Metrics to Judge the Obama ‘Change’ Movement. We Shall See Soon.

Abstract: The Obama Phenomenon is all about ‘change’ and we wonder just what might change during his administration. I have researched several metrics on education, IQ, crime, SAT scores and other measurable quantities according to ethnicity.  There are tables of numbers on several topics below sorted for ethnicity. The question is thus projected: will the Obama Phenomenon change any of these metrics for the better? Will SAT scores increase or will crime go down? We can measure the efficacy of these promises and see if they are just campaign fluff uttered during the hysteria of political campaigns.

Introducti0n:

We are subject to a foggy and sticky effluence of promises and grand-sounding social programs by our politicians just before election time, most of which seem to eventually fail and many were apparently never intended to work in the first place.  The question becomes, after an analysis of many of these promises: Are these just phony promises to get votes or do the politicians really think they can change society?  Many people believe that Obama can produce substantive change in minorities in particular. He is clearly their idol. We shall see.

Such promises have failed miserably in the past. The Great Society was a great example of throwing money into the latrines [1] like the New Deal,[2] Fair Deal,[3] Great Society[4] and host of failed programs like the Camp David Accords, HUD, War on Poverty, the Panama Canal Treaties, Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT II).[5] We are promised much and receive little for our massive taxes.  It seems we can double spending on ‘education’ and watch SAT score averages actually drop. With the new Obama administration, we can look at precise metrics from the last decade or two and use them to compare the outcomes for each category with what the Obama Era brings.  We can measure what he will accomplish.

Education and Intelligence Quotient

How did these educational programs from 1950 on ward work? Most of them failed in functional terms. The Great Society tried to focus on education. President Johnson talked about this[6] and spend billions  and most of his programs eventually  failed. According to Joseph A. Califano the race riots[7] ended the Johnson Great Society’s objectives as “he felt betrayed by the social unrest.” Johnson asked the academic community for an answer as to why his programs failed and Arthur Jensen of University of California at Berkeley assessed the reason as being related to low cognitive skills of African-Americans. His article: “How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement?”[8] caused a political fire storm and was instantly refuted by ignoring and making excuses for the standardized test results. The data were reinvestigated and reanalyzed at Harvard and further substantiated in The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life , which was also ‘refuted’ with emotion and political action. The attack on the authors was actually an attack on legitimacy of the testing data, known well since 1905 and discussed in a book entitled The Measurement Of Intelligence[9] by Lewis M Terman.  Nobody had questioned the facts about cognitive differences among races until it became a hot political issue. Thus, the refutation of hard scientific facts such as IQ testing now follows by strident political mechanisms as we see in the phony Global Warming Follies[10] and other political nostrums.  If the truth from sound scientific data violates some leftist political tenet then they must be lies and some counter process is needed to ‘correct’ the political view. 21,000 scientists can take issue with Al Gore on global warming, which recently had to be embarrassingly changed to ‘climate change, but he declares the matter ‘settled.’ His adventure is in the realm of global taxes—not science. He is the new Lysenko.

Standardized tests generally show differences among populations for suitability and compatibility with higher education and certain success predictions on the job or career. After all, lawyers and CEOs have the highest IQ scores, which correlate well with SAT scores and Harvard, Yale and Stanford all have high minimum SAT scores minimums for entry unless some affirmative action program is in force.  If SAT scores mean nothing then why does the Ivy League insist on recruiting students with the highest scores?

SAT Ethnic Group Scores (Math/Verbal+total) 

Ref: http://www.blackexcel.org/06-sat-act-scores-by-race-ethnicity.htm

Note that the 15% lower scores by blacks and Hispanics correspond, roughly, to one standard deviation[11] as was mentioned above by Jensen and Murray, authors of the Bell Curve. Will Obama encourage the minorities to get better grades and do better in school? We would then see parity with whites in SAT scores—would we not?

If it is true that the test scores are lower because of racism and obtuse racial spending on education then we shall see if they improve under the Obama Administration.

