August 2018

Townhall.com

Were Hollywood to make a movie about the “Revolving Door” that long has connected government agencies to the consulting firms that populate the Beltway encircling the Nation’s Capital, a starring role would go to the international company Deloitte Consulting LLP. Few large consulting firms are able to match Deloitte’s roster of former top federal officials on its gargantuan payroll.  This is especially the case with regard to government agencies having responsibilities for national security matters; and therein lies the very real potential for abuse.

Not only does Deloitte count among its principals key former top officials from agencies including the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP); but enjoys a reciprocal relationship with those agencies employing spouses and close associates of key Deloitte employees.

While there are extensive federal regulations designed to ensure transparency and avoidance of conflicts of interest between government and private industry — primarily the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) – these have proved clearly inadequate to address such potentialities.

This has become obvious in the large number of sole-source contracts regularly if not routinely negotiated between consulting firms such as Deloitte and federal government agencies with national security responsibilities.  Sole-source contracts, known also as “no-bid” contracts, can mean multi-year and hundred-million dollar income streams for Deloitte and other companies similarly situated. And while procedures laid out in FAR (which have been in place since Ronald Reagan’s first term) are supposed to ensure that sole-source contracts are the exception to the rule of competitively-bid contracts, the “exceptions” seem to have become the norm. This phenomenon has an especially pernicious effect on America’s small businesses, which are supposed to benefit from the open competition FAR and Small Business Administration (SBA) rules appear to mandate but often fail to deliver.

Frequent use of no-bid contracting is hardly a problem unique to the Trump Administration; nor is he the first to decry the practice and to promise to “drain the swamp” in Washington.  Every U.S. president since Jimmy Carter in the late 1970s promised to bring a new and higher degree of transparency to government contracting.Not surprising, no-bid contracting increased during the Obama years, and the practice continues.  For example, the SBA Inspector General recently reported that just under 90% of sole-source contracts set aside for women-owned businesses had been awarded improperly. Included among the improperly-awarded, no-bid contracts were some dealing with national defense matters.

Such problematic and disturbing goings on in government contracting are the sort that were to be avoided by the statutorily-mandated FAR requirements. The FAR requirements for “other than full and open competition,” would appear to place serious and difficult hurdles to limit the awarding of no-bid contracts.  In practice, however, the seven detailed “exceptions” have proven easy to circumvent for those who travel the revolving door superhighway between federal agencies and Beltway consulting firms like Deloitte.

In 2014 alone, DHS awarded 399 no-bid contracts worth in excess of $300 million.  While there exist numerous and qualified small businesses that would be in line to compete for such contracts, it has become standard for the large Beltway firms, including Deloitte near the front of the line, to reap the awards of such contracts by shoehorning themselves into one of the FAR exceptions. The Beltway Big Boys are adept also at circumventing SBA requirements designed to provide small businesses the opportunity to compete.

Family relationships between Deloitte and agencies like CBP and DHS, and the ping-ponging of former members of the Senior Executive Service as well as Senate-confirmed positions, between private industry and government and back again, has made a mockery of FAR’s requirements.

Deloitte, of course, is hardly the only company that takes advantage of maintaining and nurturing such relationships.  The Sentinel Company, which counts among its rainmakers a former CBP Commissioner, practices the game admirably.  Just one recent example of such cozy relationships between government and the close fraternity of major outside consulting firms, is the case of Kevin McAleenan, the current head of CBP who has close ties with the Sentinel Company, a somewhat clone of Deloitte Consulting.  Shortly after his appointment as Acting Commissioner of CBP, that agency awarded Deloitte a no-bid contract for $32.2 million for IT Business Support Services based on an “urgency” exception to competitive bidding. Deloitte’s foot in the door on that deal netted it a follow-on contract worth up to $69.2 million as – you guessed it – a sole-source exception.

