From the Desk of Bob Barr

Townhall

Do economic problems experienced by Americans, such as recurring food shortages and projected rationing of heating oil in northeastern states this winter, mean that the United States has slipped to “Third World Country” status? Not really. The U.S. remains a strong country with a highly developed and stable economic system.

The problems we have been experiencing in recent years, however, represent a deeper, and in many respects more serious problem than being or becoming a Third World Country.

The United States is slipping into the uncharted territory of a highly developed country that is losing the basic bonds of civil society that protect it from degenerating into chaos.

The signs of this descent are everywhere, though the extreme politically partisan lenses through which many Americans view public policy hamper their ability or willingness to see it.

In no respect is this troubling phenomenon more obvious than the recurring images of individuals committing acts of senseless violence against strangers. While we regularly see also acts of robbery and rampant shoplifting, it is the images of people being pushed onto New York subway tracks or thugs beating up elderly passers by on city streets, that most starkly remind us – or should remind us – that something dark and alarming is happening in our society.

Stealing from another person or business as a means of gaining something the perpetrator could not otherwise obtain or afford, is neither a new problem nor one unique to our country or time. Organized shoplifting, or stealing to show off the perpetrator’s “chops” on social media, however, represents a newer problem – one that is far more difficult to address and correct.

Public schools, which in years past provided a structured, rules-driven environment dedicated to learning and to developing appropriate social behavior, are experiencing increased student violence. Many have morphed into laboratories for extreme social behavior, such as drag queen shows and trans-genderism displays, where the authorities appear unwilling or unable to staunch such degenerate and harmful activities.

Universities, which used to provide the next level of socialization and learning beyond high school, have themselves become breeding grounds for aberrant and intolerant behavior. Shouting down speakers or spitting on them in public, are today impliedly if not explicitly condoned by the adults supposed to be ensuring a mature and orderly environment in which civil society advances.

Lack of consequences for these and other forms of violent and anti-social behavior, exacerbates the problems. Civil libertarians have long sought to place severe restraints on legislative, law enforcement, and prosecutorial powers to stem criminal behavior as well as behavior that, while not violent, has the effect of undercutting civil authority. Those boundaries now have loosened considerably, to the degree of permitting people to pitch tents on private and public property, or to defecate and do drugs in public areas (including near schools).

One of the primary defenses employed by society to protect against criminal behavior dismantling civil norms, are its prosecutors. Tragically, in a number of major American cities, including Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Chicago, and others, elected prosecutors who until the recent past enforced those laws to ensure that law-abiding citizens and businesses could live and operate without fear of violence, are refusing as a matter of public policy to enforce those boundaries. The unsurprising result of such policies is more violence, more fear, and greater lasting harm to society.

Bryan Burroughs’ book, Days of Rage – America’s Radical Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence, describes in detail the extreme violence that took place in our country from the late 1960s through the 1970s – bombings and other violent acts committed by numerous leftist organizations such as The Weathermen, The Symbionese Liberation Army, the FALN, and others.

America survived those years of violence because we maintained a widely understood foundation of civil norms that rejected such actions. Now, half a century later, that civil foundation has become so severely shredded that recovery from today’s widespread violence and intolerance is far less certain.

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 number of sheriffs in upstate New York are declaring that their officers will not prioritize or “aggressively enforce” the state’s recently enacted, highly restrictive gun control law. These elected sheriffs have concluded quite correctly that the state’s new law is at odds with both the Constitution of the United States and with the most recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that declared New York’s previous and long-standing gun control law – the Sullivan Act – unconstitutional.

The sheriffs’ actions have rekindled a recurring debate about the powers of the more than three thousand local sheriffs serving in every state except Alaska and Connecticut.

The United States has had elected sheriffs long before there was a “United States of America,” with the first one taking office in Virginia in 1652. Police departments, on the other hand, are a relatively new phenomenon. The first municipal police department not established until 1838 in Boston, Massachusetts.

Unlike most county sheriffs, who hold their positions under their state constitutions, police chiefs answer only to local office holders who appointed them, not to the voters. It is this distinction that has caused a number of sheriffs in “Blue States” to earn the ire of the Left.

