I’m telling you this because on Tuesday I was talking with a high-ranking Obama administration official about the stimulus plan. “There will be a dead tree planted, figuratively speaking,” he said somberly. “That will happen.”

How could it not? Much of the stimulus money is being channeled through state and local governments, through tens of thousands of governors, mayors, county executives, transportation commissioners, parks superintendents and so on. Try to imagine the person in that pyramid with the lowest I.Q., and you’ll understand that there’s a dead-tree planter hidden in there somewhere.

The White House is trying to overcome this problem with a Transparency and Accountability Board, overseen by Vice President Joe Biden. It is supposed to reassure the public that the stimulus money isn’t being wasted. But some people within the administration are arguing that that isn’t enough, that the government needs to bombard people with examples of what’s being done right  like holding big rallies for all the schoolteachers whose jobs are saved by the stimulus.

Or  and I swear to you this is a real idea  inventing a kind of stimulus logo, like the old National Recovery Administration blue eagle, that could be posted on every federally funded project, as one official explained, “to show the public exactly what we’re doing.”

Let us skip over the fact that the National Recovery Administration is best remembered as the part of the New Deal that didn’t work. Because we are instantly fascinated by the idea of designing that logo. How about:

Erp the Economic Recovery Portuguese Water Dog  Sasha and Malia’s incoming White House pet, setting a good example by taking on a second job to help support the family.

Isadore the Infrastructure Improvement Iguana

Arnie the Ant and Ginny the Grasshopper  Both wearing overalls and carrying shovels, symbols that troubled times fall equally hard on the party animals and the serious guys who saved their money and invested it with Bernie Madoff.

Petey the Penguin  Don’t want to go with another eagle. But everybody likes penguins. They march; they don’t fly into airplane engines ...

Joe Biden  Dressed like a penguin.

Or, if all else fails, they could just get Bobby Jindal a prime-time program.