How would you like an affirmative action doctor? Seven out of eight black doctors got affirmative action to get into medical school. They averaged lower scores than whites who were rejected from medical school.
Steve Sailer: From the Washington Post today:
Metro threatened with shutdown unless ‘urgent action’ is taken
Citing a botched response to a fire on Thursday, the Federal Transit Administration issued a series of emergency directives and threatened to shut down all or parts of the nation’s second-busiest subway.
By Robert McCartney 2 hours ago
From the Washington Times in March 2012:
Metro derailed by culture of complacence, incompetence, lack of diversity
‘Inept get promoted, … capable get buried’By Luke Rosiak – The Washington Times – Monday, March 26, 2012
First of three partsNinety-seven percent of the bus and train operators at the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority are black, with only six white women out of more than 3,000 drivers, according to Metro documents — a lack of diversity at one of the region’s largest employers that has led to an acknowledgment of failure in affirmative-action documents and spawned a series of lawsuits.
The homogeneity, interviews with dozens of current and former Metro workers indicated, is a proxy to a clubby culture of favoritism in which merit has little to do with promotions, and accountability, such as noting safety violations, is a career death knell. In typical examples, court and Metro records show, a black man who spent eight years in prison for dealing PCP was promoted to a high-level management position soon after his release, and whites in the same positions as blacks with far less seniority are inexplicably paid less.
With Metro’s budget chronically strained and reports of mismanagement coming more regularly than trains, interviews and internal records depict a likely root: an environment in which hardworking employees are actively excluded and those who rise are those willing to do the bare minimum — never causing a stir by flagging rampant safety violations, reporting malfeasance or proposing improvements.
“When the accident happened in 2009, I called a supervisor and said, ‘Is this the one we all dreaded?’ The way workers do their jobs, we all knew it was a matter of time. … The inept get promoted, and the capable get buried. Smart people were put in the corner, ostracized and given nothing to do,” said Christine Townsend, who sued Metro for discrimination and won.
It is a culture in which a white male engineer near completion of a Ph.D. was passed over for a management position in favor of a black man who was barely literate, multiple staffers said.
“The average rider wouldn’t believe the things that go on. There are so many easy things we could do to make the system better,” a station manager said. “But they’d never put me in charge because they know I’d make sure others actually did their jobs. They don’t want change. It’s go along to get along.”
Metro is a quasi-public agency that receives funding from the federal government, Maryland, Virginia and local jurisdictions to operate a regional bus and rail transportation system in the national capital area, but is not beholden to rules that apply to fully governmental entities. With a $2.5 billion operating and capital budget for fiscal 2012, Metrorail serves 86 stations and has 106 miles of track, while Metrobus serves the nation’s capital with 1,500 buses.
Metro’s affirmative-action plan notes that the 1.4 percent of its bus and train operators who are Hispanic and the 25 percent who are female of any race are “less than reasonably expected.” It does not make note of the 1.5 percent who are white.
COMMENTS:
* The DC Metro has always been terrible. Like most government planned and built things, it was poorly planned and built from its inception, with the stations in bad locations that don’t correspond to market demand, badly designed for accommodating passenger traffic, etc. The fares are also very expensive, despite it being a government/quasi-government concern with federal and state funding. And like most government programs, it became a quasi jobs program for blacks and incompetents. It wasn’t so bad since it wasn’t used that much until The War on Terror and the Obama years increased government spending and employment and ridership, as well as the Dems trying to get more people to use public transit.
* Who runs Riker’s Island, the NYC jail that’s a disgrace?
* This is increasingly the reality in all the big western cities as the native blue collar population are erased – the new people hire their relatives and the average competence goes down and everything starts to slowly crumble.
* Haiti now has only 2% forest cover, and has lost virtually all of its topsoil, making it impossible to grow food, and causing widespread drought. As such, a staple of Haitian culture has become its dependence on imports for 93% of its food, and Haiti’s resultant poverty.
Meanwhile, it’s neighbor, the dominican republic, enjoys lush vegetation, and a functioning agricultural model. This is why dominicans purge blacks from their country from time to time, as well as resist any meaningful immigration by blacks into their country.
