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Townhall

Verbally attack, or simply criticize in public transgenderism or the gay lifestyle, and you are roundly condemned as trans-phobic or homo-phobic. The term “pro-choice” is the favored moniker to describe those who favor legalized abortion rather than “pro-abortion.”  Those who are opposed to abortion, whether on religious, moral, or political grounds, are demeaned as “anti-choice.” Thus is contemporary left-wing culture consumed with staking out their territory as guardians of lifestyles.

Mass murders involving firearms become not examples of the need for culture control to identify and resolve cultural behaviors leading to the devaluation of life, but to the simplistic call for instrument control, that is, gun control. Virtually every incident involving gun violence, including most recently the December 16th shooting at a Christian school in Madison, Wisconsin, is headlined by President Biden as illustrating the need for “gun control” not as a call to protect “life.”

This month, in perhaps the clearest yet personification of the Left’s disregard for principles of life, the alleged murderer of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson is hailed as a true man of the people, a heroic persona even, deified to a degree Bonnie and Clyde could only hope to have aspired during their brief crime spree across America’s heartland during the bleak days of the Great Depression.

Luigi Mangione is seen through this lens of his expanding social media savvy fans as “radiant,” an “American hero,” and a modern-day “Robin Hood” – a video sensation even as he is led in shackles into a jail facility in Pennsylvania while he awaits extradition to New York where the cold-blooded murder took place with Mangione allegedly shooting his pre-selected victim in the back.

Overlooked in the case of Mangione, or purposefully ignored by his growing legion of fans, is what they would in earlier days (such as in the “Occupy Wall Street” era) have condemned as decadent — the privileged upbringing and beach bum lifestyle enjoyed and flaunted by Mangione prior to his actions on December 4th and the drafting of his rambling and semi-unintelligible “manifesto” labeling the victim CEO as a “parasite.”

The alleged gunman’s disgusting characterization of his victim – in reality a married father of two teenaged sons – has been not only echoed but glorified elsewhere in the days following the cowardly attack, further cementing the lack of human compassion for life prevalent among many young adults.

According to a just-released poll, 41% of those aged 18 to 29 consider Mangione’s apparent assassination of Thompson to be “acceptable.”

It gets worse.

One so-called “internet personality,” Taylor Lorenz, actually and openly celebrated the murder. In a befuddled attempt to defend her glorification of the healthcare company executive’s murder, Lorenz claimed that her expressed “joy” at his murder actually reflected her belief in the “sanctity of life” because of the manner by which insurance companies like UnitedHealthcare decide not to cover certain procedures.

Another Gen. Z individual has employed TikTok to present a “walking tour” of the areas connected to the United Healthcare murder – a project he reportedly thought would be “funny.”

The depravity of the Left is even more aptly demonstrated in a set of playing cards depicting CEOs who should be targeted, with all the cards imprinted with a human silhouette as a shooting target, reasonably implying they should be shot.

With some three-quarters of Gen Z-ers supporting legal abortion, it should surprise few that among this large segment of young adults in America, the murder of a corporate executive is not only considered no big deal, but to some degree even “acceptable.”

A recent, positive-themed study of Gen Z values described this group as one that favors “a more inclusive and accepting society where everyone feels comfortable.”  Everyone, that is, except those deemed, in Mangione’s words, “parasites” or, reflecting the strong pro-abortion bent of this age demographic, those who favor the life of unborn babies.

Biden’s gun-control message following the Madison, Wisconsin school shooting did express sorrow for the families of the victims. This was far more rhetorical compassion than the President devoted to Brian Thompson’s murder, a tragedy that was met by silence from the White House, where apparently concern for “life” depends on the context in which life is taken.

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 currently practices law in Atlanta, Georgia and serves as President of the National Rifle Association.

Daily Caller

With President-elect Donald Trump’s recent nomination of Pam Bondi to serve as attorney general, and his naming of Gail Slater to head the Antitrust Division at the Department of Justice, the groundwork has been laid to begin unshackling America’s marketplace, which has for decades been hampered by unnecessary regulations and — during the Biden Administration — subjected to out-and-out lawfare by the very Department of Justice supposed to protect the marketplace from anti-competitive forces.

The question now is, how quickly can these abusive, economic lawfare practices be struck from the Department’s agenda and an originalist interpretation of the nation’s antitrust laws restored?

The mission of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is to uphold federal law. The Department, however, cannot and has never carried out this mission in a vacuum. As a component of the executive branch of the federal government, it operates necessarily — and appropriately — according to the underlying policy preferences of the elected president.

