Seriously, Dana. What's the Point?

Scott Walker finds making bumper stickers is easier than creating jobs

By Dana Milbank, Published: June 20

Where are the jobs, Gov. Walker?

Scott Walker, the chief executive of Wisconsin, is riding a wave of triumph.

Yeah, that guy kind of kicks ass.

The state Supreme Court just upheld his famous crusade

Seriously? Crusade?

to strip collective bargaining rights from public workers.

That’s mildly misleading; the court decision had nothing to do with the actual law, which is universally acknowledged as adherent to both the state and federal constitutions. Nor did it pertain to anything Governor Walker actually did. The case sought to litigate the legislative procedure. (The one, you’ll recall, Wisconsin Democrats worked so gallantly to undermine by sauntering over the Illinois state line.) And even that was upheld.

The state legislature just voted, along party lines, to approve his 2012 budget reordering the state’s finances to his conservative tastes.

This sentence is kind of cute. But trying to blame Walker for the rank partisanship in the Wisconsin legislature shows that Milbank has pinpoint precision on par with that of Charlie Sheen in the beginning of Major League.

“…JUST a bit outside…”

These Democrats are the same people who would rather strong-arm a pregnant colleague into staying on the lam in Illinois than undertake the legislative process.

On Monday morning, Walker stopped by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to participate in a roundtable discussion about “what works and what doesn’t” in job creation. Walker regaled the assembled business leaders and governors with tales of his job-creating acumen.

Note the implication that Walker and “business leaders” are close. Not close, Walker “regaled” them. He showed off his “acumen.” The implication, of course, is that Scott Walker is some sort of business seducer--a lothario of the balance sheet, willing to whisper sweet nothings for positive cash flow. Nevermind that Jeffrey Immelt laughs just a little too hard at Obama’s jokes.

He boasted about passing tort reform, tax cuts, a “major regulatory reform” and his celebrated fight against the public-sector unions. “That’s powerful for job creators out there,” he said.

How powerful? “Since the beginning of the year in Wisconsin we’ve seen 25,000 new jobs,” Walker reported.

Sorry, governor, but that’s not very powerful.

I guess Walker doesn’t get the benefit of the “jobs created or lost” categorization that Obama has spent two years trumpeting. Or the goodwill and political capital from the election. It’s only been SIX MONTHS. I FEEL LIKE I’M TAKING CRAZY PILLS.

Instead of using some arbitrary sliding scale for what constitutes “good” job growth and what constitutes “bad” job growth, let’s just compare Walker with his predecessor. Taking the last year only, Jim Doyle saw an average increase in the total number of Wisconsin jobs of .05%. Walker has averaged .19%. Jim Doyle saw an increase of 10,565 seasonally-adjusted jobs over the last seven months of his term. Scott Walker has nearly tripled that number 27,060 in five months worth of data. Also, Scott Walker trounced Jim Doyle in a best of 7 Monopoly tournament shortly before being elected, and nearly broke Doyle’s wrist off in an arm wrestling bout.

Do these numbers take into account nation-wide trends or a myriad of other relevant factors? Of course not. I love me some Excel, but I’m far too lazy for that level of interest—which still leaves me eminently more thorough than Milbank, who basically set his macroeconomic expectations with a dartboard and a bottle of Scotch.  

The point is, Scott Walker is a significantly better governor, athlete, person, and (if the ladies of Alpha Epsilon Phi at the University of Wisconsin are to be trusted on such things) lover than Jim Doyle… It might have just gotten weird.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Wisconsin’s nonfarm payroll in May was 2,764,300 on a seasonally-adjusted basis, up 20,300 from January’s 2,744,000.That’s an increase of seven-tenths of one percent in the workforce -- not much better than the anemic nationwide growth in nonfarm payrolls to 131,043,000 in May from 130,328,000 in January.

That might be relevant if the situation facing Wisconsin were anywhere close to the situation facing the country as a whole. (It’s not.) The rust belt has a fairly unique set of challenges that people in California, Texas, or Massachusetts, frankly, don’t relate to.

