STIMULUS WATCH: Stimulus jobs overstated by 1,000s

From the AP (via Breitbart's BigGovernment.com) comes the following deeply disturbing - but also, sadly, completely unsurprising - story about how federal Stimulus fund recipients are in many cases wildly overstating the numbers of jobs created or saved with tax payer borrowed dollars. The sheer chutzpah of some of the recipients use of the funds is staggering and underscores the Administration's willingness to use fudged numbers to support the now blatantly indefensible inter-generational theft that was the Stimulus. The open question is whether the massive book-cooking scheme was done a) by the recipients themselves of their own accord to justify their retention of the funds, or b) at the behest of the White House to show that the Stimulus "worked", or c) at the White House itself. Any which way it happened, it smells like a stack of week old dead rats.

STIMULUS WATCH: Stimulus jobs overstated by 1,000s

WASHINGTON (AP) - An early progress report on President Barack Obama's economic recovery plan overstates by thousands the number of jobs created or saved through the stimulus program, a mistake that White House officials promise will be corrected in future reports.

The government's first accounting of jobs tied to the $787 billion stimulus program claimed more than 30,000 positions paid for with recovery money. But that figure is overstated by least 5,000 jobs, or one in six, according to an Associated Press review of a sample of stimulus contracts.

The AP review found some counts were more than 10 times as high as the actual number of jobs; some jobs credited to the stimulus program were counted two and sometimes more than four times; and other jobs were credited to stimulus spending when none was produced.

For example:

—A company working with the Federal Communications Commission reported that stimulus money paid for 4,231 jobs, when about 1,000 were produced.

—A Georgia community college reported creating 280 jobs with recovery money, but none was created from stimulus spending.

—A Florida child care center said its stimulus money saved 129 jobs but used the money on raises for existing employees.

To read the whole dreary story, go here: STIMULUS WATCH: Stimulus jobs overstated by 1,000s