Saturday, August 14, 2004
Jessica Cutler CLAIMS her IQ is 140
New Jessica Cutler article in the Washington Post
It was previously reported in this blog that April Witt of the Washington Post was working on a story about Jessica Cutler. That story is now available online.
The Washington post article is the most detailed account of Jessica Cutler to date. It’s a must read for anyone still interested in this “scandal.”
Matt Doyle
The Washington Post article is the first print publication to write about the impropriety of Jessica Cutler’s sexual relationship with Matt Doyle, the person who hires interns for Joseph Lieberman. (But unlike my blog, the Washington Post withholds his name.) I previously wrote the following in my blog:
Isn’t there something wrong when the person in charge of hiring interns (Matt Doyle) then has sex with the interns he hired? Was there a quid pro quo? Should Joseph Lieberman, who claims to be an orthodox Jew (although he was excommunicated ), tolerate this kind of behavior on the part of his staff? Doesn’t this smell unkosher? Shouldn’t Matt Doyle be fired for his scandalous behavior?
April Witt had the following to say about the matter:
The Lieberman staffer in question declined to be interviewed for this story. After Jessica's blog surfaced, Lieberman asked his chief of staff to review the matter, according to Matt Gobush, the senator's director of communications. Gobush acknowledges that the Lieberman staffer was listed as the contact on the internship posting Jessica responded to and that he had sat in on her interview. But ultimately that staffer did not make the decision to hire her, Gobush says. Although Gobush says the matter is still under review, any alleged sexual contact between a staffer and a former intern would not violate the office policy prohibiting sexual harassment.
I guess that Lieberman was paying attention to this scandal. He personally asked his chief of staff to review the matter. But in the end, Matt Doyle is still apparently working there.
Jessica Cutler does drugs
It was previously reported in this blog that Jessica Cutler uses illegal drugs. I had the following to say about this matter:
I think this is its own mini-scandal right there. Staffers who work for Senators who pass laws and appropriate money to fight the "war on drugs," do drugs themselves in blatant disregard of the law.
I know of someone who was fired from a contracting position at an irrelevant government office in outside the beltway Virginia because he stupidly confessed in his background investigation forms that he smoked a joint while he was in high school. Meanwhile, the staff who work on Capitol Hill do coke after work. How is that right?
The Washington Post article adds some further insight into Jessica Cutler’s drug use:
Jessica didn't hide from any of [her sex partners] that she drank heavily and used drugs such as ecstasy, she says. She's tried virtually every party drug, she says, and was amazed by how many men in Washington hadn't. "They will tell you, 'I have never done drugs' " she marvels. "Are you kidding me? . . . I would hope they are lying. How could you not even try it? . . . I think that's just part of being open-minded."
I think that everyone on Capitol Hill who uses illegal drugs should be outed and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law just like regular people who get caught with drugs. I say this not because I am anti-drug (actually I favor legalizing them), but because I’m anti-hypocrite. The people who make the laws are the first ones who should be prosecuted for violating their own laws.
What is Jessica Cutler’s IQ?
According to the Washington Post article, “she says she's been twice tested at more than 140.”
Just because Jessica Cutler says something doesn’t mean it’s true. She previously told news reporters that she was 24 when she’s really 26, and that she graduated from Syracuse University even though she didn’t. In fact, if Jessica Cutler’s lips are moving, there’s probably a good chance she’s lying about something.
So I find this 140 IQ story to be highly suspicious. Exactly what test did she take and when did she take it? I would like to know her SAT score. According to one guy’s SAT to IQ conversion chart on the internet, an IQ of 140 correlates to an SAT score of 1430. Prior to the SAT being renormed in 1994, Mensa considered an SAT score of 1250 to be equivalent to the 130 IQ needed for admission. After 1994, you need to add 70 points to get an equivalent score, so an SAT score today of 1320 is equivalent to an IQ of 130. I would say that if Jessica Cutler scored anything less than 1400 on the SAT then her story is a big lie.
If Jessica Cutler scored so high on her SAT, what was she doing in a bogus school like Syracuse University? And if she was so smart, why did she flunk out and not even graduate? This 140 IQ claim seems pretty bogus to me.
