September 2021

Townhall

by Bob Barr

Always lurking inside gargantuan pieces of legislation like the $3.5 trillion spending bill President Biden wants congressional Democrats to send to him, are dangers far worse than the dollar price tag. Such bills invariably include measures that give to government powers it neither deserves nor to which it is entitled, and which wind up costing citizens dearly in loss of privacy and other freedoms.

Currently, it is the IRS salivating at the thought of gaining even greater power than it already enjoys to snoop into taxpayers’ private financial records. If in fact the tax agency gets what Biden wants to give it, the IRS will have before it any individual’s financial accounts with gross inflows and outflows of more than $600 (that’s just six hundred dollars, not six thousand).

The federal government’s power to monitor financial transactions is already vast, but apparently not enough for the folks at the IRS.

Thanks to Uncle Sam’s half-century old War on Drugs, and its junior partner, the 20-year-old War on Terror, the Treasury Department, of which IRS is a part, has the power already to monitor virtually all cash transactions of $10,000 or more. Moreover, if an individual tries to evade such reporting requirements by breaking the total amount into smaller packages, that is itself a federal felony (called “structuring”).

Figuring out whether a taxpayer has crossed the line from lawful financial activities to illegal financial transactions like “structuring,” however, has been difficult for the IRS.

Americans for Tax Reform, a non-partisan, Washington, D.C.-based non-profit discovered that only eight percent of the IRS Criminal Investigation Division’s investigations into allegations of structuring uncovered actual violations of federal tax law. ATR’s research also revealed that this pitiful rate of return on investigative resources was because investigators simply “had not considered reasonable explanations” for the activities by those it targeted, leading the watchdog group to conclude that most investigations were “merely IRS-CI fishing expeditions.”

These financial transaction laws and accompanying regulations easily can become snares for the unwary, and there are numerous reported cases in which individuals and small business owners have found themselves on the wrong end of a federal felony prosecution for failing to be fully aware of the complexities of the laws.

One of the simplest ways for Uncle Sam to snoop on citizens’ banking transactions is the notorious “Suspicious Activity Report” (SAR). The Bank Secrecy Act mandates that employees at banks, credit unions, and even car financing companies, file such a report with the federal government for any transaction by one of its customers, if it appears “unusual” or out of the ordinary. The SAR is to be filed in every such instance, even if there is no evidence the transaction is illegal; only that it “might signal criminal activity” to the teller or other bank employee.

Biden now reportedly wants to make it even easier for the IRS to monitor individuals’ financial dealings by requiring financial institutions report any accounts where transactions over the year total more than a paltry $600, without further justification.

That many Democrats in Congress appear ready to grant such power to the IRS tells us how far the Party has diverged from its roots of protecting individuals from abusive government snooping. Republicans who would acquiesce to this provision will be confirming they remain blind to individual privacy in the face of government claims to be “making us safer.”

This move expanding the power of the IRS to gain access at will to virtually every bank account in America, may be justified by Biden and Democrats as necessary to access monies hidden in accounts the government wants to seize, and by so doing, help pay for the multi-trillion-dollar spending bill. This is an argument that cannot honestly be made with a straight face, but also one that rarely causes Democrats to hesitate spending the money anyway.

A more accurate, if unspoken reason some Democrats would support expanding the snooping powers of the IRS, is that it would facilitate uncovering details about financial accounts held by political enemies.

Intense pushback from Republicans may be enough to keep this proposal from the final markup of the budget as it goes through the reconciliation process; however, if this IRS-backed provision actually makes it to Biden’s desk, where he surely would sign it, one of the very last vestiges of financial privacy heretofore enjoyed by Americans, will have been swept aside by the stroke of a president’s pen.

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.

Daily Caller

by Bob Barr

If ever there was a federal agency supposed to be nonpartisan and apolitical, it would be the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), established in 1934 and with a current budget of nearly $370 million and more than 3,000 employees. During its existence, the Archives has been overseen by four presidentially appointed acting and ten Senate-confirmed archivists, many of whom served under successive presidents of both major political parties, reflecting the nonpartisan nature of its work.

No more.

The current Archivist of the United States is David Ferriero, appointed by President Barack Obama in 2009. Under his leadership, this once-apolitical entity designated to preserve the vital historic documents and exhibits of the United States has become a flashpoint for the same left-wing, racism-based ideology now coursing throughout the Biden administration.

