I don’t even want to get on an airplane right now. Between DEI in the Air Traffic Control and woke pilots, not to mention sudden deaths from the Covid Jab the pilots were forced to take, it’s a gamble now to fly.
A new report from AAR Corp., a company that provides aviation services to commercial and government operators, MROs, and OEMs, warns that the aircraft mechanic shortage has reached a critical point.
The company’s 2023 Mid Skills Gap report urges employers to “break down silos” and collaborate with high schools, colleges, non-profit organzations, and elected officials to expand early access to aviation maintenance curriculum and training.
“Mid skills” describes careers that require industry certifications but not a college degree, including aviation mechanics, according to officials with AAR, which has been putting together the report since 2011.
The 2023 report includes several suggestions to increase the number of aviation mechanics, including:
Work with lawmakers and state agencies, nonprofits and educators to launch a national campaign to raise awareness of aviation careers.
Encourage training programs to teach people with industry experience how to instruct others to build the faculty population.
Ask lawmakers to pass common sense immigration policies that allow aviation companies to recruit talent from abroad to meet demand and keep airplanes flying safely.
Make it easier for veterans to quickly transition their skills to appropriate industry jobs.
Push to eliminate restrictions on AMTs taking the FAA general exam as pilots can do with their written exams. Getting these exams completed early will lead to increased certifications for the industry, officials noted.
Increase training capacity by creating programs to make experienced retirees instructors in education programs.
The CEO of Alaska Airlines said new, in-house inspections of the carrier’s Boeing 737 Max 9 planes in the wake of a near-disaster earlier this month revealed that “many” of the aircraft were found to have loose bolts.
In an exclusive interview with NBC News senior correspondent Tom Costello, Alaska Airlines CEO Ben Minicucci discussed the findings of his company’s inspections so far since the Jan. 5 incident, in which a panel on one of its Max 9 jets blew out midair on a flight carrying 177 people.
“I’m more than frustrated and disappointed,” he said. “I am angry. This happened to Alaska Airlines. It happened to our guests and happened to our people. And — my demand on Boeing is what are they going to do to improve their quality programs in-house.”
So, as I predicted in 2008, after a moderate first term helped Barack Obama get reelected in 2012, in 2013 Obama let loose his people to pursue their agenda of Diversity-Inclusion-Equity (DIE).
White House officials decided in 2013 to purge the hiring list of over 1,000 graduates of the air traffic control course at colleges like Arizona State who had also passed the cognitive exam for hiring. Instead, it made air traffic control job-seekers start over with a new “biographical” test to “add diversity to the workforce.”
This was in response to complaints from the National Black Coalition of Federal Aviation Employees that only 9.47 percent of FAA workers were black compared with 17.6 percent in the federal civilian workforce. “Thus, the FAA would be required to increase their complement of African American workers by 8.13 percent to reach parody [sic] with the Federal Civilian Workforce.”
This is not a parody.
The Obama administration’s new biographical test was blatantly rigged to boost blacks and hurt whites by leaning in to anti-black stereotypes. From the lawsuit against the FAA filed by the Mountain States Legal Foundation:
…a candidate could be awarded 15 points, the highest possible for any question, if they indicated that their lowest grades in high school were in science…. In contrast, an applicant was awarded only 2 points if they had a pilot’s certificate and no points were awarded for having a Control Tower Operator rating or having Instrument Flight Rules experience…. In addition, one question on the Biographical Questionnaire awarded an applicant 10 points, the most available for that question, if the applicant answered s/he had not been employed in the prior three years. Another question awarded 4 or 8 points if the applicant had been unemployed five or more months in the prior three years. Statistics from the Department of Labor indicate that African Americans had the highest unemployment rate in 2010–2014.
Even the federal organization that made up this absurd biographical test reported to the FAA that it hadn’t been validated.
I’ve never wanted to get on a plane less than I do right now. They have crazy people in Air Traffic Control with mental issues and DEI ruining aircraft maintenance. A pilot who couldn’t qualify other than through diversity almost crashed his plane because he shouldn’t have been flying to begin with.
Diversity and woke ruins everything it touches, but in this case a plane is coming down soon because some assholes think that equality and diversity is more important than skill and training.
Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) requirements pushed by FBI Director Chris Wray have degraded recruitment standards in all areas, including “physical fitness, illicit drug use, financial irregularities, mental health, full-time work experience, and integrity,” and pose a threat to the FBI’s ability to protect America from harm, say the authors.
The report cites cases of new agents who are so fat and unfit that they can’t even pass the new relaxed standards for fitness; who are illiterate and need remedial English lessons; who don’t want to work weekends or after hours; have serious disabilities or mental-health issues, and “create drama.
Airline safety is no place for diversity hires. It starts at the top with United. This guy is off his rocker. I’m never flying them because I don’t want to die because some DEI hire isn’t the best qualified candidate for safety, rather they checked enough boxes for image over knowledge.
