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April 4, 2006

Notes from Ferdy - No Jobs for Illinois

One of the advantages of being an influential journalist is that you get EMAILs from high-ranking political operatives. One of these is a more-or-less weekly report on legislative activity from Illinois Senate Republican staffer Mark Gordon. Here's his report on job growth during the Balgojevich administration.

The latest figures from the U.S. Department of Labor show that after three years of the Blagojevich administration, Illinois had a job growth rate of just .7 percent from Jan. 2003 to February 2006. (That’s POINT seven percent) All of our neighboring states not only have higher rates of job growth, but even in raw numbers, they have outpaced Illinois. In the three years since Rod Blagojevich took office, Illinois has added 39,500 jobs. Despite being smaller states, Iowa, Wisconsin, Kentucky, Missouri and Indiana all have added more jobs and have had a higher growth rate. Among neighboring states, Iowa remains at the top, with a 3.9% growth in jobs over the same period. Although Iowa has less than one-fourth as many people as Illinois, the state has added 16,000 more jobs than Illinois in the past three years. Its job growth rate is more than five times that of Illinois. Indiana has added 24,000 more jobs than Illinois, even though it has only half as many people. Wisconsin may have less than half as many people as Illinois, but it has added more than twice as many jobs during the past three years.

The dismal job creation numbers for Illinois are in sharp contrast to the promises the administration has made. In recent months, Governor Blagojevich has been traveling the state to promote a massive new borrowing plan. He has claimed that if Illinoisans will only let him put the state $3.2 billion deeper in debt, he will create more than 230,000 new jobs. Such claims do not stand up under examination and the administration has been unable to document its job creation numbers. In fact, the state's job creation agency was cited in a highly critical audit for failing to adequately document and track job creation claims.

Blagojevich has not had a very happy tenure in office. While researching this article, we did a Google search to try and find his official campaign site, but all that showed up were articles like this one discussing his ethics woes. Nonetheless, there is still no reason for Republicans to be optimistic. Judy Barr Topinka is running on her record as State Treasurer, which has been exemplary but is still completely irrelevant to an Illinois Voter's daily life. The big difference between the candidate remains the fact that she plays the accordion.

We're doomed.

Respectfully submitted,

Ferdinand T. Cat

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Posted by: doll at April 5, 2006 1:40 AM