Walker/Trump: Two Peas In A Pod

By Jeff Simpson


As the WISGOP gets ready to swear in their biggest majority since the 1950's, all the Republican elected's are more empowered than ever.  So empowered that they can not wait to get in front of any camera they can find.   They also know, after the Trump win, that the American people do not care what they say, just that they see them saying it.  

Scott Walker, gave such an interview the other day.  It was almost like Scott Walker was pretending the year long election never happened.  Let us take a quick look.

  "Here`s a guy who actually tells it like it is, and goes out and does it." Scott Walker on the Donald. 

correct:

That is the guy Scott Walker looks up too, seems like Billy Bush has Scott's dream Job.

But wait there is more:

I might have a slightly more polished way of doing that, but I do think that has been part of my appeal in the past, and I hope would be, if I choose to run again, part of my appeal going forward, is that I tell it like it is," Walker said.

Yes Scott Walker tells it like it is, except when he tells it like it isn't.  Ouch those pants can get very hot!  

Then of course he told us like it is - that protesters in Madison were just like terrorist group IsIs.

Also "Mr. Tell It Like It Is", let's us know that he thinks we should wall off Canada.  

Yes Scott Walker tells us like it is in his own little world, unfortunately, his perpetual struggle with the truth shows us that how it is in Scott's world has no real resemblance to how it is the real world.   

O Yeah, That Guy!

By Jeff Simpson

Scott Walker denied that politics played any part in his decision to hand the Bucks owners almost $500 million Wisconsin taxpayer dollars!

Walker noted in the interview that one of two major new owners of the Bucks, Marc Lasry, is a “major bundler” of contributions for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Lasry is “putting in $100 million,” Walker said.

“The previous owner, who is putting in $100 million, is a 25-year Senate Democrat (Herb Kohl),” Walker also noted.

“So, it has nothing to do with politics. That’s just ridiculous,” Walker said. “If it was about politics, there is no way I would do this deal. I don’t know the owners. I don’t care about the primary owners. I care about the taxpayers.”

The problem with that statement?  Like many of Scotty's statements is flat out "pants on fire":

A minority owner of the team is Wisconsin business executive Jon Hammes, a longtime Walker supporter and a current co-chair of Walker’s presidential fundraising committee. According to the New York Times, a company registered to one of Hammes’ family members donated $150,000 in May to a super PAC supporting Walker.

I guess we are forced to believe that Scott Walker does not even know his finance co-chair.  

Maybe Scott Walker is trolling all of us!!

Scotty Nonsense

BY Jeff Simpson 

As soon as the folks at Politifact got up of the floor from laughing so hard, they gave him a pants on fire rating!

In any case, the lack of Soviet records described by Walker is clear.
Reagan's own ambassador to the Soviet Union, Jack Matlock, told us: "It's utter nonsense. There is no evidence of that whatever."
Matlock questioned whether Soviet leaders even paid much attention to the firings, saying: "At that point, their big question was whether (Reagan) was going to attack them."

Utter nonsense pretty much describes Scott walker very well.  

Kind of hard to have someone speak about holding schools and teachers accountable when you are either that ignorant of history or are so willing to lie.    Mr. Walker has more in common with Sarah Palin than we knew!

 

Scott Walker Quote of the Day

By Jeff Simpson

Let us take a trip back to 2012 and we see Scott Walker on the Neil Cavuto show and Mr. Walker was asked who Mitt Romney should pick as his Vice Presidential candidate(emphasis mine).

In the midst of his recall election, Walker shot down speculation that he could be Mitt Romney's vice-presidential pick. Instead, he told FOX Business Network's Neil Cavuto in June 2012 that if Romney were to ask him who would be a good pick from Wisconsin, he would suggest Paul Ryan—who Romney did eventually choose as a running mate. "I am not going through a year and a half of this to then take off," Walker told Cavuto, according to The Huffington Post. "I have to fulfill my commitment to the voters of the state of Wisconsin."

Ummm?!?!?!?

Scott Walker - Soothsayer

By Jeff Simpson

Scott Walker ran around the state telling anyone who would listen that the state was over $3 billion dollars in debt and Wisconsin was broke.  Which led to yet another a Pants on Fire rating for Scott Walker from Politifact.


It turns out Politifact was premature!   It seems like, after four years of republican rule, we will be lucky to escape with only a $3,000,000 deficit! It is bad, and getting worse.  The republicans and Robin Vos, have a plan though on how to address it(emphasis mine) ------  RUN!

 LA CROSSE – As Wisconsin’s budget situation continues to deteriorate, legislators and state residents have struggled to get straight answers from Gov. Walker’s administration and Republican leaders. Public anxiety and suspicions regarding the state’s $3 billion budget deficit have intensified after the only scheduled meeting of the Joint Finance Committee was hastily cancelled late last week.

Democrats have asked Republican leaders to explain how the committee planned to move forward and address the immediate budget deficit crisis. Some Republican lawmakers have indicated a budget repair bill will be needed. Others have said they intend on making millions in unspecified cuts over the next several months. Others have said nothing at all.

See if Politifact had just waited until Walker's first term was done they could have given him a 100% true rating!   Scott Walker was just telling us what he had in store for us after four years of his rule!

