Politico's Kelsey Snell Sloppily Decries Indiana's Economic Progress, Supposedly at the Expense of Illinois

Kelsey Snell "is a tax reporter at POLITICO Pro." Her output in a column entitled "Indiana lures 'Illinoyed' biz with tax breaks" makes one wonder how she arrived at her current position.

Snell's piece is riddled with striking omissions and lame progressive talking points. But the most jaw-dropping element in her report is her clear inability to detect erroneous numbers which she and her employer should know make no sense.

One of Snell's paragraphs has two obvious whoppers (bolds are mine throughout this post):

When (Indiana Commerce Secretary Victor) Smith, a former manufacturing executive, was appointed in January he was given one goal from Pence—adding 2,609,000 private sector jobs. He said the state has added 22,000 jobs since January, though he acknowledged he has a long way to go.

C'mon, Kelsey. The Hoosier State's total seasonally adjusted private-sector employment was only 2.545 million as of November. Smith's goal is obviously not to double employment; it's probably to raise it by 260,000. No one at Politico has detected this obvious blunder since the article's publication early Saturday evening.

Additionally, Snell's "22,000 jobs" figure is vastly understated. (If Smith said it, which I tend to doubt, Snell still should have verified it). The state has added 50,800 seasonally adjusted jobs since January. That's basically on track to achieve Pence's presumed 260,000-job, four-year goal.

As to omissions, let's start with the unmentioned fact that Indiana became a right to work state in February 2012 during the administration of Republican Mitch Daniels. Since then, the state has added 89,300 payroll jobs, with 80,000 of them in the private sector. During that same period, Illinois, whose workforce is over twice as large, has added proportionally fewer jobs.

Snell never brought up unemployment rates. Indiana's seasonally adjusted rate since Republican Mike Pence took office in January has fallen from 8.6 percent to 7.3 percent. The rate in Illinois is still 8.7 percent, barely down from January's 9.0 percent.

Via: Newsbusters
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