by Bob Barr | Mar 28, 2023 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller Inflation has hit the corporate extortion market, for sure. Recent studies estimate that corporate America has been shamed into spending between $83 and $340 billion on various racial causes including Black Lives Matter (BLM) and related entities since the massive (“mostly peaceful”) riots protesting the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers in 2020. BLM has made Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, who reigned supreme as kings of the corporate shakedown movement from the 1980s into the early 2000s, look like amateurs. In its analysis of the BLM shakedown record, the Claremont Institute for the American Way of Life, compiled a lengthy and well-documented database of more than 400 companies that have made pledges and contributions to numerous entities and causes favored, if not demanded by BLM. The list is quite interesting in what it reveals about the spending priorities of major U.S. corporations and other organizations. For example: The three major sports associations – the National Basketball Association, Major League Baseball, and the National Football League — together anted up $700 million. No wonder ticket prices to attend their events are so expensive.Insurance companies are among the biggest spenders, with New York Life Insurance alone spending $1 billion, and Northwestern Mutual and State Farm each throwing in a cool $100 million.Uber, a company that has yet to turn a profit, is down for $61.0 million.Not surprisingly, Starbucks coffee is in the elite category of billion-plus pledgers, with more than $1.6 billion thrown into the pot.Tik Tok, much in the news these days, pledged $4.0 million to the cause.Silicon Valley Bank, which just enjoyed a...
by Bob Barr | Mar 21, 2023 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller Without even waiting to see if the New York City District Attorney’s office issues an indictment against former President Donald Trump, House Republicans, led by Speaker Kevin McCarthy, made a complex situation even more complicated by calling for investigations of prosecutor Alvin Bragg to determine “if federal funds are being used to subvert our democracy by interfering in elections with politically motivated prosecutions.” Even as the GOP denounced Bragg’s anticipated indictment as a “weaponization” of prosecutorial power, House Democrats levelled precisely the same charge at McCarthy for “weaponizing” the investigatory powers available to the new Republican majority. This exercise in dueling weaponizations is not good for the country, for the reputation of the Congress (already at an anemic 18 percent), or for the GOP, which has been struggling to articulate a substantive agenda with which to widen its majority in the 2024 election cycle. None of this is to disagree with the Republican criticism of what the New York D.A. is doing, which may indeed turn out to be a politically motivated prosecution, but neither I nor McCarthy have seen the evidence presented to the Big Apple grand jury. If it returns an indictment of Trump, the burden will be on Bragg to show the public – and eventually a judge and jury – that the charges are based on solid evidence reflective of serious public interest. If Bragg fails in this task, he will have only boosted Trump’s image as a victim and destroyer of the Establishment. But, jumping to the conclusion that the still-unrevealed indictment is not only without substantive merit but also somehow rendered in violation of federal laws as would...
by Bob Barr | Mar 14, 2023 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller While there is no definitive, scientific definition of “Generation Z,” or “Zoomers” as they also are known, in general they share much in common with what in the last decade of the 20th century became known as “Snowflakes” — individuals who are overly sensitive, timid, and self-centered. In contradistinction to this timorous façade, however, the sense of Snowflakes’ high self-worth leads them often to be extremely intolerant, mean and nasty, especially when in a group. Emory University English Professor Mark Bauerlein noted this in The Dumbest Generation Grows Up, his most recent book analyzing today’s young adults who, while being led to consider their internet-filled lives a path to “utopia,” morph into a “fury” when threatened with ideas and circumstances not in accord with their worldview. This Snowflake fury was on display just last week at Stanford University Law School, when a federal appeals court judge, who had been invited by the Federalist Society to speak at Stanford Law School, was rudely heckled by students upset that he did not share the disrupters’ views on abortion, the Second Amendment, and other controversial topics. Unlike other similar disruptive scenarios, the Stanford wannabe lawyer-hecklers were egged on by one of the law school’s top administrators – the associate dean responsible for ensuring “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” Once the heckling and calls for the “racist” judge to shut up began, this “adult” in the room, Associate Dean Tirien Steinbach, usurped the lectern reserved for the speaker and bloviated at length about how the mere presence of such a jurist was “threatening” to her and some of the students in the room. “Threatening,” indeed, simply to...
