Clinton's Economic Plan estimated to Create 10 Million Jobs, Trump will lose 3.5 Million.

CNBC tried to without success to make destroy Hillary's economic plan estimates by Moody's Mark Zandi. Hillary Clinton's would help create 10 million jobs, while Trumps plan would wipe out nearly 3.5 million jobs.

Zandi's report backed up the claim by saying Clinton's plan is highly detailed and easy to calculate, something that couldn't be said about Trump's plan.

Senate Republican Keystone XL Pipeline bill will kill Wisconsin Great Lakes Shipping Jobs!! Yeah free trade...

A new wrinkle has emerged as the Republicans try to ram through passage of the Keystone XL Pipeline. Thanks to a Senate amendment written by Sen. John McCain, about 1,200 jobs will be lost in our norther section of the state. WPR audio: 

Republican U.S. Sen. John McCain has filed an amendment to repeal the Jones Act, which allows only U.S.-built ships to carry cargo between U.S. ports. McCain said in a release that the law hinders free trade and raises prices for consumers due to shipping costs.

Members of a Great Lakes labor and management coalition say the move would hurt the U.S. shipping industry. Tom Curelli is with the Great Lakes Maritime Task Force and is operations director for Superior’s Fraser Shipyards said a repeal may mean more Canadian competition and fewer U.S. jobs. “For every trip they take, that’s one less trip for our vessels to operate on. When you remove enough trips and enough tonnage, you tie up the U.S. flag vessels and you don’t put them to work,” said Curelli.

Curelli said around 1,500 jobs may be affected in the Twin Ports and roughly 60,000 across the Great Lakes.

Still want to pass the pipeline bill?

Is Obama bad for business, destroying economy? Seems GOP proven wrong again when it comes to Wall Street.

Not only are Republicans wrong about Obama's recovery, but you know deep down inside these guys would be touting the same numbers below if Mitt Romney had won. This is a snapshot of the financial industry, along with the jobs trend. Motley Fool:

GOP candidate Fitzgerald offers "change" and "jobs." Does he know his party runs things now?

I’m loving this. Republicans are the least self-aware people in the world.

Without thinking, Republican candidate Brian Fitzgerald is still using the same slogan used by his party when they ran against Democrats. Fitzgerald is running on "change in Madison," even though his party has been in complete control of everything, including job creation for the last four years.

Change...to be more like Democrats?

Guys like Fitzgerald don't even bother to repackage their message despite their much bragged about majority hold on our now booming state "comeback."

The only thing Fitzgerald has going for himself are his surreal ads that sadly use the party’s standard list of talking points as the jokes they've become. If anything, Fitzgerald is being unintentionally truthful:  

Cap Times: Brian Fitzgerald is running against Democratic state Rep. Janis Ringhand to fill retiring Democratic Sen. Tim Cullen's seat. He is running, he said, because he wants to see change in Madison and throughout the state. The biggest issue in his district, by far, is jobs, he said.

Watch and be amazed. Think if a Democrat ran this stuff...what a conservative talk radio field day it would be:



Oh, and the Irish stereotype, beer belly, wonder through the pub approach Fitzgerald took? Real funny too.

The Bubble World morphing into something Real!!!

Conservative bubble inhabitants may have been criticized for their buy in to all the phantom issues and empty concepts wrapped around words like freedom and liberty, but I'm suddenly realizing that if you wish hard enough, your twisted dreams can become a reality.

Like this ridiculous media encouraged bullshit, playing off the nonstop doom and gloom rhetoric by Republicans that things are worse than ever. Sadly, polls show it working;

AP: President Barack Obama gave Republicans a gift of sorts by confirming their midterm election narrative that next month's balloting is a referendum on his policies. Within hours, GOP candidates across the election landscape capitalized on his words with ads tying their Democratic opponents to the unpopular president.

