ROVE STILL PLAYING THE SAME GAME

His agit-prop group Crossroads GPS group aired an anti-union ad that relied on some research done at the Cato Institute and we find the usual problem: the ad distorted the research:

Right-leaning think tank says Rove group "misrepresented" its data in ad attacking public employee unions
By Greg Sargent
Posted at 1:33 PM ET, 03/ 9/2011
Washington Post - The Plum Line

One of the core claims in the ad, which you can watch below, is that unions and Dems are trying "to protect a system that pays unionized government workers 42 percent more than non-union workers." To back up this claim, the ad cites a Cato Institute study from March 2010 that is generally critical of public sector unions. That study is right here.

But the author of the study, Cato director of tax policy studies Chris Edwards, tells me the ad's claim distorts his data in two key ways. The ad says that unionized government workers get paid 42 percent more than non-unionized workers in general, a charge that seems intended to turn non-unionized workers of all kinds against unionized public employees.

In fact, Edwards points out, Cato's study compared unionized government workers only with non-unionized government workers, not with non-union workers overall, and found the first group doing better

That's not all. Edwards points out that the ad rips the 42 percent figure out of context, further distorting what his study actually found in another way. The study did claim the 42 percent number, but it went on to state specifically that this difference can be partly explained by "general labor market variations across states," because "states with generally higher wages tend to be more unionized."


The study concluded that once you factor in that variable, public sector unions can be said to increase pay levels by approximately 10 percent -- not 42 percent, as the ad claimed.