Bob Zadek Show: Recent Episodes
Bob Zadek Show
Bob talks about the issues that affect our lives on a daily basis from a purely Libertarian standpoint. He believes in small government, less taxes and greater personal freedom.
Bob and his producer Charlie reminisce about the longest running libertarian talk radio show.
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Arnold Kling is an American economist and an Adjunct Scholar for the Cato Institute.
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Alan Dershowitz has been called "one of the most prominent and consistent defenders of civil liberties in America" by Politico and "the nation's most peripatetic civil liberties lawyer and one of its most distinguished defenders of individual rights" by Newsweek. His legal career as a criminal defense lawyer has been deeply involved with death and life decisions.
In his new book "Dershowitz on Killing: How the Law Decides Who Shall Live and Who Shall Die," he examines the subjects of death, life, and the law.
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The Democrats have effectively had One Party Rule in California for the last two decades, with the exception of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s largely ineffective tenure as a Republican. The Since 1996, Democrats have continuously held a majority in the State Assembly and currently hold a dominant 62-18 supermajority in the 80-seat chamber.
Most forget what happened in the 1990s that permanently changed the balance of power. In 1994, Proposition 187 passed by referendum, with strong support from then-Governor Pete Wilson. The law banned undocumented immigrants from accessing non-emergency healthcare, public schools, and other services in California. Since then, Hispanic voters have largely voted as a bloc for Democrats, leaving Republicans all but irrelevant.
Tom Campbell served five terms in the US Congress, and one two-year term in the State Senate. He created the Common Sense Party to combine fiscal responsibility with inclusivity to appeal to the wide swath of voters who want more choice in their political candidates. Sounds a lot like libertarianism, without all the baggage that the word carries.
Is it too much to ask for an independent-minded politician who is neither bought and paid for by the unions, nor an anti-immigrant fanatic?
The California Common Sense Party has aligned with Andrew Yang’s “Forward” Party movement – trying to break the “two-party doom loop,” and find common sense solutions. Tom Campbell joins me this Sunday to break the latest news about their plans to disrupt California politics.
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Back in early 2021, Cato Institute senior fellow Ted Galen Carpenter urged Washington "to abandon its efforts to torpedo Nord Stream 2." His warnings have been proven prescient by Seymour Hersh's recent revelations, which seem to confirm the US government's involvement in the destruction of the pipeline. Many journalists admit behind closed doors that they believe in the US's involvement, yet the media remains silent out of fear of provoking a response from Russia.
In his new book Unreliable Watchdog, Ted Galen Carpenter argues that the news media has become a tool for propaganda rather than a watchdog for the American people, leading to a distorted view of U.S. foreign policy and a “garrison state” mentality.
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Philip K Howard, the founder of the Common Sense organization, joins the show to make the case for a legal solution – not a democratic one – for fixing the brokenness of the system. He seeks to gain allies from those who want more accountability from public servants, such as police officers and teachers.
But is it possible to get the public to recognize the threat of public sector employee unions to democracy? Or, if the threat has grown so great as to be deemed unconstitutional, is it even necessary?
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Alex Nowrasteh, the director of economic and social policy studies at the Cato Institute, will return to the show to discuss pragmatic solutions for alleviating the chaos at the border.
These solutions include simplifying the system and providing more opportunities for immigrants to live and work here legally.
Alex Nowrasteh is the director of economic and social policy studies. His popular publications have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the Washington Post, and most other major publications in the United States.
He is the coauthor (with Benjamin Powell) of the book Wretched Refuse? The Political Economy of Immigration and Institutions (Cambridge University Press, 2020), which is the first book on how economic institutions in receiving countries adjust to immigration. He is also the coauthor (with Mark S. Krikorian) of the booklet Open Immigration: Yea and Nay (Encounter Broadsides, 2014) and has contributed numerous book chapters about immigration to various edited volumes.
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Christian Britschgi is an associate editor at Reasonwho has written extensively about housing policy. His work shines a light on the root causes of the housing crisis, and why the patchwork of solutions coming from California’s legislative houses has failed to significantly ameliorate the problem.
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Will Duffield of the Cato Institute has become the go-to expert on so-called “Jawboning” i.e., informally pressuring private companies to censor disfavored speech. The “Jawboning-industrial-complex,” as Adam Kovacevich of the Chamber of Progress calls it, is made up of both parties. Companies now have internal teams to handle “suggestions” from government officials.
