April 2021

The FTC is supposed to be a non-partisan federal regulatory agency, un-swayed by partisan politics and the influence of outside companies. As the Google documents show, it’s not.

The Federalist

It is hardly a secret the Barack Obama White House had a cozy relationship with Google. Between 2009 to 2015, representatives and lobbyists for the company averaged one White House meeting a week. In what can only be described as a Google-Obama revolving door, nearly 250 individuals moved either from the government to Google or Google to the government during the Obama presidency.

While politicization of executive branch agencies has become the norm for both major parties, the Obama administration’s tentacles of politicization appear to have reached even further, deep into the regulatory arena.

Leaked documents recently obtained by Politico demonstrate the Obama White House’s tight relationship with the search engine giant may have even influenced the behavior of the Federal Trade Commission, one of the highest so-called independent regulatory enforcement and consumer protection agencies in the land. The memos reveal, for example, that despite having overwhelming data that the company operated as an unchecked monopoly, the FTC declined to pursue enforcement against Google in 2013.

As a former senior member of the House Judiciary Committee, I find these revelations deeply distressing and believe they should drum up calls in Congress to reform and depoliticize these vital federal institutions. This is essential to ensure — to the greatest extent possible — that truth, justice, and law and order prevail in our country.

Federal investigators at the FTC were alerted early in Obama’s first term that Google’s surge in the then-nascent mobile phone industry appeared to be illegal and something needed to be done. Eighteen FTC lawyers and paralegals issued memos explaining that, because of exclusionary and anti-free market deal-making, Google was the default search engine on fully 86 percent of American smartphones and controlled an astounding 97 percent of global mobile searches.

While U.S. antitrust law does not explicitly define precisely what market share moves a company from a fair competitor to a monopoly, several court cases have determined that a 70 percent market share creates a monopolization threshold. This means Google’s 86 percent share more than qualified it for at least investigation, especially when the FTC’s own report showed the commission knew that a Google executive boasted to the giant company’s CEO that the company could soon “own the U.S. market.” Still, Obama’s politically appointed FTC bosses shut the investigation down even though their attorneys suggested charges should be pursued.

Unsurprisingly, the basis for their dismissive decision appears to have been meritless or at the very least contradictory grounds. One telling example was the FTC’s use of Comcast data to allege Google only controlled between 10 and 20 percent of the web traffic for rival shopping and review sites. It did this despite knowing that Google’s CEO stated in sworn testimony to the FTC that the Comcast numbers were wrong. Google’s chief economist and even the FTC’s own attorneys stated the same thing, but Obama’s appointees at the FTC used the data anyway.

The FTC is supposed to be a non-partisan federal regulatory agency, un-swayed by partisan politics and the influence of outside companies. Their mission is to stop unfair or deceptive tactics in the marketplace and to encourage and promote competition in the free market. By not going after Google back in 2013, the Obama FTC decided to let Google squash competition. This type of behavior cannot, or certainly should not, be tolerated from an institution of this size at any time, now or in the future.

To that end, a handful of lawmakers have set out to substantively reform the FTC, among them Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo.. He has pointed out the “revolving door conflict” between the FTC and Big Tech and has suggested several reforms, including relocating the FTC to the Department of Justice so it is subject to clearer and more direct oversight. Hawley also has proposed replacing the multi-member commission with a single director appointed by Congress every five years, to maximize public accountability and transparency.

Considering the increasing power of Google and the few other search engines throughout virtually all sectors of government and private businesses, while Congress can debate the best approach to solving this issue, Hawley is right. Something must be done — and soon.

Those who believe that depoliticizing the FTC is a lost cause might be forgetting how other federal law enforcement and regulatory agencies operate within guidelines to reduce political bias. Consider how the Justice Department handled Google during the Obama years. As civil rights attorney and frequent Fox News guest Harmeet Dhillon wrote recently in the New York Post:

Despite the administration’s close ties to Silicon Valley, the Obama Justice Department in 2015 filed a Supreme Court brief against Google in Google v. Oracle, arguing that the firm engaged in significant intellectual property theft in creating Android … lawyers now consider the action to be the copyright case of the century because it could help stop what appears to be one of Big Tech’s primary means of monopolizing the digital marketplace — intellectual-property theft.

If the Justice Department can operate with at least this degree of independence, so too can the FTC. With the Big Tech accountability movement gaining steam, we need the FTC to resume its role as a non-partisan protector of the free market. If it continues down its current path of blissful ignorance and partisanship, who knows where we will be after another decade of these self-serving and nonchalant practices.

Bob Barr represented Georgia’s Seventh District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003. He served as the United States Attorney in Atlanta from 1986 to 1990 and was an official with the CIA in the 1970s. He now practices law in Atlanta, Georgia, and serves as head of Liberty Guard.

Townhall

by Bob Barr

What makes a mass shooter capable of emotionless, indiscriminate killing remains largely a mystery. Such a depraved act is not within the normal programming of a human being, not even for most hardened criminals. We may never truly understand all the factors, both physiological and environmental, that turn angry people into mass killers, but there is much we do know and can figure out, if common sense is our guide.

