February 2020

Townhall.com

by Bob Barr

Having recently tackled the scourge of “assault” weapons in the Commonwealth, Virginia Democrats now have set their sights on the looming major public health threat of unlicensed art therapy. Citing the risks posed by “toxic chemicals” in paint and glue, by scissors “which have sharp edges capable of causing cuts or punctures,” and with objects like clay that can be dangerous “if thrown,” Democrats are stepping up to correct what surely was an oversight by our Founding Fathers who failed to  envision such dangerous implements in the hands of unlicensed civilians (consider the danger to have one’s skin punctured by a newly-sharpened quill pen!). 

As ridiculous as licensing art therapists may sound, it is par for the course in Nanny State legislatures across the nation; often regardless of whether controlled by Democrats or Republicans. Take, for instance, that Louisiana requires a license for arranging flowers. Oh, and do not worry about being grifted by “fraudulent” fortune tellers – they’re licensed in several states, including Florida, Massachusetts, and Maryland. Even blow-drying hair requires more than 1,000 hours of training and potentially $20,000 in education and fees, before gaining the government’s stamp of approval. 

But who are government bureaucrats really protecting with these insane requirements? Many of the trades regulated under occupational licensing are low-wage positions, with little risk to participants or customers. Is there actually rampant fraud and public safety concerns within these fields necessary to making the barriers to entry so prohibitive? Or, are such licensing requirements being pushed by trade groups (as was the case in Virginia) to protect their businesses from increased competition; with regulation-hungry legislators happy to be seen as the saviors of public welfare and eager to use the regulatory hammer to prove their concern for their constituents.

The absurdity inherent in pushing these regulations should answer that question. After all, anyone with a halfway functioning brain knows it is complete malarkey to suggest unlicensed hair braiders, handymen, and a litany of other professions presented a clear and present threat to the public in the absence of licensing requirements. Furthermore, it is hard to argue with a straight face that a rubber stamp by the government does anything at all to stop unethical individuals from behaving unethically. 

Angie’s List and Yelp probably have done more to protect the public from disreputable and substandard businesses than any government licensing board. But the Nanny State thrives.

The actual harm to the public is not unlicensed individuals being paid for a service by people who willingly request it – the basic tenet of capitalism; it is the economic opportunities lost as the result of this protectionist Nanny Statism. It also happens to be a burden that falls hardest on non-college educated, often times members of minority communities, who rely on their trade skills to provide a living. Rather than have a shot at the American dream (or simply putting food on the table), budding entrepreneurs never even have a chance in the face of a mountain of time consuming and cost prohibitive bureaucratic requirements.

With nearly one-third of jobs today requiring the government’s permission, occupational licensing is completely out of control. Fortunately, there is a glimmer of hope at the end of the regulatory tunnel, by some Republican governors to reverse decades of this craziness. Arizona Governor Doug Ducey has worked diligently in the past few years to start undoing occupational licensing madness in his state. His fight for license reciprocity, a major issue particularly for military families that move frequently from state to state, is a model that should be emulated nationally.

Shoshana Weissmann, a resident fellow at the libertarian R Street Institute, and Twitter’s de facto leader on occupational licensing issues, cites the importance of licensing reforms in the ongoing justice reform movement. “When people find work quickly after incarceration, they’re less likely to recidivate,” says Weissmann; adding that nebulous “good moral character” requirements used in some occupational licenses often prevent otherwise qualified individual from working in fields wholly unrelated to their past legal transgressions – a scenario that in effect “helps no one and hurts public safety.”

While President Trump continues to dismantle the behemoth federal regulatory state, legislators and governors in state governments from one coast to the other still are busy enacting regulatory roadblocks for entrepreneurs working to realize the American dream. 

Townhall.com

by Bob Barr

When a young Mark Zuckerberg signed his new “Facebook” project with a video game quote — “Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master” – it was unlikely he consciously considered it a warning of how a dictatorial Chinese government could medically endanger the global population.

The young Zuckerberg clearly understood that information is power; power he and other social media moguls now wield.  But do they – or do people generally – even now understand or appreciate how control over the flow of information can be abused and imperil human beings in so many ways, when in the hands of unaccountable government officials? 

While human rights issues associated with authoritarian regimes is (or certainly should be) a constant moral concern, there is a more practical danger with the control of information under oppressive governments. I wrote last month that the tragedy with Iran’s downing of a civilian aircraft – the result of military incompetence and a breakdown of information between military and civil authorities – was a prelude to a far greater nuclear nightmare should that country ever achieve its goal of possessing nuclear weapons. Now, we see these same mechanisms in China with the outbreak of the Coronavirus.

Even in the best of circumstances, controlling the spread of a previously unknown infectious disease is difficult. It becomes nearly impossible when the disease originates within a tightly controlled, authoritarian society that is image-obsessed and highly averse to having its reputation tarnished anywhere, especially on the international stage. Suddenly, the flow of information about the disease becomes a weapon not in addressing the outbreak, but in protecting those responsible from being held accountable.

