Sad, actually

Poor Mitt:

Governor Walker gets an F after his First 20 Months

The Wisconsin DWD released the August 2012 job numbers today and things continue to go very poorly for the Walker Administration in terms of the governor's promise to create 250,000 new private sector jobs in his first four years. We were told that if the state balanced its budget on the backs of public school teachers and other state and local government workers, Wisconsin's K-12 students, and the UW system, the economy would mushroom and the private sector jobs would flow. Instead we have driven out experienced and talented teachers and other public employees, raised K-12 class sizes, decimated the University of Wisconsin budget and have a net private sector job loss since the Governor took office.  Here is the scorecard of seasonally adjusted monthly private sector job numbers to date:

We were also told that privatizing the former Department of Commerce into the new Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC) would lead to faster economic growth and more jobs.  Today Paul Jadin the former mayor of Green Bay and the current CEO of WEDC announced that he was stepping down from WEDC effective November 1.  Thus, in the first two years of Governor Walker's administration he has had three secretaries of the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development and, soon, two CEO's of WEDC. 

As of today, based on the job numbers released by DWD, Governor Walker needs to create about 9,600 private sector jobs a month for the remaining 28 months of his first term.  He started out in January 2011 needing to create about 5,000 new jobs a month to fulfill his promise.

Next Tuesday we see the release of the August 2012 Coincident Index from the Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank.  (See my last post on this index here.)  Wisconsin has been mired in 47th place in this measurement of economic growth for several months, so we will see on Tuesday if there has been any improvement.  Wisconsin ranks dead last among all the Midwestern states in terms of economic growth under this index.

It is not too late for the Governor to bring his grade up, but for now, close to midterm, his grade is an F.

Something Completely Different - Mudd

Mudd has fun

The 47 Percenters, Continued

David Brooks and Gail Collins have an interesting on-line conversation at the New York Times today about Romney's view of the 47 percenters.  I found this comment by a reader interesting:

I guess my family is among those 47 percenters, though I hardly think of us as moochers and layabouts. My 30 year old daughter stays at home with her infant while her husband works. My 23 year old son spent four years as a U.S. Marine, including almost two years overseas, half of that in Afghanistan. He is living at home, going to community college full time (paying his own way and saving G.I. benefits for when he goes to a more expensive college) and working part time for $10 an hour. My 90 year old mother is on Social Security and Medicare after working 40 years as a schoolteacher. I'm on disability after being laid low by a brain tumor after 30 years at a demanding job. None of us pay income taxes. My husband and son in law are exceptions. They help provide income to support us. I guess veterans and stay at home moms, retired schoolteachers in their 90s and people forced out of work by illness aren't on Romney's list of responsible Americans. He's right, though. We won't be voting for him.

Romney Gone Wild!

Earlier I posted one of the videos of Mitt Romney disparaging the "47%" of American voters that support President Obama.

Here is the entire Mother Jones article.   Other videos of the fundraiser are embedded in the article.

Howard Dean blew up as a presidential candidate in 2004 after a single howl captured on tape after his loss in the Iowa caucus in 2004.   Dean was mocked as unbalanced.  What will this fund-raising appeal of Romney, so demeaning of half of all Americans, mean for Romney's chances?  

Forget the 99%. Are you in the 47%?

Mother Jones secured this video of Governor Romney speaking at a private fundraiser in California. In it, Romney tells his wealthy contributors that 47% of American voters are dependent on handouts from the government.



The idea that the 47% of voters polled as supporting Obama do not pay income taxes to the federal government is comical. Moreover, anyone working that does not end up owing federal income tax, still pays local and state taxes and contributes employment taxes. Apparently Governor Romney wants to be president of the 53%. Not the leaches.

Romney's Statement on the Benghazi Attack

Mitt Romney's effort this morning to politicize the senseless killings of American diplomats in Libya yesterday was both bizarre and disgusting.  No one unprincipled and irrational enough to try to make political points out of the tragedy is worthy to lead this country.

