Franken Lies (again) on MSNBC: Jobs under Bush I+II

MSNBC Interview | 9-26-03 | RA COOK

[Robert A Cook PE]

Franken was shilling his latest book (about a subject he knows well as a Hillary-loving-liberal: Lies!) and came out with a typically absurb employment "statistic" the liberals like to tell and re-tell.

But never check.

Franken claimed that under Bush I and Bush II, there was no gain of employment: specifically, that there was no growth in jobs except under Clinton between 1992 and 2000. Then he further exaggerated and claimed that if Bush I + Bush II were in charge since teh Revloutionary War, there would have been no jobs at all right now.

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Looked at Google real quickly; and found this list at:

http://www.dlt.ri.gov/lmi/pdf/usunadj.pdf

Won't reprint the whole thing; but average annual jobs were:

1985 = 115.4 million
1986 = 117.8
1987 = 119.8
1988 = 121.6
1989 = 123.8
1990 = 125.8
1991 = 126.3
1992 = 128.1
1993 = 129.2
1994 = 131.0
1995 = 132.3
1996 = 133.9
1997 = 136.3
1998 = 137.6
1999 = 139.3
2000 = 142.5
2001 = 143.7
2002 = 144.8
2003 = 146.9 (to August)

So - Again, the liberals are lying.

The media (MSNBC this time) doesn't care if they lie.

The republicans are stumbnling around with they're collective feet in the mouths looking like fools

[Robert A Cook PE]

As irritating as the moderator's glib acceptance (Russert I believe - though I watched as little as possible of the interview) was Al's "conservative" equal ignorance.

Then again - If these numbers are valid, notice that the rate of growth of jobs wasn't all that large under Clinton.

And acceptance of the lie.

[Robert A Cook PE]

Thought you might like hearing about this latest lie.

I'll try to get a replay of the complete interview to check things.

[BenLurkin]

Good old Al Franken. What a guy.

[Starwind]

Won't reprint the whole thing; but average annual jobs were:

Franken probably is lying (certainly exaggerating), but you selected the annual averages from the 'Labor Force' column which is the total people available for work. It appears to be the sum of the two columns Employment + Unemployment.

The 'Employment' column would be the one that shows "Jobs" (or at least a count of people who were employed in a job) and that column clearly shows decreases at various times, including annual averages.

Employment has not been rising monotonically as your data would imply.

[sixmil]

If you chart out the data, you'll see that the labor force grows at a constant rate, while employment levels off during recessions. What is making this recession worse is that we have a policy of importing workers while exporting jobs. My guess is that unemployment will get worse until we change this policy.

[visualops]

ping

[remember]

If you chart out the data, you'll see that the labor force grows at a constant rate, while employment levels off during recessions.

I agree. I've posted a chart showing employment data from the BLS at http://home.netcom.com/~rdavis2/employ1.html.

What is making this recession worse is that we have a policy of importing workers while exporting jobs. My guess is that unemployment will get worse until we change this policy.

I likewise agree with this. Currently, we appear to have no policy to create jobs except to offer tax cuts to appease the economic gods.

[chichipow]

I'm interested in your chart, but your page isn't working. Bad link?

[remember]

I'm interested in your chart, but your page isn't working. Bad link?

I've been having problem with the netcom site recently. However, I've mirrored the entire http://home.netcom.com/~rdavis2 site at http://home.att.net/~rdavis2. Hence, you can now access that page at http://home.att.net/~rdavis2/employ1.html.