Because information about the impact of the virus within China’s nearly impenetrable borders is so sparse, it is next to impossible to determine the extent or trajectory of the threat to the rest of the world. What we do know, however, is that much like the culture of fear within the smaller, but still tightly contained regime in Iran, China’s oppressive rule is rife with mistrust, incompetence, bad decision-making, and failures to act – all prerequisites for yet another cover-up of historic proportions. The Coronavirus outbreak could very well be China’s “Chernobyl,” wherein the obsession with keeping it “their” problem turns the situation into “our” problem.

Beyond the health concerns involving the Coronavirus, China’s conduct should serve as a warning for western governments as well, including our own. Left to its own devices, government – any government – will protect itself first and above all else. China’s communist behemoth is doing that right now, even as health officials in Europe, the United States and elsewhere try to understand what it is doing and limit the damage.

It would be extreme hubris were we to believe ourselves immune from governmental disfunction and abuse simply because we live in a society far more open and transparent than China’s. Our own James Madison, writing 232 years ago in Federalist 51, recognized that government unconstrained by explicit legal mechanisms to limit its exercise of power, would inevitably descend into despotism. We certainly are not on the precipice of despotism in Washington – Nancy Pelosi’s wild fearmongering notwithstanding – but the “mission creep” that infects American bureaucracies from the Pentagon to health facilities across the country, remains a constant threat inching us in that direction.

When a President-elect Donald Trump dared question the authority of the “Deep State,” and it, in turn, reacted by targeting him using existing laws and procedures designed to protect our government from abuse by adversaries, it is not only good public policy, but absolutely essential policy that we identify and question those abuses, correct them, and punish the perpetrators.  Every time such corrective action is not taken makes it more likely another such abuse will happen, and more likely it will go undetected.

Neither Madison nor his fellow Federalist writers used the term “Deep State” in their magnificent essays; they were not faced with a “communist dictatorship” by that name.  But they knew the beast by other names, in their era and in times past.  They had lived — and nearly died – under despotism.   The fate of societies that had risen and then crumbled because they lacked the tools to tame the beast, were understood clearly by these wisest of men.  

Whether in modern-day Moscow, Tehran or Beijing, or in 18th Century Great Britain, unchecked and unquestioned government power leads to serfdom and ultimately, death.  If we today fail to draw corrective lessons from these and other examples, the seeds of our own demise will continue to germinate.

Townhall.com

by Bob Barr

As Rep. Nancy Pelosi stood behind President Donald Trump at the conclusion of the State of the Union address and childishly ripped his speech in half, it symbolized more than just the Democrats’ contempt for the president.  It represented the party’s final break with reality — its shamelessness exceeded only by its transparent desperation for relevancy.

In the blunt words of long-time Democrat guru James Carville, his party has “tacked off the damn radar.”  

The bizarre, leftward course now being charted by America’s oldest major political party did not start with Sen. Bernie Sanders becoming a presidential nominee front-runner, or with Pelosi throwing a series of very public tantrums. In many respects, the answer to the questions of how and why the Democrat Party reached this point starts with Twitter, the social media platform that in many respects now dominates news and politics. 

Democrats recognized early on Twitter’s potential for spreading their message, and party adherents quickly latched onto the social media platform as their vehicle of choice. In this, they have been joined by cadres of liberal reporters and journalists in the mainstream media, who similarly have flocked to Twitter to get the scoop on trending topics they then purport to transform into “news” stories. 

However, the very platform Democrats believed would amplify their message, has, in reality, become an ideologically incestuous echo chamber for extremist positions in which the party itself has become entrapped, and increasingly deaf to mainstream issues important to moderate voters.

Adding to the danger of this closed feedback system are mainstream media reporters who believe the trending topics they read on Twitter — elevated by online activists who represent a tiny fraction of Americans overall — are newsworthy. An isolated topic or issue that otherwise would pass without notice now makes headlines, thus becoming fodder for discussion among Democratic politicians eager to cash in on the latest outrage. As a result, all of the fringe extremism that previously was contained within social media overflows into the public square. 

Unable or unwilling to separate the online world from reality, Democrats have come to believe the same behavior and issues that make them “Twitter famous” will also make them popular with voters.  Not so.

Rather than making them more connected to their constituents and better attuned to local sentiment, candidates and elected Democrats drift further into the extremes as they seek online glory and their next “viral” moment, paying only nominal lip-service to the issues that once existed at the heart of the Democratic Party and fueled its electoral successes. The downward spiral continues as candidates realize it is not enough to be “woke” on just one or two issues.   If they are not 100 percent on all the issues important to progressives, they risk losing their online status should they be “canceled” for failing this absurd, all-or-nothing litmus test. 

