Man, the further along we get, the worse the "Stimulus" bill looks. Now word comes that the lauded transparency surrounding ARRA fund expenditures is nothing more than a joke. Not only are the "jobs created or saved" figures fictional the government can't even track where the money went. At the MacIver Institute, we've reported on discrepancies between the federal and state reporting Web sites. According to Wisconsin's site, www.recovery.wi.gov, $1.671 billion has been awarded to Wisconsin's eight congressional districts. According to the federal site, www.recovery.gov, $2.411 billion has been awarded to the eight districts. But the kicker is, the federal site also claims another $2.2 million sent to six districts that don't exist: the 00th, 9th, 10th, 14th, 39th, and 55th congressional districts. One word ... Boondoggle.

Brian, it’s taken me a little while to get back at you because your missive made me spit take a mouthful of fair trade coffee across my computer screen. But now that I’ve got my workstation ‘de-java-ed,’ I’m trying to figure out what you're more unhappy about: that both Wisconsin and America have begun to show signs of emerging from the national collapse due to the policies of your conservative pals like George Bush-n-Paul Ryan, or that things are improving because of the decisive action taken by the Obama administration, the Congress, Gov. Doyle and the state Legislature. Let's not forget in response to the biggest economic crisis our country has faced since before television, the conservos provided almost no votes in the Congress for the fix, and none in the state lege to pass the Wisconsin recovery plan. What did conservatives call for? Doing nothing, more tax cuts for the rich, more deregulation of the banking and financial industries and letting soul-less health insurance companies stay the course. If that’s the path your gang wants, you have bigger fish to fry than a formatting glitch on a governmental Web site.

Scot, have you checked the unemployment numbers recently? Or the value of the dollar? This all before Cap and Tax and a government takeover of health care drives unemployment higher and the dollar lower. My take on the Stimulus' transparency efforts could be expressed thusly: 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.

Wisconsin’s unemployment rate has been consistently dropping since June, and thousands of jobs have been created or saved here. America was losing 750,000 jobs a month due to the Bush collapse and our GDP was negative 6 percent. The job numbers are turning around, and GDP has risen to 3.5 percent. You and Scott Walker may have not wanted Wisconsin to get recovery funds to help turn things around, but if for instance, you’re one of the students who benefited from the 4,600 teachers saved, or the 35,000 people who got health care coverage or one of the seniors who received one of the 89,000 meals due to just a tiny portion of the Recovery Act, thems the numbers that matter to you.

By the way, I lifted that criticism of the transparency efforts from Congressman Dave Obey, the author of the $787 billion boondoggle... Moving on, The Stimulus fails to meet any previously stated measure of success. Thousands of jobs have been saved? Prove it. At MacIver, we've reported that money went to phantom congressional districts and earlier we pointed out that some funding was going to create paid positions for work that was previously done by volunteers. The Stimulus was and will continue to be nothing more than a slush fund for pork spending. Will some good come out of it? Sure. But the more this plays out, the more we find that the Stimulus was not only flawed on economic grounds, it's also being incompetently run and monitored.

The figures speak for themselves. The numbers reported by Wisconsin have been verified as accurate by the same newspaper that raised questions. But let’s not kid ourselves, after conservatives found all the money in the world to give to Halliburton, KBR, the financial behemoths, the Paris Hiltons of the world and the top one-hundredth of 1 percent of income households in our country, it’s telling the only people they’ll say ‘no’ to is the middle class. Well, them and the poor.