Walker Still Saying Wisconsin Families to Blame for Record Job Loss

Apr 30, 2012

Walker Still Saying Wisconsin Families to Blame for Record Job Loss

Job destroyers, says Scott Walker - February 2011

Scott Walker's losing campaign message: Wisconsin families caused massive job loss, not Scott Walker

In the cascade of Scott Walker lies, he may have finally out done himself.

Walker's absurd line against Wisconsin's dead-last-in-jobs-lost news has changed from "it's working" to families' working to recall Scott Walker are to blame.

Sounds like a joke, but Walker is repeating this across the nation. He already tried blaming health care reform in March, but few bought that line.

At home, Walker has turned Wisconsin's Office of the Governor's web page into a political propaganda sheet for Scott Walker, where the lede Party-press story is "Reforms and Results."

But job loss is one result you won't find on the propaganda sheet, and Walker feels he has to blame somebody for the horrible job loss numbers.

[Walker would have you pay no mind to Doug Hall and Paul Krugman's predictions of job loss resulting from Walker's policies: "We and others have cautioned repeatedly that states that close their budget gaps by laying off public sector workers do so at the peril of their overall economy," says Hall.]

So, he blames the Wisconsin people, an incredible position to which even the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel offers only a qualified endorsement, calling the jobs loss news the result of "strategic missteps and problems with execution."

Walker will claim the reason is the recall elections - that they are creating an overwhelming arc of uncertainty. That's overblown, but we do think it is a mistake to underestimate the effects of the ugly political warfare of the past 16 months. While we believe those battles have had only a marginal effect on the business climate, it would be inaccurate to say they have had no effect. There is tremendous political uncertainty in the state at the moment, and at the margins that might translate into caution on the part of some businesses.

Most of Wisconsin families believe Walker can't execute a project with destructive aims and objectives dictated by the Koch brothers. And few think exercising the rights guaranteed in a democracy leads to job loss.

This Walker lie is whopper.

Walker maintained his the people-did-it defense on the Mike Gousha show as well. [via Democurmudgeon]

Mike Gousha didn't seem to want to mess around with Walker's well rehearsed answers. So he started by asking why in the last year of the Doyle administration [Doyle saved Mercury Marine and 1,000s of other Fox Valley jobs with the biggest incentive package ever given out in Wisconsin, one may have noted], the state gained 30,000 jobs, and under his administration he lost 24,000 jobs? 'How do you explain that?'

Gousha also zeroed in on Walker and Illinois.

Gousha on Illinois jobs: But they created 41,000 jobs in that time frame, the March to March time frame.

Walker: Yeah, but they didn't have all the attention around the Capitol.

There you have it, the Wisconsin people paying attention to what their elected leaders are doing in the Capitol [secretly doing in Walker's case] caused job loss under Scott Walker, though he takes credit for everything else.