The horror of the recovery? Not bad after the GOP's free market disaster-the Great Recession. Plus, unemployment is at 5.9% and growth was . Obama even uncharacteristically bragged up the positive:

Today, our businesses are hiring 200,000 Americans a month. The unemployment rate has come down from a high of 10% in 2009, to 6.1% today. Over the past four and a half years, our businesses have created 10 million new jobs - the longest uninterrupted stretch of private sector job creation in our history. Right now, there are more job openings than at any time since 2001. All told, the United States has put more people back to work than Europe, Japan, and every other advanced economy combined.

Still Americans, pummeled by the one minded Republican meme that everything is worse under Obama, are buying into the fantasy and wishful right wing thinking. In reality, people are feeling hopeless because of the growing income gap, another Republican gift:

If Republicans take the senate, than through "reconciliation" they will push cuts that will only make things a whole lot worse, possibly forcing a government shutdown.

Obama Math: Minimum Wage Hike = Job Growth!!! Walker's Math: Minimum Wage Freeze = Dead Last in Job Growth!!!

President Obama wasn't even given 6 months before Republicans were calling his economic agenda a failure, a job killer, a waste of taxpayer stimulus money. Well 10 million new jobs later, and having gained back all the job lost during the Great Recession-and then some, Republicans are still selling their lie. And according to the Tweets I've seen from a few trolls, they believe it too.

If you’re a Republican with presidential ambitions like Scott Walker, with a record of anemic job growth that hasn't yet replaced the jobs lost in Wisconsin, that's a sign “it’s working.” Reelect the boy wonder.

I don’t want to bury the real lead story, so here it is:

Newser: Despite the absence of a federal increase, 13 states raised their minimum wages at the beginning of this year. Those states have added jobs at a faster pace than those that did not raise the wage, providing a counterpoint to a Congressional Budget Office report that projected the nation (could lose up to) 500,000 jobs.
   jsonline: President Barack Obama came to Milwaukee's Laborfest on Monday to talk up an improving economy, push Congress to boost the minimum wage … Obama set up a sharp contrast with congressional Republicans, who say a boost in the minimum wage will lead to job loss.

Republicans pounced on the Burke-Obama connection: "Mary Burke may be ducking

President Obama and his out-of-touch economic revisionism…” the RNCsaid. WISGOP: “The truth is that Burke and Obama represent the same failed policies that have produced disastrous results – and just as President Obama has taken our country backward, Mary Burke would take Wisconsin backward.”  

Who’s pushing economic revisionism? Scott Walker’s 4% jobs growth rate is moving us forward, President Obama’s jobs growth rate of 6.2% is moving us backward? Not even a nice try guys.

Walker’s Record: According to a new Labor Day report released from the Center on Wisconsin Strategy (COWS): “From January 2011 to June 2014, Wisconsin gained 109,200 jobs, posting growth in the labor market of 4.0 percent.

Obama’s Record: Over that same period, the national economy grew by 6.2 percent. If Wisconsin had simply kept pace with national growth, we would have added 167,622 jobs. That difference – 58,422 missing jobs in Wisconsin – suggests that over the last four years, every time Wisconsin added two jobs, the national economy added three.”

Who has jobs growth bragging rights, Walker or Obama? 

Obama said that over the past 53 months American businesses have created nearly 10 million new jobs. "You wouldn't always know it from Washington news — by almost every measure, the American economy, the American workers are better off than when I took office. We're better off by almost every measure."

But of course, Obama’s agenda - with tax increases and job killing regulations - is moving the nation backwards right? How can Walker ignore the following:

(Wisconsin's) hourly median wage grew a paltry $0.50 between 1979 and 2013, taking inflation into account. Wisconsin women earn just $0.82 for every $1 a man earns. 

Walker still refuses to raise the minimum wage.

Climate Change already killing jobs in Milwaukee, raising prices, and the growing numbers of GOP deniers will only make things worse.

