Jonathan Karl from ABC News reports, "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.There's one problem, though: There is no 15th congressional district in Arizona; the state has only eight districts."
Rick Klein from ABC News adds this one: "More than $36 million in stimulus funds spent between the 69th and 99th districts of the Northern Mariana Islands -- a self-governing US territory that gets only one (non-voting) representative in the House. (Did Jack Abramoff do a better lobbying job than anyone could have imagined?)"
And that ain't all. The following comes from Matthe Jaffe, also from, you got it...ABC News.
One recipient – Talladega County of Alabama – claimed that 5,000 jobs had been saved or created from only $42,000 in stimulus funds...
Some of the other recipients whose data was omitted included Belmont Metropolitan Housing Authority in Ohio that reported 16,120 jobs saved or created after receiving $1.3 million in stimulus funds from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Shelton State Community College in Alabama reported 14,500 jobs saved or created after receiving $27,000 from the General Accounting Office. And Alkan Builders of Alaska reported 3,000 jobs saved or created after receiving $11 million from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers...
"The more we learn about the administration's 'jobs created or saved' methodology, the more questions we have regarding its accuracy and validity," Rep. Darrell Issa told ABC News Sunday night. "Now we learn that OMB is playing an active role in trying to filter information. Given this hands-on role that the administration is playing, it would be appropriate to have OMB represented at Thursday's hearing."...
Since the latest stimulus report, there have been numerous media reports that the jobs numbers were inflated.
The Associated Press said the report "significantly overstates the number of jobs spared with money from programs serving families and children, mostly the Head Start preschool program."
The Denver Post also cited overstated federal figures with the Colorado Head Start program, noting that the government reported 269 jobs saved or created by the program, but only three were actually saved or created.
The Chicago Tribune noted that the administration said $4.7 million in stimulus money for schools in north Chicago had saved the jobs of 473 teachers, but the school district only employed 290 teachers. The statistics – claiming that stimulus money had helped save or create 14,330 school jobs in Illinois – were "riddled with anomalies that raise questions about their validity."
The Boston Globe also reported that Massachusetts recipients of stimulus funds claimed that 12,000 jobs had been saved or created, "that number has been inflated by miscounts, erroneous figures, or claiming jobs for work not yet started."
This whole mess prompted Andrew Malcom over at the L.A. Times' "Top of the Ticket" to quip, "But then the trouble is that just months after grandly unveiling the recovery.gov website to showcase its economic prowess and tech-savvy, the Obama administration just spent 18 million additional taxpayer dollars to redesign the still new website.
And that site proudly also reported nonexistent new stimulus spending not just in Arizona but other states across the country. So that looks to have worked pretty well, at least if you're counting computer designer jobs created."
But beyond the laughable mistakes, the muddle-headed defenses and the appropriate sarcasm delivered at the White House by a handful of media sources, there is a quite serious purpose at work with the President's lies, damned lies and falsified statistics.
Note these points made by Republican Congressman Darrell Issa from California, the ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
Since President Obama took office, the American people have been subjected to an aggressive propaganda campaign designed to convince them that the $787 billion stimulus bill is working. Month after month, as unemployment continues to rise, the administration has sent its spinmeisters out to trumpet an altogether dubious number of jobs "created or saved."
Vice President Biden -- the man appointed by the president to oversee the recovery effort -- has shamelessly continued to claim credit for as many as one million jobs that the administration argues the stimulus has "created or saved."
Meanwhile, unemployment hit the highest point in a quarter century, and 3.8 million more Americans are out of work since the White House promised to "get the economy moving again." There's good reason to doubt thepresident's policies are working...
The manifest inaccuracies in the data the Obama administration uses to justify its economic policies constitutes the promulgation of inaccurate and misleading information by the federal government. The American people deserve a straightforward accounting of the way the president spends their tax dollars, and they have the right to expect a return on their "investment."
So far, all they are getting is deceitful propaganda and a backbreaking trillion-dollar tax bill from the officials they elected to bring about change.
