by Bob Barr | Oct 24, 2018 | Uncategorized |
Townhall.com It’s a brutal world out there. Countries do horrible things. Government officials often are complicit. If America’s relations with countries around the world were predicated on dealing only with those whose record of respecting life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness mirrored ours, the number of flags exhibited at the State Department’s Hall of Nations would be small indeed. And yes, even journalists at times find themselves on the wrong end of a government that does not abide by our legal and moral standards; it’s happened over the years in Central and South America, Eastern Europe, Russia, China, the Middle East, and elsewhere. Such apparently happened to Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi shortly after he entered his nation’s consulate in Istanbul, Turkey earlier this month. As the evidence of his grotesque murder mounts, the question for the United States is how should our nation react; what should we do in response? Some in Washington clamor for drastic measures, up to and including a serious reevaluation and down-grading of our longstanding diplomatic, economic, security and national defense relationship with Riyadh. Others counsel silence. The appropriate response lies somewhere in between; but tempered by the fact that this horrible incident has little if anything to do with the United States directly. It is, at its core, a crime by Saudis against a Saudi. There simply is no vital U.S. national security interest at stake. So what should be done? First, our policy makers in Washington need to ascertain the facts. Considering our intelligence capabilities are at least as good as Turkey’s (after all, we largely trained them), this should not be...
by Bob Barr | Oct 18, 2018 | Uncategorized |
The American Spectator The Trump economic revival shouldn’t be punishing medical technology for its contributions. President Trump’s tax, regulatory, and trade policies have sparked a surging U.S. economy. Unfortunately, hidden among all the truly good news, is a serious glitch that may very well be a body blow to an important industry — medical imaging equipment. The culprit is a recently imposed tariff on sophisticated medical imaging devices; the negative effects of which are magnified because the industry already has been hurt badly by the misguided medical device tax imposed on it by Obamacare. Curiously, the Republican-controlled Congress has failed to repeal permanently that unnecessary and harmful tax, which has cost American jobs and slowed investment in critical research and development. Make no mistake, the U.S. trade imbalance with China must be addressed. But punishing a domestic industry that supports nearly two million American jobs and generates more than $52.5 billion annually in exports, does far more harm than good. Instead of strengthening the industry, the tariffs add to the burden under which it already is operating; and undercuts our stature as a global leader in healthcare research, innovation, and medical technology development. While U.S. firms develop, design, and manufacture imaging equipment here at home, they often incorporate parts imported from China and other countries. Imposing tariffs on components made abroad but used to manufacture finished products in the United States, amounts to a tax on inter-company transfers; making it more expensive, not less, for manufacturing to take place here. The consequence of this is that firms may have to reduce their American workforce and decrease their investments in research and...
by Bob Barr | Oct 17, 2018 | Uncategorized |
Townhall.com To most Americans, a large group of black-clad individuals blockading the streets and harassing motorists who disobey their commands would, quite naturally, be considered a mob. This also would be an apt and reasonable name given to groups of people stalking and screaming at others dining in a restaurant, destroying public monuments, or throwing Molotov cocktails in protest of speakers at a college campus. After all, by definition, a mob is “a large and disorderly crowd of people,” especially those “bent on riotous or destructive action”; and, these incidents are such examples. As we lawyers say, res ipsa loquitur, “the matter speaks for itself.” The problem is, the Mainstream Media and congressional Democrats are not most Americans. In their Liberal La-La Land, like at CNN, one dares not speak “the ‘M’-word” (“mob”) when commenting on events such as these. To these pundits, those roaming gangs and shouting crowds are not mobs, but merely concerned citizens understandably “motivated” by the dangerous actions of the Trump Administration. Herein lies the existential crisis for Democrats, and the dirty little secret they refuse to acknowledge openly — is mob rule what Democrats have become? And is it what our country is becoming? Since their 2016 trouncing, Democrats have strayed far from their Party’s traditional bread and butter issues like education and civil rights; pursuing instead a strategy exclusively focused on stoking emotional outbursts from their base. We hear less and less from Democrats about specific policy solutions for how they will fix anything, and increasingly more paranoid shouting that “people will die” with every move Trump and the GOP make. Therefore, in whatever twisted logic now passes for...