Since the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School, the mass shooting phenomenon has been intensively studied by experts in a number of disciplines, from law enforcement to sociology and psychiatry. The research has revealed patterns and understandings that have led to life-saving techniques for responding to mass shootings, such as law enforcement confronting the shooters quickly rather than waiting for a tactical approach, and implementing threat assessment protocols to identify at-risk individuals and get them needed help before reaching a tipping point.

Noticeably absent from this school of research is any evidence of a pattern regarding the firearms used to commit these killings – a point hopelessly lost on Democrats. Rather than attempt to tackle the far more complex cultural and social issues at the root of mass shootings, the answer for Democrats is always more gun control; even when such crimes occur, as often they do, in jurisdictions that already have in place extremely restrictive gun control measures. Democrats’ persistence on gun control as a response to mass killings is not just perplexing, but counterproductive and downright stupid.

With all we do know about mass shootings, there simply is no excuse for Democrats to play dumb when it comes to the irrelevancy of their gun control proposals to the reality of these heinous acts. For example, despite pretending otherwise, Democrats know that universal background checks will not stop mass shooters when there are no “disqualifying” factors present at the time of purchase – as is the case with the vast majority of mass shooters, who obtain their firearms legally.

Another favorite Democrat “solution” that, of course, is a government mandate, are “cooling off” periods. This represents yet another gun-control measure that cannot possibly work to prevent mass shootings, which often are planned over weeks and even months.

Finally, there is the call for an “assault weapon ban” that always follows close on the heels of every mass shooting incident. Arguing that the horrific social malady of mass shootings could be cured by banning certain firearms because of their appearance makes as much sense as claiming that child pornography can be prevented by outlawing certain types of cameras.

The only result of outlawing any particular category of firearms because of their appearance (such as the AR-15 rifle, the most popular sporting rifle in the country) would be to push these killers to use pistols instead, which have proven to be just as deadly.

Democrats know all of these things, but simply do not care because their real goal is to take as many guns out of as many hands as possible, including, of course, those of law-abiding parents, spouses, business owners and others who depend on being able to arm themselves to protect themselves, their families, and their businesses. Such persistence is not just dumb, it is dangerous.

What we do know about mass shootings suggests the biggest factor in limiting their damage is how quickly shooters are confronted, either by police or citizen bystanders. The FBI concluded exactly this after surveying 50 active-shooter incidents from 2016 to 2017. In its report, the Bureau stated that, “the enhanced threat posed by active shooters and the swiftness with which active shooter incidents unfold support the importance of preparation by law enforcement officers and citizens alike.”

By disarming law-abiding citizens in the name of preventing mass shootings, Democrats are directly contradicting what the FBI suggests needs to happen in order to minimize the carnage, and also could potentially make these tragedies far less common as potential mass killers, being the cowards they are, realize that what they thought to be soft targets are actually anything but.

Republicans need to discard their normal default position on the firearms policy debate, which is conflict avoidance, and call out Democrats for just what they are doing by pressing for gun control as the solution to mass shootings — making the problem worse not better.

Daily Caller

by Bob Barr

When the sitting president of the United States closets himself and refuses to appear publicly or to personally articulate his policies except when pressured to do so, people notice. When a president of the United States fumbles and mumbles publicly to the degree that what he is saying borders on undecipherable, people notice. When a sitting American president publicly disparages his own country, people notice. When America’s national security policies are delivered as indecisive, weak and apologetic, people notice.

When a U.S. president behaves in such ways, it is not only people in America who notice. Leaders of other nations, including key allies and major adversaries alike, take note also.

Weakness and vacillation may carry a political price domestically for a president, costing him and his political allies votes. More important, however, that same perception of weakness and inconsistency comes with a price abroad, and in terms of national security the price can be far more dangerous.

While President Biden may be comfortable saying little and doing even less, governing as an absentee president places our country in a decidedly uncomfortable posture abroad.

On the world stage, where since the demise of the Soviet Union three decades ago, the United States has reigned as the only true superpower, the absence of leadership is seen as weakness. If you are perceived as weak, you will be challenged accordingly.

As former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and many others have understood, a nation’s bargaining power to negotiate with other nations is based as much on how it is perceived by others as on its inherent power. A nation’s posture will be diminished in direct proportion to the degree it is seen as weak or indecisive, even if that weakness is based on its internal policies and priorities more than its actual diplomatic and military policy initiatives.

In the case of the Biden administration, however, the weakness is real, and is being openly telegraphed to at least one of our major adversaries – China.

Just last week, for example, in response to a question posed to Secretary of State Tony Blinken at a public forum, he stated that the United States is “not standing against China.” Now, either the president no longer considers China an adversary of the United States, or he does but is afraid to irritate Beijing by directly intimating such. Either way, the statement is deeply troubling insofar as it telegraphs weakness and hesitancy to the Chinese government.

By any real measure China is an adversary of ours and is openly challenging us on every index according to which national power is measured – geographic, technologic, economic and military.

