It’s frustrating when the Biden administration’s lousy policies make life more difficult. But when such policies make life more dangerous, it opens the door to the unthinkable.
Well, the unthinkable is happening.
Again.
What was once something The Babylon Bee would satirize is now reality:
You can’t make this up pic.twitter.com/Dek59A5pPx
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) January 14, 2024
Since at least August, the Federal Aviation Administration has been seeking to hire and promote more people not based on their abilities, but on their disabilities.
It’s called the People with Disabilities Program, and it’s part of the FAA’s “diversity and inclusion” hiring plan. “Diversity is integral to achieving FAA’s mission of ensuring safe and efficient travel across our nation and beyond,” a statement on the FAA website reads.
In case you were wondering how diversity and safety are connected, I’ll save you the trouble: They’re not.
The FAA isn’t looking for just any disability, either; it has identified some for “special emphasis in recruitment and hiring,” according to the agency’s website.
The website lists the following “targeted disabilities”:
- Total deafness in both ears
- Blindness
- Missing extremities
- Partial paralysis
- Complete paralysis, epilepsy
- Severe intellectual disability
- Psychiatric disability
- Dwarfism
With a little bit of documentation, these targeted candidates can even be hired on the spot.
Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg wants 3 percent of new hires per fiscal year to have severe disabilities, the website said. The FAA did not say which positions these employees would fill.
“The FAA employs tens of thousands of people for a wide range of positions, from administrative roles to oversight and execution of critical safety functions,” the FAA told Fox News last month.
“Like many large employers, the agency proactively seeks qualified candidates from as many sources as possible, all of whom must meet rigorous qualifications that of course will vary by position.”
Could this FAA hiring policy put lives in danger?
In light of the Boeing incident in January, which led to Alaska Airlines grounding an entire fleet of 737s, one’s thoughts likely drift to the worst-case scenario: having these targeted candidates working on airplanes or in air traffic control.
A December New York Times article exposed the difficult conditions under which air traffic controllers work.
Over the last two years, air traffic controllers have submitted hundreds of complaints to the FAA about “staffing shortages, mental health problems and deteriorating buildings,” the Times reported.
Even without a staffing shortage, air traffic controllers work in a pressure cooker, holding in their hands thousands of lives each day.
Considering this immense pressure coupled with poor working conditions, it’s no surprise that many controllers become stressed to the verge of breakdown and prone to error.
In 2023, the aviation industry saw an increase in near-miss airline incidents, the most since 2016, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The FAA reported 19 serious runway incursions, which is when a vehicle or aircraft incorrectly enters a runway, risking a collision and jeopardizing the lives of everyone involved.
“Every piece of the system is under stress,” said Ed Sicher, president of American Airlines’ pilot union, according to the Journal.
In other words, when it comes to airline safety, the industry is in a bad place. Let’s not make it worse with “diversity, equity and inclusion” — it’s a disaster waiting to happen.
Again, the FAA didn’t outright say it would be filling air traffic control positions with targeted disability hires, but its artful neglect of specifics didn’t do itself any favors.
What has to happen for the Biden administration to realize that DEI is not only discriminatory but also dangerous?
Even Dallas Mavericks owner and DEI proponent Mark Cuban is smart enough to know that talking up diversity is one thing, but actually swapping out his players with diversity hires is a bad idea.
The aviation industry is no stranger to this kind of stupidity, either.
In 2015, a class-action lawsuit was filed against then-Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx claiming that the FAA discriminated against a number of qualified candidates for air traffic control positions based on their race (i.e., they weren’t black).
In a related scandal included in the lawsuit, Shelton Snow, then an FAA employee and member of the National Black Coalition of Federal Aviation Employees, allegedly wasted no time exploiting this discriminatory hiring system.
In a 2014 email, Snow allegedly provided members of the NBCFAE with a list of “buzz words” to include on their resumes to ensure their names rose to the top of the hiring pool. Snow also allegedly gave members the “correct” answers to the biographical portion of the FAA’s hiring test.
Fox Business exposed the scandal in its 2015 investigative report “Trouble in the Skies,” but coverage of the story has since faded.
The report led to the resignation of Joseph Teixeira as vice president of the FAA’s Safety and Technical Training Air Traffic Organization, according to Yahoo Finance.
The FAA also investigated — and cleared — Snow and the NBCFAE, though the agency refused to release 29 emails and attachments associated with the controversy.
The nearly decade-old incident caught the attention of Elon Musk after an X user posted documents from the lawsuit on Jan. 29.
Is this for real?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 29, 2024
Speaking of Musk, perhaps he summed up diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives best: “DEI must die.”
Hopefully it dies long before anyone else does because of it.
