Christian Schneider: The Conservative Agenda Is Not Working

We all already know that Christian Schneider is nothing more than a paid propagandist. And he's not a very good one at that.  He's been caught fabricating stories and when he does try to deal with facts, he gets burned by people that really know what the truth is.

Yet the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel keeps him on as a regular calumnist because his drivel matches their corporate media agenda.  But sometimes, Schneider's overreaching on some subjects can backfire.

His column in today's paper is a prime example of that.  Schneider tries to defend Scott Walker's dismal record on job creation by saying that Walker is able to cherry pick numbers to make them look much more positive than what the reality is.

Schneider also tries to reassure the masses of sheeple who support Walker by saying the other GOP hopeful won't attack Walker on his lacking in job creation or on Wisconsin's flailing and failing economy because reasons:

Perhaps most important, Walker's challengers won't attack him on the Wisconsin economy because to do so would be to attack the efficacy of conservative policies in general. Walker is a down-the-line conservative; criticizing his governance would be to criticize exactly the kind of leadership Republican voters want to see in a candidate.

If Jeb Bush wants to say Walker isn't effective because Walker cut taxes, expanded school choice, took on the public sector unions, expanded the right to carry concealed weapons and implemented voter identification, exactly what does that say about what Bush stands for? Which of those Walker initiatives is Marco Rubio going to say Walker got wrong?

That doesn't mean Walker isn't susceptible to other attacks. If the other candidates are raising and spending tens of millions of dollars to run, they won't exactly adhere to Ronald Reagan's 11th Commandment ("Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican"). Maybe Walker will fend off charges that he's weak on foreign policy or that he's less electable than Bush or Rubio.

But criticizing Walker for being too much of a doctrinaire conservative is almost certainly a dead-end in the GOP primary. Republican presidential aspirants who attack Walker on jobs might just be disqualifying themselves from the one they want the most.

Now, what concealed carry or voter suppression has to do with the economy, I don't know.  Methinks that Schneider got so carries away with serving his word salad and was so desperate to defend Walker and so short on things he could use that he simply decided to throw everything in there to see if something worked.

But that is not the key point.

The key point is that Schneider is saying that the other Teapublicans don't dare attack Walker on his epic failures because Walker is the personification of the conservative agenda.

In other words, Schneider is basically admitting that the conservative agenda, otherwise known as plantation economics, is not working.  But Walker's abject failure doesn't matter because this is what their corporate masters want.

Walker Tries To Rewrite His Job Creation History

On Friday, Scott Walker (or more likely one of his campaign aides - since it's spelled correctly) issued the following tweet about his job numbers:

James Rowen at The Political Environment caught this and pointed out that Walker had conveniently tried to drop 100,000 jobs from his campaign promise. Rowen also notes that most of the jobs that Walker did create are sub-poverty level jobs.

Rowen also points out that the only way that Walker was able to pretend to meet his promise of 10,000 jobs was to count girl scout troops and little league teams as new businesses.

The thing that caught my eye was his claim of "Positive #jobs growth in Wisconsin starting on Day One."

What utter rubbish!

There is ample proof that after Walker's first budget took effect, and about the same time the ramifications of Walker's Act 10 - the attack on public sector workers - were first being felt, Wisconsin had a steep loss in jobs. In fact, there was six consecutive months of job losses when Walker's policies took hold.

That's hardly what I would call positive job growth from Day One.

Then again, to be fair, that does not include all the jobs that Walker created in other states, like Minnesota and California.

Scott Walker's Anemic Job Numbers

Todd Milewski at Cap Times has the final tally for jobs created under Scott Walker's first term.  Needless to say, he did not reach his goal of 250,000 jobs:

It has been apparent for some time that Wisconsin was not going to reach the 250,000 new private sector jobs that Gov. Scott Walker pledged in his 2010 campaign.

Jobs figures for January that were released Tuesday complete the cycle on Walker's first term and shows how far the state fell short.

Wisconsin reported 2,460,000 private-sector jobs in preliminary, seasonally adjusted estimates for January, a gain of 137,400 over January 2011.

That's just under 55 percent of the way to Walker's goal.

I would argue that Walker's job numbers aren't even that good.

If you add up the jobs that were created in the first six months of Walker's terms, which were created before any of Walker's policies or his budget kicked in, it comes to about 23,000. These are the jobs that were created thanks to the the policies and budget of Jim Doyle.