It bears reminding that Democrats lost the presidential election in November. Whether the losers like it or not, President-elect Trump has every right to choose individuals to occupy top positions at the Justice Department who will respect and implement the policies that clearly and openly were at the foundation of his Nov. 5 electoral victory.

Moreover, Trump is fully empowered to populate the top echelons of the Department with men and women who – unlike his soon-to-be predecessor – actually respect the rule of law and who will not employ the powers of the Justice Department to undermine legal norms and the institutions our Founders so carefully crafted.

For example, in the Bizarro World of the Biden Administration, when a state government – the Commonwealth of Virginia – moved to protect the integrity of its voting processes by stopping illegal immigrants from voting, the U.S. Department of Justice sued Virginia to prevent it from taking such measures!

When a U.S. citizen named Elon Musk offered, through his legally constituted, pro-Trump super PAC to give $1 million a day to select signers of his petition to protect the First and Second Amendments, Biden’s Justice Department stepped in to try to stop him (they did not succeed).

In response to such weird moves by the Justice Department, Republican Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton asked the million-dollar question: why had not the Department stopped left-wing PACs from deploying the exact same strategy: “Left-wing organizations often promote voter-registration sweepstakes,” Cotton wrote. “Michelle Obama’s voter-registration group offered individuals who provided their registration information a chance to win a free trip to Las Vegas. But where are the threats of legal consequences for liberals?” The question answers itself.

When President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris needed a scapegoat for the high housing inflation caused by their own economic policies, the Justice Department did the bidding of leftwing groups like the “Revolving Door Project,” and actually sued pricing software, such as “RealPage,” that are used lawfully by landlords.

Before the 2024 election, the rent-pricing lawsuit brought by the Biden Justice Department was mentioned repeatedly in Kamala Harris campaign news releases and speeches. As noted correctly by the Federalist Society and numerous other groups expert in federal antitrust law, the RealPage suit had no legal justification whatsoever, but rather was concocted purely for political theater and electoral puffery.

Fortunately, come January, there will be a new sheriff in town — one whose Justice Department picks illustrate respect for the rule of law and who do not view the Department as an extended political arm of the political campaign that brought the president to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Gail Slater, Trump’s Antitrust Division appointee, has a long and distinguished track record of promoting free markets and pro-competitive policies, including at the Federal Trade Commission, in the first Trump administration, and with Sen. JD Vance.

For her part, former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi has been an outspoken critic of the abusive lawfare practiced by the Biden Department of Justice she is in line to head following Trump’s January 20th swearing-in. She also represented Trump during his first Senate impeachment trial and is on record declaring that “the Department of Justice, the prosecutors will be prosecuted — the bad ones.”

With his selections of Bondi and Slater, Trump has signaled clearly that the U.S. Department of Justice will once again prioritize protecting the rule of law rather than throwing roadblocks in its path. And that’s good news for us all.

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

As with any national election, there are winners and losers. There are celebrations and there are postmortems. There is recrimination and there are congratulations. After their shellacking at the polls Nov. 5, Democrats unsurprisingly are pointing fingers, casting blame and channeling their anger; some already scheming for 2026 and 2028.

Meanwhile, the one person most responsible for what still is unfolding as a historically significant election is doing exactly what he should be doing. Donald J. Trump is laying the groundwork to begin dismantling a federal government that has been allowed to grow into a morbidly obese and regulatory oppressive behemoth under successive Democrat and Republican administrations. Not since Ronald Reagan took on Uncle Sam in his first term has the left faced such a serious threat.

What makes this go ‘round far different from Reagan’s 1980 drubbing of Jimmy Carter is the magnitude and multitude of attacks leveled at Trump before the election – a barrage no presidential candidate before him had endured. Sure, Reagan was attacked by the Democrat Party throughout the 1980 campaign, even as he had to fight off efforts by the GOP establishment that never really warmed to his anti-Washington rhetoric. But the campaign against Trump, which began even before Joe Biden was sworn into office Jan. 20, 2021, is something our country never previously had witnessed.

To the horror and dismay of Democrats and many moderate Republicans, and against all odds, Trump still prevailed.

Also unlike Reagan’s 1980 win (with his coattails ushering in a GOP majority in the Senate) — after which politics settled down into a “normal” transition — Trump’s opponents largely have refused to accept Harris’ loss or to acknowledge that his victory at the polls represents a rejection of the liberal agenda pressed by Biden and his Democrat predecessor, Barack Obama. This situation mirrors that in 2016 when Democrats refused to accept Trump’s first win, and instead declared open cultural, political and legal warfare against his administration.

