Was Affirmative Action a Factor in the Navy Yard Rampage?
September 17, 2013
From the website for The Experts, a Hewlett Packard contractor that hired Aaron Alexis
Why was a waiter with a string of arrests, a history of violent behavior and a Navy discharge hired by a Navy Yard IT contractor?
ACCORDING to news reports, Aaron Alexis, the 34-year-old man who allegedly shot 12 people at the Washington D.C. Navy Yard yesterday, believed he was the victim of racial bias and was angry about it. See this Los Angeles Times report:
Ty Thairintr, 52, a Fort Worth tooling design engineer, said he met Alexis about five years ago, when Alexis was still in the Navy. “He told me he believed he had superior abilities to his co-workers but he didn’t get promoted,” he said. “He complained about the rank and file not giving him respect.”
Alexis felt discriminated against because he was black, he said.
However, it is much more likely that Alexis was the beneficiary, not the victim, of racial bias and that this massacre was due in part to racial affirmative action. How else to explain the hiring of Alexis by the IT company “The Experts” even though he was without significant IT experience, even a college degree. The company gave Alexis security clearance despite numerous arrests for aggressive behavior and despite his discharge from the Navy for what a naval spokesman said was “a pattern of misconduct.” Without the security clearance, Alexis could not have entered the office building yesterday. From the Wall Street Journal:
According to a statement from Hewlett-Packard Co., Mr. Alexis was working for a company called “The Experts,” which H-P described as a subcontractor for an H-P contract on the Navy Marine Corps Intranet network. H-P said it was cooperating fully with law enforcement on the matter.
Mr. Alexis held a secret security clearance through his employer, The Experts, which had rehired him in July to work on a project at the Navy facility, according to company CEO Thomas Hoshko. “I don’t know if it was his first day on the job or what but we are trying to figure it out,” Mr. Hoshko said of Mr. Alexis. “We were just as shocked as anyone.” (Read more of the CEO’s comments.)
How would a company such as “The Experts” come to be involved in a U.S. government IT contract?
I work in this world – not only as an executive with Big 4 IT/Accountancies but as an independent contractor.
The Department of Defense lacks the manpower to manage its own computers so it bids out their multiyear contracts and in this case, H-P won. H-P in turn lacks the manpower to actually man the contract – this is what we call “lean” and “agile” and is a product of 1990’s business school theory. Come to think of it, that is what drives the DoD layoffs, too.
So H-P immediately sub-contracts to numerous “body shops” or “staffing companies” who maintain Rolodexes of free-lancers who enjoy contract work. Contract work has many benefits, including a fairly high hourly wage for this flexibility and in lieu of “benefits” such as PTO and health insurance.
Now body shops come in different flavors. Some cultivate relationships with very talented free-lancers who command top dollar but revel in the freedom of being an independent businessman, free to pick and choose his projects and his colleagues.
What you likely do not know is that all government contracts demand a fixed percentage of their “spend” to be directed to “Minority and Woman Owned Businesses”. Yes, it is a direct payoff to the Democrat political coalition.
So there is another flavor of body shops, those who specialize in being owned by women and minorities. I can’t tell you how many of these I have contracted through over the years but it was a couple, at least. One was owned by an Indian tribe from Oklahoma. They normally supplied janitors to the feds but somehow managed to win an accounting contract for Westinghouse, a public company regulated by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and were beholden to their rules.
Only in America!
Other government contract experiences have been substantially similar, although I was usually management with a Big 4 and my project colleagues were hired by (or owners of) the minority and women owned companies.
So that’s how a cold-blooded killer comes to work for “The Experts” (no doubt whatsoever they are a minority body shop) who won a contract from the formerly highly honorable H-P. (H-P’s honor was smashed upon hiring its own minority-and-woman CEO, the odious Carly Fiorina.)
In other words, this is affirmative action in the flesh. And blood and gore.
Only in America.
Affirmative action certainly would explain why a man prone to violence, with multiple arrests, and schizophrenia would be given a security clearance at a Naval yard. Certainly a military culture which continued to promote Major Nidal Hasan, despite his open and avowed adherence to militant Islamic ideology, in the name of sacred diversity is not going to keep out a black man like Aaron Alexis. Diversity trumps human lives; if people have to die so that diversity as manifest by the presence of Nidal Hasan and Aaron Alexis can go forward, then so be it.
As for Aaron Alexis’ immediate motives, I notice the media is not being very clear about it. The media that was so quick to turn the insane, white shooter Jared Loughner into a right-wing extremist seems hesitant to tells us what Alexis’ political views were. Instead the media keeps mentioning that he was interested in Thai culture and other elements in an attempt to humanize him. The fact that he harbored racial resentment receives only a passing acknowledgment. Was he another Christopher Dorner, motivated to turn on his coworkers by a mixture of personal and racial grievances that existed only in his mind? I suspect we will never got those answers from the media, which would pass over his motives (as they don’t fit the needed narrative) and turn the shooting into another crusade to disarm white Americans.
Earl writes:
It also turns out, according to Fox News, that the shooter was highly praised in the Navy, rated as a “must promote.” Things mentioned in support include community-mindedness and hours working with children. I’m sure he was a superstar in the Navy. He probably was not once sent back to his room to change his makeup, hair style, or nail color. He probably never once got fat or was out pregnant. He probably never faked injuries or repeatedly went to sick bay for the littlest thing. I doubt he ever once accused someone of rape, harassment, or sexism. He probably never once got his period and randomly raged on someone for eating all the cheese sauce in the breakroom. In the new Navy, with the new standards, anyone can be a superhero.
September 18, 2013
Laura writes:
More information has come out today on Alexis’s past.
Alexis’s security clearance came from the Pentagon, not the contractor, according to The New York Times. He was never convicted of a crime or committed to a mental institution and received, contrary to initial reports, an honorable discharge from the Navy, despite problems during his service. In light of this information, the company that hired him, The Experts, seems not to have been guilty of rash judgment.
