Pete's Prep: Friday, April 20, 2018

The hero pilot of Southwest 1380

I expect Capt. Tammie Jo Shults will become a household name, just like Capt. Sully.

Capt. Shults is the pilot who landed Southwest Flight 1380, after part of the engine broke off, smashed a window open - causing the cabin to depressurize and a woman to be partially sucked out of the opening.

Jennifer Riordan, 43, of Albuquerque, New Mexico, died of the traumatic injuries, despite efforts by fellow passengers to save her. She was a mother of two and an executive with Wells Fargo.

But many say the toll on Dallas-bound Flight 1380, which had 149 people aboard, would have been much higher had it not been for Shults' quick thinking during her emergency landing in Philadelphia.

"Most of us, when that engine blew, I think we were pretty much going, 'Well, this just might be it,' " said passenger Peggy Phillips, a retired nurse from Brandon, Texas.

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Shults, 56, is a 1983 graduate of MidAmerica Nazarene University in Olathe, Kansas, receiving her degree in biology and agribusiness, said Carol Best, a spokeswoman for the university.

Shults then became one of the first female fighter pilots in the U.S. military, according to the alumni group at her alma mater. The Navy confirmed that she was among the first female pilots to make the transition to tactical aircraft after completing flight training in Pensacola, Florida.

And despite the praise and attention she and her crew are now receiving, they say they are heartbroken for the family of Jennifer Riordan.

Wells Fargo stands against teachers union blackmail

In case you needed further proof that the American Federation of Teachers is a wing of the Democratic Party, the teachers union tried to force Wells Fargo to attack firearms businesses, by refusing to lend them money or imposing new restrictions on them.

Bank of America already caved to similar demands by the anti-Second Amendment activists.

But Wells Fargo essentially told the union that the way to reduce mass shootings is not through economic warfare.

Wells Fargo CEO Tim Sloan told AFT President Randi Weingarten in an April 3 letter obtained by USA TODAY that the best route to combating gun violence "is through the political and legislative process." Although Sloan suggested a meeting or conference call to discuss the matter, the sides never got together.

<snip>

The AFT's dropping of Wells Fargo represents a financial blow to the nation's third-largest bank by assets. Wells Fargo's mortgage program had been featured in the Union Privilege program on the AFT website, and roughly 1,600 member families received mortgages from the bank in 2017. In all, more than 20,000 AFT members hold Wells Fargo mortgages.

Just as we saw in North Carolina during the HB2 bathroom battle, the Left is becoming more comfortable with using economic warfare in the culture war.

I appreciate (finally!) one large business standing up and saying, "No."

Generation X is awesome & needs more power

Just to be clear... I have zero bias in this assessment from CNBC even though I am a member of GenX.

As Pew Research unflatteringly referred to them in a 2014 report, Gen X is "America's neglected 'middle child,'" and we don't hear much about the group. It seems that all eyes are on the slowly retiring baby boomers or the ascending millennials, now the world's majority generation. But our recent study revealed that Gen X is playing a critical — and underappreciated — role in leadership as organizations grapple with digital transformation.

In our Global Leadership Forecast 2018 — published by DDI, The Conference Board and EY with support from CNBC — we took a look at more than 25,000 leaders spanning 54 countries and 26 major industry sectors. We found that Gen X now accounts for 51 percent of leadership roles globally. With an average of 20 years of workplace experience, they are primed to quickly assume nearly all top executive roles.

Our research revealed that, although they aren't typically considered digital natives to the extent that millennials are, Gen X leaders are justas likely to be comfortable leveraging technology in the workplace: Some 54 percent of Gen X and 56 percent of millennials reported that they are digitally savvy.

Also, we GenXers have mastered the conventional leaderships skills, too.

We are the best of both generations! And, as such, Baby Boomers and Millenials should sit back and let us do our thing for a while.

As I said - I am completely unbiased here.

(Thanks to Darrel for sending this story to me!)

One of the least surprising studies ever

From Psy Post:

People who know less about politics are more confident about their political knowledge, according to research published in the scientific journal Political Psychology. The new study found that this effect was exacerbated when partisan identities were activated.

This is the Dunning-Kruger effect - which found that people who scored better on tests think they do poorly, and people who score poorly think they do well. People who know enough about the material to score well are aware they don't know all the answer. Whereas, people who don't know the material don't know enough to realize they did poorly.

A researcher set up an online survey to test peoples' political knowledge and determine if the Dunning-Kruger effect can be seen.

It can.

Most of the participants performed poorly on the political quiz — and those who performed worse were more likely to overestimate their performance.

“Partisans with modest factual knowledge about politics become even more convinced that they are savvier than average when they reflect on a world full of members of the opposite party. In fact, when I asked partisans to ‘grade’ political knowledge quizzes filled out by fictional members of the other party, low-skilled respondents gave out scores that reflected party biases much more than actual knowledge.”

Of course, a brief visit to Facebook could've found the same results far more quickly.

(Thanks to John for sending this story to me!)