recovery.gov

well its good to know that $1,350,000 was spent to "create or save" 0.1 jobs in California's 64th congressional district...:rolleyes:

Self reporting info, they just posted what was given to them. The jobs were created, the congressional district was wrong because some foreman in upstate California was dumb.

The numbers on that site are laughable. Not only is it near impossible to calculate (every administration does it, not just taggin Obama here), but it's such a stupid question to ask. The right question is "How many of these jobs were "created" as a direct result of stimulus, and how many of them would've been created without the stimulus.

The whole "create and save" thing is really a genius move for a President. No matter what happens to the economy, you can never measure how many jobs you've saved, but you can measure employment data from Time A to Time B. Regardless of how well the economy is doing, he can still say that 600,000 jobs were created (even if more people are currently becoming unemployed).

It's a good way to not be held accountable

i think i am more perterbed by the 1350000 that it took to create 0.1 jobs than the fictional disrict. seriously? over a million dollars to create 1/10th of a job? there has got to be some botched numbers in there somewhere?

Again, these are not the administration's numbers. These are self-reported numbers from the individual districts, and are only reported by those that acquired money from the stimulus directly.

Person A gets money. Person A is required to fill out a form that says how many jobs they gave from this money. Person A is retarded and says he's from the 65th district of California.

These numbers can be directly attributed to the Stimulus. The .1 jobs or whatever are added up from part time positions, according to how many hours they would work compared to a full time worker.

These numbers are not padded. They are very forthcoming about districts that received hundreds of millions of dollars, and created/saved NO jobs. I think that's one of the biggest differences between this administration and previous ones.

Oh, come on! The site has become a laughing stock and the fact that the administration is pointing to the data as evidence of "saved" jobs when millions have lost their's this year is hilarious. This isn't about transparency. It is about using ridiculous data to back up ludicrous claims.

To me it really doesn't matter. At this point, it's just par for the course.

What is a saved job? Does anybody know?

A job that wasn't lost.

That could be every job in the United States that, as you said, wasn't lost.

I would argue that "saving" a job means keep a job position that was under immediate and significant threat of being removed. Yes, any job in America short of tenured professionals are at risk of losing their job. That doesn't mean it's immediate, or significant. It's more like your boss coming in, saying he has to fire someone this month, and then coming back in saying the job was saved. That's saving a job.

i guess it just bothers me that the government is touting these numbers as concrete and saying "look at all these jobs we have saved/created!" then when asked about discrepancies in the data they claim "oh wait we are simply reporting what is being reported too us! these are not our numbers!" its like the reality of the situation does not even matter so long as they are viewed as "better than the last administration"

Failed administration. He didn't fix the economy. I'm voting for the other guy! He'll fix the economy.

Dude, the reason we're not in a 1930s style depression all posting from Hoovervile shanty towns is because this time round governments responded exactly as they should've done in the 1930s. Letting the banks collapse would destroy the economy and unemployment would be through the roof. Capitalism for the poor, socialism for the rich - that's how the system works.



This is a graph from the Congressional Budget Office showing what would and would not have happened were it not for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the solid line showing the drop in GDP without the ARRA and the two dotted lines showing the two estimates of the effect of the ARRA.

Just like the 1930s, the collapse of a bank affects the entire world - only this time, it would affect everyone much faster and much worse. Globalisation is both the cause of neoliberal prosperity and financial interdependence. Obama could have closed off international trade and adopt a protectionist stance which would probably create domestic jobs faster, but instead he used the stimulus package to save the banks and offer long-term economic stability (though certain policies with respect to China do seem somewhat protectionist).

It will take a while before the recovery is fully realised, but the long-term economic policy is sound.

Screw your graphs and your GDPs and your Wall Street Hollywood mumbo jumbo. I just want the economy fixed, or I'm voting the The Other Guy.

i am not going to argue weather or not government spending can create long term stability. honestly i dont know enough about economics to effectively argue point for point with you right now. i am simply saying the claims by the government that they have in fact saved/created X number of jobs while in the same breath saying the numbers "are not their numbers" and that they are basically at the mercy of local people feeding them this inaccurate info is disingenuous at the best of times. it completely undermines their attempts at "transparency"

Does one hacked Wikipedia article undermine everything on Wikipedia? Is everything on Wikipedia worthless because of it?

if there was an "owner" of wikipedia that knew[/i] that there was some shenanigans going on with that article and not only posted it anyways but touted it as evidence of how awesome wikipedia is then i would say... yes?

