by Bob Barr | Apr 4, 2024 | Townhall Article |
TownhallAs former New York Yankees icon Yogi Berra is said to have opined, “it’s like déjà vu all over again.” So it is with the U.S. Congress repeatedly abusing its power over “interstate commerce” to play favorites and distort the free market. One of the latest targets of such regulatory overreach is fantasy sports betting.This is a swimming pool in which Members of Congress have played previously. In fact, some of the same gaming companies I sought to help escape unfair government regulations when I represented Georgia in Congress back in the late 1990s are now trying to weaponize similar regulations against their competitors. It reflects the tired story of Crony Capitalism. After I began my eight years of service on the House Judiciary Committee, I became dismayed at how federal legislation and regulations aimed at online gaming companies came at the behest of wealthy brick- and-mortar casino interests. In fact, in 1992, shortly before I began my congressional career, President George H.W. Bush signed into law the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA), which imposed a federal ban on sports betting throughout the United States. In a significant victory for consumer choice, states’ rights, and the marketplace, the Supreme Court in 2018 overturned PASPA, thereby reaffirming that sports betting deserves freedom from government overreach. Now, however, FanDuel and DraftKings, two of the largest and most successful companies that were helped most by the High Court’s lifting of that anti-free market law, are looking to use Uncle Sam’s regulatory powers to kill some of their competitors in the same way that the brick- and-mortar casinos tried to stop FanDuel and DraftKings’...
by Bob Barr | Apr 3, 2024 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily CallerThe budget for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is large and growing every year. The Biden Administration has asked Congress to appropriate $369.3 billion for the VA in 2025 – a nearly 10% increase over 2024. Roughly half of the VA’s spending goes toward providing disability benefits to compensate veterans for injuries or health conditions resulting from their service. Yet, with all that money being allocated to support our nation’s disabled veterans, many still struggle to obtain what they are owed under the law. This makes it even more difficult to understand why some Members of Congress have proposed legislation that actually would make it harder for veterans to get the help they need. It is hardly a secret that the Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) has for years been plagued with problems – everything from computer systems that just don’t seem to work, to difficulties in setting appointment scheduling and lengthy wait times for many veterans once they do secure medical visits. The VBA currently has a backlog of more than 300,000 disability claims that have been pending for more than 125 days. In addition to long waits to receive decisions on their claim, many veterans are also being assigned inaccurate disability ratings, often resulting in lower benefits than deserved. An NBC News story from fall 2023 highlighted a lack of training, understaffing and low morale at the VBA as contributing factors leading to errors in decisions. As one VA employee put it in that account, “You end up developing an ‘I don’t care’ attitude. When you stop caring, you stop processing claims, you miss stuff.”Problems like these are causing large numbers of VA benefit decisions to...
by Bob Barr | Dec 14, 2023 | Townhall Article, Uncategorized |
TownhallIn 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 Movers declined, which precipitated the EEOC’s...
by Bob Barr | Nov 20, 2023 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily CallerIn 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 few companies that improperly directed their...
by Bob Barr | Nov 16, 2023 | Townhall Article |
TownhallBefore 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 significantly; with the latter being a predicament that...