Even facing strong headwinds from Democrats in Congress and those entrenched in the massive federal bureaucracy for the entirety of his first term in office, Trump was able to enact much of his conservative agenda; most notably in judicial appointments, strengthening America’s energy sector, focusing the nation’s attention on illegal immigration that had grown during the Obama years (and then exploded during Biden’s) and reinvigorating our free-market economy.

While Biden immediately after being sworn in set about to dismantle much of Trump’s signature accomplishments by opening our southern border to virtually all comers, and by massive infusions of inflationary dollars into the economy, the policy issues for which Trump as President had fought remained front and center up to and including the 2024 election cycle.

For the entirety of Biden’s four years as president, the political domestic landscape was defined not by him or even by congressional Democrats who enjoyed a majority in the Senate. This was a severe handicap for Biden, even before he bowed out in July.

Trump’s master stroke of declaring early in 2022 that he would be a candidate in 2024 guaranteed that he, and not the incumbent Democrat president, would define the parameters for the remainder of Biden’s presidency. This gamble also played to Trump’s advantage by forcing the Democrats to do what they do best – overreach.

Led by the U.S. Justice Department and its highly partisan Attorney General Merrick Garland (who never could let go of his peeve at being denied a Supreme Court appointment in 2016 at the hands of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell), Biden unleashed a series of what never were able to be seen as other than partisan legal attacks against Trump.

These politically-founded federal prosecutions in turn green-lit charges against Trump by state prosecutors in New York and Atlanta. This prosecutorial pile-on further solidified Trump’s status as a target of the Democrat Party’s abuse of the country’s legal system, and kept him and his policies at the center of virtually every public policy issue up to and including Nov. 5, 2024.

The Trump-orchestrated trifecta of Biden’s blunder-filled term, a four-year long presidential campaign and exaggerated abuses of our legal system by Democrats, converged not by chance on Election Day 2024 to give Trump and the GOP a historic and well-earned victory. The Deep State is now in deep trouble. Thank heavens!

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 currently serves as President of the National Rifle Association.

Townhall

Hindsight may be 20-20, but it can be illustrative and reliable. Here are nine errors Kamala Harris should not have committed during the course of losing her admittedly truncated campaign.

Above all, don’t define your campaign as one centered on “change” and then declare there was nothing at all you would change in your own record as vice president. I mean, who couldn’t see this one coming a mile away?

Less than one month out from Election Day, Harris gleefully appeared on “The View” with its six uber-liberal glamour gals, and was thrown the softest of softball questions by co-hostess Sunny Hostin — “What, if anything, would you have done something differently than President Biden during the past four years?” The whiff of her milquetoast answer that she would not have changed a thing reverberated all the way to her drubbing at Trump’s hands on Tuesday.

You’re a “change agent” who wouldn’t “change” a thing? Kiddo, you deserve to lose on that one alone.

But there’s more lessons to be learned here.

Use celebrities sparingly and certainly don’t rely on them. Sure, voters, especially young ones, love celebrities like Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga, Beyonce, Oprah Winfrey, and the host of others the Harris campaign trotted out over the four months of her campaign. But any campaign manager worth their salt will tell you that celebrities are like snowflakes – beautiful to look at but quickly melt. This lesson un-learned by Harris was especially obvious when compared to Trump’s campaign which wisely avoided playing the “look-at-me” celebrity card. Trump, after all, doesn’t need celebrities to burnish his image. Trump is his own celebrity.

Speaking of celebrities, it is not a great idea to showcase members of your opponent’s party who now support you but who are seen by many voters as disloyal, untrustworthy politicos; in a word, traitors. People rightfully do not trust them or those who appear to admire them.

Pick a running mate who brings something to your campaign. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz brought absolutely nothing to the Harris campaign – not youth, not eloquence, not cash, not a new constituency, and not a state that Harris was not expected to win regardless. Even George H.W. Bush’s much-maligned choice of Dan Quayle as his running mate in 1988 brought youth and vigor to the campaign, as well as strengthening ties to a state (Indiana) that Bush needed.

All Walz brought to Harris’ campaign were questions about his own background, and a penchant for clapping at the air for no apparent purpose.

Do not, under any circumstances, belittle or insult your opponent’s voters, regardless of whether you secretly consider them deplorable, garbage, or racist; your opponent’s base voters are never going to vote for you, so why risk losing independent voters who may be turned off by insulting an entire class of voters? Just as important, don’t have your own surrogates berate your own voters that you need to win. Black male voters understandably did not like being lectured to by Barack Obama on Harris’ behalf.

