An eye opener

When President Barack Obama promised in February that the $787 billion stimulus bill would unleash "a new wave of innovation, activity and construction," he probably didn't have tidying up gravestones in mind. But that is what some of the money has paid for, along with frozen fish sperm, Taser guns and an ongoing political headache that Obama easily could have avoided.

As reporters start to pore over the details of the stimulus spending reports the White House released a little more than a week ago, they're turning up lots of gems like this. In addition to the above, reporters at ProPublica found stimulus money spent on tickets for a musical version of "Little House on the Prairie," a cotton candy machine and breakfast at Fuddruckers.

Then there's the dispute over how many jobs have actually been "created or saved," as the administration likes to put it. Obama says 640,329 so far. But all last week, reporters were turning up some serious cases of job inflation. Examples:

- The Associated Press found that a pay raise for 508 employees was counted as 935 jobs saved.
- The New York Times discovered that $1,047 for a rider mower for a cemetery in Arkansas was credited with saving or creating 50 jobs.
- In Milwaukee, reporters at the Journal Sentinel uncovered examples of double counting, jobs for projects that hadn't received any stimulus money, and other problems.
- The Chicago Tribune found that $4.7 million sent to schools in North Chicago was credited with saving 473 jobs in a district that employs only 290 teachers.
- USA Today reported that a $26,174 grant to fix a fence and repair roofs in Texas was reported to have created 450 jobs. Actual number of jobs involved: six.

Even assuming the total jobs number is right, the administration is also defending itself against claims that the cost per job -- based on $159 billion spent so far -- comes out to more than $240,000. And of course, it doesn't help Obama that all these created or saved stimulus jobs have come at a time when the ranks of the unemployed swelled nearly 600,000 in October and almost 1 million since June.

Obama can complain that stimulus critics are picking nits, committing calculator abuse, or focusing on small data problems. But he has only himself to blame. That's what you get for trying to be open, honest and precise with the public. Consider:

Rather than funnel the stimulus money through government agencies, he could have simply handed out roughly $6,500 in cash to every household in the country. Sure, it might not have stimulated the economy much or created many jobs, but at least nobody would be tracking the stupid things households did with the loot.

He also could have avoided being so hyper-focused on putting out specific job number predictions -- right down to the congressional district level -- and instead stuck to a simple, vague claim that when the government borrows and spends hundreds of billions of dollars, it's bound to create or save some jobs.

And, of course, Obama could have not bothered to make his transparency pledge at all. It's only because he insisted on having all these stimulus spending reports filed and posted online that reporters and critics are having such a field day with the data.

Trouble is, perception is everything in public policy, and no matter what the actual effects of the stimulus spending, this steady diet of news reports about weird spending projects and phantom jobs will only cause the public to see the stimulus as a gigantic boondoggle. Already, only a third think it's helping the economy, according to a recent Rasmussen poll.

There's not much anyone can do about that now. But if there's ever another stimulus bill, the president would be wise to remember that, sometimes, ignorance is bliss.