Obama, his administration, and their mouthpieces in the media are scamming the American people on the $787 billion, wildly successful, job saving or creating stimulus.
Last Friday, Jared Bernstein, a White House propagandist/liar, wrote:
Good news, folks. The Recovery Act is working, and so are over one million people whose jobs have been saved or created by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
But why take it from me when you can see it for yourself? Thanks to unprecedented real-time data collection by the independent Recovery, Accountability, and Transparency Board (RATB), you will soon (as in this afternoon) be able to visit Recovery.gov and learn about the approximately 650,000 jobs directly created by part—and I emphasize that these 650,000 or so jobs are a subset of the more than one million—of the Recovery Act dollars at work in our economy.
Since that 650,000 is based off of about half the bucks at work in the economy so far, you can double it to get a rough estimate of the total jobs impact so far, getting you to over a million jobs, saved or created.
...Here are the details. As of last month, there was about $340 billion in Recovery Act dollars at work in the economy, through fiscal relief to states, committed infrastructure projects (some in progress, some yet to start), tax cuts, unemployment benefits, small biz loans, and much more. According to both our estimates and those of independent analysts, this ramp up of the Act has created or saved about one million jobs so far.
Now, a little less than half that amount applies to direct spending projects for which recipients are required by Congress to report job information to the independent RATB. As you can see in the video above, we’re talking everything from construction workers, teachers, scientists, and more. After cleaning the data, and summing it all up, the board tells us that these direct jobs amount to about 650,000, located throughout the country.
The other half of the spending includes subsidized loans to small businesses, unemployment compensation, tax cuts, and other forms of Recovery Act support that doesn’t lend itself to direct job reporting so easily. The recipient reports also omit indirect jobs—those created when the directly hired contractor orders some cement, the school teacher orders classroom supplies, or when both of them spend their paychecks in the economy, generating more economic activity and jobs than would have occurred if they were unemployed (econo-types will recognize these as “multiplier effects”).
So that’s the story today, but there’s a lot more to come from the Recovery Act. Given that more than half of the Act’s funds have yet to be obligated or reflected in tax cuts, the fact that many funded projects have a lot more hiring to do, and the fact that these recipient reports account for around 650,000 jobs through the end of September despite all the omissions just noted, we are solidly on track to meet our goal of 3.5 million jobs saved or created by the end of next year.
So, a major hat-tip to the RATB for their path-breaking work and we thank all the recipients for providing us with this information.
But as we applaud these unprecedented efforts in transparency and this new confirmation that the Recovery Act is successfully creating jobs across America, we are also acutely aware that even the highest estimates of jobs created or saved by the Act only partially offset the extent of job losses since the recession took hold last year. For this reason, we plan to continue to squeeze every job out of every dollar left to spend in the Recovery Act, and to do so with the same level of transparency achieved thus far.
Sorry, folks.
Mr. Bernstein is feeding you a load of crap.
The "good news" that the Recovery Act is working is BS.
The numbers that allegedly "confirm" this "good news" do not.
The recipient reports about jobs saved or created contain lies, complete fabrications, and distortions.
Worse, the Obama hacks reportedly are strong-arming recipients of stimulus funds into providing the government with numbers that "confirm" the tremendous success of the Recovery Act.
Recipients are being coerced into telling the Obama administration what it wants to hear.
From CNNMoney, here is what the White House wants Americans to believe:
The largest stimulus program in the nation's history has created or saved just over 640,000 jobs, the Obama administration said Friday.
Based on $159 billion in spending from the $787 billion recovery package, the tally is the first broad, concrete look at the stimulus program's impact on the economy. The numbers are drawn from 57,000 reports from state and local recipients and include as many as 30,000 jobs from private companies.
The White House posted Friday afternoon complete reports on its stimulus data tracker Recovery.gov. The site allows visitors to check what jobs were created and where, down to the zip code level.
This supposedly "concrete look" is a crock.
"The numbers are drawn from 57,000 reports from state and local recipients...."
What's important to note is that there is a glut of reports that these reports are bunk.
Recovery.gov, the Obama administration's ultra-transparent tracker, is a joke.
Recovery.gov is the U.S. government’s official website providing easy access to data related to Recovery Act spending and allows for the reporting of potential fraud, waste, and abuse.
The actual fraud, waste, and abuse IS Recovery.gov, providing government-approved lies to the American people about the success of the stimulus.
The Obama administration's fraud is being exposed by some journalists and watchdog groups and brave individuals.
