Here's a stimulus success story: In Arizona's 15th congressional district, 30 jobs have been saved or created with just $761,420 in federal stimulus spending. At least that's what the Web site set up by the Obama administration to track the $787 billion stimulus says.
There's one problem, though: There is no 15th congressional district in Arizona; the state has only eight districts.
And ABC News has found many more entries for projects like this in places that are incorrectly identified.
Late Monday, officials with the Recovery Board created to track the stimulus spending, said the mistakes in crediting nonexistent congressional districts were caused by human error.
"We report what the recipients submit to us," said Ed Pound, Communications Director for the Board.
Pound told ABC News the board receives declarations from the recipients - state governments, federal agencies and universities - of stimulus money about what program is being funded.
"Some recipients clearly don't know what congressional district they live in, so they appear to be just throwing in any number. We expected all along that recipients would make mistakes on their congressional districts, on jobs numbers, on award amounts, and so on. Human beings make mistakes," Pound said.
The issue has raised hackles on Capitol Hill.
Rep. David Obey, D-Wisc, who chairs the powerful House appropriations Committee, issued a paper statement demanding that the recovery.gov Web site be updated.
"The inaccuracies on recovery.gov that have come to light are outrageous and the Administration owes itself, the Congress, and every American a commitment to work night and day to correct the ludicrous mistakes."
- Similarly though just posting an article and link, particularly as the first post in a thread, w/o any additional commentary to continue the dialog is discouraged. If it's good enough to post it's worth commenting on as well.
Dr Mabuse
11-17-09, 11:56 AM
I saw this on ABC last night and wondered if anyone would do a thread.
They showed the clip of ol' Joe saying you could track 'every dollar and see the jobs'. Then they went on and on and on with districts that didn't exist on the recovery.gov website and all the jobs and money that had been spent in them.
It was hilarious.
Now that they've been caught, the White House claims it was all an accident and human error.
:lol:
Venusian
11-17-09, 12:03 PM
I don't think the whitehouse is purposely making up data (I hope they aren't that stupid). But I do think the bureaucracy that is crunching the numbers is pretty lax on what constitutes a new/saved job. There was some local news about local data and they said how the people in D.C. they talked to said they should count raises as saved jobs so someone who got a small raise with stimulus funds counted as a saved job. Basically, someone is looking to pad their stats
flagstone
11-17-09, 12:04 PM
I took a look around on that site. I saw that they were claiming 30 "saved or created" jobs in the mythical 91st Texas congressional district as a result of spending about $57000. How great could these jobs be at $2000 per?
Dr Mabuse
11-17-09, 12:05 PM
Come on man, they are making up districts that didn't exists knowing people have no clue about such things and it would fool them.
It's pretty obvious.
They are claiming money spent has 'created jobs' in congressional districts all over the nation that don't exist.
Venusian
11-17-09, 12:10 PM
:lol:
We got some in GA too
00 congressional district 1 $2,288,376
86th congressional district 0 $1,668,656
25th congressional district 0 $854,193
21st congressional district 0 $725,000
19th congressional district 0 $422,795
14th congressional district 0 $257,790
27th congressional district
JOE29
11-17-09, 12:15 PM
I saw this on ABC last night and wondered if anyone would do a thread.
They showed the clip of ol' Joe saying you could track 'every dollar and see the jobs'. Then they went on and on and on with districts that didn't exist on the recover.org website and all the jobs and money that had been spent in them.
It was hilarious.
Now that they've been caught, the White House claims it was all an accident and human error.
:lol:
I saw that too. I jumped so high I almost hit the ceiling. It just keeps getting better and better. Just think if the other side had done this, they'd be crucified.
General Zod
11-17-09, 12:20 PM
Well give them a break they had to create the website on a shoe-string budget. Only $18 Million. Let's see you set up a web site with such a small budget!
kvrdave
11-17-09, 12:21 PM
Apologies.
The Bus
11-17-09, 12:43 PM
Well give them a break they had to create the website on a shoe-string budget. Only $18 Million. Let's see you set up a web site with such a small budget!
I went to recovery.gov and put my zip code in the View Recovery Information in Your Neighborhood box and that $18 million site sure isn't giving me info for my neighborhood. Other zips give the same info.
But when I downloaded the spreadsheet I did find that Tsar Nicoulai Caviar, LLC got a grant for $27,407.94 with no reason specified. That's a good use of tax money.
