About those job numbers …
Conservatives have been howling for months about the Obama administration’s “jobs created/jobs saved” statistics. Every official measure of the country’s employment situation has shown the economy shedding jobs throughout the year. Yet the White House has insisted that its policies have saved a number of jobs and has issued figures to prove it.
Unchallengeable, of course. The number of jobs saved is in the eye of the beholder — or the counter. Now ABC News reports the counting has been off, calculating a number of jobs saved to congressional districts that don’t exist. For example, ABC reports, the administration’s stimulus Web site claims 30 jobs were saved in Arizona’s 15th District — but Arizona only has eight districts.
An administration official said human error was to blame. “Some recipients clearly don’t know what congressional district they live in,” a spokesman said, “so they appear to be just throwing in any number. We expected all along that recipients would make mistakes on their congressional districts, on jobs numbers, on award amounts, and so on. Human beings make mistakes.”