Two factors have exacerbated this enmity in recent years – increasingly restrictive gun control measures and abusive COVID mandates by Blue State governors and legislatures. Sheriffs who decline to prioritize enforcing such laws find themselves increasingly maligned by the Left, notwithstanding the fact that they are carrying out their sworn duty to support the federal and state constitutions, and in accord with the wishes of the voters they represent.

Consider Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva, who declared in 2021 that he would not force officers under his command to be vaccinated against COVID, as mandated by that county’s liberal Board of Supervisors.

Even more vexing to liberals, however, is the number of sheriffs who in recent years have refused to enforce what they consider unconstitutional infringements on the rights of citizens in their jurisdictions to exercise their Second Amendment rights in the face of Blue State gun control laws.

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) berates these sheriffs who follow the Constitution of the United States as “radicalized” officials who do not themselves understand the Constitution. The recently discredited SPLC simply cannot bring itself to accept that elected law enforcement officials should be permitted to resist such government overreach.

However, these “constitutional sheriffs” are not alone in their views. Since the Supreme Court’s seminal Bruen decision in June that tossed New York’s Sullivan Act, similarly restrictive laws in other states have fallen. Even more to the point, some of the very restrictions in the legislation signed by Gov. Kathy Hochul just days after the Supreme Court rendered its opinion, as part of her attempt to undercut the High Court’s directive, were blocked last week by a federal judge in New York City.

With state and federal courts seeming to agree with sheriffs who decline to vigorously enforce laws they view as inconsistent with their oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States, especially as related to Second Amendment rights of citizens in their jurisdictions, it is becoming increasingly difficult for their detractors on the Left to argue with a straight face that the sheriffs are the outliers.

Three years ago, the gun control group founded by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg — “Everytown for Gun Safety” — published a paper highly critical of sheriffs who declined to prioritize the gun control measures the organization championed. The title of the piece was, When Sheriffs Refuse to Follow the Law.

It is, however, becoming increasingly clear to citizens across the country that it is liberal, anti-gun public officials like Hochul who are not following the law, and that it is constitutional sheriffs who are the ones following it.

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

Drivers here in the United States had better get ready for federal mandates that will enable government to prevent cars from exceeding the speed limit in real time. This move has been a long time coming, and it is very real.

The federal government first became rally serious about regulating the cars we drive in the late 1960s with the passage of legislation containing the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS), and the creation of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). Uncle Sam’s obsession with motor vehicle “safety” shifted into high gear in 1970 with the establishment of one of the Nanny State’s favorite offspring, the National Highway Traffic Administration (NHTSA).

Now, a half century later, with a toolbox that includes GPS and communications technology light-years ahead of that which first powered the Apollo astronauts to the moon in 1969, Washington is gearing up to mandate both drunk-driving and speeding “kill switches” in passenger vehicles. For this “life-saving” mission, the NHTSA and the NTSB, with a combined budget of more than $1.0 billion and a cadre of many hundreds of true believers, are upping pressure on car makers to install what it euphemistically calls “Intelligent Speed Adaptation” (ISA) systems.

While mandates such as those that prevent a vehicle from being driven if the driver is intoxicated are not quite ready for prime time, as I wrote back in November 2021, requirements for such devices already are locked into federal law. Right now, apparently responding to pressure from Washington, New York is implementing a program to test “speed limiter technology” on its fleet of city-owned vehicles.

Outfitting vehicles with what Gotham’s Deputy Mayor Meera Joshi has referred to as a “dead pedal,” is made possible through “telematics” technology, happily provided to municipal, state, and federal governments by private companies to help promote “safety, efficiency and convenience.”

Companies marketing this technology and governments itching to use it to control drivers have little, if any, concern for privacy or freedom, factors that in years past were primary reasons why Americans purchased cars – to go where they wanted when they wanted. No longer will this be the case if Uncle Sam and his state and local progeny get their way.

