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Governor Tom Corbett Returns on Monday
Our next installment of “Ask the Governor” is coming up on Monday, so NOW is the time to submit your question or comment for Governor Corbett. Click the Ask the Governor link at the top of PAMatters.com and fill out the form to be included in our next program.
PAMatters.com is your direct link to the governor of Pennsylvania and all the latest news from the Radio PA newsroom. Governor Corbett appears monthly to answer your questions and talk about the issues that matter to PA residents statewide.
Radio PA Roundtable 05.03.13
On this week’s Radio PA Roundtable, Brad Christman and Matt Paul review a week that put Radio PA’s “Ask the Governor” program in the national spotlight following comments by Governor Tom Corbett regarding the unemployed and drug testing. As always, video clips from that show are also available here on PAMatters.com.
Radio PA Roundtable is a 30-minute program featuring in-depth reporting on the top news stories of the week.
Click the audio player below to hear the full broadcast:
[audio:https://s3.amazonaws.com/witfaudio/radiopa/Roundtable05-03-13.mp3]
Behind the Numbers of the Jobs Debate
Statistics ultimately led to Governor Tom Corbett’s now-infamous drug test comments. The launching point for the entire conversation on this month’s edition of “Ask the Governor” was a statistic ranking Pennsylvania 49th among states when it comes to job growth.
Democrats and other Corbett critics are harping on the figure, but the governor says there’s more to the story. “There’s an old saying that Mark Twain said. There’s three types of lies: lies, damn lies and statistics,” Corbett quipped early on in the “Ask the Governor” conversation. “It’s a matter of when you look at the number, at what point in time you look at the number.”
But what about that job growth ranking as it stands today? Corbett’s Labor & Industry Secretary Julia Hearthway tells Radio PA that it’s being taken out of context:HEARTHWAY
Democratic gubernatorial candidate John Hanger says it’s a spin game the Corbett administration can’t win. “I don’t think if you talk with most Pennsylvanians that they have found… that their job prospects have improved over the past year.”
The longer Governor Corbett has been in office, Hanger says, the worse the jobs crisis gets. “His best year was his first year, his worst year has been the last 12-months,” he says. “We’ve literally, essentially, had no job growth with this governor in the last 12-months. Zero.”
The March jobs report from the Department of Labor & Industry includes two data sets. The numbers used to calculate the 7.9% unemployment rate in March indicate a 0.5% year-to-year increase in employment. The seasonally adjusted non-farm job numbers indicate regression to the tune of -0.1% from March 2012 – March 2013.
Christman Blog: The Overlooked Answer
Yes, that was “Ask the Governor” you saw on MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris Matthews last night, and the Huffington Post, and the Philly and Pittsburgh news sites.
The video from Monday’s taping of Ask the Governor is now viral.
While critics of Governor Tom Corbett bask in the glow of his comments about job applicants and drug use, it should be noted that when asked about Pennsylvania’s slide from 7th to 49th in job growth since 2011, there was a better, more cogent answer proffered.
Job growth measures the rate of increases in hiring, a figure that can fluctuate wildly depending on how a state fared through the “Great Recession.” Now, make no mistake, the economic woes of the past 5 years have affected us all, and there are many Pennsylvanians still feeling the serious burn of the near-depression. That being said, Pennsylvania did fare better than many other states and that was the main focus of Governor Corbett’s answer Monday:
“The statistic of 49 percent (sic) is really an indication of year-to-year, the rate of growth, how fast you are growing and we have been doing better in Pennsylvania than other states , but other states were so far down that they grew – percentage wise – in their area, fast. It looks like it’s fast…they had more ground to make up than we did,” Corbett said.
Of course, the reference to drug-abusing job applicants that followed this answer is now the headline, and likely will be for several more days, but it’s important that the governor’s broader answer not get lost in the revelry of backlash since Monday. As always, the real story is bigger than the headline.
(Brad Christman is the News Director of Radio Pennsylvania and co-hosts “Ask the Governor”)