Diversity vs Diversity

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Nasdaq—the tech-oriented stock exchange (no irony there)—is demanding companies listed with it

appoint within the next four years no fewer than two “diverse” directors: at least one woman, and one person from an underrepresented racial or ethnic group or someone who identifies as LGBTQ. Any company failing this requirement would be obligated to explain why.

The SEC must approve the demand before it has legal effect, but look for the Biden SEC to grant that.

Nasdaq, and the rest of the social justice warrior-ettes and virtue-signalers, miss the point of diversity, though. Or they don’t miss the point; they just don’t care.

Diversity of thought, diversity of approaches to problem solutions, most assuredly is something desperately needed in the boardroom. And in the C-suites, in middle management, on the production floor. And in schools, legislatures, and other political entities. (Voucher and charter schools already have this kind of diversity, in the main.) And in the mainstay of our private economy, mom-and-pop and other small businesses. Diversity of irrelevant characteristics like race, gender, or anything other will fall out of hiring for diversity of thought.

That’s even the logical outcome of those who push for diversity based on those irrelevant characteristics: all men are fundamentally equal in capability, these worthies say, regardless of color, gender, or….

Diversity done for the sake of diversity of race, gender, any other form, however, is just bigotry for the sake of bigotry, regardless of claimed purpose for the bigotry.

Works for Me

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New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has taken his State hostage and, reminiscent of a scene in Blazing Saddles, involving his Cleavon Little character counterpart, is threatening that if he doesn’t get billions in Federal dollars, “the…hostage…gets it.” (“Isn’t anybody gonna help that poor State?”)

During a speech detailing the state’s annual budget, Cuomo requested at least $15 billion in federal funding—or the state will likely have to implement a number of undesirable measures, including tax increases.

And

Cuomo said the state has proposed temporarily increasing the top rate by two percentage points to 10.86%, from 8.82%. A wealthy resident in New York City would pay a top rate of 14.7% in combined taxes….

“Temporarily.” Sure.

But the very threat is Cuomo’s admission that his State already plenty of money; it just needs reallocation. Cuomo’s State has no need of Federal—which is to say, the money of us non-New York citizens.

Because It’s Time

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And it’s the season….

I’ve been so bored this week that I just memorized six pages of the dictionary.
I learned next to nothing.

My wife beamed at me with pride and said, “Wow! I never thought our son would go that far!”
I said, “This catapult is amazing! Go get our daughter.”

I saw a girl crying, so I asked her “Where are your parents?” and she started crying even more.
Man, I love working at the orphanage.

Notice t‌‌hat t‌‌he w‌‌ord “‌‌nothing” i‌‌s a‌‌ p‌‌alindrome.
Backwards i‌‌t s‌‌pells “‌‌gnihton,” w‌‌hich a‌‌lso m‌‌eans n‌‌othing.

 

What is black and white and red all over?
An elephant dressed as a nun suffering from sunburn.

Four blind elephants encounter a human, who is a creature they’ve never seen before. Wishing to learn about this creature, one decides to feel him. He reports that humans are flat. The other three then investigate, also, and they agree.

What is gray, has four legs, and a trunk?
A mouse going on vacation.

What is brown, has four legs, and a trunk?
A mouse coming back from vacation.

What has eight legs, two trunks, four eyes, and two tails?
Two elephants.

What game do four elephants in a mini play?
Squash

 

What does Tarzan say when he sees a herd of elephants in the distance?
“Look, a herd of elephants in the distance.”
What does Tarzan say when he sees a herd of elephants with sunglasses?
Nothing. He doesn’t recognize them.
What does Tarzan say when he sees a herd of giraffes in the distance?
“Haha! You fooled me once with those disguises, but not this time!”

Tarzan comes home after a hard day and asks Jane to mix him a martini.
He’s hardly sat down before he’s finished it and he asks Jane to mix him another, and being a caring, nurturing mate, she does so. Again, Tarzan makes it disappear and asks (nicely enough, to be fair) for still another one.
At this, Jane arches a delicate eyebrow and says “Three martinis? Before dinner?”
“Jane, you don’t understand,” sighs Tarzan. “It’s a jungle out there!”

 

A performative poet of Hibernia
Rhymed himself into a hernia.
He became quite adept
At this practice, except
For the occasional non-sequitur.

The Censor Campaign

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Open MIC is a Left-wing activist organization that buys stocks in companies and then uses that shareholder status to push policies having nothing to do with the companies’ business and everything to do with “social justice,” sham diversity goals, and other attempts to alter the nature of commerce in our American economy.

Now the group has joined the censorship campaign against free speech.

New shareholder resolutions call upon advertiser Home Depot Inc and agency group Omnicom Group Inc to investigate whether their advertising policies inadvertently contribute to “violations of civil or human rights” by funding platforms that spread inappropriate content, according to copies of the proposals filed in late 2020.
The effort was organized by Open MIC, an organization that uses shareholder engagement to promote causes such as diversity and privacy.
Advertisers have come under pressure to withhold their spending from controversial TV programming or social-media platforms such as Facebook Inc. and to use their weight to push for more content moderation.

“Inappropriate” is as defined by Open MIC. No disputes of that definition are allowed.

Such attempts to censor do not constitute an open microphone; they move to prevent disfavored groups of Americans from having access to the microphone.

They’re claims that ordinary Americans are too grindingly stupid to be trusted with our own decisions regarding what to listen to and how to evaluate what we hear.

They’re borne of the terror the Left has of views and of speech that contradicts the Left’s Received Wisdom.

Veto Authority

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The People’s Republic of China has once again reached into American businesses to control what they do.

This time, it was the proposed acquisition by Cisco Systems of Acacia Communications, both of which are American companies. The PRC condescended to approve this acquisition—subject to certain conditions the PRC dictated.

The PRC also is actively interfering with the American company Applied Materials’ proposed acquisition of Kokusai Electric Corporation, a Japanese company.

Earlier, the PRC interfered with, to the point of blocking, a merger between Qualcomm, an American company, and NXP Semiconductors NV, a Dutch company.

A question that the Biden administration must answer: why do we allow an enemy nation—the PRC—to have veto authority over American business’ decisions such as mergers and acquisitions?  I’m not sanguine that the administration will even take on the question, much less answer it in any way favorable to our businesses.

Related to this is why Europe’s nations, the European Union, or Asian nations cede similar authority over their businesses to the PRC.

None of us need the PRC market that badly, especially since the non-PRC Asian markets are readily available, as are those of South America and Africa—the latter two which could easily lose much of their own government graft with the greater economic prosperity that would result from greatly increased trade and business penetration.

These are private companies making these decisions, to be sure. The PRC, though, isn’t only dictating how those companies must operate within its border–a right of any nation–the PRC is dictating how those companies must operate anywhere in the world. The PRC’s vetoes of mergers and acquisitions are global.

In aggregate, such companies’ desperation to do business in or with the PRC at the expense of acceding to the global diktats of our common enemy threatens the security of each of our nations.