TheBobZadekShow: Recent Episodes
TheBobZadekShow
The only live libertarian radio show on air all weekend. Sundays on Talk 910 AM in the SF Bay Area and streamed online at http://www.iheart.com/live/talk-910-297/
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Today's guest, renowned civil liberties attorney and Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, raises the bar and exceeds the highest standards. Professor Dershowitz has published over a thousand articles and 50 books, including several national bestsellers. His autobiography Taking the Stand was a New York Times bestseller. Other notable books include The Trials of Zion, Rights From Wrongs, The Case for Israel, and Chutzpah.His forthcoming book Dershowitz on Killing examines the complex issue of determining rules regarding life and death decisions. Following the principles that have guided his long, distinguished career, he argues these rules should reflect the irreversibility of death.In this episode, Dershowitz explains how he became unfairly "canceled" for adhering to his principles, and what upholding these principles has cost him.His most recent book, The Price of Principle: Why Integrity Is Worth the Consequences (July 2022), takes a broad stance against the dangerous trend of cancellations—both of specific people as well as the very idea of neutral justice. It’s not only right-wingers provocateurs being cancelled on college campuses anymore. Liberal ideas, including some of the most cherished principles of American government, are now being cast aside.Take the presumption of innocence. It’s the bedrock of our adversarial legal system. We all pay lip service to the idea that everyone is entitled to a vigorous defense. Yet the principle seems to go out the window whenever the person being defended is unpopular, as when Dershowitz pointed out the shaky legal grounds for impeaching former President Trump.In recent years, Dershowitz himself has suffered the ‘price of principle’ as the latest victim of cancel culture. Former friends like Larry David refuse to talk to him; he’s been shunned from events at which he used to be top-billed speaker. And his principled defenses of unpopular figures like Trump have been used against him in the court of public opinion.Unlike most celebrities whom the “cancelists” go after, Alan was exonerated. Still, Dershowitz has found few defenders. He has had to defend himself.Furthermore, he writes that principles have taken a backseat to partisan identity politics. Partisan Democrats forget that his defense of Trump was based on the same principles he had used to defend Clinton against partisan attacks. He argues that too many people abandon their principles in favor of whatever stance benefits their political party or social group, and believes we are heading towards a "dystopia of partisanship and discrimination" if this trend continues.
Californians enjoy abundant choice when it comes to cuisine, entertainment and leisure activities. Yet in the political arena, we are stuck with just one choice.The Democrats have effectively had One Party Rule here for the last two decades. 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 public sector 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.
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.He examines the media's willingness to accept official accounts and policy justifications without skepticism, particularly in regards to the Vietnam War, Persian Gulf War, the Balkans, Iraq War, Libya and Syria civil wars, and post–Cold War relations with Russia and China.He questions why journalists and social media platforms collaborate with government officials in pushing an activist foreign policy, even when results are questionable or disastrous.Are we repeating the same mistakes with Ukraine as the media cheerleads the escalation of another unwinnable war?
George Will calls it the year's "most-needed book on public affairs"—Philip K. Howard's Not Accountable tackles public sector unions head-on, arguing that they're not only dangerous, but unconstitutional.Not Accountable is a non-partisan vision for fixing the biggest flaw in government. Consider a few data points:Public sector membership in the United States is around 7 million. 4.6 million teachers. 1.3 million service employees.California, with 300,000 teachers, is only able to terminate two or three per year for poor performance.40,000 Californian retirees receive over $100,000 in pension salary.In the end, who pays? Our children do—both in lost learning outcomes, future taxes, and less money in state and federal budgets for other services.Howard, the founder of the Common Good organization, joins me Sunday to make the case for a legal solution – not a democratic one – for fixing the broken system.Progressives, libertarians, and conservatives alike should be up in arms about the lack of accountability for police officers, teachers, and all those who are supposed to serve the public good. What can we do about it? Find out this Sunday on the show of ideas.
Images of illegal crossings are disturbingly chaotic and make it clear that there is indeed an immigration crisis. People perceive that chaos means we need government to exercise even more control, even when government is to blame for the chaos (as in the case of immigration). And so we get the vicious cycle that ends with our broken immigration system.Alex Nowrasteh, the director of economic and social policy studies at the Cato Institute, returns to the show Sunday to lay out pragmatic solutions for alleviating the chaos at the border.It starts with simplifying the system, and allowing more opportunities for immigrants to live and work here legally.Alex 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.Our own immigration series “Let Them All In” has answered 5 of the main populist objections to open immigration. The series will conclude with an essay on policy solutions - the topic for our show this week.
Vin Scully was a baseball and American icon. Today, I use his passing to discuss a deeper issue related to baseball culture and how a classical type of baseball "could be" used as a healing agent in American culture. Sit back, get a ballpark dog and drink, and enjoy the show. *Photo Credit: Wikipedia Commons
People, and families in particular, are fleeing California in droves. Last year, the population shrank for the second year in a row, in large part because of the lack of new housing and exorbitant prices of the dwindling existing stock. Politicians love to talk about “affordable housing,” but the plans to allow more development go out the window as soon as their talking points are pitted against the agendas of powerful lobbying groups. The infamous NIMBY’s of California have found allies in unions, who have together weaponized an environmental “super-statute” that effectively blocks any new construction if it can be shown to increase carbon emissions.Christian Britschgi is an associate editor at Reason Magazine who 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.Christian will join the show of ideas to explain how the California Environmental Quality Act makes the approval of new housing nearly impossible.What will it take to break through the thicket of regulations when the most powerful lobbies have an interest in keeping them in place?
Everyone knows that special interests lobby government for favors. The Twitter Files have revealed that lobbying is a two-way street, with government lobbying corporations too – often to silence critics of its policies.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 includes members of both parties. Major social media companies now have internal teams to handle “suggestions” from government officials. Ban this person. Silence that opinion.It’s not exactly what Orwell pictured, but it’s still concerning.I previously interviewed Jenin Younes of the National Civil Liberties Alliance on a related topic. NCLA has defended those who censored for contradicting official CDC stances on COVID, like Martin Kulldorff and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya. Getting banned from a private social media platform isn’t the same as getting thrown in jail for speech. But what if the social media company is acting under implicit pressure from Congress? It’s a classic “Your Money or Your Life!” decision.Does this kind of censorship violate the Constitution, even if no laws are passed? Duffield joins me Sunday to discuss the nuances of free speech law in the social media era, and to lay out a libertarian vision of digital expression.Don’t miss it.
Just when you think you’ve seen it all, the FBI goes and does something so egregious that it shocks even long-time Institute for Justice attorneys.If you’ve been following the issue of civil asset forfeiture, you may remember the case of Timbs v. Indiana*, in which the Supreme Court unanimously overturned a decision by Indiana’s state Supreme Court, finding that the state’s seizure of a $42,000 Land Rover violated the 8th amendment’s “excessive fines and fees” clause.Law enforcement departments across the country have been colluding with federal law enforcement to effectively “police for profit,” with civil asset forfeiture being their primary tool. Under this practice, a person need not be found guilty for their property to be taken. Tyson Timbs, the defendant in that case, had the help of the IJ to fight through the long legal battle that he ultimately won. Many innocent victims of forfeiture laws simply throw up their hands and accept defeat.Mike Greenberg is an attorney at the Institute for Justice who will join me Sunday (1/22) to discuss a new case in which the FBI blatantly violated the terms of their warrant in seizing over $80 million in assets from the private vaults kept by a safe deposit company. 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. Doesn’t the Constitution say something about that?“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. “– The Fourth Amendment to the ConstitutionSeems pretty clear cut to me. Greenberg and I will discuss the facts of the case before delivering a verdict.What will the consequences be for the FBI this time?
The word sustainability is rather slippery. We’re told that our current energy consumption is “unsustainable,” and are thus cajoled into spending billions on Green New Deal type legislation by politicians and celebrities who criss-cross the country on jumbo jets. Even allegedly “clean” energy alternatives to goal and gas require material resources that often dwarf the emissions they’re supposed to offset. It’s not enough to just stop burning oil—sustainability proponents have to propose something to replace it. Point this inconvenient truth out, and you’ll likely hear the retort that a least the projects create jobs in the Green Economy.Mike Munger, prolific blogger and Professor of Political Science, Economics, and Public Policy at Duke University, has another name for the typical thinking behind sustainability: sophistry.His latest article for AIER quotes Frederic Bastiat’s “Economic Sophisms” at length to make the critical point that costs are not benefits. Destroying wealth in order to create jobs is a losing proposition.Munger, a modern-day Bastiat, skewers today’s environmentalist sophists just by showing the logical conclusion of their preferred policies: “Burn all the gas-powered cars? Jobs! Tear down all the oil and gas-powered power plants, so we have shortages of electricity? So many jobs!” Munger returns to the show this Sunday to explore the seen vs. the unseen in green energy and sustainability.We’ll focus on one of my personal bugaboos—recycling—and Mike will explain why it’s typically worse for the environment than just throwing stuff away.Finally, we’ll revisit Mike’s clear-eyed defense of capitalism, Is Capitalism Sustainable?The question of sustainability boils down to this: how can we best fulfill the needs of the current generations without compromising the needs of future generations? We can talk all day about alternative energy, but Munger notes that there is no to alternative capitalism. Only the market can solve our sustainability woes.
Ashley Varner of the Freedom Foundation on the financial boon to the Democrats; Looking around today, do we see evidence that the government fears the people? Why should they?Remember when Lois Lerner targeted Tea Party freedom activists as head of the IRS? She retired with a full pension and never bore any consequences for weaponizing the agency she led against ideological opponents.More recently, the Biden administration was fearless enough to pass the so-called “Inflation Reduction Act,” which included a provision for hiring 87,000 new IRS agents. To quote Jefferson again, in his complaints against the Crown, “He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.”They say the new agents will “mostly provide customer service,” and that we need to spend $80 billion in order to raise $200 billion in new revenue. Does anyone believe those claims?But there is another sinister feature of the move to bolster the most reviled of all bureaucracies. The IRS represents the single largest federal public sector union lobby, and 100% of its political contributions go to one party (guess which). Ashley Varner of the Freedom Foundation joins me this Sunday to discuss the perverse nature of public sector employee unions, which can lobby the government for direct pay raises – all at taxpayer expense. Varner will explain how the vicious cycle of political privilege is perpetuated by public sector unions and their boosters in government.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.We’ll also discuss the unresolved IRS scandal of 2013, and the broader problem of public sector union influence – including the teachers union and their figurehead, Randi Weingarten. Finally, I’ll talk about what the founders would have said about our current tax system, especially the Income Tax.
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.Now, politicians like Bernie Sanders are criticizing Southwest airlines for the debacle of its holiday cancellations (and he has a point)But what else should we expect from an industry that makes money whether it performs well or not?
Two-term SEC Commissioner Paul Atkins is the chief executive of Patomak Global Partners – a New York and DC-based financial services consultancy. Paul served as a member of the congressional oversight panel for TARP (remember that?), was a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers, and an attorney with Davis Polk.Today's topic we can subtitle as “Financial markets meet Environmental Social Governance (ESG),” which sounds rather benign, but it's far from it. Imagine you're seeking the best physician to cure a serious medical condition. What's the likelihood you'll ask the prospective physician her opinion on immigration, cash bail, or criminal justice reform?As Paul will explain, financial regulation is forcing the politics of ESG into our financial markets, resulting in lower yields for all of us and the misallocation of capital.
“Innocent until proven guilty” has been the rule of the American justice system since its inception. It still is today. Unless, that is, you happen to be accused of wrongdoing on a college campus. In that case, you might as well be dragged before the modern-day equivalent of the Star Chamber, where campus administrators hardly even pay lip service to your due process rights.As we explored last week with Carissa Hessick, it is a far graver injustice to deprive an innocent person of the liberty than to let a guilty person go free. That is why the founders gave the accused so many protections in the Constitution and Bill of Rights.The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) was created to uphold these protections against rules passed under the Title IX legislation that require colleges to effectively prosecute students outside of the criminal justice system. In these campus tribunals, those accused of serious misconduct like sexual assault have been denied basic protections like the right to a live hearing, to cross examine witnesses, and even to hear the full charges being levied against them.Joe Cohn, director of FIRE’s Legislative and Policy department, joins me this Sunday to discuss a 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.Anyone connected with an American university that receives federal funding (aka, virtually all colleges) should tune in to this important broadcast. The first step to protecting your rights is to know what they are. Be sure to share this with any college students who may not know their rights, and check out FIRE’s free Guide to Due Process and Campus Justice.
“How do you plea?”
It’s the first question the judge asks you in a criminal trial. But before the accused even has a chance to answer “guilty” or “not guilty,” there is another, prior legal proceeding that rarely gets talked about – even though it pre-empts the need for a trial in 97% of convictions. Jury trials were one of the founders’ critical safeguards against the tyranny of overzealous government prosecutors. Thomas Jefferson viewed the institution as the most vital form of democracy – above the ability to vote for legislators. And yet the American legal system has largely abandoned this bedrock principle in favor of the “efficiency” of the plea bargain.
Carissa Hessick is the director of the Prosecutors and Politics Project, Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina School of Law, and author of an important new book, Punishment Without Trial: Why Plea Bargaining Is a Bad Deal.
