How successful has the stimulus been at creating jobs? So successful that it’s created jobs in Congressional districts that do not even exist! More from Nick Gillespie. (HT: Instapundit)
How successful has the stimulus been at creating jobs? So successful that it’s created jobs in Congressional districts that do not even exist! More from Nick Gillespie. (HT: Instapundit)
Richard Aubrey says:
How does this help Michelle’s children?
November 17, 2009, 9:43 amruuffles says:
November 17, 2009, 9:55 amruuffles says:
veesee, please try to read the article rather than just copypasta inpu’s sensational blurbs.
[RESPONSE: Of course the mistakes were due to "human error." What other sort of error would have been responsible? Lighten up. JHA]
November 17, 2009, 9:58 amVirginian says:
Why shouldn’t the Congressional district info be made up? The job numbers are made up, too.
November 17, 2009, 10:07 amrarango says:
And this inaccurate reporting is surprising because?
November 17, 2009, 10:17 amChris says:
Meinongian stimulus!
November 17, 2009, 10:22 amMCM says:
Please don’t pretend that a bunch of people aren’t about to come in this thread and say that the money is actually going to ACORN and other Obama paramilitary organizations which are about to start taking everyone’s guns and putting white people in concentration camps to make them work off their reparations while having gay sex and forced abortions.
Where’s DangerMouse when you need him?
November 17, 2009, 10:28 amMark S says:
Accountability, it seems, works. The downside is that, if you let people catch you in mistakes, you look foolish.
I appreciate the natural desire to chuckle, but I hope we also continue to reward a more open government process. I’ve never been a big fan of the sort of “reporting” that was more of a giggle between “us like-minded folks”.
November 17, 2009, 10:31 amPatHMV says:
Just how did these errors happen? Is it something mundane, like the data-entry form has a free-form text field, which allows any number to be entered, and the state officials entering the data just make typos? For some of them, (district 0 or district 99), it looks more like somebody entered an obviously incorrect district number perhaps to indicate that the actual district data was unavailable, or perhaps that the stimulus spending on that contract spanned multiple districts.
One expects some poor data entry designs in a project thrown together as fast as this one was, so I’m not overly perturbed, but I do think that it should be examined further because it will reveal real, substantive errors in the underlying data of the actual spending. Personally, I give the website about zero credibility at the moment, because I haven’t seen much detail about how the data is put in, and thus can’t assess how reliable the data is.
On a related point, why are we so accommodating to incumbents as to break down this data by Congressional district at significant taxpayer expense? The only reason to even track Congressional district data like this is so that Congressman Jones can campaign on how many stimulus dollars he brought to the fine upstanding people of his district.
November 17, 2009, 10:51 amShelbyC says:
Uh, I hearby so pretend.
November 17, 2009, 10:58 amMark S says:
For those that might care, the White House commentary on this issue can be found here.
November 17, 2009, 11:06 amRichard Aubrey says:
I’m not sure that the “saved” definition can be pinned down.
November 17, 2009, 11:15 amIs there a category for “neither”? As in, this job was going to be here for the forseeable future with or without stimulus money?
There was a report that one school system had two possible answers to the reporting; saved or created.
I’d like to know that this isn’t common.
On the other hand, it’s likely.
MCM says:
What? I would think would want to know where their money is going, and are probably willing to spend 18 million out of 787,000 million in order to find out.
November 17, 2009, 11:17 amRPT says:
It is a matter of faith that government jobs are not “real jobs”, that stimulus funds cannot be credited to creating jobs, and that jobs saved from loss through stimulus funds do not really exist and cannot be counted.
November 17, 2009, 11:19 amPatHMV says:
The WH response is partly right, but it runs far afield into spin mode with its defense of the “jobs created or saved” numbers.
That number, as I understand it, comes from basically a field in the form which state officials were required to fill out for each stimulus-funded project. There’s no real definition or guidance provided to the officials on how to determine that rather vague statistic. There’s some insightful commentary here. For example, many of the “jobs created or saved” apparently count people who received COLA salary increases, whose jobs were never actually at risk. I’ve read reports of universities listing hundreds of faculty jobs being “saved,” because the worst-case budget scenarios called for that… but everybody who deals with budget issues in government knows that agencies ALWAYS list many more jobs at risk than they would actually cut in the crisis, in order to create more political pressure to not make the cuts. When the actual cuts do come down, other ways to cut spending are found, and those jobs aren’t the ones to really be cut.