The most recent push for this driving-limiting, ISA technology was hatched in Europe, where automakers already are required to install speed-governing kill-switches in all cars manufactured within the European Union. This is hardly a new phenomenon. Historically, many privacy-invasive policies, such as massive surveillance cameras throughout major urban areas, start in Europe and migrate across the Atlantic to our shores.

The driving force behind this latest effort is the European counterpart to our NHTSA — the European Transport Safety Council (ETSC).

After programs such as Europe’s ISA mandate gain a foothold in a liberal enclave like New York City, citizens who might otherwise object to such nanny-ism soon thereafter become accustomed to the intrusive, but always “safety-inspired,” measures. Limited pilot programs morph into state-wide and then nation-wide mandates. It is a slippery slope to which Americans who actually care about privacy and individual liberty have become sadly accustomed.

Making government’s job in this regard easier than it would have been a decade or two ago, is the fact that for many Millennials and Generation Z-ers, driving a car, much less actually owning one, no longer seems a high priority and has not been for a decade now. Moreover, with electric vehicles such as Teslas already acclimating American drivers to cars that perform many functions for them, it is but a small step to accept cars that will not accelerate beyond a government-determined “safe” speed, or that are drivable only with a “sober” person at the wheel.

Americans of driving age but who no longer see the need or desirability of owning and driving a car for personal freedom, coupled with the millions who consider “protecting the environment” the holiest of all human goals, are enabling Washington to make substantial headway to deprive us of one of the few ways in which individuals could freely exercise their privacy and freedom – driving a car without Big Brother telling them when they can drive and at what speed. You’d best enjoy that freedom while you can.

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

Since America’s founding, an “enlightened” and “educated” citizenry has been considered essential for our representative democracy to function as intended. Our 35th President, John Kennedy, put it correctly in 1963, when he stated that, “[n]o country can possibly move ahead, no free society can possibly be sustained, unless it has an educated citizenry.”

Sadly today, education in the United States is in a truly dismal condition.

The government-mandated move to remote learning in response to the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic is a significant factor underlying what are by any objective measure, rotten academic results for our nation’s children in public schools. This trend, however, predates the pandemic and persists today despite nearly $190 billion in federal money having been directed at overcoming the disastrous effects of that remote learning debacle.

A study released last month by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) showed clearly that remote learning was a disaster for students attending America’s public schools. According to the findings of this non-partisan organization, student achievement in the key group surveyed – 9 year-olds – fell significantly in both math and reading; in reading by the largest margin in more than three decades.

The NAEP study noted that there had been a gradual but important increase in math and reading skills since the 1970s. However, those gains were shown to have levelled off over the past decade, and then dropped precipitously in the wake of the “unmitigated disaster” of COVID-mandated remote learning,  especially for minority students.

The sorry state of education achievement in our country cannot be blamed entirely on the COVID lockdowns. In Illinois, for example, in 2019, the year before COVID hit, only 36% of third graders could read at grade level; barely more than one-third. In Decatur, just one of that state’s public school systems, a shockingly low 2% of black third graders were shown to be able to read at grade level, with only 1% able to do math at grade level. In 11th grade, after eight more years in that school system, only 5% of students were able to read at grade level and 4% able to do math at grade level.

Despite these abysmal numbers for students in Illinois public schools, the State Board of Education rated virtually all teachers as “excellent” or “proficient!” Nor is the problem lack of funding. Illinois spends some $16,660 per year on each student — the eighth highest in the country. These funding levels are due in no small measure to powerful teachers unions, such as Chicago’s, where teachers walked off on strike in four of the last seven years to demand higher pay for their “excellent” performances.

The numbers may perhaps be not quite as bad in other states as in Illinois, but they nonetheless are distressingly poor. In Oklahoma, for example, large majorities of students in all grades and in all subjects tested below proficiency levels, despite record-high funding levels for its public schools.

California’s Department of Education, likely worried that its post-COVID school achievement test results will hurt incumbents running for reelection this November, has refused to release that data until later this year. However, in just one district – Fresno – that did release its data, the test results showed less than 21% of students met or exceeded its math standards.

