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AARP, which has given its full-throated support to Democratic health care legislation even though seniors remain largely opposed, received an $18 million grant in the economic stimulus package for a job training program that has not created any jobs, according to the Obama administration's Recovery.gov website. The Senior Community Service Employment Program (SCSEP), according to the website, is "a work training program for unemployed mature workers who are 55+ and are at or below 125% of the poverty guidelines." So far, $6.5 million has been spent on the program, and it has not reported creating any jobs. In February, the...

President Obama’s $787 billion economic stimulus package has been a bonanza for D.C.-based special interest groups, like the National Council of La Raza, AARP and a fund for the Service Employees International Union. The NCLR snagged $156,620 in stimulus cash and the AARP benefited from a whopping $18,176,224 according to the government. The Washington Times found organizations cashing in on the stimulus include Georgetown University ($14,807,804), the Service Employees International Union Education and Support Fund ($265,136), the Lockheed Martin Aspen Systems Corp. ($1,866,582), the Urban Institute ($1,443,178), National Public Radio, Inc. ($50,000), the National Building Museum ($50,000), the Shakespeare Theatre...

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...

The one highly visible success of the stimulus bill has been the cash-for-clunkers program. It induced a boom in vehicle sales this summer that clearly would not have happened otherwise. The rest of the stimulus bill has created a lot of jobs — 700,000 to 1.5 million, according to economists’ estimates. But it has done so in thousands of little ways: scattered construction projects, plugged-up school budgets and the like. Politically, these measures are not popular enough to create a groundswell for more of them. And the economy still needs help. So White House officials are now looking at creating...

With Congressional Democrats in near-panic amid forecasts that unemployment will remain high through next November’s midterm elections, a party leader said on Thursday that the House will pass a new “jobs bill” before Dec. 18. With more than half of last winter’s $787 billion package of tax cuts and stimulus spending still in the pipeline, Representative Steny H. Hoyer, the Democratic majority leader from Maryland, said the new measure should not be called another stimulus bill. He indicated that the legislation might include money for public jobs, which many liberals have advocated; tax credits to employers for new hires, an...

The Recovery.gov website is full of these fraudulent claims nationwide. The White House blames the problems on clerical errors, and even claims their tracking of the $787 billion stimulus funds has been a "huge success". The egregious lies spewing from the mouth's of Obama administration officials have become farcical. The complete breakdown of "clerical errors"....

Chicago politics, where voting is such a revered civic duty that people do it even after they're dead, cold, stiff, stuffed, boxed and buried beneath the permafrost for years, has now come to D.C. with the Obama administration. This afternoon comes the most encouraging economic news, courtesy of our keen-eyed buddy Rick Klein over at ABC, that the Obama administration's $787-billion economic stimulus has, for example, thankfully created 30 new jobs in a little-known rural corner of Arizona at a cost to American taxpayers of only $761,420. That works out to only $25,380.67 spent to create each individual job. Seems...

The Obama administration, under fire for inflating job growth from the $787 billion stimulus plan, slashed over 60,000 jobs from its most recent report on the program because the reporting outlets had submitted "unrealistic data," according to a document obtained by ABC News. The Office of Management and Budget document shows that before an Oct. 30 progress report on the program the administration asked the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board to remove information from 12 stimulus recipients that contained "unrealistic data," including "unrealistic job data." One recipient, Talladega County of Alabama, claimed that 5,000 jobs had been saved or created...

Here's a stimulus success story: In Arizona's 9th Congressional District, 30 jobs have been saved or created with just $761,420 in federal stimulus spending. At least that's what the website set up by the Obama Administration to track the $787 billion stimulus says. There's one problem, though: There is no 9th Congressional District in Arizona; the state has only eight Congressional Districts. There's no 86th Congressional District in Arizona either, but the government's recovery.gov Web site says $34 million in stimulus money has been spent there.

When the Obama administration put together it stimulus package all the talk was about building roads, fixing bridges, building schools … you know, the kind of jobs that people envision when they think of jobs that the government should encourage while improving our infrastructure. That’s why we heard incessant references to “shovel ready jobs.” It brought to mind images of people actually working, wielding shovels, running construction equipment, widening roads to fix traffic congestion, replacing dilapidated schools. In other words, building things. So how’s that working out in your neighborhood, city, country or state? In Oregon, those "shovel ready jobs"...

