By Cliff Montgomery – Feb. 14th, 2025
We haven’t seen a disaster like the crash over the Potomac in almost 25 years, and federal data on U.S. aviation crashes reveal that we’ve tended to experience significantly less crashes, year after year, since those disabled individuals began work at the FAA.
To hear Trump’s new administration discuss it, Obama’s and federal data on U.S. aviation crashes policy of hiring people with “targeted disabilities” to serve .in government jobs is proof the country was going to hell following wild left-wing ideas.
“Targeted disabilities” is defined by federal government parlance as including problems with “hearing, vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability and dwarfism.”
The issue with Trump’s argument is that even Trump – in his first term – worked hard to employ people with “targeted disabilities” at the FAA, as air traffic controllers. We discussed that fact at length in yesterday’s article.
We can only assume that Donald Trump will now work to save us from crazy, left-wing nuts … like Donald Trump.
As is usually the case, these ‘wild left-wing ideas’, come down to following long-established laws that actually empower U.S. citizens who aren’t white billionaires. The basis for these laws have been around and accepted by the majority of U.S. citizens for decades.
And, sadly, we’re not surprised that Trump now claims not to understand a basic respect for laws that he himself openly championed during his first term.
First, let’s kill the “crazy liberal idea” nonsense: The basis for what Trump now claims to hate is a U.S. legislation signed into law by conservative president George Herbert Walker Bush. And, as we’ve already said, Trump himself championed it during his first term.
The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) simply “requires employers with 15 or more employees to provide qualified individuals with disabilities an equal opportunity to benefit from the full range of employment-related opportunities available to others,” according to the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.
The argument that if one is disabled, one cannot possibly be a productive member of society, says more about the person making the argument than anything else.
The Act is based on the notion of “disparate impact,” established by the 1971 Supreme Court case Griggs v. Duke Power. Griggs successfully argued that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act made it illegal to practice any hiring policy that may well be discriminatory, even if it is seemingly neutral. Only policies necessary for that business and which are directly related to the job may be used in the hiring process.
But the Griggs case was intended to outlaw racial discrimination in the hiring process. The ADA was a law passed to provide the disabled with the same essential legal protection, since they too suffered from “disparate impact.”
Obama issued an executive order to solidify a hiring initiative based, in part, on the ADA. Adopted in 2010, it helped those with disabilities and even “targeted disabilities” find jobs in government. Obama pointed out that such a rule would bring in a greater representation of the disabled at federal agencies and bureaus …
But the executive order ensured that only those who could handle the agency job – and handle it as well as anyone else who worked there – were considered for employment.
In Section B of the Order, Obama specifically states that “each agency shall develop an agency specific plan for promoting employment opportunities for individuals with disabilities” – which clearly means that only those who had the ability to skillfully perform the tasks demanded by each agency would be considered for the agency job.
In that same section, Obama stated that, “the plan shall … include performance targets and numerical goals for employment of individuals with disabilities and sub goals for employment of individuals with targeted disabilities.” So a high level of performance was expected by those who did the hiring, as well as those who were hired.
That’s why Trump and his handlers seem not to understand the primary flaw in their attempt to blame all their aviation crash problems on Barack Obama: If those with “targeted disabilities” have been failing at the FAA since 2010, the data on aviation crashes would clearly reveal a steep increase in disasters going back a full decade and a half. Planes and helicopters would have been routinely crashing and falling out of the sky in highly increased numbers for years now – in fact, that’s something every U.S. citizen would have clearly seen for themselves, using simple personal experience and the naked eye.
But we haven’t seen any of that in the last 15 years, during the entire tenure of those with “targeted disabilities.” In fact, we haven’t seen a disaster like the crash over the Potomac in almost 25 years, and federal data on U.S. aviation crashes reveal that we’ve tended to experience significantly less crashes, year after year, since those disabled individuals began work at the FAA.
Now let’s take a look at the data …
If readers wish, they may use the full interactive presentations from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) to check on the real numbers for themselves. Among other things, the NTSB’s graphs and aids show both the number of crashes and the number of fatalities for U.S. Civil Aviation Accidents, and cover the years 2008 to 2023. Change the NTSB filter to ignore all non-U.S.A. crashes, then put your cursor over the chart figures, and let it do the work.
And, to give us a proper sample of the years before Obama’s executive order, we used additional NTSB data of U.S. civil aviation crashes stretching back to 1998.
The FAA watches over U.S. civil aviation – this includes such things as commercial air transport, unmanned aircraft systems and U.S. airspace that surrounds international waters. In short, “civil aviation” refers to all non-state and non-military aviation, and may be commercial or private.
U.S. Civil Aviation Accidents, 2008 to 2023
The data appear to show that, before the extra “targeted disabilities” initiative embraced by Obama, Trump 1.0 and Biden, the U.S. averaged 1,766 crashes per year, if one counts the years 1998 through 2010. After the initiative was signed in 2010, there was a two-year tick up in crashes – but then the crash rate took and maintained a significant decrease, year after year.
In all, the post-initiative rate provided a lower average of 1,290 crashes per year.
That’s an average drop of 476 crashes per year – eliminating 27% of the crashes the U.S. had previously experienced every year.
That’s a success. When you eliminate more one out of every four crashes per year, you have succeeded. That’s what success looks like, that’s how it behaves – thanks, in part, to our more diverse workforce.
So clearly, diversity doesn’t keep the best from being hired, or place incompetents into position they can’t handle. That’s a description of privilege, not diversity.
For the last 50 years, our ever-improving track record in the skies proves we’ve been hiring talented individuals, or perhaps even the most talented person we could find, for such a demanding job.
When you add previously under-represented group after under-represented group to our federal workforce through the years – including the disabled – and your crash numbers consistently go down, and stay down … you’re doing something right.
That’s why diversity matters. It ensures you hire the best people for the job – and not simply the whitest, most Protestant and best-connected.
But no longer …
There hasn’t enough time for Trump’s rejection on diversity to hit us – not yet. But it is hard to believe that the removal of numerous individuals who had been employed to watch over our air traffic controllers – an act Trump performed shortly after again taking office in January – has in no way effected how all controllers watch the skies …
The procedures are still in place, it’s true. But if police, judges, reporters, etc. are pulled from an area entirely, you might still keep the laws in place … and soon watch everything go under,because there’s no one there to expose mistakes and enforce those laws.
The rules are only as good as your ability to enforce those rules fairly and justly. If no one is there to ensure the procedures are properly followed, you soon discover that you live in a place without rules.
It’s the same here. If you’ve fired the people who watch to make sure those tried-and-true procedures are properly followed by your staff of proven ability – and something goes wrong , as it did on the Potomac – you can’t turn around and blame the staff for your mistake.
And please … these people, who have performed their jobs so well with such proven skill over several years, do not suddenly fail at their jobs after 15 years of faithful service because some of them are disabled … or dark, or female, or Catholic, or gay …
Trump must stop blaming his mistakes on others. Even if the firings prove not to have had any influence on the recent disasters, having no trustworthy oversight of such an important matter as air traffic rules can only turn out badly…
If nothing else, the recent disaster on the Potomac – the worst disaster in the skies that the United States has experienced in decades – should show any person the need for responsible, independent oversight.
Our lives depend on it.