These examples represent the tip of the proverbial iceberg of questionable sole-source contracts awarded to large Beltway-oriented consulting firms, populated by former officials with the very same agencies that continue to award them sweetheart deals; all paid for by US. taxpayers and without being bothered with open competition in the marketplace.

Former Senator John McCain was a vocal critic of such practices as these.  His voice will be sorely missed.

Townhall.com

When it comes to banning firearms in America, Leftists operate with a dark twist on a common aphorism; for them, “there is more than one way to skin the Second Amendment.” While Democrats have had marginal success stalling efforts by the GOP in Congress to pass much-needed firearm legislation (for example, the Hearing Protection Act and national reciprocity for concealed carry), not since Bill Clinton’s 1994 federal Assault Weapons Ban have they enjoyed any real legislative victories on gun control. Public opinion still favors protecting the Second Amendment from congressional interference, despite efforts by Democrats to turn every mass shooting into a political cause regardless of the circumstances or facts.

As a result, numerous attempts to pass gun control similar to that of the Clinton-era have been reduced to symbolism; failing to draw support from even some Democrats in states having majorities of Second Amendment-supporting voters.

This is not to say that Democrats have been completely ineffective in pursuing their gun-control agenda. President Barack Obama understood the futility of pushing Congress to pass openly gun-control legislation.   Wisely, his administration focused primarily on what could be accomplished in the private sector, employing the regulatory powers at his disposal.

Thus, during the Obama years, agencies including the Centers for Disease Control and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, pressured non-government entities over which they had a degree of regulatory control to “choke” the manufacture, sale, distribution and ownership of firearms.  Lawful firearms businesses will remember “Operation Choke Point” as a clear abuse of the federal government’s regulatory power over financial institutions and part of a drive to choke off the ability of those businesses to engage in normal and necessary financial practices.

This abuse of government’s regulatory power remains a tactic even now being employed by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo against insurance companies with lawful ties to the National Rifle Association. Cuomo’s strategy is so blatantly unconstitutional that the American Civil Liberties Union, which rarely finds itself on the same side of a battle with the NRA, has joined in the fight against what Cuomo and his cohorts in Albany are doing.

Liberal activists have also grown wise to this private-sector approach, by bullying private corporations to adopt their anti-gun agenda. This strategy of shaming and bullying corporate America into embracing a left-wing political agenda was honed in the 1980s by Jesse Jackson; but that torch has been passed to a new generation of rabble-rousers, led now by the likes of the ego-centric high-schooler David Hogg and his anti-Second Amendment disciples.

It has been disheartening over the years to watch one corporation after another cave to left-wing histrionics about guns, and against the NRA in particular.   But at last, someone is fighting back.

Earlier this month, the state of Louisiana’s Bond Commission, which manages the state’s debt, voted to prohibit contracts with banks that had denied funding to organizations supportive of the Second Amendment. By this action, Louisiana dropped both Bank of America and Citigroup from its pool of prospective underwriters of its public debt.

The Commission’s decision (by a 7 to 6 vote) followed an earlier move by Bank of America not to lend to manufacturers of “military style rifles”; Citigroup had attempted to force its retail clients into adopting several practices demanded by gun control advocates. “The second amendment won and I’m damn proud of the Louisiana Bond Commission,” said Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.). “I can tell you this is going to go out nationwide, what our people have done, and we are going to take this fight to every state.”

Hopefully what the Louisiana Bond Commission has done will embolden other states to start using the tools at their disposal, to fight back against financial and other institutions operating in their states, when those corporations unfairly and improperly succumb to the Left’s anti-firearm agenda.

And, there is no need to limit such a strategy to matters relating to a state’s issuance of public bonds. State governments legitimately could prohibit its employees from travelling on airlines, patronizing car rental companies, lodging at hotels, or using government-issued credit cards at businesses that have caved to pressure from gun-control groups and taken steps against the NRA.