How could the board at United have considered this nonsense, or continued to put up with it after this:
United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby admitted in a recent interview that they are no longer seeking the most qualified candidates to transport their passengers on commercial flights safely.
Meet Maya Tallman, a man pretending to be a woman who's a pilot and runs a newly formed DEI Committee for @united
He sent a letter to employees about how excited he is to incorporate DEI into @united
Pray United is focused on safety just as much as they’re focused on diversity pic.twitter.com/d7mU4rkzlf
Instead, he is committed to ensuring that diversity wins out at the expense of safety and white males. “We have committed that 50% of the classes will be women or people of color,” he boasted.
It turns out the woke, racist Kirby has a bizarre fetish as well. Videos of him performing in drag are going viral today thanks partly to Libs of Tiktok, who first uncovered Kirby’s disturbing interview.
Below is footage of Kirby dressing up as Lady Gaga and rocking out to her famous song “Bad Romance.” This was part of the US Airways Halloween performance posted to YouTube in 2010. Kirby was president of the airline company at the time.
This is Scott Kirby, the CEO of @united. He’s a drag queen and has been incorporating drag into @united.
Since 2014, an unprecedented number of college professors have been targeted, punished, or fired for what they said, published, or taught. Meanwhile, colleges and universities are becoming even less ideologically diverse than they already were. Professors around the country are reporting their speech chilled in an increasingly homogenous environment.
While you might expect universities to respond to this issue by making efforts to mitigate groupthink, the opposite has occurred. Over the past several years universities across the country have decided that it’s time to add DEI statements as part of the hiring and review process.
Look, I don’t care what color the pilot is. I want the one that is going to get my ass there without crashing, not one that got hired on diversity. Racism is racism no matter what the color you discriminate against.
Meritocracy is dead.
United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby, in a recent interview, admitted that they are no longer seeking the most qualified candidates to safely transport their passengers on commercial flights.
Instead, Kirby says, “We have committed that 50% of the classes will be women or people of color,” instead of the most qualified individuals they can find.
What could go wrong with putting one’s skin color or gender over safety and competency?
Anti-whiteness appears to be evolving into a trend in the airline industry.
Wall Street Silver, a popular finance account on X, warned people that they should not fly with an airline that puts woke DEI standards over safety:
“At this point, I think people really need to think twice about flying on United. The top priority of any airline on 100% of their hiring, especially pilots and mechanics, needs to be safety. Anyone who thinks DEI (racism) should play any role in hiring, that person needs to be removed from the process. The board of directors should terminate the CEO immediately and focus on safety, and only safety.”
Elon Musk also chimed in, saying, “This is messed up.”
The hard landed occurred on July 29th as a previously uneventful United Airlines Boeing 767-300ER flight from the Newark Liberty International Airport to the George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH) in Houston turned awfully dramatic.
“According to the [National Transportation Safety Board’s] preliminary report, while landing at IAH, the First Officer was flying and, despite best efforts to keep the nose wheel from bouncing, the nose wheel made contact with abnormal force,” as reported by Simple Flying, an aviation news source.
“The airplane appeared to bounce, and he reacted by pulling aft on the control yoke, in an effort to keep the nose wheel from impacting the runway a second time. Subsequently, the speed brakes deployed, and the auto brakes engaged which resulted in a second bounce of the nose wheel.”
These bounces reportedly caused significant damage to the airplane.
I wish the rest of Air Travel and the military were also
🧵There is one tiny corner of the military that, so far, remains 100% DEI-free. No race or gender preferences allowed. No quotas. Website, shockingly, free of DEI buzzwords like diversity, equity, gender. I can't believe it still exists!
Johns Hopkins Medicine’s Office of Diversity, Inclusion, and Health Equity (DEI) recently sparked outrage over a discriminatory “privilege list” ahead of MLK Day, which claims that nine “social identity groups” are the benefactors of “unearned benefits.”
Condemning whites, Christians, males, cis-gendered straight people, the able-bodied, middle class and property owners, the middle-aged, and English speakers, the newsletter reads, “Privilege is a set of unearned benefits given to people who are in a specific social group. Privilege operates on personal, interpersonal, cultural, and institutional levels, and it provides advantages and favors to members of dominant groups at the expense of members of other groups. In the United States, privilege is granted to people who have membership in one or more of these social identity groups.”
The letter continues, “Privilege is characteristically invisible to people who have it. People in dominant groups often believe they have earned the privileges they enjoy or that everyone could have access to these privileges if only they worked to earn them. In fact, privileges are unearned and are granted to people in the dominant groups whether they want those privileges or not, and regardless of their stated intent.”
Martin Luther King Jr. seemingly did not foresee this in his dream that all Americans “will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” Still, the university included this “social identities” judgment in their MLK Day celebration
The obvious is that they are run by liberals. It’s the same group of people who were protesting in the 60’s that never left school and took it down the drain.
Now DIE, CRT, victimhood, affirmative action and other nonsense policies have made the sheepskin and education you were supposed to get worth little to not much.
