Free Republic

The President is beginning to resemble the myth about Emperor Nero, who supposedly was playing his fiddle as Rome was burning to the ground. More often than not new facts prove his programs are out of touch with the facts or the will of the people, but he keeps on going almost as if he has lost all touch with reality (or he doesn't own a subscription to a newspaper).

The South Carolina Republican who has gained a reputation for his outspokenness is calling for an official government audit of President Obama's $787 billion stimulus bill. "After several days of reports of stimulus inconsistencies, the administration still hasn't explained where the money is really being spent," Rep. Joe Wilson said in a statement. "Their silence on this important issue is deafening." He said if a panel is not appointed by Dec. 1, he will call for an independent examination of the "reporting inaccuracies of every stimulus dollar appropriated." The main problem is the Obama administration promised that the government Web...

Vice President Joe Biden did everything short of shaking a pair of pompoms yesterday as he cheered on an economic recovery while criticizing those he hears booing from the sidelines. "Ladies and gentlemen, things aren't good but they're getting a lot better," Biden told 500 people gathered at a fundraiser for the Committee of Seventy. "We're no longer debating whether we're going to slide into a great depression. We're debating what the shape of the recovery is. Is it robust enough from my perspective? No. Do we need to do more? Yes." "We may be wrong," Biden said. "But the...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. economy grew more slowly than initially thought in the third quarter, held back by strong imports and weak investment in nonresidential structures, according to data on Tuesday that hinted at a lackluster recovery. In its second reading of third-quarter gross domestic product, the Commerce Department said the economy grew at a 2.8 percent annual rate, rather than the 3.5 percent pace it estimated last month.

Say goodbye to the 90 percent guarantee and reduced fees that sparked a rebound in Small Business Administration lending. In a few days, the SBA will run out of the $375 million in economic stimulus funds that enabled the agency to make these enhancements. As a result, beginning today, borrowers and lenders will have to make a choice: They can be put on a waiting list to receive these breaks as stimulus funds become available, or they can apply for a regular SBA loan with higher fees and a lower government guarantee for the lender. The SBA expects additional funds...

It is time to cast aside all remaining doubt. President Obama is not trying to lead America forward to recovery, prosperity and strength. Quite the opposite, in fact. In September of last year, American Thinker published my article, Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis. Part of a series, it connected then presidential candidate Barack Obama to individuals and organizations practicing a malevolent strategy for destroying our economy and our system of government. Since then the story of that strategy has found its way across the blogosphere, onto the airwaves of radio stations across the country, the Glenn Beck...

Rob Port at Say Anything noticed this story yesterday, which may explain to Barack Obama why his Porkulus bill hasn’t generated new jobs … well, one of the reasons, at least. The Associated Press reports that the increases in unemployment benefits have placed new burdens on businesses in the form of higher unemployment taxes — in Florida, a twelve-fold increase for next year. The result? Capital that may have gone towards hiring new employees will get sucked up by government instead:

Both Maureen Dowd and Frank Rich have it right. Sneer and dismiss Sarah Palin -- and/or the sentiment she taps -- at your political peril. Dowd writes that President Obama could use some of Palin's visceral appeal. Palin can be stupefyingly simplistic, but she seems dynamic. Obama is impressively complex but he seems static. She nurtures her grass roots while he neglects his. He struggles to transcend identity politics while she wallows in them. As he builds an emotional moat around himself, she exuberantly pushes whatever she has, warts and all — the good looks, the tabloid-perfect family, the Alaska...

The state that propelled Barack Obama to the presidency now has a majority of voters displeased with his performance. A new Des Moines Register poll shows Barack Obama's overall job approval sinking....

The NAACP, the AFL-CIO and the Hispanic rights group La Raza joined forces to pressure the Obama administration to do more to create jobs for a recession-plagued nation. The normally pro-Obama groups made it clear that they felt his $787 billion stimulus had favored big banks and corporations and had not gone far enough to create jobs. They called for significant increases in government spending for schools and roads and billions to provide fiscal relief for financially strapped state and local governments. In an attempt to avoid appearing to be an Obama critic, the NAACP’s Senior Vice President Hilary O....

...The Government Accountability Office this week found "significant" errors on the recovery.gov Website, including claims that more than 58,000 jobs were "saved or created" by projects that had spent no government funds, and that no jobs were reported by some projects that had spent nearly $1 billion. That did not go down well with voters or with their representatives, who are beginning to show anger at the slow pace of the recovery. On Wednesday, the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, David Obey, D-Wis., himself a major architect of the stimulus bill, ripped the White House, saying, "The inaccuracies on...