by Bob Barr | Oct 15, 2018 | Uncategorized |
The Daily Caller The most powerful force in the universe is the force of the status quo. And in every era, there have been institutions standing firm to hold back the forces of change. In early 16th-century Europe, as market forces were loosening the constraining shackles of feudalism, the Catholic Church tried mightily to hold back that tide by declaring any interest rate to be unlawful usury. The effort failed, and Europe enjoyed an economic boom that carried over to the New World. In colonial America, Great Britain’s imposition of taxes on everything from tea to paper was a major factor in the Revolutionary War that stripped the Empire of one of its most important colonies. Our Founding Fathers recognized the importance of keeping markets as free as possible from the unwelcome hands of government, and our Constitution places explicit limits on government’s power to control property, private contracts and other market forces. Yet time and again since then, presidents, Congresses and state governments have moved to limit entrepreneurial forces that threaten the status quo. In recent years, this regulatory strategy has included measures designed to make it increasingly difficult for businesses to provided funds to individuals and small businesses in need of quick cash, but who have neither the credit history nor the collateral to qualify for traditional loans from banks. We have thus seen ever-tightening regulations of pawnbrokers, title-lenders and payday loan companies. Regulators have not yet killed such industries, but not for lack of trying. This is the environment in which a relatively new, but growing business model — the merchant cash advance (“MCA”) — finds itself....
by Bob Barr | Oct 4, 2018 | Uncategorized |
Bob Barr Brietbart.com A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. (Second Amend., U.S. Const.) Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech . . . (First Amend., U.S. Const.) The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor Prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. (Tenth Amend., U.S. Const.) Probably no 27 words in our founding documents have caused so much controversy as have those comprising the Second Amendment’s guarantee of the right to keep and bear arms; except, perhaps, the ten words in the First Amendment that protect freedom of speech. When these two amendments intersect, get ready for a constitutional free-for-all; which is exactly what we have in the ongoing litigation between a private company (Texas-based Defense Distributed) and several state attorneys general, led by Washington State’s anti-gun Bob Ferguson. Adding to the constitutional melee, and fearful of the catastrophe Defense Distributed’s action might visit on the world, Ferguson and his colleagues have shoe-horned in the Tenth Amendment as a shield behind which they should be allowed to put the company out of business. The heart of the controversy is clear — whether government (in this case, state government, not Uncle Sam) can prohibit a company from making software instructions for firearms parts available to the public. So-called “3-D firearms.” It is common knowledge that the internet is replete with instructions to manufacture all manner of items big and small – from...
by Bob Barr | Oct 2, 2018 | Uncategorized |
Townhall.com The Kavanaugh-Ford hearing last week might have “riveted” the nation and boosted cable TV ratings, but it showed graphically why congressional hearings should not be compared to courtroom proceedings. They make for good viewing but bad truth-finding. The “take-aways” from the day-long session were everywhere and from everyone. Cable news pundits tripped over themselves offering their opinions on who was telling the truth, who was lying, who was credible and who wasn’t. Most viewed Dr. Ford sympathetically; but no one dared criticize her, notwithstanding the many and often glaring lapses in her memory even regarding recent events. Public opinion polls quickly appeared; supposedly accurate reflections of how the public-at-large viewed the proceedings. Members of Congress quickly weighed in, opining as to the veracity of one witness over the other and offering as fact their personal impressions of how federal investigative agencies such as the FBI conduct investigations. But what did the hearing actually reveal? Did the process lend itself to coming even close to establishing with any degree of certainty what the reality is regarding what happened on a summer day some 36 years ago? The answer is, no, it did not; but the process of a Senate hearing is not meant to be (and was never intended to be) a full and robust search for the truth in the same sense for which a criminal trial is designed. A confirmation hearing, at least to this point in our history, is supposed simply to provide a public forum by which, and through questioning a nominee (and sometimes other witnesses), Senators are able to gauge the nominee’s fitness for...