Gone are the days when the best tried their hardest to get in and then get ahead. Besides being woke, the Ivy’s discriminate against Asians and Whites, forcing them to have higher entry standards so that the schools can manipulate their quota’s.
It’s not fair to the students who don’t get in, nor to the students who did get in but can’t keep up. At this point, I could get into the failure of the education system feeding the colleges, but that’s not the point.
While Harvard is the poster boy for the issue, it by no means has a stranglehold on this problem. The California schools are just as woke and have been since hippies.
Since I’m taking university classes right now (Hillsdale College), I’d advise students and parents to evaluate carefully how they spend their money, not waste it.
More on Meritocracy:
We need to return to meritocracy and not diversity for the sake of appearances. It’s not fair to anyone and is only a position of bending over to the woke. Stop it.
Harvard President Claudine Gay claims that she is being forced to resign because of racism. As Greg Gutfeld aptly observed on Fox, Gay is not a victim of racism — she was appointed because she is the beneficiary of racist policy. Ms. Gay is a sterling example of how DEI is the antithesis of meritocracy.
While it may seem that Gay is on the chopping block because of plagiarism or her defense of calls for anti-Jewish genocide, the real reason for her downfall is her lack of qualifications for the job. She was appointed not because she was the best or the brightest, but because she fit the diversity profile that Harvard wanted. Gay is the perfect symbol for a university that has become a bastion of left-wing ideology and the enemy of meritocracy.
Does Harvard really want diversity? If you are a conservative professor, try to get hired at Harvard. People who demand diversity, such as the people who run Harvard, are against viewpoint diversity — also known as free speech. Diversity means “it is great to look different as long as you think the way I do.” Conservatives need not apply.
Harvard President Claudine Gay will resign Tuesday afternoon, bringing an end to the shortest presidency in the University’s history, according to a person with knowledge of the decision.
University Provost Alan M. Garber ’76 will serve as Harvard’s interim president during a search for Gay’s permanent successor, the Harvard Corporation — the University’s highest governing body — announced in an email on Tuesday.
Harvard spokesperson Jonathan L. Swain declined to comment on Gay’s decision to step down.
Gay’s resignation — just six months and two days into the presidency — comes amid growing allegations of plagiarism and lasting doubts over her ability to respond to antisemitism on campus after her disastrous congressional testimony Dec. 5.
Gay’s resignation letter contains no denials or admitting concerning plagiarism. She also did not mention antisemitism.
Glenn Reynolds wrote, “Not-so-great people tend to choose not-so-great people. In this, Harvard is like so many of our institutions, in and out of academia. If the best people aren’t getting to the top — if, in fact, the people at the top are often the worst people and are consistently mediocre — then your selection process is at fault. And if you don’t want to change the selection process, then you’re happy having your institutions run by bad leaders, with the inevitable results. That’s where we are all across America today.”
Al Sharpton said, “President Gay’s resignation is about more than a person or a single incident. This is an attack on every black woman in this country who’s put a crack in the glass ceiling.” He of course lives as a race hoax hustler for money who has lied to get where he is (Tawana Brawley)
Don’t hire the incompetent to check the boxes for diversity and DEI/CRT. It is a failure every time. It also made Harvard look pretty bad, or as the rest of the world actually sees it, overrated.
I recently had some surgery. The first doctor I went to gave me the talk about it being no problem and easy. I wanted a second opinion and it turned out that the actual diagnosis and surgery were completely different than what doctor one diagnosed. Doctor two was the head surgeon at the State University, teaches and has many published papers.
I and everyone else I imagine want competency, in fact excellence in care. I want meritocracy in selection, not equality. It’s like the pilot on my plane. I want the best, not the most diverse. I want my ass to get there safely.
If you are going to put your life in someone else’s hands while you are under anesthesia, it damn well better be the best trained one there is.
Now this:
DEI is a hyperaggressive and politicized quota system, a radicalized version of affirmative action for certain so-called “marginalized” people. It divides society into “groups” based on race, sex, sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion, and so on. It gives preference to certain favored groups, which include, in descending order: Muslims, transgenders, gays, blacks, Hispanics, and women. It discriminates against other groups currently out of favor, chiefly whites, males, heterosexuals, and Christians. Alas, of late, another group has joined the list of the despised, and is now, perhaps, the chief target of DEI hatred: The Jews.
Rejecting the individual, DEI reduces American society into a collection of groups or tribes, hence the “tribalization“ of society. This tribalization (racialization) is based on certain immutable, physical traits such as skin color and sex. This, by the way, has been the norm for all of human history and throughout the world. America was unique in that it rejected tribalization, group characteristics, and superficial appearance, and elevated the individual, which accounted for its historic success, and the reason so many sought to live here.
DEI, furthermore, has no place in any institution that values standards and color-blind meritocracy. If diversity becomes the driving force behind hiring and promotion, or even a small part of it, rather than skill, accomplishment, and merit, then it necessarily compromises standards.
