Liberty Updates

Townhall.com

by Bob Barr

For years, American cities run by Democrat mayors and city councils have been beset by serious fiscal problems. Now, however, these “blue” cities are reaping a far more tragic harvest of the mismanagement they have sown – violence and death.

What transpired in Atlanta over the July 4th weekend was sadly predictable, except that is, to the city’s mayor.

At this critical juncture, Atlanta’s police department has a leadership vacuum, with the former chief having stepped down immediately following the death of civilian Rayshard Brooks at a local Wendy’s on June 12th. For the past month, armed thugs have been patrolling a number of streets in Atlanta and adjacent areas without fear of arrest.

Meanwhile, Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms dithered and preened before the media, hoping to elevate herself in Biden’s not-so-discreet search for an African American female running mate. Last Saturday, on a day most Americans were celebrating our nation’s founding, eight-year-old Atlantan Secoriea Turner paid the price for living in a city void of leadership. The child was fatally shot while was riding in a car driven by her mother who was simply trying to go around a barricade erected unlawfully on a public street by armed thugs.

Mayor Lance Bottoms publicly condemned the shooting, but pointedly refused to accept any responsibility for having created the circumstances that allowed the tragedy to occur in the first place. In failing to accept responsibility, Atlanta’s mayor was following in the footsteps of other mayors whose leadership lethargy has led to violence in the cities over which they exercise power, including Seattle, Minneapolis, New York, and elsewhere.

After-the-fact, self-serving recriminations by these mayors ring hollow in the face of clear evidence that it was their failure to act that created the very conditions precipitating the violence — last weekend in Atlanta and late last month in Seattle’s so-called “CHOP” occupied zone.

Apparently, it comes as a surprise to these elected officials when criminals commit violent acts after the police step back and “give them room” to work their will. Unfortunately, it is not the mayors who pay the price, but innocent citizens, including defenseless children.

Compounding the problem, officials in these cities typically react in ways that make things worse. Atlanta is a perfect example of the tragedy that lies at the end of a chain of events started by failed leadership.

The violence that flared in Atlanta following the May 25th death of George Floyd in Minneapolis was met by city officials overreacting and punishing law enforcement. This misstep was exacerbated two weeks later when Atlanta’s top prosecutor overzealously rushed to prosecute a police officer, for what appears by all available evidence, to have been a justifiable shooting of a suspect who resisted arrest and wrested the officer’s taser, then firing it at the officer who returned fire with his sidearm.

The Wendy’s where the shooting occurred was promptly burned by an arsonist, and the site was allowed to be made into a makeshift shrine, barricaded and protected by armed thugs. It was near this sanctum that young Secoriea Turner was shot and killed on July 4th.

Neither Atlanta’s mayor nor others of these feckless municipal leaders seem to have learned anything from the history faced in recent years by their colleagues in cities from Charlottesville, Virginia to Berkeley, California.

The lessons revealed by these recent incidents are hardly of recent vintage. They are as old as civil society. Failure to stand up to the mob and backing away from violent thuggery never achieves peace and quiet.

It may be an ugly fact of life, but individual freedom sooner or later will be tested by those who would rob others of their liberty. Law enforcement – and more importantly, the willingness to use it – is an essential component of a free and ordered society. Elected officials who refuse to recognize this have no business wearing the mantel of leadership. Whether the citizens of Seattle, New York, Atlanta, and so many other cities led by such individuals will wake to this anomaly before there are more children murdered as a result, should be a key criterion facing voters this year and next.

Bob Barr represented Georgia’s 7 District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003 and was the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia from 1986 to 1990.  He now serves as President of the Law Enforcement Education Foundation based in Atlanta, Georgia.

Daily Caller

by Bob Barr

It is no secret that President Trump and down-ballot Republicans have a healthcare problem as they prepare to face voters in less than four months. The country remains gripped by the COVID-19 pandemic, and many voters blame the administration and its allies in Congress for not coming up with a magic solution. This view seems to be shared by donors, many of whom have signaled that they view health care as the party’s most serious vulnerability.

