by Bob Barr | Oct 11, 2021 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily CallerApparently unconcerned about California’s population decline, which most observers attribute to the state’s high taxes and excessive regulation, Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom last weekend signed into law a passel of new mandates, some of which appear crazy even by the Golden State’s liberal standards.Based on a “finding” that having “Boys” and “Girls” toy aisles in large retail stores is “stigmatizing,” Newsom signed into law a requirement that, beginning in 2024, large retail stores in California must have “gender-neutral” toy sections. The LGBTQ lobby in the state lauded the move, claiming it will reduce “pressure [on] children to conform to gender stereotypes.”Where such nonsense comes from remains a mystery to many of us not living inside California’s bubble, but it has come to infect virtually every aspect of life within the state. One of the strangest pieces of what the San Francisco Chronicle on Sunday called “impactful” legislation signed by Newsom, is one that outlaws “stealthing.” Lest one make the same mistake I did when first seeing that term in the article, thinking it had to do with military stealth technology, it actually (in California, at least) has to do with … sexual intercourse.With the stroke of a pen, however, Newsom may have solved the awful problem of sexual “stealthing.”According to the Chronicle, AB453 “criminalizes the nonconsensual removal of condoms during sexual intercourse, an act known as ‘stealthing.’” This conduct apparently has become such a serious and widespread problem in the Golden States that it requires a state-level prohibition to correct. Indeed, according to Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia, who hails from Los Angeles, if left ignored as a form...
by Bob Barr | Oct 4, 2021 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily CallerIn the latest round of negotiations over President Joe Biden’s proposal to raise taxes by $2.1 trillion, Democrats have struck a moderate, but hypocritical, compromise. According to The New York Times, the agreed-upon funding scheme will target “the merely rich more than the fabulously rich” by “raising tax rates on income rather than targeting wealth itself.”Off to the side, one can hear Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk sighing with relief.As Newsmax reported, their plan “largely leaves technology tycoons like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk untouched.” This news comes just months after a Pro Publica exposé demonstrated how the two mega tycoons pay very little, if anything, in federal income tax.Why would the so-called “Tax the Rich” Democrats leave the fortunes of two of the richest men in the world largely untouched? For the same reason that they allow these same billionaires to evade federal regulatory rules, such as Musk’s deliberate disregard of spaceflight safety standards, which has led to fiery explosions.And, coincidentally, these people contribute generously to Democratic campaigns and causes.Staff from Bezos’ Amazon provided over $2.2 million to the Biden campaign and nearly $1.0 million to the DNC Services Corp. Those at Musk’s SpaceX and Tesla provided more than $210,000 and $106,000 to the DNC Services Corp.While these billionaires may have bought themselves a reprieve from the Democrats’ progressive tax agenda, not so lucky are the people historian Patrick Wyman refers to as “the American gentry.” These are the “single-digit millionaires” who own concrete assets like farmland, apartment buildings and construction companies, and live in unfashionable cities like Allentown, Pennsylvania.And, coincidentally, many of them supported President Donald...
by Bob Barr | Sep 29, 2021 | Townhall Article |
TownhallMagic acts have always been a popular draw in Las Vegas. These days, however, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer could take their $5 Trillion Disappearing Budget Act show on the road, and give David Copperfield a real run for his money.With one sleight of hand, these congressional charlatans can turn a $5 trillion budget to $3.5 trillion, and in the next wave of the political wand, make it disappear altogether. We’ve come a long way downward from the late 1990s, when national leaders like then-Speaker Newt Gingrich and then-President Bill Clinton (not yet severely wounded by impeachment), could negotiate and pass through both parties’ membership in the Congress, a federal budget that actually was balanced. No black magic; only facts and transparency. Today’s Congress under the leadership of the Democrat Party in both houses, has proven itself utterly unwilling or incapable of such effort, which explains their latest magic act. And, as magic acts go, it is certainly one for the ages. There is no rabbit in this magician’s hat; just massive, historically high spending that will saddle future generations with the bill for a cradle-to-grave welfare state. Rather than treating the public with enough respect to be honest about the true cost of their plans, Democrats instead are gaslighting Americans into believing it costs nothing at all. President Joe Biden took to Twitter over the weekend to boast how his plan “costs zero dollars,” while House Budget Committee member Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D) ballyhooed the “zero-dollar” narrative to The Hill. This, of course, is a flat-out lie, and an absurd one at that. Even the “lesser” $3.5 trillion estimate is a deliberate fabrication. In July,...
by Bob Barr | Sep 27, 2021 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily CallerOn Nov. 3, exactly one year from last year’s presidential election, the United States Supreme Court will hear arguments on a landmark Second Amendment case challenging New York’s century-old law making it next-to impossible for the average citizen to obtain a permit to lawfully possess a handgun outside their home.To no one’s real surprise, the Biden administration last week filed a brief urging the High Court to dismiss the challenge to New York’s restrictive handgun law. What is interesting are the absurd, bordering on laughable, arguments the Biden Department of Justice makes in support of its position.If one were to take the administration’s legal brief as historically correct, one would conclude that the United States is a nation founded on firearms restrictions rather than firearms freedom. Moreover, the Justice Department lawyers declare that New York’s highly prohibitory handgun permitting law is “most modest”!To this Justice Department, giving state bureaucrats near-absolute power to decide whether a law-abiding citizen may exercise his constitutionally guaranteed right to possess a handgun for self-defense “fits comfortably” within what the Department considers the long “history and tradition” of government regulation of weaponry, going all the way back to at least 1285. That was the year, according to our Justice Department, when the British Parliament prohibited Englishmen from “wandering” around London after curfew carrying swords or other arms “for doing mischief.”British royals prohibiting the carrying of weaponry, as cited by Biden’s legal eagles, include King Henry VIII, Queen Elizabeth I, King James I, and others. With a pedigree such as these rulers preventing their subjects from carrying “little short handguns” and “pocket daggers,” it would be easy to...
by Bob Barr | Sep 22, 2021 | Townhall Article |
TownhallAs Charles Dickens wrote many years ago, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” Oh, how true it is today, as we watch Western culture crumble around us — toddlers being forcefully removed from airplanes for not wearing a mask, as Hollywood celebrities and socialist U.S. Representatives gleefully hobnob without such encumbrances. A time when a California mayor decries the “fun police” even as real police crack the skulls of those commoners who defy her mask orders. To label this the age of foolishness would be a gross understatement.Americans already were close to a boiling point over vexatious COVID mandates and rules, but last week’s flagrant parading of Leftist Elites’ disdain for the same rules may turn out to be the final straw. When caught violating her own rules, San Francisco Mayor London Breed’s response was precisely what you would expect of someone not only oblivious to her hypocrisy, but resentful of being publicly outed for it. People are tired of being told to “follow the science” or “do our part,” when such diktat clearly serves as a smokescreen for policies that directly contradict the science, or to protect elites who have no interest in sharing the burden with the rest of us. Then again, as I wrote recently, it was never about science or sacrifice for Democrats. They have their pandemic, and we have ours, each with its set of very distinct — and very different — rules. It is and always has been about control, and it is hardly a new phenomenon. Hollywood elites have long lectured us about global warming all while jet setting across the globe...
