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Undaunted, the White House is steadfast in its support of the measure. Yesterday, the President called the massive errors in reporting a “side issue," assuring Americans that job creation was still his primary concern. As such, it's unfortunate the President has suddenly become unconcerned with the reporting of jobs,  since he has repeatedly promised 3-4 million jobs would be impacted  by his spending bill since taking office.

And the Vice-President is as oblivious as ever. It seems that he has not bothered to take a look at the recovery site he has been touting as such a success - on the Daily Show this week he first misstated the amount of imaginary congressional districts appearing on recovery.gov (Mr. Biden reported there were 70 when in fact there are over 700) and then went on to proudly proclaim “you haven’t seen any wasteful spending” under the Obama Administration. An unbelievable statement on its own merits, Mr. Biden went on to claim they had only been in office for seven or eighth months, so it’s evident that whatever world Biden resides in, it’s not the one the rest of us share.

“Your letter specifically asks if I am able to certify that the number of jobs reported as created/saved on Recovery.gov is accurate and auditable. No, I am not able to make this certification.”

Unfazed, Devaney continued by sticking to the administration’s current messaging scheme, making nebulous promises that the system for vetting the job reports was improving and that posting the information online has

“established a process that will lead to increasingly higher levels of accuracy in the future.”

The deficiency of federal guidelines in the initial reporting of jobs should attest to the inanity of this claim. In Nevada, just within the state’s department of Education there were several discrepancies on how jobs should be reported – local authorities were using the base salary of $92,000 to calculate jobs in their districts, the department relied on an estimate of $66,681 while the state’s higher education system decided they would use an average of $45,000. Imagine the inaccuracies when this kind of confusion is multiplied several times over for different agencies, and then by 57 for each of the states, D.C. and U.S. territories.

The absence of specific accounting procedures in place before launching an accountability program, the largesse of which the administration has been quick to point out to illustrate its grand, though vacuous, commitment to transparency, should indicate a blatant lack of concern for accuracy in “stimulus” reporting. The jobs saved/created claim, devised as a hyperbolic tool to promote the President’s agenda, cannot stand up to the facts on the ground. The administration is suddenly in the awkward position of trying to reconcile its economic delusions with the reality of an America where 10.2% of the population is unemployed…and are finding it difficult to do.

President Obama brushed off criticism over his administration's inaccurate reporting on job creation Wednesday, telling Fox News the accounting is an "inexact science" and that any errors are a "side issue" when compared with the goal of turning the economy around. He said job growth is his No.1 responsibility.

For instance, data on “jobs created” in Wisconsin shows that 1.8 jobs were created in the state’s 14th CD. Wisconsin, like Arizona, only has 8 CDs. I figured I should be able to click on the data and see where in the state the reporting had taken place and locate the alleged 14th CD.  The data, however, is stuck in a static graph on the site, giving taxpayers no means of actually locating their money, which has, according to one report, gone to 440 imaginary CDs.

These errors are not going unnoticed. Rep. Dave Obey (Wis.) sent a letter to the President scolding him for the “ludicrous mistakes” and demanding that: "Whether the numbers are good news or bad news, I want the honest numbers and I want them now."

If this is a case of simple human error and state agencies are reporting using state district numbers instead of federal ones (again, ignoring the fact that many states have data listed for “00 Congressional District," which is another issue entirely) taxpayers can hardly be excited about their hard-earned money paying for these asinine mistakes. Perhaps we should turn our attention away from jobs “saved or created” in mystical CDs and instead focus on jobs replaced – as in those belonging to state workers who don’t know the difference between the federal and state districts in which they live.

I have the most to prove with this package, by the way, and I'm not - the choices we are making are those that will work, that must work. Our economy requires it. America's families need it. This is urgent.

Brilliant plan to keep the country happy: the poor pay no taxes, the rich get a massive stock market bubble to sell into, and the disappearing middle class...well, they can pay $20 for a hotdog and beer combo in Prague on that once-every-five-years vacation.

• Three of every four stimulus grants, contracts and loans approved in Michigan created or retained one job or less.
• Fewer than 700 awards had received some money, and nearly half of those -- 327 -- had created one job or less, at a cost per job of $2.7 million.
• Some job estimates were wrong: General Motors Co., for instance, reported 105 jobs saved or created for a government purchase of 5,000 vehicles but later said no jobs were saved or created. The City of Detroit reported 342 jobs it now says were projections -- not jobs already created or retained.

If this is what the administration had hoped for in its grand disbursal of taxpayers’ money, no wonder Vice-President Biden thinks the “stimulus” has worked beyond his “wildest dreams.”

President Barack Obama raised hopes for creating an Asia-Pacific free-trade region by announcing Saturday that the U.S. would seek to join a smaller group seen as a precursor to a broader Pacific Rim agreement.

News that the U.S. would participate in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, joining Chile, New Zealand, Singapore and Brunei, was announced in Tokyo and Singapore, drawing applause at the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.

I'll admit, I was pleasantly surprised.  Personally, I'm a big believer in free trade as it breaks down barriers and helps American companies and workers compete more effectively in the global marketplace.  But, like many others, I was disappointed when President Bush signed trade agreements with numerous countries years ago--like Chile, South Korea, Panama, Colombia, etc.--the Democrat-controlled Congress refused to approve them. 

Secondly, this news represents a mixed-signal from within the administration itself as just yesterday, Obama's commerce secretary said,  "Trade agreements are going to have to wait."

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