From the Desk of Bob Barr

If the 65 million (and counting) Americans who rely on Medicare want to see this 58-year-old federally-backed insurance program continue to meet their needs, they had better contact their Member of Congress and Senators and urge them to quickly fix the outdated and unfair physician reimbursement system.

Not only does the current system, administered by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), greatly underpay participating physicians, but it is exacerbating workforce shortages throughout the nation’s entire healthcare system. This in turn makes it difficult for independent physicians to maintain their practices.

If national policymakers fail to address this fundamental problem, the shrinking number of doctors will serve only to fuel radical arguments for a single-payer, Medicare-for-all system favored by far-Left Democrats. This will mean the end of the Medicare system as we have known it and as it has worked well for nearly six decades.

The Medicare Physician Fee Schedule (MPFS) is on a dangerously unsustainable path. For years, Medicare has failed to include annual inflationary updates for physicians. Other provider types, including inpatient and outpatient hospitals, skilled nursing centers, and hospices, all receive annual upgrades based on inflation. Physicians, however, have been forced to endure a congressionally ordered statutory freeze on payment increases until at least 2026. Even then, updates are set to resume at a minuscule 0.25 percent per year, well below the rate of runaway inflation we’ve seen under Bidenomics.

According to Medicare Trustees data, Medicare physician payments have only increased 9 percent over the past 22 years, roughly 0.4 percent per year. In that same time, the actual costs of running a medical practice increased by 47 percent, or 1.8 percent per year. Making things far worse, economy-wide inflation has risen by 73 percent, recently reaching historic levels not seen since the 1980s.

To put it mildly, Medicare payments to physicians do not go nearly as far as they once did. In fact, when taking inflation into account, Medicare physician payments actually declined by 26 percent from 2001 to 2023.

Considered together with the economic impact that the pandemic has had on our healthcare system, these reductions in payments are making it increasingly difficult for physicians to address ongoing workforce challenges. The impact this deeply flawed payment system has had on physicians nationwide – particularly in our many rural and other medically underserved communities – cannot be overstated.

As more private physician practices struggle with these burdens, more and more physicians are choosing to leave the profession entirely. Between 2021 and 2022 alone, over 71,000 physicians left Medicare – exacerbating the ongoing national healthcare workforce shortage.

Additionally, Medicare’s failure to keep up with inflation is fueling higher rates of healthcare consolidation, which threatens to increase overall costs and decrease access options for patients. That is especially true in rural communities that already struggle to access comprehensive health services. If something is not done to fix the MPFS, we likely will see more rural physician practices close at a time when we should be working to protect and expand access to healthcare in America’s rural communities.

To keep Medicare sustainable and responsive to beneficiaries’ needs, doctors must be reimbursed for the true costs of providing care in this economic climate, and not have their payments restricted by some complicated academic formula determined by Washington bureaucrats or siphoned off to pay for the consequences of consolidation and less competition in the marketplace.

Fortunately, a coalition of physician representatives in the U. S. House has introduced bipartisan legislation – the Strengthening Medicare for Patients and Providers Act (HR 2474) – that would take an important step forward to fix this broken system. The legislation would provide physicians with similar inflation-based payment updates just like the ones other Medicare providers already receive. This reasonable and much-needed solution would help put the MPFS on a more sustainable, realistic path in order to protect patient access and keep America’s physician practices strong and responsive to their communities’ needs.

Fixing the Medicare payment system now, before it further threatens the viability of physician practices and patient access to care, definitely is the smarter option to prevent more radical upheavals or the broad failure of our entire healthcare system. That is why Congress must pass HR 2474 to stabilize one of the primary pillars of our nation’s healthcare system.

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

In the 14 years since the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was granted what it had for decades sought — power to regulate tobacco and tobacco products — it has sought to expand its reach. One way the agency has done this is by waging a misguided, years-long crusade against e-cigarettes.

FDA’s broad tobacco mandate, overseen by its Center for Tobacco Products (CTP), is to “regulate the manufacturing, marketing, and distribution of tobacco products to protect public health.” In this endeavor, the FDA claims that it “evaluates new tobacco products based on a public health standard that considers the risks and benefits of the tobacco product to the population as a whole.”

