Update2: Lies, Damned Lies and Stimulus* Statistics

Another day, another story of bogus Stimulus* job numbers.  Today's episode comes from California, courtesy of the Sacramento Bee:

Up to one-fourth of the 110,000 jobs reported as saved by federal stimulus money in California probably never were in danger, a Bee review has found.

California State University officials reported late last week that they saved more jobs with stimulus money than the number of jobs saved in Texas – and in 44 other states.

In a required state report to the federal government, the university system said the $268.5 million it received in stimulus funding through October allowed it to retain 26,156 employees.

That total represents more than half of CSU's statewide work force. However, university officials confirmed Thursday that half their workers were not going to be laid off without the stimulus dollars.

"This is not really a real number of people," CSU spokeswoman Clara Potes-Fellow said. "It's like a budget number."...

Asked how many jobs actually would have been lost at CSU campuses without the stimulus infusion, Potes-Fellow said she did not know, though she said it would have been significant.

Translation: "We have no freakin' idea, but trust us, it's plenty!"

Adding this news to the earlier stories that I've previously noted, we now have bogus White House Stimulus* job stats from Georgia, Kentucky, Chicago, New Jersey, Milwaukee, Boston, Oregon, Florida and California.  I have no doubt that more of these ridiculous, anger-inducing stories are on the way, and at some point we'll probably need to ditch the whole report and stop "just trusting them."

Actually, with unemployment at 10.2%, I'd say that now is that point.

Update: Lies, Damned Lies and Stimulus* Statistics

The Mercatus Center's Veronique de Rugy has more evidence of ridiculous Stimulus* job-counting over at NRO's The Corner.  She finds stories from The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Boston.com (a repeat of the AP article I cited yesterday), and - gasp! - the New York Times that all indicate massive over-reporting in the White House's latest jobs report.

Her conclusions on the NYT Article:

The Times says reports released last week "from more than 130,000 recipients of stimulus money in which they claimed to have saved or created more than 640,000 jobs" are in some cases "simply wrong, while others contain apparently subjective estimates."

Basically, the newspaper admits that maybe the administration can't really calculate the number of jobs saved or created with the stimulus money.

DOH!  Read the whole thing, and the linked articles, here.  That now makes five news stories - reporting from Georgia, Kentucky, Chicago, New Jersey, Milwaukee, Boston, Oregon and Florida - highlighting the rampant problems with the "triple-checked" report.

640,239 jobs "saved or created," huh?  Umm, yeah, not so much.

Robert Gibbs, Press Secretary Extraordinaire

Tough week for Gibbsy. First, he has to try to convince the American people that the closest economic advisers of his tax-happy boss were, like, totally kidding about raising taxes on the middle class. Then he goes out yesterday and singlehandedly legitimizes Iran's thugocracy:

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs on Wednesday said he had misspoken in calling Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Iran's elected leader and that Washington will let the Iranian people decide whether Iran's election was fair.

"Let me correct a little bit of what I said yesterday. I denoted that Mr. Ahmadinejad was the elected leader of Iran. I would say that's not for me to pass judgment on," Gibbs told reporters aboard Air Force One.

"He's been inaugurated. That's a fact. Whether any election was fair, obviously the Iranian people still have questions about that, and we'll let them decide about that."

...

Obama and the leaders of France, Britain, Italy and Germany have all decided not to congratulate Ahmadinejad on his re-election. Gibbs had called Ahmadinejad Iran's "elected leader" on Tuesday during a briefing.

Good save, Gibbsy. Good save. Of course, his retraction didn't come nearly fast enough, as Iran's state-owned PressTV quickly and proudly announced the formal diplomatic recognition in an article entitled "Ahmadinejad is Iran's elected leader, US official says":

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs called President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the 'elected leader' of Iran when asked if President Obama would recognize Iran's disputed election.

Ouch. I'm sure Gibbsy's retraction will totally clear all of this up inside Iran, especially with the internet (and liberty) deprived Iranian protesters.

Totally.

But here's my question: since when is it not a good idea for the White House to "pass judgment" on the fairness of another country's political process? Methinks the Honduran government would beg to differ.