SelwynDuke.com

NY Times: U of Michigan Blew a Quarter BILLION on DEI — and HURT Students and Staff

By Selwyn Duke

When even The New York Times complains about your leftism, you know that you not only jumped the shark with wokism, but that the shark you jumped is a megalodon. This is the case, too, with a new report on how the University of Michigan squandered megabucks on DEI indoctrination. The result of these programs?

A decade and a quarter “billion dollars later,” the Times writes, “students and faculty are more frustrated than ever.”

Note that much of this is tax money, too. In fact, the University of Michigan (UoM) campus in question, Ann Arbor, received $357 million in state funds last year. (That’s a 5.1-percent increase over 2022.) Given this, is it possible the UoM has too much money on its hands? Should it be defunded?

Official Put on Leave After Purple-haired Subordinate Complained He Was Hiring Based on Merit, Not Identity

By Selwyn Duke

The Oregon Department of Forestry’s second-in-command has been put on administrative leave for committing what is now, apparently, considered misfeasance. His sin?

The official, one Mike Shaw, resolved to hire at his bureau the “candidates most qualified for the job.”

That’s what Megan Donecker — a purple-haired, tattooed DEI trainer who filed a complaint against him — said he told her, anyway.

Vermont School Bans Saying Pledge of Allegiance, Parents Say

By Selwyn Duke 

 

There was a time, not long ago, when reciting the Pledge of Allegiance was standard in schools — and uncontroversial. Then it became an issue — and optional. Now it’s not even an option at one Vermont school, say local parents.

Battle of the Sexes? Election Might Be “Boys vs. Girls”

By Selwyn Duke

If men are from Mars and women from Venus, as author John Gray put it, then something is for sure.

Mars is MAGA territory.

And Venus is Kamala Land.

In fact, as polls consistently demonstrate, the intersex voting gap is perhaps now historically large. For example, the latest NBC poll finds that men favor President Trump in the upcoming election by 16 points (56-40). In contrast, women favor Kamala Harris by 14 (55-41). For those who don’t like NBC (and I can sympathize), it’s not just that nattering network. Polls from Gallup to Pew, from left to right to center, all show the same divide, with some variation in magnitude. And the ultimate poll — voting — also reveals the gap. For instance, men supported Republicans 51 to 47 percent in the 2018 midterms; women broke for the Democrats 59-40.

This male-female chasm is evident as well among young people, ages 18 to 29. While both sexes break for Harris, young women’s support is shockingly one-sided. This isn’t surprising, as Gen Z is overall the least “traditional” generation in American history. In fact, its members are more likely to identify as “LGBTQ” than Republican. And as the Harvard Youth Poll reports on this age cohort’s current leanings:

Is the Myth of Plastic Recycling Finally Being Exposed?

By Selwyn Duke

It was to be a routine voyage.

It would become historic.

On March 22, 1987, the barge Mobro 4000, loaded with six million pounds of garbage and towed by tugboat Break of Dawn, departed Islip, New York. It was bound for Morehead City, North Carolina — but never did dock there. Instead, it spent the next five months at sea, turned away by multiple states and three foreign countries. It became big news, with journalist Dan Rather calling it “the most watched load of garbage in the memory of man.” But another load of garbage was the story the media spun about it. In reality, no one would accept the Mobro because of a rumor that it was carrying medical waste. But that’s not the narrative the media pushed.

It advanced the notion that the Mobro’s fate was a result of a lack of dump space.

The “solution,” of course, was recycling. The timing was perfect, too, as there already was increasing public concern about waste. Oh, never mind that, as Reader’s Digest reported decades ago, 1,000 years’ of America’s trash could fit in an area 50 miles square (one m² per state) and 200 feet high — the average modern dump’s height. “Never let a crisis go to waste,” and this one wasn’t wasted: The story helped catalyze the recycling movement. The Mobro 4000 might have been at sea, but recycling proponents’ ship had come in.

Of particular concern, too, is plastic, with stories of the material polluting our oceans. But what if plastic recycling is a myth, if not a scam, that is not only wasteful but environmentally damaging?

“Green Energy Transition” Is a Costly “Myth,” Says Expert, and “Isn’t Happening”

By Selwyn Duke

“The definition of insanity,” the apocryphal saying goes, “is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” This could come to mind now that yet another warning has been issued about “green” energy.

A transition to it simply “isn’t happening,” says researcher Bjørn Lomborg, of the Copenhagen Consensus Center. The problem?

Such a transition is, first, prohibitively expensive. In fact, Lomborg has estimated, lowering Earth’s temperature just 1/3 of one degree Fahrenheit by 2100 would cost $100 trillion. This makes the endeavor unfeasible.

Second, and counterintuitively, creating “renewable” energy doesn’t replace coal, oil, and gas. It mainly just adds to energy consumption.

Despite this, the world is proceeding with bull-in-a-china-shop energy ambitions, spending $2 trillion annually trying to “transition.” The bottom line, says Lomborg, is that we need a “major policy overhaul.”

Warning: NY’s ERA Is a “Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing” That LEGALIZES Discrimination

By Selwyn Duke

Any discriminating shopper knows that you can’t judge a product’s goodness based on its name or a manufacturer’s advertisement. Those are just superficial appeals designed to entice. Instead, you must examine the ingredients label. So it is, too, with government laws and propositions, a good example being New York’s Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). On the ballot this coming Election Day as “Proposition One,” it sounds wonderful. Who’s against “equal rights”? But then there are the ingredients on the label.

And they, warns a watchdog organization, are toxic.

What’s more, the ERA’s advocates are guilty of a type of false advertising. That is, some of the most poisonous amendment ingredients won’t even be mentioned in the ballot language in polling places. They’re hiding them for good reason, too.

These provisions would reportedly make discrimination for the alleged purposes of preventing discrimination a N.Y. constitutional right. For example, according to the Equal Protection Project (EPP), white employees denied promotions in order to achieve workplace “diversity” would no longer be able to sue in court (state court, anyway).

Cell Phones Have Been Called “Digital Heroin.” So, Should We Ban Them in School?

By Selwyn Duke

“There was a time, not that many years ago, really, when we would actually get into an argument because we didn’t want to answer the phone,” quite funny and mostly clean comedian James Gregory once said during an act. “It’d be like, ‘You get it; I got it last time!’”

Boy, the world sure has changed. Back then, Gregory continued, the phone was an interruption, taking time away from what you really wanted to do. Now it is what people want to do.

In fact, “screen addiction” is a real phenomenon, so much so that researchers have called electronic devices “digital heroin.” As a result, a movement to ban cell phones in schools is gaining momentum. There’s also been pushback, however. Many are reluctant to live life without that continual digital fix.

Obama Stumping for Kamala: Hating and Race-baiting

By Selwyn Duke

“Leave this world a little better than you found it,” advised the creator of the Scouting movement, Robert Baden-Powell. Critics might say, and are saying in so many words, that ex-President Barack Obama has failed on this score. He still is failing, too, and his recent campaigning for Kamala Harris is a case in point.

In fact, writes one observer, Obama this week had his “racism on full display.”

Cultural Decay: Now, Even Many “Elite” College Students “Can’t Read Books”

By Selwyn Duke

When hearing that many “elite” undergraduates “can’t” read books, first coming to mind could be that they’re not actually elite. (The term “pseudo-elite” suggests itself.) As for the word “can’t,” no, it’s not that these college students, often Ivy Leaguers, are illiterate. The issue is something different: conditioning.