If anyone reading this has any info about Jessica Cutler’s SAT score or her grades in college, then please contact me (my email address is on the sidebar of the blog’s homepage).
Blue state/red state and the high cost of housing
In the late 1960s, my parents bought a three bedroom house in Staten Island, New York. My mother was a “housewife” and my father didn’t have a college degree. There is no way today that the salary of a single non-college degreed wage earner would be able to pay for that house. In fact, it’s likely that such a person would look at the price and think, “even if my salary triples I would not be able to afford that house.”
So why is residential real estate so expensive today? It all boils down to supply and demand. Demand has increased faster than supply, causing the prices to increase. Although there are some interesting things to write about on the demand side, this essay focuses on supply. Supply is not increasing as fast as it should.
There are some who have argued that there is simply no room to build new residential units in most urban areas. They have just grown too big. But this is not true. There is always room to build something new. If there’s no room to build out, there’s always room to build up. Multi-story apartments and condominiums could add a large number of housing units to a region very quickly.
If housing were a free market, builders would quickly build more of it when prices went up bringing the market back into equilibrium. The problem is that housing is not a free market when it comes to construction. Builders are not allowed to build unless given permission by the local government, and in places with high housing costs, local governments are not letting the builders build anything.
There is a series of articles in the Washington Post about this problem in the DC area. Counties don’t want people to move there to live, because they have to educate the home owners’ little brats and that costs the county money. Instead, they let commercial office space go up, creating new jobs in the area without new people living there. This explains why the traffic is so bad around DC. People have to drive longer and longer distances to get to the new office buildings. The local governments simply forbid builders from building adequate housing near the office buildings.
The housing problem seems to me to be a red state/blue state issue. If you recall, the “red states” voted Republican and the “blue states” voted Democratic. In a red state where I used to live, Arizona, houses were cheap. Single wage earners without a college degree can afford to buy their own townhouse in Phoenix, in a safe neighborhood.
I visited an apartment complex here in Arlington Virginia and discovered that it was earmarked as “affordable housing” for low wage earners. I didn’t qualify. But I was amazed that the special “affordable housing” in Arlington was more expensive than regular apartments in the Phoenix area that anyone could move into.
I imagine the following two scenarios taking place (all imagined because I have no idea how the process really works):
(1) A builder walks into the zoning office in Phoenix, Arizona. He says, “I want to build a complex of 1000 condominium homes.” The zoning officer says, “great idea! Go ahead and start building them right away! I hope you make a lot of money.” A year and a half later, there are 1000 new housing units in Phoenix.
(2) A builder walks into the zoning office in Fairfax County, Virginia. He says, “I want to build a complex of 1000 condominium homes.” The zoning officer says, “hold it right there you greedy evil capitalist. Not so fast. First you have to fill out these four hundred forms and do an environmental impact study, a traffic impact study, and a quality of life impact study.” So the builder hires a bunch of lawyers and other experts, and he pays a million dollars in fees, and a year later he brings back all the required documentation to the zoning office. He says, “now can I build my project?” The zoning officer says, “not so fast you greedy evil capitalist. We need to study these things.” Well the story is getting boring really fast, so I’ll get to the point; five years later the builder is finally approved to build only 500 units instead of 1000, and 100 of the units have to be ‘affordable units.’” Meanwhile the builder in Phoenix has completed three projects of 1000 units each, and all of his 3000 units are more affordable than the 100 “affordable” units that the builder in Fairfax County built.
This is a blue state/red state issue because the Democrats are hostile to new construction. They think that builders are evil capitalists. They say it’s unfair that “luxury” housing is being build and not housing for the poor or the middle class. They say that the new housing will hurt the wetlands. They say that the new housing will cause more traffic. So nothing gets built, and housing prices go up.
The Democrats are supposed to be the party that “cares” about the average wage earner while the Republicans are supposed to be the party of the rich. Yet in the Democratic cities, the average wage earner can barely afford to live. In Republican places like Arizona and Texas, despite the huge influx of new people, housing remains affordable.
For most people, their single largest expense is housing. If a political party truly cared about lower income people, they would enact policies that bring down the cost of housing. It’s clear that the Democrats don’t care.
UPDATE 12/28/04
More evidence that I am right. Blue state, red state, and housing. I told you so.