Superboy
11-17-09, 01:24 PM
I don't know how this could be a mistake. If it were a mistake, they would have just reported the wrong district, or the wrong number of jobs, or the wrong amount of money spent, not districts that don't exist.
Venusian
11-17-09, 01:29 PM
Instead of district 5 someone could have put 15. Or they might have put state house districts. Or they might have made them up because they don't know what district they are in.
If the site didn't suck, you could search for stuff by district and see a list of stuff for that district (instead of totals) and then see the address and see what district it should go to.
Dr Mabuse
11-17-09, 01:36 PM
I don't know how this could be a mistake. If it were a mistake, they would have just reported the wrong district, or the wrong number of jobs, or the wrong amount of money spent, not districts that don't exist.
Exactly.
It's not a mistake.
The Obama White House is obviously amateurish in many areas, including how to try and lie to 'the faithful' about policies they championed that failed miserably.
This grant award provides funding support for the following investments in public transportation: A) Performing preventive maintenance on existing bus and rail vehicles and facilities/infrastructure B) Purchase 18 replacement clean fuel buses with bike racks C) Partial funding to upgrade and replace the fire protection system (FPS) for MARTA transit stations, lines, and facilities. This project includes fire detection, suppression and notification systems D) Support for ADA Paratransit Operations E) Upgrade and rehabilitation of lighting within the MARTA rail system and a limited amount of security equipment
Total Award Amount $55,415,078
Jobs Created 832.16
Description of Jobs Created Grant expenditures for this quarter have funded the preventive maintenance of MARTA's transit vehicle fleet and facilities, as performed by in-house employees. For the quarter ended 9/30/09, this grant funded the Full Time Equivalent (FTE) of 832 existing (retained) positions/jobs at MARTA. Examples of these jobs include apprentice and journeymen mechanics and electronic technicians, inspectors, track maintainers and servicepersons.
So 55 mill was given. Some is used to buy buses other is used for maintenance. How do you compute how many jobs buying a bus creates? Hard to say, so you just divide the total grant amount by the avg salary (FTE) and you get number of jobs.
Superboy
11-17-09, 01:50 PM
Exactly.
It's not a mistake.
The Obama White House is obviously amateurish in many areas, including how to try and lie to 'the faithful' about policies they championed that failed miserably.
Well, what really sort of drives it home is that it didn't misreport the jobs. It reported them out of thin air. They weren't jobs that were indeed created in other districts; they were just made up.
This is like dead people voting.
maxfisher
11-17-09, 02:00 PM
I skimmed over the first 700 of 1,625 projects for Indiana. As I did so, I typed the estimated jobs created for each one into an Excel spreadsheet. Seems that while that chunk is about 43% of the total projects, it only accounts for 6,346 of the supposed 75,000 jobs created in our state. Strange, but maybe the last 57% has a much higher jobs-per-project ratio.
More interesting to me, I noticed there are a shitload of similar projects that each created 109 jobs for our state. Here are three examples of what I'm talking about:
http://www.recovery.org/projectdetails.aspx?pid=AMD:10938423&gloc=Indiana*IN
http://www.recovery.org/projectdetails.aspx?pid=RFP:10931647&gloc=Indiana*IN
http://www.recovery.org/projectdetails.aspx?pid=BID:10931654&gloc=Indiana*IN
From what I can tell, these projects are an Indiana firm completing work in other states (Montana, New York, Vermont, Texas and Maine to be precise). Funnily enough, each of these projects is credited to multiple states, with both Indiana and the state the work's being done in being credited with 109 jobs and $10,000,000 in stimulus. So is each of these a project that is supposed to create 109 jobs and they're double counting? Or are these projects each supposed to create 218 jobs and they're just splitting them evenly across both states? Either way, it seems like a piss poor way of accurately estimating anything.
Venusian
11-17-09, 02:10 PM
wow, recovery.org is much easier to use than recovery.gov
I don't get this. Is it just random money to pay for jobs? How does that much money pay for 42 jobs?
wishbone
11-17-09, 02:20 PM
So is each of these a project that is supposed to create 109 jobs and they're double counting? Or are these projects each supposed to create 218 jobs and they're just splitting them evenly across both states? Either way, it seems like a piss poor way of accurately estimating anything.http://i50.tinypic.com/2r73lew.jpg
It's simply a matter of creative accounting.
