Affirmative Action and NASA

These same poilicies favoring minorities cause similar harms in other public works. These 'minority-owned' shell businesses thrive and become rich long after the mandated 'leg-up' from affirmative action. It becomes near impossible for a 'white' or male owned company to compete for public dollars.

Expecting anything out of a protected class died when affirmative action was born. Besides that, I thought the primary mission of NASA nowadays was Mooslum outreach. How’s that working out?

Skin color vs merit. I lean towards merit every time. Favoring someone for a job just because of their skin color is racist, period.

Diversity is not a strength

I used to work for a minority owned business that got lots of preferential government contracts. It was American Indian owned and had hundreds of employees. The work we did was good, but there was only one Indian in the company and he was the owner and a millionaire. Way to milk that preference.

Was this mandated by the Obama Administration? I can't imagine Trump coming up with this idea. Seems to me when you're building ROCKETS to go to the Moon, you want the Best and Brightest people involved in making that happen. Doesn't matter if they are minorities or not, what matters is if they are QUALIFIED. Most of us have seen what Affirmative Action brought us in the 90's when corporations had to meet their "Quota" or be fined. That was a mess. We don't need to go back to that!

You can do "affirmative action" (aka "quotas) for tollbooth cashiers, but not with Rocket Engineers.

I worked at Kennedy Space Center for 13 years as a Principal Engineer for both McDonnell Douglas and Boeing. In my section, there were two Principal Engineers, one a native of Nigeria, the other, me. Our manager was also black. Over the years, the other guy seemed to quit working. The rest of the department had to carry his load. Anyway, the contract came to an end. When the follow-on contract was awarded, all the Principal Engineers on site were laid off except one, the black a-h from Nigeria. I wonder who he got to do his work, once I was gone. . . So much for Affirmative Action!

And remember when the air traffic controllers were forced into this same situation.

Space program? What space program? NASA hasn't got a program except to lobby Congress for another "moon shot" or Mars landing.

Attempting to find rocket scientists among minorities has an almost certain outcome. No wonder we don't hear much from NASA. My company once discussed IT work with a minority-populated firm. They were the highest priced and had the poorest performance record.

Absolutely accurate, and devastating to output and progress, everywhere. I saw much the same in my engineering career, although we didn't do as much subcontracting for AA, we just hired them. Affirmative action is literally destroying the entire country. I retired 5 years ago and a good friend is now working at my old company, a medium size aerospace contractor working exclusively on specific weapons contracts for our government. When we have lunch now, much of the time is spent discussing his sadness and frustration at the massive incompetence and destructive AA processes which are harming what had been a place with a huge commitment to the highest performance and quality in our products. Sadly, about half of the managers now are women, and at least half of them are incompetent, promoted because of their sex, not their abilities. Add in that the corporation is using our small, highly specialized division as a way station for their mass production oriented managers. They have NO understanding of production where 1,000 units is all you will EVER make, over a decade, not 1,000 per hour or 1,000 per day. Much wasted time on high volume production concepts that are entirely irrelivant when you make 3 units a month. We are pushing more and more of our production out to small companies, and we have less and less control, so quality and ship dates slip, things that never happened in my 35 years there. Affirmative action is a destructive force wherever it is mandated, and that is nearly all large companies now. I had half a dozen good female engineers that I mentored, they were good engineers. My biggest problem was that after bringing along a straight-out-of-school engineer for 5 or 6 years until she was a really skilled engineer, able to fully contribute, even lead, several of them got married, pregnant and stopped working. I LOVE that they are starting a family, that is truly wonderful for them, and for the world. But from a business standpoint, she just blew a 6 year wide hole in my personnel development plan, and did crippling damage to our productivity for years to come. I don't know the answer for that, but it sure hurts the ability of a company to do good engineering. And as much as I hate to say it, if I was in my own small business, I would avoid hiring women - not because they are not good engineers, but because many of them will be wanting a family more than a job (as they should, I support them!) and they will leave the company in the lurch with a higher probability than a man. We only saw a few minority engineers and they didn't last long. We had three or four really skilled minority tech folks, as good as any, but they were unusual, from what we could find.

The article is 95% accurate. My only exception is the perspective on professional contractors. Professions generally have ethical standards, and most professionals do adhere to them, so in the least, all of them should not be labeled miscreant. The general framework outlined in the article of the shell, and temporary worker is true. To avoid the temporary nature of the work, contractors employ full time professionals, whose work on that assignment may be temporary, but they are assigned to a new assignment when that work ends. The contractor is able to do this by keeping a portion of their staff permanent, and probably as much of half of their staff temporary to manage to ups and downs of work available. So it is possible to find good contractors with permanent staff, but is more expensive. When the leftists get involved, it gets complicated and messy. Affirmative action has been a huge boon for contractors, as they are hired to clean up and do work affirmative action employees have not done. It takes a strong stomach most days.

When I worked for NASA (30 years), I was given a number of these minority-owned business proposals.to review and comment upon. In many of the proposals, the "minorities" were women. Reading further, you find that the professional talent that works for these minority-owned business are the husbands of these women. The women are just figureheads to get minority status. I reported my findings, but it made no difference.

When I went to work for NASA, the mission statement was, "Put a man on the Moon and return him safely to Earth before the end of the decade." (1970) Short and to the point. By the time I left, every branch had a mission statement that was several pages long. EEO objectives (quotas) and other such mandates came early. Do something to support technical objects was done at the end. The Muslim outreach and gutting of NASA by Obama came after I left.

Regarding AA in general, it's not just favorable hiring, it's the perks and pensions after. I am still ticked about being in a group interview, only one with experience and not hired. Back then the HR person could say they had to hire a minority. Look at any county, state, or federal job site and who the employees are. Some are long past their expiration date and some are doubling dipping like my mayor and his spouse in Congress. That's four retirement packages taxpayers are paying. They aren't brain surgeons by any means. I have to ask why aren't there percentages in hiring. Some offices are mostly minorities.