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To hear President Obama tell it, he's been busy creating jobs since taking office. The $787 billion stimulus package, he said last winter, would "save or create 3.5 million jobs." The White House is touting reports from recipients of stimulus funds asserting that they have created or saved 640,000 jobs so far. Yet the national unemployment rate has now hit 10.2 percent, helping explain why Republicans won the governors' races in Virginia and New Jersey last week, just a year after the party's 2008 drubbing. And Obama declared Friday that more action is needed. "History tells us that job growth...

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...

ST ANDREWS, Scotland (Reuters) - U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said high unemployment rates show that economic recovery is still perilous and governments need to maintain stimulus as long as necessary to ensure sustained growth. "If we put the brakes on too quickly we will weaken the economy and the financial system, unemployment will rise, more businesses will fail, budget deficits will rise, and the ultimate cost of the crisis will be greater," Geithner said in a statement issued at the conclusion of a two-day Group of 20 meeting. He said that with some growth beginning to become apparent in...

A familiar definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing and expecting different results. So in the wake of yesterday's report that the national jobless rate climbed to 10.2% in October, we suppose we can expect the political class to demand another "stimulus." Maybe if Congress spends another $787 billion in the name of job creation, it can get the jobless rate up to 12% or 13%. It's hard to imagine a more complete repudiation of Keynesian stimulus than the evidence of the last year's job market. We've now had two examples of such stimulus—President Bush's $160 billion...

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...

Rosenberg On Jobs: Horrible Is An Understatement, Fed Tightening Is On Hold Indefinitely Joe WeisenthalNov. 6, 2009, 1:29 PM David Rosenberg riffs on this morning's jobs report: THE HOUSEHOLD SURVEY To say that the Household survey was horrible would be an understatement. This survey showed a net job destruction of 589,000, bringing the decline to 1.8 million over the past three months — more than what was lost in the entire 2001 tech-wreck-recession. All of the decline was in full-time employment, and while the bulls out there will undoubtedly point to the fact that temp agency hirings are on the...

Krugman: It's Time For The WPA Joe WeisenthalNov. 6, 2009, 12:08 PM We wondered if Paul Krugman would use this morning's 10.2% unemployment reading as an excuse to call for another stimulus. Indeed: You can make a pretty good case that just employing a lot of people directly would be a lot more cost-effective; the WPA and CCC cost surprisingly little given the number of people put to work. Think of it as the stimulus equivalent of getting the middlemen out of the student loan program. So why aren’t we doing this? Politics, of course: government is the problem, not...

How’s that stimulus working for you, America? Obama made the claim that if the “stimulus” bill was passed, unemployment wouldn’t go above 8 percent. Right behind that claim was the claim that the stimulus was about Jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs. and the stimulus would create 3.5 million new jobs by the end of 2010. So, how is that stimulus working for you? Unemployment is now at 10.2 percent. You are probably wondering, how can unemployment numbers continue going higher when Obama and Biden continue to “save and create” jobs? Unemployment was at 7.6 percent before the stimulus. The Obama administration...

Hidden in stimulus?

WATCH VIDEO (1:43)chuckdevore.com - Nobody is really sure what Carly Fiorina really stands for. In the past year she has supported the bailout parts of the stimulus, cap and tax, and other liberal policies proposed by President Obama and Barbara Boxer. Can we really trust Carly on these issues?

Up to one-fourth of the 110,000 jobs reported as saved by federal stimulus money in California probably never were in danger, a Bee review has found. California State University officials reported late last week that they saved more jobs with stimulus money than the number of jobs saved in Texas – and in 44 other states. In a required state report to the federal government, the university system said the $268.5 million it received in stimulus funding through October allowed it to retain 26,156 employees. That total represents more than half of CSU's statewide work force. However, university officials confirmed...

Politically speaking, those on the Left will say that the current jobs report is better than in January when “we lost 700,000 a month.” I wrote already once that this excuse is lame, and the claim is false altogether. Besides, rest assure that those who lost their jobs this month don’t care for a dime how many more or less people lost jobs in this same month. Those on the Right knew all along that the disasters job market is here to stay, and to get worse than what it was a while ago. As long Obama’s economy does not...

