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Comment by imgabe | Hacker News Reader

It sounds like the deia department was ineffective, but for some reason it’s bad that the ineffective department is going away. What were we paying these people for if they couldn’t do a simple thing like get screen reader software?

This is why people want to get rid of DEI. Aside from all their obnoxious rhetoric, they don’t even accomplish the thing they say they’re supposed to do.

I know people will claim that now nobody will buy any screen reader software, but it doesn’t sound like anyone was doing that before either.

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Nothing in the post indicates that he obtained his software through some kind of "DEIA" department and that's a serious misunderstanding of the efforts being made by the current administration in the gov't right now. They are not just closing "DEIA" "departments."

I didn’t say he obtained it through the DEIA department. Obviously, it went through the normal procurement process. What I’m saying is if the DEIA department was supposed to be advocating for him and helping with the process they were clearly useless in that regard.

There is no DEIA department

More and more it’s hard to find people on HN that don’t tightly cling to party lines.

The numbers I’ve seen some of these departments get paid is mind boggling. It’s possible to both value these principles and yet be in disgust at what a grift so much of it has become.

I was raised Republican in a very conservative area. I attended church and went to a christian school from K-12. There's a lot of traditional conservative values that I agree with. The Republican Party currently embodies none of those principals. Frankly, I'd be voting D just out of the lesser of two evils, and it's not even a long shot.

I yearn for a proper Conservative Party to bring some sanity back to the world. I wish that the Christian right would actually follow the teaching of Jesus that they claim.

I don't agree with a lot of what the Democrats do, but they generally do what they do out of a place of good and Republicans are working out of a place of hate. And that matters. Tearing it all down and hurting people just isn't something I feel that I can support, no matter what other things they do that I might agree with or might help me.

Thanks for sharing your experience. It's quite a bit different from my own experience, though. Only a few short months ago, I was under constant attack from various public members of the Democratic party for being a white male with center-right views. The vitriol was quite unhinged, really.

From my perspective, both sides engage in it just as much as the other, and it's getting worse because people are choosing to respond in kind rather than take the higher ground. I voted for neither party in the last cycle, and it's likely to stay that way for me unless things dramatically change.

I hear you. The extremes on both sides are awful. I try to ignore them when I make a decision on who to vote for. I try to look at the actual impact the policies and agendas have.

That said, ignoring the loudest voices in the room, especially when they're pointed at you is very hard to do.

> I was under constant attack from various public members of the Democratic party for being a white male with center-right views.

Could you give an actual example? This isn't some kind of gotcha, I'm genuinely curious. As a non-American the Democratic Party seem pathologically obsessed with reaching across the aisle to the moderate right winger.

Well, I suppose we can start with the fact that anyone voting on the opposite ticket was routinely accused of ending democracy. Just look up various reactions to Scott Jennings on CNN for an example.

Honestly, though, I'm more curious about the examples that led you to believe they reach across the aisle. Neither party does, both are firmly encamped, and both routinely resort to verbal attacks based on party affiliation.

lol.

Have you ever dealt with government procurement?

His problem wasn't that he wanted something to help him with his disability, his problem was that he wanted something as part of a government job.

Getting rid of DEI won't change the way government procurement works.

It will. For example, a 2023 executive order (https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/02/22/2023-03..., sec. 7) established a procurement quota for minority-owned small businesses, and required all agencies to work with the SBA to optimize their procurement processes around this.

I'm not claiming this is the only problem with government contracting, but it's an example of exactly the kind of policy which leads to the source article's complaint. The author may have identified a vendor with a cheaper and better product, but if they let everyone go around making such decisions how would they know whether they're hitting the quota?

It very well might.

‘Veteran owned’, ‘Black owned’, ‘Women owned’, or the real meal ticket - ‘Black Women Veteran owned’ is a huge thing in gov’t procurement. To the point where if you aren’t those things, you’d better be a major (near monopoly) provider and have your own congressman or two ensuring you’ll get bids.

If they remove the affirmative action requirement in contractors, it’s going to be a bloodbath.

Not so much from an actual ‘which company does what’, but rather in all the various borderline (or actual) fraudulent corporate structures that have been setup to game the system.

This has been going on (and well understood) for at least 30 years that I personally know about.

Their argument is that, because the DEIA department is apparently ineffective, nothing is better than something.

It literally is. Something costs resources. If it’s not accomplishing anything, then get rid of it.

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