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“Challenging The Spot Of The Ball”: Scott Walker Magically Turns Wisconsin Job Numbers Into Pre-Election Miracle

With Wisconsin suffering the worst job loss numbers in the nation for the calendar year 2011, Governor Scott Walker promised yesterday that he will reveal newly revised numbers this week that will, effectively, change water into wine on the Wisconsin job front.

And he’s done it just in time for the June 5th recall election.

So, just how is Walker about to turn Wisconsin’s dismal job numbers from lemons to lemonade?

The Governor has simply decided to ignore the system used by the Department of Labor —and every other state in the nation —to measure job growth (or loss) and elected instead to go with a different set of numbers that makes things in Wisconsin look better.

Who knew it could be so easy to solve a jobs crisis?

With Wisconsin’s lagging job growth now driving voter sentiment as the state heads towards the June 5th election, Walker’s Chief Economist, John Koskinen, offered a presentation last week to Walker staff members and state economic officials wherein he made the case for an alternate system of measuring job creation—one that would be ‘unique’ to the Badger State.

The presentation is available for viewing on YouTube, under the title “Challenging The Spot Of The Ball”. For those of you who are not football fans, ‘challenging the spot of the ball’ refers to a football coach’s complaint to the referee when the coach doesn’t think the referee has been fair about where he places the ball on the field after a play.

Koskinen’s essential pitch is that the Establishment Payroll Survey—the Department of Labor (DOL) survey conducted each month to produce the jobs numbers—is an unfair way to go about counting jobs in Wisconsin. Why? Because the numbers look worse for Wisconsin under this method of counting than they would when the state relies upon on a different survey done each month by the DOL entitled the “Current Population Survey.”

The problem is, whether convenient to Wisconsin or not, the Establishment Payroll Survey is the metric used by the DOL —and the system relied upon by every other state in the nation— to measure job growth.

Here’s the difference between the two approaches-

The Establishment Payroll Survey involves the DOL calling workplaces-both private and government- and asking how many people are employed. The results of this survey, on a national basis, is the jobs number reported every month for non-farm employment.

With Wisconsin suffering the worst job loss numbers in the nation for the calendar year 2011, Governor Scott Walker promised yesterday that he will reveal newly revised numbers this week that will, effectively, change water into wine on the Wisconsin job front.

And he’s done it just in time for the June 5th recall election.

So, just how is Walker about to turn Wisconsin’s dismal job numbers from lemons to lemonade?

The Governor has simply decided to ignore the system used by the Department of Labor —and every other state in the nation —to measure job growth (or loss) and elected instead to go with a different set of numbers that makes things in Wisconsin look better.

Who knew it could be so easy to solve a jobs crisis?

With Wisconsin’s lagging job growth now driving voter sentiment as the state heads towards the June 5th election, Walker’s Chief Economist, John Koskinen, offered a presentation last week to Walker staff members and state economic officials wherein he made the case for an alternate system of measuring job creation—one that would be ‘unique’ to the Badger State.

The presentation is available for viewing on YouTube, under the title “Challenging The Spot Of The Ball”. For those of you who are not football fans, ‘challenging the spot of the ball’ refers to a football coach’s complaint to the referee when the coach doesn’t think the referee has been fair about where he places the ball on the field after a play.

Koskinen’s essential pitch is that the Establishment Payroll Survey—the Department of Labor (DOL) survey conducted each month to produce the jobs numbers—is an unfair way to go about counting jobs in Wisconsin. Why? Because the numbers look worse for Wisconsin under this method of counting than they would when the state relies upon on a different survey done each month by the DOL entitled the “Current Population Survey.”

The problem is, whether convenient to Wisconsin or not, the Establishment Payroll Survey is the metric used by the DOL —and the system relied upon by every other state in the nation— to measure job growth.

Here’s the difference between the two approaches-

The Establishment Payroll Survey involves the DOL calling workplaces-both private and government- and asking how many people are employed. The results of this survey, on a national basis, is the jobs number reported every month for non-farm employment.

The Current Population Survey, favored by Governor Walker, involves calling households to ask people if they are working. This is the survey that gives us our monthly unemployment number—the number that is consistently attacked by Obama foes because it is impacted by factors such as how many people have dropped out of the hunt for a job, expiration of unemployment benefits and other events that skew the numbers. In other words, when people give up looking for work, it actually has a positive impact on the unemployment rate because these people are removed from the counting base, allowing for a better ratio of people who are working to those who are not. This produces a more favorable, but far less accurate, measurement of how many people are unemployed.

The Current Population Survey (household survey) is particularly tricky when applied to determining the job numbers for a state because of the many people who live on the ‘edges’ of a state who are employed across the border in a different state. By way of example, someone living in Racine, Wisconsin may be able to answer in the affirmative when asked if she has a job. However, what is not asked is whether the respondent is employed in Wisconsin or driving across the border into Illinois to go to work. This makes such an individual’s response useful in determining how many people are working on a national basis but perverts the numbers when attempting to determine how many people are actually working in Wisconsin.

