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November 17, 2009
Stim money 'creates or saves' jobs in congressional districts that don't exist
I don't know what's loonier about this ABC report by Jonathan Karl; the idea that the federal government doesn't know much about itself or that some people who got this stim money are really, really stupid:
Here's a stimulus success story: In Arizona's 15th congressional district, 30 jobs have been saved or created with just $761,420 in federal stimulus spending. At least that's what the Web site set up by the Obama administration to track the $787 billion stimulus says.I love the spin on this one. Shorter White House; federal and state employees are dumber than the average voter but they should be excused because they're human.
There's one problem, though: There is no 15th congressional district in Arizona; the state has only eight districts.
And ABC News has found many more entries for projects like this in places that are incorrectly identified.
Late Monday, officials with the Recovery Board created to track the stimulus spending, said the mistakes in crediting nonexistent congressional districts were caused by human error.
"We report what the recipients submit to us," said Ed Pound, Communications Director for the Board.
Pound told ABC News the board receives declarations from the recipients - state governments, federal agencies and universities - of stimulus money about what program is being funded.
"Some recipients clearly don't know what congressional district they live in, so they appear to be just throwing in any number. We expected all along that recipients would make mistakes on their congressional districts, on jobs numbers, on award amounts, and so on. Human beings make mistakes," Pound said.
Well, some might argue with that but I won't. Nevertheless, it's beginning to look like the White House made a monumental error in releasing this information. So much of it has been shown to be bogus, wrong, or in this case, downright ignorant that you begin to wonder if there's any information in those reports that are correct.
And there are many Democrats who want another stimulus bill? I guess it will give them that many more chances to fudge the numbers and cook the books.