Energy-efficiency investments Tangible gains still ahead for $25 billion initiative In Baltimore, the 300 block of East 23 1/2 Street is getting patched up in time for winter. One economic stimulus program is paying to insulate 11 rental rowhouses, another is paying for furnaces and a third is covering the cost for reflective roofs to be installed by prison inmates in a job-training program. The block is part of one of the biggest initiatives ever undertaken by the federal government, a nationwide push to improve the energy efficiency of buildings. But as the national unemployment rate crosses into the double...

Last week the Obama administration issued a report purporting to show that the President’s $787 billion economic stimulus plan had saved or created exactly 640,329 jobs. Such a precise number for such a fuzzy concept as jobs “saved or created” immediately raised doubts about the veracity of the report in any honest American’s mind. And since that report was issued, a once compliant press has filed story after story tearing the credibility of the Obama administration’s job creation claims to shreds. Just enter the words “stimulus”, “jobs”, and “report” in a Google News search and these are just some of...

Whenever government throws billions of dollars at the economy, one would certainly expect to find some jobs at the end of those dollars. President Obama has worked hard to convince the nation that the mega fiscal stimulus he signed into law produced some 650,000 jobs. This PR blitz is amazing in the face of an economy that has shed 3.4 million jobs since Obama was sworn in, the unemployment rate is pressing toward 10 percent, and the Obama jobs gap – the gap between where he promised we would be and actual employment — rises monthly. Political chutzpah aside, the...

When Vice President Biden greeted a group of labor leaders two weeks after President Obama took office, he said, “Welcome back to the White House” — a not-so-oblique reference to their lack of access during the previous eight years under the Bush administration. Judging by the White House’s claims of having “created or saved 650,000 jobs” with the $787 billion economic stimulus program, it appears those labor leaders taught the administration a thing or two during their visit. How else to explain the obvious featherbedding by White House officials in tallying the job numbers released Friday? Featherbedding occurs when paychecks...

After noticing similarities between the brains of meth users and stroke victims, Portland researchers Marilyn Huckans and Jennifer Loftis theorized they could devise a more effective treatment for addicts. All they needed was a good chunk of money to prove it. And they got it -- nearly $1 million -- courtesy of the federal stimulus act, which in its first eight months has showered $1.8 billion on Oregon, according to reports released Friday. "This is our big opportunity," said Huckans, who works with Loftis at Oregon Health & Science University. The money will be used to hire support staff and...

Further analysis on this story from Ed Morrissey: posted at 9:30 am on October 30, 2009 by Ed Morrissey Share on Facebook | printer-friendly By which we should deduce that over a million jobs got saved or created, indirectly, according to the White House. The official report will come out later today, but Jake Tapper grabs the advance leak from the White House and runs it down. Pay very close attention to the sources of this data: The Obama administration’s $787 billion stimulus bill directly saved or created about 650,000 jobs as of the end of last month, administration officials...

America Now Over 6 Million Jobs Shy of Administration's Projections Wednesday, October 21, 2009 The table below compares the White House's February 2009 projection of the number of jobs that would be created by the 2009 stimulus law (through the end of 2010) with the actual change in state payroll employment through September 2009 (the latest figures available). According to the data, 49 States and the District of Columbia have lost jobs since stimulus was enacted. Only North Dakota has seen net job creation following the February 2009 stimulus. While President Obama claimed the result of his stimulus bill would...

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama is considering all options to create jobs, including another stimulus package, while trying to pull the economy out of a deep recession and deal with a record deficit, White House advisers said Sunday. With more than half of the $787 billion recovery package yet to be spent, Obama aides said the administration is not ready to commit to additional measures. "Everything is on the table," senior adviser Valerie Jarrett said. "You've got this huge national deficit and we've got to do what we can to bring that down. At the same time, it's important to...

Robert Barro, Professor of Economics at Harvard University, criticizes the recently passed federal stimulus package as a "terrible piece of legislation," and calls for permanent changes to the tax structure to spur economic growth. In a discussion with Tax Foundation Vice President for Economic Policy Robert Carroll in this week's edition of the Tax Policy Podcast, Barro strongly disapproves of both the expenditure and tax provisions within the stimulus legislation. "What they call tax reductions in this bill are really transfer payments, particularly redistribution of income from the rich to the poor," says Barro. "I don't think it's really attractive...

