Messing With Joe

A mere eleven months ago when the Obama Administration was new and hype was the name of the game, Congress handed the new President a $787 billion blank check made out to “Stimulus”. Obama and his team of economic soothsayers said it would save America from economic catastrophe, and keep unemployment from rising beyond the unthinkably high level of 8.0 percent. Additionally, Obama introduced a new matrix in labor statistical analysis by promising that the legislation would “save-or-create” 3.5 million jobs.

Since that time, the worst economic recession since the great depression has gripped the nation, and some fear a “double dip” http://blog.macroaxis.com/2010/01/13/what-are-the-chances-of-a-%E2%80%9C... may be around the corner. Unemployment remains at 10 percent and that doesn’t count the 661,000 people http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jan/09/report-suggests-unemploy... who have given up and stopped looking for work.

As for those “saved-or-created” jobs – well, Vice-President Joe Biden was assigned to track all that as well as follow where all the billions in spending from the Stimulus actually ended up on a publicly accessible website. With his now familiar flare Obama explained his pick of Biden as Overseer-in-Chief to a joint session of Congress because “Nobody messes with Joe.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyC-SU8Emhc

Unfortunately for Joe, that whole thing didn’t work out so well. It started with Joe not even able to remember the name of his website, Recovery.gov. http://www.recovery.gov/Pages/home.aspx Then, Joe and his team couldn’t seem to get the hang of making it work, so they spent millions to contract it out. Last fall they announced 640,000 jobs http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125689799688318277.html had been created or saved, but that number quickly came under attack http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/maps/Bogus-jobs-created-or-saved-by-th... for bogus reporting. And, again later when it was discovered that billions of dollars and thousands of jobs http://watchdog.org/2009/11/17/6-4-billion-stimulus-goes-to-phantom-dist... were credited to more than 400 non-existent congressional districts. Oops!

So, when the economy, unemployment, and accountability weren’t cooperating with Joe and the White House, they did what came naturally to them – they changed the rules and inflated the results. The new guesstimate released last week incredibly takes credit for 2 million jobs http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/100113-economic... from the Stimulus spend-orama.

The White House’s new scheme makes “it easier to give the stimulus credit for hiring. It's no longer about counting a job as saved or created; now it's a matter of counting jobs funded by the stimulus”, as explained by the Associated Press in a feature article http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2010-01-12-stimulus-counting_N.htm dripping with sarcasm and disbelief. “That means that any stimulus money used to cover payroll will be included in the jobs credited to the program, including pay raises for existing employees and pay for people who never were in jeopardy of losing their positions.” In other words, it’s another big joke.

Obama’s election promised a new era of transparency, openness, and ethical government. Instead, what we have witnessed is backroom deals with political cronies and union bosses, intimidation and confiscation of private industry, shell game accounting, make-believe projections, and bare-knuckled Chicago-style politics in a relentless quest for power. On second thought, these guys give the mobsters from Chicago’s by-gone days a bad name.