Obama's Stimulus Number's: A Return to Enron Style Accounting

by Mike Flynn
The Sarbanes-Oxley Law was rushed through Congress in the wake of an enormous corporate accounting scandal that shook Wall Street and investors across the country. CEO’s and officers at several large companies were found to have “cooked the books”; i.e. knowingly falsified earnings statements to maintain stock prices or propel them higher. The practice came to be known as, Enron-Style Accounting.

The new law had many provisions, but one of its more sweeping was the requirement that corporate officers and executives assume personal responsibility for the accuracy and completeness of financial reports. In some cases, corporate officers could face civil or even criminal penalties if the numbers they reported to the public turned out to be inaccurate.
If only the law applied to politicians.

On October 30th, senior Administration officials went on a full-court media blitz to crow that, to date, the stimulus bill spending had “saved or created” over 600,000 jobs.The numbers were based on reports filed with Recovery.gov, the government’s clearinghouse for stimulus spending.
The Associated Press cautioned that the data was preliminary and reminded readers that a previous Administration report on “jobs saved or created” had overstated the data by several thousand jobs.
Vice-President responded by saying that the latest report “showed the stimulus bill was operating as advertised” and on target to reach Obama’s goals.
No doubt the Administration was in a hurry to get ahead of the October jobs report to be released by its Labor Department the following week. And no wonder, that report showed that the number of unemployed persons increased by more than 500,000 in October and the unemployment rate edged up to at least 10.2%.
By convincing the press, the public and, even, Congress that its stimulus spending had “saved or created” 650,000 jobs, the Administration hoped to obscure the fact that lots of people were still losing their job. At the very least, they could argue that the jobs situation would be a lot worse without the stimulus.
Kind of like, to pick a random example, a company might issue some good future earnings guidance to dull the impact of an analyst’s bad call on a stock.
It turns out the Administration’s media blitz about saving or creating over 600,000 was duct-taped together with some pretty flimsy data. Not to put too fine a point on it, but they seem to have just made up numbers.
Consider:

• The Franklin Center recently reported that, according to Recovery.gov, $6.4 billion in stimulus funds were spent in Congressional Districts that don’t exist. Specifically, 440 Districts that don’t exist. There are only 435 Districts to begin with. A occasional data-entry error is understandable, but 100% more districts than exist?
• GAO reported Wednesday that almost 10% of the jobs the administration said were “saved or created” were in projects were no stimulus money has been spent. It also found that 10,000 projects had spent almost $1 billion and hadn’t created or saved any jobs.
• Ed Pounds, Communications Director for Recovery.gov, told a newspaper today that, “We’re not certifying the accuracy of the information.” Asked why recipients would enter Congressional Districts that don’t exist, he replied “who knows, man, who really knows. There are 130,000 reports out there.”
• Even in Congressional Districts that do exist, the date seems sketchy. Big Government contributor Kristina Rasmussen delved into Illinois’ data and found lots of inconsistencies.

Yes, with the number of records pouring into Recovery.gov there are certain to be some problems. And, not every human being knows their Congressional District and may not know how to accurately estimate jobs “saved,” since there actually is no way to do so.
Still, remember, a couple weeks ago Administration officials used this very same data to take to the nation’s airwaves and proclaim success for their initiative. They reviewed this data and said that over 600,000 jobs had definitely been “saved or created.” That so many problems with the data have been exposed so quickly underscores how irresponsible the Administration’s press blitz was. Even if they were confident Big Media would never hold them accountable for running ahead of the data, the general public does remember these things.
The government requires corporate officers to be personally accountable for all financial  information released to the public. Having tens of thousand of employees making hundreds of thousands of separate reports doesn’t absolve them of final responsibility on the numbers. Neither does a need to get out in front of some impending bad news.
A few years ago, politicians passed a law to hold accountable corporate officers who mislead the public. If only politicians were held to the same standards they wrote.
Until his dying day, Ken Lay, former CEO of Enron, professed his innocence, saying be believed the numbers he reported and had been misled by his employees. We didn’t give him a pass. Why should we give one to Biden.

Barack Obama rewards big donors with plum jobs overseas

President Barack Obama has bestowed prized ambassadorships on big donors, such as Charles H. Rivkin and Louis B. Susman. Photo: AP photo composite by POLITICO

He may have promised to change Washington, but President Barack Obama is continuing one of its most renowned patronage traditions: bestowing prized ambassadorships on big donors.

Of the nearly 80 ambassadorship nominations or confirmations since Obama’s Inauguration, 56 percent were given to political appointees and 44 percent have gone to career diplomats, according to records kept by the American Foreign Service Association.

