Texas unemployment rises to 8.5%, the highest in 24 years. (h/t TPM).
Meanwhile, in Massachusetts, clearly a basket case due to liberal policies, the unemployment rate has dropped to 7.4%, the lowest in two and a half years.
It should be mentioned that Texas job losses stem from public sector reductions. Since public sector workers like teachers, police officers, and fire fighters don’t count as real people, this should not count against Perry. One of Josh Marshall’s commenters puts it well:
1. Is a Dem trying to take credit for creating jobs by creating public sector jobs? If so, they do not count and must be subtracted from the math.
2. Is a GOPer trying to take credit for creating jobs by creating public sector jobs (as Perry has done)? If so, then they count, but you must ignore that they were public sector jobs and never speak of it.
3. Is public sector job loss causing a Dem to look like his/her policies are causing unemployment to go up? If so, then they count, but you must ignore that they were public sector jobs and never speak of it.
4. Is public sector job loss causing a GOPer to look like his/her policies are causing unemployment to go up? if so, then they do not count and you must refer to it as controlling the size of and shrinking government.
There is an important point here: current GOP ideology holds that public goods are nonexistent. Police, fire, education, transportation, public works, etc. etc. have no value and add nothing to productivity. Thus, creating these jobs does not count. Simply put, that is a recipe for national decline.
I’m so glad you’re back here! I mean, I know you have a “real life” and so forth, but this place was getting a little sleepy.
We should all be grateful for the bureaucrats who gather data on these things and put out the data without regard to the political effects it may have.
I did not hear this on NPR or on the network news tonight, so it does not count in any case.
From Zasloff’s first link:
“Free employers from the onerous tax and regulatory burdens undermining our economy…”
Does the Perry campaign really believe that’s a winning line?
With the recent EPA decision? With the Administration almost sure to sign off on the Tar Sands pipeline?
And how much did the multinational GE pay in taxes last year? Less than Warren Buffet’s secretary too? That was huge front page news.
I realize Perry’s handlers are betting on public ignorance…
But do they really think the population is so overwhelmingly dumb that they will choose Perry’s cowboy ultraright over Barack’s technocratic center-right?
Barack has already cut Perry’s legs off…
And just like that Monty Python skit, he’ll do the arms by and by….
it’s simple - good things are from the good guys, bad things are from the bad guys.
You give Republicans way too much credit. They believe that public goods, rather than having no value, have negative value. They believe that even with a tremendous output gap and severe unemployment public goods are rival to “free market” goods and that they tie up resources that could be creating positive value in the private sector on negative value public goods. They believe public goods to be not merely wasteful but inherently contractionary.
Republicans don’t want a slow national decline; they want to set the nation on fire and watch it burn just for laughs.
@ Koreyel,
Yes. Governor Goodhair’s handlers believe the American voters (as a group) are that dumb.
This edition of simple answers to silly questions has been brought to you by Avogadro’s Number and the letters aleph and ee. (Yes, we are now using foreign alphabets in transliteration.)
Jeb Bush forms company to get into the disaster response business. Obviously, first responders ARE good, but only if they can fleece the disadvantaged.