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Questionable statement: “We had declining personal income. We had gone backward more than probably any state in the history of the country. This last year, we had our first gain in over 10 years and we beat the national average in terms of income for our citizens.”
Snyder spoke briefly at his party’s state convention Saturday, where he was the warm-up act for the steel cage wrestling match determining the state’s Republican National Committee representatives. (A Truth Squad tip-of-the-hat to Michigan Radio for a recording of the speech.)
As is his habit, Snyder addressed the crowd without a written speech – which may explain why his boasts about the state’s economic turnaround on his watch were a little off-base.
Personal income, as calculated by total earnings, was up in 2011, but it’s been up all but one year since 2000. The only year it had “gone backward” was 2009, Snyder’s first year in office.
Per capita personal income also has also gone up every year since 2000 except one. Care to guess which year it dropped?
Truth Squad presumes what Snyder meant to say was that Michigan had the highest growth rate in more than a decade.
Snyder went on to say that Michigan “beat the national average in terms of income for our citizens.” Actually, Michigan ranked 36th in per capita personal income in 2011.
Truth Squad presumes the governor meant to say Michigan “beat the national average” in the percent of growth between 2010 and 2011 -- with a growth rate of 5.2 percent in personal income compared to a national average of 5.1 percent.
But being a nerd, Snyder would know that 5.2 percent growth of a smaller total would be a smaller total-dollar increase than a 5.1 percent growth in the larger national average. In fact, Michigan residents fell another $133 behind the national average in per-capita income in 2011.
Questionable statement: “We need to work harder on talent, on connecting the supply and demand. Today we have over 80,000 open jobs in Michigan while we still have 8 percent unemployment.”
Both statements are true -- the Michigan Talent Bank lists more than 80,000 job openings, and the unemployment rate in Michigan in April was 8.2 percent.
But it’s important to note that the Michigan Talent Bank always has listed tens of thousands of job openings, even when the unemployment rate in Michigan was 14 percent in early 2009. Many of those openings represent the normal churn in the job market, and don’t, on their own, represent a disconnect between jobs and talent -- or an unwillingness of the unemployed to go to work.
Questionable statement: “Now about the election: We need to have success. We need success in the House of Representatives. We need the Supreme Court. We need the federal offices. We need a new president in Washington.”
Truth Squad addresses this otherwise harmless political rhetoric because of Snyder’s reference to the Republican Party “needing” the Michigan Supreme Court. All the other elected offices mentioned by the governor are partisan -- those running for office are nominated by and generally have similar political opinions of political parties. While Supreme Court justices are nominated by political parties, elections themselves are non-partisan, with no political party listed on the ballot.
Supreme Court justices are supposed to decide the state’s most thorny legal issues on the basis of law, rather than politics. Michigan has an unfortunate reputation for weaving politics and justice. Still, for the governor to say at a political convention that Republicans “need the Supreme Court” assumes that Republican-nominated justices will rule the way Republican politicians want.
General impression: Snyder might want to jot more notes on his index cards before giving his next speech.
Truth Squad call: Technical foul on Snyder’s mangling of positive economic news, making it appear he’d been responsible for an even larger turnaround; no foul on his jobs data; and, a sad-but-true no foul call on the governor’s admission that Supreme Court nominees are partisan.
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