Saturday, April 21, 2012

Illinois’ Disinformation Push Against Scott Walker, Plus a Site Note on Links

By Dan Collins – April 21, 2012
Posted in: Featured Stories

Last time I mentioned Tamara Holder, she was complaining that Hannity wouldn’t let her get away with saying, falsely, that Obama had improved the jobs situation from what he inherited (to use his language) thirty-nine months ago. She was also deeply incensed that Scott Walker and Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch were permitted to address Illinois TEA Party folks in Chicago and at the capitol in Springfield, insisting that Walker had to go home.

Hannity’s censoring me! Shut up, Walker! I think the woman is rhetorically retarded.

It was never part of Walker’s plan to spend an inordinate amount of time in Illinois, in contrast to the Fleebaggers who hid out in Rockford rather than vote on Walker’s Budget Repair bill. What really set me off about her snottiness, though, was the deep involvement of Illinois politicians, such as ethically-challenged Representative Jan Schakowsky, who was put in charge of the Democrats’ national push to oust Walker. All of this goes on as Obama brings Chicago Way politics to the entire nation.

So, when Illinois Democrats tell us that Illinois’ economy is actually faring better than Wisconsin’s, take it with a boulder sized grain of salt:

NBC’s Edward McClelland wrote an op-ed piece published today titled “Illinois Beats Wisconsin In Job Creation.” McClelland quoted Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn (a Democrat) as saying earlier this week that “Since Governor Walker took office, Wisconsin is dead last among the 50 states in job growth.”

Bloomberg’s headline today, “Republican Whipping-Boy Illinois Beats Wisconsin on Jobs,” caps a piece written by Tim Jones. Jones quoted Quinn as saying this about Wisconsin and Gov. Walker: ““They have the worst job record in the whole country, dead last,” and “We certainly don’t want to follow his [Walker's] prescriptions when it comes to economic growth.”

Both Jones and McClelland were, of course, referring to today’s jobs numbers from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. But let’s look at those numbers. They are not difficult to understand, unless you’re a liberal buying into the lies of the Democrats and their allies in the media. Here are the unemployment rates (as percentages) for Illinois and Wisconsin for March 2012, February 2012 and March of last year:

Illinois
March 2012 …. 8.8
Feb. 2012 ……. 9.1
March 2011 ….9.3

Wisconsin
March 2012 …. 6.8
Feb. 2012 ……. 6.9
March 2011 …. 7.6

Look at the numbers. Both states have had a decrease in unemployment. Illinois went from a nightmarish 9.3 percent a year ago down to a still-nightmarish 8.8 percent, a decrease of 0.5 percent. In the same period, Wisconsin went from an awful 7.6 percent down to a still-bad 6.8 percent.

Compare Wisconsin’s lowered unemployment drop of 0.8 to that of 0.5 percent in Illinois and you have to wonder what the hell the media – and geniuses like Gov. Quinn – are talking about when they say that Wisconsin is sucking tailpipes. Wisconsin’s drop in its unemployment rate has been, over the past 12 months, faster that in Illinois (0.8% versus 0.5% as shown above). The latest numbers show that Wisconsin’s unemployment rate is a full two points lower than in Illinois. Illinois is called “the Greece next door” by its neighboring states. Nobody is comparing Wisconsin to Greece. Not yet anyway.

The truly struggling part of Wisconsin’s overall economy is Milwaukee, led by Mayor Tom Barret, who wishes to replace Scott Walker in June’s recall elections. And the hilarious and frightening part about that candidacy is that it is not nearly hard left enough for many of the state’s Progressive Democrats, because he won’t promise unions the moon.

I don’t recall Tamara being bent out of shape that Rahm Emanuel was in Milwaukee a couple of weeks ago, and I don’t recall her outrage that Jesse Jackson brings his crap up here, either. Nor, for that matter, do I recall Tamara Holder ever tut-tutting over Stratfor’s Wikileaked memos concerning Democrat ballot stuffing in Ohio and Pennsylvania in 2008:

John McCain’s 2008 campaign staff allegedly had evidence that Democrats stuffed ballot boxes in Pennsylvania and Ohio on election night, but McCain chose not to pursue voter fraud, according to internal Stratfor emails published by WikiLeaks.

Allegedly.

The latest news from the Milwaukee County Prosecutor’s politically-motivated John Doe investigation into former Walker staffers is this:

[Andrew] Jensen was arrested last December in relation to the probe, known as a John Doe investigation, but released without any charges being filed. His attorney at the time, Pat Schott of Brookfield, said Jensen was arrested for not cooperating with the investigation. Schott said prosecutors were targeting Jensen because he “wouldn’t adopt their (prosecutors’) version of events.”

Jensen, a past president of the Commercial Association of Realtors Wisconsin, donated $850 to Walker’s campaign from 2008 to 2010. In all, employees of the Boerke Co. gave $12,150 to Walker’s campaign, according to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, an elections watchdog.

A profile of Jensen on the company website lists Jensen’s biggest client as Michael Best & Friedrich, a major law firm with ties to Walker and Republican leadership.

But you know what’s ‘draconian’? Walker’s budget reforms.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: it would have been nice, especially for public employees, had Wisconsin’s progressive experiment succeeded. It did not, because of the greed of those granted the privileges. It failed because those privileged were unable or unwilling to prevent themselves becoming parasites on the body politic and the taxpayers of the state. They screwed up, and now they’re angry that those privileges have been revoked. If they were more reasonable, they would look at the state of unfunded liabilities just to our south, on which Meep has here written often and eloquently, and realize that they are in fact fortunate. But they won’t, becaus they are used always to having had more, and they believe there is an infinite store of more to which they are entitled.

Screw them. And while I’m on the subject, screw also the ‘everybody projects but me’ amateur psychologists of both the left and the right. The linked one thinks that allusions to pot use are racist, if the to-alluded happens to be black, whereas all that lefty talk about Breitbart having died from cocaine use? That was fair game, and who cares what some dumb coroner says, anyway.

Why is alluding to Obama using pot racist? Because it is manifestly racist. QED. The laugh over his silver spoon comment this week that was caused by his own autobiographical account of having used cocaine? Surely racist. Then again, one (at least) of Obama’s autobiographies claims that he ate dog in Indonesia as a lad, but PolitiFact cannot say one way or the other whether that’s true, which demonstrates that on this subject at least PolitiFact maintains a healthy skepticism.

Here’s a similar example of this logic: Irish are often portrayed as drunkards, which is stereotyping; that person portrayed a particular Irishman as a drunkard; therefore, he is prejudiced. *Hic* semper *hoc.*

If someone smoked a jay, or ate a dog . . . so what? Just so long as they aren’t trying to run my life on the authority of their self-evident (to themselves) moral superiority, or putting down other people’s lesser foibles in person or through proxies, I don’t care. But . . . Jon Corzine is still bundling for Obama when he ought to be in jail? Now that grinds my beans.

Thanks to Theo Spark for yesterday’s link, too.

Source: The Conservatory

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