Professor Hessick joins me to explain how this practice persists as the norm, while jury trials have been turned into a rare exception. What would the Founders say about this state of affairs? And why hasn’t the Supreme Court done something about it?
What do landscape architects, manicurists, kickboxing trainers, and yoga instructors from California all have in common? Besides making our state healthier and better looking, all of these professions require an occupational license.
What's wrong with that, you might wonder? Licensing might sound like an important form of consumer protection. But does licensing actually increase the safety and quality of services offered? To answer that, we need data.
Dick M. 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 me this Sunday to explain how good intent by legislators backfires when lobbyists get their way.
We will discuss the constitutionality of various licensing requirements through Randy Barnett's "presumption of liberty" framework, and review the voluntary alternatives to licensing that actually improve service quality. Barnett argues that people should be presumed to have economic rights – i.e., the ability to work without government permission – unless there is a very compelling reason for the restriction.
However, the Supreme Court has often decided in favor of a “presumption of constitutionality” – giving states the authority to interfere with our personal and economic liberties for virtually no reason at all. Hence licensing laws. Thankfully, the IJ is fighting for our rights every day in court and in the arena of public opinion.
Read the IJ’s report and tune in Sunday from 8-9am PACIFIC to the show of ideas – not attitude.
When things aren’t going well, people always look for a scapegoat. When it comes to the opioid epidemic, the CDC’s preferred scapegoat has been pharmaceutical companies. Meanwhile, the DEA blames doctors for over-prescribing pain medication, and has tightened regulations on the quantity that can be prescribed. As we’ve learned from Dr. Jeffrey Singer over the years, the crackdown on prescription opioids has missed the mark and made the problem worse: addicted patients have turned to the black market to satisfy their demand, and gotten hooked on far more dangerous drugs like illicit heroin and synthetic Fentanyl. Singer calls the misguided war on opioids a “war on pain patients” with no end in sight.
More recently, Republican politicians have tried to score points against the Biden administration by scapegoating illegal immigrants for the problem of Fentanyl smuggling. Smuggling has indeed increased. However, a Washington Post op-ed by Cato scholars Singer and David Bier (associate director of immigration studies) reveals the folly of the Republicans’ accusations. Illegal immigrants are not the ones bringing Fentanyl across the border, they note. It’s mostly US citizens doing the smuggling. Ever since border enforcement has tightened, it has become more common for smugglers to conceal small amounts of the much more potent Fentanyl in otherwise legal border crossings.
David and Jeff join the show of ideas to discuss the inevitable unintended consequences of both the war on drugs and the war on immigrants. We will investigate the issue from the angle of the failure of drug prohibition, as well as the failure of strict immigration policy. Both of these problems share a common root cause – they seek to interfere with free markets. The laws of supply and demand don’t stop functioning just because an artificial legal boundary is erected – whether you’re talking about drugs or people.
The solution is simpler than you think – but first, we must assign the blame correctly. Will politicians examine their own role in creating the crisis, or will they continue to scapegoat innocent people?
If I'm asking the question about confidence and its loss, I can't help but reflect on what I tend to do that changes that, that brings it back into focus internally, just for me.
Books about American history are often dry. Even more when the topic is political history. Most of us remember the boredom of civics lessons on log-rolling, pork barrel spending, and Gerrymandering – shortcomings in our democratic system rooted in the selfish interests of our elected officials. Nick Seabrook, however, has managed to turn the topic of Gerrymandering into a work of popular non-fiction that makes the “surprising history” come to life. The New Yorker even named it as one of the best books of 2022 so far.
Seabrook is a professor of political science and public administration at the University of North Florida. He joins me this Sunday to explain why the biggest threat to our democracy comes from the way we draw lines on the map.
The “Gerrymander” – named for the under-appreciated founding father, Elbridge Gerry – is a frightening creature, Seabrook says, because it reverses the traditional mode of democratic decision-making. Instead of the voters selecting their elected officials, the elected officials select the voters. The end result is a rigged system that favors incumbents and party insiders at the expense of We, the People.
Nick will take us through the highlights of Gerrymandering history – from the most egregious examples to the pivotal moments when a Gerrymander forever changed the country’s trajectory. He will also explain how the courts view their role in policing unfair redistricting practices, and which states are the worst offenders.
Before casting your ballot for the midterms, be sure to catch this episode of the show of ideas.
Like most Americans, Justin Hart was minding his own business – a successful data visualization business – when the pandemic snuck up on us in early 2020. Seeing that something was amiss in the reported figures, he felt compelled to start the Rational Ground organization as an “answer to the flood of chaotic COVID-19 misinformation.”
Nearly three years after lockdowns first went into effect, the early days of COVID hysteria are starting to recede into the collective memory for many of us. Some of us have stopped highlighting the government’s insanity and deprivations of our essential liberties (I haven’t done a show on COVID in almost a year). Justin, however, has continued the fight – leveraging his skills as a data guy to continue to expose the bureaucrats and COVID “Karens” for their hysterical overreactions.
Justin’s new book, Gone Viral: How Covid Drove the World Insane, has persuaded me to do whatever I can to help his message “go viral,” so that a majority of Americans will look back on this period with the appropriate level of cynicism about our health authorities. We must never let them persuade us to abandon our freedoms so readily for the sake of a false measure of security. As Benjamin Franklin said, “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
My guest this Sunday is Cathy Reisenwitz, author of the Sex and the State Substack, and one of the clearest thinkers on the topic of decriminalizing sex work.
Too often, Cathy notes, all sex work is conflated with the loathsome and illegal practice of sex trafficking. However, the response by well-intentioned religious groups and certain feminists has been to criminalize the choices of women who enter the profession voluntarily—making their work more dangerous in the process. Thus, these activist groups end up harming many of the very women they are trying to help.
We witnessed the “Satanic Panic” of the 1980s, which ruined the lives of those falsely accused of abusing children. Today, we see a similar moral panic around pornography and prostitution that must be exposed to the light of day. Cathy has the data on what happens when you legalize sex work, and how places like Germany and New Zealand have combatted genuine sex trafficking by cooperating with rather than prosecuting sex workers.
At the center of the competitive governance movement is 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 startup countries.
Patri was one of my first guests when I started broadcasting in 2009. Much has changed since he first launched the Seasteading Institute, and I invited Patri to share what he’s been up to and how the landscape (seascape?) has changed in the last 13 years.
Seasteading and related land-based projects represent the next frontier for radical libertarianism, following in the footsteps of Patri’s father – the anarcho-capitalist thinker David Friedman – and his grandfather, the late Milton Friedman. Milton Friedman showed how free trade areas like Hong Kong could supercharge growth and lead millions out of poverty. Patri’s ambition is to revive the fading legacy of Hong Kong, enabling the establishment of a thousand new nations – floating or otherwise – to pull humanity into the more optimistic scenario for the future. However, as we will discuss, these new governing entities need not adopt libertarian principles to still advance the broader libertarian agenda of enhancing freedom and competition at the level of choosing one’s jurisdiction. What freedom could be more important?
When you hear the words “mass surveillance,” you probably think of Edward Snowden’s revelations that the NSA tracks everything we do online. However, such surveillace may not be our greatest concern. 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).
His report on the worrisome new technology caught my attention, and I wanted to learn more. What I didn’t know when I invited him on my show is that Hofer himself was the victim of an error in the vast, byzantine database that law enforcement uses to link license plate numbers with suspected criminals.
Tune in this Sunday to find out how Hofer ended up with his rental car being surrounded by half a dozen patrol cars, before being tackled to the ground by an armed police officer in a dark parking lot on a cold November night (Spoiler alert: he wasn’t guilty).
While the presence of cameras on the roads may not seem like a threat to our liberties, Hofer’s personal story, and the countless other similar anecdotes he relays, should give us pause about adopting such mass surveillance technology given the propensity for serious “user error.”
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.
She is also co-founder of the libertarian feminist group Feminists for Liberty, and a professional affiliate of the journalism program at the University of Cincinnati. Last time she joined my show, Elizabeth and I discussed her work on the War on Sex Work: This week we take up the news of Biden’s unilateral action cancelling billions of dollars of student loan debt. Elizabeth calls it a fiasco, and she’s hardly alone in this sentiment. Even President Obama’s former economic adviser Jason Furman has called the plan “reckless.” If we have time, we will also take up the question of whether Walgreens should be prosecuted as an illicit drug dealer for fulfilling opioid prescriptions (hint: no).
Much of the discussion around the 2020 election has hinged around the question of who won – i.e., who got the most votes – while skirting more important questions about the procedure. Was it fair?
None of the members of Team Conservative were available to comment on their report in the NCC’s Restoring the Guardrails of Democracy project, but I may have found an even better spokesperson for the frustration of the 74 million Americans who voted for Donald Trump, regarding the outcome.
My guest, legendary political consultant Dick Morris, will be the first to admit that Biden won both the popular vote, as well as the electoral college count.
“[T]he fact is, we ultimately lost because the Democrats got more legal, eligible voters to cast ballots than we did,” writes Morris in his latest book, The Return: Trump’s Big 2024 Comeback. However, the former advisor to the Clintons diagnoses a deeper flaw in the electoral system – one that can’t be fixed by Congress or any branch of the federal government. Instead, Morris urges voters to elect Republican or neutral secretaries of state in key swing states to overturn the abuses of mail-in voting, same-day registration, and unaccountable tabulation methods – often used behind closed doors, long after the polls have closed. Morris continues:
“The election of 2020 was, in a real sense, won by the Democrats in 2018, when swing states elected their governors, attorneys general, and secretaries of state. The Democrats knew that, in order to maximize the turnout of their voters in 2020, they had to build a network of complicit, election officials to cooperate—within the law, and outside it—to swell the Biden vote and diminish Trump’s.”
The book goes on to detail Morris’s close personal relationship with Trump, and a strategy for leveling the playing field before the 2024 elections.
After revealing how state governors and secretaries of state paved the way for Biden’s win, Morris turns to Nancy Pelosi’s attempt to institutionalize these sketchy practices at the federal level through HR 1 - aka the “For the People Act of 2021.” Nevermind that the founders explicitly gave state legislatures power to regulate elections, Pelosi and the Democrats want to “vest the power" to draw district lines and adopt other regulations about elections in the federal Department of Justice and the US attorney general, appointed by the president.
Morris joined me to lay out the prospects for real reform in Arizona, Georgia, Ohio, and other states with Republican legislatures. What about Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, where Democrats control the governorship? Who wins in 2024 could depend on whether the Republicans sweep the midterms in these states.
Finally, Morris explained why the Republican nominee “Has to Be Trump,” along with the message that he believes will propel his campaign to victory.
I was also joined in the second half of the show by my new friend John Georgopolous of Sports Grumblings, who recently interviewed me on the Big Questions with Big John podcast.
This week I continue my series on the National Constitution Center’s Restoring the Guardrails of Democracy project. While most commentators are glued to the political horse race – obsessing over the 2024 midterms or the latest twist in the Trump saga – my show remains a place to discuss ideas and principles rather then ideology and personalities.
Part 1 featured Ilya Somin representing Team Libertarian, who proposed foot voting (among other things) as a simple way to make American government more accountable to the people.
Part 2 will feature Professor Edward B. Foley – Ebersold Chair in Constitutional Law at Ohio State University – presenting the progressive team’s ideas for safeguarding our democracy. Their report is worth reading in its entirety, regardless of your political persuasion. Foley and his co-author, USC law professor Franita Tolson, make a compelling case for reforming the way we elect our representatives to ensure that they actually represent the will of the majority. What a concept!
While Foley is on the record saying he’d like to replace the Electoral College with a national popular vote, the report takes a more modest aim of electoral reform – looking only to what Congress could accomplish through mere legislation, short of a constitutional amendment.
Foley is particularly concerned with electoral procedures that allow more extreme minority factions to hold power. We’ve recently seen primaries in which the Democratic Party funds a far-right candidate who they believe will be easier to defeat in the general election. Foley criticizes this cynical ploy in part because it undermines the selection of “Condorcet Winners.” If you’re unfamiliar with the Condorcet method, pioneered by the Marquis de Condorcet, be sure to tune in live this Sunday.
The basic idea, summarized in Team Progressive’s report, is that the winner of an election should be the candidate “preferred by a majority of voters when compared individually against each of the other alternatives.”
One way to achieve this is through ranked-choice voting, which we recently saw in an Alaskan primary in which Sarah Palin advanced to the general. Dr. Robert Malone offers a valuable explainer on how ranked choice voting works on his Substack.
Join Ned and me this Sunday at 8am PACIFIC, or subscribe to the podcast, to expand your civic numeracy.
Commentators across the political spectrum are scrambling for the hottest take on the raid of President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, with Jonah Goldberg and Kurt Schlicter taking opposing views. But only the libertarians like Neily are consistent in condemning abuses of government power across the board.
If only there was a way to step back from heated partisan debates and the 24-hour news cycle to assess what is fundamentally wrong with our democracy and propose a remedy. Indeed, my wish has been answered in the form of another brilliant thought experiment from the National Constitution Center, which assembled a libertarian version of the Dream Team to lay out a plan for Restoring the Guardrails of Democracy. They also solicited reports from Progressive and Conservative teams, but this Sunday my show will focus on the Team Libertarian’s report.
Team Libertarian includes both Clark Neily and Walter Olson of the Cato Institute, as well as frequent guest and friend of the show, Ilya Somin, who returns this Sunday to summarize the team’s findings. The report puts a strong emphasis on criminal justice reform – something that the former President is likely to appreciate more now that he has been a victim of overzealous prosecution and the weaponization of the law. Their solution involves greater citizen participation, mainly through the restoration of jury trials as the norm in criminal cases, as opposed to plea bargains.
Team Libertarian also takes Ilya Somin’s ideas in Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom as a meaningful way to strengthen small-d democracy. Ballot voting, of course, is only one component of a healthy democratic system. When “voice” fails, citizens need many “exit” options to guarantee their liberties.
Last week I reported on a huge victory for state-based liberty in Arizona, where Governor Doug Ducey recently signed into law a bill that makes school choice available to all K-12 students in the Grand Canyon State.
HB 2853 made universal an earlier “Empowerment Scholarship Account” program that grants parents a choice over where Arizona’s tax dollars are spent for their kids’ schooling.
Matt Beienburg, Director of Education Policy at the Goldwater Institute, touts the reform as the gold standard model for the rest of the country, and other states are sure to follow suit once politicians realize how overwhelmingly popular school choice has become with parents.
The popularity of school choice has been steadily rising but reached a tipping point in Arizona during COVID-19, when parents could see firsthand the extent of indoctrination taking place in virtual public school classrooms. In the end, it would seem that teacher’s unions’ insistence on extended remote learning has backfired dramatically, as the parent-led revolution in taking back control over education continues.
Beienburg joins the show this Sunday to discuss the Goldwater Institute’s role in crafting the original ESA legislation that empowered particularly disadvantaged students to opt out of failing public schools. He will also answer some of the many objections to school choice trotted out by the left to insulate the government from competition in the arena of education.
My listeners know that I am an optimist, despite all of the doom-and-gloom type stories we read daily.
This week, there has been more bad news – as usual. Two pieces from the American Institute for Economic Research especially caught my eye: one about the Fed’s recent interest rate hikes, and another about attempts to combat climate change through “de-growth” (read: coercion and green energy handouts). Meanwhile, the National Bureau of Economic Research seems to be defining down the definition of a recession to exclude the past two months of consecutive negative growth.
However, there is always good news to find if you just know where to look.
Reason #1: There is Still Freedom in the 50 States The biggest reason I find to be optimistic this week comes from a Cato Institute project led by AIER President and Cato research fellow William Ruger as well as Jason Sorens. Ruger and Sorens are the authors of the “Freedom in the 50 States” report, which gives an annual assessment of which states are increasing and decreasing in the rankings of a broad index of liberties.
They both will join my show for the first time to discuss how the index weighs different broad categories of freedom – from regulatory, to financial to personal – as well as specific freedoms that vary in importance for different people. Of course, there are many people who would be happy to live in a state that restricts other people’s liberty, while their own cherished freedoms are left untouched. But which states guarantee liberty for all? Find out this Sunday on the show of ideas what separates the #freestates from the unfree.
This Sunday, I’m happy to welcome F.H. Buckley back to the show to discuss his newest book, Progressive Conservatism: How Republicans Will Become America's Natural Governing Party.
Progressive conservatism sounds like an oxymoron – a bit like an exact estimate, jumbo shrimp, or a dull roar. Buckley, however, argues that progressive conservatism is not only a meaningful political label, but that it has a rich history – both in America and around the world. A former speech writer for President Trump, Buckley believes that Trump voters will still determine the future of the Republican Party, even though Trump has disgraced himself.
You’ve heard of legally blind, and even legally blonde, but what about legally white?
GMU Law Professor and Volokh Conspiracy blogger David Bernstein explores “the borderlands of legal whiteness” in his new book, Classified: The Untold Story of Racial Classification in America.
Fellow conspiracist and Prof. Randy Barnett has already included it in the syllabus for his upcoming Georgetown Law seminar, Recent Books on the Constitution.
Bernstein joins to discuss the many contradictions involved in the government’s attempt to put clear labels on complex categories.
Should Hispanics of Spanish descent be considered minorities, or European whites? Why are Asians discriminated against in college admissions – especially given the incredible range of geographies, cultures, and socio-economic statuses contained within that broad designation?
What will the Supreme Court decide in the pending suit against Harvard and the University of North Carolina brought by the “Students for Fair Admissions” group?
Tune in every Sunday morning on AM radio, or streaming online Having had a sneak preview of the book, I can tell you that it is a must-read for Constitutional Law buffs, and anyone interested in American legal history.
Joe Biden’s gaffes are usually unplanned slips of the tongue – not pre-meditated social media posts that presumably received approval from staffers prior to publication.
However, his recent Tweet demanding that gas stations lower their prices to alleviate the “pain at the pump” is far more embarrassing than his accidental public speaking fumbles. Even Jeff Bezos had to correct the President for his ignorance of basic economics, which combined blatant scapegoating with a denial of the universal laws of supply and demand. However, in a nation where the vast majority of citizens have likely never taken an undergraduate economics course, can Biden be blamed for engaging in such classic political opportunism?
Perhaps we can channel former President Barack Obama in considering this a “teachable moment.” Or as Rahm Emmanuel once said, we should never let a good crisis go to waste.
I’m delighted to welcome Professor Emeritus **Steven E. Rhoads to the show to discuss the new and substantially revised 35th anniversary edition of his best-selling book, The Economist’s View of the World: And the Quest for Well-Being.
Rhoads wrote the book as an assistant professor at the University of Virginia (home of the Public Choice economics), and was surprised when the original edition skyrocketed to the tops of best-seller lists and made economic principles accessible to millions who would have otherwise believed the fallacies embedded in Biden’s tweet.
David Henderson – editor of the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics – calls it “A Wide-Ranging Book for Non-Economists and Economists" alike, and the WSJ named it one of the best books of 2021.
Steven E. Rhoads and I attempted to distill an entire semester’s worth of economic thinking into a full hour. Don’t miss it.
I originally invited Clark Neily to join me to discuss his essay on what libertarians should think about the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Of course, it’s nearly impossible to make everyone happy with a discussion of such a controversial issue. And yet Clark and his co-essayist Jay Schweikert do an excellent job threading the needle on what they call “the hard problem of abortion.” They write:
Libertarianism tolerates a wide range of views on the policy question of abortion access
But the policy question is only the beginning. The Constitutional question is what was taken up recently by the Supreme Court, and while the outcome may be disappointing to those who support abortion as a policy matter, Clark and Schweikert note that “there are still many valid grounds to criticize how the Court has constitutionalized abortion rights in particular.”
What makes abortion different from other “unenumerated rights” discovered by the court in the modern era, like contraception, parental rights over their child’s education, or the right to privacy in the bedroom? The Dobbs decision reconsiders Roes classification of abortion among these rights, and holds that question of individual liberty is not so straightforward where unborn life is concerned.
To be sure, we got to these delicate questions, but we also talked about an area where the Court has refused to reconsider a prior decision that appears to be in error. The doctrine of qualified immunity, which the Cato Institute characterizes as an “Unlawful Shield,” protects prosecutors, police officers and other government officials from civil liability.
While pundits endlessly argue about the legal reasoning Roe, Clark and I will be talking about the 1982 case of Harlow v. Fitzgerald, in which the Supreme Court made it harder to prosecute violations of individual rights perpetrated by members of the protected class known as government employees.
Although I covered the topic in 2020, and Clark has been continuing the fight to “#AbolishQI,” it still doesn't get nearly enough attention.
“The bonds will be paid by Disney. They will be paying taxes, probably more taxes. They will follow the laws that every other person has to do, and they will no longer have the ability to run their own government.” – Governor Ron DeSantis, at a Fox News town hall (April 28)
The story of how the Disney Corporation came to have the unique ability to run their own government on a swampy tract of land in Central Florida is documented in Richard Foglesong’s remarkable book, Married to the Mouse: Walt Disney World and Orlando. Foglesong, a retired Professor of Politics at Rollins College, has become a sought-after commentator in the wake of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s move to revoke the special privileges granted to Disney over 50 years ago. The proximate cause? Disney’s vocal opposition to Florida’s new “Parental Rights in Education” law (HB 1557) – sometimes called the “Don’t Say Gay” bill.
Some argue that DeSantis is just leveling the playing field, and finally treating all corporations the same, but given his status as a rising star in the Republican Party – known for being pro-growth – one might ask why DeSantis isn’t instead moving to give more legal autonomy to neighboring theme park resorts like Universal Studios, rather than put an end to one of the most successful experiments in private governance ever to be attempted?
Hong Kong is often cited as the greatest growth miracle of the 20th century – demonstrating the power of legal autonomy and the free enterprise system to supercharge a city’s economic engine. Free market Hong Kong outperformed communist China so spectacularly that the Communist Party had to effectively admit defeat and copy the free-market model in establishing its Special Economic Zones throughout the country.
And yet Walt Disney World in Orland Florida may be an even better poster child for charter cities – a truly Magical Kingdom, that continues to produce growth and prosperity for the surrounding region. The population of Orange County, Florida, doubled in less than thirty years at the behest of Disney executives and the business-friendly government based in Orlando. The secret sauce behind this sensational growth was the agreement to structure the theme park development as a “special district” that effectively granted the Disney Corporation complete autonomy to build the infrastructure according to its own vision and needs. Unlike Disneyland in Anaheim, California, Disney World was birthed as an autonomous city within the state of Florida – free to build out Walt Disney’s vision for the cities of the future.
Why would DeSantis be inclined to break up a marriage that by all appearances has been a wildly successful one? To understand this, we must consult Foglesong and his book, which analyzes the 55-year experiment through the lens of the marriage analogy, complete with successive stages of “serendipity", “seduction,” “secrecy,” “marriage,” “growth,” “conflict,” “abuse,” “negotiation,” and finally, therapy.
Today, Disney World’s special district status is at risk, since Governor Ron DeSantis and the state legislature have moved to terminate the district in June of 2023. Foglesong, who knows the history of the marriage between Disney and Florida government better than anyone, is a trusted commentator on the looming “divorce.” He joined the show of ideas to discuss the implications of the dissolution of the Reedy Creek Special District, and what we can learn about urban growth and the politics of charter cities from the rich story he tells in his book.
We also discussed the tension between the ideals of free enterprise touted by Walt Disney, and the centralized administration of the theme park and surrounding community. Finally, we discussed the question of democracy in the context of an autonomous city, where a single corporation wishes to make political decisions efficiently and unilaterally.
Richard Foglesong reports in his remarkable book Married to the Mouse: Walt Disney World and Orlando that the population of Orange County, Florida, doubled in less than thirty years at the behest of Disney executives and the business-friendly government based in Orlando.
The secret sauce behind this sensational growth was the agreement to structure the theme park development as a “special district” that effectively granted the Disney Corporation complete autonomy to build the infrastructure according to its own vision and needs. Unlike Disney Land in Anaheim, California, Disney World was birthed as an autonomous city within the state of Florida – free to build out Walt Disney’s vision for the cities of the future.
Today, Disney World’s special district status is at risk, since Governor Ron DeSantis and the state legislature have moved to terminate the district in June of 2023. Foglesong, who knows the history of the marriage between Disney and Florida government better than anyone, is a trusted commentator on the looming “divorce.” He joined the show of ideas to discuss the implications of the dissolution of the Reedy Creek Special District, and what we can learn about urban growth and the politics of charter cities from the rich story he tells in his book.
We also discussed the tension between the ideals of free enterprise touted by Walt Disney, and the centralized administration of the theme park and surrounding community. Finally, we discussed the question of democracy
Back in February, frustrated San Francisco parents voted to recall three school board members for spending more time renaming schools than planning their post-pandemic re-opening. Among the school names being “canceled” were Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, John Muir, and even Dianne Feinstein – found guilty of exploitation and oppression. The pervasiveness of so-called critical race theory in school curriculums is not brand new, although it appears that remote learning during COVID caused many parents to start paying attention and to express their disapproval at the ballot box.
The recall was a strong sign, like the ousting of Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, that most Americans still believe that schools should be in the education business, not the indoctrination industry. The term critical race theory has been thrown around a lot in the conversations surrounding the appropriate way to teach American history. Oddly, the proponents and defenders of critical race theory seem afraid to admit that it is already being taught in many places (as if they had a guilty conscience), while its detractors often seem confused about what they are opposing.
Thus, Heritage Foundation fellow Jonathan Butcher has done the American public a great service with his new book, Splintered: Critical Race Theory and the Progressive War on Truth. The book charts the evolution of the idea in understandable terms, from its Marxian roots in academia, through the law schools, and now trickling down into grade schools across the country. Forget the universities – they’re too far gone. But can we still save elementary school kids from being lectured about privilege, while minority students are taught that they can’t advance because of system racism in the United States?
Butcher’s book is a powerful antidote to the ignorance on both sides of the issue. If we are to preserve America’s founding ideals, parents and policymakers must read and understand the ideas they are protesting.
Butcher and I discussed the main points from his book. Be sure to subscribe to the mailing list for a condensed summary of the book, plus show highlights and announcements.
The sun has set on the Golden Era of Tobacco, much like the bygone Golden Era of Hollywood. Perhaps once movie stars stopped smoking cigarettes on the Silver Screen, audiences found the activity less glamorous. Or perhaps the dramatic decline in smoking rates was a more rational response by consumers and celebrities alike to new information about the dangers of tobacco products.
However, the regulators at the FDA are not content with people’s free and informed choices. They have moved to ban menthol-flavored cigarettes, along with many flavored “vape” cartridges, in the name of public health and (of course) protecting the children.
Guy Bentley, Director of Consumer Freedom Research at the Reason Foundation, has been the “Voice of Reason” in multiple respects on this issue, calmly and rationally pointing out the facts that regulators have ignored, such as…
- E-cigarettes have helped countless adults quit smoking.
- Vaping is far less dangerous than traditional cigarette smoking.
- Menthol bans will disproportionately affect African Americans.
And last, but not least, the continuation of failed prohibition policies — this time applied to cigarettes instead of alcohol or drugs — creates yet more victimless crimes and empowers law enforcement to abuse their power in new and creative ways.
Remember the cautionary tale of Eric Garner, detained and ultimately suffocated to death by a policeman for selling “loosies” outside a corner store? Bentley reminds us of this, and other flaws with the seemingly “liberal” policy of protecting people from themselves.
Guy joined me to review the evidence on relative harms to adults and children of various nicotine and tobacco products, and put the proposed FDA rule in its proper historical and modern context.
We’ve been hearing about the end of globalization for the better part of the last decade, and yet rumors of its demise appear to have been greatly exaggerated. The latest calls for American energy independence and re-shoring manufacturing are part of this broader trend, which seeks to insulate the domestic economy from turmoil in faraway regions. COVID-19 also brought the idea of “industrial policy” back to the forefront. While it’s hard to pin down an exact definition, Scott Lincicome of the Cato Institute relates some key features behind the misguided notion that the government must steer critical industries for reasons of national importance.
Whether we’re talking about steel, oil, or semi-conductors, the proponents of a robust industrial policy argue that we’ve become too reliant on our potential foes for strategic resources, and must set national production goals through legislation rather than impartial market forces. This can range from Soviet-style central planning (which led to the ultimate collapse of the USSR), to the use of trade barriers, tax incentives and subsidies - i.e., “picking winners and losers.”
Even with the latter approach, Lincicome points out many flaws in modern American industrial policy. In a recent Cato white paper, Questioning Industrial Policy, he highlights the inefficiencies brought about by injecting politics into the market’s discovery process, and notes how most recent attempts to “improve” the outcomes of global competition have tended to hinder even our vital domestic industries.
Scott joined me to break down the report, and make the case for embracing globalization and free trade in the 21st century rather than hunkering down in our domestic silo.
Check out Scott’s excellent newsletter “Capitolism” at the Dispatch.
Politico’s publication of a leaked draft of the Dobbs decision has turned the Internet upside-down, with rampant speculation about who the leaker was, whether the decision is final, and what will happen next if early-term abortion once again becomes a policy issue for states to decide rather than a right upheld by the Supreme Court.
I find the details of the leak uninteresting (except insofar as it impacts the legitimacy of the court). I am much more interested in how the five Justices voting in the majority arrived at their tentative opinion.
Evan Bernick, a law professor at North Illinois University’s College of Law, is an expert on Originalism the judicial philosophy on which the Dobbs decision is ostensibly based. Bernick joined me to dissent from this assumption. Instead, he argues, Alito’s decision stems from a judicial philosophy that seeks to “stop the Court from recognizing unenumerated rights.” Bernick believes in a more activistic judiciary when it comes to defending individual rights, as we discussed [the last time he was on my show. We discussed the constitutional considerations behind both the Roe decision and the Dobbs reversal of an almost 50-year-old precedent. I’ll also ask Evan how the policy issue is likely to play out in the states, with progressive states becoming destinations for women seeking abortions.
Follow Evan on Twitter, and check out his book, The Original Meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment, co-authored with Randy Barnett.
What do competitive markets have to do with truth? Ask a philosopher and you might get one answer. Ask an economist and you will get another. Ask an economist with a philosophical grounding, and you get Art Carden’s fantastic piece, The Misuse of Knowledge in Society: Intervention Means Prices are Lying.
Carden is a senior fellow with [the American Institute for Economic Research. He joined the show to discuss the article that caught my eye on AIER.org, which is one of the best explanations I’ve ever read of the price mechanism of free markets.
What happens when we stop the price system of competitive markets from working? In a word, untruth. It’s why price-gouging laws always fail, and increase human misery. A price control, Carden says, is a kind of institutionalized lie. Just because the government says it’s so, doesn’t mean that the underlying scarcity of the good has been altered.
You don’t have to be either a philosopher or an economist to understand the importance of having reliable information when making decisions. Hear Carden’s accessible explanation of the complex topic of price theory only on the Show of Ideas, not attitude.
Hoover Senior Fellow and host of the Defining Ideas podcast “The Libertarian” , Richard Epstein returns to the program to discuss a new case making it’s way to the Supreme Court:
This past week, the Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal in an important case that could determine the structure of American interstate markets for years to come. National Pork Producers Council v. Ross involves a constitutional challenge to Proposition 12, a 2018 California referendum that requires all pork products sold in the state be prepared in facilities meeting California standards of animal health and safety, no matter where they are raised. As the plaintiffs explain in their brief, virtually all of the pork products (some 99.8 percent) sold in California come from out of state. On the flip-side, California represents 13 percent of the national consumer market for pork products.
In its unique and inverted version of federalism, California seems to always find a way to impose its own strict regulations on the rest of the country—using its economic might to foist “progressive values” on other states. Can California legislate outside its own borders? Well, it’s complicated.
As usual, when I’m faced with a complex hybrid legal/economic questions, I turn to the Libertarian himself. And as usual, we will try to pack a semester’s worth of economics into an hour of radio. Epstein holds positions as a law professor at NYU, a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago, and Senior fellowship at Stanford’s Hoover Institution.
“Science,” it has been said, “advances one funeral at a time.” In other words, what was once heterodox only became accepted as orthodox truth when the defenders of the old paradigm died off, or could no longer maintain their position of authority in the face of clear new evidence.
Dr. Jeffrey Singer – senior fellow at the Cato Institute and contributor to Reason Magazine – has been my go-to guest on topics of medical science since well before the pandemic. His latest article in the May 2022 edition of Reason takes on a set of philosophical questions about the nature of scientific truth, and how we arrive at it. In it, Singer contrasts what he calls the “Priesthood” acting as gatekeepers of information, with the sole authority to decide which experts can be heard. Using examples from the pandemic, such as the silencing and smearing of the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, Singer points out how often the “official” narrative has been proven wrong by subsequent studies, such as those confirming that in fact lockdowns did little to slow the spread.
Now, the California Assembly is debating a bill that would threaten doctors with the loss of their license for offering any medical advice that is considered contrary to official CDC guidelines regarding vaccination. As epidemiologist and noted COVID expert Jay Bhattacharya notes, the law would essentially take away a physician's ability to offer individualized care to their patients, who may have valid reasons (like prior immunity or other conditions) for not getting the vaccine.
It appears that politics has infected our public discourse around science. Someone call the doctor! The Doctor for Liberty, that is. Singer joined me to separate the real experts from the phony high priests of the public health establishment.
America’s high prison incarceration rates are known around the world – an embarrassment for an alleged beacon of liberty. Yet few realize that we have another problem associated with our jails. Those charged with a crime are supposed to be innocent until proven guilty, but our bail system disproportionately punishes the poor and reverses the formula – making them guilty until proven innocent.
I have previously covered the civil liberties issues associated with cash bail back in 2018, and how a wave of states was starting to test out alternatives. Since then, New York has joined that wave — eliminating their bail system for pre-trial offenders who are not deemed high risk. This is great news: other states have proven that it works to reduce jail populations and ensure that people who do not belong behind bars are released prior to trial.
But just when I thought it was time to celebrate, Reason Magazine’s Joe Lancaster informs me that these reforms are in jeopardy. New York Governor Kathy Hochul is working behind the scenes to roll back the reforms – expanding the number of crimes eligible for bail, against the findings of a new report that shows the change in the law is working as intended.
Joe Lancaster, an assistant editor at Reason, joined me to break down the findings of the report, and the status of other state-based bail reforms.
In the years leading up to the American Revolution, a pseudonymous writer who called himself “Junius” came under scrutiny for his letters protesting the abuses by the Crown against his fellow Englishmen. Professor Jeff Kosseff recounts the myriad motivations Junius had for remaining anonymous (his identity is still not known to this day) in his new book The United States of Anonymous. From there, Kosseff explores “how the right to anonymity has shaped American values, politics, business, security, and discourse, particularly as technology has enabled people to separate their identities from their communications.”
Who are the Junius’s today whose anonymity requires protection?
Jeff Kosseff is an Associate Professor of Cybersecurity Law at the United States Naval Academy. He is the author of Cybersecurity Law (Wiley), the first comprehensive textbook on U.S. cybersecurity laws and regulations, and in Spring 2019 he published The Twenty-Six Words that Created the Internet (Cornell University Press), a nonfiction narrative history of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Jeff has practiced cybersecurity and privacy law, and clerked for Judge Milan D. Smith, Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and for Judge Leonie M. Brinkema of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. He is a graduate of Georgetown University Law Center and the University of Michigan. Before becoming a lawyer, he was a journalist for The Oregonian and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting.
“This will only be the beginning.”
Those six ominous words are not what many Americans will want to hear when it comes to the increased prices they’ve been paying for everyday purchases. Whenever I want to break the bad news to my audience about the state of out-of-control spending or inflation in the United States, I turn to my friend Jonathan Bydlak. Jonathan is director of the Governance program at the R Street Institute, and the creator of SpendingTracker.org – the first ever real-time spending site that tracks the fiscal records of Members of Congress. If you’re looking for a hard dose of reality, follow Jonathan on Twitter – @JBydlak – and find out how much your representatives vote for in spending each year: Then, give his latest essay for The Spectator a read, on the topic of what’s likely to result from our sanctions against Russia.
Who’s really behind rising gas prices? Moscow or Washington D.C.?
I continued my on-going, in-depth coverage of the Russia–Ukraine conflict with insights you won’t find anywhere else, as Jonathan Bydlak joined me for the full hour.
The Honorable Jeffrey Sutton, chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, joined the show to discuss his new book, Who Decides? States as Laboratories of Constitutional Experimentation.
The book comes as a sequel to his 2018 book, 51 Imperfect Solutions: States and the Making of American Constitutional Law. Astute listeners will notice an uncanny similarity between both book covers and my own book Power to the States: How Federalism 2.0 Can Make America Governable Again. Both books broadly make a case for states to take back powers from the federal government. But where my book emphasized the virtues of experimentation at the policy level, Sutton’s books inspect the balance of powers between federal and state judiciaries. The cover of his book, arranging the outlines of each state under the capitol rotunda, foreshadows his argument that federal courts have assumed too much power to decide what count as constitutional rights. While this may sound like a classic argument for judicial deference to the legislative and executive branches, Sutton defends a more “activistic” approach to judging at the state level. He points out that the true precedent for judicial review was not Marbury v. Madison, as we all learned in high school civics, but in the many cases preceding it in the states that established the judiciary’s role in deciding which law should apply: the “higher” law of the state constitution, or the laws passed by the legislature.
Today, as the Supreme Court increasingly weighs in on partisan topics like vaccine mandates, it’s especially important that we frame the issue correctly: it’s not a question of how we or the judges feel personally about the outcome, but about who decides.
@JustinTLogan joined on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. We will have the latest updates and analysis that you won’t get on cable news – with the depth you can’t find on Twitter or social media.
Logan says, “the US military cannot — and will not — come to Ukraine’s aid.” Is there any role for western intervention? What should we make of the apparent bullying by Putin’s Russia.
As usual, restraint and insight are rare commodities.
I hope we can go deeper than the superficial narratives and media coverage thus far.
Economists almost universally agree that immigration provides net benefits to the countries that allows it, yet the public stubbornly clings to myths about immigrants "taking our jobs," or otherwise reducing natives' welfare. Benjamin Powell compiled the best scholarly economics research on immigration, gathered by multiple experts in the field, to write the conclusive book on the subject: The Economics of Immigration: Market-Based Approaches, Social Science, and Public Policy (2015). Since then, he collaborated with frequent guest and Cato scholar Alex Nowrasteh in revisiting the subject in the book Wretched Refuse? The Political Economy of Immigration and Institutions.
Both books mix rigorous scientific analysis from the field of economics with clear explanations of how various studies should inform public policy. **
Powell joined me to narrow the gap between public perception and economic reality when it comes to the vital issue.
Dr. Jeffrey Singer returned to the program to discuss his presentation at the Cato Institute on fresh approaches to the overdose crisis, that do not limit doctor’s medical freedom or expand the failed War on Drugs. The narrative that doctors are getting people hooked on opioids is a myth, Singer says. Most people who are addicted and dying from overdoses are taking illegal fentanyl.