Isn't it funny how quickly politicians abandon their original positions after being on the wrong side of an issue is used against them? Charlie Crist is the latest culprit of the phenomenon, revisionist history. During an appearance yesterday on CNN, Crist had this to say about the president's stimulus package: "I didn't endorse it. I didn't even have a vote on the darn thing. But I understood that it was gonna pass and I wanted to be able to utilize it for the benefit of my fellow Floridians." Are you sure you didn't support the stimulus Governor Crist? Because if...

The RINO hunt continues. As many of us recall, Gov. Charlie Crist (R-Fla.) warmly embraced Obama's stimulus plan. Well, yesterday on CNN, apparently after examining the election results, Crist began the walkback. Too late Charlie, we've got your number.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – In a heated race for the Republican U.S. Senate nomination, Gov. Charlie Crist keeps moving away from his support of President Barack Obama's stimulus package that the governor called "fantastic" and "remarkable" when lobbying for its passage. Faced with an increasingly difficult primary challenge from former House Speaker Marco Rubio of West Miami, the governor now claims he didn't endorse the $787 billion economic stimulus that included a generous contribution for Florida. "It seems to be the president's answer to almost every challenge that's facing our country is to spend more money," Crist said Thursday. He commented...

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...

According to Bloomberg.com the U.S. has committed $11.6 trillion to bailouts, stimulus packages, and other government programs that have mostly benefited the rich and politically connected. No one really knows for sure how much of that money has been wasted, lost, or stolen. Imagine what positive things could be done if that money were put in a charitable foundation where two laws apply: 1. the principal can never be touched 2. The foundation must use 5% of its earnings annually on philanthropic activities. Any earnings above the 5% can be used for administrative cost and/or to build the principal. Some...

The Obama administration says the Recovery Act created or saved 640,000 jobs through September. Here's a state-by-state breakdown.

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. The problems mirror those surfacing around...

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...

In just one slice of the pathetic claim of "640,000 is like a million jobs S&C'd!" we learn that there is nothing but air, and sometimes quite expensive air. Check out these specifics, all from the data compiled and submitted by the Illinois State Board of Education: 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...

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...

CLARKSVILLE, Md. (AP) - Be sure to wash up, Maryland doctors and nurses. You're being watched. State officials said Tuesday they're creating teams of staff members at hospitals around the state to secretly monitor their colleagues' hand-washing habits as part of a first-of-its-kind program. The monitors will contribute to asystemwide report on hand-washing, using $100,000 in federal stimulus money.

Using stimulus dollars as bait, President Obama is coaxing states to rewrite education laws and cut deals with unions as they compete for $5 billion in school reform grants.

Stimulated School Systems Malcolm A. Kline, November 3, 2009 Americans driving, or walking, through blocks of shut-down businesses and foreclosed-upon homes while greeting their unemployed neighbors or perhaps looking for jobs themselves may wonder what happened to the so-called stimulus money that Congress voted to spend earlier this year. On Monday, the federal government provided part of the answer to that question. “The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) provided approximately $100 billion to the U.S. Department of Education (ED) with the initial goal of delivering emergency education funding to states,” the ED department reported on November 2,...

<p>Commerce Secretary Gary Locke told Bloomberg TV today that a second economic stimulus is "being hotly discussed and very seriously considered within the administration as well as members of Congress."</p> <p>Not surprisingly, this news triggered a spasm of backtracking: Locke's spokesman now says he was being "imprecise."</p>

In this video clip, commerce secretary Gary Locke says that "if there is to be another stimulus -- and that’s being hotly discussed and very seriously considered within the administration as well as members of Congress -- it needs to be very targeted, very specific and we need to be very mindful of the deficit as well.In other words, with unemployment not improving after the first $787 billion was spent, and since at this point nothing matters since America will never be able to realistically service its debt, with mid-term elections coming up, and Obama's rating plummeting even despite an...

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...

Did a search on Recovery.gov.........hilarious

Obama Goes Wobbly Over More Economic Stimulus Economics / Economic Stimulus Nov 01, 2009 - 06:34 AM By: Mike_Whitney The recession is over. Thursdays report from the Commerce Dept. confirmed that the economy expanded in the third quarter by 3.5 percent, better than most economists estimates. GDP had contracted in the four previous quarters in the longest and deepest recession since the Great Depression. Massive government stimulus, cash for clunkers, and inventory restocking accounted for most of the surge in economic activity. Consumer spending grew at 2.36 percent while consumer credit continued to contract at a near-record pace of 4.5...