Read about the lies:
Chicago Tribune: "Illinois data on stimulus-related jobs saved, created don't add up"
More than $4.7 million in federal stimulus aid so far has been funneled to schools in North Chicago, and state and federal officials say that money has saved the jobs of 473 teachers.
Problem is, the district employs only 290 teachers.
"That other number, I don't know where that came from," said Lauri Hakanen, superintendent of North Chicago Community Unit Schools District 187.
The Obama administration last week released the first round of data designed to underpin the worthiness of its economic stimulus plan, which so far has directed $1.25 billion to Illinois schools. That money has helped save or create 14,330 school jobs in the state, the administration claimed.
But those statistics, compiled initially by the Illinois State Board of Education, appear riddled with anomalies that raise questions about their validity, according to a Tribune analysis of district-by-district stimulus spending and other state data. Many local school officials were perplexed by the stimulus data attributed to their districts.
In the official report, Wilmette Public Schools District 39 was credited with 166 jobs saved by stimulus aid. Superintendent Raymond Lechner said the number should be zero.
At Dolton-Riverdale School District 148, stimulus funds were said to have saved the equivalent of 382 full-time teaching jobs -- 142 more than the district actually has.
A similar discrepancy was found in data for Kankakee School District 111, where the stimulus report logged the equivalent of 665 full-time jobs saved. "That's impossible," a top Kankakee school official said, adding that the entire payroll -- full and part time -- is 600 workers.
Washington Examiner: "Stimulus saves nine out of every five jobs"
I've always believed that President Obama will take credit for saving 2 million jobs as long as there are 2 million jobs left in the United States. But his jobs report apparently goes beyond this, the Associated Press reports, taking credit for saving jobs that really don't exist.WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama's economic recovery program saved 935 jobs at the Southwest Georgia Community Action Council, an impressive success story for the stimulus plan. Trouble is, only 508 people work there.
The Georgia nonprofit's inflated job count is among persisting errors in the government's latest effort to measure the effect of the $787 billion stimulus plan despite White House promises last week that the new data would undergo an "extensive review" to root out errors discovered in an earlier report.
The over-estimates of jobs "created and saved" are actually far more extensive than that -- in one small segment of the Department of Health and Human Services, AP found that the count of "jobs saved" was inflated by more than 50 percent, or about 9,000.
Associated Press: "STIMULUS WATCH: Salary raise counted as saved job"
President Barack Obama's economic recovery program saved 935 jobs at the Southwest Georgia Community Action Council, an impressive success story for the stimulus plan. Trouble is, only 508 people work there.
The Georgia nonprofit's inflated job count is among persisting errors in the government's latest effort to measure the effect of the $787 billion stimulus plan despite White House promises last week that the new data would undergo an "extensive review" to root out errors discovered in an earlier report.
About two-thirds of the 14,506 jobs claimed to be saved under one federal office, the Administration for Children and Families at Health and Human Services, actually weren't saved at all, according to a review of the latest data by The Associated Press. Instead, that figure includes more than 9,300 existing employees in hundreds of local agencies who received pay raises and benefits and whose jobs weren't saved.
That type of accounting was found in an earlier AP review of stimulus jobs, which the Obama administration said was misleading because most of the government's job-counting errors were being fixed in the new data.
The administration now acknowledges overcounting in the new numbers for the HHS program. Elizabeth Oxhorn, a spokeswoman for the White House recovery office, said the Obama administration was reviewing the Head Start data "to determine how and if it will be counted."
But officials defended the practice of counting raises as saved jobs.
"If I give you a raise, it is going to save a portion of your job," HHS spokesman Luis Rosero said.
The latest stimulus report, released Friday, significantly overstates the number of jobs spared with money from programs serving families and children, mostly the Head Start preschool program. The report shows hundreds of the programs used nearly $323 million to provide pay raises and other benefits to their existing employees.
The raises themselves were appropriate — the stimulus law set aside money for Head Start salary increases — but converting that number into jobs proved difficult. The Obama administration told Head Start officials to consider a fraction of each employee as a job saved.
Denver Post: "Recovery Act job-creation math doesn't add up in Colorado"
The federal government reported Friday that Colorado created or saved 8,094 jobs through grants, loans and contracts funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
Problem is, the figure is wrong, according to an analysis of recovery.gov data by The Denver Post.
Although a Colorado Springs Head Start program reported it had created or preserved 269 jobs, the real number was three, according to an interview with a program manager. And although the largest private contract in the state funded with stimulus dollars was estimated at $166 million, the number was off by tens of millions, apparently because of a data-entry error, contract information shows.
Despite the government's bid to provide unprecedented details of spending, figures for stimulus awards in Colorado, as with an earlier data release, are inconsistent, inaccurate or incomplete so far.
