economy Now: While Scott Walker echoes his party’s resistance to minimum wage hikes, even floating ideas to get rid of the floor completely, the low wage service sector is now a dominant part of our economy. And demand is down because people don’t have any discretionary cash.

Guess who isn't rushing into low wage service industry jobs? The surprising news out of all of this is that hard working Americans have decided to steer clear of service industry jobs. Serves these bottom feeders right:

Recently, Smyth said he met with businesses in the hospitality and tourism sector and heard similar concerns. “We have employer partners coming to us saying, ‘We need twice the number of graduates.’ In some cases, the colleges simply can't find students who are interested in getting into that program area,” said Smyth.

Here's a Journal Sentinel graph that proves my point. You'll also notice in the map to the right how two GOP targets for cuts, health care and social assistance, are the biggest growth areas. That can't be good:

Walker again blames Gov. Doyle and Burke for tanked manufacturing, job losses during the GOP Great Recession

This is getting ridiculous. Will someone in the media break the news to Scott Walker that conservative free market deregulation caused the GOP Great Recession, and not the former governor? I'm going mad...! And you'll notice at the end of this clip, no one corrected Walker's mistake. WKOW:

GOP/Walker continue to blame Bush Great Recession job losses on former Gov. Doyle/Burke. Shooting Blanks this early in Campaign.

The new Friends of Scott Walker ad continues to shift blame for the GOP free market failure, "The Great Recession," on Democratic Governor Jim Doyle.

"Stand with Walker" low information voters are happy to blame someone else so long as they don't have to rethink bad policy. It's so much "work" to make improvements to their nonsensical platform.

I've added my comment to a video captured still of their ad below, in red:

President Romney...I mean President Obama brings U.S. Economy Back!!!

On the heels of one poll claiming Obama was our worst president ever, and another saying Romney would win in a landslide if the election were held today, the U.S. economy has never looked better since the Great Recession.

Funny isn't it; if Romney were president, all of the successes below would be attributed to him and the confidence businesses had in his policies. This just proves how well the GOP's concentrated attack on Obama has been. Tell me now how big money doesn't influence politics. Bloomberg News:

Economy in U.S. Grows More Than Forecast: “The economy is looking pretty darned good,” said Stuart Hoffman, chief economist at PNC Financial Services Group Inc. in Pittsburgh.

Payrolls Rise: Companies added 218,000 workers to payrolls in July, exceeding the average for the year and showing improving demand is bolstering the job market, a private report showed today.

Business Investment: Corporate spending increased at a 5.9 percent annualized rate after being little changed in the first quarter, contributing 0.9 percentage point to growth … so-called final sales to domestic purchasers climbed at a 2.8 percent rate, the biggest increase since the third quarter of 2011.

And the reason for the above successes? Don't point to the mythical CEO “job creators.” It was consumer DEMAND:

The increase in household consumption, which accounts for almost 70 percent of the economy, exceeded the 1.9 percent median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg and followed a 1.2 percent advance in the first three months of 2014.

Purchases of durable goods, including autos, furniture and appliances and recreational vehicles, jumped at a 14 percent annualized rate, the most since the third quarter of 2009, when the recovery began.

Wisconsin Congressmen vote to Repeat Great Recession with deregulation!!!

The free market Republican Great Recession was so much fun, let’s bring back the conditions that caused it. From Roll Call:

CURBS ON FINANCIAL REGULATION: The House passed a bipartisan bill (HR 4413) that would renew the Commodity Futures Trading Commission through fiscal 2018, curb its regulatory powers, add investor protections and increase the national debt by $948 million over five years. Under the 2010 Dodd-Frank law, the agency has begun the first federal regulation of the $700 trillion derivatives market, whose collapse in 2008 helped crash the U.S. and global economies and trigger taxpayer bailouts of financial firms. In part, this bill would subject new CFTC rules to time-consuming cost-benefit analyses and exempt derivatives trading by overseas subsidiaries of U.S. financial institutions from direct CFTC supervision.

A yes vote was to reauthorize the CFTC with weakened regulatory powers: Ryan, Kind, Sensenbrenner, Petri, Duffy, and Ribble.

The shocking fact that they didn't learn their lesson when millions of jobs disappeared during the Great Recession, collapsing some European countries, is inexcusable. Here's free market loser Alan Greenspan:

Free Market Failure: The Great Recession!!!

A nice series on the failure of conservative free market economics hit all the right marks with one example after the next. Check out part one of the series here, at Populist Daily.com. I especially liked the following quote, which I framed for downloading. It was THE defining moment:

Proof? Here's the video I edited together with the reckless comments of Gov. and Presidential candidate Rich Perry:



Here's a little more. Part 2 and part 3 are here.