Many of the measures suggested to help schools undo the damage wrought by remote learning mandates, using the massive post-COVID infusion of federal monies – nearly $190 billion since 2020 – have met with fierce opposition by teachers unions opposed to measures that might require its members to work harder. This was the case in Los Angeles, where union pushback forced the School District to jettison meaningful corrective measures in favor of a token requirement to add four optional days of school for students.

Thus far, Tennessee appears to be the only state to actually implement measurably successful programs using the emergency federal money dedicated to addressing educational shortfalls caused by COVID restrictions. The Volunteer State’s new, extended summer learning requirements and “high-dosage tutoring” already have produced measurably positive results.

It is a shame that more states are failing to do what Tennessee has done. A primary reason is continued opposition by teachers unions. Another appears to be that the Biden Administration’s Department of Education insists on driving education policy through its obsession with “equity” and “LGBTQ+.”

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

Imagine this. An automobile manufacturer adds a turbocharger to the engine of a passenger car as a way to increase the vehicle’s acceleration. Nanny State bureaucrats at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration decide that the turbocharger makes a vehicle to which it is attached go too fast, which renders it “unsafe.” The agency decides that the simplest way to address its concern is to include within the definition of an “automobile” a “turbocharger,” which the agency then can outlaw as an “unsafe motor vehicle.”

“Nonsense,” you say – a car “part” is not a “car,” right? Correct, yet that is precisely what the United States Department of Justice did in 2018 when it deemed by regulatory re-write, that an accessory that could be attached to a rifle to make it fire faster – a “bump stock” – was in fact and by law, a “machine gun” and therefore unlawful to be owned or possessed by individuals.

Thus, by regulatory fiat a piece of plastic, which is all a bump stock is, becomes a “machine gun” for purposes of federal law.

Despite the absurdity of this regulatory maneuver, the Supreme Court on Monday once again declined to hear arguments in cases challenging the constitutionality of the government’s bump stock redefinition.

The Court should have heard arguments in the case, to enable a majority of justices a way to declare such regulatory legerdemain is a constitutionally impermissible exercise of legislative power by the Executive Branch (aside from it being an example of absurd legal reasoning that no president should get away with).

While gun control advocates, including the Biden administration which had urged the Court not to hear the cases, characterize the issue as a “Second Amendment” case, it truly is not. At its core, the legal issues center on regulatory law, not Second Amendment law, and the repercussions extend far beyond firearms.

Like many of Uncle Sam’s bad decisions in recent decades, this one outlawing bump stocks was a knee-jerk reaction to a specific incident – the 2017 mass shooting by a crazed gunman from a hotel window in Las Vegas, Nevada. A number of bump stock-modified rifles were found in the murderer’s hotel room after police breached his barricaded door.

The publicity surrounding the Las Vegas shooting led to calls to change the law and ban the theretofore little-known, but legal, firearm accessory. Congress could not make a decision, so the responsibility fell to President Trump to show the American people he was “doing something.” That “something” was to order his then-Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, to take executive action against the devices.

It eventually fell to Sessions’ successor, Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker, in late 2018 to actually amend the long-standing definition of a machine gun so as to include a bump stock within its terms. It is this presidential action – changing federal law by the “stroke of a [regulatory] pen” – that has set a dangerous precedent that should concern liberals and conservatives.

Allowed to stand, this precedent permits extensive presidential mischief that can be wrought by Republican and Democrat administrations alike, targeting all manner of activities and products regulated by the federal government, without having to go through the often messy and time-consuming congressional legislative process.

Thanks to this Trump-proposed regulatory maneuver, virtually any federal regulation – including those involving such wide-ranging issues as the environment, health care, banking, firearms, and even abortion, among hundreds more – can serve as the vehicle for a president to unilaterally enact substantive changes to federal laws.

Regardless of why the Supreme Court declined to accept this challenge to what is by every reasoned analysis an abuse of Executive Branch regulatory power, Big Government advocates will be left extremely happy by the decision. It leaves wide open a side door by which this and future administrations can run roughshod over the system of checks and balances so carefully crafted by our Founders, but which has been so often undermined by successive administrations of both major parties.