The prime catalyst for this ideological crusade by President Joe Biden was Executive Order 13985, the very first order he issued on his very first day in office. The document declared that systemic racism permeates the entire federal government, and directed every Executive Branch agency to develop a plan to address it.

Some five months prior, however, in September 2020, Ferriero on his own had directed that a 35-member “Internal Task Force on Racism,” comprised mostly of Archives employees, would advance a plan to identify evidence of “systemic racism” and “White supremacy” that he apparently believes undergirds not only the work of the National Archives, but the “vast majority of institutions in the United States.” The Task Force was directed also to recommend ways to address current and future racism. Ferriero’s group accomplished this mission with a vengeance, as detailed in a 105-page report presented internally in April, released this Summer, and which recommendations now are being implemented.

The bizarre findings of this Archives Task Force included declaring that the magnificent paintings adorning the main floor of the Capitol Rotunda are deeply problematic and require “reimagining” because, as now presented, they “laud wealthy White men in the nation’s founding while marginalizing BIPOC [Black, Indigenous, People of Color], women, and other communities.”

Even more disturbing, however, are the numerous findings and recommendations of the Task Force on Racism relating to the National Archives Catalog. The Catalog is the vast digital compendium of millions of documents and other materials which the agency is charged by law with protecting; it is how citizens and non-citizens access and view our nation’s important records.

The Catalog includes such founding documents as the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, the Bill of Rights and the Emancipation Proclamation.

The Task Force found that “[r]acism is embedded in the history and current practices of NARA .  .  .  at every level,” and that “white supremacy is present in all American institutions and culture.” It therefore concluded that steps must be undertaken to ensure that current and future customers of this treasury of historical material be given fair warning of such dangers by use of mechanisms such as “content” and “trigger warnings,” along with “removable covers for sensitive content.”

Recommendations for future steps to ensure Archives Catalog items are to be viewed only through the racial lenses employed by Ferriero and his Task Force, include a state-of-the-art “find-and-replace feature” so that replacement or additional appropriate language could be inserted.

These practices constitute censorship by camouflage.

The truly Orwellian nature of this project, however, is perhaps best illustrated in Appendix VII where, among other things, the authors “recommend addressing not only harmful language that is present in the Catalog, but also the language that is not there.” You cannot make this nonsense up; it is there in actual printed words.

The insidious nature of this project lies in the fact that by declaring our founding documents and exhibits to be systemically racist and reflective of white supremacy, and by placing explicit and directive “warnings” impliedly probative of such perceived content, the Archivist and his Task Force obviously — and intentionally — are reaffirming their opinion that America is and always has been a systemically racist society.

What they are doing is deplorable and is an affront to our nation’s history and culture.

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

New Orleans, and the state of Louisiana of which the city is a part, does not have a global warming problem. It has a political-cultural problem that not only resists progress, but appears to revel in doing so. The state is captive to a crony political system that has changed little since the days of Huey Long in the 1930s.

Now, after Hurricane Ida’s visit, federal taxpayers once again will be on the hook for the Pelican State’s failure to prepare.

If Hurricane Katrina in 2005 was supposed to have been a wakeup call for the Crescent City, its leaders refused to answer the phone. On August 29, Hurricane Ida ripped past the city, taking out critical electrical grid infrastructure that plunged the entire city into darkness (some areas remain without electricity even now).

Despite having failed repeatedly over the years to upgrade their power system to standards beyond those of the 1970s, government officials and energy company representatives continue to blame the “unforeseeable” ferocity of the storm for the extensive damage it caused to the power grid.

In New Orleans, “unforeseeable” means “eyes closed.”

Louisiana’s deplorable infrastructure is neither a time issue, nor a money one. The same officials responsible for lagging infrastructure upgrades will be the first lining up to beg Uncle Sam for billions in taxpayer relief. Of course, this plea is more like a strong-arm ransom. Presidents and members of Congress know that refusing, or even hesitating to open the federal checkbook will incur calls of racism (as happened during the Katrina relief effort 15 years before). Billions will be spent; billions will disappear; and, history will repeat itself.

Not surprisingly, New Orleans played a pivotal role in the federal government initially assuming responsibility for natural disasters many decades ago. The federal response to the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, which devastated New Orleans and the Mississippi delta region, was the first time significant federal resources were expended for a specific geographic area recovering from a serious natural disaster.

