By Thomas Sowell, National Review

 Obama’s economic sedative

Abraham Lincoln once asked an audience how many legs a dog has, if you called the tail a leg? When the audience said “five,” Lincoln corrected them, saying that the answer was four. “The fact that you call a tail a leg does not make it a leg.”

That same principle applies today. The fact that politicians call something a “stimulus” does not make it a stimulus. The fact that they call something a “jobs bill” does not mean there will be more jobs.

What have been the actual consequences of all the hundreds of billions of dollars that the government has spent? The idea behind the spending is that it will cause investors to invest, lenders to lend, and employers to employ.

That was called “pump priming.” To get a pump going, people put a little water into it, so that the pump will start pumping out a lot of water. In other words, government money alone was never supposed to restore the economy by itself. It was supposed to get the private sector spending, lending, investing, and employing.

The question is: Is that what has actually happened?

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Reuters

 Obama and his team are trying to convince the public… evidently the evidence contradicts them

Obama and Vice President Joe Biden launched a sweeping effort to convince skeptical Americans that the stimulus has been beneficial on the one-year anniversary of a plan that was pushed through the U.S. Congress by Democratic majorities.

Obama, in a White House speech, said he believed the stimulus will save or create 1.5 million jobs in 2010 after saving or creating as many as 2 million jobs thus far.

His point was to show that the stimulus, while admittedly unpopular, had the effect of keeping the U.S. economy from plunging into a second Great Depression.

"Our work is far from over but we have rescued this economy from the worst of this crisis," he said.

As Obama spoke, many administration officials were fanning out across the country this week to promote projects that have been funded by the stimulus to show Americans its results.

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By Floyd and Mary Beth Brown, Cagle Cartoons

 Obama’s second stimulus will be as ineffective as the first

The one-year anniversary of the inauguration of Barack Obama is upon us. After only 12 months he is struggling for political survival. The cause is his economic policies. The anniversary is a bitter pill for many unemployed workers to swallow. The jobs he promised, and many voted for, have proved to be a fleeting fantasy. The reality is that Obama’s uncontrolled spending and reckless borrowing have plunged us deeper into the worst recession since the Great Depression. The dire economic situation has only been exacerbated by Obama policy. The situation is only going to get worse if his new, expanded stimulus plan goes into effect.

Obama loves to blame former President Bush, claiming he inherited this horrendous recession. However, the facts show this just isn’t true. While the housing bubble burst in 2008, and a slight recession began in the Bush administration’s last year, it was nothing compared to the past year.

Since Obama took office, the nation is distressed watching more people lose their jobs. This spiraling recession has gone from mild downturn to disaster. Obama cavalierly declared during the early days of his term, that if Congress failed to pass his economic stimulus plan, the unemployment rate would climb above 8 percent. Congress believed him, giving him all the new spending he demanded by passing the $787 billion pork-laden stimulus bill. Yet the unemployment rate then promptly climbed to over 10 percent.

In December 2008, Bush’s last full month in office, unemployment stood at 7.4 percent. Actually, the picture under Obama is even bleaker than it appears. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the real unemployment rate is 17.3 percent when you take into account those discouraged and disheartened folks who have giving up on looking for work. And if unemployment figures were still calculated as they were in 1981, the first year of the Reagan term, unemployment now would be 21 percent.

To counteract his rapidly declining job-approval ratings, Obama has frantically started pushing a second spending package. This time he won’t call the bill a stimulus package or say where the spending will go. Obama and his press secretary are now selling it as a package of "targeted ideas that will have a positive effect on private hiring." Americans know big government spending plans don’t work. Obama is in a sticky predicament, and rather than openly running on his unpopular ideas, he is attempting to deceive the American people with new names for failed policies.

One of the unreported results of the original stimulus package is that it has wreaked havoc on state government budgets. It earmarked $200 billion in bailout cash to help balance state budgets. This policy is akin to giving an alcoholic a year’s supply of beer money. Yet, here we are a year later, and the combined deficit for states has reached a staggering $260 billion. Rather than using federal dollars to repair their balance sheets, states used the money to fund temporary fixes. Now these states are hooked like a drug addict and begging for another quick fix from Obama. If Obama bails these states out again, he will prolong the waste and forestall necessary reforms.