I have this weird radar that alerts me to stories that in some way relate to each other, like job losses and climate problems. Climate denying Texas is now seeing a huge decline in cattle ranching because of drought conditions...I'm crying alligator tears:

WWNO: For decades, Texas has been the center of cattle country, but drought is reshaping the beef map and raising the price of steak. Ranchers are moving their herds from California to Colorado and from Texas to Nebraska by the thousands. They’re seeking refuge from dry weather and cattle producers in the Midwest are making the most of it.

Nebraska Radio Net: Texas, the country’s No. 1 beef state, lost 24 percent of its total beef herd from 2010-2014. Oklahoma saw a 13 percent cut. A freak snowstorm in October of 2013 killed cattle in western Nebraska. The thunderstorms and tornadoes of June this year killed an estimated one thousand head.

Neighboring South Dakota saw a flash rainfall, and then massive blizzard that killed tens of thousands of cattle:

Even after the above climate change disasters, and the news that Cargill is eliminating 600 in Milwaukee today, no one on the Republican side is talking about, or reconsidering their extreme position on this job killing issue. 

jsonline: Cargill Inc. is closing its beef cattle slaughterhouse in Milwaukee, resulting in the loss of about 600 jobs almost immediately … Years of drought have reshaped the U.S. beef industry, with cattle feedlots and meatpacking plants closing because there aren't enough livestock to support them. Plant operators say they don't expect a recovery anytime soon, as it will take years to rebuild herds that were drawn down by an extended drought in cattle-producing states and high animal feed prices.

I haven't heard one thing from the Democrats either, who are missing a golden opportunity to prove their point to a skeptical public buffaloed by Republican tea party deniers. Democrats are stuck in a pattern of reacting to Republican attacks, defending themselves by promising to give-in, and not forcefully standing up for their beliefs. I know, I'm not happy with the party either.

The Results are in: Washington State's Higher Minimum wages helped increase and exceed National job growth numbers.

The minimum wage, a bad idea? If raising wages is such a bad idea, why do we keep raising CEO salaries? A higher minimum wages would attract the best and the brightest too, right?

Republicans don't want to talk about Washington State's higher minimum wage law, or the better than average job growth: 

Bloomberg News: When Washington residents voted in 1998 to raise the state’s minimum wage and link it to the cost of living, opponents warned the measure would be a job-killer. The prediction hasn’t been borne out.

In the 15 years that followed, the state’s minimum wage climbed to $9.32 -- the highest in the country. Meanwhile job growth continued at an average 0.8 percent annual pace, 0.3 percentage point above the national rate. Payrolls at Washington’s restaurants and bars, portrayed as particularly vulnerable to higher wage costs, expanded by 21 percent. Poverty has trailed the U.S. level for at least seven years.

Increasing the minimum hourly wage to $10.10 would also reduce food stamp expenditures by about 6 percent, or nearly $4.6 billion a year, according to a report this week from the Center for American Progress. 

State Schools Superintendent Tony Evers...Deer in the GOP Headlights, while GOP Sen. Luther Olsen warns of jobs and Business losses.

On WPT's Here and Now, Superintendent Tony Evers appeared stunned by the vindictive attack on education, and the irrational hatred directed at Common Core.

With no real solutions offered by the radical elements of the Republican state legislature, Evers has no idea what is coming next. After 3 years of preparation, along with college entrance exams geared to Common Core, abandoning the system now would just destabilize public education. Which might just be the point.

If you think Evers is just making things up, try to answer the same questions he's struggling with right now. Will the Tea Party Republicans get their way and turn our kids into low information voters?



Still not convinced, well check out Republican Sen. Luther Olsen's dire warning about the consequences of killing Common Core, and we're talking about jobs business in this state. Warning, if you have kids, this will depress you even more. From WKOW's Capitol City Sunday -Greg Neumann:



Wisconsin Soapbox tracked down the actual language of the proposed GOP reform law:

Remember when the Senator's went ape over how Sup. Evers said that the legislature would have the ability to rewrite standards? Sup. Evers today went to DPI's lawyers asking that they take a look into the matter. They did, and their letter was posted online today HERE. 