The latest nomination came this week, when Beatrice Wilkinson Welters was nominated to serve as ambassador to the island nation of Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean.

Welters, a longtime advocate for underprivileged children, and her husband, Anthony, an executive with UnitedHealth Group, generated between $200,000 and $500,000 in donations to Obama’s presidential campaign and an additional $100,000 for his Inauguration, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group that tracks political giving.

The Welters can be counted among the nearly two dozen Obama bundlers — fundraisers who together organized and solicited more than $10 million in donations during the 2008 campaign — who now are being dispatched to some of the world’s greatest cities.

Charles H. Rivkin, a Los Angeles-based children’s television executive and an $800,000 bundler, is in Paris; Alan Solomont, a Boston-based investor and $500,000 bundler, is in Madrid; Louis B. Susman, a Chicago investor and $500,000 bundler, is in London; and Don Beyer, a Virginia Volvo dealer and $745,000 bundler, is in Bern, Switzerland.

Nicole Avant, a member of a Motown family dynasty who is credited with bundling up to $800,000 for Obama, was granted the coveted and cushy ambassadorship in Nassau, Bahamas.

Beyond the bundlers, Obama’s ambassador ranks are also teeming with good, old-fashioned, loyal Democrats who have given generously to the party but weren’t ranked among his top fundraisers.

Counted on those rolls are newly installed Ambassador to Germany Philip Murphy, former finance chairman for the Democratic National Committee who since 1989 has personally donated nearly $1.5 million to the party; and Obama’s nominee for ambassador to Costa Rica, Anne Slaughter Andrew, an environmental attorney whose husband, Joe, is a former DNC chairman who provided a well-timed endorsement of Obama during the extended 2008 primary against then-Sen. Hillary Clinton.

For career diplomats, the selection of amateurs is always galling. “It is time to stop this spoils system and these de facto, three-year-term rentals of ambassadorships,” said Susan Johnson, president of the American Foreign Service Association.

“We believe the appointment of noncareer individuals, however accomplished they may be in their own field, to lead American diplomatic missions should be exceptional and circumscribed and not the routine practice it has become over the last three or four decades,” she added.

The politicization of the diplomatic corps, which began in the 1960s, is of increasing concern to some foreign policy experts, given the rise of terrorism and the need for greater coordination between the U.S. and foreign governments on national security issues.

Diplomatic posts that may once have largely involved ceremonial appearances now can be focused on issues such as human and drug trafficking, kidnappings, war and intelligence sharing. With that worldview, “We believe America is best served by having career foreign service officers, just as we have career military officers,” Johnson said.
Obama never promised an end to the practice of ambassadorial patronage. In an appearance before his Inauguration, he said, “it would be disingenuous for me to suggest that there are not going to be some” political appointments.

But what has surprised some foreign policy experts is how traditionally Obama has defined the word “some”:

White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said it is unfair to judge the Obama administration by its first wave of ambassadorial nominations, because most of the openings involve traditional political posts recently vacated by Bush administration appointees.

More career diplomatic posts, which run on staggered, three-year terms, will begin opening up in the next year or two. That should produce a second wave of nominations dominated by professional foreign service officers, he added.

“We’re well-aware of the historical target of career vs. noncareer ambassadors, and we will be right on that target,” said Vietor.

That historic benchmark is roughly 30 percent political appointees to 70 percent career diplomats, and Obama seems on track to meet it.

But Johnson said the career diplomatic community had hoped for more than just the status quo from a candidate who campaigned on a vision of transforming Washington into a city less beholden to special interests and wealthy political benefactors.

“There is a bit of disappointment largely because expectations were raised by the ‘change’ theme of Obama’s campaign and that there would no longer be ‘business as usual’ in Washington,” she said.

Equally disappointing — but perhaps more expected — to career diplomats is that the distribution of assignments shows no sign of changing: The political appointees get the big mansions in big-name countries, while the careerists pack off to Haiti, Zimbabwe, Serbia and other less inviting postings.

To be sure, many of Obama’s new ambassadors are accomplished executives who were schooled in the nuances of diplomacy in corporate boardrooms rather than in foreign capitals.

They also bring to their embassies the gravitas and personal ties needed to cut through the State Department bureaucracy and speak directly to the president when a situation requires it — an asset some U.S. allies have come to expect and demand.

And several of Obama’s chosen diplomats have foreign policy backgrounds and are noted experts in their new areas of work.

For instance, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice is a well-known expert on foreign affairs, as is Ivo H. Daalder, ambassador to NATO. Rivkin, the new ambassador to France, is the son of a diplomat and was a member of the Homeland Security Advisory Council.