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

Not too many years before the declining quality of its cars forced the Oldsmobile division of General Motors to disband, the company launched a catchy but ultimately unsuccessful ad campaign – “This is not your father’s Oldsmobile.”

Today’s FBI is not your father’s FBI.

The FBI with which I worked during my tenure as the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia from 1986 to 1990, was a law enforcement agency widely recognized as the country’s best. The Bureau’s investigative jurisdiction extended to hundreds of federal crimes — from the well-known bank robberies and counterespionage cases to highly technical and complex computer crimes.

Rarely in those days was there evidence that the Bureau’s investigations were politically motivated. In fact, at times, the Bureau was hesitant to launch or continue investigations precisely because it feared appearing partisan.

FBI special agents were well-trained in the use of firearms and in the most appropriate tactics for effecting arrests and serving subpoenas or search warrants. Its special agents and leadership had learned the hard way over the decades to be prepared for any eventuality when undertaking such actions. Excessive shows of firepower, however (firepower exhibited for its own sake or to “make a point”), was neither the norm nor the acceptable exception.

How times have changed.

As the American public has repeatedly witnessed in recent years, and not just since President Biden’s swearing-in nearly two years ago, dramatic and over-the-top exhibition of firepower in arrests of high-profile or controversial individuals, has become an accepted if not normal Bureau practice. Just ask Roger Stone, whose pre-dawn arrest at his home in early 2019, was carried out by a team of heavily armed and FBI special agents in military garb.

This well-known political operative’s offense which warranted such a show of force was neither terrorism nor drug running. Stone was indicted for the very white-collar and non-violent crime of allegedly lying to the Congress and related offenses.

Since Stone’s military-style arrest, other FBI raids targeting conservative-leaning individuals have come to light (indeed, the Bureau wants the American public to be aware of them). Special agents very publicly raided Project Veritas’ founder, James O’Keefe’s home and office in late 2021 essentially for no reason whatsoever other than for the government to make a point. O’Keefe had already turned over the declared object of the search – Ashley Biden’s alleged diary – over to law enforcement.

The list of such actions by the government’s top law enforcement agency does not end with Stone and O’Keefe. It continues apace; including targets such as former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani and former Trump Justice Department official Jeff Clark. Just late last month, a the FBI arrested pro-life activist, Mark Houck, recalling the unnecessary Roger Stone-style armed arrest.

Such raids, whether based on dubious reasons (as with O’Keefe’s) or carried out with an absurd show of force (Roger Stone’s arrest), diminish the credibility of, and citizens’ confidence in, the FBI, its parent, the United States Department of Justice and by association all federal law enforcement agencies. In the long run, this negatively impacts these very agencies’ ability to do their job, which in large measure depends on the public’s willingness to support and even assist their efforts.

This trend of overtly partisan and needlessly militarized law enforcement actions did not start with the Biden or the Trump administrations. It represents a long and very slippery slope, whose roots can be traced back at least to the arrogant, uncaring, and deadly government-initiated tragedies at Ruby Ridge in 1992 and at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas just one year later.

Once a federal law enforcement agency can carry out such acts without any meaningful negative consequences, it becomes a small step to institutionalizing practices we now see all too frequently, such as the targeting political foes, using armed force just to prove they can do so, and lying to a federal judge in order to seize money from innocent individuals.

It all comes down to accountability, and there hasn’t been any of that for far too long.

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

There is a noticeable trend among young adults to postpone having children, not just for years but, in many cases, permanently. The long-term repercussions of such a movement for our country, will be significant and in many ways negative. Among the factors accounting for this trend are “green” extremism and the toxicity which has so deeply affected the current political environment.

Does the visceral dislike Republicans hold for Democrats, and vice versa, extend to marriage; to bearing children? Do other political factors, chief among them extreme fear of climate change, impact such vital personal relationships? The answer to both queries appears to be “yes.”

