Wednesday, November 04, 2009

More White House "saved" jobs mischief: Georgia and Illinois

As I've stated before, there is no way to identify what a "saved" job is. Since facts seem to matter little to the Obama administration, it's no surprise that the White House, as AP discovered, is liberally creating its own truth.

President Barack Obama's economic recovery program saved 935 jobs at the Southwest Georgia Community Action Council, an impressive success story for the stimulus plan. Trouble is, only 508 people work there.

The Georgia nonprofit's inflated job count is among persisting errors in the government's latest effort to measure the effect of the $787 billion stimulus plan despite White House promises last week that the new data would undergo an "extensive review" to root out errors discovered in an earlier report.

About two-thirds of the 14,506 jobs claimed to be saved under one federal office, the Administration for Children and Families at Health and Human Services, actually weren't saved at all, according to a review of the latest data by The Associated Press. Instead, that figure includes more than 9,300 existing employees in hundreds of local agencies who received pay raises and benefits and whose jobs weren't saved.

And that's not all. The Chicago Tribune takes at look at shenanigans in the president's home state.

More than $4.7 million in federal stimulus aid so far has been funneled to schools in North Chicago, and state and federal officials say that money has saved the jobs of 473 teachers.

Problem is, the district employs only 290 teachers.

"That other number, I don't know where that came from," said Lauri Hakanen, superintendent of North Chicago Community Unit Schools District 187.

The Trib found similar 2 + 2 = 5 type math elsewhere in Illinois.

363 days to the next general election.

Related post:

Ohio: Not all "saved" jobs were in danger

Technorati tags:

No comments: