Let there be no misunderstanding. Long before the deadly helicopter-jet collision over the Potomac River last week, Americans were justified to criticize the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on practical, constitutional, and moral levels.
If a gang of mobsters had you trapped in a series of corrals and told you that they would handle the “safe passage” from one to the other, then, forced you to pay for their “safety system,” you not only would be justified in slamming HOW these wardens control the immoral machine, you would do well to question the immoral system, itself.
Thus, when Donald Trump leveled intense criticism at the federal Department of Transportation, and, specifically, the prone-to-theatrics Biden-picked head Pete Buttigieg, every American watching could have applauded, and demanded a lot more. Trump was right in citing as problematic and prejudicial the federal government’s recent focus on “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (DEI) hiring, rather than hiring based on merit.
But an important point to include here is that, even on that level, any political system eating your money automatically removes itself from you making a decision for yourself as to what is meritorious. Even if politicians and bureaucrats claim they are employing based on what THEY define as “merit,” that does not make it so. All political systems impose their standards on the taxpayers, so who knows if the political view of “merit” matches one’s own?
Hence, we have the long-standing assumption and usurpation of power called the FAA, about which The New American’s Selwyn Duke adroitly writes:
“What do you think of the following information about the hiring of air traffic controllers? Candidates ‘whose worst subject in high school was science [and who played a lot of sports] and candidates who are unemployed receive the most points possible on the test’ (for the position), wrote The Blaze in 2018. ‘In contrast, licensed pilots and those with extensive air traffic control knowledge aren’t highly scored.’ How could this be?
It was the result of ‘diversity’ efforts — what’s now called DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) — instituted under Barack Obama and continued by Joe Biden. It gets worse, though, too.
These Obama-era DEI efforts also created a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) push to hire people who are deaf, blind, and/or have ‘severe intellectual’ and ‘psychiatric disabilities.’”
As a person who, for years, had as a friend a woman who worked as an Air Traffic Controller near Boston, I can attest to her description of how pressure-filled and intense the job is. She was one of the brightest women I’ve known, yet she often mentioned the challenges, the staffing problems, the outdated tech, and the burden of the federally-run “control” paradigm.
Because political control really is what it’s all about.
In his piece, Duke notes a Western Journal (WJ) article that also digs into the DEI policies, going back to the Obama era, with the WJ reporting:
“Let’s start from an archived 2013 version of the Federal Aviation Administration’s website and its ‘diversity and inclusion’ page.
‘Diversity is integral to achieving FAA’s mission of ensuring safe and efficient travel across our nation and beyond,’ the page read. ‘Because diversity is so critical, FAA actively supports and engages in a variety of associations, programs, coalitions and initiatives to support and accommodate employees from diverse communities and backgrounds. Our people are our strength, and we take great care in investing in and valuing them as such.’
Part of this included hiring those with ‘targeted disabilities’: ‘Targeted disabilities are those disabilities that the Federal government, as a matter of policy, has identified for special emphasis in recruitment and hiring. They include hearing, vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability and dwarfism.’”
Wonderful. Most sensible people likely would think some of those disabilities might not jibe with the job of Air Traffic Controller.
Related: FAA's Crazy, Cumbersome (And Odd) Drone Rules Cripple Commercial Users
But we must remember that our personal views of merit are negated – by political definitions of merit, imposed on us through the monopoly force of government.
And not just Obama and Biden were at fault. The WJ adds:
“In 2019 — under the Trump administration, it must be said — the FAA ‘announced a pilot program to help prepare people with disabilities for careers in air traffic operations.’ Again, it emphasized that it was looking ‘to identify specific opportunities for people with targeted disabilities, empower them and facilitate their entry into a more diverse and inclusive workforce.’”
And, to cap off the lovely revelations, the WJ adds:
“In an archived page from December 2024, the FAA touted ‘On-the-spot’ special appointment authority’ to hire individuals via a ‘non-competitive hiring method,’ one of which involved ‘hiring people with severe physical disabilities, psychiatric disabilities, and intellectual disabilities.’”
Wonderful.
And Duke also has cited a Washington Times expose on a federal boondoggle called the Collegiate Training Initiative, which ran from 1989 to 2013, and which:
“…was a pipeline to a career in air traffic control. The program aimed to ensure future air traffic controllers had the skills and knowledge necessary to carry out the job.
More than ten years ago, the Obama Administration scrapped 1000 qualified candidates. The administration’s justification was that the pool of applicants was not diverse enough, so they would be purged from consideration. Instead of hiring candidates with the most competency, individuals were elevated for hiring consideration based on their race.”
And this elimination of “qualified candidates” (again, the government, not you, defines “qualified”) already has been cited by numerous Americans in a class action lawsuit they brought in 2015.
“The Federal Aviation Administration is fighting a class-action lawsuit alleging it denied 1,000 would-be air traffic controllers jobs because of diversity hiring targets — as it was revealed that staffing levels were ‘not normal’ at the time of this week’s deadly midair collision.”
But, again, on a strict moral and economic basis, if the government is defining what is “normal” then that means political forces are imposing their will over the our own, negating our ability to decide for ourselves what we want for security, efficiency, so-called “diversity,” merit, and cost.
What we see today, with crashes, delays, DEI, and an unresponsive so-called “control” system is really control over us, eliminating our ability to find satisfaction and to disconnect from what does not satisfy our needs.
Private initiatives, through airline liability, insurance protocols, and consumer choice, actually would reflect what we want.
But we are not allowed to be free, and the market is not allowed to soar.