The Bell Curve of African intelligence generally precludes them from being functional amongst themselves in a modern society. Although there are successful Africans in America, they most often occupy the right side of the Bell Curve, or are assisted by others to be functional. Africans on the right side of the curve will always be undermined by the majority low IQ of their race in the middle and left side of the curve. Any social plans that don’t recognize this is doomed to fail each and every time.
Collectively, Blacks must generally work at menial jobs, or become angry, frustrated parasites on advanced nations. They don’t have the ability to make a choice.
This is why either allowing blacks to try to run a complicated subway system, or Obama importing blacks by the score, is madness. We should severely limit black immigration, and qualify those we allow in, and just work with what we have for the next few generations. Offering government grants for having submitting to sterilization would be a great start, as well as giving tax breaks to interracial couples.
Black bodies continue to pile up. Blacks who still have a breath in them are too often leading pointless lives, and are very unhappy. The grand experiment has failed. It’s time to clean up the horrible mess.
* Anything that is 97% black is going to be dysfunctional.
* Yes, the NYC subway is more crowded and dirtier. But that’s because it’s a very good and practical and economical public transit system. It’s the best and most practical way to get around NYC. Part of the reason the DC subway functions relatively smoothly and is clean is that it’s not as practical or effective for getting around DC and the DC area as the NYC subway is for getting around NYC, and it’s expensive.
* Worked for 6 months in DC @ George Washington Hospital as contract nurse in the ER. Lived 2 stops on the metro from work did not bring a car with me from TX. If the trains had running on time and the passengers not been so rude and disruptive this would have been great. I came to the conclusion after one month of using the metro theft it was a Jobs Program for Retarded Criminal African Americans and I was right.
* Operating a train on a grade-separated metro system like the one in Washington is the definition of a cushy job. The computers basically drive the trains on their own, and the operator is really only there as a backup.
It’s pretty corrupt to direct all those jobs to blacks, but ultimately doesn’t have much an effect on the operation of the system.
Does anyone have numbers on the percentage of the mechanics and maintenance crew that are black? If the difficult work of maintaining the railcars, the tracks, the signaling and electrical equipment has been turned into a black patronage machine, then it’s surprising the system runs at all.
* Nothing works in DC, including the Metro, because it is essentially a Black-run city. For those old enough to remember him, Marion Barry exemplifies the model for competence, leadership, and management in DC … a welfare culture that is corrupt to the core. As the Washington Post once stated, “To understand the District of Columbia, one must understand Marion Barry.”
The Metro is just one more tick mark on the long list of public-funded programs in DC run into the ground (three other examples are the educational system, public works programs, and summer jobs program for youth). I can’t see a meaningful recovery scenario for the Metro or anything else in DC. Throwing money at the problem doesn’t work due to the culture. It is throwing money down a rathole.
* This is the type of expose the Washington Post would normally be all over but I’ve never seen even a hint that affirmative action or culture have anything to do with it.
I know people that work in Metro’s finance department & it’s also black run. Consequently it’s a mess. I know of a white colleague that applied for a job there. He didn’t get an interview He doesn’t however know the reason he didn’t get it is because the Caribbean manager was racist. When he received his resume from a mutual ex-colleague the manager asked if he was black or white. When informed he said he didn’t want a white guy thinking they knew everything to tell him his job. So resume was trashed.
* The Singapore subway is a model of efficiency and cleanliness. I live in Chicago and take the red line and the conparison is stark. In Signapore the trains are always on time and there are no homeless people melting into the seats. Every aspect of the train cars is cleaner and the system moves you from one place to another much more quickly – even during rush hour.
* I left the DC area in 2002 and rode the Metro routinely for years. With some usual problems – delays in trains, overcrowding at rush hour, etc – I found it serviceable. I have been following its demise through friends still in the area for years.
