The Great Jobs Debate In Kentucky

Republican cockfighting enthusiast Matt Bevin squared off against Democratic AG Jack Conway in the second of three debates ahead of next month's gubernatorial election here in Kentucky, and things got ugly, fast.

During the debate, Bevin accused Conway of not doing his duty last year when he chose not to appeal a ruling by late U.S. District Judge John Heyburn overturning Kentucky’s gay marriage ban, all the while calling for Rowan County Clerk to issue marriage licenses as a federal judge has ordered. 

“It’s easy for you to sit here and say that indeed, she should follow the law … but frankly, you did not follow the law when you cried before the cameras and refused to uphold the constitution of this state,” Bevin said. 

Conway defended his decision saying that it was his duty under the law to decide whether to appeal based upon the chances of winning the appeal. “I did my job, Matt,” he said. “You may not have liked the way I did, but I did my job.” 

Bevin claimed the state has lost 71,000 jobs since Conway became attorney general, and he laid that at Conway’s feet.

Bevin of course is full of nonsense.  Even if employment was somehow the domain of a state's attorney general to worry about, five minutes on Google and I come up with this chart:

Jack Conway took office in January 2008, Kentucky at that point had 1,860,600 people employed. Kentucky certainly lost more than a 100,000 jobs two years later.  But since then, the state has not only added those jobs back, it caught up to that January 2008 number in July of last year.  The preliminary August jobs number in Kentucky is 1,895,700 jobs.

Which means Kentucky has actually added 35,100 jobs since Jack Conway took over as Attorney General.

Bevin can't even lie correctly.  Idiot.