Has it really been a year since the Obama administration launched its “Recovery Summer”? The season kicked off with a trip to Columbia, OH, where President Barack Hussein Obama touted jobs created by his $782 billion stimulus package (AKA The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009) but the economic outlook soon turned chilly, leading to a rout of historic proportions at the polls in November.

So now, a year later e21.org, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that conducts economic research for the 21st century, reminds us that while lobbying for Congress to pass Obama’s stimulus plan in January 2009, economic advisors Christina Romer and Jared Bernstein –both of whom since left the Obama administration - produced a report that projected unemployment would approach 9 percent without a stimulus, but would never exceed 8 percent with the plan.

Here is a chart by e21.org that shows the Obama administration’s projections vs. actual unemployment rates:  

e21.org notes, “As time has passed, it turns out that only two months out of the last two years have seen an unemployment rate lower than 9%,” adding: 

The recession “officially” ended two years ago, yet the first quarter of 2011 only saw 1.8% growth. The Administration and Congress should have a more robust discussion about their self-proclaimed “2010 Recovery Summer” – if for no other reason than to better inform the public about the recovery challenges the U.S. still faces in 2011.

For example, there is new research that suggests that the stimulus may actually have resulted in a net loss of jobs. Regardless of the exact number of jobs lost or created, however, the fact that some economists are even arguing that it had a negative impact tells you that the stimulus may very well have been a wash overall.

Larry Lindsey offered his own review of the stimulus this week, arguing that it failed what’s colloquially known as the Sharp Pencil Test. As he explains, “if you sit down and do a back of the envelope calculation of the [stimulus] program’s costs and benefits, there is no way to conjure up numbers that allow it to make sense.” Here is more on how Lindsey applies this test to the stimulus:

[E]ven if you buy the White House’s argument that the $800 billion package created 3 million jobs, that works out to $266,000 per job. Taxing or borrowing $266,000 from the private sector to create a single job is simply not a cost effective way of putting America back to work. The long-term debt burden of that $266,000 swamps any benefit that the single job created might provide.

If you think that’s bad, Martin Feldstein, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Ronald Reagan, argues the state of the economy is even worse than you think, warning in this Wall Street Journal op-ed that “[g]rowth during the coming year will be subpar at best, leaving high or rising levels of unemployment and underemployment”:

The administration's most obvious failure was its misguided fiscal policies: the cash-for-clunkers subsidy for car buyers, the tax credit for first-time home buyers, and the $830 billion "stimulus" package. Cash-for-clunkers gave a temporary boost to motor-vehicle production but had no lasting impact on the economy. The home-buyer credit stimulated the demand for homes only temporarily. …

In fact, each dollar of extra deficit added much less than a dollar to GDP. Experience shows that the most cost-effective form of temporary fiscal stimulus is direct government spending. The most obvious way to achieve that in 2009 was to repair and replace the military equipment used in Iraq and Afghanistan that would otherwise have to be done in the future. But the Obama stimulus had nothing for the Defense Department. Instead, President Obama allowed the Democratic leadership in Congress to design a hodgepodge package of transfers to state and local governments, increased transfers to individuals, temporary tax cuts for lower-income taxpayers, etc. So we got a bigger deficit without economic growth.

Feldstein explains that the ballooning national debt – which has become a synecdoche for the foundering economy as a whole – “creates uncertainty about future tax increases and interest rates that impedes spending by households and investment by businesses.”

And former Clinton advisor James Carville thinks the state of the economy is even worse than Feldstein thinks.

Bet They Smoke Cigars, Too: Part IX

After the AMA started complaining that “gratuitous” cigar smoking by adult movie villains glamourized stogies amongst school kids, The Stiletto began collecting examples of children whose behavior was so depraved that they may as well have been cigar smokers, too (a list appears at the end of this post). Now, it appears that otherwise law-abiding middle school kids in Cuyahoga County (OH) have taken to smoking fruit-flavored cigars and cigarillos - a lifestyle choice popularized by cigar-smoking rap artists on CD and magazine covers and on YouTube videos (in other words, heroes) - The Plain Dealer reports:

The regular smoking of these cigars, which are smaller and made with cheap tobacco, has grown over the last two years, significantly outpacing cigarette smoking rates among seventh- and eighth-graders, according to a recently released countywide survey.

"They think it's cool to walk around with a cigar. It's somewhat obvious by the number of kids who boldly smoke them on the streets and at bus stops near schools," said Lewis Burrell III of the Cleveland Department of Public Health.

About 9 percent of the seventh- and eighth-graders across Cuyahoga County say they regularly smoke cigars and cigarillos, while 4.2 percent smoke cigarettes, according to the Child and Family Health Services Youth Risk Behavior Survey 2010 Report on Cuyahoga County Middle Schools. …

According to the survey, black students had the highest regular use of cigars at 14.5 percent, followed by Hispanic students, 13.8 percent; other ethnic groups, 10 percent; and white students, 4.2 percent. Hispanic students had the highest regular rate of cigarette smoking.

Without question, flavored cigars and cigarettes are meant to appeal to young smokers, but in every ethnic group only a minority of children smoke. So it’s not the availability of the product per se – or even the debatable influence of movie villains or music heroes - that is to blame for the increase in cigar-smoking amongst tweens. Ironically, it’s government intervention. Both anti-smoking campaigns aimed at kids, as well as regulations and taxes meant to discourage a specific behavior, played a part:

Cigar smoking in this age group increased by about 1 percent, while cigarette smoking decreased by 1.2 percent between 2008 and 2010, according to the latest version of a survey done every two years by the Prevention Research Center for Healthy Neighborhoods based at Case Western Reserve University.

Burrell, who works with Cleveland schoolchildren on health awareness issues, was unsurprised by the decrease in cigarette smoking. "Some kids look down on cigarette smokers." …

Whether they are White Owls, Swisher Sweets or Black & Mild brands, flavored cigars and cigarillos are fairly inexpensive - much like offerings on a fast-food value menu. A single cigar or cigarillo costs between $1 and $1.79, while a two-pack can be had for around $2.40.

And taxes on cigarettes are significantly higher than on cigars, making them more of a bargain for young people on a small budget.

The federal government banned the sale of flavored cigarettes in 2009, when health advocates warned that the sweet taste was enticing kids into an unhealthy habit. A 2004 government study found that 17-year-olds were three times as likely to smoke flavored cigarettes compared to people 25 years and older.

But that ban did not apply to cigars, which are regulated and taxed under different rules.

To read other posts in this series detailing the global epidemic of evil child cigar smokers, click here (last item), here (last item), here (last item), here (second item), here (second item), here, here (second item) and here (last item).

[Hat Tip: OpinionJournal]