In 2016, the CDC issued guidelines that made it much harder for doctors like Singer to prescribe appropriate doses of painkillers following surgeries. Since then, the guidelines have become law in many states, making them difficult to reverse despite an evolving consensus in which even the CDC has had to admit the folly of its original recommendations.
What does a fresh approach to the opioid crisis look like? It begins with harm reduction, decriminalization, and treating people as responsible adults capable of making their own decisions about drugs – including in the context of a medical procedure.
As Americans tune into the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, some may be wondering about a different sort of competition with the host nation, China, whose size and growing military power make them appear as one of the most significant threats to the long-standing international order of Pax Americana.
John Mueller is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and one of the world's foremost experts on international security, terrorism, and foreign policy. In his new book, The Stupidity of War: American Foreign Policy and the Case for Complacency, (Oxford University Press, 2016), Mueller contends that China is not in fact a serious threat to the United States, nor the remarkably durable peace of the last 75 years. The greater threat, he says, comes from treating China as an adversary, and provoking them into responding in kind.
China may have the second largest military in the world (after the United States), spending more on its military than Russia or Saudi Arabia. However, in a recent Cato report, Mueller lays out the many reasons why conflict would be in neither the U.S. nor China’s interest. His answer to the brewing tensions – “complacency” – may seem like a strange word to use in this context, yet he makes a compelling case that American military might has been used for harm more often than good since the end of World War II. So why do certain elements within our government and military beat the war drum? Is it possible that there are special interests involved in making the threat seem larger than it really is? At a time when China is flexing its muscles in the South China Sea and our relationship with Russia is increasingly strained, Mueller's book is a much-needed voice of reason urging the U.S. to de-escalate.
Mueller returned to the show to help me and my audience understand what the pretext for alarm is this time, and why we shouldn’t take the bait and go to war (again) this time around.
The last time Chris Preble joined my show, we discussed the full sweep of U.S. foreign policy from the founding period to the “forever wars” in the middle east, all through the lens of his monumental book Peace, War, and Liberty: Understanding U.S. Foreign Policy.
Just as one long conflict in Afghanistan comes to an end, there are new rumors of war brewing in hotspots around the world. From Taiwan to Ukraine, the temptations for new exercises of American influence abroad are everywhere. The Biden Administration has put Americans on alert that Russia may invade Ukraine at any time. But should this happen, what is the right response? Few Americans, let alone Europeans, seem to have the stomach for a hot war with Russia.
Preble now serves as co-director of the New American Engagement Initiative in the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security at the Atlantic Council in Washington DC. We discussed the shifting alliances underlying both NATO and Putin’s patchwork of strongmen in Eastern Europe, and how the struggle is likely to play out.
Do we have a compelling interest in “defending democracy” in far-flung regions? And what about “preserving credibility” in the wake of our disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan?
Joseph Campbell famously said that there are only two stories in the whole world:
📚 1) Hero takes a journey and 2) A stranger comes to town.
This topic featured both rolled up into one.
Mark Shirley was doing well as an auto salesman when he decided to quit his job to pursue his dream of operating a barbecue food truck: the 'Ole Time Smokehouse' He moved to Farmville, NC, and soon business was booming – at least until the established barbecue joints decided they didn't like the competition. They petitioned the local government, which made it almost impossible for Shirley to keep his customers satisfied.
The Pacific Legal Foundation took on the case and is now defending the Ole Time Smokehouse's right to operate in court
Jessica Thompson, the attorney on the case, joined me to talk about the heroic battle for food freedom. Not all superheroes wear capes.
Sometimes a policy proposal comes along that is so bad, it has to be intellectually dismantled before it ever sees the light of day. Senator Elizabeth Warren is famous for such plans. Remember her mantra in the 2020 presidential campaign, “I’ve got a plan for that”? Thankfully, her Accountable Capitalism Act – which would have ended capitalism as we know it – was rejected, along with her candidacy.
But now Senator Warren is at it again. This time she is suggesting that inflation, and higher food prices in particular, are a result of "price gouging" by large grocery store companies. Her solution is to crack down on “Big Grocery” with antitrust legislation, claiming that chains like Kroger are earning monopoly profits while ordinary Americans pay the price. There’s just one problem: grocery stores operate on razor-thin profit margins, and represent one of the most competitive markets around. Don Boudreaux alerted me to this story on his blog, Cafe Hayek, where I always start my day. He returned to the show to expose the fallacies at the heart of her proposal. Putting aside the more nuanced issue of price gouging (a topic I’ve covered with Don in the past), I couldn’t let Warren’s farcical claims about grocery store monopolies go unchallenged. We discussed whether the idea is born of ignorance, mendacity, or some combination of the two.
Even after doing three separate shows on rewriting the U.S. Constitution from three different perspectives (Libertarian, Progressive and Conservative), I’m still hungry for more insights on how to think about designing the ideal constitution.
I found aspects of each team’s revisions attractive, but if I could push a button to make one the law of the land, would I? Even if I thought that the original could be improved, what unintended consequences might there be from dismantling the document that has worked at least reasonably well for almost 250 years?
Professor Michael Munger returned to the show to elaborate on a topic he recently discussed with Russ Roberts on the always-interested EconTalk podcast. They delved into the work of public choice economics like James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock, who concerned themselves with the nature of constitutions – rules about rules – and how groups can balance their collective interests against individual liberties.
We discussed the challenge of improving a constitutional order, when the document in question is the result of an evolutionary process. The American Constitution, for all of its faults, is the oldest document of its kind in the entire world. Does that mean we’re stuck with what we’ve got, whether we like it or not? Or could we possibly do better?
“Government propaganda is a direct threat to freedom and liberty because it empowers a small political elite who wields awesome discretionary powers to shape policies while keeping citizens in the dark about the underlying realities and the array of alternative options available.” – Manufacturing Militarism
I was excited to welcome Abigail Hall to the program to discuss her work on the U.S. government’s propaganda in the War on Terror. Her new book with Christopher Coyne, Manufacturing Militarism, reveals a disturbing influence exercised by the Department of Defense over public opinion, through subtle and not-so-subtle propaganda techniques. We learn that military propaganda has been a fixture since at least the world wars, but has gotten more advanced since 9/11.
It turns out that the lies about Saddam’s WMDs were just the tip of a much larger iceberg. Hall and Coyne frame the problem in terms of incentives by bureaucrats to gain public support for a bloated military and endless wars, when the public’s inclination would otherwise be to oppose war if they had full information.
Frequent guest, the erudite and always interesting Richard Epstein – aka “the Libertarian” – joins me to review the first year of the Biden Administration. We will discuss the infrastructure bill, changes to the tax and regulatory code, the COVID response, and the withdrawal from Afghanistan, and more.
Last time, I spoke with Professor Epstein’s about his book *The Dubious Morality of Modern Administrative Law (published by the Manhattan Institute) – a 200-page tour de force and a must-read for any student of modern American government.* After providing context for the history of the administrative state pre-New Deal, it shows how case after case set dangerous precedents requiring courts to defer to agency actions when the law in question is ambiguous.
Tune in for the Professor’s report card on Biden’s handling of the economy, foreign policy, and pandemic response. Epstein has been critical of government intervention in the economy since the beginning of COVID, which he says is now clearly endemic.
This show is the third in a series of three programs I am doing on the National Constitution Center's Constitution Drafting Project. Part II, with Caroline Fredrickson – representing Team Progressive – aired two weeks ago. Part I, with Timothy Sandefur of Team Libertarian, re-aired last week.
We have already heard from the libertarian and progressive teams in the National Constitution Center's drafting project. Now it's time to hear from the lead of "Team Conservative." Professor Ilan Wurman of Arizona State's Sandra Day O'Connor Law School will be representing his colleague's revisions to America's founding document.
Wurman is author of a number of books and articles on the judicial philosophy of originalism, which holds that the Constitution should be interpreted according to the framers' original intent. His most recent book is an introduction to the 14th amendment called "The Second Founding."
In addition to several nuts-and-bolts changes, Team Conservative took an interesting approach of altering the Constitution so as to emphasize the upholding of the common good. These days, there is much talk about the elusive common good, and roughly as many opinions about it as there are American citizens.
Can we unite around certain principles that will lead to the flourishing of the common good without eroding the individual liberties enshrined in the original Constitution?
The idea of a "national conversation" has never made much sense to me. 300 million people shouting over one another sounds unproductive at best, and yet, if we were ever able to have a civil "national conversation," I propose that the very top of the agenda would be the question of how we teach our history to future generations of Americans.
The recent controversy around the teaching of Critical Race Theory in elementary schools has pitted parents against teachers, old against young, and black against white in many communities. Many Americans are upset by the concepts being taught, but fail to articulate what is wrong with talking about the darker aspects of our history, from slavery to colonialism.
My guest this Sunday was Mark Milke, Ph.D. – a Canadian author, policy analyst and columnist – who has written the definitive book to guide our national conversation on victimhood, while still grappling with America's past sins. The Victim Cult: How the culture of blame hurts everyone & wrecks civilization takes readers beyond the tired arguments of conservative culture warriors, while exposing what's really wrong with the modern trend of "grievance culture," that has infected everything from history curricula to identity politics.
However, the victim cult itself is not a new phenomenon. Its origins go all the way back to the beginnings of humanity itself. Can we rid ourselves of the temptations toward blame and self-pity before it destroys American civilization as we know it?
We take it for granted that water comes out when we turn on our faucets and garden hoses – even in the drought-stricken west. Yet the way some doomsayers talk about the issue, it seems like one day we might wake up to a dry spigot. Such an outcome is unlikely, however, because of the nature of scarcity: when something becomes more precious, people find ways to conserve it. Prices rise to incentivize less use, and greater production.
Robert Glennon is one of the nation's preeminent experts on water policy and law, and the author of Unquenchable: America's Water Crisis and What To Do About It. He points to a fatal flaw in the allocation of water, particularly in the western states where resources are more limited: when the majority of water rights were assigned, several decades ago, they were based on incorrect assumptions about the supply. Today, there are more rights to water than there is water.
Glennon believes that the fix is multifaceted, and includes a mix of political and market solutions. He joined me to discuss how property rights can be clarified, and new markets created to allow for more efficient distribution of one of our most precious resources: freshwater.
Caroline Fredrickson is Distinguished Visitor from Practice at Georgetown Law Center, Senior Fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice and author of The Democracy Fix, Under the Bus, and The AOC Way: The Secrets of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Success.
She joined me or part II of my series on the National Constitution Center's brilliant experiment, soliciting three revisions to the Constitution: one libertarian, one conservative and one progressive.
Can you guess which team Caroline will be representing?
Find out what "Team Progressive" prioritized in their rewriting of our founding document, and how the balance of power would shift among the branches of government.
If you missed my show with Timothy Sandefur, you can listen to the podcast or read the transcript to get up to speed on the libertarian perspective. I've decided to interview a representative from each team, and am delighted to welcome Caroline to the show of ideas.
How does one attempt to see the unseen? The question may seem more like a Zen koan than vital concern of economists. The idea of tracing hidden consequences of different policies, however, must be discovered anew with every generation of policymaker and economic adviser.
Frederic Bastiat is credited with the original framing of the "seen" vs the "unseen," using the parable a broken window to expose the common fallacy that destruction begets economic growth. Later, Henry Hazlitt would demolish the recycled Keynesian ideas in his time, arguing that government can stimulate "aggregate demand" by spending tax dollars on make-work projects like digging holes. In both cases, the resources used to stimulate spending come out of the pockets of people who would have otherwise spent the money more productively.
This year, Ryan Bourne continues the noble tradition of Bastiat and Hazlitt in his new book Economics in One Virus – a clever spin on Hazlitt's famous "Economics in One Lesson." What can COVID teach us about the pitfalls of government intervention? Bourne lays out the high costs and murky benefits of policies such as lockdowns and mandatory masking, when voluntary alternatives would likely had achieved the same if not better results in terms of mitigating spread, without the devastating effects on small business.
Almost two years into "two weeks to slow the spread," we will revisit the problem of the pandemic from an economic standpoint. Bourne reminds us that economics is not all about dollars and cents – it's the stuff of our daily lives, including the trade-offs that determine our fundamental well-being. To ignore costs simply because they cannot be measured, such as the relationships weakened or business lost, is to commit the oldest economic fallacy in the book.
Here's a thought experiment: If the Constitution were re-written according to modern libertarian standards, how would it be different? The idea of a "libertarian Constitution" may seem redundant – the Founders were forerunners of the classical liberals, who in turn paved the way for the libertarian movement.
The National Constitution Center, however, recently posed this challenge to a group of libertarian legal scholars, along with two other groups of scholars: one progressive, and one conservative.
Timothy Sandefur, along with his Cato colleague Ilya Shapiro and Brooklyn Law School professor Christina Mulligan, drafted their version of the Constitution to include additional protections of individual liberties (unsurprisingly). In hindsight, we can see that the founders were insufficiently wary of executive authority – except for perhaps George Mason. They left the door open for the erosion of the separation of powers, especially by the administrative state – something corrected in the proposed Libertarian Constitution. Furthermore, Sandefur et al.'s "Ellis Island Clause" would restore immigration to early 20th-century policies, and limit arbitrary federal restrictions on who can move to the United States.