Liberals will, of course, cry foul and proclaim that such punitive measures are unreasonable and abusive. Seems to me it is simply giving the gun-control crowd a dose of its own medicine; and it is high time we started fighting back.

Townhall.com

Venezuela.  A country possessed of all the natural attributes providing a foundation for economic prosperity; yet whose citizens (except for the privileged few at the top of the military-protected government) now live in an economic Hell, without ready access to even the most basic necessities of life.

Venezuela often is cited as a modern-day example of why socialism as a politically-imposed economic system is not only undesirable, but deadly. One might point also to Cuba and the former Soviet Union as examples of socialism gone bad; but the short attention span, and notorious ignorance of history shared by many 21^st Century Americans (especially young voters), make it difficult to reference any example older than the most recent news cycles.

The deadly cost of socialism does not even require us to look abroad for lessons by which to understand its toxicity.  The very first settlements in America – at Jamestown and Plymouth in the early 17^th Century – very nearly disappeared completely because of famine; until the principles of private property and individual entrepreneurship were introduced in the years immediately following the first settlements, which had been constructed on notions of communal property.

While historian Tom Bethell recounts the above scenario in The Noblest Triumph – Property and Prosperity through the Ages, the lessons revealed by his study obviously have been largely lost in contemporary America.  Recent studies reveal growing support for socialism over capitalism among Democrats, Millennials, and those now labeled “Generation Z.”

The victory earlier this summer by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez over incumbent Democrat Congressman Joe Crowley, and the strength of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign against Hillary Clinton make it easy to characterize this “socialism rising” phenomenon as a political problem.  Viewed thusly, the solution is to defeat Democrats in favor of more Republicans.  Defeating the likes of Sanders, Clinton and Ocasio-Cortez and other Democrats espousing similar Big Government philosophies, obviously is a positive step; but by itself, merely deals with the tip of the iceberg.

Blame for the rise of socialism’s popularity goes far beyond hard-core Democrats; and must be shared as much by Republicans.  It is after all, the GOP which over the past three decades has strayed far from its core philosophy of free-market capitalism, in supporting crony capitalism.

Not since President Ronald Reagan have Republicans had an honest national spokesperson for free markets. Instead, the last 30 years has witnessed a steady, and in fact accelerating dilution of capitalism, led by the likes of George W. Bush as much as Bernie Sanders.  The former’s embrace of a huge expansion of Medicaid, and of the massive government-led and taxpayer-financed response to the 2008 financial crisis, declared openly to the country that even for the once free market-oriented GOP, Uncle Sam is the “default” setting for all problems economic. And it doesn’t stop there.

Republican embrace of Big Government policies – even if often less openly bold as those pressed by their Democrat counterparts – is not limited to the economic sphere.  The terrorist attacks of 9-11 witnessed an explosion of federally-controlled, taxpayer–funded, and privacy-eroding programs that continue to grow even now, 17 years later. Most recently, Republicans have suggested regulating social media companies as a way to fight “censorship” by those non-government entities.

President Trump’s predilection for federally-imposed solutions to problems in the international arena, emphasizing tariffs and sanctions backed by threats of military action, have become the new norm. Congressional Republicans largely support such an approach, notwithstanding that the GOP until recently was a party standing strongly for market forces and peaceful solutions rather than protectionism and bellicosity.

Today, business decisions at all levels more often than not are made by calculating tax breaks, government subsidies, and other “incentives” from government.  The regulatory state has become so pervasive that it determines whether a child is permitted to open a neighborhood lemonade stand.  In such an environment, public distaste for “capitalism” is perhaps not so difficult to understand.  This is especially true considering there are so few voices heard in defense of the economic and political philosophy on which America was founded.

To be sure, there are eloquent defenders of capitalism – individuals and organizations that truly understand its terms, its history, and its benefits; and that conversely comprehend the disaster that awaits those who espouse and implement socialism.  But until those voices of reason drown out the thousands of tenured university professors spewing their hatred for capitalism, and until the Elon Musks of the business world are called out for being crony capitalists getting rich from government largesse and not true entrepreneurs, capitalism will continue to lose ground to the siren call of “free stuff” that socialism promises but cannot in the end deliver.