Wisconsin’s unemployment rate (7.4%) is well below the national rate (9.2%). What that should tell you is that the recession was far more shallow in Wisconsin than other places, particularly regional counterparts like Michigan or Illinois. This, of course, means that job growth and economic recovery will not be as robust in locations that were harder hit. That doesn’t mean that Wisconsin is doing worse.

This doesn’t mean Walker’s policies have failed;

No shit, dumbass. It’s only been six months.

by his own account, the benefits could take years to materialize. But it does suggest that the conservatives criticizing the Obama administration’s handling of the economy don’t have a silver bullet of their own.

No, it doesn’t mean that at all. It means that in four months of being governor, Wisconsin has slightly over-performed the national average, despite being situated for a more tempered recovery. Both the absolute unemployment rate and the pace of jobs improvement for Wisconsin are better than average. What exactly are we lamenting?

Given that the public sector union fight dominated the state political agenda for much of the winter and early spring, Governor Walker spent most of his political capital on that very worthy fight. Given the frivolous judicial battle that Milbank referenced mere sentences ago incorporated a stop on implementation, this policy has barely taken effect. But here’s the kicker: the law to which Milbank is referring with regards to public sector unions isn’t even an attempt at spurring job growth; it was designed to inject fiscal sanity into the Madison budget and avoid a reality that necessitated future job-killing tax hikes. By Milbank’s own admission, the legislature also “just voted” on his budget. That little piece of policy isn’t even law yet. That’s right. It hasn’t even been signed.

So when you say that Republicans don’t have a silver bullet—after a mere six months in office—it’s really that they haven’t finished loading the gun yet.

Walker, who has large Republican majorities in the Wisconsin legislature, experimented with a long conservative wish-list, but the state hasn’t been a standout in job creation during his six-month tenure.

This is like criticizing a well-regarded baseball prospect for batting .285 in a call-up to the big leagues. Sure, those aren’t exactly Pete Rose numbers, but it’s a little early to ship the kid off to Oakland for a low-A lefty and a couple of fungos.

The truth is that there’s not much more that government can do to boost jobs in the short term.

Not from what’s in the liberal playbook, at least. That’s why the Obama camp is collectively shitting itself right now.

Refreshing to hear it admitted from the left, though.

That’s up to the private sector now.

Well this is a hell of a time to turn into a rugged individualist, but I’ll take converts wherever I can get them.

Corporate America has recovered so well that profits have been at or near record levels of an annualized $1.7 trillion in the last two quarters – but businesses have yet to spend their piles of cash.

Boy, corporations stockpiling cash sounds precisely like the type of thing that regulation-busting legislation could fix. Maybe by decreasing outlay costs, adding certainty to cash flow projections and reducing annual expenditures would overcome those corporate hurdle rates to get NPVs for reinvestment projects into the black. If only there was a political party that had been saying that for the last couple years!

Instead, flush CEOs are demanding still more government spending.

Yet more proof that corporate executives generally aren’t real capitalists. Even so, it’s more the Democratic leadership that’s pushing more government spending.

This was a theme of Monday’s session at the Chamber, where 23 men and one woman sat around a u-shaped table and listened to Chamber president Tom Donohue describe states as “laboratories of democracy,” where businesses are more likely to find “common sense solutions, innovations, experimentations, bipartisanship.”

I don’t disagree, but it’s kind of like trying to get seismic readings while riding a massive bull. The highest state corporate income tax bracket is in, of all places, Iowa, at 12%. (Most are 4%-8%) Federal corporate tax rates run between 15% and 35%. At the high end, federal tax plays about four times as much into the decision-making of a firm.

Walker, whose tenure has made Wisconsin more of a laboratory of theocracy,

That isn’t even close to the right word for this situation, you oblong jabberwocky!

clenched his jaw at the mention of bipartisanship. “The very first day I was elected,”

Technically, Mr. Walker, it was the only day you got elected—for governor at least. (I can’t not give shit, even when I want to like the guy.)

he said when his turn came, “I put up a sign that said, ‘Wisconsin is open for business.’” He waved a bumper sticker for the Chamber crowd with that same message. “I called the legislature into a special session based solely on jobs.”

Of course, that has nothing to do with jobs, primarily because bipartisanship has nothing to do with jobs.

That led to the fight over collective bargaining, the fleeing of Democratic legislators across state lines, and huge protests in Madison. “We got a little more attention than most,” he said.

