Update2: Lies, Damned Lies and Stimulus* Statistics

Another day, another story of bogus Stimulus* job numbers.  Today's episode comes from California, courtesy of the Sacramento Bee:

Up to one-fourth of the 110,000 jobs reported as saved by federal stimulus money in California probably never were in danger, a Bee review has found.

California State University officials reported late last week that they saved more jobs with stimulus money than the number of jobs saved in Texas – and in 44 other states.

In a required state report to the federal government, the university system said the $268.5 million it received in stimulus funding through October allowed it to retain 26,156 employees.

That total represents more than half of CSU's statewide work force. However, university officials confirmed Thursday that half their workers were not going to be laid off without the stimulus dollars.

"This is not really a real number of people," CSU spokeswoman Clara Potes-Fellow said. "It's like a budget number."...

Asked how many jobs actually would have been lost at CSU campuses without the stimulus infusion, Potes-Fellow said she did not know, though she said it would have been significant.

Translation: "We have no freakin' idea, but trust us, it's plenty!"

Adding this news to the earlier stories that I've previously noted, we now have bogus White House Stimulus* job stats from Georgia, Kentucky, Chicago, New Jersey, Milwaukee, Boston, Oregon, Florida and California.  I have no doubt that more of these ridiculous, anger-inducing stories are on the way, and at some point we'll probably need to ditch the whole report and stop "just trusting them."

Actually, with unemployment at 10.2%, I'd say that now is that point.

Update: Lies, Damned Lies and Stimulus* Statistics

The Mercatus Center's Veronique de Rugy has more evidence of ridiculous Stimulus* job-counting over at NRO's The Corner.  She finds stories from The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Boston.com (a repeat of the AP article I cited yesterday), and - gasp! - the New York Times that all indicate massive over-reporting in the White House's latest jobs report.

Her conclusions on the NYT Article:

The Times says reports released last week "from more than 130,000 recipients of stimulus money in which they claimed to have saved or created more than 640,000 jobs" are in some cases "simply wrong, while others contain apparently subjective estimates."

Basically, the newspaper admits that maybe the administration can't really calculate the number of jobs saved or created with the stimulus money.

DOH!  Read the whole thing, and the linked articles, here.  That now makes five news stories - reporting from Georgia, Kentucky, Chicago, New Jersey, Milwaukee, Boston, Oregon and Florida - highlighting the rampant problems with the "triple-checked" report.

640,239 jobs "saved or created," huh?  Umm, yeah, not so much.