Exclusive: Jobs 'Saved or Created' in Congressional Districts That Don't Exist

[-Cp]

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.

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.

The issue has raised hackles on Capitol Hill.

Rep. David Obey, D-Wisc, who chairs the powerful House appropriations Committee, issued a paper statement demanding that the recovery.gov Web site be updated.

"The inaccuracies on recovery.gov that have come to light are outrageous and the Administration owes itself, the Congress, and every American a commitment to work night and day to correct the ludicrous mistakes."

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/jobs-...ory?id=9097853

[-Cp]

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[Kathianne]

and more, including an interactive map at the site, which they will keep updating as news sources write their investigations:

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/ma...-Stimulus.html

75,343 Bogus jobs 'created or saved' by the Stimulus
By: DAVID FREDDOSO and MARK HEMINGWAY
Washington Examiner
November 12, 2009


View Bogus jobs 'created or saved' by the Stimulus in a larger map
More than ten percent of the jobs the Obama administration has claimed were "created or saved" by the $787 billion stimulus package are doubtful or imaginary, according to reports compiled from eleven major newspapers and the Associated Press.

Based only on our analysis of stimulus media coverage in the last two weeks, The Examiner has created this interactive map to document exaggerated stimulus claims. The map, which will be updated as new revelations appear, currently reflects an exaggeration by the Obama administration of about 75,000 jobs, out of the 640,000 jobs supposedly "created or saved."

The map reflects reports from The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, the Sacramento Bee, The New York Times, USA Today, the Las Vegas Sun, the Detroit Free Press, the New York Post, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, the Associated Press, the Chicago Tribune, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. It remains a work in progress because relatively few newspapers have scrutinized stimulus spending so far.

The Obama administration has claimed that the $787 billion economic stimulus package "saved or created" some 650,000 jobs. But almost as soon as the White House trotted out this figure, news organizations found huge exaggerations in the reported data. Many of the jobs reportedly created do not exist or cannot be accounted for.

UPDATE: Today's report from ABC News tells us that prior to releasing its jobs report, the administration cut out 60,000 additional jobs from unreliable reports, none of which appear to overlap with the ones we've highlighted here. Had those jobs been included in the original count, the number of jobs "created or saved" by the stimulus would have exceeded 700,000, and the number of imaginary or doubtful jobs would have approached 20 percent.

Umm, they also wrote an editorial:

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/op...-70230087.html

Stop lying about those stimulus jobs

Examiner Editorial
November 17, 2009

Give the mainstream news media some credit: They have diligently dug into President Obama's fanciful boasts of job creation. When Obama claimed earlier this month that his $787 billion economic stimulus package had "saved or created" 640,000 jobs, a dozen news organizations pounced. They soon highlighted some of the most egregious cases of sketchy job creation in about 20 states...

[avatar4321]

There are so many things wrong with this its not funny.

1) Does anyone really believe that this is the mistake of the people rather than the government itself?
2) Are we supposed to be impressed that you spend 700K and create/save 30 jobs? How the heck do you even measure that?
3) We paid how much for this website? Seriously people, you think you cant cut any of the waste in this government?

[Joyful HoneyBee]

I also heard on tv the other day that the guy in charge of overseeing the stimulus reporting for Georgia cannot make any sense of the numbers here. That must have been some large sheep they sheared to have so much wool to try to pull over everyone's eyes....still not quite enough.

Flock, we have clearly been fleeced, big time. How will we ever find out where those resources were poured into what sewer?

Everyday that goes by reminds me more and more of the concepts portrayed in George Orwell's 1984. For a book written in 1949 it certainly was insightful for this author to have skillfully summed, so many years ago, where we are in the 21st century. So he missed the date by 25 years, but, hey, the guy had vision.

In the very first chapter the reader learns that the Ministry of Truth slogan is:

WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.

