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But what are they actually talking about? The formulation of “created/saved” is, in itself, a phrase of such utter murk as to render the whole exercise meaningless. Is there no difference between a job created and a job saved? If the government takes money from taxpayers, or inflates away the value of your income, in order to directly “create” some of these jobs, then shouldn’t there also be a corresponding interactive map for “Jobs eroded/destroyed?” If a job not directly hooked up to the state dole is either ”saved” or “created,” or perhaps adapts to demand to become a somewhat different job, who’s to know for sure whether that was due to government spending, or individual enterprise?
America is going through bad times right now — not helped by the apocalyptic pronouncements of the likes of George Soros, or the President himself. But the U.S. economy is not an algebra equation in which planners can plug in a number here, and be sure of an output there. The U.S. economy, with more than $13 trillion in output last year, involves a population of more than 300 million people, a work force of more than 150 million, and creates wealth by way of countless individual decisions, efforts and exchanges of services and goods, all of this interacting with complex global markets. And yet, what our government now bestows upon us is an interactive map decked out with precise and nifty numbers that would have had Soviet Central planners salivating.
Perhaps more illuminating among the features now up on www.recovery.gov is the link to the White House photo gallery showing “The Story of the Economic Recovery Package.” No pictures here of the millions of Americans toiling away in the private sector, creating the real wealth of this nation, and real hope of recovery. Lots of pictures, however, of President Obama — conferring, striding, speaking, bestowing, and apparently all-knowing: 70,000 “Jobs created/saved” for Arizona … 32,000 for Utah … 59,000 for Colorado … 215,000 for New York. And 148,000 jobs for Illinois … or should that be 147,999, in the event that Tony Rezko isn’t out of jail and back at work by by 2011?
Hello Claudia,
I enjoy your writing!
Whatever happened to common sense? Is our government so blind to what they are doing to the hard working people of this country?
I keep asking myself, how do we change it? I’m so worried about our country, I really think that President Obama is such a lightweight on all fronts, and did not vote for him, but was willing to give him a chance to prove himself. Now, I’m more worried than ever. I started worrying when he broke the promise over campaign financing and its been downhill from there.
We have to start with “WORDS”. If people knew stimulus meant “spending”, there might have been a different outcome????? Let’s label things correctly from the onset. The public needs to be educated, especially our younger generation.
My only saving grace is that there are bloggers, writers, such as yourself, to show us a glimmer of hope that there are people out there that care about this great nation.
I loved your comment on Hugh Hewitt’s show “Give me liberty, or give me death”. I’d forgotten that phrase…..and it means more to me today!
The three republicans that voted for the stimulus package will be remembered by the voters, and will hopefully lose re-election!
Keep up the good work! I read your articles every chance I get.
Regards, Eleanor Hastings
Greetings:
Re: “created/saved”
I remember my favorite Logic professor telling us “beware of all disjunctions”.
The hidden miracle of the disjunction (or, for instance) is that only one element has to be true for the statement to be true. You seem them used a lot nowadys to conflate and thus expand data that aren’t much related.
George Soros is a naturalized American citizen, although he chooses to live outside our borders most of the time. As a citizen of the United States he possesses the right to form and advance political ideas (MoveOn). He also enjoys the opportunity to make a fortune. Having said that, an important aspect of Mr. Soros’ activities is that he is a currency arbitrageur. He has a history of (breaking the Bank of England) profiting from the manipulation of ideas. Mr. Soros has been a significant source of funding and support for the most left oriented chief executive ever elected in the United States, who has been in favor all along of executing strategies that would inflate the debt of our nation, thereby reducing the value of our currency vis-a-vis the world’s other currencies. Additionally, Mr. Soros occasionally writes op-ed styled pieces for publication reflecting his views of the current state of American affairs with an eye toward greater socialization and a lowering of the valuation of our currency.
It has often been said that the best hiding spot is in plain view. Mr. Soros’ intentions are in plain view based on his job description and his own writings. Oddly, no one seems to notice or care.
Well we better start debunking this nonsense at every level. This merely the standard rhetoircal tacticcs we see all out of the left on a daily basis in our personal lives writ large.
It is all just hogwash. Where is the data and what is the methodology to support these figures.
How do we know even if these jobs were “saved or created” by the government, that they are viable long term jobs with room for advancement. And just who are the employees?
This si really starting to sound like the propaganda one heard in the old USSR about the tons of steel production made in a year, or the amount of kilowatts generated.
what was the old joke? “They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work”?
Steele and the GOP should get out there and call these totalitarians on this stuff. They should start referring to these people as “neo-communists”. Do it every hour of the day.
The American people need to have it pointed out to them that this is just the same old totalitarian nonsense that we got out of the Communist prior to ww2.
It is like they are n a time warp.
Ms. Rosett:
“Recovery.gov — which describes itself as “the centerpiece of the President’s commitment to transparency and accountability.” Think of it as the Facebook of the Welfare State, the Twitter of the Visible Hand.”
No…I’d prefer to think of it as turning around and watching the toilet perform it’s function after you flush it.
But with the bowl full of money.
