The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

> But at the same time we -- meaning Trump and the GOP Senate -- just appointed the least qualified candidate in the history of the US, to run the most powerful military in the world?

For some context, in the last fifty years, one nominee was rejected (Towers, for drinking), one was 'close' (Hagel, 58-41), but everyone else:

> Aside from that vote and Mr. Tower’s rejection following accounts of his excessive drinking, no other secretary of defense nominee in the past 50 years has gotten fewer than 90 votes, with Leon Panetta being confirmed 100-0 in 2011. Three others — Harold Brown in 1977, Les Aspin in 1993 and Donald Rumsfeld in 2001 — sailed through on voice votes.

* https://archive.is/https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/24/us/pol...

For Hesgeth, four GOPs voted against him, and so the VP in his role as President of Senate had to break the 50-50 tie.

Getting >90 votes for SECDEF is the norm. The picks are regarded as competent and the votes have generally reflected that.

This is a fascinating read, but the thing that bugs me about this whole affair is that when this came to light many years ago it was treated as a cheating and recruitment scandal. But only recently has it been reframed as a DEI issue.

Taking old, resolved scandals - slapping a coat of culture war paint on it - and then selling it as a new scandal is already a popular MO for state-sponsored propoganda, so we should be extra wary of stories like this being massaged.

The cheating element is only _part_ of it, and the dominant regime at the time downplayed / ignored the DEI elements because that was supported by their ideology...like a sacred cow. Litigating "disparate impact" cases across any category became a successful attack vector against capitalist structures, and supported by Democratic leadership.

This isn't "slapping a new coat of paint for propaganda," but rather exposing the rest of the iceberg that was otherwise concealed. Both pieces are relevant.

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> They are explicitly the inverse of DEI approaches.

This is essentially a No True Scotsman fallacy. If it's DEI, it's bad so any good approach is, by definition, not part of DEI.

> DEI is predicated on outcome diversity, rather than treating applicants equally irrespective of background.

The first part of this is incorrect. Good DEI is about creating a level playing field (as you correctly point out for blind people or wheelchair users). Obviously, this isn't possible in all cases: I think everyone agrees we wouldn't want a blind taxi driver.

> The entire premise is that certain groups require special support

This is correct. Fair criticism of DEI initiatives can be levied at those which don't do this effectively and instead shortcut by using, say, hiring quotas. I've said multiple times that things like this are lazy and stupid because they don't address the lack of opportunity for disadvantaged backgrounds.

> and have been historically excluded because of bias (sometimes true, often wholly false

This is an inaccurate stating of the situation. Some groups (e.g. black people in the USA) are excluded due to bias. Some have been excluded due to situational factors (young white men in the UK have worse outcomes due to poverty). Good DEI initiatives attempt to counter these, with varying levels of success.

Let me take the article as an example. They identified an advantage for people on CTI programmes, which also happened to turn out good ATC operators. This may have advantaged people who could afford to attend the programmes, which could have skewed white male. A good DEI initiative might have been to put the work into outreach in under-represented areas to get more people of colour into CTI programmes. Instead, the FAA banned CTI programmes, threw the students there to the wolves, and seemed to sneak in a test designed to hit hiring quotas. Not only was this discriminatory, it also actively reduced the number of qualified ATC operators.

Nowhere in this scenarios did I need to fall back on "DEI bad," because I tried to discuss the specific issues within the article.