By John W. Lillpop
As the Obama administration works feverishly to convince American taxpayers that enough jobs have been created or saved to justify the trillion-dollar pork out, euphemistically known as the “stimulus” bill, parsing of words has become damn near an art form at the White House.
As reported, in part, at abcnews.com:
“Posting its results late this afternoon at Recovery.gov, the White House claimed 640,329 jobs have been created or saved because of the $159 billion in stimulus funds allocated as of Sept. 30.
“Officials acknowledged the numbers were not exact, saying that states and localities that reported the numbers have made mistakes.
“The White House argues that the actual job number is actually larger than 640,000 -- closer to 1 million jobs when one factors in stimulus jobs added in October and, more importantly, jobs created indirectly, such as ‘the waitress who's still on the job,’ Vice President Biden said today.
“So let's see. Assuming their number is right -- 160 billion divided by 1 million. Does that mean the stimulus costs taxpayers $160,000 per job?
“Jared Bernstein, chief economist and senior economic advisor to the vice president, called that "calculator abuse."
He said the cost per job was actually $92,000 -- but acknowledged that estimate is for the whole stimulus package as of the end of 2010.”
With all due respect to the president and Jared Bernstein, the term “calculator abuse” is more appropriate when describing a goofy reform plan that promises to add 46 million uninsured to the rolls of the insured while “cutting medical costs” in the process!
That sort of nonsense is calculator abuse,mathematics illiteracy and fraud rolled into one desperate Marxist attempt at grand larceny.
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/10/160000-per-stimulus-job-white-house-calls-that-calculator-abuse.html
