by Bob Barr | Nov 2, 2019 | Uncategorized |
Four years beyond the deadline and still no plan in place The Washington Times “Impeachment!” may blare from headlines and lead cable news shows, but there is another matter of far-reaching importance that should interest every American who uses technology to communicate. It is a matter that affects millions of jobs, trillions of dollars and the national security of our nation. Yet, it languishes; ensnared in the federal government’s regulatory morass that has stifled innovation for so long. The issue is 5G technology. 5G is the next, faster generation of improvements in communication speed and functions; employing a new wireless infrastructure to increase Internet speeds exponentially. According to the MIT Technology Review, 5G will “connect billions of machines, appliances, and sensors at low cost without draining their batteries.” In a true free market America, this technology would have deployed long ago, but government got in the way. Unfortunately, the government has been engaged in a regulatory “slow walk” that has severely hampered the deployment of mid-band spectrum needed to deploy new 5G technologies. As Holman Jenkins wrote in The Wall Street Journal almost one year ago, on Dec. 7, 2018, 40 megahertz of mid-band spectrum “has been tied up in a bureaucratic standoff for nearly a decade, ever since the global-positioning industry, which operates in nearby bands, began yelping about interference.” This regulatory lethargy has not only hampered innovation here in our country, but benefitted foreign governments who have moved faster than the United States. The Wall Street Journal had reported a year earlier, in 2017, that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in 2009 received a $13 million appropriation...
by Bob Barr | Nov 2, 2019 | Uncategorized |
Townhall.com The request on Twitter was simple: provide a “controversial” food opinion. Professor Tom Nichols, like thousands of other Twitter users, offered his: “Indian food is terrible and we pretend it isn’t.” Some 17,000 replies later, replete with charges of “racism,” Nichols has become one of the most recent examples of how the “Cancel Culture” is debasing and corrupting our country’s proud history of free speech. The Cancel Culture movement has become the scourge of Western civilization, a movement that will just as easily run roughshod over a Fortune 500 CEO as one of our next-door neighbors. It is a cultural pandemic long in the making and worsening each day it is allowed to fester unchallenged. In 2015, I wrote about New York’s left-wing Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and Democrat Rep. Ted Lieu’s joint investigation of ExxonMobil, for nothing more than failing to toe the Leftist line on climate change, a charge absurdly claimed to constitute criminal “securities fraud.” At the time, this was a somewhat novel way to browbeat a disfavored industry; it now has morphed into one of the Left’s preferred cudgels. Earlier this month, fast food chain Chick-Fil-A announced it no longer would be including the Salvation Army or the Fellowship of Christian Athletes as recipients of its charitable giving program. This change caused many conservative supporters and customers of the Atlanta-based company understandably to feel betrayed. More important, the move was one the company never should have been forced to make in a society that’s supposed to protect both lawful commerce and free speech. In spite of serving delicious food, providing top-notch service, and enjoying a...
by Bob Barr | Nov 1, 2019 | Uncategorized |
The Atlanta Journal Constitution For decades, Atlanta has thrived as a hub for domestic and global businesses. The city serves as a home to numerous Fortune 500 companies, including Coca-Cola, Delta Airlines, and The Home Depot. The economy for metro Atlanta ranks as the 10th-largest in the country. Both Atlanta and the entire state have enjoyed a boom in film and technology due to strategically deployed tax credits. But Georgia’s status as one of the very top states in which to do business could be ripped out beneath us if new Hollywood transplants continue their crusade to expand a leftist political agenda here. Recently, they have taken to pressuring banking institutions to sever their ties from lawful businesses that don’t align with their liberal ideals. It is critical that banks in our state, and around the country, stand strong against this fiscal discrimination in order to ensure the continued stability of our successful economy. Boycott campaigns, similar to the one invoked against HB 481, the pro-life “heartbeat bill,” have been designed by liberal and Hollywood elites to shift legislation and political momentum in their favor. Unsurprisingly, with some initial success and the endorsement of leftist luminaries like U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders and U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, activists are becoming increasingly aggressive. Now, instead of taking to the streets, these activists are taking to corporate board rooms and demanding that banks stop financing industries they despise. This strategy actually is not new. In 2013, the Obama Administration quietly launched an insidious program – cleverly named “Operation Choke Point” – designed deliberately to starve (or “choke off”) disfavored industries of banking...