Errors and poor estimates pepper the stimulus data that Oklahoma contractors recently submitted to the federal government. Big Five Community Services, a community action program in Durant, received $383,000 for its Head Start program. It used the money to fill three new positions and provide 39 Head Start staff members with professional training and a 1.84 percent pay increase for cost-of-living adjustments. Program representatives said the stimulus award created 42 jobs, data show. Carol Ammons, Big Five's executive director, said the pay increase would help prevent turnover and the training would help workers stay employed. "The sad thing about it...

While the US recently reported 3.5 percent GDP growth in the third quarter, suggesting that the most severe recession since the Great Depression is over, the US economy is actually much weaker than official data suggest. Official measures of GDP may grossly overstate growth in the economy as they don’t capture the fact that business sentiment among small firms is abysmal and their output is still falling sharply. Third-quarter GDP — properly corrected for these factors — may have been 2 percent rather than 3.5 percent. The story of the US is, indeed, one of two economies. There is a...

CARSON CITY — No sooner were the latest unemployment numbers released Friday morning than politicians offered their takes, illustrating that no fact will go un-spun this campaign season. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in a statement declared the drop in statewide unemployment from 13.3 percent to 13 percent a “positive development and further evidence that Nevada is starting down the economic road to recovery.” Jeremy Aguero, principal of the financial firm Applied Analysis, said the “condition is effectively unchanged between September and October.” A muted response was appropriate, he said. “The unemployment drop isn’t because we’ve created jobs,” he said....

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Here's a new way to think about the U.S. government's epic borrowing: More than half of the $9 trillion in debt that Uncle Sam is expected to build up over the next decade will be interest. More than half. In fact, $4.8 trillion. If that's hard to grasp, here's another way to look at why that's a problem. In 2015 alone, the estimated interest due - $533 billion - is equal to a third of the federal income taxes expected to be paid that year, said Charles Konigsberg, chief budget counsel of the Concord Coalition, a...

Vast Errors in Reporting Jobs Data Leave Lawmakers Angry at Recovery.gov Numbers Leading members of Congress from both parties are promising increased scrutiny of the Obama administration's data on job creation, amid widespread errors in official stimulus data reported by the federal government. A raft of reports of questionable or downright faulty jobs numbers -- including many uncovered by ABC News that show dozens of jobs created and millions of dollars spent in congressional districts that don't exist -- has cast a harsh spotlight on the jobs claims connected to the $787 billion stimulus package. The Obama administration stands by...

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...

The number-three Democrat in the House on Wednesday threw cold water on the idea of a second, jobs-focused stimulus. House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) said that the party may not pursue specific legislation to accomplish their goals on employment, and might focus instead on front-loading spending in bills Democrats had previously planned to move. "Now we are trying to get the economy stabilized and grow the economy," Clyburn said during an interview on MSNBC. "And that's what we're trying to do as we move forward, is to move in regular order." "I don't think we need to do anything...

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"....

n Barack Obama's Fantasyland, all things are possible. The economy has been rescued, millions of jobs have been created or saved, and countries that used to hate us now want to hold our hands and sing "Kumbaya". Obama's Gandalf-like wizardry has even managed to magically create eight new congressional districts in Iowa.

(snip) There’s a list of issues being hammered out, but at the top is finding money for South Florida’s cash-strapped Tri-Rail. Republicans are targeting a $2 fee on rental cars as the source and discussing whether to let county commissions approve the charge or require a referendum.“That’s sort of one of the issues we’re dealing with,” Crist said. Florida’s Republican leaders believe they need to settle funding issues for Tri-Rail and a host of insurance and money issues for a proposed Central Florida line known as SunRail before the state has any chance at securing $2.5 billion in federal stimulus...

(snip) Dickinson posted the transcript of that question and answer yesterday at Rolling Stone: Rolling Stone: Just a final question: Had you been in the Senate, would you have voted with the other Republicans for the stimulus package? Crist: Absolutely. (snip)

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.

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...

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.

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...

Barack Obama now says his plan to pump up the ailing economy could create or save three to four million jobs, more than the 2.6 million jobs the government says were lost last year..."The report confirms that our plan will likely save or create three to four million jobs. Ninety percent of these jobs will be created in the private sector – the remaining 10 percent are mainly public sector jobs we save, like the teachers, police officers, firefighters and others who provide vital services in our communities," says the President-elect.