1. $300,000 FOR MAPPING RADIOACTIVE RABBIT FECES: “A Week Mapping Radioactive Rabbit Feces With Detectors Mounted On A Helicopter Flying 50 Feet Over The Desert Scrub. … $300,000 In Federal Stimulus Money.” “A government contractor at Hanford, in south-central Washington State, just spent a week mapping radioactive rabbit feces with detectors mounted on a helicopter flying 50 feet over the desert scrub. … the helicopter flights, which covered 13.7 square miles and were paid for with $300,000 in federal stimulus money, took place in an area that had never been used by the bomb makers. … Marylia Kelley, the executive...

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...

The Boeing Co. announced Friday it will lay off a third of its 1,000-member workforce at Kennedy Space Center next year. The layoffs will come in January, May and August as the shuttle program heads toward retirement. Some 330 workers will be laid off from Boeing's Checkout, Assembly and Payload Processing Services program, which has about 500 workers, spokeswoman Susan Wells said Friday. "Boeing is committed to preserving as many jobs as possible for our valued, highly skilled employees, and the company has taken aggressive steps to lessen the impact of these potential reductions," a company statement said. "These steps...

Recent disclosure that the so-called “cash for clunkers” government program that paid new car buyers up to $4500 each for the trade-in of qualifying vehicles actually cost taxpayers an average of over $24,000 per trade-in due to government “red tape,” prompted a scathing response on the whitehouse.gov web site. “Quibbling over the cost to taxpayers is both untimely and unseemly,” wrote an anonymous White House staffer. “The important objective is to pump money into the economy. It wouldn’t have mattered if we simply threw currency from the windows of a moving car. In this case, the government employees who processed...

The Obama administration on Friday touted reports of 640,000 stimulus jobs, the latest economic numbers and the backing of a Republican governor to try to undercut GOP attacks on the effect of its massive $787 billion package. Reports released Friday afternoon showed that stimulus projects, such as highway and other infrastructure work, have directly saved or created 640,329 jobs, Vice President Joe Biden said. White House officials said a total of about 1 million jobs have been created or saved by the stimulus when taking into account the roughly 400,000 jobs that come from the economic effect of tax cuts,...

Schools Are Where Stimulus Saved Jobs, New Data Show By MICHAEL COOPER October 30, 2009 The best symbol of the $787 billion federal stimulus program turns out not to be of a construction worker in a hard hat, but rather of a classroom teacher saved from a layoff. On Friday, the Obama administration released the most detailed information yet on the jobs created by the stimulus. Preliminary data showed that of the 640,239 jobs created or saved, 325,000, or more than half, were jobs in education that school districts claimed were saved when stimulus money averted the need for layoffs....

China sees rocky export rebound, shrinking surplus October 31, 2009 1:17 AM ET All Thomson Reuters news BEIJING/SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China's exports face a "hard and tortuous" path to recovery as uncertainties dog the global economy's gradual return to health, with this year's trade surplus set to shrink from last year's record, the Commerce Ministry said. Commerce Minister Chen Deming told a conference on Saturday that China's trade surplus was expected to fall to $180 billion to $190 billion this year from last year's record $295.5 billion. The surplus was $136.4 billion in the first nine months of the year....

The naming of winning bidders in the broadband stimulus grant/loan program will be delayed by a month or so, according to the heads of the relevant government agencies. The self-imposed deadline had been early November, but NTIA head Larry Strickling said Tuesday: "We're going to take a few more weeks here to get this right...I will not fund a bad application." That came in a Senate Commerce Committee's Communications Subcommittee oversight hearing on the National Telecommunications & Information Administration (NTIA) and Rural Utilities Services' (RUS) broadband stimulus grant and loan programs under the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program. The committee heard...

