Lies, Damn Lies, and Fox 29’s Statistics

City Officials Haven’t Given Up On That Second Casino Yet. Why, you could put one near the Convention Center. Or maybe, right next to SugarHouse. Just throwing out ideas here. [Inquirer]

O’Connor Out As Holy Family Coach. He won’t be prosecuted for pushing that player to the ground, but he’s not quite what you’d call employable right now, either. [Inquirer]

Santorum Wants Boehner To Stop The Gays. After the Obama DOJ declined to defend part of the Defense of Marriage Act in court, possible presidential psychopath contender Rick Santorum wants the House Speaker—the same orange-hued dude who spent the last year bitching about “where’s the jobs?”—to drop everything and fight on DOMA’s behalf, because, you know, when the gays marry, assuredly someone, somewhere, will be marrying their Schnauzer puppy or whatever. [The Hill] RELATED: Dan Savage will soon relaunch everyone’s favorite Santorum-related website. [The Stranger]

Buzz Bissinger Wants Kermit Gosnell To Die a Brutal Death, Right Now. He’s anti-death-penalty, but willing to make an exception. In fact, he’d pay to watch. [Daily News]

The DN Comes Out Against The Voucher Bill. Main problem: It would take a billion dollars from struggling schools and give them to religious institutions, no strings attached. That’s something of a First Amendment problem, no? [Daily News]

Oops. The cops shot an innocent man’s dog during a narcotics raid in West Philly. “Mistakes happen,” says spokescop Ray Evers. Indeed. [Philly.com]

Do Public Employees Earn Too Much? Fox 29 person Steve Keeley does a “fact check” and concludes that, why, yes, they do make about $2,000 a year more than private workers, which means “the latest government data says just the opposite of what the public workers say.” This is not including their retirement and health care, of course. [Fox 29] Unfortunately for Keeley, he’s not very good at basic economics.

But the Economic Policy Institute tells us that, in Wisconsin, public-sector workers are not in fact paid more than their private-sector counterparts. They’re paid less. You can only make it appear that public-sector workers earn more by ignoring the fact that “both nationally and within Wisconsin, public sector workers are significantly more educated than their private sector counterparts.” [The Economist]

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But when we compare apples to apples, we find that Wisconsin public employees earn 4.8% less in total compensation than comparable private sector workers. The comparisons—controlling for education, experience, hours of

work, organizational size, gender, race, ethnicity, citizenship, and disability—demonstrate that full-time state and

local public employees earn lower wages and receive less in total compensation (including all benefits) than comparable

private sector employees. [EPI]

In other words, Keeley’s argument only holds if you ignore a whole host of intervening variables. In other words, this type of “analysis” should probably be left to people who aren’t Steve Keeley.