State of Economy a Plus for Obama?

The accepted thinking has been that it serves Mitt Romney to keep the electorate focused on the state of the U.S. economy. At the Washington Post's Wonkblog today, Ezra Klein looks at a new model for predicting presidential elections with an incumbent candidate and suggests that the current state of the economy is just fine for President Obama's re-election, provided his job approval rating remains in the 40% to 50% range.  The model was collaboratively designed by Klein with Seth Hill, postdoctoral associate at Yale University; John Sides, associate professor at George Washington University; and Lynn Vavreck, associate professor at UCLA

Klein:

Some months ago, I worked with political scientists Seth Hill, John Sides and Lynn Vavreck to build a model that used data from every presidential election since 1948 to forecast the outcome of this presidential election. But when the model was done, I thought it was broken: It was forecasting an Obama win even under scenarios of very weak economic growth.

After a lot of frantic e-mails, my political scientist friends finally convinced me that that’s the point of a model: It forces you to check your expectations at the door. And my expectation that incumbents lose when the economy is weak was not backed up by the data, which suggest that incumbents win unless major economic indicators are headed in the wrong direction, as was true with unemployment in 1980 and 1992.

This year, the major economic indicators are headed in the right direction, albeit slowly. We’ve been adding jobs, though not enough. We’ve been growing, though not particularly fast. We’ve seen the unemployment rate drop, though partially because workers are leaving the labor force. All in all, it’s not an impressive record. But it’s weak growth, not a new recession. And the political valence of that weak growth is unusually hard to discern, as voters continue to place more blame for our current economic troubles on George W. Bush than on Barack Obama.

You can play with a calculator for the model here.  At the bottom of the calculator there is a link to expand the post and read the methodology used in constructing the model.

First quarter GDP on an annualized basis was 2.0%.  Second quarter was 1.7%.  Even assuming that the annualized GDP in quarter three drops off to 1.4%, that would leave the growth rate at 1.7% for the first three quarters.  As of today, Gallup has President Obama at a 50% job approval rating on its six day rolling average polling.  This undoubtedly reflects some bounce from Bill Clinton's down home public policy "'splaining" in Charlotte.  Before Charlotte, Obama was running at about 45% to 46%.  The model though actually relies on the incumbent president's job approval rating in June of the election year.  During June, the average of the thirty days of President Obama's job approval rating was 46.7666%, or 47%.

If you go into the model linked above and enter 1.7% GDP growth and 47% job approval rating, it projects that Obama has a 81.6% likelihood of winning in November.  If you bump up nine month GDP to 1.9%, Obama's likelihood of re-election jumps to 84%.  This is very close to the projection of Nate Silver at the FiveThirtyEight blog at the New York Times based on current polling numbers.  Silver's has Obama with a 79.8% likelihood of winning.  Silver's described his methodology here in 2008.

Having said all this, the Badgers were 32 point favorites against Northern Iowa and 7 point favorites against Oregon State, so it's the actual contest that counts, not predictive models.  And, of course, we have to wait and see whether there is an October Surprise, perhaps from Netanyahu. 

Defend This!

Lionel Messi's third goal in a friendly in June of this year against Brazil played at Met Life Stadium in the Meadowlands, East Rutherford, NJ.




The amazing thing is that he was defensed very well by the Brazilian defenders

Welcome Back!

One of the Grimmer boys, a brand new Badger, appears at 0:48 of this UW video welcoming back students.




He spent his entire summer working on the Union waterfront as a Hoofers' instructor to get this gig. Hope he doesn't get typecast in kayaking movies.

Something Completely Different: Game of Thrones Theme

I'm a fan of Game of Thrones.  Anxious for Season 3 in hopes that Joffrey Baratheon's head ends up decorating the end a pike at the gates of King's Landing.  Here's a video courtesy of a post on Andrew Sullivan's blog today:

 

Romney In Favor of "God" on Our Money! But not His.

