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Academy's mission is to fill workforce gap

National Columnists

Mike Rowe has been on a lonely mission. For two decades, he has been raising the alarm. Rowe has been warning anyone who would listen that our skills gap in the trades was widening to a chasm so large that the economic effect on U.S. manufacturing companies, in particular auto and steel industries but also defense, construction and energy sectors, was going to be nothing short of catastrophic. Few listened. Rowe appeared before Congress. Twice. He sent an open letter to then-President Barack Obama. Crickets. Nonetheless, Rowe persisted. His alarm bells were not hyperbole. In ...

Pattern of American socialism older than DSA

National Columnists

The face of American socialism is increasingly young, college-credentialed, and conspicuously well-bred. This is not coincidence. It is structure. The pattern is older than the Democratic Socialists of America. Engels co-authored the Communist Manifesto while running his father's textile mill. Marx married into Prussian nobility and lived on Engels's industrial fortune. Lenin's father held hereditary status under the tsar. Castro was the son of one of Cuba's largest landowners. What socialism reliably produces is not equality but a closed caste. The Soviet nomenklatura had ...

What lurks outside the frame

National Columnists

I consumed a lot of horror movies during my teen years. For a couple of my friends, my room became the hub where we watched the standard fare of slashers, munched on overly processed snacks, and critiqued the characters' decisions as they ran for their lives. We, of course, would make ...

Teen's case should be considered on its merits

National Columnists

The system failed Karmelo Anthony – he stabbed someone to death and is going to jail for it. If this doesn't strike you as an injustice, you haven't been paying attention to the voices defending the 19-year-old who was just sentenced to 35 years in prison for murdering another teenager at a high school track meet in Texas two years ago. The case has garnered national attention entirely for its racial angle. Anthony is Black, and his victim, Austin Metcalf, was white. But there is no evidence that race played a role in the incident, and if both young men had been white or both ...

Platner wants redemption, others want refund

National Columnists

Democrat Rep. Ro Khanna conceded at a rally for the Maine senatorial candidate that Graham Platner's actions have not been sterling. Voters considering Platner don't like his "shameful" actions against women, the Californian said, but "they are willing to extend him grace and redemption." Maine Democrats have just chosen Platner to challenge five-term Republican Susan Collins in November. Maine is a purple state, and Collins is a moderate by current Republican standards. But here's the problem for Platner: Redemption is a theme in religion whereby someone who has committed ...

How to change Supreme Court in one easy step

National Columnists

In 2016, the conservative writer Mike Anton made a galvanizing case for Donald Trump in his famous "Flight 93" essay, arguing that the stakes in the contest between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton were existential. His contention that a Clinton win would cement Democratic electoral dominance forever, such that Republicans needed to charge the cockpit or die, was implausible at the time, and seems more so in retrospect. If Hillary had won in 2016, in all likelihood, she would have been gone in 2020, washed away by the pandemic just like Trump was. This time, though, really might be ...