Opinion
By Jeff Childers
03-04-24
Good morning, C&C, it’s the first Monday in March! If the first two months have been any guide, March is going to be a crackerjack. Your good-news roundup today includes: DEI departments under siege as corporations race to shed their woke professionals; Argentina pulls the plug on its PBS network; after locking up its career criminals, El Salvador dismantles gender ideology in schools; shocking developments in Adam Schiff’s California Senatorial campaign; latest Joe Biden gaffe signals his last tenuous grip on reality may be finally giving way; and get ready for a big Supreme Court decision to drop today.
🗞 THE C&C ARMY POST 🗞
🪖 HOLIDAY SCHEDULE: I have good news and bad news, and they’re both the same: It’s time again for Spring Break! On Wednesday, Team Childers decamps for Sin City, Las Vegas, where I’m to deliver a rousing keynote and speak on several panels at the VSRF’s Covid Litigation Conference II (Thursday / Friday). The boys are coming, grumbling the whole time, even though they get to drive a tank or something. The following week — their Spring Break — we’ll visit two of our great nation’s most majestic parks, touring the famous sandstone cliffs of Zion and the oddly-named hoodoos of Bryce Canyon.
Needless to say, normal C&C scheduling will be affected. Prepare for intermittent service, outages, and, most important, posts may be delivered late, since it’s a 3-hour time shift. Get ready!
(Seriously, though, I will post something every morning, even if it’s something short, so you guys can yuk it up in the comments if I’m occupied with family time.)
🗞💬 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 💬🗞
🔥 Whatever else the strange and unique animal called ‘2024’ may be, it appears poisonous to wokeness. The latest example cropped up in yesterday’s surprising Washington Post story headlined, “As DEI gets more divisive, companies are ditching their teams.”
You’ll probably wonder corporate media never mentioned this thrilling DEI development before. Haha, just kidding. You know why. Anyway, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion — and its revolting acronym — are in decline. DEI ‘professionals’ are collecting pink slips twice as fast as everyone else:
DEI jobs peaked in early 2023 before falling 5 percent that year and shrinking by 8 percent so far in 2024, according to Revelio Labs data shared with The Washington Post. The attrition rate for DEI roles has been about double that of non-DEI jobs, says Revelio, which tracks workforce dynamics.
Those encouraging numbers conceal the scale of the drama. Corporate America, which is generally nimbler at downsizing than smaller companies, painted an even rosier picture of DEI’s sudden illness:
In recent weeks, Zoom axed its internal DEI team amid broader layoffs, and Snap cut workers who worked on retention and engagement efforts for employees from underrepresented groups. Meta, Tesla, DoorDash, Lyft, Home Depot, Wayfair and X were among major corporations making steep cuts in 2023, slashing the size of their DEI teams by 50 percent or more, Revelio’s data shows.
The WSJ reported last year that DEI discussions on corporate investor calls have become increasingly rare.
My oldest, best friend runs a large, contrarian investment fund. One of his favorite techniques to identify his short-sale targets (i.e., betting the stock price will fall) is counting up the minutes of investor calls devoted to DEI. He swears there is an inverse relationship between the proportion of DEI chatter and future stock performance.
In other words, the more corporate officials talk about their awesome DEI programs, the more it seems like they’re trying to distract investors from problems with their fundamentals. I would add that the more time and attention top management devotes to DEI, the less time and attention it has to give its real mission, which should be delivering a superior product or service.
Let’s test the theory. Victoria’s Secret, Moderna, and ConocoPhillips all significantly expanded their DEI teams last year. But even though the market as a whole is up, the jab company and the now body-positive lingerie firm are down year-over-year. Only the oil and gas company is up, and only about +1%. So.
Meanwhile, The Home Depot cut its DEI department by over 50% last year. Its stock is way up:
So. Maybe my friend’s rule works in reverse, too. Maybe there’s a positive relationship between deep cuts to DEI and an increased stock price. Somebody should look into that (because the media won’t, that’s for sure).
DEI is not just getting punched in the face by for-profit corporations. Last week, Florida’s largest public university axed its entire DEI department. According to the WaPo article, in just the last year state legislators have introduced at least sixty-five anti-DEI bills. Last year, the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in college admissions, and the decision loaded ammunition into legal challenges against private employers’ hiring practices. Conservative groups have been suing prominent mid-size corporations over their psychotic, anti-white, discriminatory hiring practices.
An appalled WaPo called those conservative lawsuits part of a larger “effort to dismantle race-conscious policies in other domains of American life.”
And race-conscious politics are being dismantled in other domains of American life. But not just here.
🔥 Argentina’s new chainsaw-wielding, “Trump-clone,” crazy haired president Javier Miliei is at it again. The UK Telegraph ran the story under the sidesplitting headline, “Javier Milei shuts down Argentina’s largest public news agency for spreading ‘propaganda.’.
Unplugged! Switched off! Deplatformed! Deleted! Adios, muchachos! How I long to read that headline here in the United States. Oh, please, let me live to see the day.
The news sprang from Argentina’s version of the state of the union speech. Late last week, an incandescent President Milei presented his fiery legislative agenda to his congress. It was by all accounts a humdinger.
Amongst many other excellent proposals, Milei said he intends to shutter Télam, a public ‘news’ network the Telegraph called “the largest and most prestigious news agency in Argentina.” In other words, PBS. That will only be the beginning. Milei also announced “a wave of reforms targeting public bodies that he has accused of being a covert propaganda ministry.”