"You've got compliance issues and you have data-quality issues," said Michael Balsam, an executive with Onvia, a Seattle company tracking stimulus spending.
"The numbers are all over the map," according to an analysis of the Coalition for an Accountable Recovery.
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: "Obama job claims questioned; expert doubts as many as 640,000 created, saved"
Even as White House officials on Friday credited stimulus spending with saving or directly creating about 640,000 jobs, critics questioned the validity of those numbers.
Michael Balsam, who works for a Seattle company that runs a Web site tracking stimulus spending (Recovery.org), wondered about those claims when only 23 percent of stimulus money awarded has been spent.
Recovery.gov, the Web site the Obama administration established to ensure the transparency of stimulus spending, says $158.7 billion in contracts, loans and grants were awarded — but not spent — to create those jobs.
"But those are prospective jobs that will be created some time in the future, which has nothing to do with the state of the economy today," said Balsam, who directs strategy and products for Onvia, which provides businesses with information on government contracts.
Chicago Tribune: "Illinois investigates errors in economic stimulus money used for school jobs -- Tribune watchdog report found that numbers didn't add up"
Gov. Patrick Quinn on Wednesday dispatched officials from a new accountability office to investigate errors in a state database detailing stimulus-funded school jobs promoted by the Obama administration, a day after the Tribune raised questions about the job numbers' accuracy.
The officials have asked the Illinois State Board of Education to verify the number of jobs created and retained in school districts detailed in the report, said Ashley Cross, a spokeswoman for Quinn's office. Any necessary adjustments will be incorporated into the next quarterly report on the federal stimulus, she said.
Matt Vanover, a spokesman for board of education, said the flawed database actually had been washed of some glaring errors before being included in the official tabulation, which claimed 14,330 school jobs in Illinois had either been saved or created thanks to $1.25 billion in federal funds.
But the Tribune found that the database claimed far more jobs had been saved in some local school districts than actually existed on district payrolls.
USA Today: "Analysis finds stimulus confusion"
The federal government sent Bob Bray $26,174 in stimulus aid to fix a fence and replace the roofs on public apartments in Blooming Grove, Texas, a town of fewer than 900 people outside Dallas. He hired five roofers and an inspector to do the job.
But the number of jobs he reported to the government looked very different — 450 jobs.
"Oh, no," said Bray, who runs the local public housing authority part-time with his wife, Linda, when asked about the discrepancy. He said that he told the government that he had created six jobs but that a federal official told him that wasn't right. So he reported the number of hours the roofers worked instead. The Department of Housing and Urban Development caught the mistake, but he couldn't fix it before the jobs figures were published. "The money was great, but the reports are really confusing," he said. "I've been fighting with it for over a month and a half."
USA TODAY reviewed the reports to determine the number of jobs created or saved per stimulus dollar. The review found 14 recipients that reported saving or creating more than 100 jobs for less than $1,500 per job — suggesting they overreported the number of jobs. Those included:
•The police department in Plymouth, Conn., claimed in its report that a $15,355 grant used to buy new computers had created or saved 108 jobs. The department had 22 law enforcement officers last year, according to the FBI. Mayor Vincent Festa said that the town has resorted to "counting paper clips" to save money but that it had no plans to lay off any of its police officers, even without the stimulus. He said he could not explain the report, and the town's police chief did not return telephone calls Monday.
•The Southwest Georgia Community Action Council, which employs about 500 people in its Head Start preschool program, reported creating or saving 935 jobs with about $1.3 million in funding. Beverly Wise, the group's fiscal officer, said she followed the advice of federal officials to come up with the number. "I thought it was high," Wise said of the number she reported, adding that the process was confusing. The group is using its stimulus money to give a 1.84% pay raise to its employees and pay for other needs such as playground equipment and training for the teachers who serve 2,300 low-income children.
•Teach for America, which helps place recent graduates in teaching jobs in urban and rural districts, reported that a $2 million grant created or saved 1,425 jobs. Spokeswoman Kerci Marcello Stroud said officials used that money to pay part of the salaries of 125 employees; a separate $6 million allowed it to expand the training program to include 1,300 more graduates.
Wall Street Journal: "In the Battle for Stimulus Jobs, Shoe Store Owner Tells War Story"
How did Kentucky shoe store owner Buddy Moore save nine jobs with just $889.60 in federal stimulus money? He didn’t, and that’s turning into a big headache for him.
Moore’s store in Campbellsville, Ky., filed one of 156,614 reports from recipients of stimulus dollars designed to show how money from the $787 billion program is being spent, and how many jobs the funds have created or saved.
