Obama Fudges The Numbers

The dirty little secret that is not so secret among many is that after all the hype and fear mongering, after the passing of the nearly one trillion dollar stimulus bill, the thing did not work. It is hard to measure because Obama has moved the goalposts a few times. He and Biden said that things would happen quickly and then not so much. We were told that unemployment would not go above 8% and then when it did we were given a bunch of excuses. One of the biggest distortions is the idea of “saved” jobs. The regime claims to have saved jobs but this is not measurable and the different tools given to employers all but guaranteed that Obama could claim a “saved” job. If the company spent one dollar on an employee and that employee did not lose his job, even if that job was NOT going to be lost anyway, it is a save.

Bogus math, bogus accounting, bogus results.

But wait, there’s more.

The most recent report from the White House is that they saved or created 2.8 million jobs. Wow! That sounds great but it is not the truth. The reality is that the regime had to trim 7 million jobs from an earlier estimate in order to claim that it saved 2.8 million.

Confused? Big Government explains:

Here’s the math:

Step 1: How many jobs does the Administration currently claim there would be, without stimulus?

129.7 million Current number of U.S. jobs

– 2.8 million Jobs currently claimed to be “created or saved”

126.9 million Jobs the Administration currently claims there would be without stimulus

Step 2: How does that compare with the number of jobs the Administration used to say there would be without stimulus?

133.9 million January 2009 projection of jobs without stimulus

– 126.9 million Current claim of jobs without stimulus

= 7 million Jobs removed from the Administration “baseline” to justify their latest stimulus job creation claims

The January information can be found here (page 5 of the document).

The Obama regime predicted that we would have an increase of almost 3.7 million jobs with the stimulus for a total of 137.5 million. At that time we were told that without the stimulus we would only have 133.9 million people employed.

Now that there are only 129.7 million people employed the Obama regime has changed the parameters. Based on Obama’s January 2009 projections, we are 7.8 million jobs behind. In order to make it look like he saved or created jobs the baseline was adjusted down. Original projection 133.9M without stimulus and now 126.9M. This is deceptive and shows without a doubt that the stimulus did not work. If it had worked we would have employment at or near the numbers he predicted and most certainly the numbers would not have to be manipulated. I don’t want to hear people whine about this being projections and that there is uncertainty involved because Obama used these numbers and said we had to act NOW.

If he had stuck to his original numbers it would have been one thing but the very fact that the projection was lowered shows that he wants to deceive us.

So let us review. Obama projected that with the stimulus we would have 137.5M people working and we only have 129.7. Using his original baseline, the one he sold the stimulus with and the one we must hold him to, he lost 7.8M jobs.

This is the only way to look at the numbers. Any other way is dishonest. Obama cannot change the baseline just to make it look like he created or “saved” jobs. Imagine what would happen to the CEOs of private businesses if they used these kind of accounting practices. Does the name Enron ring a bell? Those folks were given jail time…

So it looks like Obama has lost 7.8M jobs. The stimulus has been a failure.

Politicians do not have to lie about successful things…

As an aside, there was a big debate about the job loss chart at this very site in the comments section. Here is another take on the issue and it is something you should keep in mind when the regime tries to sell you on the lies involving job numbers. Commenter Mike, you will appreciate this.

Never surrender, never submit.
Big Dog

Gunline

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A Very Bad Idea

Even as the focus is on healthcare, the climate bill, known as Cap and Tax, is sneaking through Congress, with even some RINOS like Lindsey Graham undergoing a pod- like body snatcher transformation, as he signs on to the flawed and expensive legislation-previously he had been against it. And he was right to have been against it- it is a very bad bill.

It does nothing but allow the government to take over a good portion of everyone’s lives, and will cost jobs- it will cost a lot of jobs, including union jobs.

Nestled in Ohio’s Amish country, Bill Belden’s 124-year-old family owned brick company has thrived on the region’s rich red clay and shale, and cheap energy from abundant coal.

Which he’s convinced that a climate bill being considered in Congress will end.

A cap-and-trade system forcing businesses away from fossil fuels, especially coal, will mean higher electricity and natural gas costs, he says. And layoffs at the Belden Brick Co.

“We’re already under severe economic strain,” said Belden, standing beside towering stacks of fresh bricks outside one of the six plants that ring Sugarcreek.

The town, about 80 miles south of Cleveland, calls itself “the Little Switzerland of Ohio.” Signs dot the highway hailing the annual Swiss Festival, quaint bed and breakfasts, and restaurants that feature traditional Dutch Amish cooking.

It’s brick, however, that’s Sugarcreek’s economic foundation.

A lifelong Republican, Belden said his criticism of the Democratic-run Congress over global warming isn’t about politics, but economics. “We’ve got to compete in the world and to do so we need low cost energy,” he argues.

kansascity.com

Of course it isn’t about politics- until the liberals make it so, by making it much harder to keep costs down- cheap energy is what is needed right now- our economy demands it.

