For better or worse, the press, Wall Street and others routinely place a great deal of faith in the federal government's payroll employment estimates.
But when Republican Governor Rick Scott's supporters cited data from Uncle Sam's Bureau of Labor Statistics to defend him against an insufferably rude leftist who started screaming and cursing at him in a Starbucks coffee shop, Associated Press reporters Jason Dearen and Gary Fineout, in a story the wire service carried nationally, claimed that Scott could only "allege that thousands of new jobs" were created in the Gainesville area, even though the claim was based on the same data the press routinely accepts as gospel.
Starbucks screamer Cara Jennings' support was so wide and deep after the incident that a rally at Florida's Capitol in Tallahassee to express support for her drew ... uh, two people — the organizer and one other guy, a retired state worker. The Tampa Bay Times covered the overwhelming show of sympathy (bolds are mine throughout this post):
Rally supporting Rick Scott's Starbucks heckler draws two supporters
The plan was for people fed up with Gov. Rick Scott and inspired by the coffee-fueled viral spectacle at Starbucks last week to rally at the Capitol and let the governor know how they feel.
But only two people showed up.
Frank Day, who owns a home repair business and lives in Point Washington, up in the Florida Panhandle, tried to gather supporters on Facebook for a "March to Support Cara Jennings," the woman featured in a viral video from a Gainesville Starbucks where she called Scott an "a------." Fred Williams of Jefferson County, a 31-year state worker who retired from the Florida Department of Health about 10 years ago came, as did six reporters.
So reporters outnumbered supporters 3-to-1. I would love to know if either Dearen or Fineout, whose April 8 AP story on the "Starbucks showdown" also came out of Tallahassee, were among the six journalists who arrived hoping for a spectacle.
Here are excerpts from the pair's disgraceful week-ago coverage (numbered tags are mine):
FLORIDA GOV. RICK SCOTT RESPONDS TO COFFEE SHOP SHOWDOWN
Florida Gov. Rick Scott, responding to a viral video showing him being cursed at by an activist at a coffee shop, has brewed the frothy fracas into a full-force Floridian feud. [1]
Instead of ignoring the exchange that had been viewed more than 2 million times on YouTube, [2] Scott's political committee on Friday posted its own video that called activist Cara Jennings a "latte liberal" who once refused to recite the pledge of allegiance at a public meeting. [3]
The initial video of the confrontation in a Gainesville Starbucks shows Jennings, 39, calling the governor "an embarrassment to our state."
... Scott, surrounded by worried aides, replied that he has created 1 million jobs, [4] before turning around and leaving the Starbucks empty-handed - he never got his coffee. [5]
As he walks out, Jennings shouts in response to Scott's oft-cited jobs talking point by asking, "who here has a great job?" [6]
Scott's "Let's Get to Work" committee fired back in its own video that espouses Scott's job creation in Gainesville, where the confrontation occurred. The video displays a satellite map of the Gainesville neighborhood where the incident happened to allege that thousands of new jobs were created there. [7]
"Almost everybody," the narrator responds to Jennings jobs question. "Except those who are sitting around coffee shops demanding public assistance, surfing the internet and cursing at customers who come in." [8]
... In an interview Friday, Jennings said the heated exchange caught on video began calmly, [8] but that she got angry when Scott refused to answer her questions.
... "The governor and his (committee) are acting like bullies," [8] she said. "I confronted the governor about his policies that impact my life. This is a form of intimidation, but it's more of the same craziness that we've seen from him." [8]
Notes:
[1] — It already was a "full-force feud." The open question was whether Scott and his defenders would continue it with a reasoned but aggressive response. Fortunately, they did. Here it is:
[2] — You see, according to the AP pair, when Republicans or conservatives get attacked, their duty is to slink away and ignore it so that the attackers' narrative dominates and can then be spread throughout the land without challenge. Team Scott wouldn't play along. How dare they!
[3] — Dearen and Fineout were clearly determined to give Cara Jennings more credibility than she deserved.