High School Dropout Rates:

We find that “almost half of all public high school students in the US’ fifty largest cities fail to graduate”[12] and the difference between success and failure at the suburbs [right next to these cities] is immense:

The City-Suburb Graduation Rate Split for Several Large Cities.[13]

Ref: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/apr2008/scho-a03.shtml

Note that the trend is everywhere. We should expect to see places where blacks graduate at higher rates than whites if there were no cognitive differences and if there were sufficient monies to encourage education as in Washington, D. C.  At a spending rate nearly double the average for whites in America, the D. C. School System is by far the worst in American. Barack Obama is not sending his children to public schools there.  Why is that if he believes in education? There are essentially no examples of any school district where about half the students are black and the others white and where the blacks score significantly higher than whites in academics. We would expect that to be the case in affluent black areas and we do not find that anywhere.

Crime:

Main street, as Obama calls it:  We all know that blacks and Hispanics form about ½ of the prison population and there issues forth the usual excuses and such for their internment.  It is always based on racism. We don’t bother, as yet, to include tax-evading illegal aliens, criminals who commit felonies, in this list as it would hit 16-18 million very quickly.  It is interesting that our new Vice-President cannot seem to answer the question posed to him by a constituent about illegal aliens stealing Social Security numbers and criminality.[14] We can count dead bodies in the inner cities, however, and we can show that most of the murders in the US are drug-based and are black-on-black felonies:

Notice that we have high crime levels and very high high school drop out rates in the biggest cities, controlled by liberals.  Isn’t that interesting? Note that Obama’ city is 4^th on the list above.

Drug addiction:

From the 2006 chart, we can see that African-Americans and Hispanics have a much higher proportion of their race and ethnic identity in drug rehab programs.

Admissions to Publicly Funded Substance Abuse Treatment Programs, 2006

Ref : http://www.nida.nih.gov/InfoFacts/treatmenttrends.html

Ref on Distribution: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0110384.html 2005 numbers There are later revisions on these numbers.[15] Note that more minorities by race are admitted to publicly funded substance abuse programs than whites on a proportionality basis. By race, twice as many blacks are admitted when compared to blacks.

A study from 1976 to 1996 on FBI arrest records shows a similar trend.[16] This ethnicity  trend continues on to the prison population:

2007 Table of Sentenced Prisoners per 100,000 populations[17]

Source: US Dept of Justice http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/prisons.htm

It is clear that blacks are doing the vast majority of violent crime in the US.

Summary and Challenge:

We can go on and on and survey the metrics of the vast differences among black and whites and other minorities in the US, but now we have a chance to measure some progress.  If President Obama really has some positive changes to make in our society then he can prove it with better metrics that are a direct result of his social programs. If not, then we can just assume that whatever the programs that the left improvise, the result will be failure.  Such a failure will destroy our society in the future as many will resist using their taxes to fund a welfare state.

I originally viewed Barack Obama as an idealist, then, with more evidence, an ideological racist, and an Afro-Leninist. [18]  His associates were poorly chosen like his mentor Frank Marshall Davis[19]. His work as an ‘organizer’ for ACORN is another example.[20] Then, there is the fact that  his radical  views were apparently  refined by Saul Alinsky, and William Ayers[21][22] Then you must add 20 years of training in Black Liberation Theology and naked hatred for anything white by the obnoxious racist--[God Dam* America! Or ‘KKK America’]--Jeremiah Wright. It is difficult to believe that Obama has everybody’s interests at heart and wants to earn the respect of all with a background like his, but I am willing to see how he proceeds and look for progress.

His massive spending programs are full of pork and things that smell like ear marks and contain a lot of fluff. If he cannot stimulate the economy then he will fail and so will his party in the 2010 elections. He promised a middle class tax cut [so did Clinton] in his campaign and promised no tax increases about the 250,000 income level.[23] So far, it looks like he intends to raise taxes in the face of an impending depression.

It will be interesting to see if he is genuine or just some academic clown in a slick suit with big ears and an Alfred E. Newman grin on his face. So far, he has taken great pains to grovel before the Islamo-Fascists and appease the far left.  He has to face the general public soon and they will be expecting him to deliver on his promises. I hope he can. I do not have faith in him, however. 

The proof will be at hand fairly soon………..

rycK

Comments: ryckki@gmail.com