If the goal is diversity, and to have proportional representation in Memorial Hospital’s work force, based on race, sex, sexual orientation, and other such trivialities, even in part, and the hospital does not contemplate the individual and his unique abilities and contributions over all else, then the system collapses and becomes simply one of groups or tribes competing with one another. Meritocracy necessarily dies in such a system. You can have DEI or meritocracy, but not both.
Harvard president Claudine Gay has been embroiled in controversy for minimizing Hamas terrorism and plagiarizing material in her academic work on race. Both scandals have discredited her presidency, but neither should come as a surprise. Throughout Gay’s career at Harvard—as professor, dean, and president—racialist ideology has driven her scholarship, administrative priorities, and rise through the institution.Over the course of her career, Gay quietly built a “diversity” empire that influenced every facet of university life. Between 2018 and the summer of 2023, as the dean of the largest faculty on campus, Gay oversaw the university’s racially discriminatory admissions program, which the Supreme Court found unconstitutional. Even after the court issued its ruling earlier this year, Gay said that it was a “hard day” and defended the university’s policies, which were deemed discriminatory against Asian and white applicants. Gay promised to comply with the letter of the law, while remaining “steadfast” in her commitment to producing “diversity”—a not-so-subtle message that Harvard would find a way, as the University of California has done, to evade the law in practice.
As president, Gay leads a sprawling DEI bureaucracy—officially, the Office of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging—that seeks to influence how students speak, think, and behave in relation to race. Though the university deleted nearly all DEI materials from its website following President Gay’s disastrous congressional testimony related to the Hamas terror attack, I have recovered some of these documents through an Internet archive. Harvard’s DEI administrators encourage students to internalize the basic narrative of critical race theory: America is a nation defined by “systemic racism,” “police brutality,” “white supremacist violence,” and the “weaponization of whiteness.” In another resource, students were invited to “unpack” their “white privilege” and “male privilege,” and to consider their “white fragility,” which stems from “the privilege that accrues to white people living in a society that protects and insulates them from race-based stress.”
We have been warning for years about the pernicious and corrosive impact of the racialization of education under the umbrellas of Critical Race Theory and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
We told our readers and anyone who would listen that these ideologies set students against each other, against their parents, against their own country, and against Israel and Jews.
On October 7, and 8, and 9, and beyond, the putrid hate generated by these ideologies spewed forth on campuses, shocking the nation. Our readers were not shocked.
I wish we had been wrong. But we were right.
We didn’t just warn. We documented more deeply than anyone else. With facts and data. It’s what Legal Insurrection blog (which just had its 15th Anniversary) and our Legal Insurrection Foundation (approaching its 5th Anniversary) do better than anyone.
It’s been almost three years since we launched CriticalRace.org, a project of the Legal Insurrection Foundation, with interactive maps now covering over 700 schools, from higher ed, to elite K-12, to medical schools, to veterinary schools, to business schools, to the military service academies. It’s all documented, with source links and archived links for every single piece of data.
Putting someone else down to make you feel better isn’t going to help anything. Dividing people and putting them against each other has been the mantra of the donkey party for ages. What gets me as people still fall for it.
Not everyone has had the opportunity to speak with their executives. I did while working in the tech industry and have known since before 2010 that they are evil and are both spying and censoring everything they touch.
It means if you use their search engine, you get their results, not correct results.
There are plenty of alternative search engines out there. If you are reading this, I recommend you switch to one. Your results will at least be less biased and you will be less tracked.
Here is more evidence with a link to go find out for yourself. Don’t let the headline about the election fool you. They did it on Covid, DEI, and just about every other morally significant topic where they could influence your thinking.
Earlier this month, Google announced that it is partnering with fellow globalists at the World Health Organization and the United Nations to seize control of the online flow of information and push their hand-selected viewpoints to the very top of the Google search engine while suppressing independent voices.
Among other things, Google’s algorithm will work to “delete websites” that question or criticize the COVID-19 narrative, international banking, FBI crime statistics, and globalism.
Google’s censorship campaign will also look to protect massive global corporations from criticism and scrutiny. Reportedly, included in Google’s list of forbidden topics is the massive amount of waste produced by pro-trans beer brewer Anheuser-Busch.
As has become the trend in recent years, Google is presenting its massive censorship effort as a form of “fact-checking.” Google appears to have released a long list of media “partners” from all over the world who will be promoted in the search results, as they espouse Google, WHO, and UN-approved talking points.
Google’s push to squash independent media outlets plugs right into other efforts by the Big Tech corporation and its partners to stifle the free flow of information online and corral the world’s population, specifically Americans and other Westerners, into a globalist echo chamber.
As National File previously reported, the World Economic Forum and the United Nations have entered into a partnership with Google and other Big Tech firms to crush independent research and advance the climate change hoax, plus the agenda for complete and total control that goes along with it.
Melissa Fleming, the United Nation’s Under-Secretary-General for Global Communications and an advisor to the World Economic Forum, claimed in an interview that globalist organizations “own the science” on so-called climate change and have “partnered with Google” to crush independent research and dissenting viewpoints.
“For example, if you Google ‘climate change,’ you will, at the top of your search, you will get all kinds of UN resources,” said Fleming last fall.
“We’re becoming much more proactive,” said Fleming. “You know, we own the science and we think that the world should know it.”
I wonder if the major corporations realized how out of touch they were when they started this nonsense. It seems that DEI, CRT and the rest of the alphabet wokeness isn’t selling any products. It’s part of the self destruction, like the Portland post below that shows most of regular people are tired of this woke crap.
The companies that were trying to get ESG points from Blackrock are paying a high price for their actions.
The rest of us just want some sanity and to get back to normal life. Those of us who are fed up just stopped buying the products from these weirdo’s. Don’t force that on us to make yourselves feel better.
Just two months ago, transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney was flying high with endorsements from Bud Light, Nike and Maybelline, to name a few. Hot off her “365 Days of Girlhood” journey on social media, she was also enjoying an elaborate musical event staged at the Rainbow Room in her honor.
That was then. But now, after the backlash against Bud Light’s decision to partner with Mulvaney on social media and feature her face on beer cans, other trans influencers say they’re feeling the heat as well.
Some told The Post that, at a time when they are usually in high demand — the period leading up to Pride Month in June — brand partnership offers are drying up.
Rose Montoya, who has 1 million followers on TikTok and Instagram, said she’s noticed a big drop-off in the number of deals she’s been offered.
Prior to Pride Month last year, Montoya — a Seattle University graduate who bills herself as a content creator, trans advocate, model and actress — was getting up to 100 brand partnerships thrown her way. Now, she said, it’s been reduced to a trickle of maybe 12 or so offers.
Trans influencer Rose Montoya says many of her usual brand partnership offers have dried up in the wake of the Dylan Mulvaney Bud Light fiasco.
“Last year was my best yet,” Montoya, 27, told The Post. “I had everything — skincare brands, TV networks, advocacy groups, lots of start-ups. They all reached out. Now I’m not hearing from them.”
While she noted that “the market has also become over-saturated with influencers since 2000,” Montoya added that “the average queer creative makes all their money in June —enough to live on for the rest of the year. And the fact that there’s been a chill probably isn’t helped by the whole Bud Light thing.”
Montoya said that she can get up to $15,000 for a brand partnership. Some of her contracts are for six months at a time, and she hopes to renew one of those soon.
You know they were trying to undermine the military by weakening the forces and morale. The recruiting numbers are way down.
You have a military to protect the nation. You want the biggest, baddest and best to fight, not a bunch of pansies they have been trying to create.
War is about killing people and blowing stuff up. The sooner you get that over with, the shorter the war. You can’t predict the outcome, despite congress wanting to secure the outcome before it is decided. Pulling out of Afghanistan and letting soldiers die in Benghazi is not the way to support your troops.
The real story is that the left love war as it promotes spending and money laundering.
Stop the tranny, race hustling, DEI, CRT and other alphabet morale killing programs. Let’s go back to what an Army is.
Recruit and train soldiers who want comradery and develop the fighting spirit we deserve.
Oh, and the Chinese have to be laughing at us as the expand in the South Pacific. Another Oh, we need a real Commander in Chief, not one bought by China and Ukraine kickbacks.
The U.S. Army’s new brand and ad campaign largely omit reference to woke identity politics and could be just what the service needs to overcome historic recruiting obstacles, experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Prior advertising efforts alienated conservative families that once served as the Army’s primary recruiting base, according to experts.
They “forgot that the primary market for Army recruiting is young men from traditional families, looking for a challenge,” Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness, told the DCNF.
The Army’s new branding campaign, unveiled Wednesday, shied away from social justice and diversity themes as it seeks to overcome a historic drop in recruiting, military experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The service’s buy-in on identity politics could turn off conservative families, which have traditionally served as the military’s largest recruiting base, and exacerbated the service’s recruiting woes in fiscal year 2022, experts and lawmakers warn. But, the years-in-the-making rebrand, with a goal of showcasing the Army’s role in defense and innovation throughout American history and encouraging soldiers to push their limits, could help the Army meet its ambitious recruiting goals for 2023, experts in military readiness told the DCNF.
“I think the new brand and commercial better appeal to young people’s desire to be part of a big, important effort larger than themselves,” Thomas Spoehr, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Center for National Defense, told the DCNF. “I think that is the right approach to take.”
The Army has come under fire for embracing perceived left-wing values in branding, according to Task and Purpose. One example is a 2021 advertising scheme that emphasized the different kinds of people who could join the service, highlighting a same-sex family.
Left-wing trends in the military’s education and personnel policies — including emphasizing inclusion of LGBTQ+ servicemembers, doubling down on outreach to minority communities, and teaching CRT and giving pronoun advice at the military academies — to support “diversity as a strategic imperative” could cause conservative, often white families to believe they “are not welcome or appreciated in the military,” Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness, told the DCNF in June.
