Tag Archives: politics

A Thought Experiment

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Our so-called “elite” universities are banding together to form a collective to resist the Trump administration’s efforts to withhold grants and contracts from those institutions that aren’t doing enough to combat antisemitic bigotry and support for terrorists, reporting what foreign money they’re receiving and in what amounts, and adequately limiting the numbers of foreign students and faculty to suit the administration.

The collective is centering its resistance on the premise that Government doesn’t get to dictate to them what their practices might be, never minding that all donors get to specify how their donations are used.

What this collective is missing is that colleges and universities have no particular right to government funds, and that government has no particular obligation to send money to colleges and universities.

Hence my thought experiment.

Consider that a large collection of private citizens get together and say to a college or university, “You can’t have any more of our money unless and until you stop doing these things and start doing these other things.”

What legal recourse would that college or university, or any collection of colleges and universities similarly addressed, have against that collection of private citizens? How is their private collective action any different from their collective action through their government? It is, after all, the same money, whether their private money given or withheld directly or their private money washed through government as tax remittances.

Another Blow against the Bigotry of the Civil Rights Act of 1964

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President Donald Trump issued an Executive Order last Wednesday, news of which the press is busily trying to spike. Titled RESTORING EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY AND MERITOCRACY, the EO gets right to the heart of the matter.

Section 1. Purpose. A bedrock principle of the United States is that all citizens are treated equally under the law. This principle guarantees equality of opportunity, not equal outcomes. It promises that people are treated as individuals, not components of a particular race or group. It encourages meritocracy and a colorblind society, not race- or sex-based favoritism. Adherence to this principle is essential to creating opportunity, encouraging achievement, and sustaining the American Dream.
But a pernicious movement endangers this foundational principle, seeking to transform America’s promise of equal opportunity into a divisive pursuit of results preordained by irrelevant immutable characteristics, regardless of individual strengths, effort, or achievement. A key tool of this movement is disparate-impact liability, which holds that a near insurmountable presumption of unlawful discrimination exists where there are any differences in outcomes in certain circumstances among different races, sexes, or similar groups, even if there is no facially discriminatory policy or practice or discriminatory intent involved, and even if everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed. Disparate-impact liability all but requires individuals and businesses to consider race and engage in racial balancing to avoid potentially crippling legal liability. It not only undermines our national values, but also runs contrary to equal protection under the law and, therefore, violates our Constitution.
… As the Supreme Court put it, “[t]he way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”
Disparate-impact liability is wholly inconsistent with the Constitution and threatens the commitment to merit and equality of opportunity that forms the foundation of the American Dream. Under my Administration, citizens will be treated equally before the law and as individuals, not consigned to a certain fate based on their immutable characteristics.
Sec. 2. Policy. It is the policy of the United States to eliminate the use of disparate-impact liability in all contexts to the maximum degree possible to avoid violating the Constitution, Federal civil rights laws, and basic American ideals.

The EO proceeds from there, including removal of the LBJ administration’s approval of regulations implementing “disparate impact” and direction to the Attorney General to begin removal of related regulations implementing—Trump generously calls them pernicious, I say openly racist—Civil Rights Act of 1966 Title VI. Additionally, the EO instructs the EEOC, HUD, CFPB, FTC, and “other agencies” to take actions necessary to end the use of disparate impact in enforcement actions both ongoing and contemplated.

The EO can be read in its entirety here.

Good for Them

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A number of universities are raising cash in large amounts, though not as large as suspended Federal government transfers to them, in their efforts to shield themselves from government pressure to rid themselves of antisemitic bigots and terrorist supporters among their student and professor populations.

Princeton University is issuing $320 million in bonds, while Northwestern secured $500 million and Harvard raised $750 million. Yale University, which has flown under Trump’s radar so far, is trying to sell billions in its private-equity holdings.

I say good for them.

These institutions are under no obligation to accept Federal dollars, and the government is under no obligation to send those dollars to them. So long as the institutions accept Federal dollars, though, the government gets to specify how those dollars get used, just as is the case with any other donor. No Federal dollars, no Federal strings.

