by Bob Barr | Aug 29, 2023 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily CallerIn the early years of the last century, as our country was flexing its new-found muscle as a major industrial power, Latin America and the Caribbean served as a primary arena where presidents including Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson showcased our military might.Now, many 2024 GOP presidential wannabes appear eager to resurrect what would be a far more dangerous version of the early 20th Century’s “gunboat diplomacy” toward Mexico.This predisposition was displayed vividly during the first Republican primary debate on August 23rd, when Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis declared proudly that “on day one” he would send American troops into Mexico to strike suspected cartel-run fentanyl labs.While it was DeSantis’ debate rhetoric that forced the question of U.S. military action against drug labs inside Mexico to the fore, the notion has been percolating on the back burner for several years.During his presidency, Donald Trump apparently was so intrigued by the idea of striking facilities across our southern border, that in 2020 he reportedly requested that his then-Defense Secretary, Mark Esper, provide him a plan for launching “some Patriot missiles [to] take out the labs.”Thankfully, such plans were never consummated, but there remain many in the GOP who today openly support such moves, up to and including bills for the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) against targets inside Mexico.Not all of the GOP’s 2024 hopefuls are as hawkish as DeSantis, but most have placed themselves in the same proactive camp as the Floridian. Vivek Ramaswamy is on record declaring he would send in American troops not necessarily on day one, but certainly in his “first six months.” Former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley is only slightly...
by Bob Barr | Aug 24, 2023 | Townhall Article |
TownhallKnee-jerk responses by government officials and legislators following incidents in which individuals have been killed by police can cause lasting harm to law-abiding citizens. One of these dangerous policies is something called the “Driving Equity Act,” which is now the law in Philadelphia. The Driving Equity Act, known also as the “Driving Equality Act,” is an overreaction to isolated incidents of alleged police misconduct, and reflects a troubling trend going back nearly a decade.For example, following the 2014 death of Michael Brown during a confrontation with police in Ferguson, Missouri, the U.S. Justice Department launched a drive against a number of local police departments that resulted in “consent decrees” – mandatory edicts that made it demonstrably more difficult for those departments to carry out their mission of protecting the public. Several years later, the 2020 death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers sparked a nationwide backlash against law enforcement generally which led to policies that reduced or defunded law enforcement agencies, causing problems that resonate still today. Early this year in Memphis, Tennessee, members of a “special” police unit beat Tyre Nichols to death, a tragedy that revived calls for state and local governments to defund and disband specialized anti-crime units.Often camouflaged as “restorative justice” or “reimagined policing,” legislative and executive actions to curtail police funding and powers usually are premised on the notion that traditional police powers, including traffic stops, are inherently racially biased and thus have been abused as tools to target members of racial minorities, especially Black men. It is not, however, as if there are not ways to deal with such abuses. At the federal level,...
by Bob Barr | Aug 15, 2023 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily CallerPresident Joe Biden claims regularly that his Administration is for the “middle class,” is there to help “American workers,” and is committed to support America’s families. The reality is otherwise, and it is not just “Bidenomics” that is to blame.Although little known to the average consumer, it is the legal and regulatory policies of the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) that demonstrate most clearly this Administration’s commitment to anti-free market policies that ultimately harm rather than help consumers. For more than a century and a quarter, one of the sharpest arrows in Uncle Sam’s quiver with which to target alleged uncompetitive forces in the marketplace has been antitrust laws, most enacted in the late 19th and early 20th Century to dismantle large monopolies such John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil. To better enforce these laws, in 1919 the U.S. Justice Department grew a new enforcement arm – the Antitrust Division.It was not until 1968, however, that the Department set clear guidelines by which U.S. companies would be measured if they sought to consolidate. The touchstone was “consumer welfare,” and unlike many (perhaps most) policies designed and implemented by the federal government, this standard made sense. Mergers between companies would be measured by their effect on consumers in the marketplace.Dan Mitchell, a noted libertarian economist and senior fellow at the Cato Institute, described the “consumer welfare” metric best, when he wrote just last month, that the policy limits the damage that can be wrought on the marketplace because it “create[es] a presumption that mergers are okay if prices go down.”Of course, as with any government policy, even one that is...
by Bob Barr | Aug 3, 2023 | Townhall Article |
TownhallSomewhat lost in the public’s fixation on the scandals surrounding President Biden and his prodigal son Hunter, and the lengthening string of indictments against former President Trump, is a revealing and disturbing survey published last month by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center. The poll released in July found that most Americans now favor government restrictions on their freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment – specifically, freedom of expression. Until recently, the freedoms enunciated in the First Amendment, which was ratified in 1791 to stop government from restricting expression and publication of ideas, has been considered part of the essential fabric of our culture. Apparently, this is no longer the case, at least for 55% of Americans who now consider government – not the individual – to be the best and final arbiter of what information is worthy of expression or publication; a full 65 percent would turn to “tech companies” to make such decisions for them.Regardless of the reasons behind this failure to grasp the fundamental principle that liberty is lost when ideas can be restricted by authorities, these findings are fundamentally far more troubling than past or current misdeeds by Joe Biden or Donald Trump.The scope of the restrictions many Americans now appear willing to surrender on their expressive freedom, as revealed by the Pew survey, are breathtaking – extending broadly to information deemed “false” or “violent.” The degree to which a majority of Americans appear content allowing government and tech companies to censor information has increased significantly in just the past five years. As the Pew survey discovered, the percentage of adults who are ready to have their right to enjoy the free flow of...
by Bob Barr | Aug 1, 2023 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily CallerSunday, July 30 was our nation’s tenth “National Whistleblower Appreciation Day.” For those who may not care so much for whistleblowers these days, including perhaps Joe and Hunter Biden, July 30 also serves as “National Cheesecake Day.”I like cheesecake and I have nothing against legitimate whistleblowers, but there are so many of them these days that it is becoming a bit difficult to sort them all out.Whistleblowers long-predate formation of our country, going back many centuries to medieval England, when individuals who snitched on their fellow Brits for working on the Sabbath, were entitled to half the perpetrators’ ill-gotten profits. Unsurprisingly, it was Benjamin Franklin who, three years before the signing of the Declaration of Independence, popularized the notion that the public good should not only encourage, but reward citizens who exposed government wrongdoing. In fact, this very principle was incorporated legislatively by the Second Continental Congress in 1778 and signed by then-President Henry Laurens.Privateering and price gouging during the Civil War became so widespread that Congress in 1863 passed the False Claims Act, pursuant to which a private citizen could initiate a civil action against government-employee scams, and be entitled to a significant cut of any monies eventually awarded.It was not, however, until more than a century later that the act of being a recognized “whistleblower” achieved significant public and political notoriety. In 1989 the “Whistleblower Protection Act” was signed into law, providing meaningful protection against retaliation for any federal employee who discloses wrongdoing to the Congress. Ten years later, similar legal protection was extended to employees of intelligence agencies who disclosed “urgent” wrongdoing to the specified congressional committees through the proper channels. Famously (or infamously, depending...