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Mike Greenberg is an attorney at the Institute for Justice who joins the show to discuss a new case in which the FBI blatantly violated the terms of their warrant in seizing over $80 million in assets from a safe deposit company called US Private Vaults. A few customers may have been breaking the law in associated with their vaults, but a majority of the assets and precious family heirlooms have now been restored to their rightful owners – but only after a fight.
Greenberg was part of the IJ’s legal team that fought on behalf of Paul and Jennifer Snitko, whose belongings were wrongly seized and photographed by FBI agents in March of 2021 without probable cause.
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Ashley Varner of the Freedom Foundation discusses the perverse nature of public sector employee unions, which can lobby the government for direct pay raises – all at taxpayer expense. The Freedom Foundation is a “Do Tank” based in Washington State that is leading a national movement of workers who are opting out of their union dues.
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We all remember the bank bailouts of 2008, but almost nobody talks about the more recent COVID bailouts. $50 billion here; $25 billion there – pretty soon we're talking about real money. The airlines were one of several industries that enjoyed special treatment from the federal government on the grounds that they constituted an "essential business." What would happen if the airports shut down completely? Sounds scary.But the airline industry was never at risk of disappearing, notes Veronique de Rugy, a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. In a series of policy briefs co-authored with air travel guru Gary Leff, de Rugy shows the colossal waste of taxpayer dollars that took place while no one was paying attention. Rather than re-organizing under Chapter 11 bankruptcy laws, as businesses do all the time, inefficient airlines were able to keep paying dividends to their shareholders while less privileged businesses went under permanently.
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Professor Richard Epstein joins the show to review the economic case against the minimum wage.
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Todd Zywicki is a lawyer, legal scholar and educator. He is a George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law at George Mason University School of Law, teaching in the areas of bankruptcy and contracts.
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Paul Atkins, a former commissioner of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, recently participated in a Reason Foundation webinar on the impact of ESG investing on public pensions.
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Joe Cohn, director of FIRE’s Legislative and Policy department, joins the show to discuss a new proposed rule change from the same administrative office behind the infamous 2011 “Dear Colleague” letter. The new language would turn certain kinds of constitutionally-protected free speech into a punishable offense under the broad umbrella of “sexual harassment.” Under the new rule, the “trial” that results from alleged misconduct would be conducted by a single college administrator acting as judge, jury, and prosecutor.
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Dick Carpenter, II, senior director of strategic research at the Institute for Justice, recently published a report analyzing Yelp! reviews for six occupations across several states – some with licensing requirements and others without.
Unsurprisingly to anyone who understands the nature of licensing, the license made no difference to the service quality according to Yelp’s ratings.
In some cases, licensing actually seems to correlate with inferior service. The reality is that it represents a barrier to competition promoted by industry insiders to earn more profit.
Carpenter joins the show to explain how good intent by legislators backfires when lobbyists get their way.
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Harvey Silverglate – co-founder of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) – has been critical of the FBI for decades. His recent article for Compact Magazine argues that since reform seems like a non-starter, we might as well go the whole nine yards and abolish the agency once and for all.
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Justin Hart - Gone Viral: How COVID Drove the World Insane
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This week's guest is Cathy Reisenwitz on Decriminalizing Sex Work.
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Patri Friedman – the co-founder and Director of the Seasteading Institute, who more recently founded Pronomos Capital, a venture capital firm devoted to transforming the “governance industry” by promoting the idea of start-up countries.
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Jonathan Hofer, a research associate at the Independent Institute, notes that the most prolific tool of mass surveillance is in fact automated license plate readers (ALPRs).
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Thomas DiLorenzo joins the show to break down what’s in the new “Inflation Reduction Act,” which he says is a Trojan Horse for Green New Deal socialist policies.
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Elizabeth Nolan Brown is a senior editor at Reason and the main author of Reason's morning newsletter, the Reason Roundup – an essential part of my daily reading.
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Political consultant Dick Morris is this week's special guest.
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Ned Foley is this week's guest on the Bob Zadek Show.
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Bob's guest is Matt Beienburg, Director of Education Policy at the Goldwater Institute.
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