by Bob Barr | Sep 17, 2019 | Uncategorized |
The Daily Caller Boone Pickens, Jr. was well-known to contemporary political and corporate leaders, but likely not so much to today’s millennial generation. This should hardly be considered a surprise, insofar as Pickens pretty much exemplified many characteristic millennials are widely known not to share; especially that he was a consummate risk taker. Although born in Oklahoma, Pickens came to personify the bigness that for generations has defined his adopted state of Texas, where he died last week at the age of 91. Pickens’ ancestry can be traced back to American pioneer hero Daniel Boone; with whom he shared much of the daring that made his forebearer one of our country’s first folk heroes. Pickens’ long and colorful career in business was anything but a straight-line trajectory; in large measure because of deliberate decisions he made throughout his nearly seven decades in the rough and tumble world of energy production. Eschewing a career as a geologist with Phillips Petroleum in the early 1950s, and in a classic entrepreneurial risk-taking move, Pickens started his own drilling company from scratch; a company which became the publicly traded Mesa Petroleum that made him a multi-millionaire. What largely defined this Texan for future generations of business leaders, however, were his decisions in the 1970s and 1980s to engage in a series of so-called “hostile” corporate takeovers of oil companies; not designed to enrich corporate managers but to place more power in the hands of shareholders. To be sure, Pickens’ moves in this regard catapulted him into the rarified atmosphere of those whose net worth was measured in the hundreds of millions of dollars;...
by Bob Barr | Sep 11, 2019 | Uncategorized |
Townhall.com The “public nuisance” legal theory cited recently by an Oklahoma judge as the basis on which to hold a drug manufacturing company liable for opioid abuse in that state, joins other dubious legal and public policy mechanisms as tactics with which the gun control movement aims to achieve its long-desired goal of disarming law-abiding Americans. The movement’s advocates are framing the legal and public debate about gun violence in much the same way as that surrounding the opioid problem – as an “epidemic.” The strategy is the same – driven by fear, not facts. Headlines designed not to educate but rather to stoke emotions are the norm. Language and semantics are employed with little if any regard to accuracy, but with every intent to elicit the public’s fear. Factually, for example, firearm violence is down. Millions of AR-15 style rifles are owned and used safely by millions of law-abiding citizens regularly. Fully automatic firearms still are unlawful except in the hands of the military, law enforcement, or the very few individuals specifically licensed by the federal government to possess them. Regardless of facts such as these, however, the media and Democrat presidential candidates continue to scream that “weapons of war” like the semi-automatic AR-15 rifle — claimed by them to have been designed for the “sole purpose of killing as many people as possible as quickly as possible” — are everywhere and must be banished from every home and business in the country. With histrionics like these, it is no wonder politicians and even judges look to every possible way to “do something”; even if it means...
by Bob Barr | Sep 11, 2019 | Uncategorized |
The Daily Caller The 15-year history of “swatting” should be borne in mind as several states and the federal government accelerate the push for “red flag laws,” also known as “emergency risk protection orders.” It was in 2004 that a new and potentially deadly phenomenon appeared on the American legal landscape. That was the year a 14-year old boy, upset over being spurned in his sexual advances toward a girl, called in a false crime report designed to dispatch a SWAT team to the girl’s family’s home. Since then, there has been a surge in the number of cases in which calls or internet communications to law enforcement units claim that serious — but false — circumstances are about to unfold or have just taken place, which therefore requires immediate and serious law enforcement response against the “swatter’s” targeted victim. The majority of swatting incidents thankfully have not resulted in serious injury or death, but there have been tragic exceptions. In one extreme swatting case in 2017 in Wichita, Kansas, for example, an innocent man was shot dead by a SWAT team responding to a false call from an irate “Call of Duty” player. The case spawned criminal charges against the alleged swatter that have yet to be resolved, but not charges against the police. Other cases have resulted in civilians and police officers being shot as a result of such surprise raids on the homes of unsuspecting victims. Accurate figures on the number of swatting cases occurring each year are difficult to come by, especially since many jurisdictions, including the federal government, do not have explicit “anti-swatting” laws...
