A few years ago, a young lady knocked on my door in Hawaii. She happened to be a volunteer from the Census Bureau, and I spent about 30 minutes answering Census Bureau questions. Unlike most of the other door to door surveys that I promptly ignore, I actually wanted my voice heard by the Census Bureau. About halfway through the survey, I was asked by the surveyor “Do you approve of smoking in the home?”

Me: “Uhm, in my home or other people’s homes?”
Surveyor: “The question doesn’t specify.”
Me: “Well, that’s kind of important. I don’t smoke, and I don’t let people smoke in my home, but I really don’t care if they smoke in their homes.”
Surveyor: “The question only has a Yes or No answers.”
Me: “Then my answer is Yes, I’m OK with smoking in the home.”

Not surprisingly, the overall results showed something like 85% of people disapproved of smoking in the home, which was then used as proof that we should conduct more smoking cessation programs.

I’m willing to bet that more than a few people felt the same way I did but chose “No.” When you design a survey question without allowing for nuance or more than a binary answer, you skew the results. That’s not good from a simple truth perspective, but its really not good if you intend to base financial and policy decisions on the results. With that in mind, flash forward a few years and I receive an email asking me to take the Health of the Force survey for the Navy. I wrote about this survey before and how it showed that the Navy is VERY unhealthy in so many ways, so I was hopeful the survey would dig further to identify the areas where the Navy can improve.

Yeah….not so much. I took screen shots as I completed the survey so you can see just how bad it was.

Let’s start with the question “What factors are or would most likely influence you to get out of the Navy?” That’s a legitimately good question, and you get to select your top five options. Maybe the Navy should put something in the survey about readiness and shipyard issues, given the massive amount of news coverage on ship schedules slipping and Sailors committing suicide in Newport News. Or what about wokeness? Or the COVID “vaccine”? Maybe people are particularly incensed about it, or maybe they aren’t, so listing it as a choice would help shed some light on it.

Nope. All the answers are super generic responses that don’t ask any hard questions. They have responses for “Leadership at current command,” but nothing about shipyards, logistics, medical, or other support services that Sailors constantly complain about.

The best option I had was “Senior Navy leaders.” I selected that, and I expounded in the comments, but again, super generic, and not going to result in anything actionable.

Another set of questions asked about Command leadership, still focused on the local command. They did bring in enlisted leaders, which is good, because in the past they often only focused on the Command Triad (the Commanding Officer, Executive Officer and Command Master Chief). But there are no support questions. Plenty of Sailors are frustrated with Navy’s Mandatory Crappy Internet (NMCI), or the lack of investment in our shore facilities, but neither of those issues are the command’s fault. Those decisions are made by top brass, who are never held accountable for how miserable they make Sailors.

What about “How I feel in the Navy” questions? Again, touchy-feely stuff, but nothing that gets at the hard issues we have going on.

And then the DIE questions. That’s like a full 30% of the survey, but I’ll spare you the agony of reading the questions. All of these ask about sexual harrasment and racism and such, which are important…but aren’t the reasons Sailors commit suicide in their baracks room.

This survey was frustrating. I wrote paragraphs in the free-form section, which I am sure will be promptly ignored by the non-warfighter HR officer bent on using the survey to justify more white supremacy training in the fleet. This survey will provide no useful results and will continue to ignore the actual problems in the fleet. It will be used by the Department of the Navy to justify more money in DIE and other stupid programs when we need more efforts towards fixing ships and training our Sailors to be ready for combat. As a taxpayer, you should be angry over this survey and demand better from your elected representatives.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.

During the Virginia election, I had the pleasure of attending a veteran’s event where then-candidates Glenn Youngkin, Jason Miyares and Winsome Sears spoke. Youngkin was the typical, polished politician that one would expect, and his speech was as expected. Miyares, who I didn’t know a lot about, surprised me a bit by talking about his background, how his mom fled from Cuba to ensure a better life for her family. But by far the best speaker was Winsome Sears, a former Marine Corporal whose background and accomplishments would make a better story than 99% of the documentaries on Netflix.

Don’t take my word for it though…

Her speech at the veteran’s event got her a standing ovation, tons of laughs and the loudest applause out of the bunch. Since then, she hasn’t stopped, and she’s right on all the issues that matter.

She opposes CRT, but wants better education to lift more people up:

She has a moderate view on abortion. While it would be better to oppose abortion completely, I’ll take this over the euthanasia being allowed now:

The one view I think is very important is on prisons. The local TV station interviewed her after the campaign visiting a prison. The reporter asked why she was here, and she responded that prisoners “…are still my constituents, and I represent them as well as other Virginians.” This is a huge, underappreciated position that most Republicans are missing. Yes, its important to jail criminals, but what happens after they serve their sentence? If they have no way of righting wrongs and re-integrating with society, then they will simply return to a life of crime.