So in reality, Walker created only about 114,000 jobs, or about 46% of his goal.

But even giving the benefit of the doubt to Walker and going with Milewski's numbers, Wisconsin still lagged far behind the rest of the Midwest and behind the nation:

There is no way an honest person could argue that Walker's agenda is working, because it is undeniably not.

Amazon - "Walmart without the bricks and mortar"

Scott Walker, in his effort to retain his governorship so that he can use it to launch his presidential bid, often brags about how he is supposedly bringing so many jobs to the state.  Of course, what he fails to mention is that he is also driving just as many jobs from the state.

Another thing he fails to mention is exactly what kind of jobs he's supposedly drawing to the state.

For example, one of the "job creators" he was making hay with was the announcement that Amazon was building a distribution center in Kenosha.  Like most of the businesses that are coming, it's because Walker is willing to give them our tax money by the drone payload while raising our taxes even further.

But just what kind of employer is Amazon?

Not a very good one at all:

Amazon has held off attempts at union organizing in the past. In 2000, for example, the Communication Workers of America started a campaign to unionize 400 customer service employees. But Amazon soon closed the call center where they worked as part of broader cuts following the Internet boom years. In other instances, the company gave managers anti-union material to hand out and warnings of how to spot union organizing by being on the lookout for hushed conversations.

Amazon’s workplace practices have come under fire in recent years. News outlets have detailed everything from the exhausting nature of warehouse work (employees can walk as much as 15 miles daily) to ambulances waiting outside a facility to collect workers who overheated because of a lack of air conditioning. Warehouse workers in Germany have walked out several times over wage issues. Some later traveled to Seattle to picket in front of Amazon’s headquarters.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Occupational Safety & Health Administration is investigating the death of a contractor at New Jersey package sorting facility owned by Amazon, but managed by Genco, a logistics firm. Amazon is also being sued in a number of states for failing to pay workers for time spent waiting in security lines before and after work.

Steve Tadelis, a professor of economics at University of California at Berkeley who focuses on e-commerce, said that unionization would make it more complicated for Amazon to fire workers, among other things. Higher labor costs could also narrow the company’s already thin profit margin. Although Amazon has a high-tech image, blue-collar employees do most of the work. Invariably, they earn much less than high-paid computer programmers.

“Even though the typical layperson on the street thinks Amazon belongs to the same group as Google, Facebook and Twitter, it’s more like Walmart without the bricks and mortar,” said Tadelis, citing another company that has successfully fought off labor organizers over the years.

Hmmm, union busting, unsafe work conditions, low wages...yup, it's sounds like just the kind of company that would love the vulture capitalism that Walker has been grooming the state for.

Well, he did say he would create good jobs. He just never said that they would be good jobs.

The Walker Budget Keeps On Working! Part XCVII

Kraft is the company that keeps on giving...pink slips. Just the other day, I wrote about how Kraft is laying off over 100 workers in Waupaca. Well, I missed the story where they are laying off another 30 workers from Madison and shipping those jobs to Illinois:

Kraft Foods will move another 30 jobs out of Madison as part of the Northfield, Ill., company's plan to split into two separate companies later this year.

The jobs are in the Kraft Foods transportation department, which manages the fleet of trucks that deliver Kraft products to stores nationwide. "The department determines where the trucks will be loaded, the routes they will take, as well as when, and where they'll drop off their cargo," Kraft spokeswoman Sydney Lindner said.

Of 120 positions in that department, about 90 employees will stay in Madison with the North American grocery business, which will include Madison-based Oscar Mayer.

Thirty will be shifted to Wilkes-Barre, Pa., where the new snacks company, Mondelez International, will house many of its business services, Lindner said Thursday.

Qualified employees in the transportation group who want to move to Wilkes-Barre will be able to get relocation packages. Others, whose positions are eliminated, can apply for other jobs with Kraft in Madison. Workers who wind up without a job at either location will get severance benefits, including pay based on years of service and continued medical coverage. Their positions will end in the first half of 2013, Lindner said.

In January, Kraft said it will cut 12 positions in Madison as part of a reduction of 1,600 employees throughout North America. Oscar Mayer headquarters and one of two management centers for the grocery business will stay here when the company splits. No date has been announced yet.

Yes, that is the same Illinois that Scott Walker loves to take kicks at. It is also the same Illinois that has been kicking the crap out of Walker economically and in job creation.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Walker is the best thing that ever happened to Illinois.