An aggressive White House push on jobs and deficit reduction in 2010 may be yet another sign that climate-change legislation will stay on the back burner next year. “There is a growing chorus in the party that thinks we should be doing more to spur job creation and not necessarily tackle cap and trade right now,” said a moderate Democratic Senate aide. White House officials told POLITICO on Friday that President Barack Obama plans curb new domestic spending beyond jobs programs and focus on cutting the federal deficit next year. In the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid has hinted that...

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...

Florida Gov. Charlie Crist says he is not flip-flopping when it comes to support of the federal stimulus package championed by Democrats, saying his comments earlier this week to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer were more about the actual stimulus legislation passed by Congress, and not the effort itself. “I think the question posed to me was, ‘Did you endorse this specific bill?’” Crist told reporters Friday after speaking to the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices policy institute in Tampa. “And I said, ‘No, I didn’t,’ but the concept I thought, and still believe, was important, necessary and it helped...

A look at the numbers inside the unemployment report including a report that claims 190,000 job losses while also reporting an increase of more than 550,000 unemployed americans. The numbers are staggering. 27 million Americans without full-time work, real unemployment tops 17.5%

For all that's transpired since his election as president, public opinion has not moved on the big issue, the current economy. The question a year later is how long Obama's got until it goes up, or he goes down – possibly with his party in tow. Health care reform draws a divided public response as well, with support for a variety of initiatives coupled with significant concern that they could do more harm than good. Some of Obama's best ratings lately have been in handling international affairs, contrary to questions during the 2008 campaign about his readiness for the global...

The White House didn't do its erstwhile stimulus ally Charlie Crist much good on Thursday. Asked about Crist's contention that he never endorsed the stimulus bill, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Crist was behind the package. "I think his words at that event speak for themselves," Gibbs said. "I think he was very supportive of the legislation and supportive of the benefits it would have and has had for the state of Florida." One has to wonder how anxious centrist Republicans will be to get behind Democratic initiatives now that the White House has thrown one of few...

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) -- Gov. Charlie Crist is saying he did not endorse the $787 billion federal stimulus bill, a statement that might confuse some voters. Crist appeared with President Barak Obama in February to support the bill, asked Florida members of Congress to vote for it and previously told The Associated Press that he would have voted for it if he had been in the Senate. But when the Republican governor talked about the bill Wednesday on CNN, he said he didn't endorse it. Crist told CNN he understood that the bill was going to pass and wanted to...

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Senate late Wednesday unanimously passed legislation extending unemployment benefits and also significantly expanding a homebuyer tax credit that was championed by Republican U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson of Georgia. The Senate voted 98-0 to extend unemployment benefits for the jobless by up to 20 weeks. In states with unemployment rates of 8.5 percent and above -- in Georgia the unemployment rate is 10.1 percent -- the jobless could receive up to 99 weeks of benefits, which average about $300 per week...

The $787 billion stimulus bill was passed in February and was promised as a job saver and economy booster. Here is where some of the money went: - $300,000 for a GPS-equipped helicopter to hunt for radioactive rabbit droppings at the Hanford nuclear reservation in Washington state. - $30 million for a spring training baseball complex for the Arizona Diamondbacks and Colorado Rockies. - $11 million for Microsoft to build a bridge connecting its two headquarter campuses in Redmond, Wash., which are separated by a highway. - $430,000 to repair a bridge in Iowa County, Wis., that carries 10 or...

The Obama administration announced Friday that federal stimulus money had created or saved about 7,200 education jobs in Ohio as of Sept. 30. Although a couple of hundred of those jobs were in Columbus City Schools, the district acknowledged yesterday that many of the "saved" jobs definitely wouldn't have been lost in the first place, and others might not have been lost at all. Although other areas of the district's budget might have suffered without the stimulus, district officials said, the jobs report nonetheless highlighted the fuzzy math involved in pinpointing a saved-jobs number.

Voters for the first time are blaming President Obama nearly as much as President Bush for the country’s continuing economic problems. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 49% still blame the economic situation on the recession that began under Bush. But 45% now say the nation’s economic problems are caused more by Obama’s policies. Just a month ago, 55% pointed the finger at Bush, while only 37% said the policies Obama has put in place since taking office were at fault. These findings had remained largely unchanged since May. Sixty-two percent (62%) now trust their own judgment...

