by Bob Barr | Sep 21, 2022 | Townhall Article |
Townhall With much of the island still without electricity as a result of Hurricane Fiona pummeling Puerto Rico on Sunday, one might think that the Biden administration would be leading an effort to repeal a 1920 federal law that continues to cost the island’s inhabitants dearly for every gallon of petroleum imported into the island, which in turn pushes the cost of most consumer goods far beyond those on the U.S. mainland. The administration, along with a majority of the Congress, however, stubbornly refuses to seriously consider weakening, much less repealing, the Jones Act (also known as the Merchant Marine Act of 1920) as a way to help the island’s 3.2 million inhabitants cope with inflation, high unemployment, and lack of basic necessities.. The Jones Act is best described as the poster child for overtly protectionist legislation that long ago outlived any usefulness it might have provided when signed into law. It was designed to protect the domestic maritime industry against competition from other countries; a goal it has accomplished for more than a century. The law does this by mandating that shipment by water of any goods or cargo between any two U.S. ports must be conducted only by vessels built in the United States and that are at least 75 percent U.S.-owned and crewed. The Jones Act was passed in the aftermath of the First World War, during which America’s maritime fleet had been severely impacted by German submarine attacks, and when our nation’s shipbuilding and cargo carrying capacity was insufficient to meet the needs of the war effort. While national security might at the time have constituted a...
by Bob Barr | Sep 14, 2022 | Townhall Article |
Townhall In 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...
by Bob Barr | Sep 7, 2022 | Townhall Article |
Townhall Despite complaining about being the victim of inappropriate, if not unconstitutional abuse by the courts and the Biden Administration, former President Donald Trump on Monday was gifted a highly unusual, if not unprecedented favor by a federal judge that, at least temporarily halts the investigation into possible criminal mishandling of classified government documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort. As is by now well-known, FBI agents on August 8th conducted a search of the sprawling Florida resort, which includes living quarters used at times by Trump and his family. The agents removed some 22 boxes containing nearly 13,000 documents and other items of evidence from the resort, pursuant to a lawful search warrant signed by a federal magistrate. Ever since then, Trump and his supporters have engaged in a full-court press to convince the country that the FBI search was nothing more than an abusive and partisan action to weaken him as a possible 2024 presidential candidate. Two weeks after the search, Trump’s lawyers filed a motion with the U.S. District Court in West Palm Beach, demanding that the court appoint a “special master” to examine all the seized evidence and determine if any falls within categories otherwise protected against seizure, such as attorney-client communications. On Monday, Judge Aileen Cannon (who Trump nominated for the post shortly before he left office) did just that. Mr. Trump is being afforded extraordinarily preferential treatment, not only by way of the judge directing that an outside party be empowered to review each and every item seized by the FBI, but by the even more unusual step of explicitly suspending the government’s current criminal...
by Bob Barr | Aug 31, 2022 | Townhall Article |
Townhall In the latest “Right Track/Wrong Direction” national poll and the global “Happiness” rating, there is good news and there is bad news. The good news is that the United States is not the unhappiest country on earth (we currently rank #19). The bad news is a significant majority of our citizens (88% according to some estimates) believe we are headed in the wrong direction and pessimistic about turning that trajectory around. A cursory analysis of politics, education, business, law, and pretty much any other sector of contemporary American society reveals why we are such an unhappy place – we are a citizenry afraid. The United States has in recent years morphed from a bold, forward-looking, optimistic, and freedom-based society into one that is driven by fear. Not so much physical fear — although fear of crime is a very real and mounting concern — but rather the sense that people are afraid to openly and honestly communicate or interact with others, insofar as doing so may get them in trouble; in trouble with government regulators and snitches (usually referred to as “whistleblowers”), in trouble with social media, in trouble with co-workers, in other words, everyone out there. Chicken Little would feel right at home in today’s America, because wherever she might turn the proverbial sky is primed and ready to fall. The causes of this pervasive sense of fear and foreboding infecting our society are many, but topping the list would be the rise of social media and the expansion of government regulations (backed up with threats of fines and jail). Query: is there any aspect of a citizen’s daily existence...
by Bob Barr | Aug 24, 2022 | Townhall Article |
Townhall During the Cold War, which lasted for nearly half a century following the end of World War II, the small number of prisoner exchanges between the United States and the Soviet Union were deadly serious affairs. Not so much now. Today, 31 years after the fall of the Soviet Union, there is a potential prisoner swap much in the news that bears no resemblance to the serious manner by which such exchanges took place in the past. In Russia’s corner, you have professional American female basketball player Brittney Griner, who recently pled guilty to the charge of bringing hashish oil into Russia. As a result of her plea, the six-foot, nine-inch player is serving a nine-year sentence in a Russian penal colony. In our corner is Russian citizen Viktor Bout, a notorious Russian arms dealer who, in 2011, was convicted in federal court of conspiring to kill Americans, and is mid-way through his 25-year sentence. In a bizarre twist to the widely publicized potential swap, former NBA star Dennis Rodman this week interjected himself into the thick of it. During the Cold War, such exchanges were taken most seriously at the highest levels in both Washington and Moscow, involving as they almost always did, clandestine espionage activities between the two superpowers. This was the case in the first and most famous of all spy-for-spy swaps — the 1962 deal that returned CIA pilot Francis Gary Powers to America from a Soviet prison and sent convicted Soviet master spy Rudolf Abel from a federal penitentiary to retirement in his native Russia. Negotiations for the Powers-Abel exchange, and the several other swaps...
by Bob Barr | Aug 17, 2022 | Townhall Article |
Townhall With citizens across the country understandably focused on increased rates of urban violent crime, and with local and state law enforcement agencies suffering under manpower shortages, another crime headache could not come at a worse time. This is, however, what law enforcement may be facing in the coming months; and in fact, already is facing in Atlanta, Georgia – the resurgence of eco-terrorism. Just outside the bustling downtown environs of Atlanta, in a still-heavily wooded area known as “Intrenchment Creek Park,” a group of anarchists, environmental extremists, and anti-police activists have declared war on the construction of a new and desperately needed police training facility for the Atlanta Police Department. Breaking with the largely non-violent measures employed in recent years by environmental absolutists, this new generation of “forest defenders” has returned to the violent tactics that characterized the movement decades ago and saw multi-million dollar arson campaigns from Oregon to Colorado and beyond. While the overarching goal of these environmental extremists is claimed to be reducing the “threats” to the environment causing global warming, the group in Atlanta has updated and expanded that mission statement. In a new wrinkle on the environmental focus of these “green defenders,” the still-loose “movement” that has reared its head in Atlanta, claims as part of its mission protecting minority and native American communities against harm allegedly caused by law enforcement and by commercial development (in this case, the construction of a new movie studio in the same area as the police training center). The tactics of these post-2020 anti-police activists, however, are well-known to law enforcement officials who have followed the trail of burned buildings...
