The Huffington Post: on Jobs

Joe Biden: Labor unions have built the middle class and built America

During his impassioned address, Biden credited labor unions for building the middle class, and thus "building the United States as we know it. If the middle class is doing fine, everybody does fine," he said. "The wealthy get very wealthy, and the poor have a way up."

Mike McFadden: Gender-based pay equality & minimum wage? "Wrong questions"

The candidate wouldn't say whether he supports a state-based effort to increase Minnesota's minimum wage to $9.50 an hour. He called the vote concerning gender-based pay discrimination an election-year trick and said personhood legislation, which seeks to give fetuses the same rights as people, is a "polarizing" issue that he wouldn't focus on. When asked about the minimum wage, he said it was "the wrong question."

"What I think is really important with politicians and with leaders [is] you understand their overriding philosophies--how do they make decisions?" McFadden said. "And so I've been very specific in this campaign as to how I make decisions and it begins with my view of government, my philosophy of government."

Rick Perry: The official unemployment rate is massaged and doctored

Back in 2012, such conspiracy theories became known as unemployment or "BLS trutherism," in reference to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the division of the Labor Department that's responsible for producing the unemployment rate. After some surprisingly upbeat jobs reports that bolstered the campaign of President Barack Obama, skeptical conservatives either implied or said outright that the numbers couldn't be trusted.

As explained at the time, the BLS is devised in such a way that the White House cannot meddle in its math, be it a Democratic or Republican administration. [But BLS truthers compare the official jobless rate of] 5.6% to alternate BLS measures that include discouraged and involuntary part-time workers.