Orwell introduced us to the term 'Doublethink' defined as the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.
He also introduced the term 'Newspeak' a new form of dialog intended to narrow the range of thought, and to induce people to accept the unacceptable.

I once argued with my high school english teacher that George Orwell and Kurt Vonnegut did not belong in a science fiction category; that they were social commentators and satirist respectively. She laughed at the idea that American society would ever accept Doublethink or Newspeak, or permit Big Brother to watch us so fiercely. Hmmmmm, not that I'm laughing now but....I'm just sayin'

[sgtdmski]

Everyday that goes by reminds me more and more of the concepts portrayed in George Orwell's 1984. For a book written in 1949 it certainly was insightful for this author to have skillfully summed, so many years ago, where we are in the 21st century. So he missed the date by 25 years, but, hey, the guy had vision.

In the very first chapter the reader learns that the Ministry of Truth slogan is:

WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.

Orwell introduced us to the term 'Doublethink' defined as the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.
He also introduced the term 'Newspeak' a new form of dialog intended to narrow the range of thought, and to induce people to accept the unacceptable.

I once argued with my high school english teacher that George Orwell and Kurt Vonnegut did not belong in a science fiction category; that they were social commentators and satirist respectively. She laughed at the idea that American society would ever accept Doublethink or Newspeak, or permit Big Brother to watch us so fiercely. Hmmmmm, not that I'm laughing now but....I'm just sayin'

You might also want to add to the mix Robert Heinlein. Have you ever read Starship Troopers??? There are great discussions using political and social commentary on war, juvenile deliquents and political power.

dmk

[Joyful HoneyBee]

You might also want to add to the mix Robert Heinlein. Have you ever read Starship Troopers??? There are great discussions using political and social commentary on war, juvenile deliquents and political power.

dmk

You might also want to add to the mix Robert Heinlein. Have you ever read Starship Troopers??? There are great discussions using political and social commentary on war, juvenile deliquents and political power.

dmk

I started to say I had not read anything by Robert Heinlein, but I went to google books and realized I have. I read Stranger in a Strange Land, but not Starship Troopers. I was big into Aldous Huxley, Alvin Toffler and Kurt Vonnegut in high school.

My senior year I took an additional English class to cover the last elective I needed. The class was broken into three sections (quarter system) the first being a study of mass media, the second being journalism, and finally the third was a study of science fiction. I read a lot of sci-fi and found much of it to be a visionary study in sociology as time unfolded. Books like Brave New World, Animal Farm and Future Shock have all conceptualized societal elements that have unfolded right before my eyes.

Making up jobs saved and created is a type of fiction, so lets hope that if the visionary authors in the first half of the 20th century wrote of so many things that later came true, then this newspeak doublethink fiction could also be a prelude to reality, eh!

[red states rule]

[cat slave]

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.

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.

The issue has raised hackles on Capitol Hill.

Rep. David Obey, D-Wisc, who chairs the powerful House appropriations Committee, issued a paper statement demanding that the recovery.gov Web site be updated.

"The inaccuracies on recovery.gov that have come to light are outrageous and the Administration owes itself, the Congress, and every American a commitment to work night and day to correct the ludicrous mistakes."

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/jobs-...ory?id=9097853

This would fall under the heading "transparent", "ethical", "tax cuts to
the middle class", and "how to lie to the people and think you can get
away with it" which works for some idiots/parasites...."bailouts" that
are really takeovers and all the other garbage BO has had the unmitigated
gall to throw at us.

[Binky]

And let me guess who that might be......Do I get three guesses and the first one not count?

[red states rule]

And let me guess who that might be......Do I get three guesses and the first one not count?

It reminds me of my co worker and car pool buddy who is having a hard time dealing with the truth about the Hope and Change Express

But it could also be BP, Gabby, and other liberals who were so giddy about about Obama, Reid, and Peolsi running things in DC

[theHawk]

The Hussein is so arrogant he thinks he can just outright lie to us and we'll swallow it.