Stimulating Mark Penn's Job
In his craptacular "jobs" speech yesterday, President Obama said this about the stimulus:
The potential for abuse in a program of this magnitude, while operating at such a fast pace, was enormous. So I asked Vice President Biden and others to make sure to the extent humanly possible that the investments were sound, the projects worthy, and the execution efficient. What this means is that we're going to see even more work—and workers—on recovery projects in the next six months than we saw in the last six months.
Even so, there are many more worthy projects than there were dollars to fund them.
I wonder if by "worthy" he includes this?
Nearly $6 million in stimulus money was paid to two firms run by Mark Penn, Hillary Clinton's pollster in 2008.
Federal records show that $5.97 million from the $787 billion stimulus helped preserve three jobs at Burson-Marsteller, the global public-relations and communications firm headed by Penn.
Burson-Marsteller won the contract to work on a public-relations campaign to advertise the national switch from analog to digital television.
Harrumph, says the administration!
"In the end, even if there are a few unwise projects, it is only a handful out of the over 50,000 projects that have been approved to date," said Liz Oxhorn, a White House spokeswoman. "The real question here is whether Recovery Act critics will at long last acknowledge that well over 99 percent of the projects are sound, effective and working as promised."
Working as promised? Wait….
Link via Wonkette. See Veronique de Rugy's November magazine column, "The Myth of the Multiplier," and her charticle of a month ago on how "even the feds don't believe they can create jobs."
UPDATE: De Rugy has some funny/awful examples of more stimulus boondoggles over at The Corner.
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move along, folks…nothing to see here.
yeah, Biden in charge…tool can’t get out of his own way.
Biden… the very embodiment of warm spit
the very embodiment of warm spit piss.
FTFY
yeah that too.
can’t we get a newer more ridiculous graph?
never mind, i’ll just fix it with a crayon.
I happen to like this ridiculous graph, it reminds me of home.
With or without the recovery plan (a new potential title for a U2 song…), the unemployment rate would still shoot upwards due to the correction. What this “stimulus” plan is going to do is to make unemployment LONGER LASTING, by not allowing the correction to occur.
That’s a great chart. What’s the source for it?
So I asked Vice President Biden and others to make sure to the extent humanly possible
Can we stencil “Escape Hatch” on this? Asking a non-human to do everything humanly possible is an exercise in futility.
It would seem to me operating quickly would mean less room for abuse and corruption, because you’d be more focused and less people would have time to come begging at your door. You would just direct money at things that everyone knew were problems like bridges falling down and roads crumbling under our tires. You wouldn’t have time to entertain something ridiculous such as giving 6 million dollars for 3 jobs.
In other words, no excuses you assholes. Get it right or just don’t do it!
Working as promised? Wait….
Sorry, what she meant to say was “Working as Intended.”
6mil for 3 jobs: Mission Accomplished!
Oh yeah, for something as vital as the digital TV switchover.
So, 6 mil for 3 jobs, to advertise to the last person in america who actually gets TV through an antenna.
So full of Win.
If Mark got 6 million, just think of what Hillary got!
Never in the history — not even in the depths of the Great Depression — have there been so many unemployed people in the US.
Obama is pleased that his jobs programs caused the unemployment rate to fall from 10.2 to 10.0% last month. But, like the chart shows, 10.2% isn’t the right starting point.