Democrats took a break from crying about losing their abortion rights (which hasn’t happened) to blame Trump for the tragic collision of a Blackhawk helicopter and a commercial jet over Washington DC. Trump also spoiled the week-old almond milk in the 15,000 dollar fridge and may have been responsible for hiding the keys to their Volvo XC60 plug-in hybrid. Lawsuits are most certainly pending.
di bom digi bom di deng di deng digigi…
As for the tragic loss over the Potomac, Trump’s administration has been pouring investigative details out to the press and public as fast as they discover them, something for which Mayor Pete’s DoT under dementia Joe was not precisely known. It is a pleasant change with even more enjoyable side effects.
With all this detail coming to light so quickly, people have taken time to look deeply at what Donald Trump inherited from Whoever was Running the Biden administration (WRBA). The most obvious deficiency is Air traffic controller staffing. Biden/Buttegeig were focused on diversity rather than capability – as if someone who can’t decide what sex they are today can handle the job’s non-stop stress and demanding requirements. Skin color was also (allegedly) put ahead of skill, none of which appears to have filled the void in openings.
Void? Openings? Understaffed, remember?
In the background of these instantaneous errors lies a fractured FAA having a slow-motion existential crisis. A class-action lawsuit continues grinding away in discovery, exposing the agency’s tragic 2014 decision to scrap merit-based testing when hiring air traffic controllers. Instead the FAA relied on a “biographical statement” that scored, you guessed it, totally irrelevant factors like skin color and ethnic background.
Reams of headlines over the last couple years have reported growing numbers of close calls at airports and an expanding crisis over staffing levels — a manpower crisis that festered even while the agency essentially refused to hire better-qualified white applicants, holding those jobs open for less-qualified minority applicants.
As bad as that sounds, it gets worse. The FAA’s critical staffing issues started —I am not making this up— with its mass layoffs in 2021 of controllers who refused to take the jabs. The agency has never recovered from that horrible mistake. It remains currently 3,000 controllers under normal staffing levels.
Thus, it is unsurprising that in its last survey in 2023, Pete Buttigieg’s DOT reported that 77% of critical air traffic control facilities were understaffed. The truth is probably closer to all of them.
I’ve also seen stories of more than qualified candidates who have degrees in the sort of thing you need for these occupations rejected or ignored in pursuit of less qualified applicants who check demographic boxes.
Eleven days ago, Mr. Trump put an end to that sort of focus, shifting the Federal government away from DEI and toward merit-based hiring, but when you inherit the problem we’ve got – understaffed and likely underskilled, this is a lot like leaving a roadside bomb for his administration to trip over and so it has.
The question is, how many more of these might we have to endure before Trump can unban unjabbed Air Traffic controllers and cajole them away from whatever job they’ve found since 2021 when Biden and Democrats drove them out in the name of public safety at the expense of public safety.
Pandemic policy catastrophe strikes again.
Suppose Trump offered them the same deal he did to anyone in the military who was forced out for refusing the unsafe and ineffective COVID-19 jabs. In that case, we’d probably see increased migration of highly qualified and experienced individuals back to air traffic control towers. Back pay and their job back could be just what the situation warrants. Then, spend some time training the DEI folks up, and if they can’t hack it, cut them loose.
This has become a serious case of FAFO, and we’re at the FO stage, and it needs to get one-eightied as fast as it can be managed. People are dying, and we can lay their loss at the feet of Democrats and the activist groups who drive them to this sort of stupidity.