Inherent in this mission statement is the underlying goal to reduce or eliminate cigarette smoking in the United States — arguably a reasonable though certainly not universally supported point of view. What is unreasonable, however, is the FDA’s regulatory record over the past several years as measured by its stated objective.

For example, CTP has in recent years approved, without any scientific review, nearly 900 new brands of cigarettes produced by dozens of companies; new brands on top of the billions of packs of cigarettes already approved for consumers. This fact alone appears completely at odds with the parent agency’s mission.

The confusion becomes bewildering when considering that, during this same period, CTP has approved less than two dozen e-cigarette products, despite acknowledging that e-cigarettes are an effective alternative to the far more health-damaging cigarette smoking.

Simply put, e-cigarettes have not gotten a fair shake in the agency’s taxpayer-funded activities, the result (to some extent) of bad behavior by a select few companies that improperly directed their marketing to young audiences.

However, the abundant volume of scientific evidence on the effectiveness of e-cigarettes in helping adults quit or reduce their smoking is nothing short of overwhelming — evidence that has been largely ignored by CTP.

One of the most credible studies, authored by Georgetown economist Robert J. Shapiro, evaluated the strength of the evidence on e-cigarettes as an effective harm-reduction and smoking-cessation tool, puts it clearly: “The single most effective way to help people stop smoking, which kills 480,000 people per year, is to encourage them to switch to vaping, which kills no people per year.”

Shapiro who, ironically has advised Presidents Clinton, Obama, and Biden, goes on to say that “this is no longer a matter of serious controversy among scientists” — unless, of course, you work at the FDA.

Under CTP Director Brian King — a career bureaucrat who was the Chief Science Officer for CDC’s highly controversial COVID-19 response – the FDA has completely squashed individual choice around e-cigarette use, and instead pointedly instructs Americans to use only the pharmaceutical products that won FDA’s self-defined stamp of approval.

The CTP’s bias against e-cigarettes is evident in the fact that of the 26 million premarket tobacco product applications presented to the Center, a miniscule 23 have been granted — a clear violation of its regulatory mandate and its commitment to public health.

The FDA pays lip service to the benefits of e-cigarettes but has simply ignored the latest science on e-cigarettes, which have been found to be more effective for smoking-cessation than FDA’s approved medicines. To justify its pinched approach, the FDA repeatedly relies on the trope that “No tobacco product is safe.”

This is disappointing, but unsurprising. Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, government agencies and institutions, including the NIH and the CDC (with King as its Chief Science Officer), have sought to justify their own existence and exercise control over the American public. Mask mandates, and the lie that receiving the COVID jab will provide immunity and prevent you from passing the infirmity to others, are just two critically important examples of how this approach has failed us.

To regain the public’s trust, largely lost amidst the COVID fiasco, the FDA should stop acting as a political and prohibitionist nanny, and simply regulate within its mandate. A good first step would be to start being honest and transparent with the American people about e-cigarettes being far less harmful than cigarettes.

Such transparency, based actually on scientific evidence, would be a welcome change of pace for an agency that is supposed to protect the public from the harmful effects of tobacco. It would also make for an interesting congressional oversight hearing, perhaps even garnering kudos from some Republicans.

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

Before Siri and Alexa arrived on the scene catering to every whim of their voice overlords, tracking an automobile took at least a degree of knowledge – of the tracking device itself and also how to monitor it.

Now, for $25 or less, anyone can purchase a tracking device that is small enough to fit just about anywhere, in someone’s purse, pocket, or automobile.

These tiny trackers have caught the attention of mayors in some of the country’s largest and most crime-ridden cities, as a way to divert attention from their own policies that have spawned serious spikes in vehicle thefts within their jurisdictions.

Baltimore, Maryland and Washington, D.C. are among the municipalities jumping aboard the tracking device gimmick as a way to convince residents that the skyrocketing numbers of vehicle thefts can easily be solved by simply by giving vehicle owners handy dandy tracking devices to place in their cars.

Unfortunately, the history of vehicle theft, especially in Democrat-run cities, is a tale that is not so simple to solve.

After years of declining incidents of vehicle thefts in the 1990s and early 2000s, the 2020-2021 COVID pandemic saw a stark reversal of that trend, especially in major metropolitan areas governed by Democrats – including among others, Baltimore, Chicago, Denver, and Norfolk; actually tripling in some cities between 2019 and 2022.