Moore’s slice of the stimulus came in an $889.60 order from the Army Corps of Engineers for nine pairs of work boots for a stimulus project.
Moore says he’s been supplying the Corps with boots for at least two decades. This year, because he provided safety shoes for work funded by the stimulus package, he said he got a call from the Corps telling him he had to fill out a report for Recovery.gov detailing how he’d used the $889.60, and how many jobs it had helped him to create or save. He later got another call, asking him if he’d finished the report.
“The paperwork was unreal,” said Moore, who added that he tried to figure out how to file the forms online, then gave up and asked his daughter to help.
Paula Moore-Kirby, 42 years old, had less trouble with the Web site, but couldn’t work out how to answer the question about how many jobs her father had created or saved. She couldn’t leave it blank, either, she said. After several calls to a helpline for recipients she came away with the impression that she would hear back if there was a problem with her response, and have a chance to correct it. So with 15 minutes to go before the reporting deadline, she sent in her answer: nine jobs, because her father helped nine members of the Corps to work.
“You could fill out the form in 10 minutes, but we were trying to fill out the form correctly,” she said, guessing that she spent up to eight hours on it in total.
That was a few weeks ago. The only thing the Moores heard after that was that because they’d received less than $25,000 in stimulus money, they shouldn’t have reported in the first place.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: "Don't count on stimulus job tally - Many employment reports from sources in Wisconsin are wildly inflated"
A stimulus job report that says more than 10,000 jobs were saved or created in Wisconsin is rife with errors, double counting and inflated numbers based more on satisfying federal formulas than creating real jobs, a Journal Sentinel review has found.
In one case, five jobs were mistakenly listed as 50 - and then counted twice. In another, pay raises to workers were listed as saving more than 100 jobs. And in another, jobs were listed as saved even though the money had not been received and no work on the project had begun.
...Among the Journal Sentinel's findings:
Double-counted jobs: About $7.3 million of federal money will flow to the Parkland Sanitary District in Douglas County to replace its sewer system, a project listed as creating or saving 100 jobs even though work won't start until this spring, federal recovery data shows.
But that number is inflated by 95 jobs, Parkland Sanitary District treasurer Eric Shaffer admitted.
When reporting to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's online reporting system, Schaffer meant to type "5" but mistakenly added a zero - and that 50-job figure appears twice in the federal data because it was a combined grant and loan. He tried to correct the error, but was told it was too late for the federal reporting deadline.
...Meanwhile, three other Wisconsin towns reported jobs on combined federal loans and grants that were counted twice, doubling their totals from 35 to 70 jobs, records show.
...
Pay raises: United Migrant Opportunity Services based in Milwaukee reported saving 113 jobs through spending $18,000 of a Head Start preschool grant, or about $160 per job. The award provided their employees a 1.8% cost-of-living wage increase. The nonprofit provides services to migrant farm workers in Wisconsin and other states.
"We think the 113 jobs were preserved, but more importantly, the quality of teachers and Head Start child development staff was maintained," UMOS spokesman Rod Ritcherson said.
In total, 157 jobs were reported saved as part of 17 Head Start grants in Wisconsin, all attributed to cost-of-living increases.
...
Murky numbers: Nearly half the jobs reported in Wisconsin - 4,670 - came from preserving teaching, administrative and custodial positions at schools, according to the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction.
For instance, Milwaukee Public Schools said 996 jobs were saved by the $75.8 million it received in state stabilization money. Those saved jobs represent about 9% of the district's total staff.
Without the boost in funding, MPS would have faced a budget shortfall, but it's unlikely to have been resolved exclusively through staff layoffs, MPS finance director Ron Vavrik said.
...
The newspaper's analysis found other inconsistencies:
• C3T Construction Co., a general contracting company in Milwaukee, listed 24 jobs retained for projects on which no work had begun and no stimulus money had been received, records show. The company got more than $7 million for five contracts, including replacing the roof and fire-alarm systems at the Milwaukee Veterans Affairs Medical Center.
C3T Vice President Jim Hubbell said the number represented a projection of full-time jobs retained for the duration of the projects.
• Owners at five Section 8 housing complexes in Madison and Milwaukee reported saving 38 jobs with more than $540,000 in additional rental assistance for low-income residents, though they acknowledged no new jobs were created.
I could go on, but you get the idea.
The Obama administration's claims about the phenomenal success of the stimulus are rubbish.
Obama and company are tossing around numbers as if they are hard facts, concrete proof of their effective economic rescue program.
That's wrong, and they know it.
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