X
11-17-09, 02:20 PM
wow, recovery.org is much easier to use than recovery.govAnd after looking at their financial statements it's pretty hard to believe that they paid anywhere near $18 million for their site.
maxfisher
11-17-09, 02:53 PM
Ok. For Indiana, recovery.org has $1,336,434,044 going to 1,187 projects to create 75,000 jobs. Supposedly they add projects as soon as the gov't has approved funding. recovery.gov shows Indiana being approved for $3,046,340,000 ($848,420,000 dispersed), going to 2,170 projects to create 18,876 jobs. Huge discrepancies, but who knows which to trust less. recovery.gov shows Indiana getting $3.27 million from the Dept. of Homeland Security, with Maine getting $9.19 million. Given that recovery.org has multiple $10 million Dept. of HS projects listed for both states, clearly one or the other is off by a lot.
Also, regarding the original story, recovery.gov shows a total of about $5 million going to Indiana's 18th, 00, 10th, 14th and 11th congressional districts, none of which exist. I tried looking up more info on that site, but it's such an incredibly slow, unintuitive and buggy piece of shit that it makes it about impossible.
RoyalTea
11-17-09, 02:53 PM
so, the government is either intentionally deceptive or they're incompetent. yes, let's let that same government take over health care!
JOE29
11-17-09, 02:59 PM
so, the government is either intentionally deceptive or they're incompetent. yes, let's let that same government take over health care!
And don't forget who voted to e-x-p-a-n-d government too.
nemein
11-17-09, 03:26 PM
And don't forget who voted to e-x-p-a-n-d government too.
-ohbfrank- Trick question... both parties have done that in recent years.
OldDude
11-17-09, 07:18 PM
so, the government is either intentionally deceptive or they're incompetent. yes, let's let that same government take over health care!
If you think this is fuzzy accounting, wait until they still counting carbon atoms.
Hank Ringworm
11-18-09, 12:11 AM
"You lie!"
The Bus
11-18-09, 10:08 AM
If you think this is fuzzy accounting, wait until they still counting carbon atoms.
:lol:
Dr Mabuse
11-18-09, 11:01 AM
I just keeps getting better.
$1,000 was spent on a lawnmower, they credit that with saving 59 jobs on the site. A lot of that stuff on there too.
:lol:
kvrdave
11-18-09, 11:26 AM
So now they are counting illegal immigrant jobs saved as well.
orangecrush
11-19-09, 01:44 PM
What I don't get is why news sources didn't call out the white house on the "saved or created" wording many months ago. We could be down 10 million jobs and they could easily say "well, it would have been 15 million. Look, we saved 5 million jobs." What utter nonsense.
kvrdave
11-19-09, 01:59 PM
Just like How Reagan had people "going hungry" and now we have "food insecurity" I suppose.
Hank Ringworm
11-22-09, 03:02 AM
This is the extent of the outrage over this? Pretty sad.
Superboy
11-22-09, 05:25 AM
This is the extent of the outrage over this? Pretty sad.
It's because people are too busy directing their energy towards divisive political issues with no substance.
Superboy
11-22-09, 05:27 AM
So now they are counting illegal immigrant jobs saved as well.
Counting illegal immigrant jobs in the first place a wildly speculative measure. As is the idea that so-and-so number of American jobs have been lost to them.
sracer
11-22-09, 09:03 AM
Counting illegal immigrant jobs in the first place a wildly speculative measure. As is the idea that so-and-so number of American jobs have been lost to them.
And yet politicians are so certain about the number of illegal immigrants currently in this country.
wm lopez
11-23-09, 03:10 AM
I saw this on ABC last night and wondered if anyone would do a thread.
They showed the clip of ol' Joe saying you could track 'every dollar and see the jobs'. Then they went on and on and on with districts that didn't exist on the recovery.gov website and all the jobs and money that had been spent in them.
It was hilarious.
Now that they've been caught, the White House claims it was all an accident and human error.
:lol: I was waiting also to see if a thread would be started here in DVDTALK. I don't know which surprised me more that the thread was started or that FOXNEWS didn't break the story.