The significant decline in vehicle thefts prior to the pandemic was not so much the result of better or more vigorous law enforcement, but rather technology built into cars and pickup trucks that made it more difficult to steal vehicles by “hot wiring” them.

Since 2020, however, carjackings and thefts of catalytic converters have risen significantly; with the latter being a predicament that can cost the vehicle owner thousands of dollars to replace the government-mandated emission-control devices that contain valuable rare-earth metals.

While the increases in auto thefts, at least for Kia and Hyundai vehicles manufactured through the 2021 model year, can be blamed in part on a Tik Tok video “challenge” that went viral in 2021-22 showing how easy it was to steal these makes of cars (which had no built-in “immobilizers”), there is no escaping the fact that policies instituted by a number of cities and states share much of the blame for the dramatic rise in vehicle thefts.

When Washington state enacts a law prohibiting police from pursuing stolen cars, it should come as no surprise that car owners in the Evergreen State have had to deal with a significant rise in theft of their vehicles. Similarly, when cities like Aurora, Colorado face shortage in their police ranks officers are pulled away from auto theft cases, with a resulting spike in vehicle theft.

Then there are George Soros-backed prosecutors like Philadelphia’s Larry Krasner, who views auto theft as a crime unworthy of his prosecutorial attention.

And, it does not take a rocket scientist to predict that when, for years as in Portland, Oregon, car thieves are not prosecuted or punished (even as repeat offenders), car thefts rise and remain high.

So we now have city leaders in cities where hard-working citizens are having their vehicles stolen in record numbers, being offered a “free” tracking device as a panacea for bad policing, bad judging, and indifferent prosecutors.

Adding insult to injury, Washington, D.C. officials are easing citizens’ privacy concerns about the tracking devices by claiming inaccurately that only the vehicle owner will have access to or be able to share the tracking information.

In fact, accessing such devices can easily be tracked by persons other than the owner of the device. However, in a city like Washington, D.C. or Baltimore, Maryland, where crime of all sorts is rampant, it should surprise no one that public officials will say or do anything to shift the blame for their bad policy decisions onto inanimate devices such as cars without “immobilizers” or tracking devices.

No matter how many tracking devices these mayors give away, until they get serious about prosecuting vehicle thefts and other crimes infecting their cities, vehicles will continue to be stolen with impunity.

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

For centuries, and certainly to Thomas Jefferson and other Founders, the value of an educated citizenry has been understood to be an imperative for good governance, if not for the very survival of a free people. Former British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli stated the principle clearly in an 1874 speech to the House of Commons, declaring that “Upon the education of the people of this country the fate of this country depends.”

Based on recent decisions by top education officials in states like Oregon, however, the fate of our country in this 21st century is indeed bleak.

Dragging the already sinking ability by Oregon students to read, write and calculate into the education abyss is the unanimous decision just last month by the Public Ed Department. Thanks to these bureaucrats, a 2021 policy to not require Oregon students exiting high school to prove they can read, write or perform mathematically to any particular level will continue for four more school years.

In the Bizarro World that has transformed many Democrat-run American cities and states into cultural and economic wastelands, those who support Oregon’s profoundly disturbing education policy decision may laud the fact that it has led to an historically high graduation rate of 81.3 percent. The fallacy of this artificial calculus is that in virtually every other state or city that has sacrificed educational standards on the altar of “equity,” proficiency in basic subjects like math, reading and writing have dropped.

For example, Ohio in 2020 traveled the same policy path as Oregon. According to a report by Ohio State University, the Buckeye State’s reward for such foolishness has been a “substantial” decline in math and English proficiencies.

If Oregon’s Governor, its Education Department or the Oregon Education Association – the union representing tens of thousands of teachers in the state – had wished to find further evidence on which to base the state’s boneheaded new policy, it could easily have discovered that Baltimore schools, which for years have repeatedly lowered the math standards for public school students, has more than a dozen high schools in which not a single student tests proficient in math.

The most deeply disturbing aspect of what Oregon has decided to do by making it easier for students to graduate but far more difficult for them to succeed in the real world is the cavalier manner by which the state’s Department of Education justified its policy. Their rationale can be found in a statement claiming that the subject-matter proficiency standards were being discarded because they had become “burdensome.”

Obviously for Oregon’s education leaders, making the jobs of teachers and administrators less “burdensome” is more important than ensuring that students can read, write and calculate.

