Nov. 7--Recent headlines suggest the hype over President Barack Obama's $787 billion plan to stimulate a slumping economy may have been overblown.

That's not surprising to me. Isn't hype always overblown?

In local news, a Journal Sentinel review found a government stimulus job report that claimed more than 10,000 jobs were saved or created in Wisconsin was filled with errors that included double counting and inflated totals. This followed on the heels of a national report stating the overall numbers of jobs created by the multibillion-dollar stimulus package passed by Congress this year was also grossly inflated.

Nobody accused the White House of deliberately exaggerating the numbers, but it was clear some mysterious bean-counters were at work. It could have been an honest mistake by government bureaucrats anxious to justify the stimulus plan or a disingenuous attempt to justify a risky economic strategy with the potential of creating a legacy of debt for future generations.

(These days, it's a safe wager few people will accept "an honest mistake" as the final answer.)

I don't know about you, but in recent months I know far more people who have lost their jobs due to the recession than those who have found new ones created by the economic stimulus. That speaks directly to the heart of complaints by Obama's most consistent critics that the media has ignored the failures of his administration because he remains the darling of the liberal establishment.

For these anti-Obama types, revelations about the inflated number of jobs created by the stimulus plan were just more evidence to support their position.

Even some of Obama's most ardent supporters wonder where all the jobs promised by the stimulus plan have been hiding. That confusion became even more glaring last week after reports the national unemployment rate has topped 10% for the first time in decades.

The need for more jobs has been a constant theme in the African-American community -- including Milwaukee -- for decades. With bleak prospects for more American workers of all backgrounds, chronic unemployment in black America continues to fester.

As the old saying goes, "When America catches a cold, black people catch the flu."

A recent report found half of all black males in Milwaukee were out of work last year, which suggests that any jobs created with stimulus funds would find plenty of eager applicants.