(I wish I could find this video, although I’m guessing Google black-holed it somewhere)

We saw this in Iraq after the invasion. Paul Bremer lead the effort to disband the Iraqi military and basically made it impossible to hire former Iraqi military members for any projects. All around Iraq, millions of dollars in investments were going to anyone, even foreigners, but not to any former Baath party members, even if the majority of them had joined simply because they had to and were happy to disavow any allegiance to Saddam Hussein. Not surprisingly, when different extremist groups came around and offered these former fighters pay so that they could feed their families, they signed up in droves, and we essentially created the next generation of terrorists.

After the most recent shooting in Richmond, Sears called for prosecuting criminals and actively going after gang activity, rather than grabbing guns.

(YouTube won’t let me embed the video, you’ll have to follow the link).

So yeah, Winsome Sears is my President. Maybe she can be the running mate for whomever wins the Republican nomination?

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.

While Glenn Youngkin was running for governor, there were more than a few skeptics that said he was going to be super-squishy on a lot of issues. That was not an unfair criticism, given how poorly so many Republican politicians turned out to be on issues of real importance. Thankfully, Youngkin has turned out to be pretty darn good.

Yesterday his efforts finally hit the news when he removed the bachelor degree requirements for nearly 90 percent of state jobs. That’s a big deal. Bloated job requirements are a nuisance and make it difficult to hire and fill positions. Most of these positions are better served by someone with a credential instead of a degree. It’s also important to note that our higher education system tends to lean Democrat, so this should make it easier for Republicans that chose to not subject themselves to 4 years of Democrat indoctrination to obtain meaningful employment.

Sadly, more than a few trolls at Instapundit are simply saying this will make it easier to insert particular demographics into government. I seriously doubt it. Combined with his assault on DIE institutions and rules, this should open up jobs to constituents everywhere, and this move in particular was viewed favorably by a few Democrat lawmakers.

It doesn’t end there though, because Youngkin is addressing hundreds of individual issues. He passed legislation making it easier to adopt children. If you recall, that’s an area where losers in the system make it hard for good couples to adopt by making them jump through hoops that normal parents would never be subjected to. It’s a real issue I’ve discussed before, so its nice to see the governor care enough to work to fix it.

On top of that, Youngkin has signed good budgets, mental health initiatives, and credentialing plans to make it easier for people to transfer credentials into the state without additional testing. These don’t tend to make the news, but for the average Virginian, they are issues that affect them every day, so they make a difference.

I’m glad he’s doing this. We’ve had a fair share of Republicans that run on big issues like abortion and Second Amendment, but then ignore the normal day-to-day issues that aren’t big news. While its great to say you “fought the woke mob,” at the end of the day, I also want my day-to-day issues to get better. Passing sound budgets and making Virginia a state desirable to live and work in affects my family directly. Hopefully with more success we’ll have other Republicans wake up and take similar efforts in their states.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.

Boycotts are a weird thing. Companies make hundreds of decisions, and large companies have hundreds if not thousands of employees that make decisions all the time. Every decision risks alienating or otherwise pissing off one group or another. For example, I went to a local restaurant with my two youngest kids once on a quiet Saturday morning, and after sitting for 25 minutes with no waiter taking our order or even bringing us water or coffee, I left in frustration and vowed never to return. I took my business to a competitor and for the next year went out of my way to not have a meal at the offending restaurant. Could it have just been a bad day, a mistake by a server, or even a disgruntled employee that was later fired anyway? Don’t know, and don’t care, because it spoiled my morning and I was determined to economically ensure my wrath was felt in the restaurants pocket book.

If that restaurant repeatedly treated customers like this, over time more and more would lose patience and go elsewhere. This is really important with restaurants because normally there are hundreds of venues in even a small city. When you have a myriad of choices, you don’t have to tolerate bad service.

Which brings me neatly to Bud Light and Target.

Remember Gillette? I used Gillette razors in the past and even introduced my wife to their female brand. Gillette could have remained the razor company for everyone, but it dipped its toe into the “toxic masculinity” bandwagon. Big mistake, because when you have options, you can go elsewhere. As analyzed here, it took a hit, potentially on the order of $350 million. I personally subscribed to Jeremy’s Razors and never looked back, and I suspect others did too.

Bud Light has always been the cheap beer choice of party goers everywhere. Need a non-offensive beer that is sure to please the limited palates of both college sororities and aging Boomer men at the local bar? Then order a Bud Light, because you can’t go wrong. That is, until you decide to insult a large portion of your customer base when they can easily pick another beer brand.

Budweiser is suffering the same fate as Gillette. What happens when its customers discover there are plenty of non-patronizing beer brands happy to serve you a fine brew without all the woke silliness? Once they get hooked, do you think those people are coming back, no matter what sort of American flag/military colors/Clydesdale commercials you run after? Not happening. That might have worked before the microbrewery revolution, but that strategy is no longer viable.

Target seems to have joined that group. You can get away with a lot when you’re quiet about it. Target had a small boycott scare once with its bathroom policy. Honestly, had it simply changed its policy on its website and stayed relatively quiet, I’m betting most people wouldn’t have cared much. But its latest pride month clothing line, conveniently right before the rush to buy summer clothes, was too big to ignore. The first day of the boycott was interesting, but when your stock plunges to the lowest price this year during a time its supposed to be high…that’s bad news.