If the Joint Committee for Review of Administrative Rules (“JCRAR”) rejects the state superintendent’s model academic standards, the JCRAR is required to “prepare a bill that incorporates by reference” the standards prepared by the Model Academic Standards Board. Id. The bill is then introduced “in each house of the legislature as provided under [Wis. Stat. §§] 227.19(5)(e) to (g) and (6)(b)…” Id.   

While SB 619 provides that the bill must incorporate the Model Academic Standards Board’s standards by reference, nothing in SB 619 or Wis. Stat. §§ 227.19(5)(e) to (g) and (6)(b) prohibits the legislature from modifying the bill once it has been introduced. In other words, once JCRAR introduces the bill into the Senate and the Assembly, the Senate or Assembly could pass any amendment to modify the model academic standards contained in the bill. 

Not just the Party of No, but the Party of No Jobs

Two big job creators are being blocked by the same Republican Party that can’t stop talking about the job creators. Clue: “Jobs” might be a trick into passing their many theoretical “Path’s to Prosperity.”

Since reducing government just takes control away from the people, the plan they have is an ugly one. Welcome to their capitalist utopia.

Finance: Just Like That, the ‘Party of No’ Is Back: Within the space of a few hours, Republicans put roadblocks in front of a pair of popular legislative proposals that supporters insist would create jobs, increase economic growth and alleviate a lot of human suffering.

1. A hard core of conservatives in John Boehner’s conference would oppose almost any immigration reform acceptable to Senate Democrats, but Boehner blamed the problem on a lack of “trust” in President Obama.

The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that comprehensive immigration reform would generate economic growth and shrink the federal deficit.

2. Later on Thursday, Republicans blocked the Senate from moving forward on a three-month extension of federal unemployment benefits (for) 1.7 million long-term unemployed people.

CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf told the House Budget Committee that the extension of benefits would help the economy and create an estimated 200,000 jobs. 

And that's why Republicans still think they can sell the public on being job creators?

WMC president Kurt "BS" Bauer says Minnesota's Republican Party not happy over their states Jobs and Business Success!!

Remember the story about Minnesota kicking Wisconsin's ass for job creation and business? Well, believe it or not, Kurt Bauer, president of Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, explains why Minnesota Republicans envy Wisconsin, and say their state is going in the wrong direction? Amazingly, Bauer reveals Minnesota Republicans want their state to be more like us, despite the our lousy record. They even hope the unemployment rate increases to prove their point. Ideology over jobs, business and consumer certainty? From Upfront with Mike Gousha: 

90 percent of Job Growth between March 2010 to July 2013 is Full Time!

My conservative friend in Milwaukee still hasn't gotten back to me after I passed along links to both of the stories posted here. From Politifact (pictured) here, and Wal-Mart's big move below:

Wal-Mart Returning To Full-Time Workers-Obamacare Not Such A Job Killer After All? ... the nation’s largest employer, announced Monday that 35,000 part-time employees will soon be moved to full-time status, entitling them to the full healthcare benefits that were scheduled to be denied them as a result of Wal-Mart’s efforts to avoid the requirements of Obamacare.

Delaying ObamaCare would just produce a year of these lies:

Nice try Rep. Sessions. This just exemplifies the Republican misinformation campaign, and should be a reality check; business still has to run their businesses and serve their customers. Part-time work did catch on, at all:

Wal-Mart’s business is going south due to the company’s penchant for putting politics and the squeeze on Wal-Mart employees ahead of the kind of customer satisfaction that produces prosperity over the long-term. In fact, Wal-Mart’s unwillingness to pay most of their workers a livable wage, while avoiding enough full-time employees to properly run a retail outlet, has led to the company placing dead last among department and discount stores in the most recent American Customer Satisfaction Index—a position that should now be all too familiar to the nation’s largest retailer given that Wal-Mart has either held or shared the bottom spot on the index for six years running. 

