A Tale of Two Cities!

It is a pretty obvious truism that, for a lie to be believed, it must, first of all, be believable.

So consider the City of Bloomington, Texas where the Obama administration claims to have “saved or created” 450 jobs as a result of the “stimulus package”. The only problem with the claim is that this small community received only $26,000. And you can do the math for yourself.

Anyway, with that sum, the city decided on a couple of small tasks one of which was to put a new roof on a public housing project. That created temporary work for five roofers and a supervisor for a total of 450 hours and it was this number that Bloomington reported to the other city, Washington DC. Well that did not fit the desired pattern and someone in the Obama administration “reworked” the numbers into 450 jobs.

Clearly with that sort of fuzzy math it won’t be too hard to come up with Obama’s stated goal of 3 ½ Million jobs saved or created but the problem he and his team face is that the American public is not quite that gullible. (Although, it must be pointed out that many were just one year ago.)

This is one of the reasons why, in New Jersey and Virginia, the “Independent” voters changed from pulling the lever for a Democrat to a Republican by a margin of 2 to 1. In the end, especially in Virginia, it wasn’t even close.

Another reason why it happened is that the American public has not cooled off since the summer-hot wrath of the Tea Parties and Town Hall meetings over healthcare. Now the House bill is published, all 1990 pages of it and people have either read it or they’ve read analysis of it. Here are a few snippets:-

Under the bill, singles making $500,000 a year and couples making $1 million a year will be hit with a further 5.4 percent tax on income.

It purports to set up a mechanism where the commissioner must verify that individuals are citizens or legal immigrants in order to receive affordability credits but the bill does not specify how this will be done.

Members of Congress "may," but are not required to enroll in the public option.

Insurance companies are given immunity from lawsuits where coverage is denied, and then a person suffers injury or death as a result of that denial.

It specifies the creation of 111 new state and federal bureaucracies.

Taxes on small businesses will increase by $729 Billion which is likely to result in the loss of 5 ½ million jobs as those businesses cut their payrolls in order to save money.

What it does not include is any provision for tort reform nor the ability to buy insurance across state lines, both of which would reduce costs immediately.

No wonder that the cities of Bloomington, Texas and Washington DC don’t see eye to eye.

So-called “Blue Dog Democrats” look at the trends shown so clearly in yesterday’s election, they know the passion of their constituents, and they ponder their own test just one year from now. And, they don’t like what they see and, for once, they’re right.