While there still is time to right the ship before the November elections, Republicans in Washington need to seriously analyze what has gone wrong and take corrective action before it is too late. If they look beneath the headlines, they will find that much of the health care dysfunction and obstruction comes not from their adversaries on Capitol Hill or from blue state governors, but from inside the federal government; specifically, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

CMS has been central to many of the problems that have plagued the administration’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite knowing early on, for example, that over 140 nursing homes had at least one resident who tested positive for the virus, CMS put all their residents at risk by refusing to release that vital information.

This seeming lack of concern for seniors’ well-being angered everyone from the residents’ families to the emergency personnel who could have used the data to save lives, and it came at the very time Trump was starting to lose what had been a major advantage with senior voters.

At the center of this botched response has been CMS Administrator Seema Verma. A former health care consultant, Verma has struggled throughout the pandemic to provide Americans with clear information and direction. Her shortcomings were on full display in the early days of the pandemic when she refused media requests to answer questions about the government’s supply of ventilators, hospital beds and ICU units for infected patients. Her media blunders damaged the Trump administration right when Americans were turning to Washington for a sense of security and leadership.

Making mistakes during an unprecedented public health crisis is one thing, but deliberately sabotaging the administration’s free-market healthcare agenda – as Verma has done — is quite another.

Notwithstanding that the agency she heads answers to Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, Verma reportedly sabotaged an administration drug pricing reform plan to be implemented by Azar, because she was unwilling to reform the dysfunctional insurance rebate system. She reportedly brazenly threatened Azar that she would “make sure he’d never work in this town again” if he pursued the pricing reform issue. When Azar refused to cave, Verma helped to deep-six his pro-consumer effort during a key meeting last year.

Verma’s obstruction then rolled over into the broader Obamacare reform effort, where she broke from the White House policy team, and freelanced her own $1 trillion plan that many senior administration officials worried would drive people away from the cheaper health insurance options two years in the making.  Her continued shenanigans have helped ensure that the administration still does not have any significant health care victories to tout this November.

While Verma’s policy impediments have hurt the administration politically, the accusations of crony capitalism that she has created for the White House may be even more damaging. Last November, for example, she tried to have taxpayers reimburse her for nearly $50,000 worth of jewelry, clothing, and other personal items that she said were stolen during a work trip. As if that were not enough, she also quietly directed millions of dollars in agency funds to communication consultants designed in large measure to boost her image, despite an already sizable CMS communications budget.

Notwithstanding the red flags raised about her spending habits, the fact that she has been anything but a team player regarding the president’s drug pricing reform effort, and considering the early and continuing missteps in handling the COVID-19 pandemic by her agency, Verma continues in her post. The longer she remains as head of the federal agency that administers both Medicare and Medicaid, the longer she remains an albatross around the neck of President Trump and the GOP heading into November.

Bob Barr represented Georgia’s 7^th District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003 and served as the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia from 1986 to 1990.  He now serves as President of the Law Enforcement Education Foundation based in Atlanta, Georgia.

Townhall.com

by Bob Barr

Donald Trump should delete his Twitter account. He does not need it and it does him more harm than good; continuing to use it only improves the bottom-line for Twitter’s liberal CEO and boosts the credibility of the popular but left-leaning platform.

Granted, Twitter is widely used, with more than 150 million active users each day, but is anyone who converses via Twitter really going to change their political views as a result? Some users may turn to Twitter to get their news; but face it, if someone is so shallow as to consider Twitter their news source, it is highly unlikely they would ever vote for Trump or any candidate with similar views.

Twitters-gone-wrong can range from inconsequential typos, to real damage; such as the fallout from the President re-tweeting a video this past weekend that contained footage of a Trump supporter shouting “white power” at Black Lives Matter protestors.

Some Trump supporters may argue that Twitter is one of the only channels through which Americans can hear from the President directly, without being filtered through the biased lens of the mainstream media. This is not the case, and definitely not a reason to continue using Twitter.

The President is the most powerful person in the world, with access to every conceivable communications medium and resource. He can communicate with whomever he wants and whenever he wants — whether to one person or millions.

Donald Trump does not need Twitter. In fact, Twitter needs him more than he needs Twitter. Continuing to patronize the site is actually hurting him. Credible polling shows that Trump’s combative tone on Twitter is costing him support among white, working-class female voters; the ones he needs to win a second term.

Democrat operatives appear to understand what is going on. They know that the more Biden is permitted to communicate publicly, whether in person or on Skype, the greater the risk he will say something that reminds voters just how unfit he really is to serve as the country’s commander-in-chief. Democrat Party bosses and Biden campaign strategists wisely have tried their best to keep Biden away from settings that present such dangers.

It would make sense for the Trump campaign to engage in a similar calculus as a way to minimize the risk of Twitter gaffes.

Yes, Trump has a certain je ne sais quoi that is unique in the annals of modern American politics; it was key to his surprise victory in 2016. Nevertheless, the last four years – and particularly the last six months –have proven that his off-the-cuff, rough-and-tumble style does not translate to the Twitter medium in a way that effectively or consistently delivers a message.

It is time to pull the Twitter plug; at least until Wednesday, November 4th. Such a step would come with a bonus. What better way to stick it to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Twitter stockholders (who by and large appear to despise Trump), than Trump leaving them and taking millions of his loyal followers with him?

Let liberals keep Twitter as their own social media plaything, and perhaps when they realize how boring it is without Trump to pick fights with, the platform might even collapse. It would be Trump taking the high road with a flip of the chin to the Left and the Democrat Party – a “win” any way you look at it.

Neither the Trump presidency nor the Trump campaign can control what the Democrats or the Biden campaign do between now and election day. But the President himself and those to whom he listens, especially his close kin, can control the forums and mechanisms through which he communicates to the American people as president and candidate.

Get rid of the Twitter account; it is a liability. Go back to the model Ronald Reagan perfected – speaking directly and frequently to the American people. It is, after all, something Trump is good at; and he would not have to worry about typos.

 Bob Barr represented Georgia’s 7 District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003 and was the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia from 1986 to 1990.  He now serves as President of the Law Enforcement Education Foundation based in Atlanta, Georgia.

Daily Caller by Bob Barr In 2008, Mark Bauerlein wrote “The Dumbest Generation, How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future.” Judging by events in the intervening dozen years (and especially in recent months), it appears that Bauerlein’s assessment was premature and perhaps even too kind. Bauerlein correctly identified overreliance on the internet and social media (then still in its infancy) as the primary culprits for Millennials losing their ability to think, learn and communicate coherently. What his analysis perhaps did not anticipate is the number of adults who have come to encourage, empower and support Millennials in these efforts. It is almost as if adults in government, the news media and academia are competing with Millennials for the title. Consider, for example, the issue of providing college students with “safe spaces,” where they can shelter from the horrors of people, ideas and principles they consider “offensive.” The students may be the ones pushing for these accommodations, but it is the adult college administrators who cave in and make it happen. Young protestors in Seattle may “occupy” a sector of that once-respected city; they may scream “police brutality” and call for the police department to be “defunded.” Their  demands, however, would amount to little were it not for the city’s clueless Mayor Jenny Durken, who lauded the young occupiers as “patriots,” and her namby-pamby police chief, Carmen Best, who decided that barricades which had protected one of her department’s precinct headquarters should be removed as a “gesture of trust” to the mob. While adult elected enablers of today’s young mobs predominate in west coast cities such as Portland, Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles, counterparts are found across the country. New York’s dynamic duo of Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio repeatedly praise and encourage the demonstrators, even as they offer virtually no support for police who are left to deal with the looting, arson and violence in the streets. Meanwhile, Cuomo’s narcissistic brother, CNN commentator Chris Cuomo, muses on air that protestors need not be either polite or peaceful. On the ground in Seattle’s mob-occupied zone, a collegiate-type “safe space” was set aside, but only for individuals with “black ancestry” or who “have experienced oppression because [they] are black.” In an interesting role-reversal, news reports noted that this open-air “Black Healing Space” was enforced against non-black interlopers by young whites. The profound historical and cultural illiteracy of these young mobs repeatedly is confirmed by actions such as their indiscriminate destruction of public statues simply because they are, well, public statues. Reasoning with demonstrators who have shown themselves incapable of distinguishing between statues of musicians like Stevie Ray Vaughan and those memorializing Confederate civil war generals would be an obvious waste of time. In Lincoln County, Oregon, officials decreed that black Americans do not have to wear medical masks otherwise required for all citizens, because requiring African Americans to do so would in some way perpetuate “racial stereotypes.” Truly, there would be little point in arguing with adults spouting such nonsense; they have thrown in with the children. The depth to which these “adult Millennials” and their “true Millennial” cohorts have descended in their drive to protect themselves (and our country) from reality, is perhaps most clearly illustrated by the wrath just recently directed against “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling. Rowling’s “sin” was to publicly explain that only biological women menstruate, not men who had “transgendered” to women. Adult detractors were not only angered by Rowling’s refusal to kowtow to the New Age gender orthodoxy; they reportedly were deeply “devastated” by the horror of her words. One such person is a teacher at the highly regarded Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Devin Michelle Bunten. Ms. Bunten penned a New York Times op-ed declaring that people, like Rowling and President Trump, who employ terms such as “male” and “female” are “erasing” transgendered individuals and simply perpetuating what she considers our disgraceful social “patriarchy.” With adult teachers at institutions of higher learning like MIT spouting such nonsense, it is hardly surprising we have now two generations of illiterate snowflakes who cannot distinguish between Stevie Ray Vaughan and Stonewall Jackson. Bob Barr represented Georgia’s 7^th District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003 and served as the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia from 1986 to 1990.  He now serves as President of the Law Enforcement Education Foundation based in Atlanta, Georgia.

Townhall.com

by Bob Barr

Virtue signaling in corporate America has become as much of a marketing strategy as television commercials and magazine ads. Most recently, the “Black Lives Matter” (BLM) demonstrations have provided ample opportunity for corporations to demonstrate how “woke” they are, by donating money to BLM and issuing self-serving tweets trumpeting their generosity and “wokeness.”

The ease with which groups like BLM are able to successfully pressure corporate leaders to bow to their demands may surprise some observers, but it is in fact nothing new. Revs. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton honed the strategy to near perfection years ago.

At its core, such corporate capitulation reflects a deep, if unexplainable corporate sense of racial guilt that can be triggered by outside groups pressing the right buttons. The strategy appears often to work even though the true goals of those exerting the pressure may have little, if anything to do with racial justice, and everything to do with funding an anti-capitalist movement designed to destroy these very corporations in the name of “social progress.”

BLM’s leaders do not even feel the need to hide their true goals from their corporate victims. In a recent interview, BLM founder Patrisse Cullors identifies herself and fellow co-founder Alicia Garza as “trained Marxists.”  This is no slip of the tongue. Such language reflects the Movement’s philosophical underpinnings and goals — the dismantling of America’s capitalist economic system as a “racist tool.”

As with so many other contemporary “progressive” movements, such as “Fight for 15,” “Extinction Rebellion,” and “Occupy,” BLM starts with a superficially worthy niche to gain quick publicity and support. Many of the protestors who came out to support BLM in the immediate aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, for example, may very well have been marching for genuine justice reform issues; unaware they were pawns in a much larger game orchestrated by Cullors and Garza. This is precisely how these movements have become so effective.

