by Bob Barr | May 23, 2023 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller In 1962, the BBC launched a political comedy show called That Was The Week That Was (“TW3”). While the show ran for only two seasons (cancelled in 1964 for fear it would impact that year’s British elections), it spawned a similarly titled but also short-lived television show in the U.S. that focused on political satire. Over just the past several days, the Left has provided us with more than sufficient satire to fill an hour-long TW3 show, not even counting the ongoing physical and mental bloopers by President Biden. The New York City Council led the most recent comedic parade when it passed a measure adding “weight discrimination” to the city’s growing list of factors that employers and others may not consider in making business or other decisions. The legislation has been sent to Mayor Eric Adams, who himself had written a book in 2020 recounting his journey losing 35 pounds on a “plant-based diet.” While illegal immigration and subway crime continue to plague the Big Apple, the city’s elected leaders apparently have concluded that “fat shaming” is a more serious and immediate problem; a position echoed by the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (NAAFA) – an actual nonprofit advocacy group, not an organization created for a satire program. It should be noted that New York is no Johnny-Come-Lately to such Nanny State-ism. In late 2015, for example, the city adopted “guidelines” banning the “misgendering” of individuals. Given its history of woke-ism, it is a virtual certainty that New York City will continue to provide material for many future editions of TW3. On the west coast, San Francisco’s always entertaining city council joined its east-coast counterpart when it announced...
by Bob Barr | May 17, 2023 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller Last week, the GOP-controlled House Oversight Committee publicly outlined a series of financial transactions possibly implicating various Biden family members in corrupt financial dealings involving millions of dollars. What the American public does not realize is that the information uncovered and made public by the committee, came primarily from what are known as Suspicious Activity Reports or “SARs.” These reports are secret and are routinely filed against private citizens by banks and other financial entities (including casinos and mortgage brokers) as mandated by federal law. The grounds on which each SAR is filed can be for something as significant as a large international wire transfer, or as mundane as a deposit of a cashier’s check or cash by a bank customer who just sold an automobile and simply wants to place the money in their account. The bank customer will almost never know that such a report has been filed with Uncle Sam, because under the 1970 law that created SARs the financial institution is prohibited from informing the customer. SARs forms have been modified over the past half century, but still require all employees of financial institutions to file a report whenever they consider that a customer’s transaction has “raised suspicion.” While neither the SAR itself nor the SAR Instructions explain in detail what constitutes a legal basis on which to conclude that a customer’s activity is sufficiently “suspicious” to warrant filing a SAR, the sweep of the law is extremely broad. Federal law requires, for example, that any transaction of $5,000 or more must be reported via a SAR whenever the bank employee concludes it “has no business or apparent...
by Bob Barr | May 9, 2023 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller In 1989, the mega-band Queen sang, “I want it all, and I want it now” – a refrain that perfectly captures the latest budget request sent to the Congress by Lina Khan, President Biden’s top regulator at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The request, sent just last month, seeks a whopping 37% budget increase for the coming 2024 fiscal year. The $160 million increase over last year’s budget is undeserved and unjustified, and should be swiftly deep-sixed by Congress. The FTC Chair, long a critic of big businesses, disingenuously recited in her budget request cover letter that the additional taxpayer money was needed so the regulatory agency could “continue to meet the ongoing challenges of its mission to protect consumers and promote competition.” In fact, the FTC under Biden has been moving in the exact opposite direction. This was made clear recently when the Commission’s leadership moved away from four decades of operating by legal consensus and rescinded an existing, fundamental policy statement that had affirmed the “consumer welfare standard” as the litmus test for whether federal action against companies is or is not warranted. As noted recently by former U.S. Sen. Scott Brown, the consumer welfare standard has been the “guiding principle” of federal antitrust policy for more than 40 years, reflecting the view that the government should intervene in the marketplace only if the consumer is being harmed. The American people got a firsthand look into the FTC’s new operational standards recently, when the commission appeared to target Elon Musk for disclosing how Twitter’s former leadership colluded with Uncle Sam to restrict and censor Americans’ speech. The Commission issued Musk a subpoena to divulge his communications with...