The initial move by Oregon to loosen “Essential Learning Skills” (as permitted by the federal Department of Education) occurred in the wake of the education debacle that Oregon and other states brought on themselves by forcing students into stay-at-home schooling during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Oregon’s “temporary” policy was supposed to end after the 2023-2024 school year, but obviously was deemed such a success that it now has been extended through the 2027-2028 school year. It would come as no surprise if, as 2028 approaches, there will be moves to extend the policy again, or simply make it permanent, so as to provide true “equity” for future high school seniors.

Speaking of “equity,” the fact that 18.7 percent of Oregon’s public high school seniors still fail to graduate even without having to prove basic subject-matter proficiency might fuel a move to simply hand out diplomas to every senior just for showing up, in much the same way that youth sports teams have taken to giving every player a participation trophy rather than recognizing only the truly superior players.

Such “equity” might be viewed as acceptable and perhaps considered benign in the world of volunteer youth soccer. But for young men and women about to leave high school to enter the real world, such an education policy places them at a distinct disadvantage — a travesty that must be laid clearly at the feet of the adults in the room.

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

The recent hubbub surrounding pro-Palestinian and anti-Jewish demonstrations at major universities and colleges in the U.S. has again drawn attention to the massive, and unaccounted donations made to those institutions, including by foreign governments and other sources; contributions that have become an increasingly important part of the schools’ budgets.

However, if critics are looking for either Congress or the administration to do anything to improve the almost total lack of transparency regarding such money flow, they are in for a long wait.

Uncle Sam has been asleep at that switch for decades, and the Biden Administration has made clear it has no interest whatsoever in continuing its predecessor’s modest effort to enforce long-standing requirements that institutions of higher learning simply report major foreign monetary donations, especially where Communist China is concerned.

Congress has not done much better. A measure that would have strengthened the federal government’s power to examine large foreign gifts to, and contracts with American universities, was stripped out of a bipartisan bill two years ago that was designed to strengthen American innovation. The reasons for the measure’s demise included opposition by the very same universities and colleges that receive significant money from foreign donors, including China, which reportedly had donated more than $400 million in the two years before the measure was deep-sixed in 2021.

Adding to the demise of the extremely modest reporting requirement in the “innovation” legislation, was a jurisdictional turf dispute between two Senate committees with concurrent jurisdiction over the measure.

The reality is that since 1986, when Section 117 was added to the 1965 Higher Education Act, colleges and universities have been required to report foreign gifts and contracts. It was not until 2019, however, that the Department of Education, under the leadership of Secretary Betsy DeVos, got around to actually ordering the schools to start doing what they were supposed to have been doing for more than three decades.

As President Trump’s Education Secretary, DeVos issued a report in October 2020 stating that some 95% of colleges and universities had for years simply ignored the foreign gift reporting requirement. The report also noted that successive administrations and Congresses had failed completely in their responsibilities to enforce the law’s reporting requirement.

The DeVos report threw cold water on the excuse given by the universities for their failure to comply with the federal law – that the reporting requirement was unclear and burdensome. It explained that the schools “manage to track every cent owed and paid by their students” and already report extensively to the IRS on their financial undertakings.

The 2020 report made clear that enforcement of the reporting requirements for institutions of higher learning was not to “police” or stop foreign contributions to American universities, but simply to bring a necessary degree of transparency to the public and to “alert” other government agencies with jurisdiction over aspects of such “entanglements.”

DeVos’ concerns that significant financial “gifts” to U.S. universities come with strings attached and can indeed influence both the education missions of the institutions, as well as potentially harming our national security, are not misplaced. As noted in the report, and elsewhere, the torrent of money flowing into our schools in recent years especially from Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and China, has increased dramatically. A 2011 FBI report focused on just such security concerns, but even that did not awake the Justice Department from its slumber.

In the three years since DeVos issued her report and at least began to demand our universities and colleges report major foreign gifts and donations, the problem has only worsened.

Not only has Biden’s Education Department deliberately stopped enforcing the long-standing law requiring schools to report foreign contributions, but has halted the initiative by Trump to crack down on Chinese espionage more generally, his “China Initiative.” Biden’s Justice Department concluded that Trump’s efforts to identify and limit China’s growing influence in American academia and businesses, was or might be perceived as “racist.” The absurdity of this conclusion has led to a number of important national security prosecutions against Chinese influencers in our country being dropped completely.