I spent the hour with Sandefur – the Vice President for Litigation at the Goldwater Institute’s Scharf-Norton Center for Constitutional Litigation – expanding my sense of possibility, and exploring what we can learn from various state constitutions in working towards a more perfect union.
Be sure to follow Timothy on Twitter: @TimothySandefur and subscribe to the Goldwater Institute's newsletter.
Here's a thought experiment: If the Constitution were re-written according to modern libertarian standards, how would it be different? The idea of a "libertarian Constitution" may seem redundant – the Founders were forerunners of the classical liberals, who in turn paved the way for the libertarian movement.
The National Constitution Center, however, recently posed this challenge to a group of libertarian legal scholars, along with two other groups of scholars: one progressive, and one conservative.
Timothy Sandefur, along with his Cato colleague Ilya Shapiro and Brooklyn Law School professor Christina Mulligan, drafted their version of the Constitution to include additional protections of individual liberties (unsurprisingly). In hindsight, we can see that the founders were insufficiently wary of executive authority – except for perhaps George Mason. They left the door open for the erosion of the separation of powers, especially by the administrative state – something corrected in the proposed Libertarian Constitution. Furthermore, Sandefur et al.'s "Ellis Island Clause" would restore immigration to early 20th-century policies, and limit arbitrary federal restrictions on who can move to the United States.
I spent the hour with Sandefur – the Vice President for Litigation at the Goldwater Institute’s Scharf-Norton Center for Constitutional Litigation – expanding my sense of possibility, and exploring what we can learn from various state constitutions in working towards a more perfect union.
Be sure to follow Timothy on Twitter: @TimothySandefur and subscribe to the Goldwater Institute's newsletter.
Halloween happens to fall on a Sunday this year, which means my guest this weekend will have to weave the topic in with the spooky holiday. Chris Edwards, my go-to expert at Cato on all things debt and tax-related, should have no trouble frightening my listeners with his latest analysis.
Where to start? The skyrocketing debt has economists murmuring about inflation. But sometimes the proposed solutions are even more terrifying than the problem itself – as in the case of new taxes on capital gains, corporate income, and even a special so-called "billionaire's tax" on unrealized capital gains. Edwards returns to the show to break down the folly of scapegoating the wealthy, and why this approach is likely to backfire.
All the while, tax revenues have actually grown to their highest rates. Yet rather than using the windfall to reduce debt, Democrats are proposing a new spending binge that makes the 2008 stimulus look like chump change. As always, the government promises that its spending spree will stimulate innovation and growth, but Edwards points to the well-established link between debt and reduced growth.
They say that death and taxes are the two inevitabilities. Massive debt, however, is not inevitable.
Tune in for a special Halloween edition of The Bob Zadek Show to hear how we can turn back the debt clock, or at least stop the ticking time bomb that it represents.
In recent memory, Democrats have been considered the pro-immigration party in the United States. In California, the Republican's shameful trumpeting of Proposition 187, which scapegoated undocumented immigrants, has turned the state solid Blue after alienating an otherwise moderate Hispanic population. Yet both parties have been guilty of using the issue of immigration as a political football to score points and claim the moral high ground against the other – all while the very real humanitarian crisis at the border has gotten worse and worse.
I have frequently lamented the terrible treatment by Republicans of immigrants, in whom conservatives and libertarians should see a natural ally. Immigrants are the ultimate entrepreneurs – risking it all for a better life. They commit less crime than native populations. And above all, they work hard.
Daniel Di Martino – a young economist and Young Voices contributor originally from Venezuela –has made a forceful case for the GOP to become a pro-immigration party. While he was fortunate enough to obtain a scholarship that allowed him to come study in the United States in 2016, most Venezuelans have had nowhere to go. Di Martino notes how the Biden Administration's bumbling bureaucracy has slowed the processing of visa applications to below even Trump era levels. He joined me to offer an alternative to the partisan bickering that has done nothing to alleviate the plight of immigrants.
Can a more immigrant-friendly GOP break the Democratic monopoly on the immigrant vote, and turn the tide of socialism? Find out on the show of ideas, not attitude.
Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly recently said on CNBC that he has always opposed vaccine mandates like the one recently announced by OSHA under President Biden's executive order, yet he has reluctantly chosen to enforce it as a matter of legal compliance. Even apart from the heavy fines threatened by the order, airlines like Southwest receive federal contracts from the government, which they might lose if they fail to follow the legally dubious order.
Philip Hamburger first joined my show in 2014, warning of the threat of the administrative state, which has only grown since he released his prescient book – Is Administrative Law Unlawful? Now, he has followed up with the sequel: Purchasing Submission: Conditions, Power, and Freedom, which examines a frequent tool used by the "fourth branch of government" to further circumvent the Constitution. Hamburger explains that by imposing conditions on the recipients of government largesse, the administrative state has cleverly been able to evade the usual constitutional considerations.
I was recently joined by Hamburger's colleague at the National Civil Liberties Alliance – Jenin Younes – who has been fighting against unconstitutional vaccine mandates. However, Hamburger joined me to step back from the specifics of any single instance of administrative overreach and see the bigger picture. Tune in to learn about the patterns and mechanics of how the government gets away with its new assaults on civil liberties by essentially purchasing our constitutional rights through various conditions on its special favors.
It has become almost cliché to note that “the pen is mightier than sword.” Years before this aphorism entered the popular imagination, however, it was John Adams who exclaimed, “Without the pen of Paine, the sword of Washington would have been wielded in vain.” Prior to the American Revolution, the sword tended to have the upper hand – with the strongest Kings and Tyrants justifying their power on the basis of force and divine right, not lofty principles like equality and liberty for all. Thomas Paine may not be enshrined in any monuments in Washington D.C., but the other more cherished founders saw the gifted pamphleteer as one of the key players in the American Revolution, and the subsequent upheaval of monarchies around the world.
In his recent biography of the “Apostle of Liberty,” historian Harlow Giles Ungers quotes John Adams again, asserting:
“I know not whether any man in the world has had more influence on its inhabitants or its affairs for the last thirty years than Tom Paine. Call it then the Age of Paine.”
So how did this “father to the founding fathers” end up as a relatively obscure historical figure, known almost exclusively by his early pamphlet, “Common Sense”? Unger joins me this Sunday to explore the full, fascinating story of Paine’s life, prolific writings, his travels, and his prominent role in the French Revolution.
Thomas Paine and the Clarion Call for American Independence is the latest in the long line of Unger’s highly readable biographies of America’s founders. Much like the subject of his book, Unger writes in a way that is accessible to all audiences – from the uneducated layperson to the scholar of American history alike. Don’t miss the in-depth exploration of the man whose writings roused Washington’s soldiers to victory across the Delaware on Christmas morning.
There will always be America.
It just might not be in America.
Hong Kong, Singapore, and even Madagascar are candidates for future beacons of freedom to the world, as most of Europe and the United States have forgotten the heritage of the Magna Carta, Bill of Rights, and enlightenment tradition of freedom. One dark horse candidate for the next "America" is the Free Republic of Liberland – a new country project that has claimed a small strip of land between Serbia and Croatia, which neither country claims as its own. Croatia swears it belongs to Serbia, but Serbia begs to differ. Vit Jedlicka says they are both right – or is that neither? As President of Liberland, Vit has gathered a small country's worth of volunteers, citizen applicants, and supporters around the world, who could soon populate the world's newest country as freedom-seeking pioneers.
Vit returned to update us on Liberland's progress, and explain how this international movement is leveraging new technologies like cryptocurrency and the blockchain to build something of an America 2.0 – complete with a stable currency, clearly defined property rights, and an innovative Constitution for holding the future leaders of Liberland accountable.
"What is Liberland?" appeared as the correct question in a Jeopardy competition, showing that its fame is spreading. Now they just need recognition from five countries and they will themselves be eligible for UN membership and other perks of statehood.
Where does Biden get the authority to mandate vaccination? It’s a difficult question, and everyone seems to have their opinion. Indeed, there are approximately as many opinions as there are arms that can receive the jab. Walter Olson predicts that the new OSHA-issued employer vaccine mandate will be challenged, all the way up to the SCOTUS. But will it survive? And more importantly, is it a good policy? Libertarians disagree, and although they almost all oppose the mandate, they oppose it for different reasons.
The Cato Institute Chairman Bob Levy joined me to discuss the nuances of the libertarian perspective on vaccine mandates. He recently wrote an op-ed for the Hill titled, “Vaccine mandates: A liberty-minded perspective”, in which he helps us think through the various liberty concerns around bodily autonomy versus endangerment. He’ll also define the “nondelegation doctrine,” and explain why every thoughtful citizen should understand this 5-syllable word.
To the American public, it may have seemed like the War and Afghanistan came to an abrupt end last month – a month earlier than the Biden Administration's self-imposed deadline of the 20-year anniversary of the September 11 attacks. To those who followed the "forever war" more closely – like my guest this Sunday, Scott Horton – the botched withdrawal of troops from the country is just another in a long line of blunders in an even longer "War on Terror" that continues largely unabated. Foreign policy, like economic policy, seems to be bound by the same inextricable law of unintended consequences, whereby policy failures end up justifying further interventions, mishaps, and pretext for even bigger government programs. The only question is whether the US will learn from its mistakes this time, or set off on another damaging campaign.
The story of the United States' involvement in the Middle East is a long one, that dates back to at least the Carter Administration. Scott Horton, director of the Libertarian Institute and host of Antiwar Radio, has meticulously documented the long litany of errors and self-reinforcing planks of the misguided War on Terror in his writings, videos, and radio broadcasts over the years.
He joined me to offer a one-hour retrospective on the War in Afghanistan, with an emphasis on the patterns and principles that have characterized our broader foreign policy failures over the past 45 years. From Scott, I've learned that the failures can be boiled down to one word: blowback. For the full story, you'll have to read two of his most recent books, Enough Already: Time to End the War on Terrorism (2021) & Fool's Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan (2017).
The American taxpayer has long accepted that education is a public good – something worthy of funding with the common purse. Until recently, a majority of Americans, including parents, have also believed that public schools are a generally the right vehicle for that funding. However, opinion has changed rapidly, and the response by school administrators to COVID-19 has accelerated the pace of that change. A new survey finds that more than 80% of parents believe that taxpayer funds should follow students to whatever schools they attend, rather than defaulting to the defective public school system.
Even more tellingly, Matt Welch reports that "Families are Fleeing Government Run Schools" – voting with their kids' feet, as it were, against the sudden and unpredictable closures and suspensions of in-person learning. Welch, an editor at large at Reason Magazine, has been reporting on the shift taking place among the population – with an increasing number of both upper and lower-class progressives suddenly embracing school choice when the dysfunction of government-run schools became too glaring to ignore. He joined me to explain why parents are taking their kids out of public schools, and where they are all going.
Have the teachers' unions overplayed their hand in demanding indefinite virtual learning and protections for their members at the expense of learning outcomes for children?
“There is a Passion natural to the Mind of man, especially a free Man, which renders him impatient of Restraint.” ― George Mason
George Mason is rolling in his grave. Or at least, he was, until Professor Todd Zywicki was finally exempted from George Mason University's new mandatory vaccination policy. Zywicki, a professor at the Antonin Scalia School of Law and frequent guest on the show of ideas, is no Anti-Vaxxer; he is, however, an ardent believer in the Constitution and Bill of Rights. These documents, if they are not to be considered artifacts, guarantee all Americans the right to privacy and the freedom from substantial interference with one's bodily autonomy without due process.
Zywicki was one of millions of Americans who already had the virus, and thus acquired the natural immunity that the vaccine is meant to mimic. That wasn't considered a good enough reason for GMU to exempt him, even though natural infection has been shown to create longer-lasting immunity. Faced with the threat of termination, Zywicki stood his ground – penning a WSJ article to make his case in the court of public opinion. He argued that those with prior infection were at a higher risk of adverse reaction, for a vaccine that would provide no proven additional benefits. Backed by the New Civil Liberties Alliance, and his attorney Jenin Younes, he then filed briefs to challenge the constitutionality of the workplace policy, which is becoming increasingly common across the country. Since then, the George Mason University administration backed down, but the legal questions are far from settled.
I was joined by Todd and his lawyer, Jenin to review the case that would have been argued – both on the grounds of the latest science around natural immunity, as well as the constitutional considerations around privacy and bodily autonomy. We may not know what George Mason would have thought about the studies showing the relative risks and benefits of vaccination for the naturally immune, but I'd be willing to bet that the founder who insisted on a Bill of Rights before ratifying the Constitution would have opposed his namesake's draconian mandate.
The sudden but not entirely unpredictable collapse of the American-trained forces in Afghanistan has woken much of the country up to the futility of our "forever wars" in the Middle East. Beyond the waste of a trillion dollars and countless lives over twenty years (for what?), we are now left with yet another humanitarian refugee crisis. Many European countries seem to have had their fill of refugees, and the Biden administration has yet to follow through on its promises to expedite asylum for the most desperate Afghans, who are now facing brutal persecution at the hands of the Taliban.
