by Bob Barr | Sep 17, 2019 | Uncategorized |
The Daily CallerBoone Pickens, Jr. was well-known to contemporary political and corporate leaders, but likely not so much to today’s millennial generation. This should hardly be considered a surprise, insofar as Pickens pretty much exemplified many characteristic millennials are widely known not to share; especially that he was a consummate risk taker.Although born in Oklahoma, Pickens came to personify the bigness that for generations has defined his adopted state of Texas, where he died last week at the age of 91. Pickens’ ancestry can be traced back to American pioneer hero Daniel Boone; with whom he shared much of the daring that made his forebearer one of our country’s first folk heroes.Pickens’ long and colorful career in business was anything but a straight-line trajectory; in large measure because of deliberate decisions he made throughout his nearly seven decades in the rough and tumble world of energy production.Eschewing a career as a geologist with Phillips Petroleum in the early 1950s, and in a classic entrepreneurial risk-taking move, Pickens started his own drilling company from scratch; a company which became the publicly traded Mesa Petroleum that made him a multi-millionaire.What largely defined this Texan for future generations of business leaders, however, were his decisions in the 1970s and 1980s to engage in a series of so-called “hostile” corporate takeovers of oil companies; not designed to enrich corporate managers but to place more power in the hands of shareholders. To be sure, Pickens’ moves in this regard catapulted him into the rarified atmosphere of those whose net worth was measured in the hundreds of millions of dollars; but the lasting importance of...
by Bob Barr | Sep 11, 2019 | Uncategorized |
Townhall.comThe “public nuisance” legal theory cited recently by an Oklahoma judge as the basis on which to hold a drug manufacturing company liable for opioid abuse in that state, joins other dubious legal and public policy mechanisms as tactics with which the gun control movement aims to achieve its long-desired goal of disarming law-abiding Americans. The movement’s advocates are framing the legal and public debate about gun violence in much the same way as that surrounding the opioid problem – as an “epidemic.” The strategy is the same – driven by fear, not facts. Headlines designed not to educate but rather to stoke emotions are the norm. Language and semantics are employed with little if any regard to accuracy, but with every intent to elicit the public’s fear. Factually, for example, firearm violence is down. Millions of AR-15 style rifles are owned and used safely by millions of law-abiding citizens regularly. Fully automatic firearms still are unlawful except in the hands of the military, law enforcement, or the very few individuals specifically licensed by the federal government to possess them. Regardless of facts such as these, however, the media and Democrat presidential candidates continue to scream that “weapons of war” like the semi-automatic AR-15 rifle — claimed by them to have been designed for the “sole purpose of killing as many people as possible as quickly as possible” — are everywhere and must be banished from every home and business in the country. With histrionics like these, it is no wonder politicians and even judges look to every possible way to “do something”; even if it means using laws on the...
by Bob Barr | Sep 11, 2019 | Uncategorized |
The Daily CallerThe 15-year history of “swatting” should be borne in mind as several states and the federal government accelerate the push for “red flag laws,” also known as “emergency risk protection orders.”It was in 2004 that a new and potentially deadly phenomenon appeared on the American legal landscape. That was the year a 14-year old boy, upset over being spurned in his sexual advances toward a girl, called in a false crime report designed to dispatch a SWAT team to the girl’s family’s home. Since then, there has been a surge in the number of cases in which calls or internet communications to law enforcement units claim that serious — but false — circumstances are about to unfold or have just taken place, which therefore requires immediate and serious law enforcement response against the “swatter’s” targeted victim.The majority of swatting incidents thankfully have not resulted in serious injury or death, but there have been tragic exceptions. In one extreme swatting case in 2017 in Wichita, Kansas, for example, an innocent man was shot dead by a SWAT team responding to a false call from an irate “Call of Duty” player. The case spawned criminal charges against the alleged swatter that have yet to be resolved, but not charges against the police. Other cases have resulted in civilians and police officers being shot as a result of such surprise raids on the homes of unsuspecting victims.Accurate figures on the number of swatting cases occurring each year are difficult to come by, especially since many jurisdictions, including the federal government, do not have explicit “anti-swatting” laws (such measures have been...