Townhall.com

In my work as both an attorney and as a legislator (I served as a Member of Congress from 1995 to 2003), a key question I always ask myself or a client seeking to achieve a desired result is, “Who really stands to benefit if we pursue a certain course of conduct?”  Laying out a strategy in this manner assists greatly in identifying potential allies as well as adversaries, and improves chances for eventual success.

When I turn my attention to current goings on in Washington, the same question crosses my mind: Who really benefits from the “Russia obsession” exhibited by virtually every national political figure and media outlet?  Hardly any issue is considered these days without blaming Russia or at least finding a Russian angle lurking just around the corner.  Take, for instance, the recent primary election in Ohio; about as close to America’s heartland and far removed from Moscow’s Red Square as you can get.

Average American viewers would see last week’s returns in Ohio, where Republican Troy Balderson narrowly defeated his primary opponent, as an indication that perhaps Democrats were not as well positioned for November as their “Blue Wave” blustering would indicate.  Some pundits on the Left, however, immediately donned their tin foil hat and pointed a finger at Putin.  Hollywood actress Alyssa Milano, for example, broadcast her revelation that Green Party votes in that contest were evidence of “Russian meddling.”

This is but one example of many, in which the default boogeyman is Russia; and it is easy to slough off such absurdity, particularly from people who demand to be taken seriously because of their “celebrity” status. However, the Russia obsession, and its concomitant search for “collusion,” has real implications for American public policy, and is no laughing matter.

Whether or not the political class actually believes Russia to be an existential threat to American freedom, the subject continues to dominate headlines and cable news face time. The Intercept analyzed Rachel Maddow’s widely-watched MSNBC show last year, and found that over a six-week period Russian-related news accounted for more than half of her airtime.

Yet, for all of the hoopla over Russia, hard evidence of such a threat is in short supply. The Washington Post, of all places, seems to be one of the few traditional media outlets that sees through the fog; noting that the hysteria over Russia is grossly out of sync with reality. To put something of a perspective on matters, the Post reminds readers that the Russian economy is ten times smaller than ours, with a GDP smaller than Canada’s.  The liberal news outlet notes also that domestic issues inside Russia have vastly weakened its economy, even as ours continues to surge; further limiting that country’s global influence.

Our Russia obsession has become a tangible distraction from other adversaries we face; most notably, China.

Unlike Russia’s weak economy, China’s is second in size only to ours and the U.S. remains one of that country’s debtors.  China has the disposable funds to pour into its military, which clearly it is doing. The Chinese increased military spending last year to $145 billion, while Russia’s dropped 17% to $61 billion.

It is true that China is a far different country today than it was two generations ago, when it was in the tight grip of mass murderer Mao Tse Tung and his immediate followers; but it remains very much a totalitarian state with a lust for top superpower status.  China shares this nationalistic complex with Russia; and the regime in Beijing has shown itself to be just as ruthless in pursuit of that goal as its counterpart in the Kremlin, if not more so.  Both China and Russia have the capability to hack into other nations’ cyber systems, including our own, and both have a demonstrated interest in doing just that.

However, it is China, far more than Russia that concerns the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) — the perennially-underfunded federal agency tasked with watch-dogging foreign investment in sensitive technology in the United States.  This is due to the simple fact there are far more Chinese nationals than Russian who are actively seeking to gain access to American technology companies.

It is true that President Trump is pressing China hard for trade fairness; but issues concerning China’s drive for military and technological supremacy, largely at our expense, are among those matters that garner far less substantive attention in Washington than do concerns over what Russian President Putin might eat for breakfast.