Forty-four days before he assumed the office, Barack Obama went on Meet the Press and spoke of shovel ready projects that were supposedly awaiting a job stimulus plan: "When I met with the governors, all of them have projects that are shovel ready, that are going to require us to get the money out the door, but they've already lined up the projects and they can make them work. And now, we're going to have to prioritize it and do it not in the old traditional politics first wave. What we need to do is examine what are the projects...

Thousands of people have lined up Tuesday for a chance at millions of stimulus dollars set aside to help Detroit's homeless and low-income residents. --- City officials told Local 4 that Detroit was granted $15 million to help residents pay bills and their rent or find temporary housing for the homeless.

RICHMOND — In a scathing letter to Gov. Timothy M. Kaine, the chairman of the U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee said no state has been slower than Virginia in putting federal highway stimulus cash to use. As of Aug. 31, construction had begun on only 16.5 percent of the $695 million Virginia received for statewide and local highway and bridge projects under President Barack Obama’s stimulus initiative, said the letter from U.S. Rep. James L. Oberstar, D-Minn. Nationally, nearly 43 percent of the billions of dollars a Democratic Congress approved for highway revitalization is already under construction, according to...

Our new research shows no evidence of a Keynesian 'multiplier' effect. There is evidence that tax cuts boost growth. The global recession and financial crisis have refocused attention on government stimulus packages. These packages typically emphasize spending, predicated on the view that the expenditure "multipliers" are greater than one—so that gross domestic product expands by more than government spending itself. Stimulus packages typically also feature tax reductions, designed partly to boost consumer demand (by raising disposable income) and partly to stimulate work effort, production and investment (by lowering rates).

"These signs are simply for political self-interest, and it's high time we stop using stimulus dollars to fund them, and instead use these dollars for their intended purpose of creating economic activity," he said in a written statement. The cost of the signs vary from state to state. For example, a "Good Morning America" report calculated the cost at $500 in Maryland and New Hampshire to $3,000 in New Jersey. Gregg estimated the total cost at anywhere from $6 million to $20 million. Even so, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., opposed the amendment, saying the signs help keep the public informed...

Title and link allowed only. Bloomberg http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=a_sfxbGMtJRI

From a political standpoint it makes little difference whether the trillions of dollars in "stimulus" spending and big-business bailouts approved by Washington in the past year have a significant effect on the economy. When the economy starts growing again and creating jobs, as it will eventually, the White House will claim credit. That's politics. Even now the White House is claiming that stimulus spending created or "saved" as many as 1.1 million jobs and added 2.3% to the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP). By these measures, with another $40 trillion to $50 trillion in stimulus spending, we might double America's...

The current methodology is simple: it takes money out of our pockets (and our employers) puts it though governmental blenders, and spits out a meager benefit at retirement. Why not let the private sector provide pension benefits to all employees under the direction of a trimmed down Social Security bureaucracy?

The data show government transfers and rebates have not increased consumption at all. Is the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 working? At the time of the act's passage last February, this question was hotly debated. Administration economists cited Keynesian models that predicted that the $787 billion stimulus package would increase GDP by enough to create 3.6 million jobs. Our own research showed that more modern macroeconomic models predicted only one-sixth of that GDP impact. Estimates by economist Robert Barro of Harvard predicted the impact would not be significantly different from zero.

The American people, left and right, by and large opposed TARP, seeing it as corporate welfare with numerous government strings attached. President Bush persisted and both candidates McCain and Obama rushed to Washington to vote the monstrosity into existence. What was transparently obvious was that no politician gives anyone money without expecting something in return, whether it is direct remuneration, influence or political support. Healthy banks were forced to take TARP funds and not allowed to repay them since that would sever the government string attached to that money. The American people, mostly from the right but with some from...

An ACORN affiliate has just submitted applications for over $6 million in government funding, despite the controversial videos of the organization’s workers aiding a child prostitution “promoter.” Employees with the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now (ACORN) in Washington D.C., Baltimore and Brooklyn told uncover investigators posing as a pimp and a prostitute how they could circumvent the law. ACORN has already fired four of the workers. But it claims the tapes have been “doctored” and “edited.” A third video implicating the ACORN workers was released today. Meanwhile, the ACORN Institute, one of many ACORN affiliates, has applied for...

September 15, 2009 Washington, D.C. - U.S. Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL), ranking Republican on the Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, today wrote to committee Chairman Christopher Dodd (D-CT) and U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Inspector General, Kenneth Donohue, calling for an immediate and thorough investigation into the activities of the Association for Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). Shelby’s call for an investigation follows recent news reports surrounding the arrest of individuals in Florida for falsifying voter applications while employed by ACORN leading up to the 2008 elections, as well as video of employees in...