Team Scott didn't merely "call" Jennings someone "who once refused to recite the pledge of allegiance at a public meeting." It's a fact, but also a gross understatement, that Jennings "refused to recite the pledge of allegiance at a public meeting." You see, she did so repeatedly:
"What concerns me about Cara Jennings is the fact that she hates America," said a former (Lake Worth) mayor here, Tom Ramiccio, in an e-mail sent last month, noting that Jennings abstains from saying the Pledge of Allegiance during council meetings.
... before council meetings, Jennings stands for the Pledge of Allegiance - but won't recite the words. Her silence is conspicuous.
The AP reporters falsely made it seem as if Jennings was simply a spectator who simply refused to say the pledge one time. As just seen, she did so serially.
The AP pair also conveniently "forgot" to note, as the Scott group asserted, that Jennings has called herself an anarchist, even though the Palm Beach Post described her as "a self-proclaimed anarchist" two days earlier.
On top of that, it doesn't take much work to learn that Jennings was escorted out of a Newt Gingrich 2012 presidential campaign appearance when she wouldn't stop trying to disrupt it, that she organized opposition demonstrations at the Republican National Convention in Tampa in 2012, and that she started a group called "Radical Cheerleaders" over a decade ago.
Cara Jennings isn't the aggrieved individual "activist" portrayed by Jason Dearen and Gary Fineout. She is a hardened radical who saw what she thought was a golden opportunity to embarrass Florida's governor, tried to capitalize on it, and beclowned herself.
[4] — Scott said: "We got a million jobs," not that "he" did it all by himself. (These two AP reporters deceive with such ease, don't they?) At a minimum, Scott's "we" would include his gubernatorial team. At most, it could include the entrepreneurs, investors and businesspeople who have started or grown the businesses that have hired so many people in the past five-plus years.
[5] — The AP reporters seem pleased that Scott didn't get his coffee because he was tired of being harassed. Really classy, guys.
[6] — "Who here has a great job?" I hear an echo from leftist economists who like the $15-an-hour minimum wage and who don't care if jobs are lost as a result of its implementation:
New School economics and urban policy professor David Howell ... (asked) "What’s so bad about getting rid of crappy jobs, forcing employers to upgrade, and having a serious program to compensate anyone who is in the slightest way harmed by that?"
Cara Jennings is apparently among those who believes that people would rather have no job than a "crappy job."
Additionally, we should not overlook the irony of someone screaming "Who here has a great job?" in a place patrons pay a great deal for a product they could buy or make themselves for a fraction of the cost.
[7] — This is disgraceful, and either breathtakingly ignorant or brazenly agenda-driven.
When the AP's economics reporters cover the Uncle Sam's jobs and other economic reports, they never write that "the government alleges" that so many jobs were created, that so many houses were started, etc. They typically don't even describe the results as "estimates," even though they are known to be subject to subsequent revision. They typically write about what a certain government agency "reported" or "said."
Yet when Rick Scott's supporters specifically cited Gainesville's addition of 9,300 (seasonally adjusted) jobs since 2011 — an amount deliberately understated by the AP reporters as "thousands" — it was only "alleged." It's no more or less "alleged" than any other government data:
[8] (tagged four times) — Yes, Scott's response was aggressive, but Cara Jennings, by her conduct, had it coming. Based on the distance between the two in the original video, it's hard to believe Jennings when she says that the exchange "began calmly." — and it's rich beyond measure that someone who screamed "a__hole" at a sitting governor has the nerve to play victim, accuse him of bullying for his response, and then accuse him of "craziness."
Exit question 1: Will the AP now instruct their reporters, consistent with how reporters Dearen and Fineout handled things, to describe every piece of economic information reported by the government as "alleged"?
Exit question 2: When are Dearen, Fineout and the AP going to tell the nation that a rally to support Cara Jennings only drew two people? Given that they acted in their reporting like complete versions of what Cara Jennings wrongfully called Rick Scott, the overwhelmingly like answer is: Never.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