Leaders of these movements build strength of numbers around their particular public “causes,” then use the resulting influence to stealthily move the conversation to the real goal. This is how the Floyd protests morphed quickly from demands for reasoned reforms to violence, looting, and capturing a multi-block section of a major American city. Corporate CEOs who are more afraid of tarnishing their image than standing for principle, are then ripe for groups like BLM to demand ransom in the form of dollars; lots of dollars.

This also helps explain why BLM and other protestors have shown no discretion or logic in toppling public statues and monuments; lumping those of Confederate generals together with their Union adversaries, former presidents of the United States, abolitionists like Matthias Baldwin, and many more.

It gets worse.

Just as Karl Marx recognized the need to dismantle organized religion in order for his collectivist and statist movement to succeed, the current movement engineered by BLM and its cohorts has taken on a decidedly anti-religion tone. Shaun King, a high profile “justice” commentator, called for the destruction of “white” Christian artifacts including statues of Jesus and stained glass windows, declaring them tools of “white supremacy.” As it was for Marx one-and-a-half centuries ago, the goal today is the destruction of Western culture.

Those who believe this movement will stop with statues and monuments are hopelessly naive. The Marxist radicals directing BLM and the broader anti-capitalist movement are targeting the institutional underpinnings of American society. Their efforts to destroy institutions of higher learning have become disturbingly commonplace, with repeated purges of faculty, administrators, and even students who refuse or simply fail to bow to the demands of the mob.

In the political arena things are playing out according to script. Democrats willingly allow themselves to be led by the mob, and most GOP leaders are too meek to stand up to it; perhaps believing that if they bow just a bit they will not be consumed by the movement.

With such spineless leadership at the top corporate and political echelons of American society, it is becoming increasingly difficult to view the future with any degree of optimism.

Bob Barr represented Georgia’s 7 District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003 and was the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia from 1986 to 1990.  He now serves as President of the Law Enforcement Education Foundation based in Atlanta, Georgia.

Daily Caller

by Bob Barr

As the Supreme Court nears the end of its 2019-2020 term, it is becoming increasingly questionable whether the “conservative majority” that Trump appointees Gorsuch and Kavanaugh were supposed to have ushered in actually exists.

Ever since his legally convoluted majority opinion upholding Obamacare against serious constitutional challenge eight years ago, Chief Justice John Roberts has provided conservatives plenty of reason to suspect he is not the “conservative” jurist in whom many had pinned hopes. However, a handful of decisions by the Court in the past two months have raised new red flags that the problems with the “conservative” majority run deeper than a single jurist.

An additional concern is that recent public threats by leading Democrat senators directed against the Court’s Republican-appointed justices might well have intimidated some of them into tempering their views.

The refusal in late April by a majority of the nine justices to decide a Second Amendment case out of New York City that was ripe for such action was the first of these red flags. It came as no surprise that Roberts joined the majority in refusing to decide the case. What was surprising, however, is that Brett Kavanaugh, the most recent Associate Justice, joined Roberts and the four “liberal” justices in punting the New York gun case. It was Kavanaugh who was the victim of an especially vicious confirmation battle in 2018, and who was specifically and publicly threatened by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) in March.

Just weeks later, the Court declined to accept another case that was ripe for decision. On June15, the Court refused to hear a challenge by the Trump administration to a California “sanctuary” law that prohibited state law enforcement officials from notifying federal immigration agents when immigrants convicted of crimes are to be released.

June 15 was the same day the Court issued what could best be described as a classic, activist liberal decision, reflecting the notion that the Constitution is a “living document,” to be interpreted by judges according to their contemporary views rather than what they might consider the “outdated” views of its original drafters. Leading the charge for this liberal decision, and actually writing for the majority (which, predictably, included Roberts), was none other than Trump’s first pick for the Court – Neil Gorsuch.

