Tag Archives: politics

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.

What Cold War?

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The press continues to pretend obliviousness to what’s been going on between the People’s Republic of China and the United States for many years. The headline and second sentence of a recent Wall Street Journal article lays out the sham ignorance quite clearly.

Breakdown in US-China Relations Raises Specter of New Cold War
…
Today, with economic relations between the two careening off the rails, China and the US are headed toward what could be a Cold War….

The fact is the PRC has been inflicting a cold war on us for 15 or more years, and we’re only just starting to respond to it. For instance,

• The PRC has coerced intellectual property and proprietary technology transfers to PRC businesses and companies as a condition of doing business with them or within the PRC
• The PRC has coerced partnering with PRC-domiciled companies as condition of doing business inside the PRC to facilitate those transfers
• The PRC has demanded placement of party apparatchiks into company management
• The PRC has demanded backdoors be installed into company operating software to allow PRC officials—those apparatchiks or others—to monitor company behavior and to copy data of interest
• outright theft of intellectual property and proprietary technology
• cyber espionage, data theft, sabotage of data, entry into cyber, energy, water network nodes, demonstrations against several of those nodes

Some of those actions the PRC claims to have discontinued or never implemented, but we have only the word of PRC government officials on that, or the word of company managers desperate to have access to the PRC domestic market.

It isn’t credible that the august publishers and news writers and commentators really haven’t recognized this, even as they cite examples from the long standing cold war. The news writer at the above link mentioned a couple in passing:

• data, call logs, and other information it [PRC] gathered from years of intrusions into computer networks at US ports, water utilities, airports, and other targets
• PRC acknowledgment of a series of cyber assaults on US infrastructure

The question, then, is why these members of the press have insisted on turning a blind eye toward this cold war of some duration, “worrying” about it only since President Donald Trump (R) has begun fighting back.

Something is Missing

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James Mackintosh had a piece in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal concerning President Donald Trump’s moves to reduce our nation’s trade deficit, particularly our deficit in the goods trade. In his piece, he delineated what he believes must happen in order for the deficit to come down the way Trump wants it to.

Trump’s obsession is the goods deficit—and there are two ways it can come down.
The first is that the overall goods-and-services deficit remains unchanged, but services—about which Trump doesn’t seem to care and in which the US runs a surplus—are sacrificed for manufacturing. … This, though, would need shifts in domestic tax and regulation.
The second way for the goods deficit to shrink is to reduce the overall trade deficit. That will mean less foreign money coming in (remember, the balance has to balance). Combine that with more investment in manufacturing—because imported goods are made less competitive by tariffs—and it will mean America has to provide more of the savings to finance new assembly plants, clean rooms, and sweatshops.

Stipulate Mackintosh is correct. That’s from a purely fiscal perspective, though. Regarding his first way, Trump and the Republicans in Congress are working in that direction, albeit for broader reasons than just changing the trade emphasis on services.

It’s the second way that matters here, and related to that is this: Mackintosh claims to not understand—that no one can understand—Trump’s policy. I claim that there’s more to our national weal than just the fiscal.

It’s a Critical Item that we revive our manufacturing base, including sourcing its critical inputs from ore to components for finished goods to finished goods—not just build more assembly plants. That manufacturing base, too, must include making large goods like automobiles and weapons systems, it must include small-to-tiny goods like medicines, and it must include cheap energy sources to power all the factories we need in our new economy and to fuel those automobiles and weapons systems. Those autos can be powered, sort of, with batteries, but the weapons systems and factories—and the electricity needed to recharge those batteries—need cheap, reliable oil for the weapons systems, and cheap, reliable, always on oil, natural gas, nuclear power, and coal for the power generating systems.

See pre-WWII Japan and WWII Germany for the outcome of depending on other nations, enemy or not, for those Critical Items. That’s what’s missing in Mackintosh’s lack of understanding.

Paying higher prices for restarting and maintaining at least a core manufacturing base that can surge production and expansion in a crisis generated by an enemy nation, which we likely will, is simply part of the price of maintaining a defense establishment capable of answering that crisis on terms favorable to us. It’s the other side of the coin used to pay directly for the development and acquisition of those weapons systems.

It’s just barely possible that this is Trump’s policy goal.