So long as our own government continues to turn a blind eye to foreign monetary influences in major U.S. universities and colleges, foreign governments will continue their efforts to influence educational policies and also to steal important technology from us.

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

In August 2022 Congress passed President Biden’s signature “Inflation Reduction Act” without a single Republican vote in either the House or the Senate. There were several reasons for this purely partisan vote, one of which was that the legislation included a mechanism for a major tax increase on many prescription drugs used mainly by Medicare enrollees for treatment of certain cancers, heart conditions and diabetes.

Already flush with the 87,000 new employees authorized by the very same Inflation Reduction Act, the IRS is drafting regulations to start collecting the prescription drug “excise tax,” which can virtually double the market price for the medications.

To win the Senate votes — including hold-out Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who switched his vote in favor of the bill at the last-minute following secret parleys with Majority Leader Chuck Schumer — Biden presented the proposed excise tax as a way to reduce the cost of many common, Medicare-covered prescription drugs, rather than what it really is — a measure that will lead to shortages and increased prices.

What Biden and the Democrats actually did was impose price controls on Medicare-covered prescription drugs, disguising them as “negotiated prices” between Uncle Sam and the drug manufacturers. This sleight-of-hand might sound reasonable, even perhaps positive, except for the fact that refusal by any of the manufacturers to “accept” Washington’s proposed prices, would result in a mandated tax on the final, consumer cost of the drugs that would in short order reach 95% — effectively doubling its price.

Moreover, while disguising an “excise tax” as a “price negotiation” may sound great, it does so only until you realize that such government-mandated price controls always come at a cost down the road.

Whether Democrat leaders like it or not, prescription drugs are products that are sold in the real world, where something known as the “marketplace” works to set production, demand and prices.  Like virtually every other product, prescription drugs are available only so long as the manufacturers can afford to produce them and consumers afford to pay.

Once Uncle Sam steps in and mandates an artificially lowered or stable price for a drug, things may appear to work fine for a while, but sooner or later the manufacturer will be forced to make adjustments. This means either cutting back production of the price-controlled drug and making it scarcer for consumers, or making cuts elsewhere, in research and development of other, newer and better drugs. Either way, it is the prescription drug consumers who wind up paying the price.

As explained recently by Jerry Rogers in Real Clear Health, mandated price controls on prescription drugs “will make it more expensive (and risky) [for drug companies] to invest science and resources into cutting-edge research, treatment, and new cures.” His conclusion that the Inflation Reduction Act’s heralded plan to reduce prescription drug prices is “bad medicine,” is supported by the history of government price controls which, as noted by analysts at Americans for Tax Reform, “always fail” as a result of scarcities caused by companies forced to manufacture products below their production cost.

In early October, Biden proudly announced that manufacturers of the first ten drugs mandated by the Department of Health and Human Services in August to be sold at their “negotiated” prices, had agreed to the mandate rather than increase the prices up to the 95% decreed by the legislation. (In the coming months, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will announce more of the 60 drugs allowed to be “negotiated” under terms of the Inflation Reduction Act.)

The announcement by Biden is at best a temporary and hollow “victory” that in the months and years ahead will give rise to shortages of the very drugs sought to be made more readily available for Medicare recipients. Once this happens, you can bet that the Administration and those in Congress who supported this legislation will blame not themselves, but “Big Pharma” for creating shortages, and who then will call for further government interventions.

Thus continues the cycle of price-control market manipulation, this time with seniors relying on drugs vital to their health and survival paying the price.

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

A recent, nonpartisan poll of 2,008 registered voters, conducted by the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, concludes what many Americans already know, which is that our two-party political system is a chaotic mess. Far more disturbing, however, are the survey’s findings that a significant percentage of voters consider that violence, suspension of democratic norms and states seceding from our union, all are acceptable alternatives to our current troubles.

These troubling findings certainly can, at least in part, be attributed to pronounced ignorance that has for at least a decade, characterized many Americans’ understanding of the structure of our national government. For example, a 2014 survey by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania found that more than one-third of adults surveyed could not name a single one of the three branches of our government.

