Obama & His Fantasy Jobs

Re: Where Troubles Melt Like Lemon Drops [Jack Fowler]

Mark, the stimulating of non-existent Congressional Districts isn’t limited to New Hampshire and its infamous 00th — there’s also the North Dakota 99th, and plenty more where that came from. There’s a great piece by Bill McMorris over at Watchdog.org that reports $6.4 billion in stimulus funds going to 440 phantom districts:

Just how big is the stimulus package? Well for one, it has doubled the size of the House of Representatives, according to recovery.gov, which says that funds were distributed to 440 congressional districts that do not exist.

According to data retrieved from recovery.gov, nearly $6.4 billion was used to “create or save” just under 30,000 jobs in these phantom congressional districts–almost $225,000 per job. The web site operates on an $84 million budget and is tasked with monitoring the distribution of the $787 billion stimulus package passed by Congress–which, for the record, counts 435 members–in early 2009.

The site’s monitors, however, are not too savvy about America’s political or geographic landscape. More than $2 million was given to the 99th District of North Dakota, a state which has only one congressional district. In order to qualify for 99 districts, North Dakota would have to have a population of about 60 million people, almost 24 million more people than California.


Where Troubles Melt Like Lemon Drops [Mark Steyn]

Jack, Jack, re all those Obama-stimulated jobs in phantom New Hampshire Congressional districts, you just don't get it, do you? Why pay ACORN to register non-existent voters when you can register entire non-existent Congressional districts? And how many votes do states 51 thru 57 have in the electoral college?

Reading those jobs numbers, I can't be the only resident of New Hampshire's Second Congressional District who dreams of relocating to the "00 Congressional District", land of 2,873.9 newly created jobs. What a great name! Because in the Obama budget you can always use a couple extra zeroes.

I like to think of it as somewhere up around the Fourth Connecticut Lake or the Indian Stream by the old bootlegging routes in from Quebec. I drive around in the forlorn hope that one day on a rutted Class VI road deep in the woods, just over the washed out culvert, I'll round the bend and see the sign saying "Now Entering The 00 Congressional District. This $47,000 sign brought to you by the America Recovery & Reinvestment Act," and the Emerald City of Oo will rise before me, its streets paved with Stimulus green and lined with dancing fountains of sparkling H1N1 vaccine and Obamatronic statues that bow as you pass by as if you're the Japanese Emperor and they sing "Be Our Guest" in a faintly metallic voice. And I'll be greeted by 2,873.9 gnarled old stump-toothed loggers with an average of 2.7 fingers between them, now federally retrained as green-jobs czars, NEA performance artists, end-of-life counseling coordinators, and Joe Biden speechwriters . . .


Re ‘The Acornization of America’ [Jay Nordlinger]

VDH wrote about “the strange Obama-administration practice of counting hypothetical jobs saved by more government borrowing rather than focusing on real statistics of real jobs lost,” and the “fantasy congressional districts with fantasy new employment in them.” I could not help thinking of a line from the president’s inaugural address: “We’ll restore science to its rightful place.” Well, maybe, but what in the world is the administration doing with statistics? More generally, has an administration’s practices ever been more out of line with a president’s boasts and promises?

UPDATE: A reader chimes in, “You think those districts don’t exist? They will after the ACORN-ized 2010 Census, and they’ll be gerrymandered for the Democrats, too!”

P.S. Remember when Reagan, saying “gerrymander,” would signal that he knew that Gerry pronounced his name with a hard “G,” though we pronounce “gerrymander” with a soft one? Amazing guy, the Gipper.