Obama Effect on Test Scores?

That's right! In less than three months Obama has reformed schools and raised black test scores!!!

I mean, really? REALLY. Let's break this down quickly.

First things first, there is a stereotype threat. Basically when told or reminded that one belongs to a certain group, said person ends up doing worse than they normally would have done. Example, if a black test taker is reminded that he/she is black prior to the test beginning they do worse than if they are asked what race they are after the test. Here's some more on it:

That gap reflects, in part, what psychologists call “stereotype threat”. In this now well-established phenomenon, being reminded that you belong to a group that, according to prevailing stereotypes, isn’t good at something causes you to do worse on a test of that something than if you were not so reminded. Similarly, if you are told that you are being assessed on something that stereotypes say your group is not good at (“girls can’t do math”) you do worse than it you’re told the test does not... When girls who are about to take a math test are reminded of their sex (basically they just check M or F on a line asking their gender), or when African-Americans about to take a standardized test such as the SAT are reminded of their race, or even when white males take a test that they’re told Asians excel on, they do worse than otherwise.

Okay, so this exists. It's real. And now some guy wants to tell us it doesn't exist with black students any more because of Obama.

Before the convention and in early October, the performance gap was as wide as ever: white students got a median score of 12.1 compared to blacks’ 8.8 before the convention; the scores were 12.9 and 8.4, respectively, in early October. But just after Obama’s convention speech, and just after election day, “when Obama’s stereotype-defying accomplishments garnered national attention,” as the researchers put it, there was a remarkable effect. Among students who watched Obama’s speech, blacks’ and whites’ scores were statistically equal (10.3 vs. 12.1) after the acceptance speech and 9.8 vs. 11.1 after election day.

Okay... by electing a black President we have managed to erase the ENTIRE WORLD HISTORY and treatment of blacks. And here's the kicker, because of this IT PROVES THAT OBAMA HAS BROKEN THE STEREOTYPE THREAT!

JUST

LIKE

THAT.

I mean come on... But here is the real kicker:
"The difference is considered statistically insignificant--that is, likely due to chance."

So Newsweek is telling us that THIS MEANS NOTHING. IT DOESN'T CHANGE ANYTHING. THIS STUDY IS POINTLESS!!!!

Are you kidding me? Not only are they wasting my time writing about this study that has NO STATISTICAL SIGNIFICANCE but well, I started that sentence poorly.

But I wanted to point out that the Newsweek editors are morons and Sharon Begley should never ever have wasted our time.

The moral: If someone brings this up at a cocktail party, call them an idiot and tell them that the study was statistically insignificant and if it is real, we won't know about it for years.

[end]

Oh, I almost forgot

Let's give it up to the media!

You know what I could use after the Blago media tour? A little Drew Peterson!

Hey media? Why don't you not book Blago and Drew Peterson for every TV show in the country. You're just feeding into their egos... so you call them disgusting, only, well you, umm, feed into them! You give them the platform for them to promote their disgustingness! And then call them disgusting!

So who's the disgusting one again?

Blagojevich Now an Ex-Governor

Yawn.

Should the U.S. Postal Service have a monopoly?

This little piece in the Atlantic this month is a perfect example at how difficult and complicated public policy can be. This seems like a pretty straight forward issue in the U.S. since we have a capitalist economy and have traditionally been a strong proponent of free markets and trade.

From time to time you'll hear that the U.S. Postal Service should not have a monopoly on mail delivery (packages, on the other hand, can be delivered by private companies, FedEx and UPS being the most famous). When one takes a step back and thinks about it, it is a bit odd that only the Postal Service delivers mail.

By law, the U.S. Postal Service has had a monopoly on delivering mail to mailboxes since 1934. Should private couriers like FedEx be able to compete? That could be a big mistake: the government’s highly trained mailmen work with the FBI and other agencies to weed out suspicious packages, prevent identity theft, and alert the public to consumer fraud—a layer of security that could be compromised by opening our mailboxes to hordes of private carriers.

This is a good case of why public policy decisions can be tough. In theory you want competition so that citizens can get the lowest price possible to send their mail. However, it becomes a security issue because if the U.S. Postal Service holds a monopoly over mail delivery it is easier for the government to gain information about suspicious activities. The downside of course, is that it costs 42 cents to send a letter to anyone in the country (with competition it may even be cheaper).

So what does a policy maker do? What is more important—national security or the economic well being of the American citizen?

Personally, I think this is a case where the cost is already so low (if you look hard enough during the day you'll find the 42 cents to buy a stamp) that allowing the U.S. Postal Service to hold their monopoly makes sense. But in other matters it isn't as cut and dry a case.

