In light of the news about stimulus job creation statistics not being as advertised — complete with made-up Congressional districts — I offer another surprisingly relevant insight from Mises’ Human Action. Turns out there is a reason stimulus advocates are resorting to trickery:

“If government spending for public works is financed by taxing the citizens or borrowing from them, the citizens’ power to spend and invest is curtailed to the same extent as that of the public treasury expands. No additional jobs are…

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“[A] government can spend or invest only what it takes away from its citizens… its additional spending and investment curtails the citizens’ spending and investment to the full extent of its quantity.”

-Ludwig von Mises, Human Action, 4th ed., (Irvington-on-Hudson New York: Foundation for Economic Education, 1996 [1949], p. 744.

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President Obama’s $800 billion stimulus package creates imaginary jobs, while destroying ones in the real world.

Billions from the stimulus are being spent on creating tens of thousands of imaginary jobs in 440 phantom Congressional districts, according to the government’s own web site:

Just how big is the stimulus package? Well for one, it has doubled the size of the House of Representatives, according to recovery.gov, which says that funds were distributed to 440 congressional districts that do not exist. . . . The web site…

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Unemployment is now higher in the U.S. than in Europe,  reports the Washington Post.  “The official U.S. unemployment rate, reported last Friday, now stands at 10.2 percent,” compared to “9.7 percent” in Europe.   This is the highest rate in more than 26 years, and marks a huge change from the recent past, in which unemployment was double the American rate in much of Europe, such as in France.

Unemployment is at 10 percent in France, which refused to adopt a U.S.-style stimulus…

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It’s been a year since the president was elected, and he’s already piled up an impressive list of lies and broken promises.

The broken promises include his pledge to enact a “net spending cut,” his promise not to raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year, and his promise not to sign bills without first giving the public five days of notice.

The Congressional Budget Office says that Obama’s proposed budgets will explode the national debt through massive spending increases, increasing the already large deficits…

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Unemployment has risen to 9.8 percent, a 26-year high.

That’s much higher than the Obama administration predicted unemployment would rise, if Congress had refused to pass his $800 billion stimulus package.  The administration claimed unemployment would rise to 8 percent without a stimulus.

Small businesses are finding it more difficult than ever to borrow badly needed money to meet their payrolls.  New financial regulations backed by the administration are contributing to a terrible credit crunch.  Meanwhile, the wealthy Wall Street investment bank Goldman Sachs, perhaps the…

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“Stimulus” packages that increase government spending don’t work, notes Harvard economist Robert J. Barro in the Wall Street Journal.

The administration claimed that Obama’s $800 billion stimulus package would deliver a short-run “jolt” that would quickly lift the economy, but unemployment rose rapidly after its passage, and the package has actually destroyed thousands of jobs in America’s export sector.

Countries that refused to adopt big stimulus packages have fared better than those that imitated Obama. And the biggest-spending countries have suffered worse in the recession.

Obama claimed his…

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Thanks to the $800 billion stimulus package, and other huge government spending increases, the number of federal and state employees is projected to increase massively. The federal government’s payroll may grow by more than 200,000, and perhaps as much as 600,000, over the course of the Obama administration. Obama’s budgets, which would result in record deficit spending of $9.3 trillion, would add at least 100,000 additional bureaucrats during just his first budget, and perhaps as many as 250,000.

This is going to be…

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Martin Feldstein, an economic advisor to Obama, criticized “ObamaCare’s Crippling Deficits” in Monday’s Wall Street Journal, noting that “the higher taxes, debt payments and interest rates needed to pay for health reform mean lower living standards.”

Obama probably chose Feldstein as an adviser because of Feldstein’s support for big stimulus packages during recessions. But selecting him was politically unwise, since Feldstein has a history of candidly criticizing Presidents for allowing deficit spending to continue after recessions end (as an economic adviser…

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You just can’t trust President Obama’s claims about his health-care plan. He keeps on lying even after he is caught lying and his lies have become obvious.

The Congressional Research Service and the Washington Examiner say that illegal aliens WILL be covered by ObamaCare — contrary to what Obama claims.

Factcheck.org and the Associated Press’s Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar earlier reported that abortions would be covered by ObamaCare — contrary to what Obama claims.

Fact-checkers have repeatedly caught Obama lying about health-care.

