Tag: DEI

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Accountability crime and punishment national politics & policies

The Slope of Service

Trump, sniper, Secret Service, DEI

“Heads should roll at Secret Service,” I declared on Monday.

That was before I stumbled upon Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle explaining to ABC News the strategic situational thinking employed by the agency in determining not to place agents on top of the roof of a building where the assassin fired multiple rounds, hitting former President Trump in the ear, killing a man attending the rally with his family and seriously wounding two others. 

Director Cheatle offered that “the Secret Service was aware of the security vulnerabilities presented by the building Crooks took a sniper’s position on to aim at Trump,” Fox News reported. “However, a decision was made not to place any personnel on the roof.” 

So much for “awareness.” And why was this decision made?

“That building in particular has a sloped roof at its highest point,” she pointed out. “And so, you know, there’s a safety factor that would be considered there that we wouldn’t want to put somebody up on a sloped roof. And so, you know, the decision was made to secure the building, from inside.”

Competing safety factors, eh? The former president’s and that of novice roof-​climbers in the Secret Service.

Instead, three local law enforcement sharpshooters were stationed inside the building as the shooter easily climbed up onto that ever-​so-​dangerously slanted roof and opened fire.

The finger-​pointing at local police by Secret Service officials, who claimed that securing that building was a local law enforcement responsibility, is simply passing the buck.

Cheatle acknowledged that her agency “is responsible for the protection of the former president,” adding “the buck stops with me.”

Good, I’m looking for immediate change.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture national politics & policies regulation

DEI Virally Decoded

DEI, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion

Is “Didn’t Earn It” — the latest scam-​decoding translation of officialdom’s acronymic jargon for race-​conscious and gender-​conscious affirmative-​action policies, DEI — really catching on?

If so, maybe we’ll get back all the sooner to sanity. 

That is, in universities, workplaces, and other hunting grounds of the DEI dictators who have inherited the mantle of reverse discrimination first inflicted on Americans via the affirmative-​action quota policies of the 1970s.

John Tierney suggests that the popularizers of the apt “Didn’t Earn It” meme may well help rid us of “today’s most egregiously indefensible phrase: ‘Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.’”

These woozy words are supposed to divert our attention from what DEI policies really mean: systematic discrimination against academic, professional, and other merit in favor of typically irrelevant physical characteristics like skin color and gender.

DEI discrimination is being imposed on ever more of our institutions, even at the cost of risking our lives. If unqualified applicants are being admitted into UCLA Medical School in order to appease the arbiters of DEI, then failing basic tests of medical knowledge after they get in — what happens if and when they start treating patients?

A single telling phrase (Tierney credits journalist Ian Cheong and cartoonist Scott Adams) can’t shoulder the whole burden of stopping DEI. True enough.

Fortunately, it’s got help. 

In Congress, Republicans have introduced legislation to shut down DEI offices and forbid federal contractors from imposing the ugly indoctrination of DEI training and DEI statements.

We can all pitch in.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling First Amendment rights general freedom

Letting DEI Die

MIT, DEI, college, racism, collectivism, sexism

The good news? 

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology will no longer require applicants to make DEI statements.

MIT President Sally Kornbluth says the school can “build an inclusive environment in many ways, but compelled statements impinge on freedom of expression, and they don’t work.”

Correct on both counts, but a bit blah as indictments go. And inadequate. Forget “inclusive.” This is merely a pledge to refrain from being arbitrarily exclusionary.

But the new policy is better than the status quo.

DEI (“diversity, equity, and inclusion”) may sound innocuous, at worst pointless. But DEI guidelines have functioned as a particularly odious form of ideological litmus test. The goal has been to force instructors to toe certain leftist (or collectivist) ideological lines as if the ideas imposed were as self-​evidently true as declarations that the cloudless sky is cerrulian blue.

For example, if you dare disagree that race-​conscious “antiracist” policies making skin color — and maybe also “gender” — more important than quality of work or some reliable leading indicators of productivity, your views may put you on the wrong side of the DEI divide.

So MIT’s dropping of mandatory DEI-​fealty statements is a big step in the right direction. By as prestigious an institution of higher learning as any in the world.

The bad news? 

MIT has apparently not fired the “diversity deans” that it hired in 2021 — and hired not on the basis of excellence of qualifications: serious plagiarism complaints have been filed against two of these personnel!

If MIT retains six “diversity deans” in place, able to run around causing trouble for those faculty who reject DEI edicts, it hasn’t purged itself of the poison quite yet.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets political economy subsidy

When the CHIPS Are Weighed Down

Taiwan, computer chips, regulations, DEI, race, racism

Has DEI “killed the CHIPS Act”?

The CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 created a giant package of subsidies that shouldn’t exist to begin with and is made even worse by all the strings attached.

The Act authorizes giving $52 billion of taxpayer money to microchip manufacturers to make chips in the U.S. The boost to domestic production will supposedly help us if China invades Taiwan and disrupts Taiwan’s globe-​leading microchip industry.

But chipmakers eligible for the largesse are recoiling from all the embedded DEI mandates. “DEI” means “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” It’s a collectivist mantra and ideology designed to make employers fret about racial and gender quotas and DEI indoctrination at the expense of hiring qualified people and making high-​quality microchips.

According to Matt Cole and Chris Nicholson, writing for The Hill, nineteen sections of the Act are devoted to DEI. One gives the Department of Commerce a mission that Commerce describes as “strengthening the U.S. semiconductor ecosystem” by ensuring “significant investments to create opportunities for Americans from historically underserved communities.”

The authors believe that CHIPS is “so loaded with DEI pork that it can’t move.” Worse, it’s making it hard for chipmakers to move, forced to focus away from making microchips and, instead, onto the wasteful exercise of appeasing regulators.

Now that they are finally about to get CHIPS funding, Intel and others are delaying announced factories and foundries on U.S. sites and instead going ahead with more overseas plants.

I guess they want to get stuff done.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling general freedom ideological culture

Division, Exclusion, Indoctrination

college, house of cards, money

Wisconsin has decided to stop using tax dollars to subsidize ideological assaults on academic freedom.

Under the leadership of Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, the Wisconsin legislature struck a blow against DEI domination of the state’s university system.

The acronym means “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” Yet, the goal of DEI is to herd all participants in academic life into the same collectivist “antiracist,” anti-​individualist straitjacket, no dissent permitted. What DEI really means, Vos says, is “division, exclusion, and indoctrination.”

The Vos-​steered budget that passed in the last session eliminated $32 million from funding for the university system. It also hiked the pay of university employees and funded new campus buildings.

Using his line-​item veto, the Democratic governor tried to thwart the move. But he couldn’t block the spending cut.

Then, after much negotiating, the university system agreed to freeze hiring of DEI officials, transfer DEI employees to other jobs, and implement race-​blind, merit-​based admissions policies.

Bullied by lefties, the board of rejects initially rejected the deal by a 9 – 8 vote. Vos wouldn’t budge. The board met again and accepted the deal.

As National Review’s editors put it, “when push came to shove, it wasn’t worth rejecting pay raises for all employees and putting building projects on hold for the sake of a handful of progressive ideologues.”

Until the whole house of cards collapses and there’s no longer any public funding of higher education, all states assailed by DEI should do the same kind of thing.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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