The president has, occasionally, tweaked the patronage mold.

His selection of then-Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, a Republican who had bundled $100,000 for Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign, as his ambassador to China was a shock to Republicans who had seen Huntsman as a possible GOP presidential candidate. And in choosing Eleni Tsakopoulos-Kounalakis as ambassador to Hungary, Obama chose someone who had bundled $100,000 — for Hillary Clinton.

An even more surprising pick was Obama’s choice for ambassador to the Holy See, a coveted post for Roman Catholics. Obama’s choice, Miguel H. Diaz, an associate professor of theology at St. John’s University, has made one political donation in his life: a $1,000 check to Obama’s campaign.

But Dave Levinthal, communications director at the Center for Responsive Politics, said, “At least to date, it’s clear that a notable number of the ambassador nominees have been bundlers, and more have been donors. Those numbers appear to speak for themselves.”

I'm not losing weight, says Obama as he hits back at claims stress is causing him to shed the pounds

Barack Obama has hit back at claims he is losing weight, insisting he is eating just fine despite the stress of being president.
Earlier this month American media had claimed 'Barack n Bones' was shedding the pounds after stress was causing him to skip meals.
He was pictured looking even skinnier than usual while leaving a gym in Washington, D.C. - though an oversized jacket may have been to blame.

The president walks alone: Mr Obama took time out from a visit to Beijing yesterday to see the Great Wall of China

However today Mr Obama said that while he is indeed going grey, reports that he is skipping meals and shedding pounds are untrue.
He claimed his weight fluctuates by about five pounds - less than half a stone - and has for the last 30 years.
He also claimed on American television that while the multitude of issues facing the country do weigh on him, being president is a privilege.
Even his grey hairs are more a sign of age than of stress, he said.

'I'm skinny but I'm tough': One of the pictures of Barack Obama leaving a Washington gym that were published earlier this month leading to fears he is losing weight

Mr Obama spoke in the wake of pictures published on the influential U.S. website The Drudge Report, which described him as 'thin as a rail'.
The right-wing website quoted an unnamed 'insider' who said the president was working so hard that 'yes he does occasionally skip meals'.

Under the headline 'Barack n Bones', the report claimed that the president's exercise regime - including basketball games - is behind the 'dramatic weight loss'.
The source quoted by the report insisted that Mr Obama was working 'non-stop' - and that he was not chain-smoking.
In the pictures, the president was wearing a oversized jacket that did dwarf his frame, which may have contributed to the impression that he is losing weight.
Last month Mr Obama cheerfully announced in Miami that though he may be skinny, 'I'm tough'.
His weight has been debated since he became the Democratic presidential nominee in 2008, with some conservative opponents jokingly asking if he was too skinny to be president.
He was even teased by Republican California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger almost exactly one year ago for having such skinny legs.
'I'm going to make him do some squats,' the former Terminator star told a campaign rally for Mr Obama's presidential rival John McCain.

He also teased the president about his 'scrawny little arms'.

Both the president and First Lady Michelle Obama have made healthy living a focal point of their time in the White House.
Mr Obama is often pictured playing basketball or returning from the gym with aides, while Mrs Obama's infamous vegetable garden in the grounds of the White House promotes healthy eating on top of exercise.
The First Lady's gym-toned arms have also been the topic of much discussion.
The news that Mr Obama is skinny because he exercises will be welcomed by health professionals and doctors also trying to promote healthy living.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1228932/Im-losing-weight-says-Obama-hits-claims-stress-presidency-causing-shed-pounds.html#ixzz0XHXStBQ0

Obama's wow bow II: Turns out Japan's emperor is just fine with simple handshakes (video)

