Interesting tid-bits in the wake of Tuesday's election...
Election already having consequences for Obamacare?
Maybe. The Hill [2] reports that Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton (D-Mo.) on Wednesday indicated that he was opposed to the House version of Obamacare: "I oppose the creation of a new government-run public option and continue to have serious concerns about its unintended consequences for Missourians who have private insurance plans they like. I remain concerned about the bill's impact on rural hospitals and doctors." The dominoes may be starting to fall.
Super stimulus...saves more jobs than actually exist!
Beware all ye who doubt the power of the super stimulus. The Associated Press [3] documents the proof.
President Barack Obama's economic recovery program saved 935 jobs at the Southwest Georgia Community Action Council, an impressive success story for the stimulus plan. Trouble is, only 508 people work there.
The Georgia nonprofit's inflated job count is among persisting errors in the government's latest effort to measure the effect of the $787 billion stimulus plan despite White House promises last week that the new data would undergo an "extensive review" to root out errors discovered in an earlier report.
At this rate, we'll have to import new illegal immigrants to do more jobs we won't do in no time.
Super Stimulus, part II
More from the AP [3]. This time they catch the administration counting raises as "jobs saved".
About two-thirds of the 14,506 jobs claimed to be saved under one federal office, the Administration for Children and Families at Health and Human Services, actually weren't saved at all, according to a review of the latest data by The Associated Press. Instead, that figure includes more than 9,300 existing employees in hundreds of local agencies who received pay raises and benefits and whose jobs weren't saved.
That type of accounting was found in an earlier AP review of stimulus jobs, which the Obama administration said was misleading because most of the government's job-counting errors were being fixed in the new data.
At some point, we're going to have to check and see if the administration is counting unemployment benefits as a "job saved".
The Biggest Loser: election edition
Columnist Michael Barone [4] sifts the results and offers up his opinion on who had the worst night this past Tuesday...and is likely to have another one next year.
If you were watching television on Tuesday night as the election returns came in showing Republicans capturing the governorships of Virginia and New Jersey, you probably missed seeing the biggest losers of the evening. ...
...the guy who may have been the biggest loser of all-a man who according to recently released White House logs has been a guest in the White House 22 times since Barack Obama became president, more than any other single individual.
That man is Andy Stern, who has boasted that the Service Employees International Union, which he heads, ponied up something like $60 million for Barack Obama and other Democrats in the 2008 campaign cycle. Altogether, Mr. Stern and other labor union leaders reportedly gave Democrats some $400 million last year.
Ouch. Looks like that ROI won't be so good in the near future.
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