Many gun-loving Americans are convinved that President Obama and the Democratic-controlled Congress are bent on ripping rifles from their "cold, dead hands," as actor Charlton Heston once declared at a National Rifle Association meeting. But from the perspective of police departments – not to mention gunmakers – the Obama administration may go down as one of the most gun-friendly in history. Across America, police departments are using the taxpayer-funded stimulus bill to boost their arsenals with shotguns, handguns, and assault rifles. Among the general public, a record 1 million guns were sold across the United States in August alone, rebuffing...

The president’s chief economic adviser warned Friday that the nation’s unemployment rate could stay “unacceptably high” for years to come — a situation that would seriously complicate Barack Obama’s ability to convince Americans that he’s beating back the recession. “The level of unemployment is unacceptably high,” National Economic Council Director Larry Summers said Friday. “And will, by all forecasts, remain unacceptably high for a number of years.” Summers’ comments came in a briefing with reporters ahead of Obama’s speech in New York City on Monday, marking the one-year anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, an event widely regarded as...

WASHINGTON, Sept 10 (Reuters) - As billions of dollars from the economic stimulus plan pour through the U.S. economy, members of Congress, the administration and regulatory agencies are increasingly worried about the risks of fraud. Earl Devaney told Congress on Thursday the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board he chairs is investigating those who may have misappropriated stimulus money.

It's clear that President Barack Obama's $787-billion stimulus hasn't worked as advertised, but some economists are worried it could backfire and cause something much worse. According to a new study by economists Charles Rowley of George Mason University and Nathanael Smith of the Locke Institute and endorsed by Nobel laureate James Buchanan, the Keynesian tactics employed by Obama "will ultimately hamper the long-term growth potential of the U.S. economy and may risk delaying full economic recovery by several years." The study accuses the president of making Depression-era mistakes. Stephen Moore, member of the Wall Street Journal editorial board and senior...

ABC News’ Rachel Martin and Sunlen Miller Report: President Obama said that on Labor Day it’s time to “reaffirm” the nation’s commitment to rebuild, and declared that the stimulus plan is working. Speaking before the friendly crowd during the annual AFL-CIO Labor Day picnic in Cincinnati Ohio this afternoon, the President said that it’s time to ensure that the middle class remains the backbone of the economy, “not just a vanishing ideal we celebrate a picnics once a year as summer turns to fall.” In rhetoric similar to the campaign trail, the President said this has been is an ideal...

As of this week- Stimulus Spending is at: $20,726,309,285.22 At the link on the upper right will be a listing: *American Recovery and Reinvestment Act Report* Updated as of 9/4/2009. New contracts signed this week are for design and construction of 10 land port of entry buildings for customs and border protection. 6 In North Dakota,1 in Vermont, New Mexico and Montana (The one in Vermont isn't even near the border, in Killingly.)

<p>President Barack Obama told thousands of cheering union members and activists gathered at Cincinnati's Coney Island park Monday that his economic recovery plan is working.</p> <p>"We're on the road to recovery, Ohio, don't let anybody tell you otherwise," said Obama, who took the stage as the sky cleared following a morning that threatened rain.</p>

"We continue to lose manufacturing jobs, government jobs, retail jobs, financial services jobs. The economy continues to contract," Peter Morici, an economist at the University of Maryland More than 2.3 million Americans have lost their jobs since the stimulus went into effect, and that's a big chunk of the 6.9 million jobs that have been lost since the recession started last year. Many economists believe unemployment is a lagging indicator during a recession and is often the last part of the economy to recover. Vice President Joe Biden said last week the stimulus is working better than the administration had...

It was nearly seven months ago that President Obama signed the $787 billion stimulus package to jumpstart the receding economy. But more than 200 days later, only a fraction of the hefty package has been spent and unemployment continues to plague the country. On this labor day, unemployment stands at 9.7 percent, the highest it has been in 26 years. Nearly 216,000 jobs were lost last month, and in some states, unemployment figures have reached double digits. The Obama administration says the stimulus money has helped curb layoffs and offered more help to those who are unemployed in the form...

New unemployment data show why it will take years for the labor market to recover from one of its fastest and deepest declines since World War II, even if an economic recovery is around the corner. The Department of Labor report released Friday showed job cuts in August were lower than they've been in recent months. But a deeper look at the data shows why it will take millions of new jobs to dig American workers out of this recession's deep pit. Unemployment for teenagers stands at nearly 26 percent. More than 758,000 workers are so discouraged they quit looking...

