by Bob Barr | Jul 8, 2020 | Townhall Article |
Townhall.com For years, American cities run by Democrat mayors and city councils have been beset by serious fiscal problems. Now, however, these “blue” cities are reaping a far more tragic harvest of the mismanagement they have sown – violence and death. What transpired in Atlanta over the July 4th weekend was sadly predictable, except that is, to the city’s mayor.At this critical juncture, Atlanta’s police department has a leadership vacuum, with the former chief having stepped down immediately following the death of civilian Rayshard Brooks at a local Wendy’s on June 12th. For the past month, armed thugs have been patrolling a number of streets in Atlanta and adjacent areas without fear of arrest. Meanwhile, Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms dithered and preened before the media, hoping to elevate herself in Biden’s not-so-discreet search for an African American female running mate. Last Saturday, on a day most Americans were celebrating our nation’s founding, eight-year-old Atlantan Secoriea Turner paid the price for living in a city void of leadership. The child was fatally shot while was riding in a car driven by her mother who was simply trying to go around a barricade erected unlawfully on a public street by armed thugs.Mayor Lance Bottoms publicly condemned the shooting, but pointedly refused to accept any responsibility for having created the circumstances that allowed the tragedy to occur in the first place. In failing to accept responsibility, Atlanta’s mayor was following in the footsteps of other mayors whose leadership lethargy has led to violence in the cities over which they exercise power, including Seattle, Minneapolis, New York, and elsewhere. After-the-fact, self-serving recriminations by these mayors ring...
by Bob Barr | Jul 1, 2020 | Uncategorized |
Townhall.com Donald Trump should delete his Twitter account. He does not need it and it does him more harm than good; continuing to use it only improves the bottom-line for Twitter’s liberal CEO and boosts the credibility of the popular but left-leaning platform.Granted, Twitter is widely used, with more than 150 million active users each day, but is anyone who converses via Twitter really going to change their political views as a result? Some users may turn to Twitter to get their news; but face it, if someone is so shallow as to consider Twitter their news source, it is highly unlikely they would ever vote for Trump or any candidate with similar views. Twitters-gone-wrong can range from inconsequential typos, to real damage; such as the fallout from the President re-tweeting a video this past weekend that contained footage of a Trump supporter shouting “white power” at Black Lives Matter protestors.Some Trump supporters may argue that Twitter is one of the only channels through which Americans can hear from the President directly, without being filtered through the biased lens of the mainstream media. This is not the case, and definitely not a reason to continue using Twitter. The President is the most powerful person in the world, with access to every conceivable communications medium and resource. He can communicate with whomever he wants and whenever he wants — whether to one person or millions. Donald Trump does not need Twitter. In fact, Twitter needs him more than he needs Twitter. Continuing to patronize the site is actually hurting him. Credible polling shows that Trump’s combative tone on Twitter is costing him support among white,...
by Bob Barr | Jun 29, 2020 | Uncategorized |
Daily Caller In 2008, Mark Bauerlein wrote “The Dumbest Generation, How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future.” Judging by events in the intervening dozen years (and especially in recent months), it appears that Bauerlein’s assessment was premature and perhaps even too kind.Bauerlein correctly identified overreliance on the internet and social media (then still in its infancy) as the primary culprits for Millennials losing their ability to think, learn and communicate coherently. What his analysis perhaps did not anticipate is the number of adults who have come to encourage, empower and support Millennials in these efforts. It is almost as if adults in government, the news media and academia are competing with Millennials for the title.Consider, for example, the issue of providing college students with “safe spaces,” where they can shelter from the horrors of people, ideas and principles they consider “offensive.” The students may be the ones pushing for these accommodations, but it is the adult college administrators who cave in and make it happen.Young protestors in Seattle may “occupy” a sector of that once-respected city; they may scream “police brutality” and call for the police department to be “defunded.” Their demands, however, would amount to little were it not for the city’s clueless Mayor Jenny Durken, who lauded the young occupiers as “patriots,” and her namby-pamby police chief, Carmen Best, who decided that barricades which had protected one of her department’s precinct headquarters should be removed as a “gesture of trust” to the mob.While adult elected enablers of today’s young mobs predominate in west coast cities such as Portland, Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles, counterparts are found...