An interesting case and a good example of how policy works in the world. And here is more from the Rand Corporation on their findings.

Three Greatest Moments of the Bush Presidency (That's George W. mind you...)

Notice none of these are about policy...

3) Dodging the shoe

Frankly, it's hilarious—some journalist in Iraq decides that he's had enough of Bush and he throws a shoe at him. Straight up, Austin Powers style.

What's amazing is that Bush easily gets away from the shoe-missile, and then when the second shoe is launched, he once again dodges it with ease. And he's unfazed by all of this... the bring it on mentality is in full force during this 'attack'. Bush wants the shoe to be headed straight at him just so he can show his agility and cool, calm demeanor in a pressure situation.

In other words, this was the anti-"My Pet Goat" moment of his Presidency.

2) Throwing a strike during the 2001 World Series

Let's break this down, Hubie Brown style:
Okay, so you're George Bush. You're in New York. You're in Yankee Stadium. Millions of people are watching you on TV. It's just a few weeks after 9/11, people love you right now. LOVE YOU. So you're asked to throw out the first pitch, but being the President, you've got to wear a bullet proof jacket. These things are big, they're heavy, they aren't comfortable. They don't feel natural.

So what do you do?

That's right, you throw a strike down the middle.

That my friends, is pretty cool.

1) The Bullhorn speech
Without a doubt, no matter what you think of W. and his policies or his politics, Bush represented on September 14, 2001 with his "bullhorn" speech:

I can hear you! I can hear you! The rest of the world hears you! And the people -- and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!

It was the perfect thing to say on that day. American wanted to be sure that we had someone who could hear us and who would, in turn, make sure the world heard us. It was off the cuff, it was inspirational, it was a great moment in American history.


Sadly, Bush didn't hear most of us in the end. He would waste all the support he gathered and manage to divide the country despite the unity that the country so wanted.

And what's even a bigger bummer for me is the Bush's policy achievements are lacking... domestically they have been a disaster and his foreign policy—to be nice—is incomplete. None of the things on this list have to do with policy... two of them are just sort of fun, or cool moments. They aren't symbolic, they aren't anything thing other than a youtube clip. And while the his greatest moments is truly a great moment, if that is the only thing worth a damn from eight years in office, well... I'm not sure what to say other than what a waste it's been.

If Mr. Easterbrook Didn't Live in D.C., maybe he'd know how bad things actually are

Today, we're gonna give the treatment to Gregg Easterbrook. Easterbrook's day job is at Brookings and his night job? ESPN.com columnist during the NFL season. For the most part, I like Mr. Easterbrook but...

If Teenagers Borrowed to Spend the Way Washington Borrows to Spend, Adults Would Call Them Irresponsible:

This is true.

Since the taboo against serious deficit spending in peacetime was shattered under Ronald Reagan, presidents and Congress have borrowed lavishly to give constituent groups and special interests whatever they want -- then handed the debt to our children and grandchildren, all the while wagging their fingers about how somebody else must do something about the federal deficit.

Yes, yes, tell me more! I'm one of those children! What happened next? Will the next sentence be as long as the first? I'm at the edge of my seat here.

George W. Bush added the wrinkle of simultaneously cutting taxes and borrowing to increase spending, all the while wagging his finger about the deficit. The result was that the national debt nearly doubled in eight years. But Bush will never have to deal with that, since he will be retired when the bill comes due. Bush took the easiest possible path, cutting taxes and increasing spending... Tax cuts and spending increases are candy.

I agree! I agree! This is right! I like candy also! And tax cuts! And spending! Why can't this work? So what if W was a cut revenue and increase spending President! No one said anything for years and year, so why are we pointing this out now?

Barack Obama was right last week to call Bush's handling of the country's finances "profound irresponsibility," though, of course, Democrats in Congress went along with it.

What? No. Not really. See the GOP controlled both the Senate and House from 2002-2006. It wasn't until 2007 when the Bush spending spree was some what slowed, thanks mainly to the Democrats taking control of Congress. And then 2008 came around and we had to spend.

The soaring debt is worrisome for many reasons, not least because it represents headlong borrowing when there is no national emergency.

Interesting... where is he going with this?

Terrorism is a concern, but not an emergency.

Good way of putting it.

The economy is a concern, but recessions are cyclical and all previous postwar recessions cured themselves.

