Two Stories, One Story

These two stories tell one complete story.  

The first story is simply that Stephen Chu, the Energy Secretary, and former Cal-Berkeley physics professor, does not own a car!



When GHW Bush didn't recognize a grocery price scanner in the early 1990s, he was labelled as out-of-touch.   At a time when gas prices are rocketing upward, will anyone in the MSM notice how out of touch this elitist, limousine-liberal (literally) Secretary of Energy is?   Do you think he has any keen grasp of what $5/gallon gas means to a commuter in Southern California?

The second story is this one, in which it is learned that the District of Columbia,which received nearly a billion dollars in stimulus funding, has a unique technique for measuring how many jobs were created.... they have no fucking idea!

Despite receiving more than $885 million in federal economic stimulus funds since 2009, the D.C. government — whose residents face one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation — cannot say how many jobs it actually created for those who live in the District.

Most of the money has been spent, and data suggest that overall regional job growth did occur as a result of the massive infusion of capital. But a review by The Washington Times of figures provided by D.C. officials shows that the city spent hundreds of millions of dollars without being able to demonstrate any significant improvement in the city’s jobs outlook.

If anything, the employment picture has worsened in the District. At the end of 2011, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the city’s unemployment rate was 10.4 percent, ahead of only three states: Nevada (12.6 percent), California (11.1 percent) and Rhode Island (10.8 percent).

That figure contrasts sharply with a 5.5 percent unemployment rate in the metropolitan D.C. area, which includes parts of Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia.

In the District, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate has increased by 8 percent since 2009, as the D.C. government was receiving historic levels of federal stimulus funding via contracts, grants, loans, tax benefits and entitlements.

The complete story?   In a nutshell:   An out-of-touch, elitist governing class is perfectly content to confiscate billions of dollars in taxpayers' money -- your money -- but can't be bothered to use it responsibly, and instead are comfortable simply losing track of it.