Kamala Harris Kicks Obedient Woke Corporations in the Teeth
It must really suck to be a major corporate CEO in the 2020s. Between shareholder expectations for greater profits, woke culture DEI demands and entitled employees, the people who occupy the captain’s chair at these unmanageable behemoths face unreasonable expectations on a daily basis. Sure, they make a lot of money, but they also set themselves up for an early grave.
Take Boeing, for example.
The Decline of a Once Great Company
On March 24, 2020, a little over a year after Boeing’s stock hit an all-time high, Vivian Martin, an African-American, Muslim Boeing employee, filed a discrimination lawsuit with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission, claiming she was repeatedly passed over for promotion because of her religion and race. Ultimately, Martin lost her case, but several more discrimination cases followed, most of which were settled out of court.
Public opinion and government scrutiny began to turn against Boeing, and in an attempt to restore its image in the eyes of the leftist media and the cancel culture, Boeing embarked on an aggressive policy of DEI adoption. In August 2020, CEO David Calhoun announced a comprehensive “Racial Equity Action Plan.”
From the document:
“With input from team members and leaders at all levels — including Business Resource Groups; front-line managers and teammates of color; diversity, equity and inclusion experts; and external stakeholders from communities of color — we understand we have work to do.”
Following the implementation of the DEI plan, Calhoun established “diversity metrics,” that served as appearance-based quotas for Boeing’s various departments. Within a year of adopting DEI, Boeing terminated 65 employees and took corrective action against 53 others for behavior that ran “contrary to our values.”
While the woke leftist community offered muted praised for Boeing’s efforts, Wall Street wasn’t nearly as impressed. Since 2019, when Boeing’s common stock reached at $440/share, the company has lost 55% of its market capitalization, and the share price currently stands at $196 as of this writing. Meanwhile, over the same period, the S&P 500 has risen 103%.
Running concurrently with its embrace of DEI, Boeing has suffered a series of near catastrophic failures in engineering and manufacturing. In 2024 alone, three years after fully embracing DEI, a rear door plug on a Boeing 737 Max 9 jet blew out mid-flight at 16,000 feet. A different 737 MAX 9 was forced to make an emergency landing in Portland after a portion of its fuselage tore off. A 737-800 canceled takeoff because a cockpit windshield cracked. Then, a 737 from Switzerland was grounded because of an oxygen leak.
A Boeing 747 headed from Florida to Puerto Rico had to turn around after an engine caught fire. Shortly thereafter, a 757 lost a wheel after takeoff from Atlanta. A 787-9 Dreamliner experienced a mid-flight technical issue that caused the plane to severely drop mid flight, injuring 50 people. On a flight from Sydney to San Francisco, a 777-300 was forced to turn around due to a fuel leak. A 737-800 arrived in Oregon from San Francisco, where flight crews discovered an exterior panel had fallen off mid-flight.
Finally, the Boeing Starliner space capsule has been docked at the International Space Station for over two months with helium leaks and malfunctioning thrusters. The astronauts who traveled in the Boeing spacecraft are awaiting rescue by a Space X vehicle, which won’t return until late February 2025.
The Leftist Reward for Forced DEI
Boeing isn’t alone in establishing a direct correlation between DEI adoption and a subsequent decline in operational competency. Unfortunately, Boeing attracts more attention than other woke corporations because if they produce inferior products, people can die. Companies across America that were hoping to avoid woke cancelation tried to ingratiate themselves with the leftist authoritarian state by adopting quotas and appearance-based hiring and promotion. The result has been higher prices for goods and services, supply chains that are failing, and substandard products. As a result, America is losing its competitive edge globally.
You would think that in giving up much of their identity and failing to meet obligations to shareholders, these companies would at least have gained favor with the Democrat ruling elite.
Nope.
Instead, the party’s presidential nominee, herself a DEI hire, recently proposed sticking it to the fat-cat CEOs she despises by raising the top corporate tax rate from 21% to 28%. Additionally, Kamala Harris also proposed price controls on goods and services to prevent what she calls “price gouging.” Imagine if you’re the CEO of Kroger. You unabashedly adopted a robust, discriminatory DEI plan in 2020, only to have the same woke leftists you pandered to demand price controls on groceries while working to undermine your merger with Albertsons.
What a kick in the teeth.
These poor saps running large multi-national companies just can’t win. They completely overhaul their business models to accommodate the appearance-based preferences of woke leftists, but subsequently, they have to deal with the fallout of declining productivity and higher prices. And for all their effort, Harris vilifies them and gives them a gut punch because vilifying them makes her more popular with her leftist base.
I don’t know, maybe these companies will learn a lesson and go back to doing business the old way? You know, the best and most qualified candidate gets the job?
What a concept.
