No, Really, Pat Quinn Still Sucks More Than Scott Walker. Really.

April 20, 2012 - There are a lot of news reports out there today claiming that the jobs and unemployment situation in Illinois is better than Wisconsin. Nearly all of them are wrong.

That's not my opinion, it's fact. The numbers in the table below prove it. In what seems to be a conspiratorial attempt by the leftist mainstream media to discredit Wisconsin's Governor Scott Walker, a Republican, the employment numbers released today are being spun so much that heads are spinning.

Two quick examples of the liberal media's spin come from NBC Chicago and Bloomberg News.

NBC's Edward McClelland wrote an op-ed piece published today titled "Illinois Beats Wisconsin In Job Creation." McClelland quoted Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn (a Democrat) as saying earlier this week that “Since Governor Walker took office, Wisconsin is dead last among the 50 states in job growth.”

Bloomberg's headline today, "Republican Whipping-Boy Illinois Beats Wisconsin on Jobs," caps a piece written by Tim Jones. Jones quoted Quinn as saying this about Wisconsin and Gov. Walker:  "“They have the worst job record in the whole country, dead last,” and  “We certainly don’t want to follow his [Walker's] prescriptions when it comes to economic growth.”

Both Jones and McClelland were, of course, referring to today's jobs numbers from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. But let's look at those numbers. They are not difficult to understand, unless you're a liberal buying into the lies of the Democrats and their allies in the media. Here are the unemployment rates (as percentages) for Illinois and Wisconsin for March 2012, February 2012 and March of last year:

Illinois March 2012 .... 8.8 Feb. 2012 ....... 9.1 March 2011 ....9.3

Wisconsin March 2012 .... 6.8 Feb. 2012 ....... 6.9 March 2011 .... 7.6

Look at the numbers. Both states have had a decrease in unemployment. Illinois went from a nightmarish 9.3 percent a year ago down to a still-nightmarish 8.8 percent, a decrease of 0.5 percent. In the same period, Wisconsin went from an awful 7.6 percent down to a still-bad 6.8 percent. 

Compare Wisconsin's lowered unemployment drop of 0.8 to that of 0.5 percent in Illinois and you have to wonder what the hell the media - and geniuses like Gov. Quinn - are talking about when they say that Wisconsin is sucking tailpipes. Wisconsin's drop in its unemployment rate has been, over the past 12 months, faster that in Illinois (0.8% versus 0.5% as shown above). The latest numbers show that Wisconsin's unemployment rate is a full two points lower than in Illinois.  Illinois is called "the Greece next door" by it's neighboring states. Nobody is comparing to Wisconsin to Greece. Not yet anyway.