It seems conservative customers are finally waking up to the notion they have real choices. It’s not hard to find clothing stores without rainbows in June, beer that actually tastes good, or razors that don’t lecture you while you shave. Perhaps the next big test will be in June. What if conservative voters choose to not eat or purchase items from places displaying a Pride flag? A month is a small amount of time to boycott, but its long enough for a company to see damaging results, and enough damage will make even a die-hard executive scale things back.

You don’t have to protest, post on Twitter or even tell your friends, because the simple act of no longer spending your money in these places tells the foolish executives is always going ring much louder than any letter or social media post.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency. Speaking of making choices, why not buy the author’s book and donate to DaTechGuy?

The day that Jordan Neely, my Google News search gave me a million articles about how crazy it is that a white man can literally kill a black man in cold blood and get away with it. Applying my normal rule of “Wait 72 hours till the truth comes out,” and low and behold, we get some facts:

• Daniel Penny gets charged, but not the black or Hispanic men that helped him
• Multiple eyewitnesses say Penny didn’t do anything until Neely threatened to kill people
• The news media plays lots of clips of Jordan Neely doing Michael Jackson impressions
• As always we get protests and people comparing Neely to George Floyd

If you want a good summary, watch the Actual Justice Warrior break it all down:

Likely Penny’s only crime was being white and making the mistake of thinking he should stop Jordan Neely from potentially killing someone. Anyone who has sat through a self-defense class knows that the first rule of self-defense is to get yourself out of the situation if you can, because things can go south quickly. It can take seconds to go from begging for food to stabbing someone to death, and given you can’t exit the subway, that would frighten any normal person.

Anymore though, I say abandon the cities that want to live like this.

Why bother defending others in these situations? I bet plenty of the people riding the subway voted for the current NYC mayor. Sure, they might testify on behalf of Penny, but I doubt it, since NYC has a track record of intimidating witnesses to make a case work. Penny defended a bunch of people that actively voted against his own interests, and those people will try to send him to jail. Sadly, that makes him more of a sucker. Anyone that is living in NYC and not either working to actively change it or leaving is a sucker, because if the local government has become this tyrannical, you can’t put your head in the sand anymore.

This is why Virginians fought hard on the school board front. Many of us were happy to let the school board run without much oversight, until we realized just how bad it was. So we pushed back, hard, and its changing for the better. Most of the time, local government does a good enough job that its just not worth the time and effort to root out the corruption that exists. When it gets to the point where the government will happily throw you in jail in a sham trial, then you either fight to change it or leave.

Daniel Penny should have never been on the subway, but since he was, he should have simply let Jordan Neely stab or injure someone first, since his first thoughts should have been “I’m a white guy trying to stop a black man, how is NYC going to view that?”

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.

What if the best people in the military start asking “Who is John Galt?

Anyone who has read Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged,” or like me used the audiobook because its too damn long to read on paper, knows what I’m talking about.

Spoilers ahead for those that haven’t read it.

The book is set in a future world, where American industry is slowly crumbling. Trains are a preferred method of transportation, but its becoming harder and harder to run the trains on time because of a crushing bureaucracy in government that is making it more painful for businesses to operate. Eventually one of the characters, John Galt, decides to destroy the bureaucracy by removing all the smart people from the system in what he calls a strike. He approaches the engineers, business owners and other hard workers and offers them a chance to leave to a hidden place where their efforts are appreciated instead of demonized. This causes the United States to delve into dictatorship, and eventually collapses, with John leading the strikers to now rejoin the world.

It was a hit book. The first movie was good (although it wasn’t well received, go figure!), but movies 2 and 3 kinda sucked. The book teases out the interesting point that a small number of people tend to make the biggest impact on industry, and if they quit, the systems they run tend to collapse.

I’ve seen this hold true in the Navy. I’ve watched some leaders take difficult commands and turn them around, only to watch another lesser leader destroy the well-functioning command right after. It’s incredibly infuriating to spend two years building a team of people, only to watch a new person come in and squander your efforts.

When I think about military recruiting, I’m not as worried about the young people coming in. Every young generation gets looked down upon by the older ones. Every older generation thinks they were so much better at that age. Young people tend to do OK long term.

But what happens if the talented people decide the military isn’t worth joining? What happens if the budding young Nimitz, Marshall, or Billy Mitchell decides to leave, or never join in the first place? What happens if after they join and are greeted with an oppressive bureaucracy of our own making, they vote with their feet?

What happens if John Galt gets to them first?

Our military relies on a perilous few smart people to drive the strategic thinking of the organization. Not everyone is going to be a Nimitz. That’s fine if and only if we actually HAVE the Nimitz in our midst. But if the Nimitz decided he or she had enough beratement by lesser individuals, then we’re going to be left with more Richmond Turners, who might win in the short term through brute force, but lack the operational and tactical genius to win our long term conflicts.

Military recruitment scares me, but the ongoing brain drain as people ask “Who is John Galt” gives me nightmares.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency. If you enjoyed this article, drop some coin in DaTechGuy’s wallet!