The decision, which could as easily have been written by former ultra-liberal Chief Justice Earl Warren as by Gorsuch, held that the 1964 Civil Rights Act protected both “sexual orientation” and “transgender status” against workplace discrimination, even though neither term appears anywhere in the law.

Three days later came the final gauntlet thrown at the feet of the Republican president by the “conservative” Chief Justice. Roberts, in a hyper-technical majority opinion joined by the four liberal associate justices, ruled that the Trump administration could not shut down the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program implemented by the Obama administration without statutory authority, even though the current administration had the lawful power to do so.

In another of his signature convoluted opinions, Roberts held that the reason DACA could not be closed down was because the Department of Homeland Security did not fully “appreciate the scope of its decision” to terminate the program. The gobbledygook in the opinion cannot disguise the fact that Roberts was desperate to find some reason not to terminate a politically popular program.

Still to be decided before the current term of court ends later this month is the Louisiana abortion case that precipitated Schumer’s public threats against Gorsuch and Kavanaugh three months ago. The law at issue poses no burden whatsoever on women seeking abortions in Louisiana. It merely requires that doctors performing such procedures have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital, which is the very same requirement applicable to physicians providing other medical services.

If one or more of the Republican-appointed justices side with the four certain liberal justices in finding Louisiana’s law unconstitutional, it will signal clearly that the threats by Democrat senators, buttressed perhaps by recent polls indicating likely Democrat gains in November, have in fact intimidated at least some conservative justices into moderating their constitutional principles.

This happened once before when President Franklin D. Roosevelt openly threatened action against the High Court for hesitating to uphold his New Deal programs. The Court succumbed then, with disastrous constitutional consequences. Let us pray it does not happen again.

American Action News

by Bob Barr

The violent upheavals we have witnessed over the past three weeks in cities across America, coupled with the clamoring for “racial justice,” has elicited comparisons with events in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Similarities exist certainly, but our country is a far different place than it was 52 years ago. Where we wind up when the dust settles after the votes are cast on November 3rd, will be far different from where we found ourselves on Wednesday, November 6, 1968, or, four years later the day after Richard Nixon was reelected.

The violence in America in 1968 and continuing for several years thereafter, was precipitated initially by opposition to the war in Vietnam but was seriously exacerbated by domestic events, notably the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy that Spring and Summer. King’s assassination in particular provided the other catalyst for the wave of violence – racial tension.

Today, while there is no discernible relationship between U.S. foreign policy and the turmoil rocking cities from Seattle to Atlanta, there clearly is a strong underpinning of racial animosity; more so than was the case a half-century ago.

Another common element between the political upheavals evident in these two eras is deep-seated personal animosity toward a national leader – Richard Nixon in 1968 and 1972, and Donald Trump today.

In that first election, Nixon tapped into a profound sense of unease among middle-class voters, focused first on the antiwar demonstrations and later the violence following King’s assassination. In declaring himself the “law and order” candidate running against an entrenched establishment Democrat — Hubert Humphrey — who appeared to be baffled by the extent of that voter unease, Nixon opened a wellspring of support that carried him all the way through to his reelection four years later.

President Trump cannot be credited with “discovering” that undercurrent of unease – Nixon beat him to it 52 years ago. Perhaps even more than did his predecessor, however, Trump understands the timeliness and importance of the phenomenon, and he has masterfully calculated how to use it to his electoral advantage.

One could delve deeply, if not endlessly, into numerous statistical factors comparing voting in 1968 and 1972 with 2016 and 2020 – education levels, racial voting patterns, voting age, and the list goes on. Bearing in mind the truism that statistics are notoriously malleable, however, such analysis yields little of value in trying to understand how the current climate of extreme social unrest will affect this November’s election.

The only exception, perhaps, to not becoming bogged down in dueling statistics, might be to consider the substantial “gender gap” – currently at 20% – Trump suffers when matched against Joe Biden, his all-but-certain Democrat rival. Nixon did not face such a “gap”; in fact, it was not until the 1980 election that a discernible “gender gap” began to appear in presidential contests.