As politics among nations is practiced in the real world if you do not “stand against” your adversaries, you are considered to have backed away, which most decidedly is not the position from which you want to be dealing with major world powers like China and Russia. Blinken’s timid statement vis-à-vis China followed his defensive posturing at a meeting in Alaska with his Chinese counterpart just a few days earlier. And while not directed at Russia, the weakness the Secretary of State portrayed assuredly was heard by Vladimir Putin, who understands the rules of the game even if Biden does not.

To be lectured at by Chinese officials, as was Blinken in Alaska, should have been met by a rhetorical blast clearly heard not only in Beijing, but also in Pyongyang, Tehran and Moscow. Yet, it was met by silence which, here again, in the international arena will be seen and responded to as weakness.

Already, the regime in Tehran is demanding that the United States, not Iran, must “come back to compliance” with the nuclear deal that Iran itself already had broken. Putin meanwhile is verbally challenging Biden after the U.S. President’s childish and unnecessary statement to a reporter that Putin is a “killer.”

Meanwhile, as our adversaries around the globe are flexing their muscles and challenging the Biden Administration, our Secretary of Defense appears fixated on LGBTQ policies in the ranks of our armed forces.

It is in just such unsettling circumstances that mistakes are made, and, unlike domestic political gaffes, national security blunders and misperceptions often lead to conflict and even war.

Bob Barr represented Georgia’s Seventh District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003. He served as the United States Attorney in Atlanta from 1986 to 1990 and was an official with the CIA in the 1970s. He now practices law in Atlanta, Georgia and serves as head of Liberty Guard.

FullMAGnews by Bob Barr In the United States, where the Constitution is — or is supposed to be — the supreme law of the land, two things are true. Police, tasked with upholding the law, have the right to do what is necessary to secure control of a situation in order to protect themselves and others. Equally important, however, is that police officers afford due recognition of and respect for the fundamental, natural right of the citizenry to keep and bear arms at home and outside the home. Balancing these rights and responsibilities is not always easy, especially in times of unrest and, as now, when increasing gun control is placing additional obstacles in the way. Ideally, when these two truths come to a head, the situation is resolved peaceably and without altercation, which is how the vast majority of cases are resolved. Unfortunately, when the situation falls short of this ideal, the result can be injury or death to citizens and at times to police officers themselves. Worse still, such tragic outcomes are increasingly common as gun rights in America are put to the test like never before. For the sake of the nation, the lives of our brave men and women in blue, and the future of gun rights in America, it is imperative that the police and Second Amendment citizens must work together to reverse this unsettling trend. Although Second Amendment conservatives and racial justice activists rarely see eye-to-eye, not least of all because of the outright anti-police rhetoric of Black Lives Matter, recent incidents that have stoked the anger of these groups should also cause conservatives generally to pause and pay attention to what is going on. Behind the click-bait headlines and incessant anti-gun progressive propaganda, the deaths of black citizens like Breonna Taylor, Corey Jones, and Philando Castile highlight the tragic consequences when the give-and-take of Second Amendment rights versus the duties of police becomes unbalanced. Taylor died last March during a botched police raid that unfolded under questionable circumstances as police returned fire to a single shot fired by Taylor’s boyfriend from inside the apartment, who thought their apartment was being broken into and robbed. Jones was a concealed weapons permit holder shot by a plainclothes police officer who approached him from an unmarked vehicle while Jones waited on the side of the road for a tow truck late at night. Castile happened to be driving a vehicle stopped by police and was inexplicably shot by officers after calmly notifying them that he was lawfully carrying a firearm. While these are extreme examples, and all involved questionable police officer conduct that fell short of the overall high standards demanded of law enforcement, they demonstrate what can happen in the absence of sound training and proper respect for citizens’ rights to keep and bear arms. To be sure, police officers in general still reflect robust respect for the Second Amendment. However, particularly in more urban areas where far-Left activists have either been elected sheriff or have risen to leadership posts in police departments, results can be very different. This makes sound police training for encounters with armed citizens even more critical; importantly, this training should include focusing on plainly and unambiguously directing citizens how to safely secure their firearms during an encounter. Also, however, citizens must be respectful of, and toward police officers. To this end, there must be immediate and absolute compliance in following their precise instructions. Even if a citizen believes he or she is in the right, the time for protest comes after the situation is de-escalated, not during. When police and citizens treat each other with respect and understanding, there is no reason for violent escalation. However, if ambiguity, disrespect, mistake, or criminal action – by either side – disturbs the critical balance, the outcome can be, as we have recently seen, tragic. Although the radical gun control proposed by Democrats have placed a strain on this relationship, police and Second Amendment citizens need never forget they are natural allies in the fight for public safety and for Second Amendment rights. Bob Barr represented Georgia’s Seventh District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003. He served as the United States Attorney in Atlanta from 1986 to 1990 and was an official with the CIA in the 1970s. He now practices law in Atlanta, Georgia and serves as head of Liberty Guard.