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“Parents and Army veterans who are ‘influencers’ are not recommending military service to the next generation, and recruiting numbers show the deterioration,” she added, as the Army was beginning to realize it might not make its recruiting goals for 2022.
The new rebrand, however, has so far nixed emphasizing the background or identity of future soldiers or the supposed systemic disadvantages each has faced, though two commercials unveiled Wednesday did feature an ethnically diverse cast. At an event with Army officials promoting the rebrand, the word “diversity” was only mentioned once, and that was in reference to the array of career fields available in the Army.
“The Army’s identity-based marketing has been a disaster for recruiting, which is why they’re shifting away from it. … The Army and every other branch needs to focus on appealing to all Americans, regardless of their political beliefs or background,” Republican Indiana Rep. Jim Banks, who chairs the military personnel subcommittee on the House Armed Services Committee and has sworn to crack down on wokeness in the military, said to the DCNF.
The campaign resurrects the “be all you can be” slogan that served marketing and recruiting efforts from 1981 to 2001 and speaks to the possibilities for personal and career development the Army holds, according to Army Secretary Christine Wormuth, Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville and Sgt. Maj. Michael Grinston. It also involves nixing the box around the Army’s recognizable five-pointed star logo.
Two new 90-second ads accompanying the rebranding guide the viewer through the history of the U.S. Army, from the colonial militias of the Revolutionary War to modern missions aimed at countering a rising China. They highlight themes of “overcoming obstacles” and pushing toward the future with new technologies that better the lives of civilians as well as serving the nation’s defense.
“You could say that the new brand is “non-woke” because it is completely absent of any suggestion that the Army is interested in any one demographic than another,” Spoehr said.
“The images of history in the new ad ring true, but I hope that woke Critical Race Theory (CRT) activists don’t get the chance to ruin what could be progress in reconnecting with traditional families who see America as a great country, not a racist country,” Donnelly told the DCNF.
Two prior marketing campaigns under the most recent branding scheme seemed to alienate some target audiences, Col. John Horning, who leads marketing and strategy for the Army Enterprise Marketing Office, explained to Army Times.
The “What’s Your Warrior” ad series rolled out in 2019 aimed to showcase the wide variety of career fields available in the Army, but it’s belligerent overtones turned away some hopeful audiences, Horning told the outlet. However, The Calling, an anime-style video series released in 2021, sparked condemnation from some conservative audiences.
“Even with The Calling, we found that there was a prospect audience that absolutely identified [with it], but we’re all very aware that it struck a nerve,” Horning told Army Times. “Some other people didn’t identify with what we were trying to do, and it became a distraction.”
One video in the series depicted a future recruit named Emma attending a wedding for her “two loving and inspiring mothers.”
The Army intended the commercials to broaden its appeal to Gen Z audiences and present a range of relatable scenarios as the recruiting pool grows increasingly shallow, Task and Purpose reported. Instead, detractors launched barrage of criticism against the videos for representing what they saw as a “woke” and “emasculated” military.
The ads “forgot that the primary market for Army recruiting is young men from traditional families, looking for a challenge,” Donnelly told the DCNF. “Last year’s recruiting crisis was partially fueled by that colossal mistake.”
The Army missed its recruiting objectives for 2022 of 60,000 new members by 25%; to make up for that offset, the service set a “stretch goal” for 2023 to 65,000 recruits, according to Wormuth.
The Army accelerated launch of the new branding effort to help with recruiting for 2023, Wormuth explained at the event Wednesday. The new campaign cost roughly $117 million to execute, she said, and is a result of extensive work that included focus groups with relevant stakeholders. But leaders are confident that a data-driven approach will yield results.
The U.S. needs an Army that shows itself to be a capable, hard-hitting force that can defeat and deter enemy aggression, not one that prioritizes inclusion over competence and lowers standards to accommodate more self-described identities, GOP lawmakers argue.
As recruiting appeared to slow in the spring and summer of 2022, the service surveyed Americans between the ages of 16 and 28 to find out why young people were choosing options besides serving in the military. Respondents cited as their number one concern that they “would be putting their life on hold,” Grinston, the Army’s top enlisted leader, testified to Congress on Thursday.
He denied that Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives hurt recruiting.
“They just don’t perceive the Army as being in touch with the modern, everyday culture that they’re used to,” Army head of marketing Maj. Gen. Alex Fink told The Associated Press in context of the survey results.
At the same time, propensity to serve has fallen to the lowest levels in 15 years. Only 9% of young people demonstrate a desire or willingness to join the Army, and of those, only 23% meet physical, academic and legal qualifications — down from 29%, Grinston said.
The Army doubled down on messaging about benefits and career opportunities available to soldiers in 2022 and into 2023, offering bonuses in the thousands of dollars for successful referrals and new recruits’ willingness to ship out within 45 days of enlistment. It invested in health care, education support and vacation while pleading with lawmakers to set aside funding for housing assistance, child care and spousal career assistance, to hold on to the recruits.
