by Bob Barr | Nov 3, 2022 | Townhall Article |
Townhall According to recent media accounts, scientists in China have developed “high-tech” face masks that warn the individual wearing the mask that they have come into contact with the dreaded coronavirus. This is but the most recent chapter in the now nearly three-year long global overreaction to COVID-19. It is also perhaps one of the silliest, even though it presents interesting future applications. Chinese researchers proudly claim that the masks not only will alert the wearer if he or she is in the presence of airborne coronavirus pathogens, but will likewise warn the individual if nearby swine flu or bird flu particles pose an imminent danger. The state-of-the-art masks, however, have one serious drawback – it takes 10 minutes for the mask to alert the wearer’s cell phone app that they are in the presence of the dread, disease-bearing molecules. The mask’s developers, however, “hope to shorten the detection time” even as they work to enable the detection mechanisms in the mask to alert to other “health conditions including cancers and cardiovascular diseases.” While the scientists working on this project convey great hope for the future of such high-tech masks, there remain significant questions about the usefulness of the devices. For example, if you are wearing one of these masks in the future, it is unclear what would be the benefit of alerting you that you are near someone with cancer or heart failure (other than perhaps to console them). Still, the mere idea that wearing a high-tech mask can allow you to take swift (or not-yet-so-swift) evasive action to avoid dangerously long exposure to a virus or other ailment, is an...
by Bob Barr | Oct 27, 2022 | Townhall Article |
Townhall Do economic problems experienced by Americans, such as recurring food shortages and projected rationing of heating oil in northeastern states this winter, mean that the United States has slipped to “Third World Country” status? Not really. The U.S. remains a strong country with a highly developed and stable economic system. The problems we have been experiencing in recent years, however, represent a deeper, and in many respects more serious problem than being or becoming a Third World Country. The United States is slipping into the uncharted territory of a highly developed country that is losing the basic bonds of civil society that protect it from degenerating into chaos. The signs of this descent are everywhere, though the extreme politically partisan lenses through which many Americans view public policy hamper their ability or willingness to see it. In no respect is this troubling phenomenon more obvious than the recurring images of individuals committing acts of senseless violence against strangers. While we regularly see also acts of robbery and rampant shoplifting, it is the images of people being pushed onto New York subway tracks or thugs beating up elderly passers by on city streets, that most starkly remind us – or should remind us – that something dark and alarming is happening in our society. Stealing from another person or business as a means of gaining something the perpetrator could not otherwise obtain or afford, is neither a new problem nor one unique to our country or time. Organized shoplifting, or stealing to show off the perpetrator’s “chops” on social media, however, represents a newer problem – one that is far more difficult to...
by Bob Barr | Oct 19, 2022 | Townhall Article |
Townhall Drivers here in the United States had better get ready for federal mandates that will enable government to prevent cars from exceeding the speed limit in real time. This move has been a long time coming, and it is very real. The federal government first became rally serious about regulating the cars we drive in the late 1960s with the passage of legislation containing the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS), and the creation of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). Uncle Sam’s obsession with motor vehicle “safety” shifted into high gear in 1970 with the establishment of one of the Nanny State’s favorite offspring, the National Highway Traffic Administration (NHTSA). Now, a half century later, with a toolbox that includes GPS and communications technology light-years ahead of that which first powered the Apollo astronauts to the moon in 1969, Washington is gearing up to mandate both drunk-driving and speeding “kill switches” in passenger vehicles. For this “life-saving” mission, the NHTSA and the NTSB, with a combined budget of more than $1.0 billion and a cadre of many hundreds of true believers, are upping pressure on car makers to install what it euphemistically calls “Intelligent Speed Adaptation” (ISA) systems. While mandates such as those that prevent a vehicle from being driven if the driver is intoxicated are not quite ready for prime time, as I wrote back in November 2021, requirements for such devices already are locked into federal law. Right now, apparently responding to pressure from Washington, New York is implementing a program to test “speed limiter technology” on its fleet of city-owned vehicles. Outfitting vehicles with what Gotham’s...
