How Do 3.5 Million Promised Jobs Become 600,000?

Answer: When it was all BS to begin with.

Remember when the so-called stimulus bill was rushed through Congress to the tune of $787 billion? It was promoted as the cure for the Great Depression Part II that would "create or save" 3.5 million jobs.

Well, the official back-pedalling has now begun. First, Obama this past week said that 150,000 jobs had been or would soon be created from the stimulus, and now his right-hand truth fabricator Joe Biden said on Sunday that the stimulus would create 600,000 jobs by the end of summer.

Why the backtrack? As Biden says, "The economy was worse off than we thought."

Actually, statistics now show that the recession was milder that the Obamacrats had been portraying it (not that 15 million unemployed is mild).

Truth be known, the stimulus package a) had nothing to do with creating jobs and b) had everything to do with expanding government and government control over the economy.

So, if you're one of the 15 million looking for work, don't expect the stimulus dollars to create a job for you--unless you plan to work for the government.

It's Your Money (Debt), But Biden Takes Credit

The story at Chicago's Republic Windows and Doors actually is a good one, a victory for the workers that is all too rare in these days of massive layoffs and job destruction.

However, it sticks in my craw when someone as blatantly disingenuous as our Veep, Joe Biden, manages to take credit for saving the plant. He showed up there on Monday to boast about the admin's stimulus plan.

In fact, funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) are behind the resurrection of the factory. New owner Kevin Surace of Serious Materials eyed $8 billion in ARRA for weatherization and energy efficiency, hoping for a slice of the action, when he purchased Republic this year. Surace now intends to use the plant on Goose Island and another in Pittsburgh to churn out energy-efficient doors and windows and other weatherization products using ARRA bucks.

It's great news for the laid-off employees, who are now returning to work:

"We would have liked to run the factory ourselves, but things don't really work that way in this country," said Vicente Rangel, 35, who worked at the factory for 15 years. Since the factory closing he looked for work with little luck and took classes in computer skills. "There are not too many jobs out there," he said. "I'm a little bit surprised and glad to be back here. The workers stayed united and we were able to do this."

A good story, but Biden should butt out and go study the Constitution for the first time in his life.

Biden Reveals Administration's True Agenda

Talk about Gov Regs. Vice-President Joe Biden is now threatening to use his robots in the liberal media to embarrass states for "not doing what they're supposed to be doing."

He was referring to using the funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) stimulus package and specifically to those states whose governors are refusing to accept ARRA money to expand their unemployment programs to cover part-time workers and others not now eligible. Problem is, after the federal largesse runs out, the states are stuck paying for these programs themselves, as the dissenting governors have argued.

But Biden has a plan for these governors, which sounds similar to what the White House is already doing to Rush Limbaugh--shame, smear, scandalize and mock them using the captive media. (Nancy Pelosi has another plan to stop Limbaugh. She's working on a law requiring equality of viewpoints on public radio, meaning probably five liberal hosts to one conservative host, or better, five to none.)

Speaking to the AFL-CIO convention in Miami this past week, Biden also revealed that the stimulus money was earmarked for union jobs (gee, what a surprise, and how come no one in the media ever figured that out and reported on it?).

Here's how he explained it:

"The focus of this administration the first month has been to rebuild American roads, bridges, waterways -- jobs for the building trades union. Investing and getting more people access to broadband -- communication workers. Creating clean energy economy -- jobs that require electrical workers to modernize the grid, steel workers to go out and build the wind turbines, laborers to install the solar panels. Making our communities safer, jobs that require getting cops on the beat and keeping firefighters in firehouses. That's what we're trying to do."

Conveniently, no cameras were allowed into the meeting, but the Biden PR people were gracious enough to release a transcript to the media.

To sum up, if you were around during the Cold War, or bothered to study a little 1950s-1980s history, you'll see the parallel: Biden clearly wants to establish "captive states," just as the former Soviet Union had its "captive nations." (I should throw in "captive businesses" too, which will all fall to unionization once EFCA passes.)