It also plans to expand opportunities for willing prospects to complete pre-enlistment programs that offer supplemental fitness training and academic tutoring for those who fall short of the Army’s requirements in those areas.
However, none of those efforts appeared to meaningfully move the needle on recruiting, Spoehr said.
“I think the Army (and the other services) are learning that recruiting messages that stress compensation and benefits are falling short,” Spoehr told the DCNF.
About 84% of new recruits come from military families, according to Gen. McConville.
“So we’re becoming a military family business. We want to be an American family business,” he told reporters Wednesday.
“We need every young person in this country, we need every parent in this country, to know that the United States military is a pathway to success,” McConville said.
A head of risk management at Silicon Valley Bank spent considerable time spearheading multiple “woke” LGBTQ+ programs, including a “safe space” for coming out stories, as the firm catapulted toward collapse.
Jay Ersapah, the boss of Financial Risk Management at SVB’s UK branch, launched initiatives such as the company’s first month-long Pride campaign and a new blog emphasizing mental health awareness for LGBTQ+ youth.
“The phrase ‘you can’t be what you can’t see’ resonates with me,’” Ersapah was quoted as saying on the company website.
“As a queer person of color and a first-generation immigrant from a working-class background, there were not many role models for me to ‘see’ growing up.” (there is the announcement of “everything I touch is going to fail”)
Her efforts as the company’s European LGBTQIA+ Employee Resource Group co-chair earned her a spot on SVB’s “outstanding LGBT+ Role Model Lists 2022,” a list shared in a company post just four months before the bank was shut down by federal authorities over liquidity fears.
It’s time to stop hiring people like this and eliminate this group of initials, ESG, CRT, DEI and anything woke
In addition to instituting SVB’s first “safe space catch-up” — which encouraged employees to share their coming out stories — and serving on LGBTQ+ panels around the world, Ersapah also spent time over the last year serving as a director for Diversity Role Models and volunteering as a mentor for Migrant Leaders.
“I feel privileged to co-chair the LGBTQ+ ERG and help spread awareness of lived queer experiences, partner with charitable organizations, and above all, create a sense of community for our LGBTQ+ employees and allies.” (how do you feel about it now knowing you screwed the pooch?)
Ersapah couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.
SVB was abruptly shut down Friday by the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation shortly after it disclosed it had taken a $1.8 billion hit from a $21 billion fire sale of its bond holdings.
It faced a cash crunch due to surging interest rates, and a recent meltdown in the tech sector led many customers to pare their deposits.
“… SVB recognizes the significant societal, ecological and economic threats of climate change. … We enable entrepreneurs with inventions and new businesses that reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and take seriously the responsibility to reduce our own. …” – SVB ESG Report 2022 Section 8
Pinkerton: Green, Woke, and Now Broke — How SVB Became the 2nd Biggest Bank Failure in U.S. History
Go Woke, Go Bust
Oh so woke, oh so green, oh so diverse Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) just went bust.
One can go to its website—still up for who knows how much longer—and see that it claimsassets of $212 billion. But as they say, the bigger they are, the harder they fall; and so SVB makes for the second largest bank failure in U.S. history.
…
Speaking of ‘splaining, SVB officials will need to answer a lot of questions, including, What role did wokeness play in SVB’s failure?
Another term for wokeness, of course, is ESG, which stands for environmental, social, and governance. ESG is a pertinent question, as there’s a considerable body of economic literature showing that woke investments aren’t good investments. For instance, one study by professors at the London School of Economics and Columbia University finds that:
ESG funds appear to underperform financially relative to other funds within the same asset manager and year, and to charge higher fees. Our findings suggest that socially responsible funds do not appear to follow through on proclamations of concerns for stakeholders.
Of course, it wasn’t just the woke policies of SVB which might have contributed to the disaster. One of the biggest sources of damage to Silicon Valley Bank was the bank’s mistaken belief that fixed rate securities were a safe harbour for depositor’s money.
‘Better and Stronger’: Harvard Hosts Second Annual Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging Forum
Harvard students and affiliates participated in the University’s second annual Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging Forum last week under the theme “Reckoning and Transformation,” gathering for keynote speakers, mixers, and performances.
The three-day forum — which was hosted in a hybrid format by the Office for Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging — included speakers from the Harvard Museum of Science and Culture, the Harvard University Native American Program, and Harvard’s faculty.
The forum featured a keynote speech from founder and president of Justice for Migrant Women Moníca Ramírez and a conversation with vice provost Sarah Bleich, who will oversee the implementation of Harvard’s Legacy of Slavery initative.
Harvard’s Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer Sherri A. Charleston, who both attended and spoke at the event, wrote in an email to The Crimson that the forum was intended to provide Harvard affiliates with an opportunity to learn about diversity initiatives.