Never believe your own hype, even if you consider it to be accurate. Seeing yourself on the cover of a magazine leaping across a mountainous chasm like Super Woman may be worth a thumb’s up at a family gathering, but should never become part of your own campaign’s identity. Pride is one of the Seven Deadly Sins for a reason – it can be deadly.

The flip side of belief in one’s hype is, of course, a candidate should never underestimate their opponent. Nothing can cost a campaign so dearly as thinking your opponent is incapable of beating the living daylights out of you. Succumbing to this clear avoidable error has doomed more than one campaign and probably figured in Harris’ defeat.

Finally, make sure that the final message of your campaign is a good one; a positive one, and one to which voters can relate. One of Trump’s final campaign stops before Tuesday was in Grand Rapids, where he delivered a message that was positively Reagan-esque. He reminded voters that they did not need to accept the status quo, that they could expect and deserve better.

Over in Philadelphia, Harris surrogate Oprah Winfrey issued a dark, dire warning that failure to vote for the vice president risks never being able to vote ever again. Not surprisingly, voters decided not to be swayed by such over-the-top doomsday-speak.

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 President of the National Rifle Association.

Townhall

It is a time-honored tradition that high-ranking U.S. government officials are – a few easily surmountable legal limitations notwithstanding — permitted to cash in on their public service when they leave Uncle Sam and enter or reenter the private sector. Even modern-day presidents have done so; some more than others (can you say, the “Clinton Foundation?”), but all have gained significant wealth after leaving office.

The circumstances involving Barack Obama’s Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who apparently has signed on as a lawyer representing a Chinese drone-manufacturing corporation, however, raises concerns that go beyond post-public service profiteering and impact our national security. Not only is Lynch serving as an attorney for Shenzhen DJI Innovation Technology Co., Ltd. (“DJI”) – the world’s largest manufacturer of commercial drones – but she has sued the U.S. Department of Defense on behalf of her Chinese client.

This is troubling in a number of ways, most importantly because the Chinese drone manufacturing company DJI has for the past few years been listed by the Pentagon as a company with which our government should not deal, because of problematic relationships with the communist Chinese military. Apparently this is of less concern to our former attorney general that what is certain to be a significant retainer her firm is receiving for representing the company.

The close relationship between “private” Chinese companies and the communist-controlled government in Beijing and its military arm, the People’s Liberation Army or “PLA,” is well-established and open to no real dispute. Despite superficial steps orchestrated by President Xi in recent years to appear more benign and market-oriented, according to experts these relationships in fact are more significant today than in years past.

The reality is that Chinese-controlled companies located in mainland China are not “private” in the same sense as are American companies. And while a company such as DJI may not be an outwardly and fully “State Owned Enterprise” (“SOE”) like large Chinese energy, mining, or shipping companies, the hand of either the Chinese military or the ruling communist party (or both) is almost certain to be present to a degree; this is especially so if the products (like drones) being manufactured are capable of military as well as civilian uses (so-called “dual use” technology). At a minimum, the common presumption by U.S. companies doing business in China or partnering here in the U.S. with Chinese companies, is that information gained by virtue of such business relationships is — directly or indirectly — available to and shared with Chinese government officials.

While Lynch and her colleagues at the Washington, D.C. based law firm Paul, Weiss may not see or accept the reality of this unhealthy relationship, we should be glad our military leaders do understand how Beijing operates, which is why DJI has been placed on the restricted list.

Lynch, of course, is not the first attorney general who has left office, entered private practice, and then challenged government policies or actions. Her predecessor, Eric Holder, openly sued at least three government entities, alleging civil rights violations. Well-known peacenik Ramsey Clark, who served  as President Lyndon Johnson’s attorney general, in 2015 joined a lawsuit against various members of former President George W. Bush’s administration for their roles in the war in Iraq.

Representing a Chinese company like DJI in a direct confrontation with the U.S. Department of Defense, however, is a new and concerning wrinkle on an old problem.

In her lawsuit, Lynch is demanding that our government be ordered to justify, beyond the Pentagon’s reasonable assertion that selling drones possessing military applicabilities manufactured by a company headquartered in mainland China is not a great idea.

In making such demands in court filings, Lynch joins the ACLU, which complains that strong enforcement of federal laws permitting the U.S. government to list Chinese companies as potential threats to our national security, infringes the constitutional rights of such companies — a rather head-scratching argument to make in behalf of companies operating under the umbrella of the largest and most powerful anti-civil liberties regime of modern times.