I have to say though that this sounds very much like a vicious circle. I suspect that long before the 97% was reached, white people stopped applying for such jobs and many that were not near retirement left the system. Why stay in a system where promotions and pay are stacked against you and where your likely co-workers and especially your boss were incompetent and hostile? So what happens? More incompetent blacks get hired and more whites leave or don’t apply in the first place. 97% is just around the corner, just a matter of time.
Two quick parallels:
The DC school system where it entails the highest per capita cost and the lowest returns. I read somewhere that 40% was the tipping point for school systems. After that white flight took over.
Neighborhoods and apartment complexes, about which Steve has written over the years.
Before I left the DC suburbs in 2002, I lived in a great apt complex in Alexandria. Sometime in the 90’s there was a gradual population shift, which became a major shift as time went by. We began seeing often non-family groups of 3-4 people or families w/several children – mainly from El Salvador and Ethiopia – where singles or couples had lived before.
As living conditions declined as a result of overcrowding, litter, garbage-overflow, and crime, more of the long-timers left, to be replaced by MORE 3-4 groups or families. The new groups living there simply brought in more unvetted renters to share the rent and the conditions reflected the changes. Turnover increased, as you’d expect. Fewer singles and couples wanted to live there so the newest renters were more of the same that drove the old renters out. When I left, I was 1 of 2 whites living in a 14 unit bldg.
The owners, realizing that they had lost control of the complex, decided to gentrify. The complex was emptied and the units up-scaled, including rent, to where the old renters couldn’t afford to live there. The result was that close to 250 affordable units were removed from the market.
* In Tokyo there are several competing private rail companies – they all try to give the best service at the lowest cost in order to lure riders away from their competitors. Unbelievably, this works better than having the government run one big efficient rail system that has no wasteful duplication. Who could imagine that would happen? We should learn from the DC Metro and get rid of wasteful duplication in the airline and auto industries to start with so they too can reap the benefits of socialism.
* I think, though it’s not been widely acknowledged much, there’s been a cultural devolution gaining momentum in the former black working class and below that’s been slowly occurring since blacks left the republican party, that black elites, and especially white democrats willfully ignore, and the “black lives matter” constituency are too feeble-minded to be aware of.
Black Republicans:
Black Democrats:
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=75b_1462666930
The most important lesson black folks must learn is, when American white culture devolves, American black culture devolve even lower.
Trying to lower white people’s status is an exercise in cultural self-annihilation.
* Blacks must generally work at menial jobs and become angry, frustrated parasites on advanced nations. They don’t have the ability to make a choice.
* The Miami-Dade County Transit system has been a hideout for overpaid blacks for decades – over 90% black workers and managers, while the county is only 19% black. I was familiar with one reasonably competent black female that got a job there as an entry level secretary right out of high school twenty years ago. She’s now a senior-level secretary (which the agency titles as “Administrative Officer”) making $80K year plus plenty of “overtime.”
* One of the things that’s kept Boston functioning fairly well in comparison with a lot of US cities is the fact that the Euro ethnics have fought tooth and nail to retain their hold on the public unions.
* The operators were all black back in the ’80s, too*, but the system worked. The Metro was held in high esteem back then, or at least in as high esteem as any public transportation system ever is by the people who use it.
As you say, the problem is aged equipment and lack of maintenance. Last year, I had occasion to ride the Metro again – same ride I used to make, from Silver Spring to Dupont Circle on the Red Line. I was shocked to see the exact same cars, exact design as that used when the line first opened in 1976. The appearance of the cars is now so dated it’s like riding a “SeventiesWorld” ride at Disneyland.
It’s disgraceful that such a good system, truly a credit to the DC area and to the kind of big infrastructure projects we, sadly, seldom undertake anymore, was allowed to deteriorate. However incompetent Metro management may have been, this level of decay is only possible with the connivance of government leadership compounded by public unwillingness to pay for proper upkeep through fares or taxes.
*Almost all the bus drivers were black, too, and had been at least since the early 70s. In my young mind, bus driving, like trash collection, was one of those jobs white people never did. I had never seen a white garbageman until I moved to New Jersey in the late 80s; I was genuinely shocked. Washington was still very Southern in some ways when I grew up there.
