"Lives Touched"
Posted on 08/22/2010 4:13:36 PM PDT by Libloather
Obamanomics: Touching lives $195,000 at a time
By Rusty Weiss
Published: 2:04 PM 08/19/2010
Every time a report on the stimulus bill is released, one can almost hear the sound of ‘Yakety Sax’ playing in the background and the president’s team running around in frantic disarray.
It isn’t simply the absurdity of a recent Government Accountability Report (GAO), finding that each job ‘created’ by the stimulus bill costs an average of $194,213. It’s the fundamental shell game that the administration is playing with the public regarding the numbers, a game that can only be interpreted one of two ways – either the administration itself is inept in their reporting, or they assume the American people are too inept to catch on.
In fact, the jobs reporting has been such a muddled mess, that even liberal media stalwart, MSNBC, couldn’t keep track of their stories earlier in the year. On January 13th, they ran two stimulus related stories, one which touted the White House claim that the stimulus had saved two million jobs, and another which explained why calculating such a number is impossible.
Now however, the GAO report shows that the phrase ‘jobs created’ or ‘jobs saved’ is no longer the term of choice. They have decided to go with – wait for it – ‘lives touched’.
Essentially, we’ve now transitioned from the aforementioned terminology, on to ‘jobs funded’, and eventually landed on something reminiscent of an after school special, ‘lives touched’.
So what exactly defines a touched life?
A spokesperson from the CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Company explains:
“Lives Touched” is a figure that the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) uses to track the amount of people who have been positively affected by the Recovery Act funds. This total would include people who have been provided full time employment (i.e. saved and created jobs) through the Recovery Act and people who at some point have supported a project funded by the Recovery Act.
In other words, the administration has stumbled upon another way to inflate their job numbers. They were already reporting on those saved or created, but will now include ‘people who at some point have supported a project.’
Additionally, the significance of this coming from a CH2M spokesperson cannot be overstated. According to the Recovery.gov web site, the CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Company is listed as having been awarded four of the top ten contracts from stimulus funds; contracts worth over $1.2 billion as of July 30th. The CH2M web site boasts of 4,547 ‘lives touched’ as of March, with only $471 million in contracts. The government web site, based on the four contracts over $1.2 billion, reports a grand total of 2,466 jobs funded. Meaning somehow, someway, the remaining $793 million is being used to touch the lives of 2,081 individuals. That’s $381,347 per touch.
This new accounting system being implemented by the DOE is essentially a cumulative analysis of all individuals who contribute anything to any given project. An overall headcount of sorts. According to reporting instructions for CH2M subcontractors, this constitutes the “total number of workers who have directly charged 1 or more hours of work time to a … contract”. One hour of work and your life has been touched.
Additionally, the report states that, “The lives touched headcount will remain the same or increase over time as new workers become involved with ARRA contracts. The total headcount will never decrease.”
Regime Adds "Lives Touched" to Stimulus Reports
RUSH: The Department of Energy is now publicizing job creation benefits of the stimulus. They have jobs created, jobs saved, and now they've added a new category: "Lives touched by the stimulus." I'm not kidding. It's right here. I am not making this up. The Department of Energy is now publicizing the job creation benefits of the stimulus with a new metric called "lives touched." Yeah, okay, as in like: We've been screwed! "This counts any person who may have billed a funded project for any work time" like two hours, whenever, "and it counts workers at firms supplying inputs for projects funded by the government." The Department of Energy people have to be careful to check to see if they don't end up counting more lives touched than the US or world population here, folks. (laughing) I'm not kidding. They've added now "lives touched" to the stimulus. "Lives touched" will soon be part of the vernacular. The source of this is a July 29, 2010, GAO report, pages 26-28. Lives touched. You know, we've been talking about it a little bit over the course of the busy broadcast today: The Democrats' new marching orders talking points. The Democrats are now counseled against claiming the law will reduce costs and deficits, the health care law. They're not supposed to do that.
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_082010/content/01125104.guest.html
“‘Yakety Sax’
Oh maaaaan! You gave me an ear worm! Dang!
"Lives Touched"
““‘Yakety Sax’”
I know this gets off topic but listen to Chet Atkins version.
By limiting the list of their recent acccomplisments to adding “Lives Touched” as a job creation benefit, the DOE overlooks the important collateral effect that the President’s green agenda has had in expunging greed and the disease of acquisitiveness from the American lifestyle.
To reflect the full impact of the Stimulus “package” the DOE should include expand its report employment to include as a “Souls Saved” as a job creation benefit.
Repeating my earlier post: Abolish the DoE. In more than 30 years since their creation can anyone please reference one significant game changing technology that will secure the energy future of the United States? One? Anyone? Anything?
In this last 3 decades they have spent enough money to fund any of a number of major oil companies or significant projects. Their Synfuels efforts are only a rehash of the German’s processes, only copy cats. Other things add up to insignificance.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2575467/posts?page=17#17
Something obviously happened in the US that didn't happen in Canada...
I think that your graph partially explains my graph. :-)
There’s more to the story, of course. Throw in Obamacare, Financial “reform”, and possibly “cap and tax” and you see a bleak future that can’t help but have a seriously negative effect on the nation’s economy.
Bend over, America, and prepare to be “touched” by your government.
It’s the bad kind of touch.
Ok. They can have ‘lives touched’ and we’ll go with ‘pockets picked’, ‘futures mortgaged’,’freedoms destroyed’....there are just endless possibilities.
Once that $195,000 hits my account, I'll let you know.
The list, ping
so, they could conceivably count dead people in this.
if the cemetery business gets federal funds.
if medical profession gets federal funds.
etc...
course, it begs the question, does the dead guy get counted twice ?
Lives touched: Mine - soon to be out of work as a result of Obama declaring victory in the Gulf!
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