by Bob Barr | Feb 17, 2021 | Townhall Article |
Townhall Next month will mark effectively one-year suffering under the COVID-19 virus. Here is the good, bad, and ugly about what we have learned about ourselves, and our country, when the chips are down. The Good: Free Markets. With the exception of the genuinely unforeseeable panic-buying of paper supplies and disinfectants during COVID’s initial days, the free market did an outstanding job rising to meet spikes in demand. A flurry of new products hit the market, helping to fix product shortages of crucial items. Even breweries and distilleries, crippled by government-mandated closures, stepped up to make hand sanitizer at a time when supplies were strained. Most astoundingly, thanks to advancements in internet broadband technology (the result of keeping government out of the way by Republicans fighting odious regulatory measures like “Net Neutrality”), tens of millions of Americans were able to instantly pivot to “remote” work, saving the economy from certain collapse as government attempted to shut down virtually all in-person business. However, the crowning achieve of the private sector during COVID was its development of COVID vaccines at historic speed, thanks to both technological developments and a demand by the Trump Administration that bureaucrats step out of the way as much as possible. Additionally, the private sector is developing not just vaccines at record speeds, but advanced treatment methods like synthetic monoclonal antibodies as well, which will potentially address new COVID variants far quicker than developing new vaccines – saving countless lives over the years. None of these things would have been possible even a few years ago but are today only through private sector innovation and a push to rollback...
by Bob Barr | Feb 3, 2021 | Townhall Article |
Townhall Once upon a time, stock trading served as a way for businesses to raise capital and for traders to make investments. If companies flourished, stocks rose and investors made money; if not, stocks fell and investors lost money. This was the way the stock market was intended to function. Over time, however, more and more rules and regulations were added, each to address something that at the time was thought necessary to prevent cheating and manipulation. Just like the proverbial “Road to Hell,” Wall Street became paved with regulatory good intentions. Instead of eradicating cheating, manipulation, and fraud every new “rule” or “failsafe” implemented by Congress or government regulators simply created new ways for inside players to game the system. Thus, an event like the “GameStop” phenomenon last week — where the coordinated efforts of a social network group (Reddit’s “WallStreetBets”) drove up the price of GameStop’s stock, thereby costing short-sellers tens of billions of dollars — is both unsurprising and was entirely predictable. The only surprising element was that the new kids on the block (retail investors) quickly turned the tables on the supposed Grand Masters. “Short selling” occurs when an investor borrows stock from a company and immediately sells it, hoping when it is time to buy stock in which to return to the company, the price has gone down resulting in profit for the investor. On the other side, a “short squeeze,” which is what the Reddit group of retail investors instigated last week, involves buying-up stock to drive the price higher, forcing short sellers to abandon their position before taking a potentially astronomical loss....
by Bob Barr | Jan 27, 2021 | Townhall Article |
Townhall Imagine how much more difficult it would have been for America’s Apollo moon landing program to have succeeded as it did so spectacularly in 1969 had NASA scientists been subject to being fired for failing to use the correct pronouns when referring to their colleagues. Worse, consider if in the early 1950s as the world faced the scourge of polio, how many children’s lives would have been lost, if funding for Jonas Salk’s miracle polio vaccine research had been cut because the board of directors for the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis lacked sufficient “diversity.” America and the world would look far different today if “woke” politics were then as they are now. Whereas once America’s exceptionalism could literally take us to the moon and back, today, half a century later, government cannot make even the most basic of decisions without coursing through a long list of regulatory and policy self-checks to ensure its actions will not be perceived as racist, sexist, jingoist, or in any way “triggering” to an individual or collective “victim” somewhere. The disease of 21st century “wokeness” has become not only embarrassing, but crippling. Just ask our neighbor to the North, which has seen the Keystone XL Pipeline project stopped dead in its tracks, after millions already had been spent to construct it, solely because the new Biden Administration is beholden to the woke Green Crazies now in control of the Democrat Party. If you are wondering how the country that once sent Hitler running to a Berlin bunker to die like a coward is now paralyzed to take decisive action against a worldwide pandemic...