* What I notice about Black Conservatives/Black Republicans is that most of them date & marry White people and that includes Black female Conservatives as well, most of them get romantically involved with White men.
* Same here, and I take it to be a move of desperation to escape the pathology of black culture, while still providing commentary for it from a safe distance.
Call it “black fatigue.” It’s the strategy of avoiding adding more heads to your dysfunctional black family by marrying white, asian, or even hispanic.
Anything to eliminate the adding of more Cousin Jabari’s calling you on from their Obama phone asking if they can sleep in your living room because they doesn’t know where their dad is, and their mom just got arrested for dealing prescription drugs, or having heirlooms lifted when the family gets together at your home for Easter.
If you think it’s hard being around a lot of black people when you’re white, try being black. At least white people can walk away from black folks. Black people have black relatives, around half are dysfunctional, just plain stupid, or both, and one of the only ways out is to marry white.
* Don’t give the drivers too much credit. One of the reasons the 6 car trains have to pull all the way to the front of the stations instead of stopping in the middle of the platform is because too many of the drivers couldn’t remember that they were driving 6 or 8 car trains. This was true even when they had post-it notes on their dashboards telling them how many cars their train had.
Another issue is that the drivers are told they have to stop and count to 5 at every station stop before opening the doors just so they have time to remember which side of the train the doors open on. This was because the drivers kept opening the doors on the wrong side of the tracks.
* There was a disturbing real-life example earlier this year. Gloria Short 54, her son, 17, and granddaughter, 10 were beaten and stabbed to death in her home. The bodies were found by Short’s husband after he came home from working the night shift.
One of the teens arrested for the crime is Jervarceay Tapley, 17. Jervarceay lived with his grandmother and her boyfriend. The boyfriend was Gloria Short’s 68 y.o. brother. The brother died of a heart attack when he heard of the murders.
Although the teens stole the Short family vehicles as get away cars, they mainly stole clothing and jewelry which were found in Jervarceay’s bedroom and tossed in the neighbor’s backyard.
* Worth pointing out that Metro has actually been spending plenty of money. Operating expenses for the year ending 6/30/15 were about $2.5 billion. This may be apples and oranges, but the budget for operating expenses for FY 2015 was $1.75 billion of which 58% was for Metrorail. If we scale everything up, that would imply we spent ~$1.45 billion operating Metrorail in FY 2015. That supported average daily ridership of about 712,000 across 91 stations.
Meanwhile, the Tokyo Metro — a private subway, and one of the two major subway networks in Tokyo (alongside the Toei subway) — had operating expenses of approximately 260 billion JPY (with SG&A, 302 billion JPY). Using 120 JPY/USD as the historical exchange rate, those operating expenses total approximately $2.16 billion. That supported average daily ridership of approximately 6.84 million, across 179 stations. In other words, they paid about 50% more than WMATA, to get 960% more service.
And better service. Some of the difference is just because the population of the greater Tokyo area is something like 10 times the population of DC. Even if the rail network could support it (which it can’t), DC’s population is so small that running subways every 3 minutes wouldn’t make sense. The fact that Tokyo Metro turns a nice profit and WMATA depends on subsidies is also mostly due to DC’s tiny population, rather than American sloth and incompetence. But other aspects — punctual service, helpful staff, clean stations, well-maintained track and trains — aren’t things that necessarily scale. We pay a lot! We just don’t get our money’s worth.
“We need more money” is the eternal complaint of our incompetent public services. That doesn’t make it true. And the classically American solution — throw more money at a problem until it goes away — isn’t necessarily the best.
* To run a complicated technological structure requires a workforce with an IQ of about 100, thus the present decline of Metro and it’s eventual demise is as foreseeable as that of Detroit or Selma or Haiti. Even more, a free functioning democratic society requires a population with an IQ of at least 100. If the average IQ is around 90, then it takes a village or a “big-boss” society. If the IQ is in the 80 range it requires the institutionalized rule of society. Institutions such as prison, the military, schools, churches, serfdom or other peculiar institutions. With an average IQ of 70, you are in the heart of darkness. It’s not hard to see.