Since Ronald Reagan, two serious economic crises, one of which was and is devastating to our society and possibly our future. One very damaging unnecessary war (not only for us but for innocent citizens of Iraq…and we wonder why Arabs hate us), tax cuts primarily for the wealthiest Americans that have dropped our annual revenues to approximately 15% of GDP from 20% under Clinton and Carter, causing massive deficits and a national debt of $16 trillion.

So we know what to expect from Conservatism. Promises of gold in the hills, promises that tax cuts will create a more vibrant economy, promises that all will be well, until…things don’t work out. And now what is their solution, those Conservatives working for huge corporations and billionaires…the Conservative solution is to blame the average person for wanting the “entitlements” we all paid for over 40 years or more of a working life. Conservatives want to cut Social Security and Medicare. 

Walker's uses Great Recession as Excuse, diversion from his Failed Jobs Policies.

Obama's job creation numbers are twice that of Scott Walker's, yet Obama's recovery is a failure and Walker's is a success...double standard?

We also heard how Obama should stop blaming Bush for everything, yet Walker can blame former Gov. Jim Doyle for everything, including the Great Recession...double standard?

And Walker's continued use of the Great Recession ("free market" anyone?) as a ploy to use against against Democrats has been surreal for some time now. He just went off the rails today:

Here's the jobs chart showing both Doyle's and Walker's record. Anyone notice the dip in 2008-2009? The Great Recession, right? Supporters should be asking themselves, "Is Walker that stupid or is he conning us?" By the looks of his Tweet, we all know the answer:

Just to be clear, here's the latest rankings:

jsonline: Wisconsin gained 28,141 private-sector jobs in the 12 months of 2013, a 1.2% increase that ranks the state 37th among the 50 states in the pace of job creation during that period. The latest rank is little changed from the state's previous status. In 2012, Wisconsin ranked 36 out of 50 in private-sector job creation and in 2011 it was 35th.

The United States created private-sector jobs at a rate of 2.1% in the latest 12-month period, nearly double Wisconsin's 1.2% rate.

Walker Nonsensical: says Policies that led up to Great Recession same as those in Illinois right now? I'm not kidding....

Finally, Scott Walker is asked why he keeps blaming former Gov. Jim Doyle and Mary Burke for the Great Recession.

Walker had no answer...none...and compared GOP deregulation policies to those in Illinois, whatever that means.

On Upfront, Mike Gousha kept asking Walker why the deficits and job losses were the previous governors fault, and how Illinois is similar in any way.

Something that took 3 decades of Reagan supply side policies to create, is now happening in Illinois? He was either woefully unprepared, or god knows what he was thinking:

Gousha: "Would you not concede though that was a national recession, that there were many states that were bleeding jobs just as Wisconsin was?"

Get ready for it, it's doesn't make any sense...purposely, and it's a doozie:

Walker: "Except that those policies we see happening right now, in real time just to the south of us in Springfield. So I think if voters say we're not even going to go back in time because it was part of a national recession, Wisconsin has come out of that much better than a state like Illinois, where they still have a budget problem ... not only people don't wanna go back to the Doyle/Burke days, if they don't wanna go back to what we see happening right now in our neighbor in Springfield, I'm the better alter...." 

Gousha: "You cite Illinois, but your critics, as you know, say we are lagging 8 out of 9 western states in job growth, better than Illinois, why not better than the other states?

Walker: "A lot of that data is looking at the past, but more recent numbers, the last few months, we have had aggressive job growth in the state."

Yea, don't look at his past 3 and half years, just the last few months...audio clip only:

Drone Walker Army again Blames Former Gov. Doyle for Great Recession!!!

It seems the drone army of "Stand with Walker" zombies actually believe former Governor Jim Doyle caused the Great Recession. For at least two years the state press never corrected Scott Walker's insanely ridiculous talking point that the job losses and soaring deficit were the result of Doyle's policies and by association, Walker opponent Mary Burke. Not the Great Recession.

These roving bands of know-it-all brainiacs are tweeting and retweeting the "Doyle destroyed the global economy" rhetoric all the time, with comments like this:

Even though Doyle, like all governors, went through the same financial hell (after supply side economics collapsed), it's Bobacheck and the others that will never admit their ideological failure: 

How about the real story:

The U.S. Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission reported its findings in January 2011. It concluded that "the crisis was avoidable and was caused by: Widespread failures in financial regulation, including the Federal Reserve’s failure to stem the tide of toxic mortgages; Dramatic breakdowns in corporate governance including too many financial firms acting recklessly and taking on too much risk; An explosive mix of excessive borrowing and risk by households and Wall Street that put the financial system on a collision course with crisis; Key policy makers ill prepared for the crisis, lacking a full understanding of the financial system they oversaw; and systemic breaches in accountability and ethics at all levels.“

And no mention of Governor Jim Doyle/Mary Burke?