by Bob Barr | Sep 4, 2019 | Uncategorized |
Townhall.com Anyone hoping to find consistency in how courts are assigning responsibility for the so-called “opioid crisis” will be sadly disappointed. Last May, a North Dakota judge dismissed a lawsuit against Purdue Pharma that sought to hold the pharmaceutical manufacturer responsible for that state’s opioid problem. Just last week, an Oklahoma judge in a very similar case decided to take the opposite approach and found that another drug manufacturing giant, Johnson & Johnson, was responsible for the state’s high number of individuals using the opioids it manufactured; to the tune of nearly $600 million. In each of these lawsuits, the pharmaceutical company was charged under the respective state’s “nuisance” laws, with engaging in “deceptive” marketing practices that in turn caused and contributed to individuals’ opioid addiction. Using nuisance laws in this way — targeting deep-pocketed corporations selling or manufacturing dis-favored products within a state – is a legal maneuver increasingly favored by aggressive state attorneys general to attack everything from cigarettes to firearms. Considering the facts in these two most recent opioid cases were very similar, why were the judges’ rulings dramatically different? As Reason’s Jacob Sullum put it, the rulings “pit a simple narrative of the ‘opioid crisis’ with a clear set of villains against a more complicated story that’s closer to the truth.” In other words, the two courts had very different concepts of “justice” regardless of the facts presented. In North Dakota, both sides of the controversy were argued and weighed, with Judge James Hill holding that the State failed to meet its burden of proof; not that Purdue was completely innocent, but rather the State did not have...
by Bob Barr | Sep 3, 2019 | Uncategorized |
The Daily Caller With the U.S. House reconvening this week, the agenda will be both predictable and meaningless. Led by Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler of New York, Democrats will clamor for bans on “assault weapons” and “high capacity” magazines. They will demand “universal” background checks and “red flag” laws. Nothing will happen that will help solve the problem of mass shootings. As has been the GOP’s standard operating procedure, Senate leaders could simply wait for the Democrat-controlled House to pass the same cookie-cutter gun-control measures it pulls out of its arsenal every time it has the opportunity and refuse to bring the legislation to the Senate floor for votes. Or, Senate Republicans could actually do something meaningful — immediately convene hearings and call as witnesses top administration officials who can substantively address the real issues and provide information that can guide meaningful solutions. Start with the law already on the books — the so-called “Fix NICS” Act signed last year by President Trump, and to have been fully implemented this summer. This statute was designed expressly to plug shortcomings in the system of FBI-administered background checks preceding every commercial firearm sale in the country; yet which has been demonstrably plagued by “bad information in” that results in mistakes being made with sometimes tragic consequences, as happened in Charleston, South Carolina in 2015 and Sutherland Springs, Texas two years later. Bring forward the two key government officials most responsible for ensuring that the NICS system works as intended and as amended, before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Instead of rote talking points, these officials could provide direct and relevant answers to...
by Bob Barr | Aug 28, 2019 | Uncategorized |
Townhall.com Higher education in America today should come with the disclaimer, caveat emptor. The cost of tuition has more than doubled in the last two decades, with the value of a four-year college degree heading in the opposite direction. The “fix” championed by Democratic Party leaders – a bailout for those already graduated, and “free” tuition for those entering the pipeline – will only make matters worse. A part of this long-developing problem is simply supply and demand; the overabundance of bachelor’s degrees in the market means they are worth less in the eyes of employers. There also is more talent in the marketplace for specialized jobs, meaning graduates with narrowly tailored degrees in obscure fields are less likely to find employment regardless of how much they spent on those degrees. Moreover, employers cannot be sure about the quality of graduates; are they getting someone who is smart and capable in the workplace, or a lite snowflake who melts outside the “safe space” sanctuary of college. It is a badly broken system, and cannot be remedied by the Democratic Party’s much-ballyhooed “bailout” proposals. The $1.6 trillion student loan crisis is not to be ignored or overlooked. The massive amount of debt shouldered by mostly young Americans has been shown to have a sweeping economic and social impact — from delaying marriages and having children, to stunting small business entrepreneurship. Yet, a bailout of student loans, in the form of cancellation or forgiveness such as supported by almost all of the 2020 Democratic presidential hopefuls, absolves from responsibility those whose policies caused the problem, while doing nothing to address the root cause. In other...
