Wednesday, April 17, 2013

"Pants On Fire" For MacIver Institute Walker Jobs 'Finding'

The pro-Walker and right-wing advocacy machine raised eyebrows all over town with the stunning finding that despite federal data and state agency information to the contrary,  Scott Walker was more than halfway to creating the 250,000 jobs on which he'd based his 2010 gubernatorial campaign, had reiterated in the 2011 recall election and would have to defend if he runs for re-election in 2014.

If true, it would mean clearer sailing for Walker.

PoilitiFact says the claim is false:

Our rating
The MacIver Institute posted an item that says Wisconsin has 137,372 more private sector jobs than when Gov. Scott Walker first took office, meaning that Walker is more than halfway to his goal of 250,000 jobs.

The jobs promise will be the No. 1 yardstick used to measure Walker’s performance as governor.

But the conservative group’s number is wrong, two times over.
MacIver started with the wrong month of data. That alone nearly doubled the number of jobs they claim were created under Walker.

They compounded their error by combining full and partial years of data -- even though they (like the governor himself) were told not to do so.
Pants on Fire.



2 comments:

Gareth said...

And now we discover that the austerity policy fad, which has devastated the economies of Europe and now threatens the US, is based on an economic study that suffers from the double-whammy of cherry-picked data and an Excel spreadsheet error. Brilliant!

Max B said...

More brilliant analysis from the MacGruber 'Institute.'