It's enough to make an atheist pray to God for an end to this...

Gov. Deval Patrick’s economic-stimulus program is looking more like a Save-A-Hack telethon with a federal cash infusion going mostly to save jobs on the government payroll.

With pink slips flying in the private sector and the state unemployment rate at 9.4 percent, a Herald review has found that more than 70 percent of jobs “created or retained” by state stimulus spending last quarter were government jobs.

And the vast majority of those jobs were not newly created - the stimulus money was either used just to keep government workers on the job or to increase their hours.

“Let’s call it what it is: it’s a Public Sector Protection Act,” said Jim Stergios, executive director of Boston’s Pioneer Institute, a conservative nonprofit think tank. “We’re just shoring up the public sector.”

Yesterday, Republicans ripped into the discrepancy between private- and public-sector jobs created or saved by the state’s stimulus spending.

“You might as well play the roulette wheel rather than think you can get a job through (the state’s) stimulus program,” said House Minority Leader Brad Jones (R-North Reading).

“The focus has not been on private-sector growth,” said Charlie Baker, a Republican candidate for governor. “The focus has been on the status quo.”

About 71 percent of the 4,722 full-time equivalent jobs that Patrick said were created or saved last quarter were government jobs either fully or partly funded with federal stimulus dollars.

An examination of the state’s overall numbers also shows that about 70 percent of the total jobs were retained, not created. Only 1,389 of the positions touted by Patrick are classified as newly created jobs, data shows.

UPDATE: More from the Globe.

SECOND UPDATE: Gov. Patrick on Marian Walsh: "We just screwed that [one] up." (Listen at the 11-minute mark.) Plus, more from David Tuerck.

THIRD UPDATE: Please be sure to join us Wednesday night for the latest edition of The Notes on Blog Talk Radio. Our guests will be historian George Nash, author of Reappraising the Right, and Katie O’Malley of Human Events. Plus, more from Todd Feinburg and Holly Robichaud.