In a rambling article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel today, Scott Walker is quoted many times trying to walk back a lot of the evil shit he's been promising to inflict upon Wisconsin after the new year. Personally, I don't believe a word of his retreat, but when he was quoted about jobs in the state I almost fell out of my chair:
The governor also said that he believed he could still achieve his stated goal of creating 250,000 jobs in his four-year term, though he acknowledged that ongoing concerns about the "fiscal-cliff" negotiations in Washington as well as uncertainty about costs connected to the Affordable Care Act.
"We're just under 100,000," he said. "It's going to be tough, no doubt about it.
"We're going to achieve it."
The reason I laughed was in the next sentence in the article:
According to an analysis by PolitiFact, Walker has been responsible for a net of 25,411 jobs created.
I'm not a big follower of Politifact, but when they deal with hard numbers they're pretty good.
For a while I was following Wisconsin's job numbers very closely and posting my own analyses on another blog. Walker, however, instructed his Department of Workforce Development to start issuing "extra", unvetted numbers along with confusing press releases to throw amateur employment sleuths like me off the trail.
I don't have time to read through the crap, so I now rely on Politifact and a couple other sources for jobs numbers and they are all pretty similar in their conclusion: Scott Walker sucks at creating jobs.
Forbes Magazine concurs, ranking Wisconsin 42nd out of 50, making it one of the worst states for business:
The Badger State adopted the slogan “Open for Business” in 2011, erecting signs along the state border. The results have been middling at best as job growth is projected to be second worst in the U.S. through 2016.
Walker sucks. I know that's not very original, but it's true. He sucks at creating jobs and he sucks at math.