One of the key issues in the upcoming election is Scott Walker's broken promise to create 250,000 jobs during his first four years in office. Take it away Scott:
With his first term almost complete, Walker has created only 40% of the jobs promised. And even the rosiest of projections show that he will barely get to 50% of his goal by the end of his first term.
While it's obviously a concern that Walker's fiscal policies failed to produce even half the number of jobs promised, the bigger concern is that Walker ever believed that his goal was attainable. When he first made his guarantee, many people argued that it was impossible to create 250,000 jobs given the severity of the recession. Walker dismissed the critics and claimed that he would easily achieve his goal. Right, Scott?
So what was Walker thinking? During the campaign, he tried without any hard evidence to compare the economic downturn Tommy Thompson dealt with in the 1980s to the current recession. But as most people rightly pointed out, the comparison was unsupportable and reflected Walker's poor understanding of the economic climate.
And now that Walker's campaign promise has imploded, we are still waiting for a reasonable explanation as to why Walker thought his jobs goal was so easily attainable. So far the only response we've seen has been Walker's attempt to scrub his campaign promise from the Internet and his boldfaced lie that the jobs number was never a promise, but simply a goal to work towards. Sorry Scott, what was that?
But again, this isn't just about missing the goal. It's that the goal was unattainable from the beginning. By picking an impossible goal, Walker has demonstrated that he has a very poor understanding of our state's economy. So why do Wisconsinites still trust Walker?
I mean, if I ran an investment firm and told you that I could easily quadruple your money in a year, but then barely kept up with inflation, would you trust me when I came around next year asking for more money? And if you asked me why I didn't quadruple your money last year, would you be satisfied if I pretended like my guarantee wasn't really a guarantee, but that it was just a number I was working toward? Wasn't my guarantee the whole reason why you invested in the first place? Aren't you concerned that my promise to quadruple your money was based on nothing more than a charlatan's hustle to entice you to trust me?
Well, Walker is doing just that. He has failed to keep his promise, he has failed to explain how he ever intended to keep that promise, and is currently trying to pretend that he never made the promise to begin with. And now, Walker's asking you for your investment for a third time. I think it's time to cut our losses.