A Lesson in How to Fudge Charts, Courtesy of Rick Scott's Office

By Matthew Hendley Mon., Nov. 28 2011 at 4:51 PM

Gov. Rick Scott's office introduced its monthly chart comparing private-sector job gains against government job gains, and it just didn't look right.

Remember, there were 6,900 more government jobs in October than in September, while the number of private-sector jobs increased by 2,600. (That one wasn't in the governor's news release.)

Aside from the governor's office giving his chart a gold star, we noticed a few other things -- like the fact that they apparently tried to fudge the visuals of the chart.

Here's the chart (click on it for the full-sized view):

In case you don't see the problem there, the governor's office is apparently still trying to pretend the government jobs gain never happened, as -16,900 and -11,100 are at nearly the same exact spot (again, click on it for the full-sized view):

Here's a more accurate view of how it would look without the pretend like the government jobs never happened angle:

Actually, it'd probably look more like this:

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Tags:

700000 Jobs, Florida, Florida Department of Economic Opportunity, Florida Jobs, Florida Unemployment, Line Charts, Rick Scott

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Chaz Stevens, Genius

Job Creator.

Euphemistic term for a wealthy or rich person first proposed by Republican politicians in mid-2011.

The term is meant to justify why the wealthy are given special legal and economic advantages and why the rich are taxed less than other people in the United States even though they can afford it more.

In Republican/Tea Party political theory, "Job Creators" are wealthy because they are industrious, virtuous, hard working people and can use their vast wealth to create jobs by hiring people to work for them. The idea that this euphemism is trying to convey is that taxing these people would hurt the economy because then their money would be going to the government (which is always evil in this political ideology) which will only waste tax money on things like social services.

We are Job Creators, therefore we deserve not to be taxed on our big houses and luxury cars, because then we might not be able to afford our nanny and gardener.

ftl

"why the rich are taxed less than other people in the United States "

Oh Really? any facts to back that statement up?

I thought it was:10% up top 17k incomeand 15% up to 69kand 25% up to 140kand 28% up to 212k,and 33% up to 379kand 35% over that amount?

so we already penalize those that are successful at earning money.

So how much more should we penalize the rich?

my facts come from:http://www.taxfoundation.org/t...

nanook5

i think just repeating the fact that rick scott thinks firing his employees and selling the jobs to his friends is something to be proud of should be enough criticism with or without a non-representational chart.