 Swiss Franc Coin











Mitt Romney implies this weekend in Virginia that the Dems and the False Prophet seek to take God out of our society:



Oh Mein Gott! If having the word  "God" appear on one's money is so important to Romney, why is his money in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands?

Swiss Twenty Franc Note

 Cayman Islands Dollar

How to Get Romney's Returns

 Larry Flynt, Publisher of Hustler Magazine





Back in early August the Daily Kos summarized the past record for presidential candidates (since Reagan-Carter) in releasing their previous federal income tax returns to the electorate.  By and large, Republicans have been more effusive in releasing their returns than Democrats.  Mitt Romney's father, George Romney, an Eisenhower-style Republican, released 12 years of his returns when running for president in the Republican primaries in 1968.  The elder Romney famously said at the time: “One year could be a fluke, perhaps done for show.”

Here is the record for release of tax returns from the Daily Kos:

2012
Barak Obama-D: 11 years
Willard Romney-R: One year - 2010 (plus estimate of 2011).
2008
Barack Obama-D: 7 years
John McCain-R: 23 years
2004
George W1 Bush-R: 13 years
John Kerry-D: 5 years
2000
George W. Bush-R: 7 years
Al Gore-D: 16 years
1996
Bill Clinton-D: 19 years
Bob Dole-R: 30 years
1992
Bill Clinton-D: 15 years
George H. W. Bush-R: 18 years
1988
George H. W. Bush-R: 14 years
Michael Dukakis-D: 6 years
1984
Ronald Reagan-R: 14 years
Walter Mondale-D: 8 years
1980
Ronald Reagan-R: 10 years
Jimmy Carter-D: 8 years

I saw on the internet today that Larry Flynt of Hustler Magazine fame has offered a million dollars for information about Mitt Romney's pre-2010 tax returns.  In the past, Flynt offered similar bounties to the public for information about the sex life of various politicians he sought to discredit.  In one case, involving David Vitter, a sitting Republican senator from Louisiana, Flynt scored information that Vitter was a client of a D.C. prositution ring.  Vitter successfully defused the incident by immediately coming out to a Louisiana press conference with his wife and admitting his mistakes. Wendy Vitter made a very courageous and moving statement that day.

I suspect that unless the rumors are true that Romney's pre-2010 returns were stolen (by computer hacking) from one of the PriceWaterhouseCoopers' offices in Tennessee, Flynt's money will stay in his pocket.

How about a different approach for ferreting out the returns, since simple moral suasion and heavy political pressure from Dems and the media have not moved Romney from his position?   If Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is convinced that the returns will astound us with how modestly (as a percentage of income, of course) the Romneys contributed to the public fisc prior to 2010, he should use his contacts to put together a fund to purchase the returns off Romney himself.  Maybe George Soros and other Democratic heavy-hitters would contribute $15,000,000 to a trust fund that will have as its goal the release of the Romney returns.  The trustee of the trust could be empowered to make charitable contributions to three veterans assistance charities that are rated A+ by Charity Watch:  Fisher House Foundation, the National Military Family Association, and the Semper Fi fund on the basis that each would received a million dollars for every year of tax returns for years immediately prior to 2010 the Romneys release.  Mitt Romney claims he is a strong supporter of American's vets.  This would allow him to show us and the vets.

Wisconsin in 47th Place in Economic Development since Walker Inauguration

 Governor Walker at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida last Tuesday Night.



Governor Walker had a key prime-time role speaking last Tuesday night at the GOP national convention. The Huffington Post reported that he received a one-minute standing ovation when he walked into the Tampa Bay Times Forum.  This was predictable, given that he took on the public sector unions that Republicans love to hate and not only neutered them in our state, but survived the recall election spawned by his anti-union efforts.  He is well deserving of his celebrity status in the national GOP party, and especially with its Tea Party component, for these two reasons alone.   Here are two sections of his speech:

On June 5th, voters in Wisconsin were asked to choose between going backwards to the days of double-digit tax increases, billion dollar budget deficits and record job losses or moving forward with reforms that lowered the tax burden, balanced the budget and helped small businesses create more jobs.