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, serves as head of Liberty Guard, and currently is president of the National Rifle Association.

Daily Caller

Former “Shark Tank” star Mark Cuban likes to position himself as a humanitarian. But it turns out he might be just another well-connected celebrity using his high-profile political connections to rig the marketplace in his favor.

The healthcare scheme Cuban seems to have cooked up recently with Vice President Kamala Harris reveals his true motives.

Cuban has aligned himself with Big Pharma in pushing for healthcare regulations that would advance his business interests. Hardly by coincidence, Harris announced Oct. 8th that she would do their bidding if elected president.

The game plan concocted by Cuban and Big Pharma looks to unleash the power of the regulatory state against pharmacy benefit managers, known as “PBMs.” These are groups that businesses’ health plans hire as a way to lower drug costs for their employees. It happens also to be a strategy used by many government agencies.

PBMs are effective because, combined, they manage the health plans for just about every business in the country, with 275 million Americans benefiting from their services. Their size and scale gives them significant leverage at the negotiating table with the drugmakers, leading to lower consumer drug costs.

A study by the Coalition for Affordable Prescription Drugs found that the great majority of businesses are happy with their PBMs. This unsurprising finding is reflected in research by Casey Mulligan, who chaired former President Trump’s White House Council of Economic Advisers from 2018 to 2019. Mulligan’s research found that PBMs provide more than $145 billion in value every year.

Why, then, are Big Pharma, Cuban and Harris pushing to regulate these companies?

For Big Pharma, the answer is simple — its otherwise laudable goal of making as much money as possible is facilitated when government regulations can be used to limit negotiating groups that challenge its list prices.

For Cuban, the answer is revealed in the fact that he has a company, Cost Plus Drugs, that employs a business model that hinges on eliminating PBMs (at least the ones he disfavors). So, when the government attacks PBMs, he benefits.

For her part, Harris has every political reason to go along with Cuban and Big Pharma’s regulatory wish list. Despite positioning herself as an enemy of Big Pharma and a champion to consumers, Harris has benefited handsomely from drugmakers’ political donations. As The Daily Signal pointed out:

“President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris slammed Big Pharma for ‘inflating the price of lifesaving medications’ … But Biden and Harris’ congressional campaigns received $9 million and $2 million, respectively, from 1990-2024.”

Cuban and Harris like to pretend they are challengers to Big Pharma’s political agenda; but if they were, they would not be pushing one of the drugmakers’ top lobbying priorities just weeks before a national election. They would also call out drug manufacturers for using the regulatory state to increase prices.

Unlike Cuban and Harris, the American people recognize it is the drug companies that are primarily to blame for the crisis in prescription drug prices. A KFF poll released earlier this month found that 89% of Republicans, 84% of Democrats, and 78% of Independents believe pharmaceutical companies’ greed is a contributing factor to today’s high drug costs.

It is a shame that Cuban and Harris are helping the drugmakers in their lobbying quest to deflect blame and become even bigger with the help of the regulatory state; but it should hardly surprise us, either, considering the long history of crony capitalism that infects the modern-day marketplace.

This is why it is so important that voters choose wisely Nov. 5th. The upcoming elections present a clear path forward to minimizing the influence-peddling and soft corruption that far too often rigs free markets against consumers and in favor of the well-to-do.

Here’s hoping the public makes the right calls on their ballots.

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 and currently in President of the National Rifle Association.

Townhall

First came the self-revelation that Vice President Kamala Harris “Owns a Handgun” as blared in a New York Times headline last month. Next, in no less a substantive forum than an interview with Oprah Winfrey, Ms. Harris startled the liberal media by declaring that she would shoot anyone daring to break into her house.

Coyly claiming that she “probably should not have said” she would actually shoot an intruder, Harris then took advantage of the moment to assert that her gun ownership and her avowed willingness to use it in defense of home and family, was absolute proof that claims she is anti-firearms are nothing other than a vile, Trump-created canard.

While Kamala’s “Dirty Harry” act may have pulled the wool over the liberal media’s eyes, the fact remains that both Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim — “Tiananmen Square” — Walz, have a demonstrable history of favoring anti-Second Amendment policies that belie their professed, late-night conversion to gun advocacy.