At the extreme, beginning in 2006, there has developed a movement to deliberately de-populate the planet by refusing to have children – “anti-natalism.” There even have sprung up umbrella organizations such as “Antinatalism International” and the “Voluntary Human Extinction Movement” to provide structure and publicity.

To be honest, I had not come across the term “anti-natalism” until noting mention of it recently in an article about the degree to which fear of climate change was causing individuals to alter their lifestyles, including deciding not to have children. On further investigation, I discovered it appears already to have enticed several celebrities to advocate on its behalf, even if only indirectly.

Perhaps foremost among those with celebrity status who have come to question the morality of having children, is New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who, as far back as 2019, posed the question to whoever might have been listening, “ Is it okay to still have children?” because of what she viewed as the accelerating ravages of climate change.  That same year, Britain’s Prince Harry, now an avowed left-winger living on America’s left coast, declared that he and his wife Meghan would limit their stable of offspring to two, out of deference to the endangered global climate.

Not only are individuals jumping on the no-more-children climate change bandwagon, but prominent business entities as well are dipping their corporate toes into the controversy.

Morgan Stanley, the New York based multinational investment management and financial services company, last year alerted investors that bringing a child into the world is “7-times worse for the climate in CO2 emissions annually than the next 10 most discussed mitigants that individuals can do.” It is unclear exactly what that statement means, but clearly it reflects the notion that having children represents a dire threat to Mother Earth.

The United Nations, always eager to raise the alarm against the developed world and the United States in particular, recently issued what it labels a “Code Red” warning for all of humanity because of climate change. While stopping short of formally endorsing anti-natalism in this context, the U.N. has been among those organizations issuing regular, apocalyptic warnings about global overpopulation since the 1970s.

Drilling down from the international level to the family, the vehemence with which Republicans detest Democrats, a favor returned in at least equal measure by Democrats toward Republicans, also appears to be infecting even personal, marital relationships. For example, a poll conducted last December revealed that at least among college students, more than 70% of Democrats would not knowingly even date a Republican.

This aversion to dating, much less marrying, and far less having children with someone of the “other” Party, while not new, has displayed a sharp increase over the past decade. Lasting, inter-party relationships, such as that between dyed-in-the-wool Republican Mary Matalin and Democrat firebrand James Carville, are becoming ever more rare as the deep and consuming animosity between the two parties grows. Overall, marital unions between Republican and a Democrat have sunk to a clear minority.

Whether for fear of increasing the “carbon footprint” a new child brings to the world, unwillingness to form a lasting personal relationship with a member of the “other” Party, or the economic cost of raising a child (calculated to be $300,000 for a child born today), the birthrate in the United States remains at its lowest ebb in history.

Green extremists might cheer this decline, as might other countries and movements seeking to harm or supplant the United States on the world stage, but in the medium and long-term, a nation riven by internal divisiveness and suffering a declining population is ill-positioned to remain a top-tier power.

And a nation without children would be a very unhappy place, indeed.

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

Daily Caller

Last Thursday’s unveiling of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy‘s long-promised “Commitment to America” is a step in the right direction, in that it offers voters a sense that the GOP at least has an agenda. But it is hardly a giant leap and lacks the excitement, specificity, and strength that made 1994’s “Contract With America” such a game-changer.

Unlike its predecessor, this latest attempt to provide a scoresheet for evaluating House candidates reads as if it was drafted by a committee or committees, which in fact it apparently was. Not that such preparation is a fatal defect, but if the resulting document is wordy, lacking in clarity and precision, and comes across as an effort to please everyone who had a hand in its drafting, it loses the very attributes that made the 1994 Contract so appealing.

Perhaps the 2022 Commitment is so different from its predecessor because the political environment in which this year’s mid-term voters will cast their votes is so dissimilar. In 1994 Democrats entered the final weeks before the November elections blissfully confident that their four-decade long House majority would hold once again. This year, virtually every poll indicates the Democrats will lose their majority in the House.

In such environment, perhaps it makes sense to present a national Republican agenda that is strong on generalities and short on specifics; a game plan that provides just enough substance to qualify as an actual agenda without alienating voters already inclined to vote Republican. If so, it is precisely the type of timidity that many Republican voters have come to identify with the GOP in recent years.

