How did Kentucky shoe store owner Buddy Moore save nine jobs with just $889.60 in federal stimulus money? He didn't, and that's turning into a big headache for him.
Moore's store in Campbellsville, Ky., filed one of 156,614 reports from recipients of stimulus dollars designed to show how money from the $787 billion program is being spent, and how many jobs the funds have created or saved.
Moore's slice of the stimulus came in an $889.60 order from the Army Corps of Engineers for nine pairs of work boots for a stimulus project.
Moore says he's been supplying the Corps with boots for at least two decades. This year, because he provided safety shoes for work funded by the stimulus package, he said he got a call from the Corps telling him he had to fill out a report for Recovery.gov detailing how he'd used the $889.60, and how many jobs it had helped him to create or save. He later got another call, asking him if he'd finished the report.
"The paperwork was unreal," said Moore, who added that he tried to figure out how to file the forms online, then gave up and asked his daughter to help.
Paula Moore-Kirby, 42 years old, had less trouble with the Web site, but couldn't work out how to answer the question about how many jobs her father had created or saved. She couldn't leave it blank, either, she said. After several calls to a helpline for recipients she came away with the impression that she would hear back if there was a problem with her response, and have a chance to correct it. So with 15 minutes to go before the reporting deadline, she sent in her answer: nine jobs, because her father helped nine members of the Corps to work.
To be clear, my assumption is that given the strange behavior of credit markets, especially during the first half of the year, the stimulus probably did create some jobs--I think the government took in money that would otherwise have done nothing. But its figure is both certainly inflated, and absurdly precise.
I think the correct answer is that the stimulus (temporarily) saved 535 jobs.
Megan - if you question The One's figures you are a hater, pure and simple!
And a racist, to boot.
Because remember, questioning Obama = racism.
I disagree that the figure was "absurdly precise", I would think with the kind of transparent governance represented by the requirements of all stimulus recipients, even the smallest, to report what they did with their funds we could see jobs saved or created down to the tenths of a job at least -- and maybe even to the hundredths.
And, of course, leaving out all of the many, many fractional jobs created or saved by the stimulus means that the final tally woefully understates the true magnitude of its impact.
In desperate times like these, a part time job -- even a very part time job like ".01 jobs" would represent -- is nothing to sneeze at and should be counted.
As for the griping about paperwork from these stimulus recipients, sheesh, how petty can you get? You are offered a bold, progressive salvation for the economy -- a salvation without which the world would quite literally burn -- and all you can do is complain about the online forms you have to fill out?
And I bet these same folks would complain if Obama weren't conducting every aspect of his governance at the very highest standards of openness and transparency...
There's just no winning with some people.
"In desperate times like these, a part time job -- even a very part time job like ".01 jobs" would represent -- is nothing to sneeze at."
You're not seriously advancing this lame argument, are you?
People are losing their homes and their kids are starving, and you want credit for creating .01 jobs? Millions of people are in foreclosure and being forcibly evicted by the state from their homes and you think a .01% job is nothing to sneeze at?
Boy are you people tone deaf.
Barack Obama needs to quit playing midnight basketball and get to work for the American people creating an economic program that doesn't require that kind of moronic math, buddy.
Or he's going to end up with his head on a pike.
Um... you need to read blighter's other comments before responding to him...
why is the white house doing its own counting anyway?
this seems like the sort of thing that should be done by a reputable outside contractor or the GAO. that's how legitimate program evaluations are done. this seems like something being done for purely political reasons, which should explain why it's absolutely meaningless.
have we officially entered a quasi-soviet/ingdoc era where the government will regularly release all manner of statistics that bear no resemblance to anything true or meaningfull?
Third-party legitimate counting is done by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which reports that Barack Obama's little makework program has resulted in a net loss of 15.1 million jobs.
BLS: "Since the start of the recession in December 2007, the number of unemployed persons has increased by 7.6 million to 15.1 million and the unemployment rate has doubled to 9.8 percent."
A total of 20 million people are either completely unemployed, or have been forced to take part-time work because they cannot find full-time work.
So, 650,000 jobs - even if they were real, which they aren't, but let's just assume for a moment that they are real - is an incredible indictment of the complete incompetence of the Obama Administration.
Obama spent - according to their own figures - $150 billion to "create or save" 650,000 jobs. Again, these are their figures. That works out to spending of over $230,769 per job theoretically "created or saved."
But what about the remaining 14,450,000 people who did not get one of Obama's jobs, or had their job saved by Obama?
Obama claims to have helped 650,000 people with all the powers and unlimited money at his command.
That's a horrid accomplishment.