When the creation of business start-ups and new opportunities is bad: Blame Obamacare!

Fox News featured the following doom and gloom story of conservative outrage over all of the new jobs and investor windfalls we're seeing as the Affordable Care Act, ObamaCare, rolls out.

"Amid all of the problems surrounding the roll out of ObamaCare..." the Fox News anchor warns, we now we have a whole new set of winners who stand to make a profit. Wow, nasty stuff isn't it? 

This hilarious video shows the reporter trying, and failing, to sound unbiased over the new jobs created due to ObamaCare. Especially when asked leading questions by the anchor. Think the same thing wouldn't happen under an entirely private "buyer beware" system pushed by Dumb Ron Johnson and Paul Ryan? 

Republicans have a thing against business success from industries they don’t support. I started noticing this movement on a statewide level in Wisconsin, when Scott Walker’s legislative foot soldiers managed to kill thousands of new jobs building a high speed rail system. It would have created a regional business climate tying Milwaukee to Chicago; to Madison; to Minneapolis. Now they’re reversing themselves with plans to expand rail from Milwaukee to Chicago with state taxpayer money, instead of using federal dollars negotiated by the former Democratic Governor.

They want to limit wind turbines construction, they want to run from health care reform, embryonic research…the list is a long one.

Now, lobbyists are bad. See what horrors await in the new health care reform economy:

The early big winners of the president’s signature law include investors, lawyers, consultants and purveyors of new technology.

The health care sector of stocks in the S&P 500 has increased in value by 50 percent.  Gilead Sciences, a California-based drug maker with 5,000 workers, has seen its stock price explode by 157 percent in the last three and a half years. Health insurers Cigna, Aetna and United Health have each seen healthy gains since President Obama signed the reform measure. Those companies as well as hospital operators Tenet Healthcare and Health Management Associates have seen stock gains far above the S&P's overall 16.9 percent jump. On a smaller scale, lawyers with expertise understanding ObamaCare are winners, too.

Oh no, a new re-energized economy is emerging. It’s all so confusing. Stop it please:

Arthur Tacchino says he's fortunate to have stumbled into a job asking him to become an ObamaCare expert … he's now taken his intricate knowledge of the law to the private sector, where he's part of a small team selling software programs to companies needing help managing the new law’s red tape.

Outrageous.

Ending Sequestration would create 900,000 new jobs-CBO!!! So, who's backing this job killer....hmm?

This is just an estimate:

Scott Walker's revisionist Promise get reelection spin!

The Walker sh** hit the fan today, and just in time for his reelection. According to the latest report from Politifact regarding Scott Walker's grandiose jobs promise and pander:

On Aug. 26, 2013, Walker talked about what happened before he took office. And he referred to the promise as a "goal.”

Here's the offending, contradictory clips...see if you too can detect any difference between now and then:

"My goal wasn't so much to hit a magic number as much as it was, in the four years before I took office, when I was campaigning, I saw that we lost over 133,000 jobs in the state. I said, 'It's really not about jobs, it's about real people, real jobs like those here, and more importantly, affecting real families all across the state,'" Walker told reporters.

Rhinelander television station WJFW reported on the governor"s comments under an online headline that read: "Walker backs off campaign jobs pledge at Merrill stop.”  

We asked Walker's office about the report from Merrill, and whether the governor was backing away from the jobs promise.

"Absolutely not,” spokesman Tom Evenson said in an email. “In that story, Governor Walker was providing the context behind the goal.  Governor Walker set the goal because it’s about real people and real families all across Wisconsin.  Governor Walker’s number one priority is helping the people of this state create jobs.”

It's worth noting that in his short statement, Evenson three times refers to his boss's top promise as a "goal.”

Democratically run Minnesota kicking Wisconsin's ass on jobs.

When I took a look at Jake’s Economic TA Funhouse's breakdown of Scott Walker's jobs numbers, I noticed something interesting about our neighbor to the west and south, Minnesota and Illinois.

Jake compared Walker’s Wisconsin to the other Midwestern states:

Wisconsin's 2,000 job gain in July (1,800 in the private sector) was the lowest in the Midwest, and it 6th out of 7 in the region when it comes to job growth in the last 2 months, regardless of what measure you use.

It's that simple really. We should be comparing Wisconsin to Democratically controlled Minnesota and Illinois. Sure each state has their problems, but not on the job creation/taxation front. Where Minnesota raised taxes on the wealthy, and Illinois raise the corporate tax, Wisconsin didn't. Here's what happened:

Midwest job growth, all jobs July '12-July ‘13: Minn +55,000, Ill. +55,500, compared to Wis. +25,800.

Midwest job growth %, all jobs July ‘12-July ’13: Minn +2.02%,   Ill. +0.97%,   Wis. +0.93%. 

Midwest job growth %, private sector, July ‘12- July ’13: Minn +1.91%,   Ill. +1.26%,   Wis. +1.18%.  

Interesting? Jake summed up Scott Walker like this:

This guy's such a paper tiger. Time to start poking a whole lotta holes in him. C'mon DPW, run some ads and TELL PEOPLE THE FACTS. NOW.

Isn't it time Democrats never stop talking about Scott Walker's jobs record? Scott Walker is laying out his vision and leading. And we're expected to follow him there?

Walker takes Paul Ryan path to White House...Lie!!!

I thought this was pretty obvious:

The truth:

Not true, we found: Private job growth was higher in 2010-11, in the final year of Doyle and the first year under Walker. And total employment including government jobs rose faster from 2003-05 and 2010-11 than in the two-year Walker period.

We rate his claim False.

My conservative friend in Milwaukee just yawns over Walker's record, because no matter what else, Republicans are in control.

Scott Walker's yearly Jobs record: 1st year 32,282, this last year 24,124. We're on the down slide....

The numbers are in, and hey, Scott Walker saw jobs increase in Wisconsin, but fewer of them than in his first year. "It's working?" may be his new slogan.

jsonline: Wisconsin gained 24,124 private-sector jobs in the 12 months between March 2012 and March 2013, according to data released Thursday by the state Department of Workforce Development … based on a set of employment data considered to be the most reliable.

However, compared to the prior 12-month period for Wisconsin, from December 2011 to December 2012, private-sector job creation slowed from 32,282. "The momentum looks to be slowing, not continuing," said Brian Jacobsen, chief investment strategist at Wells Fargo Funds Management in Menomonee Falls.

Poverty Wages the new norm?

New research just release by COWS, the UW's Center on Wisconsin Strategy, shows you where we're headed as a country. After the Great Recession, big business made major adjustments to their employment and benefits plans, saving themselves lots of money but also lowering wages and cutting jobs. Blue collar unskilled jobs disappeared.

Here's a screen capture of just a part of their summary:

U.S. becoming "Third World India 40 years ago" with low wage jobs. We don' Build Thinks Anymore....

Former Assistant Treasury Secretary Paul Craig Roberts identified the jobs Republicans like to call “going in the right direction,” with the 179,000 jobs created in May. Thanks to America United for the story tip:

TruthDig: Retail, 27,700; wholesale trade, 7,900; ambulatory health care services, 15,300; servers and bartenders, 38,100; local government, 13,000; amusement, gambling and recreation, 12,500; temporary help, 25,600; business support services, 4,300; services to buildings and residences, 6,400; accounting and bookkeeping, 3,100; architecture and engineering, 4,900; computer systems and related, 6,000; management and technical consulting, 3,200.

“For a decade this has been the jobs profile of ‘the world’s most powerful economy.’ It is the profile of third world India 40 years ago. The jobs that made the U.S. the dominant economy have been moved off shore by corporations threatened by Wall Street with takeovers if they did not increase their profits. The U.S. has twice as many people employed in government than in manufacturing,” and virtually no new jobs for the “vast number” of recent college graduates.