TWC Chairman Questions Positive Impact Of The Recovery Act

AUSTIN – “As Chairman of the Texas Workforce Commission, I have grave concerns about the true impact of the Obama Administration’s stimulus program on job opportunities for unemployed Americans,” said Tom Pauken. The TWC Chairman addressed the claims made in a White House press release last week which called the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (Recovery Act) a great success, “responsible for 2.2 to 2.8 million jobs created through the first quarter of 2010.”

In that statement, Vice President Joe Biden is quoted as saying, “the [Obama] Recovery Act is firing on all cylinders when it comes to creating jobs and putting Americans back to work.”

The press release quotes a report released by the Council on Economic Advisors that 205,000 jobs were created by the Recovery Act in Texas alone, and millions created nationwide. “That’s news to us here in Texas where our state is arguably doing better than any other large state in the nation in job creation, but the Obama stimulus plan has not ‘created’ 205,000 jobs here,” said Pauken. “This claim is completely misleading and inaccurate. There is no direct evidence that the Obama stimulus plan actually created any new private sector jobs in Texas.”

In contrast, March job growth and unemployment data released by the U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics reported there were 2.3 million job losses in the United States over the past year and that 15 million Americans still are unemployed.

Pauken added, “The Council of Economic Advisors’ report, upon which the White House claim is based, even calls into question the accuracy of their own estimates, stating ‘these disaggregate estimates are inherently … speculative and uncertain’.”

The Statistical Projection Approach used to arrive at the 205,000 ‘saved or created jobs’ has little basis in fact, and is based on an assumption that the Recovery Act had a national employment impact of 2.8 million jobs, which is higher than the Council’s own Quarterly Report. The statewide breakdown divides the ‘2.8 million jobs saved or created’ among the states on the basis of an average of the share of all states’ national non-farm employment, the distribution of Recovery Act outlays among the states, and the sectoral composition of employment in each state.

the statewide breakdown also assumes that any jobs ‘saved or created’ in a particular industrial sector are distributed across states in the same way as are existing jobs in that sector. That’s a big assumption, as is the initial estimate of 2.8 million Recovery Act jobs. In the end, the Council’s report is only good for estimating the proportional impact of the Recovery Act among the states, not for the ‘estimated total’ of jobs created as the White House release infers.”

Annual private investment has fallen nationally by $316 billion since the recession started—a 20 percent drop. This fall continued even after the Obama Administration’s stimulus became law, providing a clear indication that less private investment means less job creation. As long as business investment remains low and entrepreneurs refrain from starting new enterprises, job creation will remain low and unemployment will stay high nationally.

A Lecture By David Ray Griffin

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — David Ray Griffin, acclaimed philosopher, theologian, author, and 9/11 researcher, will be making his second Boston-area appearance at 7 p.m. on Saturday, May 8, at the Harvard Epworth Methodist Church, 1555 Mass. Avenue (near Cambridge Common).  Griffin’s current presentation, “Is the War in Afghanistan Justified by the 9/11 Events?” is part of a 15-city U.S. tour and a follow-up to his April 2009 presentation at Boston University, which was hosted by the BU School of Theology and attracted an audience of over 400 people.

One of the most prominent spokespersons for the worldwide 9/11 Truth Movement, David Ray Griffin has written nine books about the 9/11 attacks and the official reports concerning them, the most recent of which is The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7: Why the Final Official 9/11 Report is Unscientific and False. His previous book, The New Pearl Harbor Revisited: 9/11, the Cover-Up, and the Exposé, was a Publishers Weekly “Pick of the Week” in November 2008.

The topic of Griffin’s lecture comes on the heels of an eventful year for relations between the 911 Truth and Anti-war movements. In 2009, America’s “Peace Mom” and anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan endorsed the 9/11 Truth Movement’s call for a new 9/11 investigation, a call echoed by the antiwar coalition Veterans for Peace at their 2009 national convention. Commenting on his upcoming lecture, Griffin states: “Whereas it is widely recognized that the US-led war in Afghanistan is illegal under international law because it was never authorized by the UN Security Council, most Americans believe that it is morally justified as a response to the 9/11 attacks and a necessary means to prevent another attack originating from that region. My lecture will present evidence showing that both of these beliefs are untrue, and that the 9/11 Truth Movement and more traditional Peace and Anti-War groups should be able to combine forces to oppose this illegal and immoral war.”

Dr. Griffin’s books about 9/11 have been endorsed by numerous scholars as well as peace and anti-war advocates, including the late Howard Zinn, Richard Falk, Ray McGovern, Ed Asner, Bill Christison, Mark Crispin Miller, Marcus Raskin, Rosemary Ruether, Peter Dale Scott, and the late William Sloane Coffin. In addition to receiving two endorsements from Zinn, Griffin has other connections to prominent professors in the Boston area. His 9/11 books have also been endorsed by Harvey Cox of  Harvard Divinity School, Richard Horsley of the University of Massachusetts at Boston, and National Medal of Science-winner Lynn Margulis of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

David Griffin’s next book will be a response to a controversial 2008 article entitled “Conspiracy Theories,” co-authored by Harvard Law School’s Cass Sunstein (currently a member of the Obama administration) and Harvard law professor Adrian Vermeule.

While teaching philosophy and theology at the Claremont School of Theology and Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California, and serving as the executive director of the Center for Process Studies, David Ray Griffin produced (with another philosopher) the corrected edition of Process and Reality – the magnum opus of Alfred North Whitehead, who taught philosophy at Harvard in the 1920s and ‘30s.

Although Griffin has published 25 books in religion and philosophy (with a heavy emphasis on the philosophy of science), he has spent most of his time since 2003 writing and speaking about 9/11.  In 2009, this work resulted in his being ranked 41st in the New Statesman’s list of “The 50 People Who Matter Today.”