by Bob Barr | Oct 30, 2019 | Uncategorized |
Townhall.com In the not too distant past, most adults realized that not everything one saw on the internet or on social media was to be taken as true. Today, however, what used to be a sarcastic phrase – “I saw it on the internet so it must be true” – is taken quite literally, regardless of the online source for such information; especially if it confirms our existing opinions and beliefs. This reflects a deep-seated cultural problem far beyond the ken of the Congress to solve; yet, of course, they try. And, as is par for the congressional course, they are pinning blame on an easy target: Facebook. While Facebook certainly can be blamed for plenty of social ills, including the proliferation of “fake news” by its billions of users, as a private company it is frankly none of Congress’ business what it does with its platform. More to the point, expecting Facebook to lead the war against a societal problem for which “fake news” is but a symptom, is a waste of time and money, and sets a very bad precedent for legislative meddling. Facebook can’t fix stupid, and “stupid” is the real problem. At the most fundamental level, allowing Congress, or any third party, to sanitize and label what is and is not “real” information is a terrible reflection of the intellectual laziness that infects our society. Have we become so averse to engaging in threshold research, or asking basic questions necessary to determine if something actually makes sense or is logically sound, that we need Mark Zuckerberg or Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to help us arrive...
by Bob Barr | Oct 28, 2019 | Uncategorized |
The Daily Caller The number of ways in which Democrats have abused the rules of the House of Representatives, the jurisdiction of committees, the importance of precedent, and virtually every other aspect of their so-called “impeachment inquiry” is clear beyond any reasoned dispute. However, if Republicans continue to focus their energies on process, no matter how accurate their complaints, they will never gain the offensive advantage critical to ensuring President Trump remains in office. Ask the average voter if he or she cares whether Democratic California Rep. Adam Schiff has abused his power as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee by investigating matters that have nothing to do with oversight of the Intelligence Community, and the response is likely to be a blank stare. Sure, individuals who serve in the CIA care; but the average American voter, not so much. Debate whether a resolution has or has not been introduced in the House of Representatives officially directing the House Judiciary Committee to begin a formal “inquiry of impeachment” as had been the case in prior impeachments, and listeners’ eyes are as likely to glaze over as to express interest in what is a “House Resolution.” To those of us who are or have been involved in such matters, that is a valid and important question. But few others would understand or care about such a technicality. As we witnessed during the impeachment of President Clinton 20 years ago, it was far easier for his cohorts to defend the charges against him by claiming “it was all about sex,” than it was to argue the merits or lack thereof of...
by Bob Barr | Oct 23, 2019 | Uncategorized |
Townhall.com Thanks to today’s “Internet of Things” (IoT), there is an “automation” for almost every aspect of our lives. From such mundane if not downright silly things as kitchen faucets that activate on voice command, to the impressive — massive shipping warehouses run by robotics — many aspects of life today go beyond that imagined decades ago in science fiction. While we still are waiting for flying cars depicted in the Jetsons television show of the 1960s, or space hotels as portrayed in the sci-fi epic 2001, the array of technologically driven devices available to the average citizen is indeed impressive. Yet, while automation and artificial intelligence simplifies or altogether eliminates many of the activities of day-to-day life, the technology complicates others. For example, how do you program a self-driving car in an emergency situation to choose between the life of a pedestrian or that of its “driver?” Even more complex are questions now being asked in the context of judicial systems; decisions cutting to the heart of individual liberty. As a Forbes article propositioned, what does justice look like if, or rather when, many aspects of judicial procedures, such as sentencing, are left to computer algorithms? On the surface, injecting AI into certain legal procedures may appear to make sense for the same reasons it is used across other sectors of industry and professions. In many arenas, artificial intelligence can process information far faster than humans, even while incorporating astronomically more data; and doing so without “human error.” Leaving aside for the moment the question of whether all human “error” should be eliminated from decision-making, advocates for such technology would ask why wouldn’t we want to...