It’s a 30-minute drive up Interstate 77 from Belden’s plants to the United Steelworkers Union office just outside Canton. Former steelworker Joe Holcomb, now a district representative for the union, says that a dozen years ago the union had 65,000 members in the state. It’s now about 50,000.

Like Brown, Holcomb and union members see the climate bill debate in Washington as a path to new manufacturing jobs and way to push those numbers up again – or at least stem the slide. That’s why the national union strongly backs the cap-and-trade legislation.

If energy prices jump, Holcomb says he’ll put up a windmill and generate his own power.

But he’s not exactly a tree-hugging environmentalist. He recalls the push decades ago to clean up Ohio’s rivers and sooty air from factory smokestacks. The water became cleaner, the air healthier, but factories closed, production became more expensive, jobs were lost, he said.

His warning to those in Washington: Don’t make the same mistake.

“If we’re just going to put a bill in and say we’re going to clean the air … but not create jobs, we’ve already seen that happen. We’ve got to do it in a way that’s going to bring jobs into this country and not let them go out of here.”

Many of the union’s members work across town, producing specialty steel at a mill owned by the Timken Co., a $5.6 billion global manufacturer of high-grade precision bearings for everything from cars and locomotives to jetliners and giant wind turbines. Of its 25,000 employees worldwide, about 5,000 are in Ohio.

It’s electricity bill for the steel mill and five other Ohio facilities runs as much as $50 million a year.

Ward “Tim” Timken Jr., company’s chairman, said the United States has no business capping carbon pollution and fossil fuel use unless other countries act as well.

“This whole notion that the U.S. is going to lead and set the example because it’s the moral thing to do is foolish,” he said in an interview at the company’s technology center adjacent to the Akron-Canton airport.

Timken, a member of one of Ohio’s most influential Republican families, said he doesn’t understand why the steelworkers would support the climate bill.

“These guys have to wake up and realize that their jobs are stake,” he said.

If the bill became law, “there would be some very difficult decisions to be made, quite frankly. I’ve got a global footprint. A quarter of my work force is in Asia. I’ve got manufacturing in Eastern Europe,” he said. “These are very real threats that we’re talking about.”

kansascity.com

The liberals continue to mistakenly believe that the jobs we shed will magically be reinvented, and perhaps that might be true in a long run (if you believe in unicorns), but we would see a depression the likes of which we have never seen, because, unless other countries signed onto the same restrictions we impose on ourselves, this bill will have the only true effect of impoverishing our country unnecessarily. And all in the mistaken myth of “Global Warming”- a myth that has no basis in reality, just in the minds of liberals who want to impose their beliefs on everyone else.

Quid enim est veritas? What, then, is the truth? The single question whose answer gives us the truth about the climate question is this: By how much will any given proportionate increase in CO2 concentration warm the world? We now know the answer. The oceans, which must store 80-90% of all heat-energy accumulated in the atmosphere as a result of the radiative imbalance caused by greater greenhouse-gas concentration, have shown no net accumulation of heat for almost 70 years, implying a very small influence of CO2 on temperature (Douglass & Knox, 2009). The devastating analysis of cloud-albedo effects shortly to be published by Dr. Roy Spencer of the University of Alabama at Huntsville will show that the UN has wrongly decided that cloud changes reinforce greenhouse warming, when in fact they substantially offset it. Repeated studies of the tropical upper troposphere (e.g. Douglass et al., 2008) show that it is failing to warm at thrice the surface rate as required by all of the UN’s models, again implying very low climate sensitivity. The clincher is Professor Richard Lindzen’s meticulous recent paper demonstrating – by direct measurement – that the amount of radiation escaping from the Earth’s atmosphere to space is many times greater than the UN’s models are all told to believe. From this, the world’s most formidable atmospheric physicist has calculated that a doubling of CO2 concentration, expected over the next 150 years, would cause 0.75 C (1.5 F) of warming, at most: not the 3.4 C (6 F) that the UN takes as its central estimate.

Most analysts would stop there. Yet some might ask, “Suppose that the single satellite on which Lindzen’s results depend is defective. What then?” They might consider the economic cost of attempting to mitigate the “global warming” which, as our Monthly Reports demonstrate, is not actually happening. The figures turn out to be startlingly simple. To mitigate just 1 C (2 F) of warming, one must forego the emission of 2 trillion tons of CO2. The world emits just 30 billion tons a year. So the analyst, as a thought-experiment, would shut down the entire world economy, emitting no CO2 at all. Even then, and even on the incorrect assumption that the UN’s exaggerated projections of the effect of CO2 on temperature are correct, it would take 67 years to mitigate 1 C warming. Preventing the 3.4 C (6 F) warming that the UN’s climate panel thinks would occur in 100 years would take 225 years without any transportation, and with practically no electrical energy. The national security advisor would at that point advise his head of government that there has never been any security threat less grave, or more expensive to prevent, than the non-problem that is “global warming”. It is the fearmongers that are the real national security threat.

americanthinker.com

Yes, it is the fearmongers, because these people want your money, and more importantly, they want you to live as they think you should- they do not trust you to be able to live as you yourself wish to. This is contrary to the American Dream, where you as an individual are able to chart your own course. A denial of freedom of choice- but this does not bother these control freaks at all; no, they want the power to dictate what you do and how you do it.