This is also what unemployment was predicted by Obama's team with and without the recovery plan (I can bring out cool graphs too!). Obama's "create or save" plan is based on policy simulation. Under their model of the economy at the time, they predicted that their stimulus would create or save jobs (I think 4 million was the number Obama gave as his metric of success). There is no problem in saying that based on their policy simulation of the economy at the time, we believe we have saved "this many jobs". There is a problem saying that they somehow calculated the number of jobs saved or created as a direct result of the stimulus, because it is immeasurable, and not to mention the economy changes over time and today's economy was not the economy months ago.


And regarding longterm economic policy, I don't know how one can say at this point it's exactly "sound". We've yet to see how health care is going to work out. We are still in the hole in debt pretty much. The economy right now is at a standstill with the Central Bank cornered with a near zero interest rate that they WILL have to rise eventually (people will be pissed then after so long with little interest rate). Banks that we have saved keep asking for even MORE money.

OH MY GOD, THE TOP DOT IS OFF THE CHART:psyduck:

A portion of the stimulus bill went to state governments suffering budget deficits. For example, in my home state of Florida tax revenues declined significantly 2008-2009, by almost 13%. In order to balance the state budget, our state government would be forced to cut jobs. Instead, the stimulus money helped cover some of that deficit, and thus people's jobs were saved from being cut.

In economic parlance, that part of the chart is known as OH **** WE'RE TOTALLY ****ED

I know what they're doing and it's clear that it would work (since most of the jobs they profess to have saved are not profit-earning) but I think the "saved jobs" rhetoric bears a very disingenuous and untrue implication of saving jobs in the private sector. Which isn't possible.

You can throw billions of dollars at a sane businessman and he's still not going to produce outside of the cost/revenue function that's already earning him the maximum profit. He's definitely not going to make major capital investments (i.e. hiring) while total wealth is in free-fall, either.

Note that the financial and car companies did the exact opposite.

You mean the companies that the government told what they must do.

Aww.

No, I mean the financial firms who got a no-strings-attached bundle of money from the Republicans before Obama took office and spent it on office renovations and private jets.

I also mean the labor union-owned car companies that continued to manufacture and stockpile cars at their normal rate, even though they weren't selling, until the government intervened.

Yeah, because the two companies that the government "intervened" with are doing so much better than the one that avoided said intervention.

And what Republicans were in charge before Obama took office? The democrats in congress had been running things for years at that point. Not that liberal Republicans are any better than liberal democrats, though.

What you are suggesting is that those industries are failing because the government intervened.

What is happening in reality is that those industries needed the government to intervene because they are failing.

Correlation =/=> Causation.

Edit: I know you're terrified of the carpetbaggers and the 'northern agitators' and all but that doesn't excuse the fact that your exact unmodified argument can be used to prove that surgeons are all murderers. Your logic doesn't work. Your logic never works.

Neither does "the government had to act". The neccessity to act does not excuse poor actions taken. It is interesting that my logic never makes sense to you however the clearly mismanaged steps our government (and by that I mean the government of my countrymen and mine, clearly not yours) has taken apparantly seem so logical to you.

And I guess you're going to have to illustrate how you can make the exact, unmodified, argument about surgeons being murderers. Oh, is it that the government "operated" on GM and Chrysler and succeeded in "killing" them and Ford avoided the "operation" and is still alive? Even if a surgeon kills a patient in an attempt to save their life it is not the same as intending to kill the patient.

Funny how you never posted anything like this...

But that doesn't make any sense. The Taliban supported and harbored the enemy that attacked us on 9/11 and several previous times and the previous administration made a judgment call on Iraq. Things probably would have turned out better for us if we just "killed" them but we are attempting to rebuild them and help instill functioning governments and infrastructure. In that regard Iraq was never going to be as hard as Afghanistan.

/end derail of the derail

.

War sucks. Sorry we don't have floral ammunition in our inventory.

So you defend your stance by basically saying "don't be a pussy"?

I wasn't trying to derail the thread, either, I was simply pointing out how easily your argument can be deconstructed. And it wasn't hard.

But there are not any "correct" actions when it comes to war. So unless you are making the case that BHO's figurative war on the economy is the same as the literal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is no comparison.

Are we really still doing the whole "Barack Hussein Obama" thing?

I didn't say it was the same. What I'm pointing out is you use an argument which you would disagree (under other circumstances) with to justify criticism of Obama's economic policy. It's another one of those scenarios where the Neo-Cons like to sit around and say "it's being done wrong!" even though you don't care to address how it should be done right.

And when I throw it in your face that the same argument can be made for things you support, you simply come back with "well there is no "correct" way to do that." There is always a correct way to do things. It usually ends with things NOT being in a giant cluster**** after 8 years.