Most people agree that those who assisted the U.S. effort and thus find a target on their heads should be given priority for asylum status. But what about those who are seeking asylum from forced labor under terrorist groups like the Taliban or, in other countries, ISIS? In a recent USA Today article, GMU legal scholar Ilya Somin directs our attention to a bizarrely cruel ruling by the Department of Justice’s Board of Immigration Appeals in 2018 classifies such slave laborers as ineligible for asylum because their forced labor qualifies as "material support" for terrorism.
Somin joined me to explain how such legal gymnastics were ever justified in the first place, and what the current Attorney General can do about it. We also considered the arguments for and against letting in larger numbers of refugees from Afghanistan and other countries.
2020 was a bad year for small business. Government waged war on the entrepreneur in the name of public safety – imposing harsh lockdowns on those deemed "unessential." Carol Roth, author of a new book "The War on Small Business: How the Government Used the Pandemic to Crush Small Business," makes an important observation that large corporations tended to be exempt from the lockdowns. Isn't that funny!
Roth is a content creator, “recovering” investment banker, entrepreneur, TV pundit and host, and New York Times bestselling author. With 300+ pages of evidence, her new books makes the case that the government has been treating the little guy unfairly since long before COVID. However, the pandemic provided a perfect excuse to ramp up its preferential treatment of privileged cronies at corporations.
Can we even call this capitalism anymore?
A Gallup study collecting polls over the last 13 years estimates that 17 to 23% of Americans identify as libertarian. One-fifth of the population is not bad, but even that never seems to translate into meaningful progress at the ballot box. Furthermore, the idea of a "libertarian politician" still seems like an oxymoron.
Marc J. Victor is an attorney who has fought for his clients' freedoms for decades, and is now turning his attention to a broader goal of building a global peace movement under the mantra of "Live and Let Live." His ideas are fundamentally libertarian, but the Live and Let Live Movement differs from the Libertarian Party in several key ways.
First, it is global—not national.
Second, it presents libertarian ideas in a way that should be agreeable to any reasonable person of principles. Rather than focusing on the arcane details of why the non-aggression principle passes moral and philosophical muster, Victor would prefer to let the principle speak for itself: just don't hurt people, and don't take their stuff. It's what we all learned in Kindergarten, although the majority of people could use a friendly reminder.
What better substitute for the often-confusing "NAP" (non-aggression principle) than the "3LP" – the Live and Let Live Principle? Victor joined the show to talk about this urgently needed rebranding of liberty, and how the ideas of Live and Let Live are taking hold in small communities across the world.
Rising violent crime rates in the United States has prompted a gun control push by the Biden administration and the Democratic Party. Biden has stated in a CNN town hall that he wants to target all "semi-automatic" guns – both rifles and pistols, which have the capacity **to hold more than 20 rounds. Because most firearms possess this capability, such an act would turn most law-abiding Americans into criminals. Naturally, Biden's remarks have generated significant controversy.
Here to discuss with me the Biden Administration's plans for gun control, the rationale (if any) behind them, and the reality behind guns and crime rates in America, is Dr. John R. Lott.
You may know Dr. Lott as the meticulous researcher and economist behind books like Gun Control Myths, More Guns, Less Crime, and The Bias Against Guns. He is a world-recognized expert on guns and crime, and founder of the Crime Prevention Research Center and has held various research and teaching positions, including at the University of Chicago, Yale, Wharton School of Business, the University of Pennsylvania, Stanford University, and Rice University.
John Lott was also the chief economist at the United States Sentencing Commission during 1988-89, and has published over 100 articles in peer-reviewed academic journals.
When it comes to guns, it's important to separate the stuff from the fluff. Get the facts, on the show of ideas, not attitude.
You may have heard about Cuban American protests in the streets of Miami, but what’s happening in Cuba itself, where protest often carries stiff punishment from the communist dictatorship? It’s hard to find accurate coverage given the information embargo imposed by the Castro regime. Ian Vasquez returned to the show to explain what the events of the July 11th uprising symbolize in a country whose people have lived in fear of persecution and torture for decades.
Ian is Vice President for international studies at the Cato Institute and director of its Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity. He is a foreign policy correspondent for CNBC, NBC, C-SPAN, CNN, Telemundo, Canadian Television, NPR, and Voice of America. He is also the co-author of the Human Freedom Index – a subtopic for this Sunday’s show – the editor of Global Fortune: The Stumble and Rise of World Capitalism, and the coeditor of Perpetuating Poverty: The World Bank, the IMF, and the Developing World.
Vasquez finds that technology and the arts are creating new possibilities for exposing the miserable results of the Cuban “experiment” with socialism, which could only be sustained for so long by repression and intimidation. The rallying cries for freedom have grown louder and louder since Cubans got a taste of freedom from the outside world.
When does environmental protection become regulatory overreach? As part of the "Great Reset" agenda to "Build Back Better," Biden's new America the Beautiful report outlines plans to conserve 30 percent of the nation’s lands and waters by 2030 – reversing many sensible reforms to the Endangered Species Act, for example, that have occurred over the last four years.
Remember the infamous Louisiana frog case? Federal agents in the Obama administration deprived a landowner of property by designating 1,500 acres of his land as "critical habitat" for the dusky gopher frog... a creature that hadn't been seen in the Bayou State for more than 50 years. Thankfully, Pacific Legal Foundation successfully defended the landowner in a 9-0 Supreme Court victory.
Now, the federal government under Biden is overreaching once again – weaponizing environmentalism against property rights. The Endanger Species Act may have good intentions, but its implementation has caused untold harm to countless human beings, while distorting incentives for achieving actual conservation.
I was joined by Damien Schiff to discuss the Biden administration's despotic approach to environmental regulation. Damien is a senior attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation. He leads its environmental practice group, a unique initiative that draws broadly from PLF’s expertise and success in property rights and separation of powers litigation. Over the years, Damien has represented hundreds of landowners and property rights advocates to defend their liberties against heavy-handed and unwarranted environmental and land-use regulation.
Find out how you can help in the fight against federal overreach on the show of ideas, not attitude.
Occupational licensing is often deployed by industries to limit job competition, and it is no different with the American Bar Association. I was joined by Clifford Winston, senior fellow at Brookings Institution's Economic Studies program, applied microeconomist, and author of Trouble at the Bar.
Together, we will take a close look at the adverse effects that the ABA regulation has on the legal market and the economy as a whole – including the increase in cost, reduction in quality, and the limit of access to legal services for the general population. Clifford argues that by deregulating the legal industry, there would be a mutual benefit to both lawyers, prospective lawyers, and society in general.
Every 4th of July, we commemorate the signing of the Declaration of Independence – some 250 years ago – but the proclamation that all men are created equal was not truly realized until another proclamation was made some 90 years later, on September 22, 1863, by President Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln may not have been one of the original founders of the United States of America, but his influence on our nation’s trajectory rivals even George Washington’s. More books have been written about Lincoln than any other American, and his actions as President permanently altered the very definition of American liberty. In this sense, Lincoln can be said to have presided over a second founding moment – of almost equal importance to the first in 1776.
John Cribb has written the latest in a long line of books about Lincoln. Old Abe: A Novel distinguishes itself as one of the few historical novels – accurately retelling the story of Lincoln’s last five years leading up to his untimely demise. Cribb joined me to unpack the complex and fascinating legacy of Abraham Lincoln, from his election to the Presidency, through the tumultuous war that almost tore the country apart, to his assassination in 1865.
Of course, we will discuss the role Lincoln played in ending the “peculiar institution,” which the founders themselves had neglected to solve in their own struggle for emancipation. Can this help explain why celebrating the 4th of July has become less popular in recent years? I’ll ask John how “Old Abe” can help us recover a sense of patriotism in every generation.
Finally, we’ll discuss the murkier questions of Lincoln’s legacy, including the growth of federal power and the questionable suspension of Habeas Corpus during the Civil War.
During the 2020 election campaign, Joe Biden and the Democratic Party floated the idea of "court packing"––adding Justices to the Supreme Court. The call for court reform was a response to Amy Coney Barrett's nomination following the death of Justice Ruther Bader Ginsburg.
Fast forward to April 15, 2021. Congress has introduced legislation that would add four more Justices to the Supreme Court. President Biden, meanwhile, has formed a commission to reform the Supreme Court, either via packing or term limits. The historical situation has striking parallel's to the 1937 Roosevelt court-packing attempt, which ultimately failed but caused the court to submit to his New Deal agenda in the hope of "saving the court," regardless of whether they thought the New Deal was constitutional or not.
Today, we seem to be in the same situation. The executive branch has taken on the role of bullying the court into adopting Biden's agenda, whether or not that agenda is constitutional. Even if the court packing attempt fails, many Americans wonder whether the threat on the court alone is sufficient to corrupt the impartiality and independence of the Judiciary.
I was joined by Phillip Hamburger. Phillip is the creator of the Columbia Law School's Center for Law and Liberty and is the founder of the New Civil Liberties Alliance, a civil rights organization based in Washington, D.C. He has authored two recent books on the administrative state, Is Administrative Law Unlawful, and The Administrative Threat. Phillip has recently written a Wall-Street Journal article on the dangers of court packing to the American Republic and the separation of powers, entitled, "Court Packing is a Dangerous Game."
What does this court packing attempt mean for the American Republic? Phillip and I will sift through the frightening implications of the Democrat's plan.
Americans have been partially aware of the NSA’s surveillance of the public thanks to whistleblowers like Edward Snowden. But do they know that their own cell phone carriers and beloved apps are often complicit in these constitutionally questionable breaches of privacy?
The Fourth Amendment guarantees “no unreasonable search and seizure,” but this hasn’t stopped government agencies from prying into our vast stores of personal data such as location information, shopping habits, etc. – all in the name of public safety. It should come as little surprise that tech companies do not discriminate against the government when it comes to selling our data to third parties, and this loophole has been exploited by the NSA and other agencies to create a brand new form of crony capitalism.
I was joined by Elizabeth (Liza) Goitein, who co-directs the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty & National Security Program and is a Senior Practitioner Fellow at the University of Chicago’s Center for Effective Government. Goitein has written a fascinating and frightening article in the Washington Post revealing how technology has rendered previous Supreme Court decisions protecting our privacy moot.
Can we preserve the Fourth Amendment in an age of mass data collection, or have we become so complacent that we are willing to surrender our privacy to Big Tech operating as a proxy for Big Government? Goitein and I will discuss the implications of a Supreme Court decision that was supposed to make this kind of behavior more difficult, and how Senators like Rand Paul are trying to shore up the abuses in the legislature.
We live in a "permission society," where it sometimes feels like anything that is not prohibited is mandatory. What is the entrepreneur to do in such a climate? Perhaps, rather than using bad governance as an excuse not to innovate, we should see it as an opportunity to satisfy the needs being unmet by lumbering bureaucracies.
Adam Thierer, a Senior Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, has written something of a manual for Evasive Entrepreneurs & the Future of Governance, following his last book, Permissionless Innovation , which offered a kind of cognitive therapy for the obsessive-compulsive personalities that head various regulatory agencies.
Thierer specializes in innovation, entrepreneurialism, Internet, and free-speech issues, with a particular focus on the public policy concerns surrounding emerging technologies.
From excessive playground rules to ride-sharing red tape, signs of the permission society are everywhere. Thierer says that legitimate concerns about new technology need not stymie innovation in areas that can make all of our lives better.
Is it sometimes better to ask forgiveness than permission?
Jordan Peterson took the world by storm with his somber life lessons to YouTube disciples. He codified his appeal for order in his book, “12 Rules for Life.” F.H. Buckley – a Canadian like Peterson – has outlined a very different set of rules in response to what he sees as a shortage of curiosity in the modern age. Curiosity and Its Twelve Rules for Life is the latest book from the wide-ranging author, scholar, GMU law professor, and frequent guest on my show.
Buckley introduces his new “rules” less as a self-help book than an antidote to the somewhat dour outlook of Peterson’s book, which Buckley says was written for people living in cold, harsh northern latitudes (like Canada). He exhorts Americans to think differently – embracing more risk and uncertainty in pursuit of originality, dynamism, and a life well-lived. The first rule? Ditch rules (he says they deprive us of a certain kind of responsibility and moral freedom).
While my previous conversations with Buckley have dealt with concrete topics – from the administrative state, to social media censorship, to “American Secession” – this week we try something different. I will ask Buckley – a Canadian-born American citizen – how curiosity has set the United States apart from the rest of the world in times past. What do we lose when our curiosity fades? Can American capitalism survive if we don’t produce new crops of entrepreneurs with an insatiable curiosity and drive for risk and reward? Perhaps being curious results in less order and more chaos, but it seems to me to be an essential part of being free.
The Biden administration has ambitious plans to spend over $2 trillion – an alleged “one-time” capital investment in our nation’s infrastructure. This spending is to be paid for largely by higher taxes on corporations. Biden’s “soak the rich” campaign rhetoric included a promise not to raise taxes on anyone earning under $400,000 a year. My question: Is his proposal to raise the corporate income tax rate from 21 to 28% breaking his promise?
Who bears the burden? This week, I welcome the Wall Street Journal’s U.S tax policy reporter Richard Rubin to the show to help break down the concept of tax incidence, and explore the hidden downstream effects of increasing taxes on “the rich.” Rubin is a neutral observer with no particular agenda other than to help readers understand what to expect when politicians in Washington D.C. change the tax code.