Beyond that, though, with all of that money-raising—and the institutions are just getting started on this round—these institutions are demonstrating how little they actually need Federal dollars to carry out the various researches they cry so piteously are at risk from losing those dollars.

Even as these institutions “free” themselves from Federal strings, though, so long as they tolerate—condone, actually—those bigots and terrorist supporters, they are no fit institutions for our children’s post-high school education.

It’s true enough that colleges and universities can be highly useful centers of technology development and of basic research, including in areas critically important for our national security, and Federal dollars can be highly valuable impetus and support for those efforts. There are a plethora of such schools, though, that are not hotbeds of bigotry and support for terrorists; these are the schools who should be getting those dollars.

Americans’ Intellectual Property at Risk

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And that risk stems from President Donald Trump’s (R) alleged trade wars according to Daniel Gervais, a Vanderbilt professor and Director of Vanderbilt’s Intellectual Property Program, who should know better. In his letter to The Wall Street Journal‘s Tuesday Letters section, he wrote

The US is turning its back on the multilateral trading system it helped create after World War II, threatening Americans’ intellectual property…. Embodied by institutions such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), this system has provided stability through clear trade rules and dispute-settlement mechanisms….

And

The most important set of international rules protecting IP rights is the WTO’s Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, or Trips. The agreement obligates member countries to provide IP rights, with limited exceptions, and enforce them at their borders and in national courts.

What Gervais ignored is that it is the PRC that’s been busily blowing up the global trading system ever since its accession to the WTO. Politically, the PRC ignores WTO rulings it doesn’t like, including one regarding its seizure and militarization of South Sea islands that belong to other nations and not the PRC. Specific to that ruling, the PRC is ignoring the Republic of Philippines’ ownership of—not mere responsibility for—the islands in its EEC.

Regarding intellectual property, Gervais also ignored the PRC’s assault on other nations’—particularly the US’—intellectual property and proprietary technologies. The PRC has long had (for all that the current regime recently has begun paying lip service to limiting) requirements that foreign companies partner with PRC-domiciled companies and agree to intellectual property and proprietary technology transfers that comport with PRC-mandated requirements at zero compensation beyond the privilege of doing business. These requirements go far beyond the WTO’s minimalist transfers with compensation for the transferring company.

Gervais also ignored the PRC’s long standing and extremely extensive intellectual property and technology thefts through corporate espionage.

It’s not the current administration that’s turning its back on the multilateral trading system and the WTO, it’s the PRC with its long-extant studied efforts to destroy them.

A Sort of Start on a Student Loan Fix

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Department of Education Secretary Linda McMahon has proposed a series of steps to correct our nation’s student loan miasma.

• mov[e] roughly 1.8 million borrowers into repayment plans and restart collections of loans in default
• in some cases wages would be automatically garnished
• push colleges to be responsible and transparent

That last is especially curious. McMahon does not say how she defines “responsible and transparent,” nor does she say what constitutes her “push,” how hard she will push, or what consequences—concrete, measurable, and publicly accessible—she will apply for noncompliance, or how promptly.

These steps need to be taken, but by themselves they can be only stopgap, and they are wholly inadequate. What’s really necessary is to get the Federal government completely out of the student loan business: no Federal student loan guarantees, no Federal student loan-supporting programs whatsoever.

Because money is fungible, that must include drastically curtailing the range of student grants and scholarships originating from Federal programs. The same reasoning for getting rid of DoEd altogether applies to any sort of Federal involvement in education.

McMahon can do these things from within DoED while she’s setting the stage for Congress’ elimination of the Department (note: not merely defunding the department; eliminate it altogether). However, for the complete solution, Congress needs to act:

• statutorily require colleges and universities to publish the average, median, and range of income at the five years employment mark for their graduates in each of the major fields offered
• statutorily require student loans to be originated by private lenders or colleges and universities
• statutorily require colleges and universities to guarantee at least 50% of each loan granted their students
• statutorily allow current and future student loans to be discharged in “ordinary” bankruptcy proceedings

Only when private lenders and colleges and universities are the only ones with skin in this student loan game will those loans and their borrowers be carefully screened for repayment risk. That will prove optimal for the student borrowers and for us taxpayers.