Blurry language of Jeff Johnson

DO NOT ADJUST YOUR DIAL, Johnson’s language leaves him out of focus on issues.

Reading the Star Tribune this Sunday morning confusion redoubled about the GOP messaging.

“Republicans argue that the good-looking numbers are misleading and that many people are “underemployed.” They point to research from the state’s Department of Employment and Economic Development pegging 53 percent of Minnesota workers as in positions beneath their qualification level.

Dayton’s GOP foe, Jeff Johnson, has seized on the statistic.

‘Half of the people employed in Minnesota are employed in a job they really don’t want. They are employed in a job that is part time versus full time. They are employed in a job that is paying them less than what they think they should make,’ Johnson, a Hennepin County commissioner, said at a recent campaign event.”

So is Johnson now arguing that employers are underpaying and mis-assigning people in job capacities? If the employee is taking an ill suited job in a troubled economy is Johnson saying it’s the employees own damn fault?

Edward Deming, the American revered by the Japanese, who is often attributed to the rebuilding of industry there, post WWII had no sympathy for Johnson’s arguments. Deming would lay this squarely on management within these companies. Got to give credence to a man that pulled an entire war torn nation forward. Johnson by comparison is a lightweight.

All this lament about job creators from the GOP for the last 30 plus years and now a gubernatorial candidate appears to be casting aspersions at the employers. There’s even a taint of sympathy for the unhappy employee. Wages being the crux of his argument.

Ultimately he’ll say he has the GOP solution to fix the economy, more on that in a moment.

The decision as to whether an employee is part or full time resides with the employer. Watching the CEO pay reported in the business section employees within larger firms should indeed feel as if they were being short shrifted in compensation. As for the smaller ones follow the money trail to see who has large donations going to Republican coffers. Not about to plow it back into employee pay they pass the cream off in expectation of legislators promising additional largesse.

And if Johnson is sympathetic to the employee plight can we expect him to strive for better minimum wages?

Just what is this man saying?

Employers alone can correct the sense of underemployment by elevating wages with full time jobs. Fat chance of that occurring. It’s a fools belief that Johnson will come to the employees aid.

So is Johnson committing a GOP sin, laying it on the employer?

As always GOP language is contorted, misleading and messaged for the base that finds erratic and simplistic solutions to complex problems.

We’ve seen it for 30 years, Reagan said smaller government is the way and then swelled the number of government employees by something like threefold. He talked big about debt and deficit and then drove them damn near through the ceiling finally retreating to a “deficits don’t matter” alibi.

Johnson appears to be as full of blurred language (colloquially known as bullshit) as most GOP candidates.

From the Michelle MacDonald fiasco as Supreme Court material, to the residual party debt, all the while claiming fiscal responsibility, to rich scions like Stewart Mills, the beer bong kid, he being more worried about his taxes and guns than the welfare of the state at large, Emmer the quarter wit radio personality, Torrey Westrom with his personal indebtedness, Scott Newman the vote alienator and with his nose up Warren Limmer’s sphincter, Kline the education destroyer and labor dissembler who has lived on the government tit his entire working life, Macfadden let’s use cheap foreign steel, Hagedorn the sexist bigot and that’s being kind to him, and here locally in 57B Anna Wills the Tea Party homeschooling advocate functioning as sandwich board, she having had no novel thought crossing her mind in two years of service.

The main facts on these GOP policies are this:

1982 * Markets tank under the great thespian Reagan

1987 * Markets tank under the great thespian Reagan

1991 * Markets tank under the G. Herbert Bush, the scion of the thespian Reagan

2003 * Markets tank under the “decider” George the shrub Bush

2008 * Markets tank under the “decider” Shrub for a second time.

Yet the GOP claims they know a thing or two about economics. They obviously have proven they can ruin the national economy in 4 to 5 years.

At the state level Tim Slapshot Pawlenty kept his pledge, no new taxes… from the state, he drove them upward through property tax imperatives more or less shoved down local government throats and blurred the his actual tax language with the term “fee”. Of course the GOP is now claiming this is Dayton and the DFL’s fault.

The conclusion here is that Johnson is using the same bullshit language of his party’s ancestors. You really don’t know what he’s saying at any moment in his campaign.

That language is out of focus, intended to mislead. These are GOP policy contentions without data and that by extrapolation means the entire Johnson campaign message is out of focus. We have no real idea what we’ll get should this guy win because he can’t speak in clear terms.

The program House became identified with the line “Everybody lies.”

 

Probably true enough.

The GOP has taken it to a fine art and it got a big boost emulating Reagan misleading language. Understudies at best, one and all.

Still at it, still blurry and still true. Caprices to cover the lies, “Gee, the dog must have ate it Teach!”