I think most people would agree that facts are important. As the saying goes, everyone is entitled to their own opinion but not their own facts.

This morning, three White House advisors appeared on three different morning shows and touted three different figures on how many jobs were created and, eh "saved." 

Axelrod, on CNN’s State of the Union: “But understand that, in this recession that began at the beginning of 2007, we've lost 7 million jobs. Now, the Recovery Act the president passed has created more than — or saved more than 2 million jobs. But against 7 million, you know, that — that is — it is cold comfort to those who still are looking.”

Jarrett, on NBC’s Meet the Press: “The Recovery Act saved thousands and thousands of jobs. There are school teachers and firemen and— and— teachers all across our country, policemen, who have jobs today because of that recovery act. We're investing in infrastructure. We're investing in public education so that our kids can compete going forth into the next— generation.”

Gibbs, on “Fox News Sunday”: “Well, Chris, let's take for instance the example you just used of the stimulus package. We had four quarters of economic regression in terms of growth, right? Just last quarter, we finally saw the first positive economic job growth in more than a year. Largely as a result of the recovery plan that's put money back into our economy, that saved or created 1.5 million jobs.”

Politics is getting in the way of reality. Of course the administration would like to show progress on the jobs front but that simply isn't possible. Since Barack Obama has become president, the U.S. economy has shed nearly 5 million jobs. The administration fabricated a statistic called "jobs created or saved" because they knew the recession would continue well into Obama's first term and they needed a way to spin the jobs numbers in a positive light.

In other words, they are making up their own facts. That's why nobody in the administration knows exactly how many jobs were "created or saved." The real answer is none.

Read more at The Politico.

The Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal released their 2010 Index of Economic Freedom. The index ranks economic freedom and opportunity around the world.

Here's where the United States ranks in various categories (notice all the red arrows in 2009):

And here is their summary...

The United States’ economic freedom score is 78.0, making its economy the 8th freest in the 2010 Index. Its score is 2.7 points lower than last year, reflecting notable decreases in financial freedom, monetary freedom, and property rights. The United States has fallen to 2nd place out of three countries in the North America region.

The U.S. government’s interventionist responses to the financial and economic crisis that began in 2008 have significantly undermined economic freedom and long-term prospects for economic growth. Economic freedom has declined in seven of the 10 categories measured in the Index.

Uncertainties caused by ongoing regulatory changes and politically influenced stimulus spending have discouraged entrepreneurship and job creation, slowing recovery. Leadership in free trade has been undercut by “Buy American” provisions in stimulus legislation and failure to pursue previously agreed free trade agreements with Panama, Colombia, and South Korea. Tax rates are increasingly uncompetitive, and massive stimulus spending is creating unprecedented deficits. Bailouts of financial and automotive firms have generated concerns about property rights.

Ouch. We're not even ranked #1 in North America anymore!

PJTV.com examines how bad social and economic policies destroyed the city of Detroit, Michigan. Is America next?

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-backed corporations that fueled the housing crisis, received a Christmas miracle. The Obama administration agreed to cover unlimited losses for the next three years AND they rewarded Fannie and Freddie executives with $6 million in bonuses for a job well done.

Now I know why they waited until Christmas Eve to drop this bomb. From the Wall Street Journal...

Doubling down on stupidThe Treasury announced Thursday it was removing the caps that limited the amount of available capital to the companies to $200 billion each.

Unlimited access to bailout funds through 2012 was "necessary for preserving the continued strength and stability of the mortgage market," the Treasury said. Fannie and Freddie purchase or guarantee most U.S. home mortgages and have run up huge losses stemming from the worst wave of defaults since the 1930s.

"The timing of this executive order giving Fannie and Freddie a blank check is no coincidence," said Rep. Spencer Bachus of Alabama, the ranking Republican on the House Financial Services Committee. He said the Christmas Eve announcement was designed "to prevent the general public from taking note."

Treasury officials couldn't be reached for comment Friday. [Editor: Of course not!]

So far, Treasury has provided $60 billion of capital to Fannie and $51 billion to Freddie. Mahesh Swaminathan, a senior mortgage analyst at Credit Suisse in New York, said he didn't believe Fannie and Freddie would need more than $200 billion apiece from the Treasury. But he and other analysts have said the market would find a larger commitment from the Treasury reassuring.

That is reassuring. After all, Fannie and Freddie loaned billions of dollars to people who couldn't afford to pay back their loans and then they sold their worthless paper to other financial institutions in the form of mortgaged backed securities, thereby infecting the global financial system with steaming piles of worthless paper.

Instead of dismantling Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac so that this never happens again, we're throwing more money at them and we're asking them to lower their already low lending standards in the name of "affordable housing."

We are the dumbest people walking the planet.

I agree with most of President Obama's comments regarding Bush era spending. During his eight years in office, President Bush increased public debt by at least $2.3 trillion (including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan).

President Obama, on the other hand, is set to increase public debt by more than $5 trillion.

If Bush was irresponsible, what does that make Obama?

Here's a chart from the Washington Post that shows our actual deficits vs. our projects deficits...

This chart doesn't even include health care reform!

Hmm... it's obvious that someone didn't get the memo - red ink harms self esteem.

According to recovery.gov, it cost taxpayers $246,436 for each job created or "saved" under the Obama "Porkulus" plan.

From Ed Yardeni (subscription required) via James Pethokoukis at Reuters

The Obama Administration is touting that their stimulus program has saved or created 640,329 jobs since it was enacted back in February through the end of October. This number is updated and posted on the Administration’s recovery.gov web site. That amounts to $246,436 per job based on the $157.8bn that has been awarded so far! Total compensation earned by the average payroll employee during October, on an annualized basis, was $59,867. If the government had simply used the funds awarded so far to pay for a year's worth of labor, that would have paid for 2.6mn jobs!

It's getting ugly out there. Perhaps stories like this one should be called "Revenge of the Porkulus."

From the local Putnam County (NY) Courier...

In fact, the number of jobs that should appear on the report is not 60, but just 1.54, and those one and a half jobs are actually in New Paris, Indiana. Whether by bureaucratic error, or deliberate maneuvering, the administration has inflated claims of job creation based on Putnam County stimulus spending. Other stimulus-funded projects in Putnam County are riddled with reporting errors and inaccuracies.

Recovery.gov reports that Putnam County has received $1,092,595 of stimulus money for projects, $319,000 of which was dedicated to purchasing five new Paratransit vans, manufactured by Turtletop Busses in Indiana. Lynch told the Courier that the inaccurate number of 60 jobs created by the purchase of vans “counted both the second and third fiscal quarters, when it was only supposed to count the third quarter.” Putnam County officials tried to correct the number before the third quarter report was issued, but were “frozen out of the system” according to Lynch.

Read more at the Putnam County Courier website.