Coupled with historic lows in the public’s trust in government, such a disturbing level of civic cluelessness makes the most recent finding by the University of Virginia even more troubling.

Having so many voters remaining fundamentally ignorant about how our government operates, while at the same time having little or no trust in that government, and with some forty percent considering it “acceptable to use violence to stop” those in the opposing political party “from achieving their goals,” is a recipe for disaster.

If voters engaged directly with political leaders and parties, there might be at least some check on these disturbing trends, but, as the Pew Research Center has discovered, the vast majority of Americans get their news the easy way, from “digital devices,” which are by definition more subjective, less transparent and more easily manipulated than direct communication. It therefore should come as no surprise that a majority of Americans now support restrictions on their access to information by government and corporate censors.

All this creates a toxic environment for civil political discourse and which, in the current national political goings-on, makes it difficult to be optimistic things will improve anytime soon.

Former President Trump might have given voice to what many voters felt in their gut but were unwilling to state when, in his 2016 campaign he declared publicly it would be fine for his supporters to “knock the crap out of [hecklers].”

Individual acts of violence against political opponents are one thing. Large scale acts of politically motivated violence are quite another, and efforts by political leaders and media pundits to excuse or justify such actions muddy the waters far more than any single politician can hope to accomplish.

When Democrat leaders and pundits excuse or justify massive acts of looting and arson, such as many of those in the aftermath of the 2020 murder of George Floyd, or when certain GOP leaders downplay the violence at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 because it was “mostly peaceful,” it smooths the way for individual, aggrieved voters to view politics through that same lens; which is precisely what nonpartisan surveys illustrate.

In this hyper-partisan atmosphere, populated by many participants with little, if any substantive knowledge of the underlying principles or issues, even a legitimate, academic exercise can be mischaracterized as something evil and nefarious, and therefore worthy of the most extreme opposition. For example, the ideas in a recent book on reducing the regulatory powers of the federal government, published by the very establishment Heritage Foundation — Mandate for Leadership 2025 — are labelled “textbook fascism” by a guest on MSNBC’s Morning Joe.

If the ideas in a rather boring, but very academic and substantive book on how to reduce the powers of the federal government are considered to be “fascist,” then there truly is little, if any room remaining in which civil discourse can be advanced in our current political environment.

At the same time, voters who participate in and do have some knowledge of how our political system operates, are witnessing a Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives behave in a totally confusing and dysfunctional manner, with no apparent regard for the welfare of the country beyond their own careers.

It therefore should come as no surprise that many Americans have come to adopt alternatives, including those that in the past were considered beyond the pale; whether violence, or as one psychologist at the esteemed Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania suggests, that we would be better off choosing our political leaders by lottery rather than democratic elections.

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.

https://townhall.com/columnists/bobbarr/2023/10/19/bidens-visit-to-israel-in-the-throes-of-a-war-actually-is-an-inflection-point-n2630069

Since taking office early in 2021, President Joe Biden frequently has used the term “inflection point” as a way to add gravitas to whatever issue he is speaking about. In fact, he has used it so often its meaning, or whatever it is supposed to mean, has been significantly diluted. His current visit to Israel, however, which neither Biden nor his media team has described as an “inflection point,” could accurately be seen as such a juncture for Biden and for the Middle East.

In none of the instances in which Biden has employed such rhetoric has he explained exactly what he means by the use of the term. In such linguistic laxity, the president perhaps presumes the reader or listener knows that the term “inflection point” (when not used in its technical, differential geometry context) is defined by dictionary guru Merriam-Webster, as “a moment when significant change occurs or may occur.”

In his October 15^th “60 Minutes” interview with Scott Pelley, Biden declared that his principal motivation for seeking a second term despite his advanced age and the myriad domestic problems he continues to face, was because “[t]h world is at an inflection point.” Two days later, America’s commander-in-chief was en route to Tel Aviv – smack dab in the middle of a burgeoning and already extremely bloody war between our close ally Israel and Hamas, one of that country’s most militant adversaries.

What takes place in that region over the coming days, weeks, and months, may very well turn out to be a point at which “significant change occurs.”

By all public assessments, the Jewish State is poised to launch a ground attack against Hamas, whose base of operations is Gaza, the narrow and densely populated quasi-state that lies between Israel and Egypt on the Mediterranean coast.

