Walker Caught Embellishing His Job-Creation Total. Again.

[Updated, 9:25 p.m.] The Journal Sentinel's PolitiFact carried a long story Sunday exposing Scott Walker's job-creation inflation. The newspaper does not mince its words:

As the fall election nears and most everyone agrees his promise of 250,000 new jobs in four years won’t be met, Gov. Scott Walker is rolling out a bullish new measure of business growth -- and suggesting it shows Wisconsin could reach the mark by mid-2015.   

But his impressive-sounding talking point -- that 17,000 new ready-to-hire businesses have sprung up on his watch -- crumbles upon examination.

Many of the so-called businesses which Walker claims as job-creators born on his watch, in fact, are clubs and non-profits like Scout troops or hobbyist associations that create no jobs, or are limited liability corporations - - LLC's - - that exist on paper to hold real estate or shield a sole proprietor from certain risks. rather than to generate payrolls or get shovels in the ground, as the newspaper notes: 

More than 80 percent of the newly created business entities during Walker’s term are LLCs.

As PolitiFact Wisconsin has noted several times in evaluating Walker’s new-business promise, business experts caution that many LLCs are set up for tax and liability purposes and employ no one.

The blogger Jud Lounsbury wrote about this issue months ago - - as the newspaper acknowledges - - and I was glad to post his work at the time:

The blogger Jud Lounsbury takes a closer look at Scott Walker's claim that 10,000 new businesses have been created on his watch and finds Walker is counting the creation of little league teams, skiing, ping pong, bird-watching and yachting clubs, scout troops and condo associations.

So hat tip to Lounsbury, again, for writing six months ago about the businesses Walker claimed to have seen created during his term in office so far:   

Such is the case of the Oak Creek Little League team, which first formed in 1982.  At some point, they fell behind in keeping up with their paperwork and were administrative dissolved by the state.  However on August 7, 2013 the Oak Creek Little League Team was restored to good standing,  was issued a "certificate of reinstatement" and bang: Scott Walker has another "new business." 

And we're not just talking Little League teams. The Reedsburg Girl Scout troop, Madison Ping-Pong Club, Waupaca Rotary Club, Columbus Historical Society, Oconto Jaycees, Blue Mound Nordic Ski Club, Clyman Lions Club, Three Rivers Bird Watchers Club, Menomonee Falls Choir Association, and Pepin Yacht Club all are in Walker's list of new businesses created. 

In fact, in Walker's list of new businesses, he is counting 241 organizations with "club" in the title, 102 with "friends," 75 condo associations, 458 associations (mostly real estate), 360 foundations, 211 churches and over 200 with football, baseball or some other sport in the name.   

The larger problem for the state and the body politic is that we have a Governor who is routinely caught speaking falsely - - his Politifact-vetted record is heavy on "false" ratings, or worse - - and on the matter of the albatross that is his 250,000 new jobs' promise-and-fail, the latest finding by PolitiFact is not the first time he has been caught manipulating or falsifying the jobs' count.

*  Here's an earlier PolitiFact finding about a Walker job-creation claim that earned him a finding of "ridiculous" and "Pants on Fire." With the proof being numbers from his own administration.

*  Or a "False" PolitiFact finding for substantially overstating his job-creating numbers for  the first two years of his term.

* And a real Walker whopper about jobs for alleging that his predecessor and principal whipping-boy, the Democrat Jim Doyle, had created a wasteful employment program  - - but the program, in fact, had been created by GOP Gov. Scott McCallum, with Scott Walker's legislative vote!

A government with an inveterate falsifier at the helm cannot be trusted or respected.