Damn, that stimulus is doing a bang-up job!

So remember that $787 billion stimulus, much of which was thrown away to left-wing groups and imaginary zip codes? You probably do since Obama won't stop harping on how it saved the nation from losing countless jobs. The unemployment numbers for February are out today and the nation is still losing countless jobs.

According to the Department of Labor, the economy shed 36,000 jobs during February and unemployment remains mired at 9.7 percent. Obama promised that, if his stimulus boondoggle was passed, unemployment wouldn't surpass 8 percent. Since then, we've been to 11 percent unemployment and back.

Calculated Risk Blog has a graph showing just how bad our situation is, shown above.

Everything after month 14 on the y-axis of that graph is since the stimulus was passed. During that time, one-third of the stimulus has been spent, with almost no discernible effect. If anything, this recession is more prolonged than anything else in our history. The economy began plunging in December 2007 and has continued sinking for more than two years. The job losses are finally starting to abate, but we're still looking at net losses of jobs.

The only difference is that our government is $787 billion shorter now, thanks to the president's fiscal delusions.

UPDATE: It occurs to us that the unemployment rate is likely much higher since many people have stopped looking for jobs since the recession began. These people aren't counted in the unemployment tally. Some estimates have the real unemployment rate at 20%. Good going, Mr. President.

Finally: The stimulus creates lots of jobs!

Finally, after months of failure, the stimulus finally seems to be bringing down unemployment! Unemployment in other countries, that is.

Naturally, one of the largest programs in the Recovery Act funds renewable energy (progressive-speak for "windmills"). But there's just one problem, according to the Investigative Reporting Workshop:

"[M]ore than 80 percent of the first $1 billion in grants to wind energy companies went to foreign firms. Since then, the administration has stopped making announcements of new grants to wind, solar and geothermal companies, but has handed out another $1 billion, bringing the total given out to $2.1 billion and the total that went to companies based overseas to more than 79 percent.

In fact, the largest grant made under the program so far, a $178 million payment on Dec. 29, went to Babcock & Brown, a bankrupt Australian company that built a Texas wind farm using turbines made by a Japanese company."

Finally, outsourcing we can believe in. It's gotten so bad that a group of Democrat senators has sent a letter to Department of Treasury demanding that the program be halted until the government starts buying American. The effort is being led by Sen. Chuck Schumer. When even Chuck Schumer is bashing your spending program, you know it's a spectacular failure. Meanwhile the unemployment rate is still almost 10% and the national debt is still skyrocketing. So the stimulus has thus far spent money in imaginary zip codes and foreign countries. It's high time Obama got the program back on track and make sure its aid goes to all 57 states.

Confirmed: Obama's stimulus a massive waste of money

The president has been going around bragging about his stimulus bill again. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office recently announced that the stimulus supposedly saved or created anywhere from 1 million to 2.1 million jobs. Of course, that's an enormous range of difference...and unemployment has skyrocketed since the stimulus passed...and the CBO was the same collection of bean counters who claimed the health care reform bill would somehow save money.

But let's say they're right. Let's pretend the stimulus has created, say, 1.5 million jobs. Roughly one-third of the stimulus money has been spent so far. That means we spent $1,746,000 per job! The median household income in America is only $46,000 per year!

It's difficult to think of ways Obama could have wasted that money more inefficiently. Rather than passing a stimulus bill, why didn't Obama just give every American citizen (around 300 million) $100,000? He could have instantly stimulated the economy and done it for half the price.