According to the Rutland Herald:
In a report due out this week, Vermont officials will conduct the first statewide tally of jobs “created or preserved” by the federal stimulus package. But the figures necessarily will fall well short of the 8,000 jobs projected by federal economists at the outset of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
The final calculations won’t be ready until late this week, but Vermont “recovery czar” Tom Evslin says he’s certain the total won’t come close to what was predicted. That doesn’t necessarily mean that many jobs weren’t created or saved; there’s just no way to document the effect.
Here’s the thing. The data they’re discussing? The one where he says “there’s just no way to document the effect?” Documentation of that effect is part of the requirement of the funding. And it was due yesterday.
So I’m not sure what’s going on here, but I suspect that this has little to do with job creation, and a lot more to do with petty bickering along the same lines of Douglas not wanting to inform people that ARRA funding helped with certain projects.
but look at the money we saved by not putting up ARRA road signs !
Isn’t it a poor Recovery Czar indeed to be suddenly dumbstruck on the task of documenting job creation ?
Sure jobs were created jobs and saved too….but gosh you know …eh its sooo hard to say how many exactly or ….eh ….if it was statistically significant
but we do know government isn’t the answer !
If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it ,does it still make a sound ?
If a tax dollars create a job and only a Republican Recovery Czar is there to document it ,is it still a job ?
…that may be helpful, in terms of where people are coming from in all this. Change “Vermont ‘recovery czar’ Tom Evslin” to Vermont ‘recovery czar’ and right wing blogger Tom Evslin.” You’ll see from his posts that he decided a long time ago he wouldn’t have anything to report.
Guy’s on an agenda-driven mission, just like we are. Unlike us, though, the media lets him get a pass as some sort of non-ideological expert.
And on a related note, this sort of coverage is becoming a pattern with Peter Hirschfeld.
Did anyone read Tim Ashe’s letter to the editor that ran in local papers this week? I know it was printed in my Essex Reporter.
I found it very odd. It was a really cold “I thought ARRA didn’t do what it should and wasn’t what we needed”, and then the next paragraph was him going through projects that had benefited the local community. Something about the sharp change in tone didn’t sit well with me.
If you want to see how the economy is recovering go out and try to find a job. There are none out there. That’s how the recovery is doing.
There are two political parties in America, both carefully failing to confront and solve the problems we face.
The left is like a deer caught in our headlights, sure that whatever it does, it will be crushed. The left postpones doing anything, until it is too late. So, we’re still at war, the economy is still a mess, and our rights are still being eroded.
The right is trying to lead us back to old gods, human behavior patterns we’ve been trying to shed for thousands of years. The right knows that inaction serves them almost as well as action, as they control more and more of society’s resources. Every stone wall they erect helps them herd people in the wrong direction.
The left hasn’t done the basic work of endlessly repeating that we used to be headed AWAY from endless war, AWAY from torture, AWAY from worship of money, and AWAY from monarchy. So, the right’s noise machine is winning.
The right is trying to substitute money for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and we’re letting them get away with it.
The Rutland Herald has it right but the selective quote here is misleading.
1. Vermont did get its reports in to the feds on time, of course.
2. as explained both in my blog on recovery.vermont.gov and in the Rutland Herald story, NO state numbers will match the federal numbers because the federal projections covered something different than the states were asked to report. The feds made an econometric projection which included direct, indirect, and induced jobs.It covered two plus years of stimulus and money which went directly from the feds as well as that which went through the states. The states report on only the one-third of the money that went through the states (with certain huge exceptions like Medicaid which we also don’t report jobs for),only on direct jobs, and, at this point, only on part of the first year. That’s why the state job numbers won’t match the federal projections: they’re apples and oranges.
You can project indirect and induced jobs but you can’t measure them. How many jobs were saved because of the indirect effect of not cutting Medicaid? We’ll never know. We’re required to report only what we do know.
The feds projected; the states count and report. The difference is important but there is no value judgment implied.
Tom Evslin
Chief Recovery Officer
“I’m afraid you are a victim of stimulus spin; very little money was awarded on the basis of job creation or retention claims.”
Man, that must be hard to do, administraing the stimulus money with a restrictive formula in front of use. Good luck. It sure has not stimulated much of anything on the street level.