by Bob Barr | Oct 12, 2022 | Townhall Article |
Townhall Since America’s founding, an “enlightened” and “educated” citizenry has been considered essential for our representative democracy to function as intended. Our 35th President, John Kennedy, put it correctly in 1963, when he stated that, “[n]o country can possibly move ahead, no free society can possibly be sustained, unless it has an educated citizenry.” Sadly today, education in the United States is in a truly dismal condition. The government-mandated move to remote learning in response to the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic is a significant factor underlying what are by any objective measure, rotten academic results for our nation’s children in public schools. This trend, however, predates the pandemic and persists today despite nearly $190 billion in federal money having been directed at overcoming the disastrous effects of that remote learning debacle. A study released last month by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) showed clearly that remote learning was a disaster for students attending America’s public schools. According to the findings of this non-partisan organization, student achievement in the key group surveyed – 9 year-olds – fell significantly in both math and reading; in reading by the largest margin in more than three decades. The NAEP study noted that there had been a gradual but important increase in math and reading skills since the 1970s. However, those gains were shown to have levelled off over the past decade, and then dropped precipitously in the wake of the “unmitigated disaster” of COVID-mandated remote learning, especially for minority students. The sorry state of education achievement in our country cannot be blamed entirely on the COVID lockdowns. In Illinois, for example, in 2019, the year...
by Bob Barr | Oct 5, 2022 | Townhall Article |
Townhall Imagine this. An automobile manufacturer adds a turbocharger to the engine of a passenger car as a way to increase the vehicle’s acceleration. Nanny State bureaucrats at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration decide that the turbocharger makes a vehicle to which it is attached go too fast, which renders it “unsafe.” The agency decides that the simplest way to address its concern is to include within the definition of an “automobile” a “turbocharger,” which the agency then can outlaw as an “unsafe motor vehicle.” “Nonsense,” you say – a car “part” is not a “car,” right? Correct, yet that is precisely what the United States Department of Justice did in 2018 when it deemed by regulatory re-write, that an accessory that could be attached to a rifle to make it fire faster – a “bump stock” – was in fact and by law, a “machine gun” and therefore unlawful to be owned or possessed by individuals. Thus, by regulatory fiat a piece of plastic, which is all a bump stock is, becomes a “machine gun” for purposes of federal law. Despite the absurdity of this regulatory maneuver, the Supreme Court on Monday once again declined to hear arguments in cases challenging the constitutionality of the government’s bump stock redefinition. The Court should have heard arguments in the case, to enable a majority of justices a way to declare such regulatory legerdemain is a constitutionally impermissible exercise of legislative power by the Executive Branch (aside from it being an example of absurd legal reasoning that no president should get away with). While gun control advocates, including the Biden administration which...
by Bob Barr | Sep 28, 2022 | Townhall Article |
Townhall There is a noticeable trend among young adults to postpone having children, not just for years but, in many cases, permanently. The long-term repercussions of such a movement for our country, will be significant and in many ways negative. Among the factors accounting for this trend are “green” extremism and the toxicity which has so deeply affected the current political environment. Does the visceral dislike Republicans hold for Democrats, and vice versa, extend to marriage; to bearing children? Do other political factors, chief among them extreme fear of climate change, impact such vital personal relationships? The answer to both queries appears to be “yes.” At the extreme, beginning in 2006, there has developed a movement to deliberately de-populate the planet by refusing to have children – “anti-natalism.” There even have sprung up umbrella organizations such as “Antinatalism International” and the “Voluntary Human Extinction Movement” to provide structure and publicity. To be honest, I had not come across the term “anti-natalism” until noting mention of it recently in an article about the degree to which fear of climate change was causing individuals to alter their lifestyles, including deciding not to have children. On further investigation, I discovered it appears already to have enticed several celebrities to advocate on its behalf, even if only indirectly. Perhaps foremost among those with celebrity status who have come to question the morality of having children, is New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who, as far back as 2019, posed the question to whoever might have been listening, “ Is it okay to still have children?” because of what she viewed as the accelerating ravages of climate change. That same year,...
