The Heritage Foundation, a conservo think tank (and I use that term liberally) has always harbored an odious brew of vile crypto-facsists, Libertarian assholes and right wing screw jobs. They are also known for concocting refuse published in assorted academic "papers" - which term I also use loosely. Most people of sense and acumen knew that once Jim DeMint - Demented Tea Bagger got the top job there- the place would slide down at an accelerated rate.
Well, we didn't have long to wait. As Rachel Maddow exposed last night, this bunch of troglydytes are now at the center of a storm that threatens to engulf them. It concerns an academic paper to do with the intelligence of immigrants. It claims, and I shit you not, that their I.Q.s are substantially lower than whites and moreover they will add $6.3 trillion to the deficit if wide-open immigration legislation is passed.
All of this is based on the numbers "crunching" of a former Harvard Ph.D. grad - a Jason Redwine- who actually wrote in his dissertation (making one wonder how the quality of Harvard Ph.D. dissertations has descended):
"The average I.Q. of Immigrants in the United States is substantially lower than that of the white native population. And the difference is likely to persist over several generations."
In other words, this bozo with three letters after his name (which don't mean diddly) is claiming that "immigrants" (no distinctions, just one general category) will become poverty-stricken "takers" that will have to go on whatever dole is available, and their year-by-year taking (from gov't) will bring us all much further into debt.
Well, it doesn't take much exposure to his claptrap (and btw, ANY thesis adviser at Harvard that allowed the quoted rot to pass muster for a Ph.D. ought to be fired forthwith.) to see the similarities to bollocks produced by another Heritage alumnus, Charles Murray. Readers may recall Murray was the author of The Bell Curve in which he attempted to tie IQ to racial genetics, with African-Americans and Latinos at the lower end of "the Bell Curve"- a Gaussian distribution.
Murray followed this up with a knock-off book, (Coming Apart) that extended his poverty -taker paradigm to poor whites. He basically took 300 odd pages to "document" how working class whites were detaching from the "four founding virtues of industriousness, honesty, marriage and religion". Because of this profound moral laxity, these poor whites were damaging the white brand, and also ramping up deficits because of their entitlement mentality. They ranged from middle age working whites just fired from white collar jobs, who refused to flip burgers, to younger Gen Y types who refused to respect "the Man" and put their asses to work without whining. HIs worst diatribes were reserved for those who grabbed benefits, whether Social Security or Veterans disability, and these were tagged as "parasites".
In any case, he attributed the Whiteys' grafting ways and laziness to their collective failure to hold up the four props as explaining why they are perhaps now embracing government "entitlements" and in the process reducing their collective IQ. For example, we learn that in blue-collar America (in contrast to the white upper class in which divorce rates hav declined) divorce has soared since the 1980s, and nonmarital child-bering is skyrocketing Worse and worse, 40% of white females with just a high school diploma have children outside of marriage, compared to 5% with college degrees.
Murray's suggestion? That the poor white's wealthier class betters teach them morals!
Now, anyone who's read Murrary's codswallop cannot fail to see the extension of the same statistical errors and nonsense to Jason Redwine's pseudo-science. (Btw, where do these crackpot "Jasons" come from anyway? Recall my earlier exposure of the Ph.D. moron Jason Lisle, e.g. http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2011/06/why-jason-lisle-is-wrong-in-his-solar.html )
In the case of Redwine, statistical errors are evident merely from reading his statement-quote above from his dissertation, using the catch all "immigrants". Has he never observed or studied Asian immigrants, for example, who have some of the most industrious habits and actually display higher I.Q. s than Caucasians? Obviously not! This means he's using the blanket term "immigrants" to pin the blame mainly on Mexican immigrants. But this doesn't wash nor are his skewed numbers worth much.
Right now, for example, the census figures show net zero immigration between the U.S. and Mexico. That means the numbers coming and going are balanced at about 1.4 million each way. This hardly can be used to make the case that we will see milions more Mexican Takers and then they're ramping up deficits by another $6.3 trillion. Where does he get that figure anyway?
That's another case of bogus use of stats, which we call selection effect. In this case, Redwine never bothered to factor in the immigrants' contributions, via their labor and paid tax dollars (amounting to $11.2 billion a year). In other words, Redwine - genius that he is- left out one whole side of the ledger projected over a generation (40 yrs.).
This is as bad as not distinguishing between the economics of the assorted immigrant groups, or their educations, etc. Worse, he makes a typical error of many naifs in not appreciating several things about I.Q. itself: 1) that I.Q. can change over time, it's not some fixed number that follows you the rest of your life, and 2) I.Q. measurements and tests themselves vary and are highly subjective relative to a population's aptitude and skill set.
I mean really! Does this turkey believe that an I.Q. test - say devised in by Pygmies in Africa- would be expected to be the same as one for the U.S. and Canada? Does he think a related rates math item or vocabulary item - like 'write the synonymn for derelict' would appear on a Pygmy I.Q. test.?
Is he even aware of the fact that the SAT, for example, has not been used by Mensa since the mid-90s as an alternative I.Q. entry determinant? (Only the SATs taken before about 1994 qualify, else one must sit Mensa's own test). Why the change? Because the College Board that administers it no longer was convinced the SATs met the basic requirements of an I.Q. format aptitude test. This means that if Redwine used SAT scores, say, to assess Mexican or any immigrants' I.Q. scores, he'd be off base. They results would have to be tossed into the dumpster.
While Redwine and Heritage seek to clean themselves up from this fiasco, one thing is clear: The Repukes still haven't learned - even after the last election- that when they spit on immigrants (especially including all those who are also naturalized citizens) they will never get their votes.
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