The most outrageously outrageous stat counting ever UPDATE: Cavuto finds a believer
The White House has come up with a new spin on jobs created or saved and well … imagine you’re in an economics class and you turn in a paper that says this. Now imagine your Professor laughing (yes, even the liberal ones), and then imagine the “F” you are going to get on your transcript.
Hot Air has this covered. I post it only because you must not miss it. Because for sure … if I didn’t point it out you most assuredly would believe it’s made up.
Now … your job has been “saved” if you got a raise. No really. Stop laughing. Come on. Stop it. I am writing here. I’m, um, uh … ahhh, bawahahahahahahaha.
About two-thirds of the 14,506 jobs claimed to be saved under one federal office, the Administration for Children and Families at Health and Human Services, actually weren’t saved at all, according to a review of the latest data by The Associated Press. Instead, that figure includes more than 9,300 existing employees in hundreds of local agencies who received pay raises and benefits and whose jobs weren’t saved.
Ed points this line out in the AP story:
But officials defended the practice of counting raises as saved jobs.
“If I give you a raise, it is going to save a portion of your job,” HHS spokesman Luis Rosero said.
The AP had better watch itself. They might get Foxed.
UPDATE: From last night’s Neil Cavuto program on FBN (which if you don’t have you should demand it), Cavuto challeneged California Congresswoman Jackie Speier on the 640,000 stimulus jobs created or saved …another classic Cavuto moment, followed by another classically dumb Democratic moment. As you listen … keep in mind the story above.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWa4uHIlNho
The most abominable implications of this fuzzy math accounting of Jobs created is the impact on income tax accounting. People filling out an income tax form for a $60,000 salary may now to declare an actual income of $30,000 factoring the other $30,000 as income saved or created…. for unrealized taxes and other government conficatory acts not included in the IRS form. The Government may also invoke new audit powers to collect additional taxes from honest returns. The IRS could claim the tax payer receives and fails to account for additional intangible benefit incomes that citizens collect from the mere existance of our benevolent government.
Isn't it amazing how Congress exempts itself from everything, including GAAP (generally accepted accounting practices), good commonsense and plain old looking at history?
Having anything that Congress passes affect them as well is the ultimate check on their own legislative insanity. What Jim calls "skin in the game". Nobody does anything that will hurt them too.
If nothing else, we have to find a way to ensure that Congress has a lot of skin in the game, so it gets scraped just like our. No more elite class.