Statistics aside, our society truly is at a crossroads.

The current political climate contains the very real possibility, if not the likelihood, of recurrent urban violence at least through the November election. Voters in 1968 and 1972 faced similar threats, and not surprisingly responded positively to Nixon’s “law and order” campaign on both occasions. His victories were facilitated by virtue of the fact that his Democrat opponents, especially George McGovern in 1972, were perceived as weak in dealing with domestic violence.

Historically, American voters have responded positively to candidates who convey strength in the face of domestic or international turbulence. While Biden does not yet personify the profound weakness McGovern displayed in 1972, the ambivalence he continues to exhibit is similar to that by Humphrey when he campaigned against Nixon in 1968 (and lost).

Thankfully for our country in both those cycles, and ever since, there has been a reserve of reason and maturity sufficient to push back successfully against the forces of chaos that tested us.

However, never before in our history have so many political leaders and citizens shown themselves willing to accept, if not encourage violence and chaos in order to defeat one individual, as we now are witnessing. If they are able to defeat Trump in November, the violence and chaos we have seen so far this summer will be but a harbinger of things to come.

Bob Barr (@BobBarr) represented Georgia in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003. He won the Libertarian Party’s presidential nomination in 2008 and currently serves as president and CEO of the Law Enforcement Education Foundation.

Townhall.com

by Bob Barr

Marches, demonstrations and even riots have been sweeping cities across the country. Protesters have literally taken over a sector of downtown Seattle. Calls to “defund the police” are being heard even in the halls of the Congress. Some health experts are predicting a resurgence of COVID-19. Amidst all this chaos the U.S. Postal Service is begging Congress to give it another bailout. Congress should respond to this request with a resounding “NO.”

The United States Postal Service (USPS) has suffered from well-documented structural problems for years; long before the coronavirus pandemic hit early this year. However, in recognition of the difficulties the Postal Service faced along with almost every other business sector hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic, it received $10 billion as part of the CARES Act. For any well-run business, that should have sufficed to get it over the pandemic hump. Not for the folks at the USPS.

Now, just a few months after that huge cash infusion, the Postal Service is coming back begging for another bailout; this time for a whopping $25 billion. In the absence of meaningful structural reforms to the failed business model under which the USPS long has operated, Congress should not even consider granting this request.

For one thing, in light of recent jobs numbers and other signs that the economy already is bouncing back, there may be no need to pass the most recent proposed COVID-19 “stimulus” package, the HEROES Act. Even aside from this broader perspective, however, it is clear that giving the USPS as it currently is structured more taxpayer money, would be throwing good money after bad. The Service needs reform – major structural reform – not a bailout.

The Postal Service operates according to a broken business model. It has lost billions for more than a decade and will continue to lose billions endlessly as it currently is configured. Its operational losses are continuing to increase, yet its leadership is not proposing any reforms. They are asking for debt forgiveness while facing a huge and increasingly negative balance sheet. The Service hides the revenues it loses on package deliveries by calling them “institutional costs;” it increases fees for First Class mail and for mass mailings. None of these steps have stemmed the fiscal hemorrhaging.

It is hardly a winning argument to say that giving money to the U. S. Postal Service is only fair because without such largesse it is forced to operate as a government-run service at a disadvantage in competition with private sector delivery businesses. Private sector delivery services are profitable and strong (especially in today’s economy) because of how they are structured, how they operate, and perhaps most important, how they respond to changes in the marketplace. Compared to companies like UPS and FedEx, the USPS is the Pony Express.

Numerous reforms have been recommended but are routinely ignored. The Department of Treasury conducted a comprehensive study of the USPS and recommended substantial changes. President Trump has called the USPS a “joke” and has demanded reforms. A 2018 White House Task Force issued recommendations, but the Postal Service failed to act on any of them. Congressional Democrats labeled the reforms “privatization” — the kiss of death for Democrat Party members of Congress and voters.