No need to talk of the true damage that republicans have wrought until after the election.  Luckily we at COGDIS were able to snap a quick picture of the republicans on the joint finance committee when asked about the huge deficit that we will face in January! 

Politifact Gives Scott Walker A Break!

By Jeff Simpson

Recently Scott Walker made an outrageous claim.

 During a radio interview on April 1, 2014, Gov. Scott Walker claimed that a poll taken "a few months ago" showed "70 percent approval or higher" for Act 10, the collective bargaining reform law that spurred massive protests in Madison and an attempt to remove him from office.

After all of their "research", this was their conclusion:

Walker said a poll "taken a few months ago" found "70 percent approval or higher" for his Act 10 collective bargaining law.
No known poll has asked Wisconsinites about Act 10 in the months leading up to Walker's statement on April 1, 2014, and his staff did not cite one. One poll question from May 2012 found 75 percent support for one part of the law, but what the level of support for Act 10’s various provisions might have been a few months ago is strictly speculation.

 So Scott Walker makes up a poll AND the results of the made up poll to make his signature bill look as if it is popular.  Politifact finds out that this statement came right from the depths of Scott Walkers imagination and their rating -  

 We rate Walker's statement False.

Mary Burke makes a statement about Scott Walker's jobs failure and they rate it "pants on fire".  

What could be more "pants on fire" than making up your own poll and results?

We at CogDis rate this statement and Politifacts handling of it

Liar Liar, Pants on Fire! 

   

MacIver Lied!

By Jeff Simpson

Who Knew? 

That’s why an item posted April 9, 2013 by the MacIver Institute caught our attention.

The Madison-based group, which publishes items supportive of conservative causes -- items that are often then cited by other conservatives -- included this headline: "Gov. Scott Walker more than halfway to 250,000 jobs goal."

That’s a much larger number of jobs created under Walker than we’ve ever heard -- even from the governor himself.

In December 2012, Walker said the state had created "just under 100,000 jobs" since he took office. We rated that statement Pants on Fire.

Why?

Walker had combined full and partial year data sets from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages compiled by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. His staff explained that he was using a "raw number."

But state experts and the governor’s own staff have long said that while the quarterly census is more accurate than monthly measures, the census data should only be viewed in one-year blocks. That is, January to January, or July to July. In other words, you can’t combine partial years of census data with full years to create a running total, due to major seasonal fluctuations in the workforce.

Here is what Walker spokesman Cullen Werwie told us when we asked about job numbers in the summer of 2012: "Please don’t, as John Koskinen, an economist at DOR would say, compare February temperatures to July."

When we asked MacIver  to show us their math, spokesman Nick Novak responded:

"We used Bureau of Labor Statistics QCEW figures for each month from January 2011 to September 2012 (the most recent month available).  To get to the number of 137,372, we simply subtracted the January 2011 jobs number from the September 2012 jobs number."

Novak provided a link to a BLS report that showed the two numbers.

But, this isn’t just a simple math problem. MacIver made two critical errors in their calculations.

Starting point

Walker took office at the beginning of January 2011. MacIver used the number for the end of January 2011. To properly measure the governor’s promise, you need to start with the number of jobs that existed at the start of his term. That is a difference of 65,401 jobs.  

Here’s how it plays out the way the MacIver Institute calculated the numbers.

January 2011 census number: 2,205,584

September 2012 census number: 2,342,956

Increase: 137,372.

Here’s how it plays out with the December 2010 number.

December 2010 census number: 2,270,985

September 2012 census number: 2,342,956

Increase: 71,971

In summary: MacIver’s math nearly doubles Walker job count because it started counting one month later. In effect, they used a lower starting point, which makes the growth seem larger -- by 65,401 -- than it really is.

And even that is a bad number.

Apples to oranges

There’s a second, more important -- and more familiar -- problem. Like Walker in December,  MacIver failed to line up a year-to-year comparison. It measured February temperatures against July.

What’s more, the item itself notes that Koskinen, the state economist, told them they should not combine the data sets in this manner:

While Koskinen called the numbers "literally true" the article goes on to note: "Koskinen said economists typically use the same month from different years to avoid seasonal variations in employment."

Their rating of course is

The MacIver Institute posted an item that says Wisconsin has 137,372 more private sector jobs than when Gov. Scott Walker first took office, meaning that Walker is more than halfway to his goal of 250,000 jobs.

The jobs promise will be the No. 1 yardstick used to measure Walker’s performance as governor.

But the conservative group’s number is wrong, two times over.

MacIver started with the wrong month of data. That alone nearly doubled the number of jobs they claim were created under Walker.

They compounded their error by combining full and partial years of data -- even though they (like the governor himself) were told not to do so.

Pants on Fire.

Paul "Pinocchio" rAYN

The other day we brought you the story of how Paul Ryan (R- Ayn Rand) was begging for stimulus funds with one hand while voting against the stimulus on the other. Now we find out that not only was he two faced about it, he had no problem lying to people who asked him about it! H/T more great reporting from the Boston Globe:

On October 28, 2010, after the Wisconsin Republican penned at least five letters to two federal departments seeking grants under the Obama administration’s economic recovery package, Ryan responded to a caller on WBZ’s Nightside with Dan Rea who asked if he sought any of the money. Ryan said that he would not vote against something “then write to the government to ask them to send us money.”

“I did not request any stimulus money,” he continued.

Don't they vet these people???