Eleanor, you’re not quite right about Obama being a lightweight on ALL fronts. He’s definitely a heavyweight when it comes to concentrating power in his own hands and the hands of the democratic party. He’s also a heavyweight on manipulating the system. Let’s face it, bankrupting an entire nation while at the same time cementing his and his party’s control over that nation is no mean feat.
I’m not feeling twitterpated.
What a freaking joke. Talk about a slap in the face to all tax PAYing Americans.
Transparency? RIGHT. Pathetic.
I have some liberals in my life who sent me the link to the recover site which i dutifully explored.
It is completely content free. I’ve written several successful business plans in my life and would have been laughed out the door presenting something akin to this site.
Perhaps more illuminating among the features now up on http://www.recovery.gov is the link to the White House photo gallery showing “The Story of the Economic Recovery Package.”
Did you check out the Leonardo Da Vinci, Last Supper picture in that montage? Priceless. No wait. That picture is worth $800 billion.
One day, the story will be written of the 500-billion dollar run on our money markets (not the banks) in two quick hours, back in September, and in the middle of that story will be the raging, hate-filled visage of one George Soros.
Soros hates America and wants it destroyed. It’s hard for normal people to understand men like him, but they exist and they always have.
Obama said he’ll cut he deficit in half by 2013- after the end of his term. So we won’t be able to measure anything at the next election.
But liberals are too stupid to get it.
We have to change this disaster — this perfect storm packaging of Hitler, Marx and Mao — the way we’ve done it for 220+ years:
VOTE.
For Bilgeman: I have just the item for you – http://jcrue.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/otoilet.png
Do gutter dwellers have computers or know what face book is?
I have to say great minds think alike Claudia. In my purely satirical blog I suggested as Obama and Gordon Brown both promise to create jobs by building massive “health and welfare” databases Facebook could be the key. To put details of all our embarrassing little ailments online considering the track record of governments in implementing big Information Technology schemes the most efficient approach would be to leave all the doors to archive stores onpen one Friday night. By the end of the weeken everybody’s health, employment and tax records would be on Facebook for the whole world to see.
Going to the site I was immediately struck by the innaccurate bar graph of where the money is going. The figure does not show the correct ratios of the numbers involved. What’s up with making tax relief look like it’s not much bigger than the other numbers? Is it embarrassing to show that money would be going back to the tax payers?
Yes, yes. Just one tiny quibble:
I think the better metaphor is “the visible foot”
The Visible Hand is a clever metaphor that calls to mind Adam Smiths’s invisible hand. But the invisible body to which the invisible hand is attached is . . . us – not the government.
So I would say that the visible foot of government in fact now rests on the very visible necks of the people.
This is not good. SF Democrats in charge.
#15 jcrue:
“For Bilgeman: I have just the item for you”
Thanks, man. That was funny right up until early November, when lemming-like, the electorate decided to dive right in.
Sadly, they’re dragging me in, too…
Hi Claudia,
I’d like to know what you think of the
Rick Santarelli CNBC “Chicago Tea Party” plans.
Grace
I have been watching recovery.gov for a while now, and it is one of the most depressing websites ever. It is not transparent, it is not interactive, it is not helpful in the least. It is the closest thing to an Orwellian pablum that any administration has ever doled out. There is no useful info. For example, I wanted to know who the players were at yesterday’s “Stimulus Focus Group”. There wasn’t even an announcement (yes, they have an “announcement” menu) that the President was holding a “focus group”. Now don’t you think a truly transparent administration would tell you which 20 or 30 people were going to come up with this one day solution to economic crisis?
Palin-Santarelli 2012
Whenever you read a general statement that you question, you have to go to the specifics listed and check them out one by one. truthfulness by the Obama administration is never in the specifics:
- 95 % tax cut
- 3 Million jobs created
- 3 million jobs created/saved
- 3.5 M jobs created/saved
- 4M jobs created/saved
- get out of Iraq in 16 months
- close gitmo in 12 months
- no rendition
- we’re keeping rendition
- I like Pepperoni
- I hate Pepperoni
- we need to spend,stimulus is spending
- there are no earmarks?
Get the idea? this guy and his administration are so accustomed to not being questioned, they think they can cite any fact or number and no one will keep up with it. Over time, they will look, and be, the biggest liars in the history of politics! They are so impressed with themselves, and their sycophants, that they don’t know they don’t have any clothes on!
Whenever they speak, look at their specifics. If they were selling real estate or life insurance, they would be jailed. buy this life insurance and you’ll make millions!
If they worked for any of us citing these nebulous numbers, we’d fire them in days.
I am actually fairly curious about recovery.gov, but I’m afraid to go to their site. My computer might leave a cookie trail behind, then they’ll know who I am, and they’ll know that I recently started a new job, and they’ll use my meager little statistic as “proof” of a job saved or created.
11B40: “Disjunction” – absolutely brilliant. “Saved or created” … it almost sounds like a double negative, doesn’t it? I think it must be a term straight from the Saul Alinsky School of Oxymoronic Speech.
Notice the timeline on recovery.gov – March 3, 2009 – “federal agencies begin reporting use of funds”. That ought to be interesting. Maybe Arne Duncan will get the Dept of Education some more of those $2,000 coffee pots he bought for the Chicago school system.