Magic Math

I am so sick of magic math. "What's magic math?" you ask. The administration's account of "jobs created or saved", officially released today is a prime example of magic math.
Government officials claim that the $787 Billion stimulus package released earlier this year has saved or created approximately 640,000 jobs across the country, with the vast majority of those jobs being in construction and education. This claim is based on reports filed by recipients of the $160 Billion or so that has actually been spent so far. Though the administration only gets angry if you mention it, though, these numbers are highly contested by analytical experts.
It has been well-documented that there were numerous errors in initial reporting, but the administration claims that they caught and corrected for all of them. If you believe that, I have a bridge I'm looking to sell. We're talking about the same people who have admitted that our healthcare system wastes about $800 Billion a year, with nearly half of that waste being directly attributed to Medicaid and Medicare. If this is the way those people count, you try believing that they caught every error in reports from more than 100,000 recipients. I'm not buying it.
The reality is, this kind of counting can never use anything but magic numbers. Sure, you can count jobs that were created by the stimulus, assuming you're not looking in areas where the creation of new jobs was already being considered, but how do you verify jobs saved by the stimulus? How many of those recipients actually reported, "I was going to fire this many people but, thanks to the stimulus package, I didn't"? It's guessing, plain and simple. Some of it is scientific guessing, guesswork that actually has some verifiable relationship to reality, but much of it is just wishful thinking. History states clearly that there is no rational reason to assume that politicians didn't wish up some higher numbers than reality supports in order to make themselves look and feel better. Remember, the same people who claim confidence in these numbers were the people who claimed confidence in the fact that their stimulus package would prevent the unemployment rate from hitting double digits. How's that confidence working out for you?
If these fictional numbers were all there was to the story, it would be disgraceful, but it would be the same disgraceful story we see every time some politician starts spouting numbers. That isn't all, though. Fairy dust didn't make their number big enough, so they blew on it and made it even bigger.
White House officials are actually claiming that they get to count 1 million jobs, when you add in things that can't actually be measured. Things like the unmeasurable guy who didn't lose his job went to eat at Burger King and that unmeasurably saved the job of some kid serving fries. I'm not kidding. They actually used a stimulus-saved worker spending money at a restaurant as an example of how they came up with that 1 million magic number. They took numbers that can't be verified and added them to numbers that can't be verified and threw out a bigger number that can't be verified that they get to pat themselves on the back for. Magic math.
It's enough to make your head spin, but it's business as usual for the clowns we have in Washington. When they got called out a few weeks ago for pork and bloat-spending in a defense bill - wasting money that's supposed to help our soldiers and using it to make them look good in the home district instead - a spokesman for Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, had the gall to say, "Anyone who suggests this clearly doesn't understand the appropriations process." Mind you, the pork is there and documented, so the only English translation for this statement is, "We do this all the time. Nothing unusual here."
I wish I could say vote them all out and install some people who know how to count, but the odds don't look good for that either. Take a look at this comment I found on the New York Times website the other day, introducing some organizations brainstorm for how to solve the economic crisis:

"First and foremost it calls for the Fed to print a lot more money and pay off the federal debt. It then calls for taking the $400 billion saved on interest payments and using that money to give everyone on Social Security a 20% raise and lowering the retirement age for Social Security and Medicare to age 60. This would create an army of young retirees looking to volunteer at the charity of their choice. At the same time it would open up jobs for younger workers."

Print all the money you want to pay off the debt and triple (at least) the number of people collecting Social Security benefits instantly. Do I really need to explain the real world consequences to such an idea? How are you going to pay all those benefits when the value of our dollar crashes to the point where it's only worth will be as an historical exhibit?
Wasn't there a time when we taught math as part of our basic educational system? I seem to recall such a time, though I am beginning to think it was just a hallucination. Lying about your numbers doesn't make you right. It just lets you steal more before the average person catches on. Keep that in mind the next time you see a highly-educated politician spouting figures that are obviously fabricated.

Historical Stupidity

I don't usually make two posts in one day but the more reactions I read concerning this current economic crisis and the so-called stimulus bill, the more disgusted I get and I felt like I just had to say something. Phrases along the lines of "worst disaster in American history" and "can't get any worse" keep popping up everywhere I look and all I can say to this is you can't ask for any more evidence of the stupidity of the average American voter.
This crisis does not hold a candle to October 29, 1929. It is not nearly as threatening as December 7, 1941. It will not have half the impact on this country as April 12, 1861. If you are among the people making these statements and do not know what these dates mean then you are proving my point on making historical statements while knowing nothing about history. I'm not even going to tell you what they are. Look them up, you lazy whiners!
We are in a recession. That is true. For many people this is an extremely bad time and there is no falsehood in this statement either. However, the fact that you lost your job (or might or know someone who did) does not make this a global catastrophe of record-making proportions. There is no argument that these are bad times and we need to do things to make them better, but we cannot make them better by claiming that they are worse than they are.
No, doing something is not automatically better than doing nothing. Doing something that exaserbates or lengthens the crisis is decidedly worse than doing nothing. No, it is not helping just because politicians claim they are trying to help. Most politicians can't be trusted to help you tie your shoes. No, the New Deal did not do a thing to end or even shorten the Great Depression and attempting to copy it will not do a thing to end or even shorten this recession. Entering World War II dragged us out of the Great Depression, which should make you pause and think about which group of people are arguing for this New Deal redux.
The current stimulus bill should have been rejected, not because we don't need a stimulus bill of some sort, but because this was not a stimulus bill. It was an excuse to go on a spending orgy for liberal pet projects. Look it up and try to wrangle your way through the numbers. Those portions of the bill that most anyone could agree are for the purpose of creating jobs or stimulating the economy are the smallest part of the bill. The majority of the bill is pure pork, projects that even liberals will not try to claim are actually for economic stimulation except in the most round about way that anything that "improves the country" (strictly in their opinion, of course) must also improve the economy.
The Republicans did not cause this crisis (another historically blind claim from the far left). In truth, neither did the Democrats. They both had a hand in it (and not a small hand, either) but the true culprits are you and me. If you want to know who is to blame for this mess, just look in the mirror. Every time we the people let those clowns in DC get away with their games as usual; every time we took a loan we knew we couldn't afford; every time we listened to the common wisdom instead of checking the facts; every time we voted for more bread and circuses. These are the causes of this crisis.
We are not at our worst point in history, but we can get their and it will not be politicians who put us there. It will be you and me. It will be the American people continuing to do what we have gotten so good at doing: holding out our hands and demanding more more more while paying nothing in return, or giving everything we have while demanding nothing in payment. Unless the American public finally wakes up and realizes that there is such a thing as cause and effect, that actions have consequences, and that nothing is free, we might be watching our "worst point in history" through the rearview mirror before we realize it.