More generally, the WH commentary (and thanks to Mark S for posting it), while making the appropriate point that errors of this sort are inevitable with a large, fast-moving project like this, fails to acknowledge that some of these data errors point to the potential for truly systemic problems which might have very far-reaching impacts on the reliability (or lack thereof) of the data.
November 17, 2009, 11:19 amPatHMV says:
MCM… why is it important to track by Congressional district instead of state and county? Who benefits, other than incumbents wishing to promote themselves, from tracking by Congressional district? I didn’t say don’t track geographically, but don’t track by Congressional district.
November 17, 2009, 11:22 amB.D. says:
From overstating the catastrophic consequences of inaction to directing funds to liberal causes to using immeasurable metrics, the White House has been playing politics with the stimulus from day 1. The economy will recover, as it always does. Obama wants his undeserved credit in time for reelection.
The biggest mistake Obama made was promising the stimulus would prevent the unemployment rate from rising above 8%. In true political fashion, the White House is now saying, “well it was even worse than we could have known.” In other words, it’s Bush’s fault.
November 17, 2009, 11:31 amMCM says:
Congressional districts all have roughly the same number of people. Counties and states tend to vary a bit more.
Besides, federal program, federal representatives… doesn’t seem like much of a stretch to me. Plus you get to break it down more – telling me how much money was spent in LA county doesn’t tell me as much as giving the information by each district in LA.
November 17, 2009, 11:35 amMCM says:
If only to balance out the undeserved blame, probably.
November 17, 2009, 11:37 amHouston Lawyer says:
They should just claim that they saved all of our jobs, because the world was clearly going to come to an end if that stimulus package were not enacted. Then they can begin by adding all of the people outside of the country who have jobs.
November 17, 2009, 11:49 amcaliforniamom says:
The stimulus is just a giant slush fund.
November 17, 2009, 11:57 amB.D. says:
How mature, the POTUS spending $800 billion on stimulus and relentlessly complaining about his predecessor in order to “balance out the undeserved blame.”
November 17, 2009, 12:02 pmjosh says:
Of course, this was reported by ABC News — an arm of the Librul MSM — so I don’t believe a word of it.
Palin 2012!
November 17, 2009, 12:02 pmMCM says:
The POTUS doesn’t spend anything. Congress does.
November 17, 2009, 12:11 pmegd says:
I don’t see what’s wrong with tracking by Congressional district. Federal funds are apportioned by district, not by state & county, and it makes tracking the information a lot easier.
Although looking at the data provided by recovery.gov sure is interesting.
For a mere investment of $1,046.99, fifty jobs were created or saved by buying a mower from Toro.
By contrast, it took $6,310,385.50 to create five jobs placing stones in the Mississippi river.
And it cost $999,998.12 to hire a single project manager to dredge Sandusky Harbor in Ohio.
Clearly, a worthwhile investment all around.
November 17, 2009, 12:11 pmRichard Aubrey says:
Some years ago, one of my kids was in the hospital and we discovered the bill included a fee for a Pap smear. The circumstances were such that a Pap smear would have been, to be charitable, inappropriate.
November 17, 2009, 12:14 pmAfter questioning this, I was told I didn’t have to pay it. But, I said, as a concerned parent, I WANTED to know WHY a Pap smear was done in the middle of an unrelated procedure.
After some embarrased coughing, the billing department manager confessed that his immediate predecessor had tried to save money by not giving the data-entry people monitors. They had no idea if they’d made a mistake.
The stimulus figures seem to result from an even dumber process.
B.D. says:
Thanks for the 5th grade civics lesson, lol. So I take it you’ll credit Congress, and not Obama, when the economy recovers.
November 17, 2009, 12:16 pmLarryA says:
Congressional error?
I’ve been job hunting since last year, when my position wasn’t saved. As far as I can see the situation is getting worse, not better.
November 17, 2009, 12:21 pmyankee says:
And $1.67 million for one job in asphalt paving in the Second District of Virginia.
November 17, 2009, 12:24 pmMCM says:
I won’t credit either of them.
November 17, 2009, 12:35 pmPatHMV says:
egd… and why are funds apportioned by Congressional district? Because their primary purpose is to benefit Congressional incumbents, and let them easily show their constituents how much bacon they’re bringing home.
November 17, 2009, 12:38 pmRichard Aubrey says:
As one blogger wearily put it, “I get so tired of saying, suppose this were the Bush administration.”
November 17, 2009, 12:43 pmLN says:
Well, that’s what happens when you have socialized medicine.
