Putting on the kid gloves for the jobs report

In today's WSJ there's a real sentimental softy worthy of the 2008 campaign coverage on the stimulus and jobs. Louise Radnofsky opens with this grabber:

"The number of jobs the Obama administration credits to federal stimulus money could be overstated by at least 20,000 of the 640,000 claimed, a Wall Street Journal analysis found.

If 20,000 were the only mistake, I'd probably take it. But there's so much more. Did you think when he touted this "recovery" that the money would go for "Head Start" jobs--a program that's been in place for 40 years, absorbing billions of dollars, and has yet to show any academic improvement for minorities, so they've moved the goals to nutrition and health? But according to Ms. Radnofsky, who apparently didn't dig very deep, it was misunderstanding how to report that caused the misreporting. Maybe the directors were victims of their own programs?

But then, what's the excuse for colleges and universities who misreported jobs created and saved, counting part time and work study students as discreet numbers instead of FTEs? And how about those low-income housing landlords, who've been on the federal dole for decades. Do you really think they'd want to show no jobs? How would they get their next installment? And those confusing forms and no accountability? Who designed that, Louise? Was that Bush's fault too? Or the money that went for raises and bonuses. Yes, I suppose you could say it's a job saved--except where would they have gone?

If it clunks like car loan, or crashes like a $8,000 mortgage credit, or bails like a rich bank lobbyist, let's call it what it is. F-A-I-L-U-R-E.