by Bob Barr | Sep 22, 2021 | Townhall Article |
Townhall As Charles Dickens wrote many years ago, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” Oh, how true it is today, as we watch Western culture crumble around us — toddlers being forcefully removed from airplanes for not wearing a mask, as Hollywood celebrities and socialist U.S. Representatives gleefully hobnob without such encumbrances. A time when a California mayor decries the “fun police” even as real police crack the skulls of those commoners who defy her mask orders. To label this the age of foolishness would be a gross understatement. Americans already were close to a boiling point over vexatious COVID mandates and rules, but last week’s flagrant parading of Leftist Elites’ disdain for the same rules may turn out to be the final straw. When caught violating her own rules, San Francisco Mayor London Breed’s response was precisely what you would expect of someone not only oblivious to her hypocrisy, but resentful of being publicly outed for it. People are tired of being told to “follow the science” or “do our part,” when such diktat clearly serves as a smokescreen for policies that directly contradict the science, or to protect elites who have no interest in sharing the burden with the rest of us. Then again, as I wrote recently, it was never about science or sacrifice for Democrats. They have their pandemic, and we have ours, each with its set of very distinct — and very different — rules. It is and always has been about control, and it is hardly a new phenomenon. Hollywood elites have long lectured us about global warming all...
by Bob Barr | Sep 15, 2021 | Townhall Article |
Townhall Always lurking inside gargantuan pieces of legislation like the $3.5 trillion spending bill President Biden wants congressional Democrats to send to him, are dangers far worse than the dollar price tag. Such bills invariably include measures that give to government powers it neither deserves nor to which it is entitled, and which wind up costing citizens dearly in loss of privacy and other freedoms. Currently, it is the IRS salivating at the thought of gaining even greater power than it already enjoys to snoop into taxpayers’ private financial records. If in fact the tax agency gets what Biden wants to give it, the IRS will have before it any individual’s financial accounts with gross inflows and outflows of more than $600 (that’s just six hundred dollars, not six thousand). The federal government’s power to monitor financial transactions is already vast, but apparently not enough for the folks at the IRS. Thanks to Uncle Sam’s half-century old War on Drugs, and its junior partner, the 20-year-old War on Terror, the Treasury Department, of which IRS is a part, has the power already to monitor virtually all cash transactions of $10,000 or more. Moreover, if an individual tries to evade such reporting requirements by breaking the total amount into smaller packages, that is itself a federal felony (called “structuring”). Figuring out whether a taxpayer has crossed the line from lawful financial activities to illegal financial transactions like “structuring,” however, has been difficult for the IRS. Americans for Tax Reform, a non-partisan, Washington, D.C.-based non-profit discovered that only eight percent of the IRS Criminal Investigation Division’s investigations into allegations of structuring uncovered actual violations...
by Bob Barr | Sep 8, 2021 | Townhall Article |
Townhall New Orleans, and the state of Louisiana of which the city is a part, does not have a global warming problem. It has a political-cultural problem that not only resists progress, but appears to revel in doing so. The state is captive to a crony political system that has changed little since the days of Huey Long in the 1930s. Now, after Hurricane Ida’s visit, federal taxpayers once again will be on the hook for the Pelican State’s failure to prepare. If Hurricane Katrina in 2005 was supposed to have been a wakeup call for the Crescent City, its leaders refused to answer the phone. On August 29, Hurricane Ida ripped past the city, taking out critical electrical grid infrastructure that plunged the entire city into darkness (some areas remain without electricity even now). Despite having failed repeatedly over the years to upgrade their power system to standards beyond those of the 1970s, government officials and energy company representatives continue to blame the “unforeseeable” ferocity of the storm for the extensive damage it caused to the power grid. In New Orleans, “unforeseeable” means “eyes closed.” Louisiana’s deplorable infrastructure is neither a time issue, nor a money one. The same officials responsible for lagging infrastructure upgrades will be the first lining up to beg Uncle Sam for billions in taxpayer relief. Of course, this plea is more like a strong-arm ransom. Presidents and members of Congress know that refusing, or even hesitating to open the federal checkbook will incur calls of racism (as happened during the Katrina relief effort 15 years before). Billions will be spent; billions will...