WHAT? The economy is just a concern? Did Mr. Easterbrook miss September and October? Did he not realize that the credit markets came to a stand still and we were looking at the economic abyss? I know is was only, THREE MONTHS AGO, but the entire system almost broke. And when I say broke, I mean it in the 'people weren't going to get paid' kind of way. The economy is more than a concern and what happened back in the fall wasn't going to correct itself. This wasn't 1992 or 2002. This was 1929/1930, and pretty much every economist agrees with me.

Though life is mainly normal, we're borrowing as if the whole world were at war. If the United States borrows like mad even when things are under control, what's in reserve for a genuine emergency?

Point taken, only life isn't mainly normal. Life may be normal in the L.A. of the East (D.C. is FantasyWorld to L.A.'s FantasyLand), but for most of American—New York, the Midwest, California—things are pretty bad.

Considering the slack economy, some short-term deficit spending may be a lesser evil...

May be? May be a lesser evil? That's an understatement. When banks aren't lending money that's kind of, sort of, a major problem.

Obama said last week, "We're going to have to stop talking about budget reform and totally embrace it" in order to "make a change in the way Washington does business" on the budget. Genuine budget reform will require either deep spending and benefits cuts, or tax increases, or both.

True.

Little of the federal budget is discretionary; most is entitlements (Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid), defense and payments on the debt. If you ended agriculture subsidies, shut down the National Park Service, abolished NASA and the Environmental Protection Agency, stopped all federal support for education, and canceled all pending Pentagon weapons programs, there would still be federal deficits.

Yawn... So what?

There just isn't any way out of the debt mess that does not involve long-term tax increases;

Falling asleep... Everyone knows this.

or Social Security cuts (perhaps eliminating benefits to any senior whose household income is above $50,000 annually);

Yeah, yeah, only that doesn't matter since Social Security is really just a Ponzi scheme with transparency. Birth rates rise and fall. In 30 years, with just a few tweaks, we could even lower the Social Security threshold.

or Medicare reduction (perhaps requiring seniors to pay for half their care).

Okay, Medicare is a problem. But no one wants to do anything about it. Why? Because old people vote and for many of them it's the only way they can get health insurance. What private company is going to insure an eight-one year old male with a long list of problems? With private health insurance, there are going to be some losers—children and the elderly in this case.

The question should be about cutting Medicare, it should be how to we reduce medical costs on the whole? That would save billions.

Someone in Congress should introduce the Future Dramatic Spending Cuts Act, which would require big spending cuts, but only once everyone who voted for the bill has left office.

The jokes write themselves people! The joke write themselves... sigh.

With each passing year that the United States refuses to deal with its deficit, the problem gets worse, owing to the compounding of interest... For the past three George W. Bush budgets and at least the first Obama budget, the country is borrowing, borrowing, borrowing as if tomorrow will never come.

And with this he goes back to the N.F.L. Look, part of the reason the U.S. is able to borrow, borrow, borrow is because the U.S.A. has more assets than anyone else. To compare it to the financial crisis is flat out wrong. What happened there was that people with few assets were given homes or credit lines they couldn't afford. What's happening with the federal government is much different. Should we be concerned with government spending? By all means yes, but it doesn't work the way Mr. Easterbrook wants it to work. The Federal government can borrow because Americans and non-Americans want to lend their money to the U.S. And when these people buy Treasury bonds, the U.S. usually don't lose too much money (if any) on the deal because interest rates on those bonds are so low.

[END]

And in the 5th District...

Hopefully 538 will get all over this race since they live in the district (or blocks away), but I'm interested in it since well. A former professor of mine is running for the Congressional seat—Charlie Wheelan (full disclosure: not only did I have Charlie as a professor, I've volunteered at the campaign a bit).

The race is for Rahm's (and Blago's... and Rosty's...) old seat. It is wide open at the moment—thanks to Blago forcing every elected Illinois politician to keep their mouth shut due to the political climate. Thus the Cook County Dems haven't gotten behind anyone... so everyone and their brother is running at the moment.

But back to Dr. Wheelan... Charlie is a policy guy, which I like, and has an econ background. In a time like this that might come in handy. Bellow is a nice video of Charlie on the campaign trail.

Who else is running? Illinois state representatives Sara Feigenholtz and John Fritchey, Chicago Alderman Patrick O'Connor and Cook County Commissioner Mike Quigley are the main Democrats in the race. But all, despite what they say, have some sort of connection—at some level—to the Chicago Machine. The same Machine which gave us Blago, Jessie Jackson, Jr., and over course Mayor "Olympics or Bust, even if it means crime goes up and the schools fail" Richie W. Daley.