“The EDIB Forum, for me, is about passing the mic to those who don’t regularly have opportunities to participate, share ideas, or ask questions on a University-wide platform,” Charleston wrote. “There is a wealth of expertise here at Harvard, and the Forum is an opportunity for all of us, me included, to learn with and from nationally recognized experts.”
The event included discussion around Harvard’s reckoning with its legacy of slavery, Gen Z activism, and the ethical stewardship of the Harvard Museum Collections.
The forum occurred in light of controversy surrounding the stewardship of the remains of 19 individuals of African, African-American, and Brazilian descent who were likely to have been enslaved. According to a report by the University’s Steering Committee on Human Remains in Harvard Museum Collections, Harvard museums house the remains of more than 22,000 human individuals.
Since the days of the Greeks, doctors have been guided by the Hippocratic Oath, by which physicians pledge to administer only beneficial treatment and to refrain from causing harm. This oath is obsolete, now that killing children in the womb and sexually disfiguring them to advance a political agenda are considered “health care.” Columbia University — the American beachhead of the cultural Marxist Frankfurt School that has remained at the cutting edge of wokeness — provides an alternative:
The 140 members of the Class of 2025 were welcomed into the profession of medicine at August’s White Coat Ceremony with the usual traditions but with one twist…
Students decided on a new oath … that better reflects the values they wish to uphold as they enter their medical training.
These “values” consist mainly of leftist identity politics.
The VP&S [Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons] Class of 2025 has more students from underrepresented minority backgrounds than any medical school class in Columbia’s history.
Formerly, medical schools took pride in their students’ aptitude. Now they take pride in the students not being white. This does not bode well for the future quality of healthcare.
Going forward, each incoming MD class will have the opportunity to create its own oath.
This is important, because what is politically correct one year can fall behind into thoughtcrime the next as we rush at an ever-accelerating speed toward absolute moonbattery.
Here’s how this year’s oath starts:
“We enter the profession of medicine with appreciation for the opportunity to build on the scientific and humanistic achievements of the past. We also recognize the acts and systems of oppression effected in the name of medicine. We take this oath of service to begin building a future grounded in truth, restoration, and equity to fulfill medicine’s capacity to liberate.”
The loaded buzzwords “oppression” “equity,” and “liberate” signify that medicine is not about medicine anymore. Like everything else that has fallen to the Long March Through the Institutions, it is about leftism.
Yale sacred music center launches climate change art initiative
The Institute of Sacred Music at Yale University has a new initiative that seeks to combine art, religion and concern for “ecological crises.”
Titled the “Religion, Ecology, and Expressive Culture Initiative,” the program’s aim is to “amplify cross-disciplinary and integrative work at the intersection of religion, ecology, and expressive culture,” according to its website.
Ryan Darr, the postdoctoral researcher who runs the program, told The College Fix via email that the goal is to “support and disseminate the work of scholars, artists and practitioners both at Yale and beyond.”
“Going forward, we hope that most of the initiative’s energy and resources will go to supporting the proposals of others,” Darr said in his email.
“Our plans for the initiative this semester include a webinar series titled ‘Mass Extinction: Art, Ritual, Story and the Sacred,’” Darr said. The initiative also plans an “art exhibition in April with Angela Manno called ‘Sacred Biodiversity: Icons of Threatened and Endangered Species.’”
Manno is an iconographer who “has brought the same kind of religious ‘reverence’ to nature by featuring endangered animals in her art,” the Yale Daily Newsreported.
“We’re also involved with the ‘Breath of Life’ concert, including a roundtable before the conference on images of Eden and the garden,” Darr told The Fix.
‘Towards Equity’ Dartmouth event introduces years-long program to implement DEI
Dartmouth College hosted an event Jan. 31 to launch a three-year institutional program called “Towards Equity: Aligning Action and Accountability,” dedicated to promoting diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging.
The College Fix attended the event along with approximately 125 people, mostly Dartmouth administrators and professors.
A document sent to all attendees outlines DEI initiatives Dartmouth is planning for the coming years, including establishing an Institute for Black Intellectual and Cultural Life “following the national racial unrest in 2020,” according to the document.
Additionally, Dartmouth aims to increase the number of faculty of color, provide more resources for underrepresented minorities in STEM, and implement DEI training for all leaders on campus.
“The weight of systemic forms of oppression are heavy,” Shontay Delalue, who led the development of the three-year initiative, told the group at the event.
Delalue is senior vice president and senior diversity officer with the Dartmouth Division of Institutional Diversity and Equity. She has a doctorate in education and is an adjunct assistant professor of African and African American Studies, according to her university bio.
To Delalue, equity means “leveling the playing field” and giving people what they need as opposed to “giving everybody the same thing,” which she would define as equality, she told The Fix in an interview. “Equity is making sure that in policies and practices that people who have not been given access in the past are now getting access, so it’s leveling the playing field, not just making sure everybody has the same exact thing.”
Delusions of Adequacy 