The result is a Democratic Party that is electable in New York’s Bushwick neighborhood or San Francisco’s Mission District, but utterly unpalatable to voters outside such “progressive” urban areas.

Still, Democrats don’t seem to get it, as evidenced by how poorly the 2020 race has gone for them so far. Rather than crafting a populist message like that which helped elevate Trump to the White House in 2016, Democrats climb over themselves to be seen as the “most progressive” of the bunch. 

It did not help that they were thrown into a series of issue-specific town halls by news outlets who calculated this would be great for advertising dollars, but where for hours candidates had to figure out ways to stand out from each other on niche topics such as guns and climate change. This naturally took them to greater and greater extremes through the night, leading to some pretty embarrassing moments, as when all the candidates raised their hand as a vow to provide universal healthcare to illegal immigrants – a position extreme even for traditionally liberal voters.

The cumulative effect of this pandering for notoriety on a platform used by less than 10 percent of the population, of which even less are politically like-minded, has created the state of extreme discord among Democrats we are witnessing today.   It is a rift in which candidates look, act, and sound increasingly alien to the mainstream voters to which they need to appeal in order to succeed in the general election. 

It remains to be seen whether Carville is to be a prophet or a pariah for speaking this truth.  

Townhall.com

by Bob Barr

As they say, “words have meaning”; even – rather, especially – words in the Constitution.  Take the words found in Article 2, Section 4, which provide the only grounds on which a president can be impeached and removed from office: “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” Despite the interminable effort by Pelosi, Schiff and their merry band to ignore both these words and the historical context in which they were written, the President of the United States can be removed from office only if found to have committed a serious (“high”) crime. 

In a startling display of ignorance of history – which renowned historian David McCullough wrote recently is something that “keeps him up at night” – impeachment-focused Democrats appear to have forgotten our Founders established a government led by a “President” elected by the People, and not by a “Prime Minister” chosen by the legislative branch.  

The difference at the heart of the debate over how our country’s leader may be removed is more than semantic; it reflects clearly two of the principles – separation of powers and checks and balances – woven into the fabric of our constitutional republic. The President is elected by the People but can be removed by the Congress, that is, the legislative branch.  In contrast, a British Prime Minister is chosen by and can be removed by the legislative branch in which he or she serves whenever that head of state loses the support of the Parliament, for whatever reason (including, for example, disreputable behavior or “maladministration”). 

While technically a prime minister can be removed by impeachment – an extreme procedure under old British law – the use of “impeachment” as a means of removing a prime minister is neither necessary nor useful.

In our country, by contrast, the process of “impeachment” takes on far greater importance than in the country from which we extricated ourselves more than two and a quarter centuries ago.  This is why “impeachment” must be considered in the context of our system of government, not Britain’s. 

In the British parliamentary system, impeachment is used to police its own members, as opposed to how it is intended to be used in America — as a check by the legislative branch over the Executive. As such, the Founders understood the threshold had to be much higher, to prevent the very type of abuse of power we are witnessing under Democrats today.

If the standard for impeachment were read to include behavior not constituting serious crimes, such as conduct deemed by the pursuing parties as unbecoming of the office, then there would be little, if any, protections on the Executive from being subjected to a constant cycle of challenges from the legislative branch. The effect, when abused as the Founders anticipated, would be to paralyze the office of the President, and subsequently, of the government itself.  We have witnessed this also in how the Democrats already have done with the judicial branch, by using friendly judges to enact national injunctions against the President’s domestic agenda. Clearly, this was not the intent of the Framers.

Instead, the Constitution provides the legislative branch with numerous other tools (legislative, appropriations and oversight) to be employed as checks on the Executive. That these powers have not been employed effectively by Congress in recent decades to rein-in presidential abuses and power grabs, reflects not any defect in our Constitution; but instead a growing imbalance of power between these two branches of government.  Failure by successive congresses to stand firm against power grabs by a string of modern presidents, must not be permitted to provide justification for this Congress to abuse the impeachment power to remove a president over policy or procedure differences. But this is precisely what the Democrats have attempted to do against President Trump.

The Pelosi-launched and Schiff-driven impeachment effort against Trump does not provide justification to pervert the original intent of the Founders that a president may be removed only for committing serious criminal acts, not because of disagreements – no matter how serious – with the Congress.

This half-baked impeachment effort by Democrats to remove Trump is but a desperate move by a Party utterly bereft of ideas, vision or leadership.  Fortunately, the Framers designed the Constitution to prevent against such manifest desperation, not enable it. Try as they might to shoehorn the standard of impeachment to cover a trial that revealed no proof of high crimes or any other legal offenses, Democrats have no constitutional standing to carry their scheme any further; although their blind hatred of Donald Trump will likely fuel their continued efforts to destroy him.