On April 30, 2019 the House Committee on Oversight and Reform held a hearing titled, “The Financial Condition of the Postal Service,” at which Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC), now President Trump’s Chief of Staff, made a number of strong statements in support of reform measures. His suggestions for meaningful reform were, of course, summarily rebuffed by Democrats on the Committee. What did emerge from the hearing is that the Postal Service faces a $125 billion gap but has no plan to restructure itself now or in the future.

Adding insult to injury, at the same time that the USPS is demanding debt forgiveness, it seeks to have its retirees dumped into Medicare, so the taxpayers at large pick up the huge tab for health care benefits the Service promised its retirees.

The reforms must be real, and they must deal not only with the structure of the USPS, but also with the manner by which federal monies are used to disrupt market forces throughout the package delivery sector. Reform of the Postal Service is essential, and the time to do so is now, but not disguised as pandemic stimulus.

Bob Barr represented Georgia’s 7^th District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003 and served as the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia from 1986 to 1990.  He now serves as President of the Law Enforcement Education Foundation based in Atlanta, Georgia.

Daily Caller

by Bob Barr

Policing in the United States is overdue for reform. Admitting to this is not a matter of race, political party, or ideology. It is an observable truth, confirmed time and again by the lack of accountability in holding bad cops responsible for actions that should not be tolerated in a free country governed by the constitutional rule of law.

There are steps that the federal and state governments can and should undertake to address deficiencies in policing. Defunding the police, however, is not an idea worthy of consideration. The fact that “defund the police” is actually being seriously considered illustrates the idiocracy that has infected public debate in 21^st century America.

Defunding the police because of a few bad police officers is akin to closing down hospitals as a result of an occasional malpractice incident by doctors; or closing public schools because there are some bad teachers. Such a move would solve nothing and in fact make matters incalculably worse for everyone (except perhaps for the very rich, who could afford private security services for their homes, property, and vehicles). Still, however, especially within the “Black Lives Matter” movement, the proposal lives.

Thankfully, amidst the cacophony, there are a few rational voices.

On Twitter, Washington Post columnist and noted police critic Radley Balko suggests we not get too hung up on the phrase “defund the police” as a literal objective, but rather take it as a call-to-arms for a host of sensible reforms. Balko’s approach should be garnering wide, nonpartisan appeal, but many Black Lives Matter activists still insist that the only solution is literally to get rid of police departments. “Please don’t misrepresent our demands,” Jonathan Ben-Menachem, who writes at the criminal justice news site The Appeal, replied to Balko — “It’s not a euphemism or an analogy.”

But advocates of this extreme measure should not be permitted to skate by without being forced to answer a host of hard questions. Who, if anyone, is to investigate crime, and what limitations, if any, would restrain them in their search and surveillance powers? Would the Constitution still apply to these New Age Peacekeepers, or would they be unrestrained by due process and equal protection of the law? In the society envisioned by Ben-Menachem, what authority would peacekeepers have to detain or incapacitate dangerous individuals – or would they be not be empowered to do so in the first instance?

Most fundamentally, what exactly is the goal for such radicalism? Perhaps, like the Bernie Sanders socialists who romanticize a future of complete economic and social equality, police abolitionists foresee a future miraculously free of crime, where community “peacekeepers” exist only to change tires and help old ladies across the street. But, just as socialists always have had to contend eventually — people can only be made equal through government power, ultimately enforced at the end of a gun; look no further than the chaos that grips modern-day Venezuela.

Both history and human nature confirm that there are sound reasons why policing is one of the basic functions of any government. In our society, police functions are designed to be a common authority to enforce the law equally for all citizens, removing the need for vigilante mobs operating without accountability. More importantly, the Constitution and the rule of law hold police accountable within defined boundaries.