For these reasons, the Establishment Survey has long been the primary tool for measuring how many jobs exist in a given state rather than the household survey.

Yet, when Scott Walker delivers his ‘good news’ this week using his version of the ‘real’ numbers of job growth in 2011, he will not be using this traditional standard. And should we insist that the Walker Administration stay within the same metrics everyone else uses so as to get a true measure of where Wisconsin ranks vis-a-vis other states?

No worries —The Governor is ready for that one.

In the presentation noted above, Mr. Koskinen argues that were the DOL to use the old benchmarking readjustment standards (the Labor Department uses up-to-date data each year to go back and make adjustments to earlier estimates), involving making corrections to the 2nd quarter job numbers of the previous year rather than the current standards of readjusting the 3rd quarter of the previous year—it would also look better for Wisconsin. Accordingly, Walker is choosing to use the old standards because…well, I think the reason is sufficiently obvious.

Still, every single other state in the union uses the current standards of readjusting 3rd quarter benchmarks and it is that number which is used to compare relative success or failure among the 50 states.

According to Laura Dresser, a labor economist at The Center On Wisconsin Strategy at The University Of Wisconsin, Walker’s new numbers are little more than an incredibly transparent effort to create a false reality just in time to mislead Wisconsin voters who will cast their ballot in a few short weeks. Pointing out just one of the flaws in the ‘new and improved’ Walker method of measuring job growth, Dresser says, “It seems that they’re attributing employment growth in other states to Wisconsin.”

Dresser further points out that even if we were to go along with Walker’s preferred metrics, despite their being completely out of synch with the remainder of the country, we simply end up “dancing around zero.” While the Establishment Survey puts the numbers of jobs lost slightly below zero, the alternative survey preferred by the Walker people puts them just above zero. At the end of the day, we’re talking about zero job growth—even under Walker’s favored, if completely unorthodox, approach.

The numeric wizardry has not gone unnoticed by Governor Walker’s opponent in the coming election, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett who said,””They brought in a fiction writer. They don’t like their numbers. They’re going to make up their own numbers.”

There is always a way to spin bad news and we can always count on politicians-of all stripes-to do their best in this regard. However, when one considers that Governor Walker, for the first 15 months of his term, was content to utilize the same system of measuring job growth accepted by the remaining 49 states and the federal government, it seems stunningly disingenuous to toss the metric aside now that he faces recall.

The question that remains is whether those who support the Governor, and the few remaining Wisconsinites still on the fence, will be willing to forgive so blatant a diversion or will respond to the Administration’s attempt to insult the voters by ‘changing the spot of the ball.’

Should the voters of Wisconsin throw their own red flag on Walker’s ploy and demand a review of the play, it’s a good bet that the people are not going to like Scott Walker’s call on this one.

 

By: Rick Ungar, Contributing Writer, Forbes, May 15, 2012

May 16, 2012 Posted by | Wisconsin | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

“Democrats May Be Choosing A Governor”: Scott Walker’s Austerity Agenda Is Losing

Driving west from Madison, Wisconsin, through the small towns and dairy farm country of western Wisconsin, it quickly becomes clear that the Wisconsin recall election is a statewide phenomenon.

For all the efforts of Governor Walker to convince the hosts on Fox and CNBC that he is a popular governor who is threatened not by angry citizens but by “the left, the radical left, and the big labor union bosses” who are “somehow counting on the idea that they can bring enough money and enough bodies into Wisconsin to dissuade voters,” the message from farm country tells an entirely different story.

Walker has had the overwhelming spending advantage since the recall fight started last November. Walker has had all the benefits of the Republican Party organization that has gone into overdrive to aid his candidacy, while Democrats have faced a multi-candidate primary fight.

Yet, Walker does not have the swing counties of western Wisconsin wrapped up. Not by a long shot.

Along Highway 14, heading out of Dane County and into Iowa and Richland Counties, hundreds of hand-painted signs propose to “Recall Walker.” Most list reasons for the governor’s removal: “Worst Job Losses in US,” “Attacks on Collective Bargaining,” “Cut Education,” “Cut BadgerCare,” “Divided State,” “John Doe.”

Of course, the governor has his supporters.

But there is genuine, broad-based and statewide opposition to this governor in every region of Wisconsin—but especially in the western and northern parts of the state. Even as the governor has spent $21 million so far on the recall campaign, that opposition is growing.

The new Marquette University Law School Poll shows that disapproval of the governor’s performance had moved up to 51 percent. Indeed, the governor’s approval rating has now declined to 47 percent, the lowest point so far this year. And one of the prospective Democratic challengers, Tom Barrett, has now moved ahead of Walker in head-to-head match-ups run by the Marquette pollsters.

What has changed? The polling shows that Wisconsinites, who once felt that Republicans had the right equation for creating jobs (tax cuts for multinational corporations, attacks on public employees and their unions, slashing of education and public-service funding), have soured on the GOP and its poster-boy governor. They’ve been influenced, of course, by the Bureau of Labor Statistics study that reveals that, in the year since Governor Walker implemented his austerity agenda, Wisconsin has suffered the worst job losses in the nation. The Marquette poll shows that Wisconsinites now believe that investments in education, good relations with unions and fair tax policies are more likely to grow the economy than Walker’s “war on workers” approach.