Rick Scott, like Scott Walker, is blaming the Republican Great Recession and Job Losses on former Governor Christ.

Conservative voters can't be this gullible? Come to think of it, it did take the news media here nearly 3 years to call Scott Walker out on that lie. Well, here we go again, but in Florida.

According to Gov. Rick Scott, it appears former Gov. Charlie Christ also tanked the U.S. economy and shed nearly 1 million Florida jobs at about the same time Wisconsin's Democratic Governor Jim Doyle did. Great Recession? Never heard of it. From the conservative loons at Americans for Tax Reform:

And like Walker, Rick Scott is taking credit for the state surpluses he and every other state is receiving due to the recovering U.S. economy, courtesy of Pres. Obama. If this works....

Small Businesses Uncertain, afraid of being Blind Sided by another Economic Crash!!!

BizTimes Executive Editor Steve Jagler may have started a whole new conversation nationally with this interesting tidbit from the Council of Small Business Executives; since they don't want to be caught by surprise again by another economic collapse, the uncertainty of "deregulation" may be holding business back.

Jagler: "They will forever, I think, be wary of what could blind side them again. They are determined not be blindsided and bloodied like they were with the Great Recession."   

This is a big story, and a scoop by Upfront's Mike Gousha:



Something never mentioned by the GOP, because it would explain the higher unemployment rate, is the new business model hatched from the wreckage of the Great Recession; a reduced permanent work force supplemented by part time workers during times of higher demand. And since demand lags do to lower wages, more people remain out of work.

Like tort reform that attacked the victims of medical errors instead of preventing the errors in the first place, the GOP is now attacking the unemployed instead of the reasons for slow job growth and anemic demand. Nothing ever changes because of them.

Walker and state GOP campaign target, former Democratic Governor Jim Doyle and Mary Burke, for causing Great Recession...again.

Since we know former Gov. Doyle did not cause the Great Recession, it seem almost ridiculous to hear the head of the state Republican Party continue to blame him for it. Is WISGOP's Joe Fadness stupid? But do keep it fresh in our minds, Joe, how Republican free market policies caused the the Great Recession, wiping out jobs and businesses in Wisconsin.

Does this also mean Republicans will give up saying, "Oh sure, blame Bush," or will they successfully have it both ways from an uncritical media? 

Cheap shot artist, and not too smart: Fadness is shocked Doyle donated money to Mary Burke’s campaign. He thought money went only to Republicans? Maybe the legislature can "reform" that too.

Before the Republicans took over in D.C., we were looking at “surpluses as far as the eye could see,” remember? Heck, read Fadness’ reminder of how bad things got under GOP control:  

jsonline: Joe Fadness, executive director of the state Republican Party, was quick to criticize the donation. "Mary Burke and Jim Doyle set Wisconsin into a downward spiral, and it's no surprise that this same team is funding and advising Burke's campaign to take Wisconsin backward," Fadness said. 

Fadness should also check the calender. In fact, Burke wasn't really there to for the plunge (Feb 2005 to Nov. 2007. And yet, after all is said and done, Doyle’s job creation numbers were on the upswing.

Burke's campaign would be wise to thank Fadness for keeping the Great Recession front and center. 

In Attacking Mary Burke, WISGOP reminds us how they lost 130,000 jobs due to their “free market” induced Great Recession.

WISGOP is proving to be more of tea party affiliated group than an actual opposition party, especially after their latest attack on Democratic candidate for governor Mary Burke (another chance to blog her picture).

Let’s look at their latest intellectually insulting statement:

Burke was a central figure in the failed Doyle Administration – where a $3.6 billion budget deficit was created and over 130,000 jobs were lost in his second term – a mess that was fixed by Scott Walker and Republicans. Her candidacy would solidify an embrace of the failed policies of the past that include massive job loss, high unemployment, and billion dollar budget deficits. 

The budget deficit of $3.6 billion was a high “estimate” produced mainly in conjunction with the Great Recession, that also dumped 130,000 Wisconsinites from their once stable jobs. 

But the tea party WISGOP may want to take another look at their screening process for campaign staff, since the last batch of middle school interns put this amazingly juvenile site together under Burke's name. Are conservative voters willing to stoop to this level...really?