Prior to the 1927 flood, costs of disaster recovery and other assistance was seen primarily as the responsibility of those affected, charitable organizations, and local governments. Grover Cleveland best summarized this approach when vetoing a federal relief bill in 1887, saying the “friendliness and charity of our countrymen can always be relied upon to relieve their fellow-citizens in misfortune,” while warning “federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the Government.” Prescience, indeed.

What incentive is there for New Orleans to expedite infrastructure improvements when federal taxpayers can be tapped year after year for rebuilding but without demanding verifiable modernization in return?

Also hampering New Orleans’ recovery is a broader sentiment among global warming-minded Leftists that focuses exclusively on the future, and what can be done to change it, as opposed to the more difficult task of fixing the present. It is far easier to sit back on one’s self-proclaimed laurels and bark about global warming being the cause of New Orleans’ disaster loop, as doing so shifts blame to external actors and “global efforts for change,” over which they have no control.

For lazy and corrupt government officials, this cop-out provides the perfect cover to respond to the consequences of their incompetence. After all, when you blame Mother Nature, there is no rebuttal to defend against.

This has been the strategy employed by state and local officials for the last 15 years. However, as any visitor to New Orleans knows, the stench of garbage and sewage, and the painful visages of poverty are a constant presence in the French Quarter and elsewhere, not the temporary inconvenience of another disruptive disaster.

Such unpleasantries reflect the perpetual incompetence and corruption of a government that wrings its hands and surrenders to whatever comes next, instead of actually preparing for it. So long as federal dollars keep feeding this delusion of colorful grit and decay, residents, visitors, and taxpayers alike will be forced to continue filling the coffers of a corrupt system.

The expensive aftermath after Hurricane Ida is certain to illustrate once again the political system described to me by a fellow United States Attorney in the late 1980s — a system where “people don’t just expect corruption on the part of their elected officials, they demand it.” In the Big Easy, it comes rolling back in.

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.

Daily Caller

by Bob Barr

After causing Americans to suffer whiplash over the past year and a half with conflicting and at times openly contradictory statements on how to deal with COVID-19, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), seems now to have shifted focus to issues that more easily fit within the overarching themes driving the Biden-Harris administration: Racism, guns and climate change.

Not coincidentally, for an agency that urges everyone except itself to “follow the science,” there is far less need to do so when pontificating on racism, guns and the climate, because there really is no “science” involved.

In April, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky declared that “racism is a serious public health threat” that has become an “epidemic impacting public health.” As overseer of the 13,000 employees at CDC, Walensky directed that every component of the agency, which has been headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia since its founding 75 years ago, must consider racism as a top priority.

In late August, Walensky explained in a CNN interview that “preventing gun violence and gun deaths” has shot to the top tier of priorities at the CDC, which has been chomping at the bit to jump back into the “gun violence” business after having been prevented from using taxpayer money to do so since the late 1990s.

As for climate change, or the climate crisis as this administration has now rebranded the issue, the creation of a new “Office of Climate Change and Health Equity” within the Department of health and Human Services, of which CDC is a part, will provide many new avenues for Dr. Walensky and her cohorts to save the world.

The executive order that prompted the establishment of this particular new bureaucracy was one of the many President Joe Biden issued during his first days in the White House. The 21-page “Executive Order on Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad,” called on virtually every federal department and top-level presidential adviser, including CDC’s parent agency, Health and Human Services, to tackle climate crisis-related issues. These offices were also directed to address the amorphous problems of “environmental injustice” and “equity.”

These tasks alone are sufficient to keep HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra and Walensky busy for the remainder of Biden’s term, notwithstanding that none of it has anything to do with disease control and prevention, which happens to define the jurisdiction of CDC since it was established in 1946 to direct the fight to eradicate malaria, which at the time was rampant in the southeastern United States.

Going off on such a tangent, however, never has given CDC pause to expand its mission to include all manner of non-disease problems. It is, indeed, the poster child as an example of “mission creep,” notwithstanding it has not always been successful in taking on new issues outside its defined jurisdiction.

Late last month, for example, the Supreme Court shot down the eviction moratorium mandate that CDC had been pressing.