The governor admitted Wednesday that the recall contest on June 5 is “a 50-50 race.” But what’s notable is that his numbers are declining, while numbers for the opposition are rising.

When I spoke at the Arcadia Bookstore in Spring Green the other night, we talked a good deal about the Democratic gubernatorial primary. I suggested, as I will here, that people should take their vote seriously. After all, they are not just choosing a nominee. If the signs in front of the farms are correct, and if the polls are correct, it looks like Democrats may be choosing a governor.

 

By: John Nichols, The Nation, May 3, 2012

May 4, 2012 Posted by | Wisconsin | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

“No Time For Infighting”: Divided Wisconsin Unions Could Spell Win For Scott Walker

Unions in Wisconsin made history by mobilizing the recall against Gov. Scott Walker, but it’s too soon to say whether the state will follow through and kick him to the curb. One thing that could work in his favor: The inability of some of the state’s powerful unions to consolidate behind a Democratic candidate to oppose him. Having come this far, some labor activists now question whether the best way to flex their muscle is to sit out the election altogether.

This is the drama unfolding at the Teaching Assistants Association, which represents graduate students and project assistants from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. No union is more identified with the anti-Walker mobilization. Days after he introduced his bill to gut collective bargaining, TAA members showed up at the state capitol, sleeping bags in hand, and kicked off what became a 16-day occupation. That emboldened Democratic senators to flee the state to deny Walker a quorum – bringing national media attention to the controversy.

Now a month before the May 8 primary, two Democrats, former Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk and Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, are neck-and-neck at the front of the pack. And TAA members are split on what to do about it.

At issue is whether the union should support a candidate who hasn’t pledged to restore cuts to public workers’ wages and benefits — one of the criteria the TAA originally listed as a a prerequisite for an endorsement. Falk, who entered the race in January, is the only candidate who has pledged to veto any budget that doesn’t restore collective bargaining rights. But she also frequently touts the $10 million in concessions that she secured in negotiations with local unions as county executive. Barrett, who entered the race Friday, is more problematic when it comes to cuts: Last year, as the debate over collective bargaining raged, he told a conservative radio host that he opposed Walker’s collective bargaining changes but supported his proposed cuts.

“While Barrett was positioning himself as Walker-lite to the right-wing radio audience, Kathleen Falk was in court suing the state Senate for violating the state’s open meetings law,” says Mike Amato, the chairman of TAA’s Political Education Committee. Amato’s committee voted unanimously to recommend that the membership get behind Falk in February, but the rest of the union hasn’t accepted the advice. It voted in March to remove the endorsement conditions, but still did not endorse Falk.

Some now argue that it is better for the union to endorse no one rather than compromise on its principles. TAA’s co-president, Adrienne Pagac, says the union should have left the endorsement conditions in place. “Some people were frightened that it was asking too much … Are we asking too much when we say we just want back what we had when Governor Walker came into office?” Pagac says. Falk’s boasts about Dane County make her worry that, as governor, Falk would join Democrats like New York’s Andrew Cuomo in shortchanging workers rather than asking the wealthy to make sacrifices.

Amato says that, while he supported the “No cuts” call at the capitol last year, reversing year-old concessions is the wrong place to draw a line in the sand. “Were she to say that she would restore every cut to every union … that would doom her candidacy, and on June 6 we would have Walker in the governor’s office,” he says. “I think we absolutely have to make sure that we defeat Walker.”

Pagac counters that a Falk endorsement would preserve political incentives that push candidates to the middle of the road while leaving unions under the bus. “The labor movement has become a fine-tuned machine in terms of being able to turn out voters …” says Pagac. “Organizing workers takes a lot longer.” If unions are strong enough, she says, “it doesn’t matter what political party is in office, because you have the ability to use that power, the power that you have in the workplace, to extract wins from your employer and the state.”

Amato says “one of the false ideas” held by some TAA members is that there’s “a zero-sum relationship where we have to do workplace organizing or political organizing.” Rather, he says, political activism is an opportunity to engage more members in the union. He worries that sitting out the election will hurt the union’s relevance, and will send the wrong message to others who occupied the capitol: “As an organization that is looked to for leadership, we have a responsibility to lead.” He also worries that rejecting Falk for excessive moderation could hand the primary to Barrett. “The idea that we’ve come this far and then we’re going to sit out the election boggles my mind.”

The TAA membership will meet again next Thursday. Amato says he doesn’t know whether he’ll revive the motion to endorse Falk. “It’s become a really contentious issue,” says Amato, “and I think a lot of us are starting to question how hard we’re going to push on it. I think it will absolutely be a big mistake if we don’t endorse Kathleen Falk.” But if both sides remain adamant, says Amato, “I also don’t think it’s worth tearing apart the union.”

 

By: Josh Eidelson, Salon, April 5, 2012

April 9, 2012 Posted by | Collective Bargaining, Wisconsin Recall | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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