November 17, 2009

Among the thousands of comments left on the Ticket in recent days, most dealt with our item: "How low will he go?" about the awkward bow that President Obama gave Japan's Emperor Akihito over the weekend.
Apparently improperly briefed about accepted procedure in Japan or perhaps having a time zone mind melt, Obama stuck out his hand for a shake. Which was fine. And friendly.
He then proceeded to simultaneously bow. Which was not.
And take his eyes off the person he's greeting. Which was not.
And, worst in the eyes of many, the over-enthusiastic president of the United States bowed way down at a 45-degree angle, indicating in that culture, and apparently in the eyes of many others, subservience to the emperor, son of the man who authorized the 1941 Pearl Harbor attack.
This came only a few months after White House aides denied that Obama bowed to the Saudi king, when it sure looked like a bow to non-aides.
And it all seemed to fit in with what critics mockingly call Obama's world apology tours.
It also adds to previous Obama diplomatic gaffes. There was that promise to talk with the president of Canada. A reference to not speaking Austrian. Giving Britain's prime minister a chintzy collection of American movie DVDs, which weren't formatted for video players in the U.K. And Michelle Obama's friendly or patronizing pat to the back of Queen Elizabeth II, who received as her presidential gift an iPod with Broadway show tunes.
The emperor of Japan, who does not bow to anyone, and his wife handled the awkward wow bow moment with regal aplomb. Japanese do not typically expect foreigners to bow anyway and often feign pleasant surprise when one is attempted.
Fact is, as the photo of Vice President Dick Cheney shows on that same post, the Japanese emperor is good with handshakes. He really is.
To make the point humorously -- sure, and with a little political dig -- the College Republicans at the University of Connecticut spent some time this last weekend assembling a hilarious video of just exactly how good the Japanese emperor is with handshakes.
And just how unusual Obama's attempted bow was.
It's even got music:



-- Andrew Malcolm

David Obey (D) Slams Obama Administration for Errors in Reporting Stimulus Job Gains

The chairman of the House Appropriations Committee slammed the Obama administration Tuesday for "outrageous" errors in data that led to inflated job-creation numbers on recovery.org, the Web site that reports on the president's stimulus program. The Hill reports that, due to "unrealistic" reports from about a dozen federal agencies, the site incorrectly reported more than 600,000 jobs had been saved or created by the stimulus. An ABC News report outlined some of the site's inaccuracies on Monday.

"The inaccuracies on recovery.gov that have come to light are outrageous and the Administration owes itself, the Congress, and every American a commitment to work night and day to correct the ludicrous mistakes," Rep. David Obey (D-Wis.) said in a statement Monday. "Whether the numbers are good news or bad news, I want the honest numbers and I want them now."

Obey was a major player in writing the stimulus bill, and said he was dismayed to see it failing to meet the goal of complete transparency.

The White House has deleted at least 60,000 positions from its hard count of jobs saved, because the original figure was based on overstated reporting from agencies.

Quinnipiac: Obama Under 50 For First Time

President Barack Obama's job approval rating is under 50% for the first time, according to a new national survey from Quinnipiac University. The survey, conducted November 9-16 among 2,518 registered voters, shows 48% approve of the way Obama is handling his job as president, while 42% disapprove. That is a slight decline from Quinnipiac's last poll in early October, which showed 50% approval and 41% disapproval.
Support for Obama's handling of specific issues has also declined in the past month, most notably on Afghanistan:
Afghanistan
Approve 38 (-4 vs. last poll 10/8)
Disapprove 49 (+9)
Economy
Approve 43 (-4)
Disapprove 52 (+6)
Foreign Policy
Approve 49 (no change)
Disapprove 42 (+5)
A plurality (48%) still believes we are "doing the right thing" by fighting the war in Afghanistan, though that's a four point drop from the same question in October's survey.
The public is slightly in favor (47% to 42%) of Obama granting General McChrysta'ls request for 40,000 additional troops, though 55% say they would like to see us spend no more than two more years with troops in Afghanistan.
Fifty-three percent say the "trust" President Obama to make the right decision regarding troop levels in Afghanistan - a net 6-point decline from last month - while 77% say they trust the US military to make the right recommendations on troop levels - also a 7 point net decline in support from last month.
Fifrty-four percent believe we will stay in Afghanistan too long rather than leave too soon, but a slim majority - 51% - believe we will avoid Afghanistan becoming a replay of Vietnam.

Cheney: Obama shows weakness with bow

Dick Cheney blasted President Obama today for showing weakness when he bowed to Japan's Emperor Akihito.
There is no reason for an American president to bow to anyone, the former vice president told Politico.com.
PHOTOS: OBAMA IN ASIA
"Our friends and our allies don't expect it, and our enemies see it as a sign of weakness," he added.
The State Department said that its protocol office worked closely with the White House to provide Obama with advice on how to deal with Akihito.
"Protocol, in general, is about respecting the customs and traditions of a host country," the department said in a statement said. "The president was simply showing respect."

AFP/Getty Images

President Barack Obama bows as he shakes hands with Japanese Emperor Akihito and as Empress Michiko looks on.

Obama gave a deep bow, mixed with a handshake, when he was greeted by Akihito and Empress Miochiko at their imperial palace in Tokyo last Saturday.
Conservative bloggers contrasted that with photos showing how when Cheney was vice president he gave Akihito a straight-backed handshake.
It was the second protocol flap for the much-traveled Obama. He was criticized earlier this year for appearing to genuflect to Saudi King Abdullah at a summit meeting.