How to create a zillion jobs

As time goes on, we find more on how the administration can claim that they have saved or created so many jobs.  No one has specified anything about the length of those jobs.  The Associated Press checked on figures used by Democrats in Oregon and found they took credit for creating over 3,000 jobs with Porkulus funds — jobs that lasted shorter than a typical Barack Obama expiration date:

How much are politicians straining to convince people that the government is stimulating the economy? In Oregon, where lawmakers are spending $176 million to supplement the federal stimulus, Democrats are taking credit for a remarkable feat: creating 3,236 new jobs in the program’s first three months.

But those jobs lasted on average only 35 hours, or about one work week. After that, those workers were effectively back unemployed, according to an Associated Press analysis of state spending and hiring data. By the state’s accounting, a job is a job, whether it lasts three hours, three days, three months, or a lifetime.

The state takes offense to the notion that they’re being dishonest in reporting these numbers:

“This stimulus plan was intentionally designed for short-term projects to pump needed jobs and income into families, businesses and communities struggling to get by,” Hunt said in a statement. “No one ever said these would be full-time jobs for months at a time.”

Which is exactly why Porkulus was a bad idea.  If that same capital had gone into the private sector instead of getting confiscated by the Obama administration for this generation’s WPA, the investment would have allowed businesses to expand and new businesses to start. That would have created actual jobs that last longer than a few months, or in Oregon’s case, a few hours.

When the issue of stimulus arose in January and February, critics made exactly this argument, now corroborated by this Oregon bureaucrat.  Instead of agreeing with that criticism, Democrats insisted that it was completely incorrect.  They sold Porkulus as the vista to a future economy that would create better jobs for more Americans.  Instead, they bolstered the day-worker industry and tried to pass it off as a real corrective to massive unemployment that continues to expand.

At this rate, how will Porkulus actually reduce unemployment in Oregon with the $176 million in Porkulus grants?

If Oregon’s dollars-to-jobs ratio remains steady, the program will create about 688 full-time, yearlong jobs. So far, it’s generated only enough hours to employ 54 people full-time for a year.

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?  At least it’s cheaper per job than New Hampshire.

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