Stimulating Dishonesty

How Obama’s “jobs saved and created” scam has introduced a new level of dishonesty to government statistics!

It’s no secret that Obama’s claim of saving or creating 650,000 jobs is an utter fantasy. But now, the sheer dishonesty and bungling incompetence of the effort to hoodwink Americans into believing the $trillion stimulus bill is saving jobs is becoming more clear:

Exclusive: Jobs ‘Saved or Created’ in Congressional Districts That Don’t Exist
Human Error Blamed for Crediting New Stimulus Jobs to Nonexistent Places
By JONATHAN KARL
ABC News
Nov. 16, 2009

Here’s a stimulus success story: In Arizona’s 15th congressional district, 30 jobs have been saved or created with just $761,420 in federal stimulus spending. At least that’s what the Web site set up by the Obama administration to track the $787 billion stimulus says.

Discrepancies on government web site call into question stimulus spending.
There’s one problem, though: There is no 15th congressional district in Arizona; the state has only eight districts.

And ABC News has found many more entries for projects like this in places that are incorrectly identified.

Late Monday, officials with the Recovery Board created to track the stimulus spending, said the mistakes in crediting nonexistent congressional districts were caused by human error.

“We report what the recipients submit to us,” said Ed Pound, Communications Director for the Board.

Pound told ABC News the board receives declarations from the recipients – state governments, federal agencies and universities – of stimulus money about what program is being funded.

“Some recipients clearly don’t know what congressional district they live in, so they appear to be just throwing in any number. We expected all along that recipients would make mistakes on their congressional districts, on jobs numbers, on award amounts, and so on. Human beings make mistakes,” Pound said.

Well, you try just throwing in “any number” on your tax return and see if the IRS is so understanding. On something THIS important, it’s mind boggling that the bureaucrats which Obama is hiring by the boatload (those are the only jobs he has created) can’t do even a cursory review of such key data before publishing it.

And we’re supposed to believe these people when they say health care won’t be rationed under the government plan? Yeah, sure!

Stimulus dishonesty
Job numbers keep proving to be exaggerated
Union-Tribune Editorial
Wednesday, November 11, 2009

First it was The Associated Press refuting the Obama administration’s claims for jobs saved or created nationwide by February’s $787 billion economic stimulus measure. Then it was The Sacramento Bee refuting the claims that state agencies had made for California. Then it was the Chicago Tribune refuting the claims that state agencies had made for Illinois.

The errors were not of a minor or technical nature. They were egregious.

AP reported that “some jobs credited to the stimulus program were counted two, three, four or even more times.” The Bee reported that California State University said “the $268.5 million it received in stimulus funding through October allowed it to retain 26,156 employees” – more than half its statewide work force. The Tribune reported that Illinois education officials grossly inflated job-saved numbers, sometimes saying school districts had saved more jobs than their total number of employees.

This is a scandal and should be treated as such. It’s not government as usual. Instead, it appears to reflect a decision to distort government data collection to support explicitly political agendas.

With U.S. unemployment now topping 10 percent, the Obama administration is struggling more than ever to fashion credible counterarguments to the assertion made by this editorial page and many pundits and economists that the massive stimulus measure was a poorly thought-out pork fest that wouldn’t work. What’s the easiest way to defend the stimulus? Make up claims about its glorious results.

Politics also appears to be driving state agencies in their willingness to prop up this bogus narrative. It helps them make the case that they should get even more borrowed money from the federal government that they never will have to repay.

Such dishonesty should be completely unacceptable – especially at the federal level. We trust the Office of Management and Budget to provide honest figures on the size of the deficit and the national debt. We trust the Labor Department to provide honest statistics on unemployment and job gains and losses by sector. We trust the Commerce Department to provide honest numbers on monthly imports and exports and the gross domestic product. We trust the Environmental Protection Agency to provide an honest accounting of air and water pollution levels.

All of these statistics end up helping shape the public debate on the most crucial issues of the day. If these numbers can’t be trusted, we can’t have an honest debate. When it comes to the economic stimulus package, it sure looks like the Obama White House doesn’t want an honest debate. Instead, it is going to relentlessly push the very dubious claim that the stimulus was a huge success – no matter what.

We are struck yet again by the contrast between the hopeful and idealistic tone of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign and the bare-knuckles Chicago-style politics of his White House. If this hardball approach goes beyond the usual arm-twisting to the routine twisting of government statistics for political purposes, that will be a grim day for America.

In a report which is typical of other states, the Journal Sentinel in Milwaukee, Wisconsin produced a chart showing just how bogus many of these “jobs created and saved” are:

Meanwhile, unemployment just keeps going up and up:

House Leader John Boehner has a media wrap up of the news showing that the stimulus is NOT working. Read it here.