by Bob Barr | Mar 7, 2023 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller In a 46-page opinion ordering the national and state-level powerlifting organizations to allow men who have “transitioned” to female to compete as women, a Minnesota judge illustrates everything one needs to know about the contemporary leftist culture, which elevates subjective feelings above objective, scientific fact. The controversy between transgendered female powerlifter JayCee Cooper (nee, Joel Cooper, a biological male) had been percolating for some five years when, on Feb. 28th, Minnesota District Judge Patrick Diamond ordered USA Powerlifting and Powerlifting Minnesota to change their policies prohibiting participants born as male from competing as women, and to permit Cooper, who “in 2015 or 2016” had begun “a process of transitioning to a female identity,” to compete as a female. At its core, the judge’s ruling reflects the contemporary, liberal notion that the science of biology has no place regarding an individual’s “sexual orientation” to determine either their legal rights (in this instance, pursuant to the Minnesota Human Rights Act), or their rights to participate in organized sports. To Judge Diamond, all that matters is the individual’s “self-identity.” Thus, it matters not a whit what “sex” appears on an individual’s birth certificate – the document might as well no longer carry any significance. The only factor that, in this case a sporting organization, may legally employ to decide the category in which a member may compete, is what the individual “self-declares” at the time they wish to compete. The statutory underpinning for the court’s order is the Minnesota Human Rights Act, which defines “sexual orientation” as a person “having or being perceived as having a self-image or identity not traditionally associated with one’s...
by Bob Barr | Feb 21, 2023 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller British and American sensitivities were properly offended when, in 1989, Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa or death sentence against author Salman Rushdie for the religious content of his novel, “The Satanic Verses.” Now, three decades later, British publisher Puffin Books has engaged in a similar, though less pernicious course of action against author Roald Dahl. Dahl’s sin, as it were, seems to be certain adverbs and adjectives used in his books, including “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” that in the woke publisher’s pinched perspective, might offend readers too immature to recognize the now-stricken words are simply descriptors in a work of fiction. For example, in a news account of this absurdity, the character named Augustus Gloop, has morphed from being “enormously fat” (Dahl’s words) into simply, “enormous” – “enormous” in what sense is left unanswered, but this omission apparently is deemed a worthy price to protect readers from the agony of learning that an individual in a fictional work was very “fat.” Authors employ words – especially adverbs and adjectives – to impart to the reader what they cannot see except in their mind’s eye, which is after all, the whole point of reading a book, as opposed to watching a film or a television show. One might, however, worry that in future films of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” Mr. Gloop will be photo-shopped into a more lithe, even perhaps dare I say, “skinny” character, in order to protect viewers being triggered by the sight of an “enormously fat” screen actor or cartoon character. Where, indeed, will this nonsense end? Consider, in the same vein as the de-fattening...
by Bob Barr | Feb 7, 2023 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller First things first. The Biden administration is weak, ineffective, and indecisive in its handling of America’s foreign and national security affairs. Based on its record so far, it would be easy, and likely accurate, to conclude that in handling the Great China Spy Balloon Caper of 2023, Team Biden showed itself to be weak, ineffective, and indecisive. Simply criticizing the administration for failing to shoot down the Chinese balloon earlier during the course of the wind-borne vehicle’s leisurely trek across America, however, misses important policy aspects of this episode. First, we do not know everything about the capabilities, intent, and purpose(s) behind either the Chinese operators of the clumsy balloon and its clunky cargo, or of precisely what our country’s capabilities were or are in defending against and neutralizing whatever threat it posed. Figuring out why China’s communist leaders do what they do, is no easier than deciphering decision-making inside the Kremlin, which, as Winston Churchill said, is “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” Did Beijing send this almost amateurish balloon device cruising over our sovereign territory simply to see what we would do? Was it actually equipped with listening devices of sufficient capability to pick up communications that are not collectable by other means, notably, satellites? Was China’s President Xi Jinping hoping that the Americans would take action to neutralize its capabilities in order to gauge our jamming abilities? Was it a ploy to accomplish a diplomatic goal, having no real intelligence purpose at the outset? What actually did our defense and intelligence agencies know about the balloon, and what in fact did we do...
