The Swine Line

Despite a sustained rash of news articles that the 640,000 jobs that the Obama Administration claims it “saved or created” is as phony as a $3 bill, there appears to be a willful refusal to make any corrections on their website touting the success.

We pointed out that the Obama Administration had a problem with counting here, here and here.

Here are some more examples that have been brought to the attention of the Obama Administration that they continue to ignore.  The reporters at the Sacramento Bee just scratched the surface of the numbers and look at what they found.

Up to one-fourth of the 110,000 jobs reported as saved by federal stimulus money in California probably never were in danger, a Bee review has found.

California State University officials reported late last week that they saved more jobs with stimulus money than the number of jobs saved in Texas – and in 44 other states.

California State University (CSU) system claimed they were only following the guidelines for reporting given them by the federal government.

They determined that CSU’s stimulus funds equaled the pay of roughly 26,000 full-time employees for the two months following the allocation, May and June, and reported that as the number of jobs saved.

Given CSU’s large payroll, the system would need to receive another $1 billion or more to keep funding those jobs for an entire year. But about half of the money California expects to receive under the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund – the stimulus dollars funding the university jobs – already has been spent.

In a follow-up article, Laura Chick, the California Inspector General for overseeing stimulus funds going to the state found more problems with stimulus money that went to the California Economic Development Department.

Chick said she will also look at job figures reported by the California Economic Development Department showing 12,000 FTE positions created through a skills training program. That program, Chick said she had been told, was not meant to create reportable jobs. “These were temporary jobs, just for the summer,” Chick said.

Reporters with the Boston Globe also uncovered phony job numbers.  They found a number of problems. 

While Massachusetts recipients of federal stimulus money collectively report 12,374 jobs saved or created, a Globe review shows that number is wildly exaggerated. Organizations that received stimulus money miscounted jobs, filed erroneous figures, or claimed jobs for work that has not yet started.

But in interviews with recipients, the Globe found that several openly acknowledged creating far fewer jobs than they have been credited for.

Some were simple exaggerations of the number of jobs created.  Others were more incidious.  The Obama Administration decided that funding received annually from an existing federal program could be shuffled to a stimulus bill program causing the miraculous saving of an existing job!

They found problems throughout the state of Massachusetts.

One of the largest reported jobs figures comes from Bridgewater State College, which is listed as using $77,181 in stimulus money for 160 full-time work-study jobs for students. But Bridgewater State spokesman Bryan Baldwin said the college made a mistake and the actual number of new jobs was “almost nothing.’’ Bridgewater has submitted a correction, but it is not yet reflected in the report.

There were more problems in housing stimulus money.

Massachusetts property owners received $75.5 million in rental subsidies from the stimulus bill, for a reported total of 437 jobs. Recipients of 27 of the 87 contracts reported zero jobs. The others, meanwhile, simply reported the number of employees working at the property. If they received two contracts, for a larger property, they reported the employee figure twice.

For example, Plumley Village East in Worcester listed 23 jobs for each of its two contracts for a total of 46 jobs, even though it has only 23 employees working throughout the complex.

Here is another example of Obama Administration bait-and-switch.

Robert Ercolini manages a 201-unit affordable housing development in Plymouth. After being notified his annual rental subsidies were classified as stimulus spending, Ercolini renewed a request to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development for more than $1 million to fix up the property, reasoning he would be creating jobs by hiring contractors. He was refused.

“After HUD denied me money to make needed improvements and actually create jobs,’’ Ercolini said, “it’s really funny to find out in September that I’ve been receiving stimulus funds all along and they want to know how many jobs we’ve saved or created.’’

By his count, the answer is: “No jobs.’’

This is curious because recovery.gov is reporting this project as “creating” 18 jobs eventhough the recipient specifically reported.

No new jobs created as Boston Office of HUD denied request to do infrastructure funding for critically needed replacements.

The Obama Administration continues to play Catch Me If You Can.