by Bob Barr | Sep 20, 2022 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily CallerWith a huge public workforce, high unemployment, and an energy sector plagued with recurrent Third World-style blackouts, is Puerto Rico a sign of things to come for the United States mainland?The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico is an “unincorporated territory” of the United States whose 3.2 million citizens enjoy U.S. citizenship. To be fair, the island suffers from weather and geography problems not of its own making. It lies in the path of tropical storms and hurricanes that periodically cause widespread damage, such as Hurricane Fiona which crossed the island last Sunday. The Commonwealth’s problems, however, extend beyond geography and weather. Even before Fiona hit, the entire island had been without electricity. Some areas had not fully recovered from a previous island-wide blackout in 2017. The electricity situation has become so notoriously bad that one of Puerto Rico’s internationally known singers, Bad Bunny, included complaints about his homeland’s energy failings in a recent music video.Not only are Puerto Rico’s outdated and poorly maintained power plants constantly vulnerable to storms, but also to what has become almost a regular occurrence – fires caused by faulty equipment. Whatever the cause, of course, power outages have a ripple effect that cuts off water to homes, businesses, schools, and hospitals; in turn leading to serious economic and health concerns. As with issues faced by Americans on the mainland, shoveling more taxpayer dollars at problems does not necessarily result in better quality of services or products. In recent years, because of the devastation caused by Puerto Rico’s constantly failing electrical grid system, billion of dollars have flowed from the mainland to the island for the express purpose of fixing the...
by Bob Barr | Sep 14, 2022 | Townhall Article |
TownhallIn the now-distant past, the top priorities for the Democrat Party reflected views held by many middle- and working-class Americans, and included health insurance, higher wages, and support for public education. That once moderate set of priorities has now morphed into an agenda more at home in a European socialist country than middle America.Today’s Democrat Party is in love with abortion and at war with the Second Amendment. With regard to both guns and abortion, Democrats often have employed direct means of accomplishing their goals of unlimited abortion and very limited Second Amendment rights – appropriations riders, legislation, and executive actions. But they also exhibit no hesitancy in using sneaky and indirect methods to get what they want. In recent years, two of the Left’s favored tools with which to push their radical agenda are retirement funds and restrictions on financial institutions. Both avenues are being pursued currently as ways to limit Second Amendment rights.Retirement funds, especially those into which members of favored liberal interest groups have paid dues for many years, control hundreds of billions of dollars, which can and are being invested to directly support liberal causes. Also, and more cleverly, Democrats have seized on the fact that individuals who manage these vast pools of money can in turn pressure financial institutions, including credit card companies, to do their bidding. And, when individuals wielding that power over public employee pension funds are government officials, such as New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, their wishes can be especially persuasive.Gun control has become a primary arena in which the Left is using control of large employee pension funds to push its political agenda. Their...
by Bob Barr | Sep 12, 2022 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily CallerStudents of theoretical physics are familiar with the principle that if matter and antimatter come into contact, both are instantly annihilated.Political discourse in 21st Century America has become so toxic and polarized that it has come to resemble the realm of quantum physics, with little — if any — room for agreement or even civil discourse. Both sides — the Republican and the Democrat — cannot coexist without destroying each other or reducing each other’s ideas and policies to shambles.As we enter the final stretch of the 2022 midterm elections and the starting gate for the 2024 presidential campaigns, it has become clear to everyone except the most diehard Pollyanna that every major public policy issue — including guns, abortion, immigration, energy, and others — is being played out on a “zero sum” game-board. Any oxygen that might otherwise sustain civil debate or compromise has been sucked out.Consider abortion. Since the Supreme Court declared this past summer that the 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade was constitutionally defective, and that henceforth abortion access would be considered an issue for citizens of individual states to decide, the debate has become so white-hot, that for abortion advocates no tactic is off limits — even violence against individual Supreme Court justices. Such actions, while not explicitly endorsed by Democrat Party leaders, enjoy implicit support from many of them.The issue of Second Amendment rights, always a hotly debated issue in the political arena and the media, remains similarly devoid of compromise. Virtually every incident involving a murder, such the killing of two sheriff’s deputies attempting to serve a warrant in suburban Atlanta last week,...
