by Bob Barr | Mar 28, 2018 | Uncategorized |
Townhall.com It comes as no surprise that Congress’ $1.3 trillion dollar omnibus budget package is rubbing raw the already thin patience of the Republican base. Rather than draining the swamp, which includes seizing this historic moment of Republican control of both Congress and the White House to dramatically cut government spending, Congress instead (with the support of the White House) is spending as recklessly as when Democrats were in charge. Coupled with scant legislative victories outside of President Donald Trump’s tax cuts, especially in regards to expanding gun rights, and it is clear Republicans are doing little to motivate voters to show up in November to keep them in power. That is why killing the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) is precisely the low-hanging fruit Republicans need to score a quick and much needed victory with conservatives. And, just as Senator Majority Leader Mitch McConnell prefers it, doing so would require virtually no effort on his part. In September 2013, the Barack Obama Administration signed the UN-ATT, an international agreement that regulates the sale, transfer and export of conventional weapons, including “small arms and light weapons”; covering essentially every civilian firearm on the market. And, just as gun control activists in the United States claim their “common sense” demands are aimed at reducing “human suffering” attributed to firearms, the U.N. claims the ATT is needed in order to combat the international scourge of illicit firearms. As with virtually every other strategy hatched by the bureaucrats at the sprawling UN headquarters on the banks of the East River, such claims are nothing more than emotionally-driven and thinly-veiled attempts to...
by Bob Barr | Mar 21, 2018 | Uncategorized |
Townhall.com Bob Barr 3/21/2018 12:01:00 AM – Bob Barr Is tonight’s dinner giving you heartburn? You’re in luck; there is a pill for that. Do you have high blood pressure? There’s a pill for that, too. How about going bald? Restless legs? Help in bed? Thinning eye lashes? Yes, yes, yes, and…yes – all maladies solved with the help of prescription drugs. In modern medicine today, there seems to be nothing that cannot be cured with prescription or over-the-counter remedies. Simply turn on television during a big game or an evening news program, and you’ll catch the latest drug ad from Astrazeneca, Merck, or Pfizer, hawking a treatment for whatever ails you. While the expansiveness of today’s treatment options is good for clinical care, we as a society have been conditioned to expect that all of life’s problems are solved with a small pill and a sip of water. Is it any wonder then, that we have an opioid epidemic? The Rolling Stones presaged America’s obsession with pharmaceutical “therapy” in songs such as “19th Nervous Breakdown” and “Mother’s Little Helper,” recorded in the mid-1960s; decades before today’s crisis. “Mother needs something today to calm her down,” the song goes; “and though she’s not really ill, there’s a little yellow pill; she goes running for the shelter of a mother’s little helper.” The pill referenced in the song is thought to be Miltown (meprobamate), a precursor to Valium and Xanax; a psychotropic drug with properties of a tranquilizer, and once used to treat everything from alcoholics to stressed-out housewives and Hollywood’s elite. According to Andrea Tone, a pharmacology historian, Miltown “normalized the notion that people...
by Bob Barr | Mar 14, 2018 | Uncategorized |
Townhall.com What’s in a name? In Washington, not much. Here, Republicans who run campaigns on fiscal discipline regularly jack up the national debt. And, Democrats who constantly preach “tolerance” push the narrative that “free speech is violence” and disagreement is itself cause for punishment. So, to the inhabitants of this strange place, it actually makes sense that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) should be involved in researching, funding, and advocating for regulations about non-disease related issues, such as gun violence. After all, to Beltway insiders, a federal agency established in the 1940s to combat malaria (which at the time was rampant in parts of the United States), should be free to spend federal tax dollars studying everything from the Ebola virus to school bullying, workplace hazards, domestic violence and, yes, gun control. Last month’s tragic mass murder in Parkland, Florida has – predictably – again raised the notion advocated for years by the gun control movement that gun violence is a “public health” issue with which the CDC should deal. The fact that gun violence has nothing to do with diseases or the public’s health, matters nothing to individuals bent on dismantling the protections guaranteed by the Second Amendment however they can. As a term of art, gun violence can be, and often is described metaphorically as a “disease,” a “cancer,” or a “blight” on our society. But speaking in a nation ruled by laws not opinions or personal views — a world in which words have assigned, accepted and understandable meanings — there is absolutely no connection between mass shootings and the flu, Ebola, malaria,...
by Bob Barr | Mar 8, 2018 | Uncategorized |
The Hill BY BOB BARR, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — 03/07/18 04:00 PM EST Generations of American inventors and entrepreneurs have touted the value of competition. Walt Disney — the pioneering creator of Disneyland and shrewd businessman — once remarked, “I have been up against tough competition all my life [and] wouldn’t know how to get along without it.” Today, there are those who push themselves to the head of the class and claim they should be the sole provider of a service simply because they performed a successful assignment and are more adept at claiming government support. Enter Elon Musk and SpaceX — and the game of crony capitalism. Broadly speaking, the advent of modern crony capitalism can be traced directly to the 20th century explosion of federal government involvement in virtually every economic activity in which society is engaged, and using taxpayer dollars to mold the marketplace to its agenda. This has produced a class of business people adept at manipulating government, and reducing competition in favor of projects in which they are involved, thereby reaping substantial pecuniary gains. Musk clearly is an extremely savvy technology expert and businessman. And he is among the most successful at convincing government officials and agencies to “invest” in products he builds and markets (or tries to market). While the most visible of Musk’s ventures are his solar-powered products — including the Tesla automobile — for several years he has been actively developing rocket boosters with which to deliver payloads into earth orbit. Just last month, Musk’s SpaceX venture captured front-page coverage around the world with the successful launch of his...
by Bob Barr | Mar 7, 2018 | Uncategorized |
The Washington Times By Bob Barr – – Tuesday, March 6, 2018 ANALYSIS/OPINION: Whether one labels it a “crisis” or an “epidemic,” or understates it simply as a “problem,” no reasonable observer can consider the human and monetary cost of opioid abuse anything other than a matter of the utmost national importance. In 2016 alone, more than 64,000 people died from drug overdoses in America; the highest number ever recorded. The opioid crisis has cost the United States more than $1 trillion since 2001. President Trump appropriately has declared it a “public health emergency.” To try and end the epidemic and obtain for addicts the help they need, the demand for opiate-treatment drugs has skyrocketed; unfortunately, a result not without its own set of problems. It is well-known that the drug buprenorphine, properly administered, can manage opioid dependency. The drug reduces craving for opioids, and in a properly managed regimen, truly can reverse the tide of addiction and death. However, one drug company — Indivior, which produces buprenorphine under the patent Suboxone — has viewed the opioid crisis as nothing more than a profit-making opportunity. Rather than increasing the quantity of opiate treatment drugs available, Indivior has done everything possible to keep its own prices high and lock competitors out of the market. This profit-driven effort has been called a “shocking scheme to profit off of heroin addicts,” with the drug maker’s actions leading to “nearly a billion dollars in undeserved profits.” This scheme appears not only to violate state and federal antitrust laws, but every notion of common decency and ethics in coming together to solve our country’s current drug epidemic....