But when Obama denied that his health-care…

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ObamaCare won’t just raise taxes on the rich, and impose tax penalties on people without approved health-insurance plans. It will also dramatically change tax laws so that “taxpayers will be fined for honest mistakes,” explains prominent New York tax lawyer James M. Peaslee. That’s true even if the mistake resulted from a confusing tax rule, and the taxpayer “tried in good faith to comply with the law.”

(Keep in mind that the health-care bill backed by Obama is over 1,000 pages long, and some…

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Mickey Kaus, who voted for Obama and wants universal health-care, wonders why Obama is damaging his credibility and endangering his health-care reform proposals by lying about whether ObamaCare will cover illegal aliens.  He chides Congressional Democrats for trying “to sneak de facto health care for illegals through while showily saying the opposite,” and Obama for offering “carefully-crafted phrases designed to offer false assurance” that illegals will not be covered.

Kaus notes “that illegal immigrants will too get health insurance under the current…

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More legal experts are questioning the constitutionality of ObamaCare.  In today’s Washington Post, two former Justice Department lawyers, David Rivkin and Lee Casey, argue that a central provision of Obama’s health-care plan – the “individual mandate” — is unconstitutional, and beyond Congress’s powers under the Constitution, such as its powers to tax and regulate interstate commerce.

Earlier, other legal experts and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights criticized major provisions of ObamaCare, such as its affirmative-action and racial preferences, and its intrusive regulation of…

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“ObamaCare is all about rationing,” says one of Obama’s own advisers, Martin Feldstein. Feldstein earlier noted that Obama’s health-care plan would harm people with insurance, and massively raise taxes.

Civil-libertarian and former ACLU board member Nat Hentoff says that after reading Obama’s health-care plan, he was more scared of the Obama Administration than any other Administration he’s lived under. (In 1995, Hentoff received the National Press Foundation’s Award for lifetime distinguished contributions to journalism).

Legal experts and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights have questioned the…

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The recession has ended in France, which avoided adopting a massive stimulus package like Obama’s $800 billion stimulus package.

France’s conservative President adopted a much smaller $31 billion stimulus package, which, unlike Obama’s, was focused on productive investment, not welfare or social services. $14.5 billion of France’s stimulus package was earmarked for injection “into private sector enterprises.” Billions more were for investments in infrastructure, construction projects, and railways.

In the U.S., Obama pushed through a much more costly, welfare-filled $800 billion stimulus package…

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“Join your fellow pervs for some explicit, twisted fun,” urged a recipient of more than $25,000 from Obama’s $800 billion stimulus package, which received the money through the National Endowment for the Arts. The stimulus is also being spent on “nude simulated-sex dances, Saturday night ‘pervert’ revues,” and “pornographic horror films.” While providing taxpayer funds for “numerous” sexually perverse projects, and lots of money for welfare, the stimulus package has done little for America’s roads and bridges.

Why? Because feminist leaders complained that rebuilding roads…

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The federal budget deficit has already risen by $880 billion to an unprecedented $1.3 trillion. Most of the increase is attributable to recent increases in federal spending, including Obama’s $800 billion stimulus package, which the Congressional Budget Office says will actually shrink the economy in “the long run,” and which ended welfare reform, destroyed thousands of jobs in the export sector, and substituted welfare for productive investments.

Ironically, Obama had campaigned on a promise, since broken, to make a “net spending cut” in…

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The auto bailouts keep expanding. Billions more are going to be spent on wealthy auto-dealers, cash-for-clunkers, politically-correct cars few people will buy, and excessive benefits for autoworkers who are richer than the average American.

The Administration’s cash-for-clunkers program has already run out of money, burning through the $1 billion it was supposed to cost. The program rewards people who bought ancient gas-guzzlers, giving them, and not more environmentally-responsible people, federal tax credits for trading them in to buy new cars. The new…

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CNN notes that there are “5 freedoms you’d lose in health care reform” as promoted by the Obama Administration: the freedom to choose your doctors, the freedom to choose what’s in your plan, the freedom to keep your existing plan, the freedom to be rewarded for healthy living, and the freedom to choose high-deductible coverage.

Earlier, we described how Obama’s health-care plan would destroy many affordable health-care plans, raise taxes on the middle class, and break Obama’s campaign promises, as…

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$1,562,568 of stimulus money went to subsidize mozzarella cheese in Rep. Marcia Fudge’s district.

Hat tip to Evan Banks.

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