The 1994 Contract was prepared in secret by a small group of House Republican leaders with input from an even smaller cadre of tested consultants. It was not promised and referred to repeatedly and publicly over many months, thereby reducing, if not eliminating any excitement “bump” once it was sprung whole cloth on the electorate and the Democrats.

Most importantly, however, the Contract gave the American electorate something it never before had received – a specific, concise, and clear set of ten manageable promises, set forth in language easily understandable to the average voter. It promised but importantly did not over-promise, and it set a very specific timetable for keeping those promises.

The current Commitment is very different, consisting of four broad, evergreen “themes” that tend to appeal to virtually every voter: a strong economy, a secure nation, a future of freedom, and an accountable government.

Each of these general topics is then buttressed with several sub-topics, which each in turn contains a few specifics. Drilling down to these specifics, the committed reader does indeed discover a few clear policy proposals and legislative initiatives for the GOP to pass if it regains the majority. These include a “Parents Bill of Rights” and ending proxy voting in the House.

Unfortunately, many of the “specifics” included in the Commitment lack details, and while all are consistent with long-standing tenets of the modern Republican Party — “curb wasteful government spending,”  “secure the border,” and “safeguard the Second Amendment” — there are no metrics with which the electorate can measure the Party’s success in keeping its promises.

It pays homage to the now-boiler plate promise by Republicans and Democrats alike – “Save and strengthen Social Security and Medicare” – a slogan that has become as meaningless as a distinction between the two major parties. Its inclusion adds nothing.

Many of the items listed are exceptionally vague — “personalize [health] care” and  “move supply chains away from China” – while others border on the esoteric – “enhance America’s …  cyber resiliency.”

Perhaps the single most important commitment in the entire document comes toward the end, where McCarthy commits to “conduct rigorous oversight” of the Executive Branch.

If a new Republican House majority conducts serious, substantive, and continuous oversight of abuses by the Executive Branch generally and the Biden Administration in particular – something that is among the rarest exercises of congressional responsibility by either Party – the 2022 Commitment to America will have earned its keep.

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

With much of the island still without electricity as a result of Hurricane Fiona pummeling Puerto Rico on Sunday, one might think that the Biden administration would be leading an effort to repeal a 1920 federal law that continues to cost the island’s inhabitants dearly for every gallon of petroleum imported into the island, which in turn pushes the cost of most consumer goods far beyond those on the U.S. mainland.

The administration, along with a majority of the Congress, however, stubbornly refuses to seriously consider weakening, much less repealing, the Jones Act (also known as the Merchant Marine Act of 1920) as a way to help the island’s 3.2 million inhabitants cope with inflation, high unemployment, and lack of basic necessities..

The Jones Act is best described as the poster child for overtly protectionist legislation that long ago outlived any usefulness it might have provided when signed into law. It was designed to protect the domestic maritime industry against competition from other countries; a goal it has accomplished for more than a century. The law does this by mandating that shipment by water of any goods or cargo between any two U.S. ports must be conducted only by vessels built in the United States and that are at least 75 percent U.S.-owned and crewed.

The Jones Act was passed in the aftermath of the First World War, during which America’s maritime fleet had been severely impacted by German submarine attacks, and when our nation’s shipbuilding and cargo carrying capacity was insufficient to meet the needs of the war effort. While national security might at the time have constituted a legitimate basis on which to enact corrective legislation, such is no longer the case and has not been for decades.

Still, like the famous case of Jarndyce v. Jarndyce described by Charles Dickens in his well-known novel, “Bleak House,” the Jones Act lives on and on and on.

Exceptions to the law’s rigorous and costly mandates can be invoked for emergency needs, as President Trump did in 2017 following the devastation suffered by Puerto Ricans as a result of Hurricane Maria. The Act also allows for national security exceptions, as was considered earlier this year in the context of cuts targeting Russia’s petroleum exports. Over the decades, however, such moves are rare, insofar as they may incur the wrath of union leaders and members of Congress from districts having significant shipbuilding industry.

The cost of this law for a small nation like Puerto Rico (an “unincorporated territory of the United States”) that is highly dependent on importing virtually all petroleum and most other consumer goods, is massive; estimated to be in excess of $1.2 billion per year.

Still, whatever compassion resides in the White House or on Capitol Hill for the misery periodically inflicted on citizens of Puerto Rico by disruptive and deadly hurricanes, remains insufficient to move Washington away from its steadfast support for the protectionist law and the many shipbuilding union voters who demand allegiance to it.

In fact, rather than our government moving to relax some of the strict mandates the Jones Act requires which make it significantly costlier and less efficient to move goods and services from one U.S. port to another, recent initiatives have been in the opposite direction. In December 2020, for example, legislation was passed requiring that the law’s mandates apply to all aspects of the “offshore wind industry.”

The survivability of the Jones Act proves yet again that the most powerful force in Washington, if not in the entire universe, is the force of the status quo.

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

With a huge public workforce, high unemployment, and an energy sector plagued with recurrent Third World-style blackouts, is Puerto Rico a sign of things to come for the United States mainland?

The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico is an “unincorporated territory” of the United States whose 3.2 million citizens enjoy U.S. citizenship. To be fair, the island suffers from weather and geography problems not of its own making. It lies in the path of tropical storms and hurricanes that periodically cause widespread damage, such as Hurricane Fiona which crossed the island last Sunday.

The Commonwealth’s problems, however, extend beyond geography and weather. Even before Fiona hit, the entire island had been without electricity. Some areas had not fully recovered from a previous island-wide blackout in 2017. The electricity situation has become so notoriously bad that one of Puerto Rico’s internationally known singers, Bad Bunny, included complaints about his homeland’s energy failings in a recent music video.

Not only are Puerto Rico’s outdated and poorly maintained power plants constantly vulnerable to storms, but also to what has become almost a regular occurrence – fires caused by faulty equipment. Whatever the cause, of course, power outages have a ripple effect that cuts off water to homes, businesses, schools, and hospitals; in turn leading to serious economic and health concerns.

As with issues faced by Americans on the mainland, shoveling more taxpayer dollars at problems does not necessarily result in better quality of services or products. In recent years, because of the devastation caused by Puerto Rico’s constantly failing electrical grid system, billion of dollars have flowed from the mainland to the island for the express purpose of fixing the problem, but with little, if any, positive effect. In fact, $12 billion in federal aid already had been committed to the problem long before last Sunday’s storm.

Notwithstanding such assistance, and with the island’s electricity customers already paying twice the rates as mainland users, the problems never seem to get resolved.

A significant factor in the Commonwealth’s continuing, if not worsening energy crises, appears to be the structure of the labor market on the island. Long a Mecca for public sector employment,  more Puerto Rican workers are employed by the government than in the trade, transportation, and utilities sectors combined. Overall, some 22% of all jobs on the island are government jobs, nearly twice the percentage as in the U.S. economy.

Unions in Puerto Rico, particularly those in public-sector jobs, are a major political force that periodically harm the island’s fragile economy. Recently, for example, teachers and other public sector employees engaged in a strike that resulted in a generous government commitment for higher pay that will weaken the island’s already reeling economy suffering an unemployment rate far higher than the 3.7% on the mainland.

The power grid system operating across the mainland United States is far more reliable than Puerto Rico’s broken down grid operated by a single company and micromanaged by the government. Notwithstanding this reality, some adherents of the “green new deal” opine that isolated problems which have hit the U.S. system in recent years (such as the unusually cold winter weather in Texas in early 2021) mean we should move toward a single grid system such as on the island Commonwealth. This would be a disaster.

Caught between a large, heavily unionized public-sector workforce, an energy system that resembles one operating in the world’s poorest countries, and high unemployment, Puerto Rico illustrates how an economy driven not by the free market but by the heavy hand of government can find itself marooned. The last thing the American mainland needs to be doing, is taking steps to replicate that situation.

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.