by Bob Barr | Sep 1, 2021 | Townhall Article |
Townhall Gender unicorns. “Social justice” physics. Math and reading skills deemed no longer necessary. College grads multiple thousands of dollars in debt but unemployable in the marketplace. America’s once world-class education system is crumbling around us, rotting from within. Measured by money spent, our education system should be working magnificently. At more than $14,000 per student, the U.S. spends the fifth-most of any country in the world educating children, in a highly managed system overseen by officials from local school boards to the presidential cabinet. Despite all this – actually because of it – the return on our investment in education has never been worse. Decades ago, liberals realized educational institutions were a crucial tool by which to push their radical agenda into American culture; first covertly, but now openly, even proudly. The result is a system far less concerned with the actual, objective education of students, than with consolidating power by the adults who oversee it. Students suffer, but teachers’ unions, public school officials, bureaucrats at all levels of government, and well-funded special interest groups gain ever greater control. Students barely able to read and write are being taught about gender unicorns. White students are demeaned as being “racist” simply for being white. All the while, students are being emotionally scarred and taught to be afraid of everything around them, thanks to masking mandates, social distancing, plexiglass barriers, and constant “active shooter” drills. Sadly, private schools are not immune to these destructive shenanigans. As John Sailer writes at City Journal, plans by a Washington, D.C. private school for “anti-racist” education includes “discussions of social justice such as kneeling during the national anthem, Title...
by Bob Barr | Aug 25, 2021 | Townhall Article |
Townhall Underlying virtually every policy of the Left is the notion that, with enough laws, society will be ordered, and that from order will emerge safety, security, and happiness. The problem is, the well-ordered utopia long sought by leftists over the centuries, including our own, is a pipe dream that always comes at the cost of individual freedom. Still, social engineers from Washington, DC to Canberra, Australia continue their drive to force socialism upon us. The continuing COVID-19 pandemic has provided an endless supply of excuses for Big Brothers of all stripes to find new ways to control our lives – a situation that in many respects is worse than the virus itself – and the results can be bizarre. In Australia, for example, government officials are shooting rescue dogs as a way of preventing people from traveling during COVID to adopt them. Closer to home, elementary school children in districts across America are being forced to wear masks (even outdoors) that restrict their own breathing, despite the overwhelming data that the COVID risk facing these youngsters is virtually nil. The illusion of ordered safety has come to trump facts, common sense, and even basic human decency. Over the course of our nearly two-year long COVID journey, we have moved from temporary measures designed to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed, to myriad legal mandates and economic restrictions wielded, rescinded, and then reimposed by public officials whenever they feel the situation warrants. It is only our Constitution — and the fact that there remain Americans who still understand and defend its guarantees of individual liberty — that has thus far...
by Bob Barr | Aug 18, 2021 | Townhall Article |
Townhall Like most Americans, the debacle surrounding the fall of Afghanistan’s capital city to the Taliban caused me great concern. In fact, we are witnessing failures of leadership decision-making and foreign intelligence analysis worse than any in modern history; certainly, worse than the failures that lead to the terrorist attacks of 9/11. To a degree, this conclusion is based on my personal experiences of having lived in that part of the world in my youth (I graduated from high school in Tehran, for example), having worked at the CIA for eight years in the 1970s, and having served in the Congress before, during, and after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Even without this background, however, the many negative short and long-term ramifications of this debacle cannot be overestimated. Broadly speaking, there is more than enough blame to go around leading to the dismal situation in Afghanistan that President Biden inherited on January 20th, including mistakes by all three of his immediate predecessors (one Democrat and two Republican). But the final series of decisions – or non-decisions – leading directly to this fiasco, were made by this administration, and efforts by Biden to shift blame to others is an act of cowardice. The lenses through which this administration viewed events in Afghanistan were deep rose-colored. This caused them to overlook the otherwise obvious weaknesses in both the Afghan military and its civilian government. They persisted in the narrative that the fall of Kabul to the Taliban was only a “possibility,” and certainly not an “inevitability.” Even worse, they concluded that this possibility was months away, and therefore we had adequate time to arrange...
