Obey out of line

The whole thing is a sham!

Rep. Dave Obey (D-Wis.), who chairs the House Appropriations Committee, took the administration to task for pervasive errors on the Web site designed to monitor disbursement of the stimulus funds. He called those errors "outrageous."

"Credibility counts in government and stupid mistakes like this undermine it. We've got too many serious problems in this country to let that happen," Obey said in a statement. "Whether the numbers are good news or bad news, I want the honest numbers and I want them now."

Obey demanded a commitment from the executive branch that they would "work night and day to correct the ludicrous mistakes." Congress and the public should be able to trust reports by the Recovery Accountability and Transparency (RAT) Board, he said.

The administration has already slashed 60,000 jobs from its estimates of how many jobs were created by the stimulus, after discovering "unrealistic data" submitted by stimulus recipients. In one extreme example, the stimulus Web site reported that 50 jobs were created or saved by an Arkansas cemetery's purchase of a lawnmower for roughly $1,000.

This guy now has to watch his job.

WI Dems in trouble

This is a good sign.

Ashland County prosecutor Sean Duffy has impressed national Republican campaign officials with his early fundraising in his bid to unseat Rep. Dave Obey.

In his first three months as a candidate, Duffy collected $139,471, according to his campaign committee's Oct. 15 report to the Federal Election Commission. That was just $16,600 less than what Obey, a 40-year incumbent Democrat, took in from July 1 through Sept. 30.

"I would consider that a pretty powerful moral victory," said Tom Erickson, a spokesman for the National Republican Campaign Committee, which works to elect Republicans to the House of Representatives. "That should give Mr. Obey pause."

More than "pause," friends.

Obey needs to be scared. This is a serious challenger who's doing the work.

Perhaps more significant than the totals is the fact that all of Duffy's money came from individual contributions, while only $34,325 of Obey's $156,075 came from single donors. The rest came from political action committees.

Duffy's fundraising total was good enough to earn him a spot on the NRCC's "On the Radar" list, the first rung of a three-step hierarchy in the committee's Young Guns program. The program was established to develop promising GOP House candidates. The next level is "Contender" before reaching "Young Gun" status. Fundraising and organization infrastructure are among the key benchmarks in rating the candidates.

I'm sure Mr. Duffy will stay on the radar.