If Israel in fact engages in a massive military invasion of Gaza, the goal of which would be to neutralize Hamas’ ability to launch future cross-border terror operations such as that on October 7^th which resulted in dozens of hostages being taken into Gaza (including several U.S. citizens), the declared “war” between Hamas and the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) would almost certainly expand, probably dramatically.

In this context, the potential stakes of Biden’s wartime diplomacy could not be greater.

If Biden succeeds in convincing Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu that a massive military invasion of Gaza is neither necessary nor prudent, he will have earned significant kudos by heading off a very dangerous and negative “inflection point.”

If Biden is unsuccessful in heading off a major Israeli invasion (and possible subsequent occupation) of Gaza, the resulting expansion beyond the strict confines of Israel and Gaza — including possible direct military involvement by other NGOs (e.g., Hezbollah) and state supporters of Palestine, such as Lebanon, Syria, and Iran — risks hostilities on a scale actually imperiling world peace.

Tuesday’s hospital blast in Gaza already has complicated Biden’s mission. His plan to meet with Jordanian and Palestinian leaders in addition to Israel’s was “upended” due to the hospital disaster, thereby potentially and severely limiting the possible benefits of his trip to the region.

Still, if his discussions with Netanyahu, and perhaps indirectly with Arab officials while in Israel, results in visible movement to secure the release of Hamas-held hostages (especially Americans), he can legitimately claim a degree of success. If some form of punishment for the atrocities committed by Hamas in its most recent cross-border operations that are seen as short of a massive Israeli military operation into Gaza, even perhaps with limited, non-combat U.S. involvement, this, too, could enhance his administration’s stature, and might at least to a small but significant degree lessen the chances for a much wider conflict.

Any way you look at this presidential foray to the Middle East, it is a very real, as opposed to a merely rhetorical “inflection point.” It is one that should be supported publicly in a bipartisan way here at home – although in today’s hyper-partisan political climate that may be too much to hope for.

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.

https://townhall.com/columnists/bobbarr/2023/10/19/bidens-visit-to-israel-in-the-throes-of-a-war-actually-is-an-inflection-point-n2630069

Daily Caller

Florida Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz accomplished his goal last week, when his “Motion to Vacate the [Speaker’s] Chair” passed the House of Representatives with unanimous support from Democrats, plus Gaetz and seven of his colleagues who like him appear to have no vision beyond their own egos.

In kicking former Speaker Kevin McCarthy to the curb with no Plan B beyond making the rounds of cable TV and radio talk shows, Gaetz & Co. left an important segment of the government of the United States adrift in an increasingly dangerous world.

The egotism and immaturity their game reflects will have ripple effects at home and abroad, as leaders scratch their heads and marvel at what the United States has done to deserve such punishment.

Lest we place too much blame at the feet of Gaetz and his Happy Seven for this sorry state of affairs, America and the rest of the world know full well that there are other serious tears in the fabric of our mantle of leadership.

Let’s begin at the top, with the President of the United States, Joe Biden, whose somnambulance is exceeded only by the vitriol that infects virtually every public pronouncement he occasionally makes. If Biden’s handlers and his cohorts in the Congress and in Democrat-controlled state governments across the country honestly believe other world leaders, including friends and foes, do not see and act on such profound and obvious weaknesses, then they are as clueless as he is.

The Republican Party, which in our closed, two-party system is the only meaningful political counterbalance to the Democrat Party that currently controls the White House and the Senate, is being led by a proud egotist whose dealings in both politics and business have earned him the sobriquet of “multiple indictee.”

Amidst all this political chaos, we have a southern border across which uncountable thousands of aliens daily pour, at times with the help of the very federal employees whose responsibility it is to stop such illegal crossings. The rest of the world watches this madness play out, even as the Biden Administration claims with a straight face that the border is “secure.”

The cherry atop this toxic political sundae, however, is the plan by Gaetz to leave the House of Representatives leaderless, without even a bare majority of members willing to stand up and say, “Okay, at least here and now, we will put aside personal peeves and partisan bickering to ensure that this vital component of the federal government is not left twisting in the wind as the world watches.”

Domestically, governors and legislators will step in to pick up much of the political and economic slack caused by Washington’s ongoing inability (or unwillingness) to function.

Abroad, however, matters left hanging or in tatters because of the failure to engage in at least a semblance of regular order or to maintain leadership in the House of Representatives, will not be so easily patched over.

