Walker's disregard for the truth and the general public's intelligence might have reached new lows with his "release" of new numbers contradicting Wisconsin's job losses.
The real numbers and the real story
By
The Capital Times
Just imagine what Mitt Romney and his supporters would say if President Barack Obama suddenly announced that he had found a set of jobs figures that "proved" he was presiding over an economic boom -- rather than a slow recovery.
They would not hesitate to accuse the president of cooking the books in order to aid his re-election campaign.
And rightly so. There are established models for measuring job creation and economic growth.
A politician suddenly abandoning those models on the eve of an election in order to create a different impression is not leveling with the people. He's gaming the numbers in order to fool some of the people some of the time.
If Obama played that sort of game, he'd provoke a firestorm of criticism from Republicans. So, hopefully, Republicans will respond with an equal level of anger to the gaming of Wisconsin's job-creation numbers by Gov. Scott Walker.
On the eve of the release of the latest official numbers on job creation -- or, in Wisconsin's sad case, job losses -- Walker suddenly announced he had found a new set of data that shows his policies are working.
He did this barely two weeks before a recall election in which voters will decide whether to remove him from office.
But, more brazenly, he did this one day before official numbers -- which unlike Walker's figures have been reviewed and verified for accuracy -- were to be released.
When the real numbers came out, it became obvious why the governor was turning to another set of data. The real numbers show that Wisconsin, which over the past year has experienced the worst job losses in the nation, lost another 6,200 private-sector jobs in April.
That's devastating news for Wisconsin, and it should serve as a wake-up call for voters regarding the governor's job-killing policies.
Everyone who cares about Wisconsin, even Republicans who might want Walker to retain his post for partisan reasons, should be intellectually honest enough to call him out for peddling an election-season fantasy.
Politicians get away with a lot of things. But no politician, Democrat or Republican, should be allowed to spin away the truth about whether jobs are being created or lost.
(This unsigned editorial originally appeared on the editrial page of the Capital Times.)
May 20, 2012
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