Obama is so preoccupied lobbying for his health care bill; he is neglecting to focus on job creation. Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson, who has supported Obama’s healthcare bill to the scorn of his constituents, has even expressed, “I think it was a mistake to take health care on as opposed to continuing to spend the time on the economy.”

As Obama considers this new spending package, which increases the debt burden, he is ignoring the advice of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Remember, this year Bush’s growth-promoting tax cuts are set to expire. The Chamber says if Obama allows the tax cuts to expire, then he will be setting up the stage for a double-dip recession. Obama is already stressing a weak economy.

If Obama wants to create jobs and improve the economy, he needs to create a stable and secure environment for companies. If Obama doesn’t realize the folly of his policies soon, his party will rightly deserve a strong rebuke from the American people in this November’s elections.

By Alexander Bolton, The Hill

 Obama gives $6 Million to Clintons former pollster

Nearly $6 million in stimulus money was paid to two firms run by Mark Penn, Hillary Clinton’s pollster in 2008.

Federal records show that $5.97 million from the $787 billion stimulus helped preserve three jobs at Burson-Marsteller, the global public-relations and communications firm headed by Penn.

Burson-Marsteller won the contract to work on a public-relations campaign to advertise the national switch from analog to digital television. Nearly $2.8 million of the contract was issued to Penn’s polling firm, Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates, according to federal records.

Federal records also show that a former adviser to President Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign received nearly $70,000 from that contract to help alert viewers in difficult-to-reach communities that their televisions would soon no longer receive broadcast signals.

The adviser, Alfredo J. Balsera, who heads a public-affairs firm based in Coral Gables, Fla., helped craft Obama’s Hispanic advertising message.

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by FOXNews

 Barack Obama says the real focus is jobs; well where exactly are they?

President Obama brushed off criticism over his administration’s inaccurate reporting on job creation Wednesday, telling Fox News the accounting is an "inexact science" and that any errors are a "side issue" when compared with the goal of turning the economy around. He said job growth is his No.1 responsibility.

The president was responding to criticism from Republicans, as well as Democratic Rep. David Obey, who drew attention to embarrassing errors on the Recovery.gov Web site that tracks stimulus funding. The site is under fire for claiming a number of jobs were created from the stimulus in congressional districts that don’t exist and accepting unrealistic and inflated jobs data from various sources.

Obama said he understood the "frustration" but said his focus has to be on accelerating job growth.

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By Bill McMorris, Franklin Center for Public Integrity

 The Stimulus is so great it is saving jobs for people who don’t even exist

Just how big is the stimulus package? Well for one, it has doubled the size of the House of Representatives, according to recovery.gov, which says that funds were distributed to 440 congressional districts that do not exist.

According to data retrieved from recovery.gov, nearly $6.4 billion was used to “create or save” just under 30,000 jobs in these phantom congressional districts–almost $225,000 per job. The web site operates on an $84 million budget and is tasked with monitoring the distribution of the $787 billion stimulus package passed by Congress–which, for the record, counts 435 members–in early 2009.

The site’s monitors, however, are not too savvy about America’s political or geographic landscape. More than $2 million was given to the 99th District of North Dakota, a state which has only one congressional district. In order to qualify for 99 districts, North Dakota would have to have a population of about 60 million people, almost 24 million more people than California.

The stimulus revived 8 recently retired congressional districts. Pennsylvania’s 21st District has received just under $2 million in funds. Mississippi’s 5th District and Oklahoma’s 6th received $1 million from the legislation, respectively. All three were eliminated by the 2000 census.

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By EAMON JAVERS, Politico

Politico compiled a list of Obama’s ten worst (and “best”) moves

Across Washington, political pros are quietly putting together their report cards on the first year of the Obama presidency.

On some issues – like Obama’s diplomatic overtures to Iran – it’s too early to tell whether they’re political wins or losses. On others – like Obama’s failure to break up the big banks – the judgment is hopelessly clouded by ideology. Where you stand, as in so much of life, depends on where you sit.

But on much of Obama’s presidency, there is a surprising bipartisan consensus on what has worked well and what has not. POLITICO spoke to a dozen political insiders and pulled together this list of Obama’s ten worst, and ten best, moves of the year.