Also, the agency’s previous, repeated moves to involve itself in the highly political subject of gun control led the Congress in 1996 to slap the agency’s hands and declare that none of its appropriated funds could be used for such activities. The ban was partially lifted in 2019, which paved the way for congressional Democrats to now start pouring millions into CDC’s budget so it could once again engage in “gun violence prevention.” Dr. Walensky has enthusiastically embraced this windfall.

Shortly after taking the reins at CDC, Walensky identified all three of these issues – racism, gun violence and climate change — as top priorities for her tenure as America’s “Top Doc.” She has not disappointed her supporters.

In her Aug. 27 interview with CNN, Walensky offered as justification for pulling CDC directly into the ongoing and highly political gun violence policy debate, the fact that she “swore to the president and to this country” to protect our health. Seems she has already forgotten the oath she took upon becoming CDC director was actually to the Constitution and laws of the United States, not to Biden.

Pledging allegiance to Biden, however, makes it easier to justify engaging in activities and policies bearing little, if any, relationship to the Constitution or the legal jurisdiction of the CDC.

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

Gender unicorns. “Social justice” physics. Math and reading skills deemed no longer necessary. College grads multiple thousands of dollars in debt but unemployable in the marketplace. America’s once world-class education system is crumbling around us, rotting from within.

Measured by money spent, our education system should be working magnificently. At more than $14,000 per student, the U.S. spends the fifth-most of any country in the world educating children, in a highly managed system overseen by officials from local school boards to the presidential cabinet.

Despite all this – actually because of it – the return on our investment in education has never been worse.

Decades ago, liberals realized educational institutions were a crucial tool by which to push their radical agenda into American culture; first covertly, but now openly, even proudly. The result is a system far less concerned with the actual, objective education of students, than with consolidating power by the adults who oversee it. Students suffer, but teachers’ unions, public school officials, bureaucrats at all levels of government, and well-funded special interest groups gain ever greater control.

Students barely able to read and write are being taught about gender unicorns. White students are demeaned as being “racist” simply for being white. All the while, students are being emotionally scarred and taught to be afraid of everything around them, thanks to masking mandates, social distancing, plexiglass barriers, and constant “active shooter” drills.

Sadly, private schools are not immune to these destructive shenanigans. As John Sailer writes at City Journal, plans by a Washington, D.C. private school for “anti-racist” education  includes “discussions of social justice such as kneeling during the national anthem, Title IX, and paying college athletes while learning about concepts such as Newton’s Laws of Motion.”

Linking physics to the social justice movement would be laughable, were it not part and parcel of the Left’s scheme to destroy rational thinking and replace it with mind-numbing groupthink.

This problem has been simmering for years, as far back as the late 1960s, but it is only recently that parents, students, and citizen groups have awakened fully to what two generations of indoctrination fueled by trillions in taxpayer spending has wrought. Government mandates directed at schools and students as justified by the COVID pandemic, suddenly have exposed the evil scheme by those in control of education.

This revelation sparked by governments’ COVID mandates, has been aided by the way in which the education elite has openly and aggressively pushed its “woke” agenda in the classroom.

In a sense (and thankfully), the Left’s own hubris and its irresistible urge to overreach, has put its insidious agenda at risk.

Whereas the push of Common Core a decade ago began to stoke the ire of parents, today’s onslaught of progressive politics disguised as educational curriculum – best personified by “critical race theory” – coupled with the absurd and debilitating COVID mandates in schools nationwide, is moving these parents from simply being upset to becoming angry and, more important, actively so.

Democrats consider contentious school board meetings taking place in communities across the country as manufactured conservative outrage, and they publicly belittle parents choosing to stand up vocally against arrogant school board members. The anger manifested by these parents, however, is very real; more important, it is well-founded.

In many instances, the confrontations at these school board meetings focus on political issues, but at its core, the fight is about who should control the education of America’s children – parents, or progressive bureaucrats and union officials in swanky offices with well-connected friends in Congress and the Department of Education.

Parents moving to seize control of school districts from the hands of bullying officials serving their overlords in Washington, D.C., Sacramento, California, Chicago, Illinois, and other liberal enclaves, are fighting not only for their children, but for America’s future.

It is a battle long in the making but now existential in importance. The Left senses this and will continue to use every tool in its power to thwart it, from withholding grant monies, to ordering police to arrest and jail protesting parents. For the sake of our children and our country, these liberal bullies cannot be allowed to prevail.