A year's worth of fuzzy or made-up numbers

Stimulus, They Cried - Jonah Goldberg - The Corner on National Review Online

(Here are a few notes from the piece by Cantor referred to below--use the link to original for monthly jobs lost, and the unemployment rates):

From Eric Cantor's shop (PDF):

As we looked back over the past year of the Democrats’ Stimulus, two reoccurring themes emerged:

1. Every time the Administration or Congressional Democrats would claim credit for some number of jobs created or saved, a subsequent fact-check would debunk the claim

2. The unemployment rate kept marching upward.

...March 4, 2009: CNN reports on the controversy surrounding the first Recovery Act project in a segment titled “A New ‘Bridge to Nowhere.’”

...March 16, 2009: Press reports indicate that even Recovery Act “Czar” Earl Devaney is questioning the state-by-state jobs figures released by the Administration

...April 13, 2009: The Administration announces 2,000th Recovery Act project, but an ABC News fact check reveals that far fewer projects are actually underway.

...May 12, 2009: Reports begin to surface of dead people, some deceased for 40 years or more, receiving $250 stimulus checks.

...May 27, 2009: President Obama marks the 100 day anniversary of the Recovery Act by claiming that 150,000 jobs have been saved or created.

May 29, 2009: Politifact.com reports on the President’s claim of 150,000 jobs created or saved, saying it is “not much better than a guess presented as a fact.”

...July 31, 2009: ProPublica checks in on the Democrats’ claim of 48,000 highway and transit jobs created or sustained and says the estimate suffers from “fuzzy math.”

...October 29, 2009: Associated Press analysis reveals that the 30,883 job count previously released by the Administration overstated the jobs created or saved. “The AP review found some counts were more than 10 times as high as the actual number of jobs; some jobs credited to the stimulus program were counted two and sometimes more than four times; and other jobs were credited to stimulus spending when none was produced.”

October 30, 2009: Administration announcesRecovery Act has saved or created 640,329 total jobs.

...November 19, 2009: Administration confirmsthat they cannot confirm their claim that 640,329 jobs were saved or created by the Recovery Act.

...December 18, 2009: Administration sends out a memo saying they will no longer count jobs created or saved, but instead count jobs funded in whole or in part by the Recovery Act.

(DP: Keep this all in mind upon hearing that Gov. Terminator claimed Republicans were wrong to oppose the stimulus because  California alone has 150,000 jobs from it.)

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MTJjY2M0M2YxODBlODBkNmY3M2ZmYTU3M2IyMWY1Y2I=