RoyalTea
11-25-09, 08:08 AM
$890 spent on 9 pairs of work boots has CREATED 9 jobs (http://www.recovery.gov/Transparency/Pages/RecipientProjectSummary.aspx?AwardIDSUR=27434&PopId=19675).
I can't believe this isn't a bigger story in the mainstream media.
RoyalTea
11-25-09, 09:48 AM
Hawaii received $2,284,000 million of federal stimulus funds for the 11th Congressional district, $40,903,941 million for the 15th Congressional district, $1,651,811 for the “00” Congressional district, and $799,656 in the 99th congressional district creating a combined “3.4” jobs or $13,423,355 per job, according to the federal government’s transparency web site for stimulus funds.
And in the two congressional districts that actually exist, it looks like each job created cost about half a million bucks each.
kvrdave
11-25-09, 11:43 AM
Counting illegal immigrant jobs in the first place a wildly speculative measure. As is the idea that so-and-so number of American jobs have been lost to them.
I was joking.
fujishig
11-25-09, 02:25 PM
Hawaii received $2,284,000 million of federal stimulus funds for the 11th Congressional district, $40,903,941 million for the 15th Congressional district, $1,651,811 for the “00” Congressional district, and $799,656 in the 99th congressional district creating a combined “3.4” jobs or $13,423,355 per job, according to the federal government’s transparency web site for stimulus funds.
And in the two congressional districts that actually exist, it looks like each job created cost about half a million bucks each.
Maybe they were actually honest about how many jobs were created (as opposed to "saved" or made up). I'm sure if you checked CA, and took out all the jobs that wouldn't have been lost if the stimulus money wasn't there, the number would be really, really low.
Hasn't the administration already given up trying to push even the fake number of jobs created or saved, and instead produced fake numbers based on a "trickle down" effect? That's how they reach 1 million, right?
Recovery.gov, the Obama administration’s supposedly transparent attempt to let citizens know how every dollar of the $787 billion stimulus package was spent, is turning out to be a lot more comic fiction than fact.
Not only have fake jobs been reported in phantom congressional districts, Steve Allen Adams of NewMexicoWatchdog.org discovered that some of the $27 million of federal money his state received also went to nonexistent zip codes:
“Closer examination of the latest recovery.gov report for New Mexico shows hundreds of thousands of dollars sent to and credited with creating jobs in zip codes that do not exist in New Mexico or anywhere else. Moreover, funds reported as being spent in New Mexico were given zip codes corresponding to areas in Washington and Oregon.”
The next quarterly report by the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board - the federal agency in charge of tracking stimulus dollars that responded to the fake congressional district scandal by labeling them “unassigned” - is due January 30.
As much as $9.5 million in federal stimulus dollars went to 14 zip codes in Virginia that don’t exist or are in other states, Old Dominion Watchdog (http://virginia.watchdog.org) reports. The fake zip codes were listed on Recovery.gov, the federal Web site that is supposed to track how the stimulus money is being used.
The phony zip codes are a new wrinkle in Recovery.gov’s increasingly tattered credibility. In November, Ed Pound, director of communications for the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, said a rash of phantom congressional districts found on the website were the result of confusion by fund recipients, who apparently didn’t know who their congressman was.
But who would give millions of dollars to somebody who doesn’t even know their own zip code?
People make mistakes. That's pretty obvious. But when millions are being sent out, it doesn't seem like it should take long to fix the mistakes
Venusian
01-06-10, 04:07 PM
Eh. looks like there are tons of them: http://watchdog.org/2010/01/06/phantom-zips-zap-stimulus-funds/
RoyalTea
01-06-10, 04:29 PM
Honest mistake?
or deliberate fraud?
Birrman54
01-06-10, 04:35 PM
While I'm sure there's plenty of fraud to go around - I think this quote applies "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."
OldDude
01-06-10, 04:43 PM
Eh. looks like there are tons of them: http://watchdog.org/2010/01/06/phantom-zips-zap-stimulus-funds/
The summary at the bottom of your link shows millions pissed away creating zero jobs. That should perhaps be a concern too. How do they decide whether to accept or reject a request? I would think jobs per million dollars would be a criteria. It would also seem like the zip code should be right if you want the check to arrive. I can understand Congressional district being wrong.
spainlinx0
01-06-10, 07:29 PM
How do I get some of this money? I want to open a bar. I will create many skimpy female bartender jobs, and DVDTalkers will drink half price.
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