I may be 150 miles south, but I can still smell those hippies in the capitol.

The attention continued on Monday. Delaware Gov. Jack Markell, one of two Democrats on the panel, said he “took a different approach” than Walker did: “I invited the unions to the table.” Markell said that the cuts he got from the unions exceeded his target by 30 percent, without creating statewide bitterness.

Sounds like his target was pretty low. (In addition, Markell—or his successor—will have to renegotiate soon, in conditions that are far more likely to favor the union.)

The other Democrat, Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, implicitly rebuked Walker when he said “with a Republican House and Democratic Senate we passed our budget with at least 75 percent in both houses.”

Little known fact: the Colorado legislature also recently passed a series of internal rules whereby they have abandoned the Pledge of Allegiance in favor of singing Kumbaya before getting down to state business. Hickenlooper brings the guitar and afterwards, they just jam. Hippies from Boulder are invited to form a drum circle, and everyone shares a hearty meal of granola.

In terms of job-creation, neither Democrat’s approach has worked any better than Walker’s. Colorado added 9,000 non-farm jobs this year and Delaware has been flat. Iowa, represented on the panel by Republican Gov. Terry Branstad, added 12,000. Virginia, represented by Gov. Bob McDonnell, added 22,000.

Compared to those geniuses, Walker might as well be Ronald Reagan!

The biggest job creator of the six, Gov. Rick Scott (R-Fla.),

Why is it that I keep seeing R’s after the names of the governors of job-creating states and D’s after the names of unethical legislators?

boasted that his tax cuts, deregulation and tort reform enabled him to cut “unemployment every month since I came into office, and last month our job creation was more than the entire rest of the country.” That’s nice, but even Scott’s job growth amounts to just 1 percent of the state’s workforce, and Florida’s unemployment is among the highest in the country.

I’m not sure how you intend to get significant job growth by shitting on modest job growth and praising anemic job growth.

Eventually, the governors – like President Obama – will have more to show for their job-creation policies.

Walker has been in office for six months. Obama’s been sitting in the Oval Office five times as long. The comparison rings a little hollow when you’re talking about giving them time until the economic recovery kicks in. Besides, Obama’s still blaming Bush.

But for now, they’ll have to settle for baby steps.

So the moral of this article is: “Republicans are significantly better at governing than Democrats, but I don’t like them very much, so they’re not good enough!”

Walker told the Chamber that Wisconsin moved up 17 places in Chief Executive magazine’s annual ranking. “Last year we were 41,” he said. “This year, we went up to No. 24.”

An excellent achievement for the governor.

If only those happy CEOs would start hiring.

This piece was a complete waste of time.

danamilbank@washpost.com

Speaking of Shakedowns and Shutdowns...

After Robert Reich just got done telling us that shakedowns and shutdowns were the worst thing that could possibly happen to a government, I bring you an ideological kin making the argument for shakedowns and shutdowns. Awesome.

Shock Doctrine, U.S.A.

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Oh Krugman, you rogue! It’s been too long. This is going to be fun.

Here’s a thought: maybe Madison, Wis., isn’t Cairo after all.

If it takes you a colon, two commas, and an inappropriately antequated state abbreviation to say “I’m wrong,” this might be a good time to crack open The Elements of Style.

Maybe it’s Baghdad — specifically, Baghdad in 2003, when the Bush administration put Iraq under the rule of officials chosen for loyalty and political reliability rather than experience and competence.

In a middle east where Egypt is drifting towards state-sponsored extremism and Libya—which was a docile house cat in the wake of the invasion of Iraq—is descending into an anarchical bloodbath, are you sure this is the time to take on the only stable republic in the Islamic world?

As many readers may recall, the results were spectacular — in a bad way.

What deft verbal judo! This is the rhetorical equivalent putting “not” at the end of a sarcastic statement. Let’s all watch Waynes World and listen to Nirvana’s “Nevermind.”

…Actually, that sounds awesome.

Instead of focusing on the urgent problems of a shattered economy and society, which would soon descend into a murderous civil war,

So to be clear, this is an argument against nation-building?

those Bush appointees were obsessed with imposing a conservative ideological vision.

