by Bob Barr | Dec 14, 2023 | Townhall Article, Uncategorized |
Townhall In the 1972 made-for-TV movie Between Time and Timbuktu, the protagonist is transported to a world in which no one person is permitted to be superior in any way to any other person – physically or mentally. Individuals who happen to be physically stronger or more agile than others are forced to carry weights on their shoulders – “handicappers” – so they are not able to out-perform their weaker fellow citizens. Now, a half century after author Kurt Vonnegut’s make-believe but prescient production, the federal government is punishing companies for hiring employees who are stronger and more athletic than others. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has become Uncle Sam’s handicapper enforcement arm. One case at hand pits the EEOC, currently chaired by Democrat Charlotte Burrows, against a California moving company. The unforgivable legal sin committed by Meathead Movers that has led EEOC to file a lawsuit against it, is to hire movers who are strong and agile – precisely the qualities that would have forced such employees to don the handicappers envisioned by Vonnegut in Between Time and Timbuktu. The primary difference between the handicappers in the 1972 movie and those now the object of the EEOC’s lawsuit against Meathead Movers, is that in the fictional account, the handicappers are physical weights, while the 2023 handicappers are statutory. The punishment sought by the EEOC against the moving company is, of course, monetary. The EEOC initially demanded that Meathead Movers pay $15 million to settle the case – an offer the company refused. Notwithstanding the agency’s oh-so-generous subsequent offer of $5 million to withdraw its threatened action against the company, Meathead...
by Bob Barr | Nov 20, 2023 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller In the 14 years since the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was granted what it had for decades sought — power to regulate tobacco and tobacco products — it has sought to expand its reach. One way the agency has done this is by waging a misguided, years-long crusade against e-cigarettes. FDA’s broad tobacco mandate, overseen by its Center for Tobacco Products (CTP), is to “regulate the manufacturing, marketing, and distribution of tobacco products to protect public health.” In this endeavor, the FDA claims that it “evaluates new tobacco products based on a public health standard that considers the risks and benefits of the tobacco product to the population as a whole.” Inherent in this mission statement is the underlying goal to reduce or eliminate cigarette smoking in the United States — arguably a reasonable though certainly not universally supported point of view. What is unreasonable, however, is the FDA’s regulatory record over the past several years as measured by its stated objective. For example, CTP has in recent years approved, without any scientific review, nearly 900 new brands of cigarettes produced by dozens of companies; new brands on top of the billions of packs of cigarettes already approved for consumers. This fact alone appears completely at odds with the parent agency’s mission. The confusion becomes bewildering when considering that, during this same period, CTP has approved less than two dozen e-cigarette products, despite acknowledging that e-cigarettes are an effective alternative to the far more health-damaging cigarette smoking. Simply put, e-cigarettes have not gotten a fair shake in the agency’s taxpayer-funded activities, the result (to some extent) of bad behavior by a select...
by Bob Barr | Nov 16, 2023 | Townhall Article |
Townhall Before Siri and Alexa arrived on the scene catering to every whim of their voice overlords, tracking an automobile took at least a degree of knowledge – of the tracking device itself and also how to monitor it. Now, for $25 or less, anyone can purchase a tracking device that is small enough to fit just about anywhere, in someone’s purse, pocket, or automobile. These tiny trackers have caught the attention of mayors in some of the country’s largest and most crime-ridden cities, as a way to divert attention from their own policies that have spawned serious spikes in vehicle thefts within their jurisdictions. Baltimore, Maryland and Washington, D.C. are among the municipalities jumping aboard the tracking device gimmick as a way to convince residents that the skyrocketing numbers of vehicle thefts can easily be solved by simply by giving vehicle owners handy dandy tracking devices to place in their cars. Unfortunately, the history of vehicle theft, especially in Democrat-run cities, is a tale that is not so simple to solve. After years of declining incidents of vehicle thefts in the 1990s and early 2000s, the 2020-2021 COVID pandemic saw a stark reversal of that trend, especially in major metropolitan areas governed by Democrats – including among others, Baltimore, Chicago, Denver, and Norfolk; actually tripling in some cities between 2019 and 2022. The significant decline in vehicle thefts prior to the pandemic was not so much the result of better or more vigorous law enforcement, but rather technology built into cars and pickup trucks that made it more difficult to steal vehicles by “hot wiring” them. Since 2020, however, carjackings and thefts of catalytic converters have risen...
by Bob Barr | Nov 8, 2023 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller For centuries, and certainly to Thomas Jefferson and other Founders, the value of an educated citizenry has been understood to be an imperative for good governance, if not for the very survival of a free people. Former British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli stated the principle clearly in an 1874 speech to the House of Commons, declaring that “Upon the education of the people of this country the fate of this country depends.” Based on recent decisions by top education officials in states like Oregon, however, the fate of our country in this 21st century is indeed bleak.The Oregon Department of Public Education recently teamed up with woke Democratic Gov. Kate Brown to render virtually meaningless the value of a high school diploma from any public school in the Beaver State. Dragging the already sinking ability by Oregon students to read, write and calculate into the education abyss is the unanimous decision just last month by the Public Ed Department. Thanks to these bureaucrats, a 2021 policy to not require Oregon students exiting high school to prove they can read, write or perform mathematically to any particular level will continue for four more school years. In the Bizarro World that has transformed many Democrat-run American cities and states into cultural and economic wastelands, those who support Oregon’s profoundly disturbing education policy decision may laud the fact that it has led to an historically high graduation rate of 81.3 percent. The fallacy of this artificial calculus is that in virtually every other state or city that has sacrificed educational standards on the altar of “equity,” proficiency in basic subjects like math, reading and writing...
by Bob Barr | Nov 2, 2023 | Townhall Article |
Townhall The recent hubbub surrounding pro-Palestinian and anti-Jewish demonstrations at major universities and colleges in the U.S. has again drawn attention to the massive, and unaccounted donations made to those institutions, including by foreign governments and other sources; contributions that have become an increasingly important part of the schools’ budgets. However, if critics are looking for either Congress or the administration to do anything to improve the almost total lack of transparency regarding such money flow, they are in for a long wait. Uncle Sam has been asleep at that switch for decades, and the Biden Administration has made clear it has no interest whatsoever in continuing its predecessor’s modest effort to enforce long-standing requirements that institutions of higher learning simply report major foreign monetary donations, especially where Communist China is concerned. Congress has not done much better. A measure that would have strengthened the federal government’s power to examine large foreign gifts to, and contracts with American universities, was stripped out of a bipartisan bill two years ago that was designed to strengthen American innovation. The reasons for the measure’s demise included opposition by the very same universities and colleges that receive significant money from foreign donors, including China, which reportedly had donated more than $400 million in the two years before the measure was deep-sixed in 2021. Adding to the demise of the extremely modest reporting requirement in the “innovation” legislation, was a jurisdictional turf dispute between two Senate committees with concurrent jurisdiction over the measure. The reality is that since 1986, when Section 117 was added to the 1965 Higher Education Act, colleges and universities have been required to report foreign gifts...