A harbor dredging operation carried out despite concerns from wildlife officials killed at least six loggerhead sea turtles in September - two in Savannah and four in Brunswick. The Army Corps of Engineers dredged the entrances to both the Savannah and Brunswick harbors for a total of 15 days using most of $6.8 million in federal stimulus funds meted out for the project.The corps usually avoids such summertime dredging precisely for the protection of turtles, Measures were taken to reduce the turtle death toll to the federal limit allowed for this particular dredging, a limit the corps successfully petitioned to...

The federal stimulus program has saved or created nearly 650,000 jobs through aid to states, infrastructure projects and federal contracts, the Obama administration claimed Friday morning, adding that officials believe they are on track to meet their goal of 3.5 million jobs over two years. The new figures are based on reports being released today from 131,000 recipients of the stimulus money and are intended to give the clearest sense to date of how many jobs are being created or saved directly by the stimulus. Until this month, most jobs figures have been based on the estimates of economists —...

How long before we hear from Team Lightbringer that CBS isn't really a credible news organization? The latest bedtime story from the Obama administration was released today and, darn it, they just can't bring themselves to tell the truth. "Jobs saved" is no more measurable than "hugs hoped for" but when you have the smartest president in the history of EVER he's probably privy to some super-secret genius metrics that we Earth-bound beings couldn't handle. We're moving into new territory here. The formerly unquestioning MSM is showing signs of realizing that they might still need work one day after Barack...

Stocks tumbled Friday afternoon, erasing most of the previous session's big gains. Financials and energy shares were among the hardest hit. The Dow Jones industrial average (INDU) lost 220 points, or 2.2%, with about three hours left in the session. The Dow had lost as much as 225 points earlier. The S&P 500 (SPX) index fell 25 points, or 2.4%, and the Nasdaq composite (COMP) shed 44 points, or 2.1%. The selloff was broad based, with all 30 Dow components declining and most stock sectors sliding. Energy prices and stocks were hit hard as the dollar turned mixed; the financial...

The recession is over, supposedly. The preliminary estimate of the 3rd quarter's Gross Domestic Product was announced Thursday, and it showed the economy growing at an annual rate of 3.5% from July through September, after four consecutive quarters of decline.  As the Associated Press reported, waiting for the official call from the National Bureau of Economic Research -- specifically, its Business Cycle Dating Committee -- is all but a formality. That's funny; GDP growth was not used as the measure for timing the beginning of this recession. So why would it be used to time its end?GDP last peaked in...

WASHINGTON — More than 650,000 jobs have been saved or created under President Barack Obama's economic stimulus plan, the White House said Friday, saying it is on track to reach the president's goal of 3.5 million jobs by the end of next year. New job numbers from businesses, contractors, state and local governments, nonprofit groups and universities were not scheduled to be released publicly until Friday afternoon. But White House economic adviser Jared Bernstein says officials have been told the figures. When adding in jobs linked to $288 billion in tax cuts, Bernstein says the stimulus plan has created or...

Eight billion dollars isn’t enough — not nearly enough. It’s not often you’ll hear this newspaper make a statement like that. Usually we are urging fiscal restraint. But if this country truly wants high-speed rail, we’re going to have to get serious about the effort. Eight billion dollars won’t get us there. That’s the amount of federal stimulus money promised by the Obama administration for high-speed rail. Already the administration has received requests from 24 states for projects amounting to $50 billion in high-speed projects. It also has received $7 billion in requests from states wanting to improve rail travel...

Is the mainstream media's love affair with the Obama administration on shaky ground?

When an initial report by a government oversight board claimed President Obama's $787 billion stimulus plan had already resulted in 30,000 jobs, the White House said that was evidence the stimulus was working. Now the Associated Press has reviewed the stimulus contracts and found, oops, the government exaggerated the job numbers. You always suspected your money was being flushed away. Now you have proof.

Associated Press confirms what we first reported a few days ago... Stimulus jobs overstated by thousands By BRETT J. BLACKLEDGE and MATT APUZZO Associated Press Oct 29,2009 WASHINGTON (AP) - An early progress report on President Barack Obama's economic recovery plan overstates by thousands the number of jobs created or saved through the stimulus program, a mistake that White House officials promise will be corrected in future reports. The government's first accounting of jobs tied to the $787 billion stimulus program claimed more than 30,000 positions paid for with recovery money. But that figure is overstated by least 5,000 jobs,...