But, as usual, you won't give this time to see if it works out. He's been given almost a whole year and everything isn't perfect. What a failure. We should really start giving the POTUS more than one year to do his job before we elect a new one[/sarcasm]

Where was this criticism a few years ago, when the administration seemed to be doing everything in its power to actively ruin the United States in the eyes of every country in the world? Or when this economic downturn started? Oh, but of course, the economic downturn started when Clinton was in office is what I'm sure you'll say. Because the economy looked so bad in those years.

The problem with Republicans these days is that you let labels define your criticisms. He's a liberal, so he's a ****up in your eyes. Nothing Obama does will ever be good enough for you and that's just the way it is. It wouldn't matter if he created world peace... he'd still be a pinko commie liberal.

I think it's more the fact that as someone who didn't vote for Obama (I actually didn't vote this election, I didn't like anyone), it gives someone an immense amount of pleasure for him to basically have not accomplished anything that his supporters voted him in for. It's funny to see the backlash among his own supporters (under 50% approval I think now) because they were that stupid in the first place to think that he would accomplish everything with the snap of his fingers (OBAMA GONNA PAY FOR MY GAS!). Shows how the public is a fickle mistress (and also how caught up everyone was with CHANGE). The one thing he actually DID give a deadline for was Guantanamo, and looks like that is not happening.

I see no problem with someone criticizing the administration right now as it stands. Yeah, of course, things will happen in the future, but does that mean we aren't allowed to criticize in the present? I'd rather people be critical of him than give him a free pass in the meantime. Just because there are still 3 years left of his Presidency doesn't mean that we can't be critical on the stimulus currently (especially one designed for the short-run).

As of right now, I wouldn't say he's a ****-up, but he's certainly not making a name for himself. Could he end up being the best president evar??!! Sure, but as of right now, not looking like it, and there's absolutely no problem with saying that.

It's an abbreviation, get over it. Do you get so squeamish every time someone uses GWB? Besides, he is the one running all over the place using his full name to establish credibility.



Actually, I'm a conservative although I realize that radical left wingers like to try to discredit everyone right of center by calling them "Neo-Cons". I had always been quite vocal on what I viewed as solutions to problems here but this place is so hostile to conservative views that I simply ceased to do so as much. Still, rather than attacking me for not offering some solution (to what, I don't know) you could simply ask.

With regards to BHO's economic policy, there aren't really any historical examples of it ever working but there are several that show the opposite working. The closest you can probably get to showing a demonstrated effect of policy similar to his would be FDR's policies essentially prolonging the depression until the military industrial machinations of WWII drug us out of it.



Yeah, if you want a "nice" end to the war we simply destroy the countries. But that isn't how you prosecute wars today. It also isn't as simple to accomplish what we did in WWII because once the military and governments of those countries was defeated, there was still a solid, rational foundation from which new, functioning governments could spring. Iraq was much closer to that with a decent infrastructure but, of course, Afghanistan lacked all of that and both suffered from the power hungry tribal, gang, mob sort of mentalities of those cultures.

Of course I haven't agreed with all the actions taken in either location. I have never said that I have and, in fact, have said the opposite. That doesn't contradict anything on my dislike of BHO policy.



Why would I give [socialism, fascism, Marxism] time to see if it works out? When it does what will have succeeded is diminished freedom in this country. You can see the solid, incremental changes as they have taken place. I want him to fail in everything he is attempting to do because everything he is attempting to do is unconstitutional. I would fully support an amendment to our Constitution that would require the constitutionality of each bill to be certified before it can ever be voted on.



You should know that I could care less what "every country in the world" thinks about us. I've also been quite vocal on my belief that the debt minded mentality at every level of our society is what is responsible, in part, for this economic condition. That is not limited to any single administration although, you are correct, that the recession did begin while Clinton was in office. That was probably mostly due to the fact that so much of the economy was "fake" back then anyway. Everybody was getting rich on paper but when that went away all they were left with were the bills.



Yeah, pretty much.

the problem with this argument is that people use GWB to differentiate him from his father, GB, or GHWB, not to throw suspicion on him and trying to link him to dictators and terrorists.

also, i find it interesting that suddenly Wookie is an expert on constitutional law...

Why does anyone still take Wookie seriously?

He's shown no signs of changing his policies. Anything he does wrong is automatically blamed on George W. Bush. They both have done the same thing to fix the economy: wasteful spending.



Wookie's not doing that as far as I can tell. BHO is just an abbreviation, like FDR, JFK, or GWB. Are we supposed to just act like he doesn't have a middle name? I have no problem with his name being Barack Hussein, but it seems we're being told not to use the middle name.