by Bob Barr | Jan 20, 2021 | Townhall Article |
Townhall It is perhaps fitting that President Donald Trump would wait until his final days in office to deliver what was perhaps the finest speech of his presidency. In his January 13th remarks delivered from the White House, Trump calmly and directly denounced the January 6th Capitol Hill violence still raw on the minds of most Americans. He stated clearly that such violence was an insult to both the “MAGA” movement he launched five years before, and to America itself. The speech was the perfect speech; or, at least, would have been the perfect speech had it been delivered when it was needed most, instead of being lost among the ensuing fallout from that day of shame one week prior. Sadly, this speech serves only as a tragic reminder that if Trump somehow could have adopted this stately – one might say, “presidential” – tone years before, it very well could be his Inauguration being celebrated today, not Joe Biden’s. Instead, it will be his remarks on January 6th to his supporters massed on the Washington Mall that will at least for the foreseeable future define his presidency. There is, however, an important lesson for the GOP in this episode; one that could help it out of its present morass. It is a lesson so basic and obvious it is often overlooked in today’s social media driven political environment. The lesson? Substance and principles remain always the most valued currency of political leadership. Rather than the poise demonstrated in last week’s speech, Trump’s leadership throughout the past year was clumsy and unclear, as Democrats and media gadflies baited him into distracting squabbles. Missing were...
by Bob Barr | Jan 13, 2021 | Townhall Article |
Townhall In the 1980s, Wall Street hot shots who raked in millions playing fast and loose with questionable, if not illegal, stock trades were derisively labelled “Masters of the Universe.” Today’s Big Tech CEOs, who control social media platforms used daily by billions of people, have become far more powerful and wealthy than their 1980s predecessors, yet face little meaningful push back from Democrats preparing to take control of power in our nation’s Capital. These Lords of Social Media now have become emboldened by last week’s deplorable violence inside the Capitol building, to openly do what they appear to have long desired – to deploy their vast financial, technological, and political power to silence those who dare communicate political ideas not adhering to their liberal orthodoxy. These cohorts understand the First Amendment to our Constitution does not directly apply to them since they are not the government. Conveniently ignored by these social media powerhouses, of course, is the fact that their power and wealth benefits greatly from government programs and regulations, to say nothing of the massive benefits they derive thanks to federal, state, and even local tax benefits. The notion that with great power comes responsibility – a principle these and other Liberals almost gleefully charge President Trump with violating – also does not, of course, apply to them. They claim that appearances and common sense to the contrary, their social media platforms are not subject to being held to the same standard as traditional publishers. It is the provisions of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 on which they hang their hat, and which provides them free rein to censure...
by Bob Barr | Jan 7, 2021 | Townhall Article |
Townhall For all the potential merit the Trump campaign’s post-November 3rd campaign election lawsuit strategy might have possessed at the start — posing intriguing constitutional challenges and a platform for evidence of voter fraud — as a strategy to win two Georgia Senate runoff elections yesterday, it was, shall we say, problematic. Runoffs, especially in Georgia, historically and almost always, turn on three things: voter turnout, voter turnout, and voter turnout. And at this moment, with both Republicans David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler’s projected defeats, Democrats appear to have done a better job. This is a reversal of the situation prevailing for three decades in the Peach State; years in which state and local GOP workers and organizations kept their messages focused and relevant to the campaigns and to the runoff candidates. In years past, Republicans marshaled their voter databases down to the block level, and micro-organized their get-out-the-vote effort to reach voters most likely to vote in the runoff in numbers sufficient to overcome efforts of their Democrat rivals, who, until the last two cycles, were slow to adapt. That now has changed with a vengeance, presenting serious challenges for the Republican effort moving forward. Evidence of shenanigans at vote counting rooms in Democrat-controlled counties are real, and this accounts for some of the Democrat margins. And yes, the mail-in ballot verification procedure pressed by failed 2018 Democrat gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, which strangely was agreed to last Spring by Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State (not the Governor, who President Trump continues to vilify) made it far easier for illicit votes to be counted. And yes, going forward, the GOP-controlled...