by Bob Barr | May 4, 2023 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller Calls for a national police force — a concept deeply in conflict with our very form of constitutional governance — are becoming, if not commonplace, more troublingly recurrent. Of particular concern is the idea that America needs such a force not to defend against widespread lawlessness, but rather to defend against the ideology reflected in what the Left describes as “MAGA.” The real target of this movement is in fact political conservatism. A recent essay by Steven Simon and Jonathan Stevenson published on April 21st as a “Big Idea” in Politico, strongly suggests such a move. The main title of the piece, “The Threat of Civil Breakdown Is Real,” might appear to the reader who reads no further, as a timely warning against rioting and other mass lawlessness our country has suffered in recent years, including the George Floyd-inspired riots that rocked major cities in 2020. Not so. The subtitle of the Politico essay —“National security officials are still not prepared for a far-right revolt” — makes clear the authors are worried solely about “right-wing” violence. They make no mention, much less express concern about violence-prone groups such as Antifa, Black Lives Matters, or the eco-terrorists opposing construction of a police training center in Atlanta, Georgia. On the other hand, the “Big Idea” is replete with what the authors perceive as the real threats our country faces: “hyperbolic reactions of far-right Republican figures and media commentators”“bellicose conservative agendas”“white supremacist groups”“far-right groups” generally“the MAGA movement”“Radicalized Republicans”“high-powered weapons like the AR-15s” and, of course, “Trump” and “Trumpism” The authors of this call to action lament that the United States, “unlike the United Kingdom … has no...
by Bob Barr | Apr 25, 2023 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller The battle over whether, how, and when to raise the national debt ceiling rages on Capitol Hill and at the White House. While political leaders tussle over the “Big Picture” balance between debt and spending, we must ensure that none of the key elements of our defense budget suffer collateral damage in the confusion. Considering today’s threatening global environment in which we are sending billions of dollars in military munitions to Ukraine in a proxy war with Russia, and as we face an increasing bellicose China in regions from the Taiwan Strait to west Africa, it is more important than ever that no key components of our defense strategy be overlooked or short-changed. The ongoing and complex budget/debt battle creates the “perfect storm” in which defense doves and special interest groups might be able to chip away at certain defense programs. They must not be allowed to succeed, especially when it comes to such often overlooked factors as military logistics and supply lines. While last week’s proposal by Speaker McCarthy to link debt ceiling relief to cuts in several of Biden’s favored spending programs will never be supported in toto by Democrats, budget cuts or caps for some programs may yet emerge as a price those on the other side of the aisle may be willing to accept in return for the overarching goal of increasing the debt ceiling. This is where the details matter. Mid-air refueling capability for our fleet of aircraft rarely makes the evening news. Without it, however, combat readiness and effective warfighting capability come to a standstill, especially in the vast Pacific theater...
by Bob Barr | Apr 17, 2023 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller Growing up in such far-flung locations as Baghdad, Iraq, Lima, Peru, and Tehran, Iran, did not present me and my five siblings with what might be considered a typical, traditional childhood. We overcame the challenges with which we had to cope in those varied environments by employing skills learned from our parents. Probably the most valuable tool in that oft-changing journey was the fact that we were permitted a great deal of freedom and flexibility within which to take risks, exercise judgment, experiment, make mistakes, and eventually, learn; all steps taken long before the advent of the internet and social media. The political environments in which I grew from a third-grader at the only American school in Baghdad in the late 1950s to a senior in an international school in Tehran a decade later, were such that neither Muslim extremism nor violent drug cartels were factors with which we had to deal. Since then, of course, such dangers present themselves in ways that cannot be ignored for Americans living or raising families in many of the countries in which I roamed as a teenager. However, the fundamental skills with which my parents armed me and which allowed me to not only survive but thrive in such diverse settings, are those that still today should be among the most basic that parents should be affording their children. Teaching children to gain, understand, and use knowledge equips them with the power to assess situations they face, assume and assess risks, make reasoned judgments, and undertake courses of conduct that will, more often than not, allow them to mature and...