Vice President Joe Biden tried to blunt lingering skepticism of the Obama administration’s $787 billion stimulus plan Thursday. “I believe this was the right thing to do morally,” Biden said in a speech the White House billed as a major address. “It was also the smart thing to do economically.” Biden’s 35-minute speech included a look back at the state of the economy when President Barack Obama took office, a detailed defense of the stimulus package’s effectiveness in its second 100 days and a plea for patience as it continues to make more of an impact. The vice president touched...

Barack Obama said the Waxman-Markey carbon tax would help create "green energy" jobs in the U.S. He is now using taxpayer dollars to fund jobs in Spain.Barack Obama sold the Waxman-Markey "American Clean Energy and Security Act" to Congress and the American people by saying that investment in so-called "green energy" would create millions of high-wage American manufacturing jobs. We received an E-mail from the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (nonpartisan professional organization) that exposed Barack Obama as a blatant prevaricator who is shamelessly using our tax dollars to create jobs not in the United States but in foreign countries. We...

Last week, NEA Communications Director Yosi Sergent denied claims that memos asking artists to draft Obama policy art came from his office at NEA. They did. You can see those memos themselves now, with the email addresses originating from Sergent's office at NEA. Also, the Official Obama healthcare website, Organizing For America, now features a post that calls ObamaCare opponents "Heirs of bin Laden" and "Right Wing Domestic Terrorists." And all that's just for starters.

Everybody is looking for stimulus money. From bridge builders to food stamp recipients, from roofers to subway riders, from teachers to housing project residents, people are eager to feel some part of a tidal wave of federal dollars in their lives. The mob is eager, too. Federal and state investigators who track organized crime believe that organized crime figures have geared up to take advantage of the swift and enormous cash influx — if they have not already — looking, as the old Sicilian expression goes, to wet their beaks. Nimble, innovative and with a seemingly boundless appetite for the...

The latest tally of stimulus spending can be found here. Go to the link and on the upper right will be a listing: *American Recovery and Reinvestment Act Report* The link will be an excel sheet that can be sorted and columns deleted once saved on your computer for easy research. Updated as of 8/28/2009 So far- Stimulus Spending is at: $$18,862,930,793.91 This week's spend was: $998,797,988.94

A sleepy Montana checkpoint along the Canadian border that sees about three travelers a day will get $15 million under President Obama’s economic stimulus plan. A government priority list ranked the project as marginal, but two powerful Democratic senators persuaded the administration to make it happen. Discuss COMMENTS (83) Despite Obama’s promises that the stimulus plan would be transparent and free of politics, the government is handing out $720 million for border upgrades under a process that is both secretive and susceptible to political influence. This allowed low-priority projects such as the checkpoint in Whitetail, Mont., to skip ahead of...

A tax policy expert says President Obama has reneged on his promise to keep his economic "stimulus" plan transparent and free of earmarks. The Associated Press reports that Senators Max Baucus (D-Montana) and John Tester (D-Montana) persuaded the Obama administration to award $15 million in federal stimulus money to a Montana checkpoint along the Canadian border that serves only three people a day. A similar checkpoint in North Dakota, which serves about 73 people a day, is also getting $15 million for renovations. Meanwhile, a border checkpoint in Laredo, Texas -- which serves more than 55,000 travelers and 4,200 trucks...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The federal government sent about 3,900 economic stimulus payments of $250 each this spring to people who were in no position to use the money to help stimulate the economy: prison inmates. The checks were part of the massive economic recovery package approved by Congress and President Barack Obama in February. About 52 million Social Security recipients, railroad retirees and those receiving Supplemental Security Income were eligible for the one-time checks. Prison inmates are generally ineligible for federal benefits. However, 2,200 of the inmates who received checks got to keep them because, under the law, they were...

WASHINGTON -- America's fiscal and economic outlook is looking a lot bleaker under President Obama's impotent and misguided spending-stimulus policies. While there are fragile signs the recession appears to be bottoming out and making a tenuous comeback in parts of the economy, the painfully slow turnaround has had little to do with the Democrats' huge $800 billion spending binge that hasn't made a dent in the nation's unemployment rate. Indeed, the White House announced this week that the jobless rate will climb next year and remain high in 2011 in the face of record budget deficits and a tripling of...