Far from the liberal caricature, W was far from a conservative ideologue. Outside of the Bush tax cuts in 2001, he did virtually nothing to decrease the size or influence of government. Why would one believe that he would impose on Iraq what he refused to back domestically?

Indeed, with looters still prowling the streets of Baghdad, L. Paul Bremer, the American viceroy,

For the record, viceroy is necessarily a monarchical term (from the latin vice- “in the palace of” and the French roi- “the king”). When you’re criticizing someone for too rapidly dismantling totalitarian institutions, it is downright counterintuitive to simultaneously criticize them for being monarchical totalitarians.

told a Washington Post reporter that one of his top priorities was to “corporatize and privatize state-owned enterprises”

When a government has a stranglehold on the economy, and the government topples, privatizing state-owned enterprises is synonymous with stimulating the economy. That of course leads to jobs and gets looters, vandals, and potential terrorists off the street. I was under the impression that economics was supposed to be your wheelhouse.

 — Mr. Bremer’s words, not the reporter’s — and to “wean people from the idea the state supports everything.”

In other words, the Bush Administration’s goals were to erode the cultural tolerance towards totalitarianism and building the fledgling ideal of self-determination, which is the foundation of a culture in which a democratic republic can take hold. My goodness, that sounds almost like a well thought-out plan!

The story of the privatization-obsessed Coalition Provisional Authority was the centerpiece of Naomi Klein’s best-selling book “The Shock Doctrine,”

Can someone please stop professional writers from turning their columns into 8^th grade book reports on obscure drivel that no one bothers to read? Editors? Executives? Typesetters? Please?

which argued that it was part of a broader pattern.

I’m bored with this book already.

From Chile in the 1970s onward, she suggested,

That does involve the Iranian hostage situation as part of the “control group,” right. Given the Obama Administration’s callow response to the unlawful detention of an American diplomat in Pakistan, I’d say the precedent of indecision and half-measures from the left is far more unsettling. What about Clinton’s complicity with turning North Korea into a nuclear-armed rogue state?

right-wing ideologues have exploited crises

Of course, it was the great Republican thinker Sarah Palin who said “never let a crisis go to waste.” Wait…that doesn’t sound right.

to push through an agenda that has nothing to do with resolving those crises,

Seriously, how’d the Iranian Hostage Crisis get resolved, again?

and everything to do with imposing their vision of a harsher, more unequal,

If we wanted to impose an equal society, we’d all be socialists.

less democratic society.

Again, how does an ideology permissive of totalitarian government interference at the expense of individual liberty promote a democratic society?

Which brings us to Wisconsin 2011,

Actually, it takes you to the end of Ms. Klein’s book, which is currently selling it’s 162^nd copy for 85% off at Borders. Congratulations, Ms. Klein. If you want to transition to Wisconsin, you actually have to make the transition, not just state that one occurred.

where the shock doctrine is on full display.

Part of not turning your column into a book report involves avoiding the obnoxious verbiage from someone else’s work and applying it to something wholly unrelated.

In recent weeks, Madison has been the scene of large demonstrations against the governor’s budget bill, which would deny collective-bargaining rights to public-sector workers.

Keep in mind, these are public sector workers. And only select public sector workers at that. Police and Fire workers are excluded.

Gov. Scott Walker claims that he needs to pass his bill to deal with the state’s fiscal problems. But his attack on unions has nothing to do with the budget. In fact, those unions have already indicated their willingness to make substantial financial concessions — an offer the governor has rejected.

Unless these concessions are single-handedly enough to get the state of Wisconsin out of debt (they’re not), then the concessions are less important to the budget than giving the legislature the tools to cut the budget now and in the future.  Which means, if you’re playing America’s favorite drinking game “Paul Krugman is wrong,” you need to take two shots of Jagermeister and switch right shoes with the person sitting to your left. (The rules to this game are really tricky.)

Sadly, since the peace prize was awarded to Obama, I can no longer in good conscious advocate playing the drinking game “Nobel Lauriates are wrong.” Seven people died of alcohol poisoning during the State of the Union.

What’s happening in Wisconsin is, instead, a power grab — an attempt to exploit the fiscal crisis to destroy the last major counterweight to the political power of corporations and the wealthy.

