Andrew Sullivan’s Prescription for Curing our Bad Case of DEI

We've got an enormous problem with DEI. It goes completely against what all of us seek when we need the best surgeon to operate on us, the best engineer to design a new bridge or the best pilot to safely fly us home. Even though we all know this, many of us have been afraid to say this lately. It is entirely rational and humane to seek out the best qualified people to fill jobs. Full stop. Although it is often a challenge to decide who is the best qualified person for the job, there is no close competitor to basing our decisions on merit.

Andrew Sullivan succinctly articulated the way forward:

End DEI in its entirety. Fire all the administrators whose only job is to enforce its toxic orthodoxy. Admit students on academic merit alone. Save standardized testing — which in fact helps minorities, and it’s “the best way to distinguish smart poor kids from stupid rich kids,” as Steven Pinker said this week. Restore grading so that it actually means something again. Expel students who shut or shout down speech or deplatform speakers. Pay no attention to the race or sex or orientation or gender identity of your students, and see them as free human beings with open minds. Treat them equally as individuals seeking to learn, if you can remember such a concept.

I've promoted this idea throughout the Great Awokening, hearing mostly crickets or criticism from intelligent people. Countless people I know have been sitting on their hands--refusing to say what they really think. They worry, often justifiably, that saying out loud what they really think will cost them their jobs and/or their reputations.

Speaking out in favor of merit as the only basis for hiring isn't just a platitude or an emotion. Consider, finally, this excellent article setting for the many reasons for hiring solely on the basis of merit: "In Defense of Merit in Science." Here is the abstract:

Merit is a central pillar of liberal epistemology, humanism, and democracy. The scientific enterprise, built on merit, has proven effective in generating scientific and technological advances, reducing suffering, narrowing social gaps, and improving the quality of life globally. This perspective documents the ongoing attempts to undermine the core principles of liberal epistemology and to replace merit with non­scientific, politically motivated criteria. We explain the philosophical origins of this conflict, document the intrusion of ideology into our scientific institutions, discuss the perils of abandoning merit, and offer an alternative, human­centered approach to address existing social inequalities.

Continue ReadingAndrew Sullivan’s Prescription for Curing our Bad Case of DEI

No Qualified Applicants for the Job of Censor

Christopher Hitchens:

To whom do you award the right to decide which speech is harmful or who is the harmful speaker? Or determine in advance what are the harmful consequences going to be, that we know enough about in advance to prevent? To whom would you give this job? To whom are you going to award the job of being the censor?

[...]

To whom you would give the job of deciding for you, relieve you of the responsibility of hearing what you might have to hear?

Do you know anyone — hands up — do you know anyone to whom you’d give this job? Does anyone have a nominee? You mean there’s no one ... good enough to decide what I can read? Or hear?

Continue ReadingNo Qualified Applicants for the Job of Censor

Vivek Ramaswamy Pulls Back the Curtain to Expose Nikki Haley’s Warmongering and Corruption

Vivek Ramaswamy harpooned Neocon Nikki Haley who, along with fellow neocon Joe Biden, now wants to spill American blood in the Ukraine, where we blew up an early peace settlement, leading to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians and Russians. I could not hold either of them in lower respect as a result of their warmongering and war-machine corruption.

Continue ReadingVivek Ramaswamy Pulls Back the Curtain to Expose Nikki Haley’s Warmongering and Corruption

Free-Flowing Money to Corrupt the Doctor-Patient Relationship by Incentivizing Vaccinations

How to corrupt the doctor-patient relationship: Quietly pay doctors to recommend vaccinations. What better way to convince doctors to downplay vaccination side-effects, most recently with the COVID vaccinations. I would prefer that my doctor not be paid anything by anyone, so that I am getting the doctor's free and unbiased judgment regarding treatment the doctor recommends. Excerpt:

Fake?

The AP attacked the claim that doctors receive $400 bonuses reaching some $40,000 per year, for getting those 39 vaccines into a baby on time. Yet, while determining the claim to be “false,” they clarify that their objection is just that it's not one price scheme for the entire nation.

CLAIM: Blue Cross Blue Shield pays doctors a $40,000 bonus for administering childhood immunizations to at least 100 patients under 2 years old and an $80,000 bonus for vaccinating 200 children.

AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. Blue Cross Blue Shield Association is a national federation of more than three dozen locally operated companies, and doesn’t offer such an incentive across the board . . . [Emphases added].

The AP went on to say that the $400 bonus and 63% benchmark are in fact the exact figures for the incentives offered in Michigan.

The document that blog post referred to was a 2016 edition of a Performance Recognition Program specifically for the Blue Cross Blue Shield Blue Care Network of Michigan. In a table titled “Quality Incentive Measures,” the program lays out that doctors who meet 63% of their plan goal for childhood immunizations receive a $400 payout. [Emphasis added].

The only real correction offered by the AP was that the doctors were not as successful as assumed in getting all those shots in the babies' arms. The payouts in 2016, in Michigan, topped out at $9,600. At $400 each, that translates to just 24 fully vaccinated babies.

One more excerpt, this time focusing Robert Malone's article on incentives paid to to doctors to incentivize the COVID jabs:

Dr. Robert Malone, an inventor of mRNA vaccine technology, revealed a similar, but even more rewarding, incentive program that was quietly provided to physicians to push mRNA injections. The program provides physicians with some $380,000 annually based on an average of 1,800 unique patient visits per year per medical practice...

The only way insurance companies could profit from more vaccinations would be if the government reimbursed them more than the combined costs to the insurance companies of purchasing the vaccinations and paying the bonuses. Dr. Malone confirms that this is exactly the case with COVID vaccines, as the money, which originates with the federal government, covers the costs of the vaccinations, the physicians' bonuses and the profit of the insurance companies. It is, therefore, tax dollars that are being passed from the government to the insurance companies to the doctors:

Continue ReadingFree-Flowing Money to Corrupt the Doctor-Patient Relationship by Incentivizing Vaccinations

About Political Factions

It distresses me that so many educated people embrace tribal politics, regardless of what tribe affiliate with. The Founders of the U.S. rightfully feared that factions would be our undoing as a country. For many people, it's as though the Enlightenment never occurred. Sarah Pruitt offers the historical background:

Today, it may seem impossible to imagine the U.S. government without its two leading political parties, Democrats and Republicans. But in 1787, when delegates to the Constitutional Convention gathered in Philadelphia to hash out the foundations of their new government, they entirely omitted political parties from the new nation’s founding document.

This was no accident. The framers of the new Constitution desperately wanted to avoid the divisions that had ripped England apart in the bloody civil wars of the 17th century. Many of them saw parties—or “factions,” as they called them—as corrupt relics of the monarchical British system that they wanted to discard in favor of a truly democratic government.

Continue ReadingAbout Political Factions