In my opinion, the chuckleheads and the man with the mouth full of rocks couldn't recruit or relocate stink to a s5!t factory if it was located in Knoxville or Knox County. As sad as that is, it is painfully true and the little chamber down in Chattanooga has run circles around these clueless wonders in the Knoxville Super Chamber office and the local community and local businesses continue to throw money at these efforts for which there is zero accountability and next to nothing to show for it in the employment (real jobs) numbers.

As you prowl out into some of the higher elevations, as turned around as some of those communities are in Campbell, Claiborne, Cocke, Hancock, or Wide Spot in the Road County, what realistic business whose employees/management/leadership are concerned about decent education and liveable communities would want to do boo out there anyway?

If the numbers are wrong, the unemployment numbers (people drawing a government support check) are much higher than are actually being reported.

A big part of the problem is that these are net gain zero jobs for the people working them. They get a job and a way to spend their time, but as their reported income rises, their benefits go down and they still have no disposable income. It's just like slavery, only in America, we call it freedom.

This has been the Republican game plan on jobs numbers since the beginning of the Obama administration. When unemployment numbers were going up, and when they stayed up, the GOP was happy to embrace the BLS statistics, claiming they showed Obama to be a failure.

When they tracked downward, the statistics were challenged as as falsified, or at least delegitimized for not including people who had dropped out of the labor force, despite the fact that this is the same methodology used under previous administrations.

Likewise, Haslam crowed about Tennessee's unemployment numbers when they tracked below the national figures, but now, when they don't follow as the national numbers drop lower, there must be something wrong with the numbers.

The thing about statistics is that you can either use them to help understand a given circumstance and set policy appropriately, or you can try to cherry-pick them as a disingenuous means to validate whatever it is you intend to do anyway.

ACA - healthcare & social assistance employment growth ~1/2 in TN vs expansion states

Surely it has nothing to do with decisions like hiring a Missouri PR firm to promote our 5 year long "Made in Tennessee" tourism campaign to the tune of 60 million dollars? Is there no PR firm in this state that could handle this campaign and put $60 million in our economy over the next five years? Or maybe it has to do with the fact our legislature stalls bills in committee that give Tennesseans priority in hiring on state contracts paid for by our tax dollars? Or maybe it has to do with us being the number 1 state in workers making minimum wage...over 60% of them women. Funny thing how every state in the nation who raised the wage is showing a decline in unemployment. (Except perhaps one, which has remained the same). Or maybe not.

I find it extraordinary that Haslam mentioned in the AP article the lack of unemployment claims filed to try and illustrate his point. In the previous two audits conducted by the Comptroller's Office, the Dept. of Labor and Workforce Development has been cited for the difficulty in potential claimants contacting the unemployment call center in order to file a claim.

Two years ago, the audit stated that on numerous days the telephone lines were turned off early in the morning therefore not taking any calls the rest of the day. In last year's audit, the auditors themselves unsuccessfully attempted to reach the call center.

Haslam certainly has every right to make whatever point pops in his head but it would seem he would be concerned about the points that would not stand up to the scrutiny of a journalist if additional research was conducted.

Ray