With the United States absent or dithering in countries and regions from Russia and Ukraine to Taiwan and China, and now to a suddenly exploding Middle East, allies will begin making decisions without Washington at the table; some will seek new friends of convenience. Adversaries will be emboldened to test us as perhaps never before since the interregnum between the First and Second World Wars when the United States stuck its head in the sand while Europe smoldered.

And once those new alliances or partnerships of convenience gel, it will be extremely difficult to turn back the clock and return to the status quo ante. Prestige and influence frittered away over the past several years is not easily regained. The current expansion of “BRICS” (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) to include Iran and Saudi Arabia as a counterweight to NATO and the G7, is a harbinger of things to come.

Townhall

A four-page piece of legislation that protects federal funds for school archery and hunting programs from being cut by federal bureaucrats illustrates the many perverse effects of giving Uncle Sam control over America’s education system.

The nearly 60-year-old Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA) is the multi-headed hydra that provides virtually unlimited ways by which U.S. Department of Education bureaucrats can directly and indirectly control all manner of programs in schools across the country.

The reach of these tentacles is lengthened whenever an unrelated piece of legislation applies  – or can be interpreted to apply – to schools. This is exactly what Miguel Cardona, President Biden’s Education Secretary, did after his boss in 2022 signed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (BSCA), a knee-jerk legislative response to the tragic mass shooting at a school in Uvalde, Texas, that same year.

The BSCA contained a number of gun control measures, such as funding incentives for so-called “Red Flag Laws,” but did not prohibit use of federal education funds for such school programs as archery and hunter safety courses. It did, however, include language intended to prevent federal funds from being used to provide any “dangerous weapon” (that is, a firearm) or “training in the use of a dangerous weapon” in schools. This provision was intended to stop moves by some schools to arm teachers, resource officers, and administrators as a way to protect against criminal shooters at schools.

Cardona’s Department, however, saw an opportunity to expand the restrictive language in the BSCA, and ran with it.

Last July, the Education Department issued one of its dreaded “guidance letters” declaring that hunting and archery programs in schools would no longer be eligible to receive any federal funding, because such activities necessarily involved “technically dangerous weapons.”

The problem here is that the way a “dangerous weapon” is defined under federal law is so broad that virtually any Swiss Army knife no matter how small, or any metal-jacketed pen, could be read to fall within its ambit – which is precisely what Education Department bureaucrat Sarah Martinez proceeded to do in her “guidance” letter concerning archery and hunting education programs.

This action by the Education Department was taken not because the legislation as signed by Biden placed any restrictions on such school programs (it did not), but only because the Department simply decided to interpret it that way.

The guidance letter had precisely the “chilling effect” on such programs desired by the Department. Many school administrators, concerned that they could potentially be violating federal law if they allowed such benign programs to continue in their schools, ordered them stopped.

Tommy Floyd, president of the National Archery in the Schools Program, which oversees archery programs in some 9,000 schools with 1.3 million student participants, summed it up this way: “any time the U.S. Department of Education gives guidance about anything .  .  .  [and] until I know the final answer, I’m probably going to pause.”

That would have been the death knell for archery and hunting programs in schools, but for unusually quick action by congressional supporters of such programs.

The “Protecting Hunting Heritage Act” was introduced in the House on August 1 as H.R. 5110, and its four-page text clarified what never had been the intent of the BSCA – namely, that the prohibitory language in that 2022 legislation did not apply to “training in archery, hunting, or other shooting sports” programs in schools covered by the omnibus ESEA. By late last month, the clarifying legislation had overwhelmingly passed both houses of Congress and awaits President Biden’s promised signature.

It is laudable that Congress, in this age of nearly impenetrable partisanship, was motivated to attack this abuse of federal education control, and to do so swiftly. However, the problem and process that led to the need for such action illustrates all that is wrong with America’s public education system, with its top-down control by a massive and intimidating Education Department.

In this perverse system, bureaucrats with an ideological agenda such as opposition to any activity remotely deemed by them to support firearms or any type of “weapons,” can move to block students from benefitting from such programs as archery, and hope that those in the Congress harboring opposing views do not notice.

Thank goodness that in this instance Congress did notice, but consider all the other instances of such “guidance” abuse that slip by unnoticed.

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.