Only the government would claim that the sale of one lawnmower costing $1,047 saved a total of fifty jobs. The private sector and most normal people would call “bullsh*t” immediately. Props to the New York Times for reporting on the waste.

In June, the federal government spent $1,047 in stimulus money to buy a rider mower from the Toro Company to cut the grass at the Fayetteville National Cemetery in Arkansas. Now, a report on the government’s stimulus Web site improbably claims that that single lawn mower sale helped save or create 50 jobs.

Earlier that same month, when Chrysler got a $52.9 million stimulus order for new cars for the government, the struggling automaker claimed that the money did not save a single job.

Those two extremes illustrate the difficulties in trying to figure out just how many jobs can be attributed to the $787 billion stimulus program. Last week the Obama administration released reports from more than 130,000 recipients of stimulus money in which they claimed to have saved or created more than 640,000 jobs, but a review of those reports shows that some are simply wrong, while others contain apparently subjective estimates.

Note: The government didn’t claim that keeping a lawnmower company open “created or saved” fifty jobs, nor did it claim that the purchase of a fleet of lawnmowers did the same. No, the claim is that the sale of a single lawnmower “created or saved” fifty jobs.

And to think some people doubt the estimates put forth by the government as to how many jobs were “created or saved” by the $787 billion “stimulus” legislation. Shocking.

Actually, the Fifty-Job Lawnmower isn’t the most outrageous pork lie discovered today. The government is actually claiming that nine jobs were “created or saved” by purchasing nine pairs of shoes. Nine. Pairs. Of. Shoes.

Welcome to the era of Hope’N'Change.