Haha! That phrase alone, describing public reporting agencies as a covert propaganda ministry, felt like a balm from Gilead. Yes! A thousand times, yes. Do it.
He’s on a roll. Last week, Milei unplugged Argentina’s Orwellian ‘National Institute against Discrimination, Xenophobia and Racism’ — an agency Milei called the thought police. On Thursday, he signed an executive order banning the use of “marxist” gender-neutral language in any official government document.
Pray for them. Argentina and its fiery new president face a period of painful transition. De-marxifying Argentina’s economy will be costly and difficult, and good Argentinians will need nerves of steel. But the experiment is critical. They are trying to disprove that old saw about how you can vote your way into socialism, but you have to shoot your way out.
If it works there, it can work here too.
🔥 Not only that! Over the weekend, El Salvador’s new president Nayib Bukele — who famously cured his country’s crime problem by promptly jailing giant numbers of gang members — announced his latest plan: banning every last trace of woke gender ideology in his country’s schools.
CLIP: President Bukele tells Moms for Liberty activist about banning woke gender ideology (2:52).
Describing gender ideology as “unnatural” and “contrary to God,” President Bukele said the change was necessary to restore civil society. I don’t know who needs to hear this, but gender ideology is a psychotic, uncharitable, harmful, virtueless, immoral philosophy that all normal people should shun and revile.
I don’t know about you, but I sense a tide turning.
📈 I know what you’re thinking. But what about here, what about in the blue states? Consider the San Fransisco Chronicle’s most surprising story so far of the short week headlined, “Schiff, Garvey in ‘statistical tie’ for U.S. Senate seat, poll shows.” Wait! How can this happen? In California?
On Friday, the University of Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies published its latest electoral poll and you still won’t believe what they found. The news is actually even more astounding than the headline suggested: Republican Senatorial candidate Steve Garvey is beating liberal anti-hero Adam Schiff by +2%:
That survey question asked about a full-term election. But a different partial term question showed even stronger support for Garvey, reporting him up 29%-23% over Schiff — beyond the statistical margin for error.
These shocking poll results explained corporate media’s disgusting deluge of pro-Schiff articles over the weekend. The stories claiming Schiff was beloved in his district flooded out of panicked corporate media sewer pipes this weekend like propagandist effluent flowing out of a knocked-over Porta-Potti.
According to liberal Berkely, apparently Schiff is not, after all, quite that beloved in his district. If the pencil-necked Representative’s Senate bid fails, he’s finished. And if that happens, then what was it all for?
Eight months remain until the elections. A lot can happen. And Katie Porter (D-Ca.) holds about 20%, so Garvey remains far behind the democrat vote in total. But Schiff was supposed to be a shoe-in, thanks to his leading the Trump impeachment efforts and coordinating the January 6th prosecutions.
What is going on in California? Golden State C&Cers, please report in the comments.
🔥 Everything’s going terrific! Looking and sounding just like the Energizer Bunny running down on those unreliable generic batteries, Mumbly Joe laboriously and monotonously updated reporters this weekend about his cunning plan to airdrop humanitarian supplies into Gaza, except — painfully — he told them he ordered air drops into Ukraine — twice! — even though he was reading from pre-prepared notes in his lap.
CLIP: Biden mistakes Ukraine for Gaza twice in spite of being told what to say (0:21).
As much as Joe wants to dump pallets of cash out of helicopters in Eastern Europe, airdrops in Ukraine would be an especially bad idea right now, since the Russians have near-total control of its skies. Not only that, but the Ukrainians have demonstrated a keen ability to more nimbly shoot down their own aircraft even more accurately than Russian planes.
I wouldn’t suggest it. Joe should stick with dropping things on Gaza.
He has to make it eight more months. But it looks like the courageous final five functioning neurons in Joe Biden’s brain, worn and thin and desperately clinging to life, may be finally giving up the ghost, packing it in, and closing up shop. You can’t blame them. I really, really hope they’ve taken the nuclear football away from Joe. At this rate, instead of nuking Moscow, Russia, he’d probably accidentally nuke Moscow, Pennsylvania.
🔥 Yesterday, the Huffington Post breathlessly reported that, “Supreme Court Could Decide Monday If Trump Can Be Kicked Off State Ballots.”
In a rare Sunday announcement, the Supreme Court announced yesterday it would be deciding “a case” this morning at 10am. We don’t know for sure which case, but Colorado’s primary is tomorrow, so the Court really must rule today, so voters know whether or not a vote for Trump counts. (Colorado’s Secretary of State voluntarily printed Trump on the primary ballots just in case.)
Tomorrow is also “Super Tuesday,” when 16 state primaries happen on the same day. Like Colorado’s, the other Super Tuesday voters need to know whether or not Trump will be a viable candidate.
Especially after hearing the skeptical judges asking questions at oral arguments, most commentators already expect the Court to rule against Colorado’s creative use of a Civil War-era, anti-insurrectionist Constitutional provision. The outcome could realistically include a rare 9-0 decision, signaling even the most liberal justices didn’t want to be anywhere near Colorado’s kooky theory.
You can check the Supreme Court’s website for real-time updates today, or wait till tomorrow’s C&C, when I will let you know what happened with commentary, context, and possibly a snide remark. Or two. You never know.
Have a magnificent Monday! Come on back tomorrow morning for your final regular C&C until after Spring Break. Hopefully we will discuss the Abolishment of Trump’s Insurrection.
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© 2022, Jeff Childers, all rights reserved
The views expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Citizens Journal Florida
