Answers? You want Answers?

From ABC News blog The Note:
Key House Dem Wants Answers on Recovery.gov Errors

Hours after ABC's Jonathan Karl reported on government data showing hundreds of created jobs and millions of dollars spent in congressional districts that don't exist, House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, D-Wis., late Monday issued a blistering statement demanding an immediate fix to "ludicrous mistakes" on the Recovery.gov Website.
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This issue was raised on Monday with this post:

The Magically Appearing Stimulus Jobs
ABC News’ Rick Klein reports: We’ve long been wondering what taxpayers would get for their$18 million Website redesign at Recovery.gov. ABC’s Jonathan Karl is reporting on one thing we never guessed might have been purchased: Jobs created in congressional districts that do not exist.
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Jobs Report-How Very Inflated

Don Surber wraps it up in this Daily Mail article.

Newspapers rise and fact-check The Won

It began with the Associated Press:

“But the 30,000 figure is overstated by thousands — at the very least by nearly 5,000, or one in six, based on AP’s limited review of some of the contracts — because some federal agencies and recipients of the money provided incorrect job counts. The review found some counts were more than 10 times as high as the actual number of jobs; some jobs were credited to stimulus spending when, in fact, none was produced.”

And it continued in California.

The Sacramento Bee: “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… In a required state report to the federal government, the university system said the $268.5 million it received in stimulus funding through October allowed it to retain 26,156 employees.

And in Colorado.

The Denver Post: “The federal government reported Friday that Colorado created or saved 8,094 jobs through grants, loans and contracts funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Problem is, the figure is wrong, according to an analysis of recovery.gov data by The Denver Post. Although a Colorado Springs Head Start program reported it had created or preserved 269 jobs, the real number was three, according to an interview with a program manager.”

And in New York.

And in Georgia.

And in Texas.

And in south Carolina.

And in Florida.

Now as unemployment surges past 10% on its way to who knows where — 15%? — the administration scrambled for cover. Lost in all the math is how paltry 650,000 jobs is in a nation of 15,700,000 unemployed people.

The press is starting to wake up, smell the incompetence and do the math.

Read it all  here. via Lucianne.

The AP says Administration "Overstated" Stimulus Jobs

Can you believe it? Not that it was overstated, that the AP fact checked it.
Read it here.

White House Readies a Stealth Stimulus

I love it when the mainstream left-laying* media points out the truth.

See the TIME online article here -- calling it for what it is -- Stealth Stimulus. The Obamam Administration is not going to like that blatant truth-in-media behavior. Those trend-buckers at TIME are such renegades. They may get themselves put on the same list as FOX News. (yeah, right).

Read the story here.
http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1930932,00.html?cnn=yes

*They're not leaning, they're all the way prone.

My grandson is in Afghanistan and they did WHAT???

From the Washington Times:

U.S. troop funds diverted to pet projects

Study finds $2.6 billion taken from guns and ammunition

Senators diverted $2.6 billion in funds in a defense spending bill to pet projects largely at the expense of accounts that pay for fuel, ammunition and training for U.S. troops, including those fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to an analysis.

Among the 778 such projects, known as earmarks, packed into the bill: $25 million for a new World War II museum at the University of New Orleans and $20 million to launch an educational institute named after the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat.

While earmarks are hardly new in Washington, "in 30 years on Capitol Hill, I never saw Congress mangle the defense budget as badly as this year," said Winslow Wheeler, a former Senate staffer who worked on defense funding and oversight for both Republicans and Democrats. He is now a senior fellow at the Center for Defense Information, an independent research organization.

Sen. Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican, called the transfer of funds from Pentagon operations and maintenance "a disgrace."

"The Senate is putting favorable headlines back home above our men and women fighting on the front lines," he said in a statement.

the General Electric Political Action Committee

From the Washington Examiner:
Leaked e-mail shows how GE puts the government to work for GE
by Timothy P. Carney

The intersection between GE's interests and government action is clearer than ever," General Electric Vice Chairman John G. Rice wrote in an Aug. 19 e-mail to colleagues.

Rice was calling on his co-workers to join the General Electric Political Action Committee. "GEPAC is an important tool that enables GE employees to collectively help support candidates who share the values and goals of GE."

The full letter suggests that "share the values and goals of GE" really means "support policies that profit the company."

Read it all here.

Daschle's Dealings

From the New York Times:
Daschle Has Ear of White House and Industry
by David D. Kirkpatrick

Six months have passed since the morning when Tom Daschle, the former Senate Democratic leader, under fire for not paying certain taxes, called President Obama in his study off the Oval Office to withdraw his nomination as health secretary and reform czar.

But these days it often seems as if Mr. Daschle never left the picture. With unrivaled ties on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, he talks constantly with top White House advisers, many of whom previously worked for him.

He still speaks frequently to the president, who met with him as recently as Friday morning in the Oval Office. And he remains a highly paid policy adviser to hospital, drug, pharmaceutical and other health care industry clients of Alston & Bird, the law and lobbying firm.

Now the White House and Senate Democratic leaders appear to be moving toward a blueprint for overhauling the health system, centered on nonprofit insurance cooperatives, that Mr. Daschle began promoting two months ago as a politically feasible alternative to a more muscular government-run insurance plan.

It is an idea that happens to dovetail with the interests of many Alston & Bird clients, like the insurance giant UnitedHealth and the Tennessee Hospital Association. And it is drawing angry cries of accommodation from more liberal House Democrats bent on including a public insurance plan.

If you have the stomach for it, read the rest.

Are we "Reapeating the Mistakes of Japan's Lost Decade?"

An editorial in the Washington Examiner says we are.

Here's something that ought to scare the daylights out of everybody: After Japan's stock and real estate markets collapsed in 1991, government officials made a series of disastrous policy decisions that prevented the world's second largest economy from recovering for more than a decade. Starting with the closing months of the Bush administration and continuing now with President Obama, America is making the exact same mistakes today.

Read it all, it looks as though we are making the same serious mistakes.

Links for Monday

Unintended consequences this would be funny if it didn't cause us so much trouble and expense in the first place. It is just pressure to take us back to horse and buggy days, and we don't want that kind of pollution. In the enviornmentalist opinion the CO2 we exhale is a bad thing.

Those enhanced interrogation techniques have done more than were reported by the Washington Post, today they had to backtrack with a new article. Via Power Line

Newsbusters has an article on Walter Cronkite you may want to read. If you want more Media Research Center has it.

The birth Certificate issue reared it's head. It is a short video via Gateway Pundit.
I think someone was surprised! Mike Castle is a representative from Delaware, "Gee, I wonder what his party is?" Anyone want to guess?

From Instapundit some links:
Obama Care and the Tea Party Effect by Donald Douglas.
Best Ham Sandwich Evah, just heard Rush reading about this one, too. Ham + Pork!
Finally the New York Times is going after Murtha! follow the money.
A roundup of videos of health care protests.

There is so much to keep up with and it's beginning to look like we may have a chance to turn it around. We just have to get out there and email, call and show up on the doorstep, in some cases, our elected officials.