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...

More than half the 14,000 jobs created or saved by the federal economic stimulus in Minnesota are in public schools. Federal and state officials are reporting about 7,400 full-time teaching and school support staff jobs linked to the stimulus through the end of September. The U.S. Department of Education issued a report Monday detailing 7,421 stimulus jobs in the state's education system. Minnesota Management and Budget officials counted 7,380 K-12 school jobs created or saved by stimulus spending of $634 million.

The Daily Capitalist The Obama Administration knows it didn't "create or save" 640,000 jobs but they use the Big Lie to justify the huge waste of taxpayer dollars through the $787 billion American Reinvestment and Recovery Act of 2009. But on Friday the government says that it did: ... The new data come from information tens of thousands of state and local governments, private companies, colleges and community groups submitted earlier this month to show how they are making use of stimulus funds. The White House said states with the highest unemployment rates reported 25% more jobs created or saved...

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Health insurer Humana Inc. rode its strong government business in posting a 65 percent jump in third-quarter profit Monday, as bulging membership and premiums from Medicare Advantage overcame a lackluster commercial segment hampered by the weak economy. Louisville-based Humana said its quarterly revenue rose 8 percent as enrollment in its Medicare Advantage offerings grew 11 percent from a year ago. But the company saw enrollment in its plans sold to employers fall by 7.6 percent from a year ago, contributing to a pretax loss in its commercial segment. Slumping enrollment in employer-sponsored health coverage plans has been...

The U.S. Census Bureau of the Department of Commerce announced today that construction spending during September 2009 was estimated at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $940.3 billion, 0.8 percent (±1.8%)* above the revised August estimate of $933.0 billion. The September figure is 13.0 percent (±1.9%) below the September 2008 estimate of $1,081.2 billion. During the first 9 months of this year, construction spending amounted to $715.2 billion, 12.1 percent (±1.3%) below the $813.3 billion for the same period in 2008. PRIVATE CONSTRUCTION Spending on private construction was at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $613.9 billion, 0.5 percent (±1.1%)*...

More than 1.4 million Californians were working part-time in September, not out of choice but because their hours had been cut or it was the only job they could find and they needed the money, reports the state Employment Development Department. That's a nearly 72% increase from a year ago when 840,000 Californians settled for part-time work. The biggest jump has been in workers who have settled for part-time jobs because they can't find full-time work. Their numbers have soared 83.3% since September 2008.

A month ago, Almeta Whitsett was on the waiting list for Mobile Meals. With two hip replacements and a husband with Alzheimer’s, the 84-year-old Greensboro woman was finding it harder to cook. She already had someone who came in to clean her house every two weeks. Now, she has help in the kitchen, too. Senior Resources of Guilford learned over the summer that it would receive $80,000 in stimulus money from the state Department of Health and Human Services. The money officially arrives today for Senior Resources. But since the agency knew that the funds were coming, Whitsett started receiving...

A year ago I argued that to repair America's ripped social fabric, Barack Obama had to move forward on healthcare, a higher minimum wage, imaginative ways to keep families in homes that were being foreclosed and investments in public works on a vast scale to stem the tide of unemployment that would inevitably follow a financial collapse. And that he had to juggle many of these reforms simultaneously. Such transformations couldn't occur overnight, but the impetus for them had to come in the first months of the new administration – when Obama's popularity was high, when the calamitous malfunctioning in...

Inconsistent Messages On Obama's Stimulus Package October 31, 2009 Confused about President Obama's stimulus package? The administration may not be the place to find clarity. The White House leadership has made statements about the stimulus that often are inconsistent -- and at odds with facts put out by the administration. Effect of the stimulus * Vice President Joe Biden on Friday: The stimulus "is responsible for over 1 million jobs so far." * White House senior advisor Valerie Jarrett on Oct. 18: The stimulus "really staved off a disaster and we saved millions of jobs around the country." * White...

WASHINGTON – Fifty-seven people in northeast Indiana got a job – or were spared a pink slip – so far this year because of the government’s stimulus program, the government reported Friday. It was the smallest job gain or employment preservation reported in the state’s nine congressional districts. Vice President Biden said the program created or saved an additional 400,000 jobs – the harder-to-count jobs created as a result of extra economic activity – putting the total more than 1 million. The government does not distinguish between jobs that were created because of the program and the jobs people didn’t...