by Bob Barr | Sep 28, 2022 | Townhall Article |
TownhallThere 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, Britain’s Prince Harry, now an...
by Bob Barr | Sep 21, 2022 | Townhall Article |
TownhallWith 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 legitimate basis on which...
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 7, 2022 | Townhall Article |
TownhallDespite 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 investigation. Based on already publicly released...
by Bob Barr | Aug 31, 2022 | Townhall Article |
TownhallIn 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 that does not include within it...
by Bob Barr | Aug 24, 2022 | Townhall Article |
TownhallDuring 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 that followed over the next several decades,...
