Josh Hawley

Sen. Josh Hawley Explains How to Take on China and Save America

On May 20, speaking from the Senate floor, Josh Hawley, the youngest member of the chamber, laid out his plan for fixing international trade, taking on the People’s Republic of China, and thereby, too, saving America. In so doing, Hawley, populist firebrand that he is, showed that he was willing to overturn the stale orthodoxies that have mildewed our economy and undermined our security. In his speech, Hawley laid out the core problem: The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has taken advantage of the flaws built into the current international economic system, embodied in the World Trade Organization (WTO), that agglomeration of unelected globalcrats. As Hawley put it, “We must recognize that the economic system designed by Western policy makers at the end of the Cold War does not serve our purposes in this new era.” He added, “And we should admit that multiple of its founding premises were in error.” Those founding premises, Hawley continued, trace back to the save-the-world utopianism of our 28th president, Woodrow Wilson. Having entered World War One in 1917, Wilson had some strange ideas; for one thing, it would be “a war to end all war,” and, he added, we must strive for “peace without victory.” Yes, such concepts might seem a bit, well, unrealistic; you know, like the musings of an ivory-tower professor. In fact, Wilson had been a professor and subsequently, in fact, he held presidency of Princeton University before winning the White House. So maybe now we can see the origins of his vaulting but vacuous phrasemaking. Indeed, without a doubt, Wilson was a great talker; he wove webs of words and theories that have bewitched many politicians since, inspiring them to be wannabe Wilsonians. For instance, there was George W. Bush, who said he heard “a calling from beyond the stars,” summoning America to wars of choice, aimed at “ending tyranny in our world.” Well, we know how that worked out. As Hawley said, “During the past two decades, as we fought war after war in the Middle East, the Chinese government systematically built its military on the backs of our middle class.” Exactly. While we were liberating Fallujah for the third or fourth time, the Chinese were hollowing out our economy. Of course, Bush wasn’t our only warlike president in the past two decades; we also had Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, both of whom launched foreign interventions as well, even as they were welcoming Chinese products and influence into the U.S. Indeed, as an aside, one wonders what Obama’s vice president, Joe Biden, thinks of all this: Has he learned the lesson of Iraq and other quagmires? Has he rethought trade with China? Those are certainly good questions to be answered during the remainder of the 2020 campaign season. Okay, back to Hawley. Having raised serious questions about the status quo, he offered three specific answers: First, we should withdraw from the World Trade Organization. As Hawley put it, the WTO was built on a false promise: the idea that the nations of the world would converge around a fair and non-manipulated trading system; as the Missourian put it, “they wanted a single liberal market to support a single, liberal international order that would bring peace in our time.” Yet in the decades of the WTO’s existence, the countries of the world haven’t come together on much of anything—except, perhaps, to snooker Uncle Sucker. And we might pause to note Hawley’s slyly ironic use of the words, “peace in our time.” That’s an allusion to the catastrophically mistaken statement of British prime minister Neville Chamberlain; back in 1938, Chamberlain made a wrongheaded deal with Adolf Hitler, which he said would bring “peace in our time.” Wrong! Yes, Hawley is saying, the stakes today are potentially that high; we can’t stay in an organization that has “not been kind to America.” He added, “The WTO’s dispute resolution process has systemically disfavored the United States”—and favored China. Second, Hawley says that having left the WTO, the U.S. should negotiate new trade deals on a more reciprocal and bilateral basis; that is, the U.S. should make a trade deal with, say, the United Kingdom—and then on to another deal with the next potential trading partner. As Hawley explained, “We must replace an empire of lawyers with a confederation of truly mutual trade.” Indeed, Hawley argues that a new focus on win-win trade deals—as freely determined by the two countries actually involved in the deal, as opposed supranational WTO-crats—deals that would offer a new opportunity for the U.S. to put together better alliances, based on mutually beneficial economic and strategic relationships: We benefit if countries that share our opposition to Chinese imperialism—countries like India and Japan, Vietnam, Australia and Taiwan—are economically independent of China, and standing shoulder to shoulder with us. So we should actively pursue new networks of mutual trade with key Asian and European partners, like the economic prosperity network recently mentioned by Secretary Pompeo. We might pause over one of the countries Hawley mentioned above, Taiwan. Its formal name is the Republic of China (ROC), an island nation whose capital is Taipei. In other words, the ROC is separate and very much distinct from the People’s Republic of China, whose capital, of course, is Beijing. The two nations split in 1949, when Mao Zedong’s Soviet-backed communists took over the mainland. In the decades since, the ROC, population 23 million, has become a prosperous and free country, while the PRC is merely … prosperous. (And, of course, menacing.) So it’s notable that Hawley has become a strong champion of Taiwan, which stands not only as a bulwark against the PRC, but also as proof that the Chinese people, if given a choice, will choose freedom. Third, Hawley wants to crack down on the ability of international capital, including Wall Street, to hopscotch the world—and step all over the people of the world. As Hawley explains about the current WTO dominion,

To continue reading, or see the video of Sen. Hawley’s (R-MO) speech, click on the text above.   Excellent!!      🙂

Josh Hawley, Jim Jordan Propose to Restrict Universities with Large Endowments from Receiving Aid

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Rep Jim Jordan (R-OH) said on Wednesday that they plan to introduce legislation that would bar universities with “massive” endowments from federal aid unless their plan to use the endowments to help students and cover the costs of the coronavirus. “Department of Education should adopt a rule now that stops federal aid to universities with massive endowments (like Harvard) UNLESS schools spend down some of that endowment to help students & cover this emergency,” Hawley wrote on Wednesday. Hawley then said that he plans to introduce legislation to limit universities’ access to federal aid: ” I will introduce legislation to bar the Department of Ed from giving federal relief funds to universities with massive endowments UNLESS and UNTIL those universities actually spend some of those endowments to help their students and cover costs of this emergency. I’m tired of hearing from university execs that “it wouldn’t be prudent” to tap their endowments in this crisis. Fine. But don’t come begging federal taxpayers for money while you sit on billions in endowment funds and students suffer.” In response to Hawley, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) said that he will cosponsor the House companion bill. “Great idea, Senator. Sounds like you need a companion bill,” Jordan wrote. “Happy to work with you.” “Let’s do it,” Hawley replied. Hawley and Jordan’s announcement follows as Breitbart News reported on Monday that several Ivy League institutions, including Harvard University, received federal bailouts even though many of them have billions of dollars in their endowments. For instance, Harvard has roughly $40.0 billion in its endowment. Harvard University reportedly received $8.6 million in federal bailout funds from the CARES Act. Harvard University President Lawrence Bacow initially resisted calls to dip into the university’s large endowment fund. He said last week: Some of you may be wondering why we can’t just dip into the endowment to support us through these difficult times. We do intend to distribute as much from the endowment as we responsibly can, but there are limitations to the endowment’s capacity. Because of the recent declines in the markets, the endowment, while still large, is not as large as it was previously. As it shrinks, it has less capacity to support our existing operations, especially as other shortfalls in revenue sources loom. On Tuesday, Harvard had said that it planned to keep the federal aid, promising to use it for student financial assistance. Department of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said on Wednesday that she urging Congress to change the CARES Act to ensure that wealthy schools cannot tap into the emergency funds reserved for less wealthy schools. DeVos said: Congress required by law that taxpayer Emergency Relief funds be given to all colleges and universities, no matter their wealth. But as I’ve said all along, wealthy institutions that do not primarily serve low-income students do not need or deserve additional taxpayer funds. This is common sense. Schools with large endowments should not apply for funds so more can be given to students who need support the most. It’s also important for Congress to change the law to make sure no more taxpayer funds go to elite, wealthy institutions. Harvard announced on Wednesday that they will not take the $8.6 million in aid that was granted as part of the CARES Act.

..And that’s only because they got caught, and are getting a LOT of bad press, like this, about it.  Kudos to Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Congressman Jim Jordan (R-OH) for looking our for us like this.  Outstanding!!     🙂

Josh Hawley: Google, Apple CEOs Must Be Personally Liable for User Privacy

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) has called on the CEOs of Google and Apple to accept personal legal liability for protecting user privacy as they move to implement “contact tracing” technology in smartphones to track the spread of the Chinese virus. As Breitbart News reported earlier this month, Google and Apple are teaming up to track carriers of the Chinese coronavirus and other individuals, a process known as “contact tracing,” using smartphone location data. The companies promise a broader Bluetooth-based contact tracing platform by building this functionality into the underlying platforms,” meaning the technology will be embedded in Android and iOS smartphones. Now Sen. Hawley is calling on the companies to address privacy concerns by making their CEOs personally liable for any improper use of user data. “If you seek to assure the public, make your stake in this project personal,” wrote Hawley in a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook and Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai “Make a commitment that you and other executives will be personally liable if you stop protecting privacy, such as by granting advertising companies access to the interface once the pandemic is over. The public statements you make now can be enforced under federal and state consumer protection laws. Do not hide behind a corporate shield like so many privacy offenders have before. Stake your personal finances on the security of this project.” This comes after Google’s recent announcement that, allegedly due to pandemic-related disruption, it would delay the rollout of key features in its plan to eliminate third-party tracking technology (known as “cookies”) in its Chrome internet browser. The effort is part of a wider push by Google to reassure consumers about its commitment to their privacy. But as Breitbart News reported last month, eliminating third-party cookies does not mean Chrome browsers won’t be collecting user data. It just means that Google will have an even tighter monopoly over that data, supplementing the vast amounts of data it collects on its users’ behavior via services like Google Search, Maps, YouTube, Gmail, Google Docs, and hardware like Android phones, tablets, and Chromebooks. The company also does not have a sterling reputation for responsibly accessing healthcare data. In 2019, the company gained access to the personal health data of 50 million Americans through an initiative the company branded “Project Nightingale.” According to reports at the time, doctors and patients were unaware of Google’s data-harvesting operation.

Major kudos to Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), who is also the former Attorney General for the State of Missouri, for putting these CEOs on notice.  This whole so-called “contact tracing” just stinks of big brother and allowing the government the ability to track your whereabouts without any restrictions.