Like many places across the country, Wisconsin lost more than 100,000 jobs from 2008 to 2010. Unemployment during that time topped out at over 9%. But because of our reforms, Wisconsin has added thousands of new jobs and our unemployment rate is down from when I first took office.

What is more questionable is whether the governor's rock star status is deserved among the citizens back home in Dairyland.  I have previously posted about the lack of any evidence or data supporting a conclusion that Governor Walker's reforms have spurred economic growth in our state.  The Bureau of Labor Statistics' Standards'  monthly Current Employment Statistics ("CES") data for July 31, 2012 was released in the middle of August by DWD, and it shows that Wisconsin has lost 17,800 private sector jobs since the governor assumed office.

While the Governor and his Labor Secretaries (three since January 2011) started out hyping his administration's job creation based on the CES data, once those numbers started trending poorly, the Walker Administration quickly shifted to impugning them.

In a recent press release, the Governor clearly seems to have finally settled on the BLS's Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) reports as the new gold standard for assessing his performance in meeting the promise he made to create 250,000 new private sector jobs in his first four-year term.  But here is what a careful mining of the current QCEW data shows:

o  In the last full year of the Doyle Administration, ending December 31, 2010, Wisconsin ranked 8th in the nation in private job creation, an excellent ranking.

o  As of December 31, 2011, only nine states had worst job creation percentage-wise over the prior twelve months than Wisconsin. We ranked 41st in private job creation during Governor Walker's first year in office.

o  As of December 2010, the average weekly wage for Wisconsin's private sector employees was $835, which represented a 3.9% increase over December 2009.  Only 15 states had a higher percentage increase in private weekly wages over the year than did Wisconsin.

o  As of December 2011, the average weekly wage for Wisconsin's private sector employees was $818, an annualized decrease of average private sector wages of $884.   The drop of $17 in weekly wages for the average worker ranked Wisconsin 34th in the nation in term of preserving weekly wages over 2011.

o  Over the course of 2011, here are the new private sector jobs created by Wisconsin and its Midwestern neighbors:

         Michigan     -    105,244    -    3.3% increase

         Minnesota    -     58,681    -    2.7% increase

         Indiana         -     56,557    -    2.4% increase

         Ohio             -     88,226    -    2.1% increase

         Illinois          -      68,982    -    1.4% increase

         Iowa             -     16,633    -    1.4% increase

         Wisconsin    -      27,811    -    1.2% increase.
 

The Philadelphia Fed released its Coincident Index for July 2012 on August 21.  I have previously posted on the purpose and data of the Philly Fed's Coincident Index here and here.  Since January, 2011, the month of Governor Walker's inauguration, here are the five worst performing states in terms of economic growth as measured by the Philadelphia Fed Bank's Coincident Index.

What the coincident index data means is that over the 19 months since the Walker inauguration, Wisconsin's economy has grown by one-third of one percent, at the same time that the U.S. coincident index has risen by 4%, or twelve times faster. Here is how Wisconsin matches up in terms of economic growth with our sister states in the Midwest over the same nineteen-month time frame:

This isn't a red state versus blue state deal.  Ohio and Indiana are states with GOP governors and legislatures.  Ohio's economy has grown at a rate over twenty times our rate of growth since Governor Walker entered office.  Indiana has grown at a rate fifteen times our rate.  Illinois has had a rate of growth of its economy eight times ours. Economic growth in Wisconsin has been stuck in neutral since January 1, 2011.  That is a story that wasn't addressed by anyone last week in Tampa. 

The Dude Abides

Jeff Dowds of Seattle, the original Dude, and inspiration for Jeff Bridges in The Great Lebowski: