This guy's got moon sized balls:
One day after a federal report showed that Wisconsin is creating jobs at a pace that's about half the national rate, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker said the uncertainty of last year's special gubernatorial recall election stunted hiring in the state.
Walker commented on a report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics that showed Wisconsin added private-sector jobs at a 1.1% pace in the 12-month period from March 2012 to March 2013, while the U.S. added jobs at a 2.0% rate.
(bolding is mine)
Here's what he said:
"These numbers are March to March, and in March of last year, we were still three months out from the recall election," Walker said at a press conference in Chicago, where he appeared at an economic forum. "And as I point out repeatedly, employers in the state were basically frozen until they knew what would happen in that election and the uncertainty it caused."
"There's no doubt in our first two years, because of the protests, the recalls, that they had an impact early on. Much as there is concern nationally about the impact of Obamacare and the impact it has on employers, they just wonder with uncertainty."
He hopes people have forgotten that the recall election was June 5, 2012 -
over a year ago and that the annual jobs numbers report covered not only the recall campaign and election, but the 9 MONTHS AFTER THAT when "certainty" that Scott Walker would still be Governor had been ensured.
He's blamed everything else for his failure to create the 250,000 jobs he promised.
His new promise?
"When the end of the year numbers come out, you are going to see a significant increase," the governor said.
He might just be right about that. After creating his own phony jobs numbers report just before the recall election and right before the release of the official (and dismal) Bureau of Labor Statistics report, he's finding that his own special report is still not doing the job papering over his jobs failure. He's got his folks hard at work creating a brand new jobs report using a different methodology for calculation (likely using Rovian Math).
If Scott Walker wants to know why Wisconsins economy is in the tank, wages are falling, and jobs are slow to come, he need only look in the nearest mirror.
You don't have to be an economist to realize that sucking out 18% of the pay of every public worker in Wisconsin means there will be a whole lot less money spent, less demand for products and services, home foreclosures, more debt, and businesses laying off workers or going under because they have less business. And then there were the added costs incurred as every public employee who could retire DID retire to avoid those serious cuts, others left for the private sector, layoffs as state and local budgets were seriously cut, and the costs of hiring and training needed replacements had serious impacts on state and local budgets.
You also don't have to be a Rhodes Scholar to realize that taking nearly a billion dollars out of education had an impact, too. Teachers retired in massive numbers, but other teachers and staff got laid off. More negative economic impact.
Walkers cuts to health care, disability programs, Badger Care, and everything else that affects the 99% created more economic damage.
And with the current budget we have more of the same. 92,000 people are about to be thrown off Badger Care (Medicaid). They'll need to buy insurance from the exchanges starting Tuesday. The money going to insurance companies WON'T be going into Wisconsins economy. That won't be good either.
The big problem here isn't that these guys aren't deep thinkers, it's that they're NON-THINKERS. They don't look ahead to see what the impact of their policies will be. Anyone with even a basic comprehension understand you can't take money from people in wage cuts or layoffs, payments to insurance companies, closures of programs they rely on, or to pay for benefits they've given up wage increases to maintain and expect that an economy will chug along with no problem.
And if your policies fail because 100% of your focus is on benefitting campaign donors, punishing perceived "enemies", pleasing ideological zealots, or advancing ones own political career, grasping at straws to find someone or something to blame is both a lie and cowardly.
These guys have been blaming the protests, the recalls, the "uncertainty", for far too long. They've had things all their own way since the recall was done well over a year ago. Dredging up old excuses might be handy, but it's a lie grasped by the flailing hands of desperate politicians angling to deflect blame.
Scott Walker and the Wisconsin Republicans own this failing economy. They created it. If it's become Frankenstein, they have only themselves to blame.
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