November 17, 2009, 1:05 pmCareless says:
“$1.5 million spent and .3 jobs created ” is my favorite.
November 17, 2009, 1:15 pmSecond Amendment Sister says:
With $18 million funding this government website, mistakes like this should not be happening.
Geez, just hire a couple of reporters for a few thousand bucks and they’ll find the errors before it goes live. Instead, ABC does it for free and illustrates that transparency isn’t always positive when nobody in authority seems to care about accuracy.
Then again, that’s a good object lesson in government.
November 17, 2009, 1:16 pmRichard Aubrey says:
Actually, LN, not quite.
November 17, 2009, 1:23 pmThe guy I talked to had fixed it, after replacing his non-civil service, non-tenured, non-unionized, non sovereign immunitized predecessor.
That’s what happens when you don’t have socialized medicine.
And I didn’t have to pay it because no half-wit functionary with absolute immunity from any kind of consequence couldn’t be bothered to think of a reason to fix it.
egd says:
Probably because it’s already a stretch to expect the bean-counters to know the 50 states, requiring them to know all 3,000+ county names is needlessly pedantic. Not to mention having to distinguish the counties as boroughs in Alaska and (some parts of) New York and Parishes in Louisiana.
There are also varying populations from one country to another, making score keeping even more difficult. Congressional districts are generally evenly populated, and provide a reliable metric.
But sure, let say it’s all because Congressmen like to brag about how much money they’re bringing home. Other practicalities and bookkeeping concerns don’t matter.
November 17, 2009, 1:43 pmMCM says:
I sympathize with your argument but
(1) the funds are apportioned by Congressional district because it’s Congress doing the apportioning. Rep A has absolutely zero reason to be interested in what’s going on in Rep B’s district. Rep A was only elected by district A, and he’s only responsible for district A.
(2) what’s wrong with people being able to see how effective their Congressman is? Go read your Federalist No. 10 again. It’s totally expected that every district will greedily seek the most they can get from the system, and want to elect the Congressmen who does the best. Working as intended.
Even the Founders engaged in pork-barrel politics. Go read how Washington ordered the first US frigates built in different shipyards to spread the federal spending around (and he reserved the best ones for Virginia, of course).
November 17, 2009, 1:47 pmdew says:
MCM: Even the Founders engaged in pork-barrel politics. Go read how Washington ordered the first US frigates built in different shipyards to spread the federal spending around (and he reserved the best ones for Virginia, of course).
The first part: very likely. The second part: not so much. Only one of the 6 frigates launched under that original US frigate contract was built in Virginia. Three were larger and three slightly smaller – the Chesapeake built in Virginia was one of the smaller ones. When a treaty halted the construction of the frigates, the Chesapeake was one of the ones frozen for several years – all were eventually completed, but the Chesapeake and two others were not completed until after Washington was out of office. Not very good evidence of Washington pushing for Virginia pork.
November 17, 2009, 8:06 pmBruce Hayden says:
I think by now that a lot of people have come to the belief that whatever figures the government provides are bogus. On the one hand, you have school districts saving more jobs than they had, and on the other, you have hundreds of thousands or millions saving single job. In short, total fabrication throughout.
My view is that the most egregious are all the civil servant (including school district) jobs “saved” by giving people raises. As if any of those people would give up their civil service type jobs in the midst of the worst recession of their working lives (esp. since they probably don’t have marketable skills outside a government). There seemed to be a lot of this in those figures.
November 17, 2009, 11:12 pmMCM says:
Mostly true except that since it was the Naval Act of 1794 that controlled the entire process (including the freezing of construction when peace with Algiers broke out), you can’t absolve Washington of seeking pork for Virginia simply because he left office before the process completed.
Regardless, IIRC, according to Six Frigates by Ian W. Toll, the original plan was to build all the ships in Boston. Washington and others arranged to spread the construction to virtually every shipyard in the US.
November 18, 2009, 1:55 amSwede says:
How do you know those Congressional districts don’t exist?
Have you searched in all 57 states?
November 18, 2009, 2:08 amProf. S. says:
Good, then I trust we can quit hearing about the “Bush” deficits. Instead, we can refer to them as Congress’s deficits – the same Congress that has been controlled by Democrats since 2006.
Along those same lines, I also trust we can credit the reductions in the deficit between 1994 and 2000 to the Republican Congress, not Clinton.
November 18, 2009, 9:50 amRichard Aubrey says:
Prof S.
November 18, 2009, 10:07 amYou wish.