by Bob Barr | Oct 24, 2018 | Uncategorized |
Townhall.com It’s a brutal world out there. Countries do horrible things. Government officials often are complicit. If America’s relations with countries around the world were predicated on dealing only with those whose record of respecting life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness mirrored ours, the number of flags exhibited at the State Department’s Hall of Nations would be small indeed. And yes, even journalists at times find themselves on the wrong end of a government that does not abide by our legal and moral standards; it’s happened over the years in Central and South America, Eastern Europe, Russia, China, the Middle East, and elsewhere. Such apparently happened to Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi shortly after he entered his nation’s consulate in Istanbul, Turkey earlier this month. As the evidence of his grotesque murder mounts, the question for the United States is how should our nation react; what should we do in response? Some in Washington clamor for drastic measures, up to and including a serious reevaluation and down-grading of our longstanding diplomatic, economic, security and national defense relationship with Riyadh. Others counsel silence. The appropriate response lies somewhere in between; but tempered by the fact that this horrible incident has little if anything to do with the United States directly. It is, at its core, a crime by Saudis against a Saudi. There simply is no vital U.S. national security interest at stake. So what should be done? First, our policy makers in Washington need to ascertain the facts. Considering our intelligence capabilities are at least as good as Turkey’s (after all, we largely trained them), this should not be...
by Bob Barr | Oct 18, 2018 | Uncategorized |
The American Spectator The Trump economic revival shouldn’t be punishing medical technology for its contributions. President Trump’s tax, regulatory, and trade policies have sparked a surging U.S. economy. Unfortunately, hidden among all the truly good news, is a serious glitch that may very well be a body blow to an important industry — medical imaging equipment. The culprit is a recently imposed tariff on sophisticated medical imaging devices; the negative effects of which are magnified because the industry already has been hurt badly by the misguided medical device tax imposed on it by Obamacare. Curiously, the Republican-controlled Congress has failed to repeal permanently that unnecessary and harmful tax, which has cost American jobs and slowed investment in critical research and development. Make no mistake, the U.S. trade imbalance with China must be addressed. But punishing a domestic industry that supports nearly two million American jobs and generates more than $52.5 billion annually in exports, does far more harm than good. Instead of strengthening the industry, the tariffs add to the burden under which it already is operating; and undercuts our stature as a global leader in healthcare research, innovation, and medical technology development. While U.S. firms develop, design, and manufacture imaging equipment here at home, they often incorporate parts imported from China and other countries. Imposing tariffs on components made abroad but used to manufacture finished products in the United States, amounts to a tax on inter-company transfers; making it more expensive, not less, for manufacturing to take place here. The consequence of this is that firms may have to reduce their American workforce and decrease their investments in research and...
by Bob Barr | Oct 17, 2018 | Uncategorized |
Townhall.com To most Americans, a large group of black-clad individuals blockading the streets and harassing motorists who disobey their commands would, quite naturally, be considered a mob. This also would be an apt and reasonable name given to groups of people stalking and screaming at others dining in a restaurant, destroying public monuments, or throwing Molotov cocktails in protest of speakers at a college campus. After all, by definition, a mob is “a large and disorderly crowd of people,” especially those “bent on riotous or destructive action”; and, these incidents are such examples. As we lawyers say, res ipsa loquitur, “the matter speaks for itself.” The problem is, the Mainstream Media and congressional Democrats are not most Americans. In their Liberal La-La Land, like at CNN, one dares not speak “the ‘M’-word” (“mob”) when commenting on events such as these. To these pundits, those roaming gangs and shouting crowds are not mobs, but merely concerned citizens understandably “motivated” by the dangerous actions of the Trump Administration. Herein lies the existential crisis for Democrats, and the dirty little secret they refuse to acknowledge openly — is mob rule what Democrats have become? And is it what our country is becoming? Since their 2016 trouncing, Democrats have strayed far from their Party’s traditional bread and butter issues like education and civil rights; pursuing instead a strategy exclusively focused on stoking emotional outbursts from their base. We hear less and less from Democrats about specific policy solutions for how they will fix anything, and increasingly more paranoid shouting that “people will die” with every move Trump and the GOP make. Therefore, in whatever twisted logic now passes for...
by Bob Barr | Oct 15, 2018 | Uncategorized |
The Daily Caller The most powerful force in the universe is the force of the status quo. And in every era, there have been institutions standing firm to hold back the forces of change. In early 16th-century Europe, as market forces were loosening the constraining shackles of feudalism, the Catholic Church tried mightily to hold back that tide by declaring any interest rate to be unlawful usury. The effort failed, and Europe enjoyed an economic boom that carried over to the New World. In colonial America, Great Britain’s imposition of taxes on everything from tea to paper was a major factor in the Revolutionary War that stripped the Empire of one of its most important colonies. Our Founding Fathers recognized the importance of keeping markets as free as possible from the unwelcome hands of government, and our Constitution places explicit limits on government’s power to control property, private contracts and other market forces. Yet time and again since then, presidents, Congresses and state governments have moved to limit entrepreneurial forces that threaten the status quo. In recent years, this regulatory strategy has included measures designed to make it increasingly difficult for businesses to provided funds to individuals and small businesses in need of quick cash, but who have neither the credit history nor the collateral to qualify for traditional loans from banks. We have thus seen ever-tightening regulations of pawnbrokers, title-lenders and payday loan companies. Regulators have not yet killed such industries, but not for lack of trying. This is the environment in which a relatively new, but growing business model — the merchant cash advance (“MCA”) — finds itself....
by Bob Barr | Oct 12, 2018 | Front page |
The American Spectator For one thing, the current president isn’t inclined to prop up the mullahs. On three occasions in the past eight decades, Iran has served as a turning point for America’s strategic global interests. Now, as the Trump Administration turns up the pressure on the Islamic Republic, it appears the country may once again become a fulcrum for our country’s strategic interests in the Middle East and beyond. The first time modern Persia found itself in a key global position was in the immediate aftermath of World War Two, when the Soviet Union’s imperialist designs were focused on Iran’s already well-known oil reserves, and access to the country’s ports on the Persian Gulf. The United States and Great Britain teamed up to ensure that they, and not the USSR, held sway in Teheran after the defeat of the Axis powers. For the next three decades Iran served as a key military and economic ally to the United States; providing a steady supply of oil, and invaluable intelligence on Soviet missile technology captured from listening posts in northeastern Iran overlooking the Caspian Sea. That important bilateral modus operandi disintegrated in 1979 with the overthrow of the pro-American Shah, and the installation of what quickly became a regime controlled by a cleric-based Supreme Council headed by the Ayatollah Khomeini. The subsequent rise of militant Islam as a force not only in Iran but throughout the region, from Syria and Iraq to Afghanistan and Pakistan, became a force that has dominated much of America’s global strategy for the past four decades. Since 1979 and over the course of six American presidencies from...