Well it’s certainly a nice side-effect. The idea of public funds financing public union dues financing partisan political contributions should be loathsome to, well, anyone.

And the power grab goes beyond union-busting. The bill in question is 144 pages long, and there are some extraordinary things hidden deep inside.

It takes some stones to criticize Republicans for overly long bills. 144 pages? That’s 1/16^th the size of Obamacare.

For example, the bill includes language that would allow officials appointed by the governor to make sweeping cuts in health coverage for low-income families without having to go through the normal legislative process.

Funny. That actually was in Obamacare.

And then there’s this: “Notwithstanding ss. 13.48 (14) (am) and 16.705 (1), the department may sell any state-owned heating, cooling, and power plant or may contract with a private entity for the operation of any such plant, with or without solicitation of bids, for any amount that the department determines to be in the best interest of the state. Notwithstanding ss. 196.49 and 196.80, no approval or certification of the public service commission is necessary for a public utility to purchase, or contract for the operation of, such a plant, and any such purchase is considered to be in the public interest and to comply with the criteria for certification of a project under s. 196.49 (3) (b).”

What’s that about? The state of Wisconsin owns a number of plants supplying heating, cooling, and electricity to state-run facilities (like the University of Wisconsin). The language in the budget bill would, in effect, let the governor privatize any or all of these facilities at whim.

Should state government really be a utility company?

Not only that, he could sell them, without taking bids, to anyone he chooses. And note that any such sale would, by definition, be “considered to be in the public interest.”

While I’m not a fan of the language that opens the door to corruption, I understand the reasoning behind it. The language expedites the process considerably, because generally dealing with the government is as slow as it gets.

If this sounds to you like a perfect setup for cronyism and profiteering — remember those missing billions in Iraq? — you’re not alone.

This is an article about unions and you’re mentioning cronyism and profiteering without mention of the stimulus. Of course, that’s cool with me. Just acknowledge your biases.

Indeed, there are enough suspicious minds out there that Koch Industries, owned by the billionaire brothers who are playing such a large role in Mr. Walker’s anti-union push,

Which was completely refuted when a liberal activist called the governor posing as one of the Koch brothers and tricked the Governor into saying…exactly what he says in public.

felt compelled to issue a denial that it’s interested in purchasing any of those power plants. Are you reassured?

Certainly it’s uncomfortable, but is it any more comfortable than Wisconsin tax dollars financing the Democratic Party through the public union siphon?

The good news from Wisconsin is that the upsurge of public outrage — aided by the maneuvering of Democrats in the State Senate,

Well that I agree with, but most of the outrage is coming from the right.

who absented themselves to deny Republicans a quorum

A fancy way of saying “shut down the legislature in a purely anti-democratic technicality.”

--has slowed the bum’s rush.

Great. In the meantime, the people of Wisconsin are due a budget, and the Democrats have taken their ball and gone to an out-of-state protectorate.

If Mr. Walker’s plan was to push his bill through before anyone had a chance to realize his true goals, that plan has been foiled.

Does anyone really believe that Governor Walker didn’t want any attention paid to this bill? He has majority support both in Wisconsin and nationwide.

And events in Wisconsin may have given pause to other Republican governors, who seem to be backing off similar moves.

Really? What’s going on in Indiana and Ohio?

But don’t expect either Mr. Walker or the rest of his party to change those goals. Union-busting and privatization remain G.O.P. priorities, and the party will continue its efforts to smuggle those priorities through in the name of balanced budgets.

Smaller government is the GOP’s priority. They said it throughout the 2010 campaign; this rallying cry was noticeably absent in George W. Bush’s second term, to the detriment of the party. But here’s the question that no one really has an answer for: how does stripping public unions of the right to collectively bargain on benefits hurt Wisconsin? The answer, of course, is that it doesn’t.

Crazy Cat Ladies For Feingold

Gail Collins, circa 1997

Gail Collins is basically the New York Times equivalent of the crazy cat lady, except instead of cats, she collects absurd political opinions that she pets and feeds. Occasionally she pretends they're friends or a husband, blithely avoiding the cruel reality that after she dies, miserable, cold, and alone, they will eat her face.