The degree to which the Trump Administration, along with virtually the entire Congress and much of the American media obsess over Russia, clearly draws our attention away from the one player on the world stage that most benefits from the klieg lights remaining focused on Russia.  These are blinders that will be very costly to us in the long term.

Townhall.com

The latest liberal outrage changes as often as the daily special at a diner.  One day it is Cecil the Lion and “big game” hunting; the next day  deciding which bathroom people had a legal right to use. This week, it is the specter of a 3D-printed gun that has the Left running around with its collective hair afire, proclaiming the end to civilization.

While the manufacture of components necessary for a functioning firearm without a stamp from the government has been possible since, well, 12^thCentury China, the fact that modern technology actually has been applied to that process by an individual without asking “mother, may I” from Uncle Sam, has pushed the Left to pull out all stops in an effort to shut down such freedom.

Recently, the Left has discovered a new — and willing — ally in its constant battle against anything remotely akin to a firearm. The Left’s latest “best friends forever” are kindred spirits on the federal judiciary. This forum increasingly has become the Left’s default position, as its efforts to effect political change have been repeatedly stymied by a Republican Congress and a President opposed to their agenda.

Just as President Obama figured out that he could sidestep Republicans in Congress, especially on Second Amendment issues, by utilizing regulatory powers lodgedin federal regulatory agencies, liberal state attorneys general and other Democrat officials have seized on a similar strategy, but using liberal judges in friendly federal district courts. Now, if President Trump does something in Washington, D.C. that liberals don’t like, their attorneys general in California, Oregon, Connecticut and New York can throw the brakes on national policy using court injunctions.

Historically, injunctions are not a remedy favored by courts. In our system of jurisprudence, largely inherited from the British, individuals were allowed to take action free from a court stopping them, unless there was a real and imminent threat of serious harm without a judge stepping in. At least that’s the way it has been until now.

As we saw last year when President Trump issued his executive order slowing travel into the United States from certain countries known to harbor terrorists, the Left was able to rush into select federal district courts, wail about vague, but awful, harm that would affect their “constituents,” and secure injunctions from like-minded federal judges based on such will-‘o-the-wisp scenarios. Many of those same left-leaning attorneys general rushed into federal courtrooms last week with dire warnings that 3D-printed guns would imminently flood the streets of their states, unless the courts stepped in and enjoined individuals from publishing the computer code necessary to instruct a printer to print one of these largely unusable guns.  Sure enough, in a Pavlovian response, judges granted the injunction without any meaningful showing of harm.

As a former federal prosecutor, the behavior by both attorneys general who should know better, and federal judges who even more so should be immune to this type of political gamesmanship, is deeply disturbing from a procedural standpoint; not only by issuing injunctions on such a flimsy rationale of immediate harm, but doing so with nationwide reach.  In thus abusing our courts, judges overstep district courts’ traditional jurisdiction by huge bounds. The idea of a single,liberal attorney general and one friendly judge colluding to freeze the policies of an individual citizen harming no one, or even more disturbing, stopping the President of the United States from implementing policies he is lawfully permitted to undertake, based on pure speculative notions of harm, is absurd; even more, it is dangerous to the proper functioning of our judicial system.

It is for these reasons and more that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, rightfully concerned with the abuse of national injunctions, offered a scathing indictment of their use and impact in the Court’s 2017 opinion in Trump v. Hawaii. “I am skeptical that district courts have the authority to enter universal injunctions,” Thomas opined; adding their increased use skips the practical tradition of letting legal questions develop through the court process while also “encouraging forum shopping, and making every case a national emergency for the courts and for the Executive Branch.”

“If their popularity continues, this Court must address their legality,” Thomas concluded.

It is high time the Supreme Court heed Thomas’ warning, and stop what is becoming a recurring disease of collusion between liberal attorneys general and lifetime-tenured federal judges; many of who are eager to use their coveted perches to enact a political agenda which our Founding Fathers wisely denied them in crafting our Constitution as they did.