So Many Jobs, So LIttle Time

To great fanfare a couple of weeks ago, the Obama Administration proudly ignored the unemployment rate spiking to 10.2 percent to announce they had created or saved exactly 640,329 jobs.

So that each and every one of us can track exactly where those jobs were created or saved, the Obama spin machine created a website, Recovery.gov, which has as its slogan: "Track the Money."

SIDEBAR

In France, their stimulus website is headed "Count de Monet" which is very funny, but only if you are a Mel Brooks fan.

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The money, the Obama team would like us to be able to track amounts to precisely $158,705,328,811, which, if the calculator that came with Windows 7 is functioning properly, works out to $247,849.67 per job.

A quarter of a million per job sounds a tad high to me, but maybe it's a generational thing.

ABC News actually went to the trouble of looking at some of the entries on the website and found an example about which reporter Jonathon Karl wrote:

"In Arizona's 15th congressional district, 30 jobs have been saved or created with just $761,420 in federal stimulus spending."

I did the calculation for you. It's $25,380.67 per job, but that will probably go up when those 30 people find out they're getting paid just 10 percent of the going rate.

Except they won't. Why? Karl goes on to point out that,

"There is no 15th congressional district in Arizona; the state has only eight districts."

Oops! Don't you hate when that happens?

According to ABC, the communications director for the Recovery Board said, simply:

"We report what the recipients submit to us."

Let's run that past the IRS and see if this has become a government-wide operating theory.

Similar errors were found for jobs created in non-existent districts in Oklahoma, Connecticut, and Iowa. You will be interested to learn that 142 jobs were created in the 99th congressional district of the Northern Mariana Islands.

As you might expect, a Member of Congress immediately leapt into the fray saying the inaccuracies,

"are outrageous and the Administration owes itself, the Congress, and every American a commitment to work night and day to correct the ludicrous mistakes."

Before you roll your eyes and whine about those dopey House Republicans jumping on the President while he is over there in China doing whatever he is doing, I should point out that the statement came from Rep. David Obey (DEMOCRAT-Wis) who is the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee (which is always written as the powerful House Appropriations Committee and for good reason).

A few weeks ago, the New York Times reported that $1,047 in stimulus money was used to purchase a riding mower to "cut the grass at the Fayetteville (Arkansas) National Cemetery."

I went to the Toro site and couldn't find a riding mower suitable for a home lawn for under $2,000 much less an industrial-strength mower such as one might buy for a cemetery, but that was not the point of the Times piece. This was: According to NY Times reporters Michael Cooper and Ron Nixon, the Recovery.gov website,

"improbably claims that that single lawn mower sale helped save or create 50 jobs."

They go on to write that "a spokesman for Toro said the 50-job figure was not accurate."

I'm not sure how the spokesman would know that, but Toro is apparently paying closer attention to these data than the U.S. government.

The Washington Post, in a piece written for today's editions by Alec MacGillis, reminds us that from its earliest sales pitch,
"the Obama administration framed the stimulus act as a job-creating initiative, saying that it would create or save 3.5 million jobs over the next two years."

With the jobs "created or saved" numbers having such little credibility, reporters are jumping on the data like a five-year-old on a leaf pile. From MacGillis' WashPost piece:

The constant barrage of such stories may be taking a toll. In the new Washington Post-ABC News poll, 23 percent of respondents say they think the stimulus act has hurt the economy, and 39 percent say that it has made no difference."

Only 37 percent think the stimulus package has helped (one percent had no opinion).

Can't blame that on George W.

On the Secret Decoder Ring page today: Lot's o' links: The Recovery.gov site, ABC News, Washington Post and the NY Times. Also an explanation of that Mel Brooks line.

Also a pretty amusing Mullfoto and a Catchy Caption of the Day which will irritate many of you.