The New York Times may swoon over Harris’ new platform of “Freedom” as reflected in her tough rhetoric on gun ownership and protecting her home – already tightly guarded by numerous firearms-wielding Secret Service agents – with a Glock handgun, but “freedom” is not reflected in any of the following policies advocated by the Democrat Party’s current standard-bearers:

• As San Francisco District Attorney, Harris signed onto a legal brief asserting that the Second Amendment does not guarantee an individual right to keep and bear arms, but only a collective right. The U.S. Supreme Court, in its 2008 Heller decision, correctly found otherwise – that the Second Amendment does indeed guarantee an individual’s right to possess that Glock handgun Harris glibly declared this year would blast an intruder to smithereens.

• Both Harris and Walz are on record (repeatedly) declaring that the AR-15 rifle, which happens to be the most popular rifle in the United States, should be banned from individual, civilian possession.

• Harris has openly lauded Australia’s gun confiscation program, and has called for mandatory gun buy-back programs.

• The Vice President considers “bump stocks,” which are a non-functioning accessory for AR-15 style rifles, to be “machine guns,” notwithstanding the recent Cargill Supreme Court decision stopping ATF from enforcing just such an absurd definition.

• Both candidates support expansive so-called “red flag laws” that allow for a court to order seizure of a person’s lawfully owned firearms even without an opportunity for a hearing, upon an assertion by a third party that the gun owner appears to be a “threat” to themselves or others.

• The Vice President serves as head of the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, which President Biden established last year and provides Harris what amounts to a bully pulpit from which to advocate her gun control predispositions, but little more.

Rest assured, however, if the Harris-Walz team is sworn into office next January, and with the tools available from which to not just advocate for gun control but to implement such policy directives from the Department of Justice to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – and every federal agency in between – Kamala Harris would quickly discard her Dirty Harry image in favor of Michael Bloomberg.

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 President of the National Rifle Association.

Daily Caller

The year was 1917 — the Panama Canal had been opened a mere three years, the United States entered World War I in April and the Jones Act granted American citizenship to the citizens of Puerto Rico in March. 1917 was also the year that the U.S. Congress passed the little-noticed “Rum Cover-Over” as a way to help the new island Commonwealth of Puerto Rico develop much-needed infrastructure by transferring back to Puerto Rico federal excise taxes on rum produced there.

We are now 117 years later, and what was designed as a temporary tax rebate to help the newly acquired and at the time largely undeveloped island of Puerto Rico get on its feet following the Spanish-American War, is still with us; illustrating the adage that “temporary” tax measures are rarely, if ever, truly temporary.

In fact, the rum tax “cover over” was broadened in 1954 to include the U.S. Virgin Islands, to help fund infrastructure projects on those islands.

These tax rebate projects in recent years do little, if anything, to assist either Puerto Rico or the U.S. Virgin Islands build schools, roads or power plants. What the revenue measures have done, is to greatly benefit private distilleries, including Diageo and Bacardi, that produce rum in these Caribbean locales, including by subsidizing major expansion of such facilities.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy a good rum drink from time to time, but where is the economic justification in this year 2024, for the governments of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands to be benefitting from federal excise tax refunds that can total hundreds of millions of dollars per year, which in turn are paid back to the rum distilleries as subsidies?

As noted in an analysis of the rum cover-over program, the governments in both Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands have in recent years manipulated this federal tax rebate program — having it serve to divert money to some of the world’s largest rum-producing companies, such as Bacardi. In turn, the companies expand their distilling capacity, thereby increasing their rum output, which results in receiving a larger percentage of the “cover-over” excise taxes. All of which, by the way, distorts the markets in ways that do not always or necessarily help the local economies in either Puerto Rico or the Virgin islands.

Everybody directly involved, however, makes out handsomely, except, of course, for U.S. taxpayers, who are indirectly paying for the tax dollars lost by virtue of the rum rebates.

There have been previous efforts in Congress to put a halt to the rum cover-over handouts, but none have secured the public interest or the votes to withstand the lobbying effort that invariably comes with such corporate largesse.

The indestructible nature of tax benefit programs like the rum cover-over, is reflected in the fact that, in the current, 118th Congress, the only bill that would impact the rum cover-over program – H.R. 3146 – would actually increase the rebates and at the same time direct that a portion go to funding certain green, “sustainable agriculture” programs in Puerto Rico.

Perhaps a lame duck session of Congress would provide cover for the House to at long last jettison this corporate welfare program as part of a massive budget reconciliation package. If not, the rum cover-over program will remain a shining example of crony capitalism at its best – or worst.

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 currently serves as President of the NRA, and practices law in Atlanta, Georgia, where he also heads Liberty Guard.