Indiana Governor Profile Does Disservice

What a disservice the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel did to its readers, other Wisconsinites and residents of other states with the Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels fluff piece “Blueprint for cuts” the newspaper ran on its Sunday, March 27, front page.

We got a personality profile of a folksy, fun-loving, good ol’ boy Daniels, eviscerator of public employee unions and champion of privatizing government functions. Good ol' Mitch Daniels whom Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker yearns to emulate.

But this nearly full-page story offered nothing of substance. I read the article, which seemed like a great “Mitch Daniels for president” promo, twice looking for answers to such questions as:

(1) Did Indiana’s economy improve in the three years between Daniels eliminating collective bargaining in 2005 and the 2008 onset of the Great Recession?

(2) Before Daniels took office, how did Indiana’s economy compare with other states that had collective bargaining and those that didn’t?

(3) How does Indiana's economy compare now with bargaining-rights and non-bargaining states?

(4) Does the number of new private jobs in the six years Daniels has been governor exceed the 6,300 state jobs he cut?

(5) How much tax revenue has Indiana lost because 6,300 people became unemployed?

(6) How does Indiana’s budget deficit compare to right-to-bargain states?

(7) How does Indiana’s standard of living compare to collective-bargaining and non-bargaining states?

Only at the end of this lengthy story do we learn that the thousands of jobs promised in Daniels’ public-private partnership never materialized and that an analyst with the Cato Institute -- the supposedly free-markeets, privatize-government-happy Cato Insitute -- has dubbed the partnership “news-release economics.”

As a former newspaper reporter and editor, I'm truly conservative about using a barrel of ink and a full page news hole on an ad nauseum press-release about a possible presidential contender that is pretending to be a news story. 

Here’s the link to the JS story: http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/118719549.html