Porkulus Fraud: More Funds Going to Places That Do Not Exist

The very first post at this blog was about the “Porkulus.”  I haven’t discussed it in a while, so perhaps it’s time to revisit the whole fiasco.

So, we know that the Porkulus would most definitely prevent unemployment from going over 8%.  We also know at this point that the Porkulus funds, as predicted, went to overwhelmingly Democratic districts (we said all along that it was going to go towards paying back supporters).  We also found out that the numbers of “jobs saved or created” were bogus, and that some places were counting pay raises for existing employees as jobs created.  One place even claimed to have created more jobs than their total number of employees!

Then, an even more serious flaw was found.  Billions of dollars in Porkulus money went to Congressional districts that do not exist.  The government downplayed it, the MSM glossed it over, and all was well…right?  Well, not so much.  One of the websites that helped point out some of the previous corruption with the Porkulus is now reporting that funding went to zip codes that do not exist.  Here are some excerpts from their article.

First it was phantom Congressional districts. Now it’s phantom zip codes.

Last month, we reported on federal stimulus money credited with creating jobs in nonexistent New Mexico Congressional districts. Further examination of the most recent report on the recipients and uses of New Mexico’s share of the $787 billion stimulus shows jobs created and money going to zip codes that do not exist.

New Mexico Watchdog broke what became a national news story, and fodder for Jon Stewart and Steve Colbert. The website launched by the Obama Administration to track the destinations of billions of dollars of stimulus funds under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act showed billions going to nonexistent Congressional districts. The website, recovery.gov, reported $26.5 million going to ten New Mexico Congressional districts that do not exist. Those millions were credited with creating 61.5 jobs. Spadework by our Watchdog counterparts in other states showed a total of $6.4 billion reported as being allocated to 440 nonexistent, or “phantom,” Congressional districts.

So, 26.5 million is credited with creating 61.5 jobs?  Simple math tells us that government spent $430,894.30 per job.  Now, I don’t know wages and cost of living in Oz, Wonderland, or Shangri-La, but it is apparently quite expensive to hire folks there.  Or, are some Democratic operatives or groups sitting on a boatload of government money?  Who knows?  Maybe the yellow brick road needed repaving?

The agency charged with tracking the stimulus funds, the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, attempted to eliminate this embarrassment by lumping all the billions reported going to nonexistent Congressional districts into a new category called the “unassigned” Congressional district.

Translation: “Erm, we don’t know where it is, or who got it.  Actually, we do, but we’re not going to tell you.  We’ll just change the category so it doesn’t look so bad.”

Closer examination of the latest recovery.gov report for New Mexico shows hundreds of thousands of dollars sent to and credited with creating jobs in zip codes that do not exist in New Mexico or anywhere else. Moreover, funds reported as being spent in New Mexico were given zip codes corresponding to areas in Washington and Oregon.

The recovery.gov site reports that $373,874 was spent in zip code 97052. Unfortunately, this expenditure created zip jobs. But $36,218 was credited with creating 5 jobs in zip code 87258. A cool hundred grand went into zip code 86705, but didn’t result in even one person finding work.

None of these zip codes exist in New Mexico, or anywhere else, for that matter.

The recovery.gov report also credits New Mexico with $131,139, though the zip codes receiving these funds (but creating no jobs) are in fact located in DuPont, Washington, Richland, Washington, and Gales Creek, Oregon.

These errors were found by checking the zip codes reported at recovery.gov against the United States Postal Service’s on-line zip code locator. Coming on top of our discovery of millions of dollars reportedly going to ten phantom New Mexico Congressional Districts, this latest discovery confirms that the data released by the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, at least for New Mexico, contains serious errors. All told, we have found over $27 million dollars that has been reported as going to either nonexistent Congressional districts or nonexistent zip codes.

So, again the government has wasted billions, and they can’t even say where it went, not will they even state that they are concerned!

The next quarterly report tracking stimulus funds, and reporting jobs created or saved by expenditure of those funds, is scheduled to be posted by the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board on January 30, 2010. The reports are docketed for quarterly releases. The discovery of errors, raising questions about the integrity and accuracy of the data, have occurred with the release of every report.

Update West Virginia Watchdog’s Steve Allen Adams reports $28 million in stimulus funds going to what he has discovered are nonexistent zip codes.

So, what we are seeing is massive fraud.  Our government is telling us that they are “transparent,” but what we are seeing is something opaque.  We can see enough to know that we are being ripped off, but the who, what, where, and how of it is pretty obscured.  Given the short track record of this administration, we might ask for an accounting of this money.  But then again, I wouldn’t hold my breath either!

My final thought is this; what would the reaction be if a Republican Administration had done the same thing?  Would the MSM be talking about it nightly until heads rolled, or would they be doing what they are now, which is absolutely nothing?

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Related posts:

1. Waste in the Porkulus?
2. The Piggly Wiggly and the Porkulus
3. Revenge of the Porkulus
4. Irony That the Media Misses
5. New Video: The Porkulus Wastulus Collection