1. Obama saying the Cambridge cops acted "stupidly" in arresting Henry Louis Gates.

As Obama took the side of an old friend against a police officer before he even knew the details, he threw gasoline on simmering racial tensions left over from his election. The White House’s hastily cobbled together attempt at a solution – the famous “beer summit” – is probably not what won him the Nobel Peace Prize.

2. Eight percent unemployment? No.

If the stimulus was a good idea, touting the stimulus too much was definitely not.

Obama’s advisers confidently predicted that unemployment would top out at 8 percent if Congress went along with his push for a $787 billion stimulus package. But unemployment hit 9.8 percent last month and 10 percent isn’t far behind.

The White House said that the economy was actually much worse than the advisers would have known at the time. Still, they broke a cardinal rule of politics – under-promise and over-deliver.

3. The Olympics bid

Copenhagen was not so wonderful to Barack Obama. More like the agony of defeat. The trip gave fodder to the White House’s critics to argue that the president remains too close to his Windy City political base, and all the big city machine seediness that implies. Not only that, Chicago’s bid was bounced on a first ballot – so much for the power of the global Brand Obama.

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By SUSAN FERRECHIO, Washington Examiner

$30 million for a spring training facility is certainly a questionable project

The $787 billion stimulus bill was passed in February and was promised as a job saver and economy booster. Here is where some of the money went:

- $300,000 for a GPS-equipped helicopter to hunt for radioactive rabbit droppings at the Hanford nuclear reservation in Washington state.

- $30 million for a spring training baseball complex for the Arizona Diamondbacks and Colorado Rockies.

- $11 million for Microsoft to build a bridge connecting its two headquarter campuses in Redmond, Wash., which are separated by a highway.

- $430,000 to repair a bridge in Iowa County, Wis., that carries 10 or fewer cars per day.

- $800,000 for the John Murtha Airport in Johnstown, Pa., serving about 20 passengers per day, to build a backup runway.

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By Edward Lazear, Wall Street Journal

Maybe we should look at unemployment rather than bogus “jobs saved” claims

With the news that GDP grew at 3.5% in the third quarter, it seems apparent that economic recovery is underway. How much of this was a result of government programs? To evaluate this, it is important to understand what constitutes a recovery. There are three developments needed to restore the economy to its prior vibrancy.

The first development, bank stabilization, began in late autumn of last year. The source of the recession was financial-sector turmoil that commenced in August 2007 and peaked in early autumn 2008. Although we did not know it at the time, by the end of 2008 the financial crisis had passed. Financial markets were far from normal, but the panics and major collapses that characterized September 2008 were behind us, and no others arose. This financial-sector stabilization created the environment that is allowing our economy to heal.

This past January, at the end of my term as chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, my agency released the White House economic forecast. At that time, I said that I foresaw a couple of bad quarters but expected that the second half of 2009 would be positive, with perhaps very strong growth in 2010.

These forecasts assumed no stimulus; the projected turnaround was instead based on the natural rebound of the economy that would come after the financial crisis had eased. The resumption of GDP growth, which is the second development on the road to full recovery, probably began in late spring of this year.

The third recovery factor—job growth—will be slower to develop. In a shallower recession that ended in late 2001, job growth did not become positive until 2003.

Historically, recoveries have a consistent pattern: Productivity grows first, then jobs are created, and finally wages rise.

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Fox News

Democrats quietly push more stimulus packages, cause they know the first one  hasn’t worked

Confronted with big job losses and no sign the U.S. economy is ready to stand on its own, Democrats are working on a growing list of relief efforts, leaving for later how to pay for them, or whether even to bother.

Proposals include extending and perhaps expanding a popular tax credit for first-time home buyers, and creating a new credit for companies that add jobs. Taken together, the proposals look a lot like another economic stimulus package, though congressional leaders don’t want to call it that.

Democratic leaders in Congress and the White House say they have no appetite for another big spending package that adds to the federal budget deficit, which hit a record $1.4 trillion for the budget year that ended last week.

But with unemployment reaching nearly 10 percent, many lawmakers are feeling pressure to act. Some of the proposals come from the Republicans’ playbook and focus on tax cuts, even though they, too, would swell the deficit.

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