Barack Obama and the White House have decided that their $787 billion economic stimulus bill has been a success. How do they figure?? They base this on the fact that as many as a quarter of the jobs that have "saved or created" are government school teachers.

The chief economic advisor for Joe Biden says that recent data shows that at least 250,000 educational jobs have been saved or created. Oddly enough, no one has actually SEEN this report. The Republicans point out that 250,000 jobs were lost last month alone and 3 million have been lost since the economic stimulus bill was signed. But don't slow us down with the facts! Let's celebrate that we have done exactly what we wanted to do: get more people on the government payroll. After all, folks, remember that these teachers are nothing more than glorified government bureaucrats. They are paid by the government, report to the government, abide by government regulations to fulfill their jobs requirement ... they are government employees.

So we spend $787 billion to provide pork barrel projects and hire more government workers. That sounds like stimulus to me!

Keep in mind that data released last week by the federal government found that federal contracts paid for with stimulus money created or saved 30,383 jobs. That is not a lot of jobs, folks. In fact, the White House at one point had a goal of saving or creating 3.5 million jobs over two years. There is a pretty big gap between 30,000 and 3.5 million, wouldn't you say? So when in doubt, emphasize the fact that you kept the government school teachers around and hope that Americans are too ignorant to realize that the darn thing isn't working.

And while we're at it .. you do know this whole "created or saved" thing is a crock, don't you? There is no way the government can accurately tell you how many jobs have been "saved" by stimulus spending. What we have here is the local governments telling the federal government "Oh yeah! Thanks for the money! If it hadn't been for that money we would have fired a bunch of people!" Hogwash. This is nothing but a transparent PR scam designed to convince the public that this stimulus plan is working. Try to get some private business to talk about jobs saved