Their whole policy is based on a lie, a very big lie.

And that is always a very bad idea.
Blake
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Here We Go Again

While everyone is involved with the debate on healthcare, and rightly so, there are other problems that the socialists are trying to ram through, like the Cap and Tax problem that they are foisting on a public that, while most are environmentally aware, are unaware that their economic future is extremely dependent on whether this bill is passed in its current form or not by the Senate when they come back from recess (makes them sound like the children they seem to be, doesn’t it?). It should be noted that not everyone is thrilled with the content of this badly constructed bill.

Local energy workers are expected to crowd into a downtown Houston theater today to protest climate change legislation that the U.S. Senate will take up in the coming weeks.

The Energy Citizens rally, promoted by some major energy companies and business organizations as well as the Greater Houston Partnership, will be the first of several such events planned in 19 states in the coming weeks.

Organizers of the event, billed as a dialogue on energy and the environment, told the Chronicle on Monday that legislation the U.S. House passed last spring will destroy millions of U.S. jobs and raise costs without reducing greenhouse gas emissions blamed for climate change.

“It’s a dangerous piece of legislation,” said James Hackett, chairman and CEO of Anadarko Energy, which is busing employees to the event.

Hackett said he supports reducing greenhouse emissions and developing alternative sources of fuel.

“But I do think there’s a virtual reality that’s being portrayed to most American citizens about how quickly we get there and how we get there,” Hackett said.

chron.com

These workers, who actually do work in the energy industry, not just “play one on TV”, are concerned about the future of our energy industry if this bill is passed, as there is so much that is omitted in this bill.

The climate change bill the House passed earlier this year sets a steadily decreasing cap on emissions from factories, power plants and other industrial sources and lets companies trade any excess emissions allowances. The price of those emissions allowances would most likely be passed on to consumers.

The measure also would set up a system for creating extra allowances, called offsets, through other projects that reduce emissions, and would include incentives for renewable energy sources and home and business energy efficiency.

But opponents say the bill won’t reduce greenhouse gas emissions because it doesn’t secure promises from developing nations, like China and India, to put controls on their growing emissions.

It also makes no mention of encouraging nuclear power generation, which some rally organizers believe will be key to meeting the country’s electricity needs without creating more greenhouse gases, and doesn’t discuss a role for natural gas, which typically has lower carbon emissions than other fossil fuels.

Opponents also say the cost of the legislation is ill-timed in a weak economy.

chron.com

Yeah, nuclear power would and should be on the plan, but some environmental whackos won’t be satisfied until we are living off of granola, sitting in our tents, and pondering our navel. Lovely.

When you consider that China and India’s air becomes ours in two to three days, as the jetstream transfers and mixes air above us, any plan that doesn’t have them on board is useless, and just cripples our economy, and makes no sense. It’s the economic version of slitting our own throat.

A study released by the National Association of Manufacturers last week says the law would cost 1.8 million to 2.4 million jobs by 2030 and would cost each U.S. household up to $1,248 a year by 2030.

Other estimates of annual household costs have differed — $83 per year according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration; $88-$140 according to the Environmental Protection Agency; and $175 a year projected by the Congressional Budget Office.

chron.com

Now, I am all in favor of a plan that makes sense, and I am aware of how wasteful people can be, but if we take water out of the ocean on the West coast, and put it back in on the East coast, we have accomplished nothing. 

That is basically what this bill does.

One of the scheduled speakers at today’s event, National Black Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Harry Alford, said his organization has been on the record against such a bill since 1996 when it opposed the Kyoto Treaty that led to the emissions trading system now operating in Europe.

chron.com

You know you have lost the argument when the President and CEO of the National Black Chamber of Commerce is not on your side in this debate. Mr. Alford knows what everyone else besides our lawmakers know- this is a bad bill, and should not be passed.

If it is, our economy will suffer- that’s guaranteed– and all for naught, as nothing will have been accomplished in a positive manner. We the people will suffer, the rest of the world, (you know, the ones who can see the future of energy) will have their nuclear reactors, or their hydroelectric dams, and they will definitely have our manufacturing jobs.

We will have a lot of over- paid, out of work, disgruntled union workers who will be sitting around wondering how things could change so badly for them. It’s simple, really-

They, and the other liberals, will have figured out too late that their leader “Changed” the playing field on them also.

All to gain control.

Blake
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