The figure that caught my eye was the 300,000+ teaching jobs supposedly created or saved by the stimulus. That would mean that about 1 in 1000 Americans is not just a teacher, but a teacher whose job was created or saved by the stimulus. It would also mean that about 1 in 10(!) teachers owed their jobs to the stimulus. I mean, seriously? We're supposed to believe that this entire sector, untouched by the financial crises on the up or downsides, largely financed through government, often with fierce legal barriers against budget cuts, would have contracted by TEN PERCENT in the absence of the stimulus?
The figure that catches my eye is the figure that Barack Obama and his corps of Democrat govenor's didn't include in their calculations ... and that is the number of jobs they have destroyed.
They claim to have created 650,000 jobs ... but they conveniently forget to mention that on the other hand they are destroying jobs. Every Democrat Governor in the United States has announced that, in response to the economic crisis, they will destroy thousands and thousands and thousands of high paying union jobs in order to balance the state budgets.
Clearly one anecdote makes fact about a statistical aggregate.
Plus, if the recipients don't like the paperwork, they don't have to accept the government's money. Any large bureaucratic organization needs to assess the effectiveness of their spending, be they government, corporate, or non-profit, and these sorts of forms help them do that.
It says more about your ideological contradictions when you criticize the government for waste while simultaneously criticizing the government for waste control measures.
The paperwork associated with ARRA is absolutely insane -- it's above and beyond what government has ever required before. I work in a program office for a federal agency and we're always short on money to meet our maintenance needs. Nevertheless, spending the ARRA money we were given is such a pain I'd just as soon give it back.
To add to the misery, the money was budgeted on a line-item basis (i.e. I'd like to install a specific item on a specific asset), with the selection period for individual line items being extremely short. Back during the budgeting process we were given DAYS to pick projects to request money for. In multiple cases when it's come time to spend the money we've found that the expenditure we briefed up is no longer required -- or even worse, what we're doing is going to cost us significant amounts of money to undo.
Thank You Peter. You do an excellent job demonstrating my point.
Paragraph 1: Paper work is too complex.
Paragraph 2: Money was not spent carefully enough.
More detailed paperwork allows more careful spending, less detailed paperwork means more cases of misspent spending.
Apparently they tried to use a website to increase the ease of form filling, but people couldn't understand the technology.
Personally, I've seen a lot of good research get funded with ARRA. The selection process was certainly rushed, but the people making the decisions seemed to do a good job making their best decisions, and generally did a decent, but not perfect job.
As to whether the details of Buddy Moore's story is correct, I really have no way to know. Maybe he would have gotten the contract this year without ARRA, but maybe he wouldn't because government revenues were plummeting. Maybe they forced Moore to fill out paper work in a post-hoc request or maybe Moore just didn't understand the obligations of the contract he agreed to.
This guy took the government's money voluntarily. I would think conservatives would empathize with the "my house my rules" attitude.
Plus, if the recipients don't like the paperwork, they don't have to accept the government's money.
So in Buddy Moore's case, he is a stimulus grubbing greedy bastard because he sold a long term customer some boots. And following the statement to it's logical conclusion, when he had difficulty filling out the unsolicited paperwork, he should have demanded the Corp of Engineers return the boots and refunded their money.
Brilliant.
87% of all statistics are made up. 19% of people know that.
Lies, damned lies, ans statistics
about job creation.
Not to worry;
Texas is the new California.
Send us all the competent jobless,
and we will put them to work building
Relocation Centers for the hordes of
incompetent jobless who will flee
their failing welfare states when
the money goes away.
We will make you a really good deal
on the cost of warehousing them.
Clearly one anecdote makes fact about a statistical aggregate.
Two!
~~~
Financial Times
...Many universities, for example, are including tenured academics in their "jobs created and saved" numbers even though their jobs were already guaranteed for life.
Ms Smith, who is associate vice-chancellor for research administration at the University of California, Los Angeles and leads a team handling its stimulus awards, received guidance from the UC Office of the President saying she should include everyone paid by stimulus dollars, including tenured faculty members.
...it did avoid a very sticky problem: how can you know for sure whether a job would have disappeared were it not for stimulus money?
~~~
When in doubt, don't risk any error being on the "down" side.
Why in the hell are people like the shoe salesman required to fill out paper work? Why aren't we firing the people who designed this?
Maybe people are. In Virginia, NY23 and New Jersey.
Derek
Looks like another sucker who'll be the "Fall guy"!!!! His business, personal and property taxes will have to be increased to pay for the investigation into the unverifiable identities of the people in the "Boots on the ground" trumpeted as a successful money giveaway!!! He should have asked to see their birth certificates, but then again if they are working for the government, they wouldn't have to present it or any other documentation, just ask Obama!!! One thing about it, the government will get stimulation from him, through fines, tax increases and regulation!!! SUCKER!!!!