I'm so sick of hearing about how the "stimulus" spending is going to "create or save jobs". The phrase is rhetorical hand-waving the Obama Administration made up to give themselves cover when the stimulus plan didn't have any visible beneficial effects.
Obama admitted his own dissatisfaction with the progress but said his administration would ramp up stimulus spending in the coming months. The White House acknowledged it has spent only $44 billion, or 5 percent, of the $787 billion stimulus, but that total has always been expected to rise sharply this summer."Now we're in a position to really accelerate," Obama said.
He also repeated an earlier promise to create or save 600,000 jobs by the end of the summer.
"You're fired. Just kidding!" Times 600,000,000! I just "created or saved" 600,000,000 jobs! Considering how many jobs have been lost in the past few months, how are we supposed to measure "saved" jobs? It's absurd, and yet the media keeps reporting the "create or save" claim as if it has any meaning at all.
The economy has shed 1.6 million jobs since the stimulus measure was signed in February, far overshadowing White House announcements estimating the effort has saved 150,000 jobs. Public opinion of Obama's handling of the economy has declined along with the jobs data.
Estimating! The White House "estimates" the level of success of its programs, but because the whole thing is so ephemeral there's no way for anyone else to verify anything! And yet this is reported as "news". Why don't we just cut out the middle man, kill off the media, and broadcast Obama's press releases directly?
