Woke watch: ‘Social Justice’ Hijacks Therapy
After a “graduate student at Antioch University” criticized the school’s “radical approach to training therapists,” notes Ethan Blevins at The Hill, Antioch “issued a public statement blasting” the student “as a transphobic white supremacist” and “reportedly created a ‘crisis team’ ” to deal with “trauma” she “allegedly caused.” Like many other grad programs, the school teaches would-be therapists “to bury the individual” beneath “group identities” and requires signing “a ‘civility pledge,’ in which they acknowledge their ‘privileged and marginalized identities.’ ” “It is remarkable that any university has arrived at a place where it considers one dissenting viewpoint to be a ‘crisis’ ” and “it’s past time that colleges once again see dissent as a key to intellectual development.”
Economy beat: Supply Chain Still at Risk
What caused the “severe backup” of container ships last year that ignited the “worst” supply-chain delays ever — and “what can be done to prevent a recurrence?” asks Peter Tirschwell at The Wall Street Journal. At one point, “a record 109 containers were stalled outside the U.S.’s largest port complex in Southern California,” fueling inflation. Government stimulus checks “bolstered” spending, leading to higher shipping volumes, but containers failed to move “fast enough through U.S. ports.” To improve flow, ports should be used 24/7, and containers must be moved out of ports faster. “Automated container handling is also essential,” though the “labor unions are fiercely opposed.” Yet it’s “an economic priority.” COVID exposed US supply-chain weaknesses; “without correction, the system remains vulnerable.”
Liberal: Biden’s ‘Industrial Policy’ Woes
The United States has always had some “industrial policy,” argues The Liberal Patriot’s Ruy Teixeira, starting with “the Hamiltonian ‘American System,’ ” which aimed “to nurture American manufacturing both by building internal markets and protecting the sector from external competition.” But Team Biden’s effort to set a new policy “is a bit of a dog’s breakfast of different ideas and priorities. And so it has come across to most Americans. Voters certainly got the idea that the Democrats wanted to spend a gazillion dollars on dozens of programs,” yet “the purpose of this spending . . . has not been so clear.” Fact is, the “Green New Deal” theory that pretends “clean energy by itself can power a national economic transition and dramatically increase the availability of good jobs” is “a fantasy.” Needed is a strategy that can “work substantively” and “generate broad support from American workers.”
Libertarian: Foreign Bands, Stay Away?
“From the Beatles to the Sex Pistols,” Americans have seized “the chance to see foreign performing acts on U.S. soil.” But now the Department of Homeland Security “is proposing to make it much harder for Americans to experience performers from beyond our border,” laments Reason’s Brian Doherty. It wants to hike the entry fee for “what is known as a ‘P visa,’ for temporary stays in the U.S. to perform, from $460 to $1,615” and boost the “ ‘O visa’ for longer-term working stays from $460 to $1,655.” The alleged reason, in part: “to help spread the costs of asylum applications across the entire body of people seeking entrance to the U.S. for whatever reason.” Expect “many mid- and lower-level performing acts” to wonder if touring here “is still a viable business at prices audiences seem prepared to pay.”
Conservative: Ask the Prez About Gas Stoves
It turns out draft Energy Department “efficiency standards” would rule out nearly all gas stoves now on the market, “but it’s something the White House doesn’t want to talk about, and isn’t willing to talk about,” snarks National Review’s Jim Geraghty. “It is likely that Biden himself doesn’t think gas stoves are harmful, to the extent he thinks about gas stoves at all,” and “might well insist his administration isn’t taking any actions to phase out the use of gas stoves. It’s fair to wonder how many details he hears and remembers about what’s going on in his own administration.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board