From Sunday's Tribune-Review

Sorry for the lateness of this - I have been fighting a killer of a cold.

We all know how the Trib's editorial board routinely refrains from logic, from reality but some days (and yesterday was a good example) they just pop the cork on a new layer of inexact-itude.

Take a look:

The Congressional Budget Office confirms what Democrats were trying to fob off on Republicans as "reckless partisan rhetoric": ObamaCare is a jobs killer. How many? Try 800,000. Higher costs, fewer jobs, more government control. Yet again, class, it's a tutorial in what "progressivism" is all about.

Except that when you look at what CBO director Douglas Elmendorf actually said, you find that the Trib has it completely totally ass-backwards wrong.

And had they read the Wall Street Journal, they'd know that:

Speaking Thursday before the House Budget Committee, the Congressional Budget Office director estimated that ObamaCare will cause the labor force to shrink by about half a percentage point by the end of the next decade. That isn't the same as claiming that there will be 800,000 fewer jobs available, but rather, as Mr. Elmendorf said, that the law will reduce "the propensity to work." As with any other government subsidy, people receiving "free" health care won't have as much incentive to search for a job or work full time. [emphasis added]

Let's explain further. Better yet, here's the CBO itself, doing something the braintrust doesn't seem to want to do - give you clear information:

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act(Public Law 111-148) and the Health Care Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 (P.L. 111-152) will affect some individuals’ decisions about whether and how much to work and employers’ decisions about hiring workers.1 The Congressional Budget Office(CBO) estimates that the legislation, on net, will reduce the amount of labor used in the economy by a small amount—roughly half a percent—primarily by reducing the amount of labor that workers choose to supply.

And then:

The expansion of Medicaid and the availability of subsidies through the exchanges will effectively increase beneficiaries’ financial resources. Those additional resources will encourage some people to work fewer hours or to withdraw from the labor market.

So it's not about the jobs, but about workers. With Health Care Reform implemented fewer people would have to work that second job or do overtime just to pay for their health care. Or if they know their health insurance is solid, they might be able to retire sooner and not have to wait for Medicare to kick in. The supply of labor would be reduced - but not the number of jobs.

A huge difference the Trib blurred into a lie.

Now go back and look at what the Trib fobbed off as true. What they wrote is completely wrong and it only shows (yet again) that the braintrust must think its readership is a bunch of idiots who'll believe whatever partisan drivel plops on their doorstep every morning.