The key question, Rubin says, is who actually pays the price? The corporations themselves? Corporate profits will suffer, as Biden seems to expect, as will the shareholders. But what about workers who depend on corporate investment in capital to enhance their productivity, and pay them living wages?
Jobs, Jobs, Jobs The President assures us that the infrastructure bill will boost jobs, but we must always make visible the unseen effects of pulling a dollar out of the private sector in order to spend it elsewhere.
Property is a concept at once so simple that a 4-year-old can grasp it, yet so complex that the greatest legal minds have not been able to formally settle on a definition.
Law students are presented with the classic case of Pierson v. Post to illustrate how a dispute over the rightful owner of a fox carcass cannot be settled without surveying a whole host of historical legal treatises.
Pinning Down Property
Bart J. Wilson is a Professor of Economics and Law and the Donald P. Kennedy Endowed Chair in Economics and Law at Chapman University, where he co-founded the Smith Institute for Political Economy and Philosophy, for which he serves as the director.
His economic research aims to better understand humans as we interact with each other and our environment - especially with respect to things that can be considered as “yours” and “mine,” i.e., private property.
His new book, The Property Species: Mine, Yours, and the Human Mind, is one of the most comprehensive studies ever undertaken of how we come to own stuff, and from whence this essential concept arises.
Not long ago, the word “socialism” was something of a taboo. Following the failed Soviet experiment in hardcore socialism, most Americans of a certain age still shudder at the prospect. Libertarians schooled in Friedrich Hayek’s writings have learned to instinctively resist even the smallest encroachments of government ownership into the means of production. But have we perhaps learned a lesson too well?
Revisiting Socialism Every so often, I like to re-assess my fundamental beliefs by inviting highly intelligent people to make the case for ideas like socialism on my program. A glance through my show archives reveals that I'm long overdue for a challenge, and John B. Judis is the perfect man for the job.
John is Editor-At-Large at Talking Points Memo and author of eight books, including most recently The Socialist Awakening – the last in his trilogy of books on the revival of the doctrines of nationalism, populism, and now, the "S" word.
Venezuela or Sweden – Which Way for the New Socialist Man? Judis observed how Trump used populism to promote a nationalist agenda, and calls on today's progressives to use these same populist forces to advance a rebranded socialist program.
For Judis, Bernie Sanders is the poster-child of the evolution of socialism, from orthodox Marxist ideology calling for imminent revolution to an incremental approach of expanding the power of labor over capital in a modern "mixed economy." Where I see a flashing red DANGER sign in Sanders' appeal to young people, Judis sees a sign of hope.
Is Judis’s vision compatible with a robust economy, free markets, and individual autonomy, or will a single step toward Scandinavian-style socialism set us down the "Road to Serfdom"? Can socialists learn from the mistakes of the past, or are they doomed to be relegated to the dustbin of history?
If you couldn’t listen live, be sure to subscribe to the podcast and leave a 5-star review.
In January of 1776, Thomas Paine anonymously penned a radical proposal for American independence. “Common Sense,” the title of his pamphlet, has been a rallying cry for American patriots since our founding and continues to unite a dissatisfied public in the pursuit of better governance.
Today, a new Common Sense Party of California – led by Quentin Kopp and Tom Campbell – aims to free Californians from the yoke of single-party rule.
Ending One-Party Rule, Once and For All
California has problems. From drought to fires, a bankrupt pension system, homelessness, unemployment, and housing crises, the only “solutions” our leaders have offered are more regulation, higher taxes, and the declaration of a permanent state of emergency.
The primary crisis, however, is the lack of leadership.
The Democratic Party has failed liberal and conservative voters alike. Lacking serious competition from an increasingly irrelevant GOP, our legislature has let special interests write the laws – that is, when “Emperor Newsom” isn’t exercising indefinite and dubious “emergency powers.”
Help is On the Way
Meanwhile, former U.S. Congressman and California state senator Tom Campbell has been laying the groundwork for an independent third party that could run serious contenders for the state office as soon as 2022. Outside of his political career, Campbell has served as Dean of Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law, a Dean and professor at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, and Professor of Law at Stanford.
Campbell joined me to outline his vision of a party of principles and independence from political monopoly run by special interests. We’ll also discuss the ever-important question of separation of powers in the context of federalism and California’s COVID policy.
After learning about the Common Sense Party from Judge Quentin Kopp last fall, I’ve been eager to get an update. Signature gathering to get on the ballot was put on hold by the pandemic, but Campbell and Kopp are finally getting back to work. If the recall movement is any indicator of Californian’s dissatisfaction with the status quo, they should have no trouble getting the 70,000 required signatures to get on the ballot.
If you couldn’t listen live, be sure to subscribe to the podcast and leave a 5-star review.
While Biden's idea of a solution includes cash payments to would-be immigrants to get them to stay in their home countries, Alex has a better plan that also doesn't cost nearly as much: "Encourage free trade, end the drug war, and liberalize immigration," he says. Of course, the President is not entirely to blame for 150 years of bad immigration law - ultimately it's up to Congress to replace the patchwork of executive orders with a rational framework and plan for naturalizing future American immigrants, while disincentivizing dangerous illegal crossings. Wretched Refuse? Alex Nowrasteh - my go-to immigration expert - returns to the show to unpack the root causes of this chaos, and offer practical solutions that don't put the blame on those seeking a better life in America. I was eager to discuss Alex's new book, co-authored with Benjamin Powell, Wretched Refuse? The Political Economy of Immigration and Institutions (Cambridge University Press, 2020). We grappled with the political problem of immigration reform, along with the misconceptions underlying nativist hostility to more open immigration.
When Steven B. Smith told his Yale colleagues about the topic of the book he was working on – Reclaiming Patriotism in an Age of Extremes– he was met with bewildered and even troubled looks. Perhaps they viewed patriotism (following British critic of the American Revolution Samuel Johnson) as the last refuge of scoundrels. Or perhaps something else is at work that has turned Americans off to the idea of love for one's country. There seems to be a skepticism of our own history and national values, which in the extreme erodes any semblance of patriotism.
Smith is careful to distinguish patriotism from nationalism, which often accompanies ethnic chauvinism, while also warning against the dangers of excessive cosmopolitanism that is so fashionable among elites in academic institutions and government.
Can patriotism be reclaimed in a way that brings these two extremes of American politics closer together under one banner? It turns out a certain amount of skepticism about America can be healthy and is even part of what makes our country so great. Professor Smith joined me live to help me understand first of all why patriotism has gotten such a bad rap, and secondly, how it can be revived without stoking the flames of international conflict or invoking a dangerous "us vs. them" mentality.
When Steven B. Smith told his Yale colleagues about the topic of the book he was working on – Reclaiming Patriotism in an Age of Extremes– he was met with bewildered and even troubled looks. Perhaps they viewed patriotism (following British critic of the American Revolution Samuel Johnson) as the last refuge of scoundrels. Or perhaps something else is at work that has turned Americans off to the idea of love for one's country. There seems to be a skepticism of our own history and national values, which in the extreme erodes any semblance of patriotism.
Smith is careful to distinguish patriotism from nationalism, which often accompanies ethnic chauvinism, while also warning against the dangers of excessive cosmopolitanism that is so fashionable among elites in academic institutions and government.
Can patriotism be reclaimed in a way that brings these two extremes of American politics closer together under one banner? It turns out a certain amount of skepticism about America can be healthy and is even part of what makes our country so great. Professor Smith joined me to help me understand first of all why patriotism has gotten such a bad rap, and secondly, how it can be revived without stoking the flames of international conflict or invoking a dangerous "us vs. them" mentality.
Preston Cooper is a PhD student in George Mason University’s economics program and a visiting fellow at The Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, whose studies have led him to a number of under-publicized conclusions about the so-called student loan crisis.
First of all, blanket forgiveness of student loan debt would be far more costly than most people imagine – totaling more than all spending on antipoverty programs over the past several decades.
Second, those with the largest sums of debt are generally those who have graduated with reasonably valuable degrees, who are on their way to paying those debts down. The people most likely to be in default are those who incurred smaller debts from one or two semesters of college before dropping out, and failing to find well-paying work.
Finally, for those in this latter category, there are already programs available to alleviate the often crushing burden of student loan debt. These programs, including so-called IDR (income-driven repayment) plans, are much more helpful than the kinds of “debt forgiveness” being proposed by the Biden administration ($10,000 per student). In other words, call off the student loan debt jubilee.
Cooper joined me to discuss how we got to the point where the educational system produces so many poor debtors, and what we can do to resolve this problem going forward – without breaking the bank or benefitting the relatively privileged at the expense of the poor American taxpayer.
Dr. Jeffrey Singer is no “anti-vaxxer.” The Arizona-based surgeon and senior fellow at the Cato Institute has written and spoken clearly about his belief that the COVID vaccines are safe and effective, and that those who get vaccinated can return to normal activities like flying, indoor dining and visiting friends and family.
However, Singer also opposes mandatory vaccination from both a strategic and moral standpoint. When the government has to use force to induce compliance, the argument has already been lost. Skeptics, Singer points out, will be less trusting of the safety if they are forced to get the jab.
In quantum mechanics, the Totalitarian Principle states that "everything that is not forbidden is compulsory." The government's botched rollout of the vaccine seems to be following a similar pattern. Millions of potentially live-saving AstraZeneca vaccines remain held up in a warehouse in Ohio due to regulatory hurdles, while at the same time politicians like New York's Governor Cuomo are pushing a kind of of mandatory vaccination with "health passports."
Making matters worse, Dr. Jeffrey Singer points out that the messaging from people like Dr. Fauci has been subpar at best. Rather than communicating that the vaccines are safe and effective, and that those who receive them can return to normal life, Fauci and others continue to lecture that little will change with the vaccine. He seems to be saying, “Keep masking. No hugging. No going out to eat. Just keep following the rules, even if it means an endless lockdown and ratcheting up of government's permanent authority.”
What kind of message does this send to those who already have “vaccine hesitancy”? Where's the incentive to take the risk?
Dr. Singer joined the show to clear up this confusing messaging and discuss the actual risks/reward ratio of the vaccines, as well as the all-important consideration of the freedom to make a decision for yourself.
Is a more prosperous world with less government intervention possible? Trevor Burrus of The Cato Institute joined me to discuss the constitutionality of rent control and the related issue of expanding the "libertarian imagination,” in a world filled with statist dreamers.
Bernie Sanders is obsessed with a vision of a national rent control policy, complete with a “Renter’s Bill of Rights.” However, this imaginary bill of rights couldn’t exist without violating the original bill of rights - in particular, the Fifth Amendment’s “takings clause,” which guarantees that private land cannot be taken for public use without “just compensation.”
Burrus, a senior fellow at Cato’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies and editor‐in‐chief of the Cato Supreme Court Review, has helped file a friend-of-the-court brief in defense of NYC landlords whose rights have been violated by a new set of “rent stabilization laws.” Burrus notes that “The right to exclude people from occupying your property is obviously central to the concept of ‘property.’”
Among other illegal “takings” embedded in the law, the latest rent control push forces owners to transfer a lease from the original renter to their relatives. Advocates will argue that rent control helps the poor afford housing in areas where they otherwise couldn’t live. However, 93% of economists already agree that rent control hurts the very people it’s trying to help by restricting the supply, and decreasing the quality of the rentals on the market.
We might consider shifting our focus from doing more studies on rent control to trying to win hearts and minds. Burrus helped me imagine what city life could be like in New York if property owners were free to set rents at the market rate, and developers were allowed to build new real estate to meet the resulting demand. If you take the red pill, you’ll never look at our cities or government the same way again.
Gavin Newsom took to The View this week to launch his national “anti-recall campaign,” brazenly claiming that the effort to oust him from office is coming from of a small number of Trumpists and conspiracy theorists.
Contrary to Newsom’s polished talking points, a majority of Californians are fed up with his hypocrisy, corruption, abuse of powers, and neglect of real issues in our state. A new poll shows that 58.3% of Californians oppose his re-election. State assemblyman Kevin Kiley calls it the largest citizen’s movement in our state’s history, and it appears to have well over the required number of signatures to force an actual vote.
Recall Newsom: The Case Against America's Most Corrupt Governor
Kiley was willing to give Newsom the benefit of the doubt when COVID struck – seeking unity among Californians, and proposing legislation to tackle the challenges posed by the pandemic in line with the checks and balances laid out in our state Constitution. Newsom, however, wasn’t having it.
The Governor abused his temporary emergency powers, extending them indefinitely, and passed executive orders left and right that benefitted his donors and California’s most powerful special interests.
Now, thanks in part to a lawsuit brought by Rep. Kiley and the grassroots “Recall Gavin” movement making its way to the ballot, the chickens are finally coming home to roost.
Kiley – a leader of the citizens’ movement to recall Gavin – joined me to provide the “PSA” version of his eye-opening and infuriating new book, Recall Newsom: The Case Against America’s Most Corrupt Governor. If you haven’t been closely following the scandals, lawlessness and incompetence of our state’s leadership, this is a must-listen program. Tune in live, and share the link with everyone you know.
Think Newsom and his pals in the California Teachers Association were just following the “science” when they closed schools for longer than any other state? Think again.
Newsom has been caught usurping the legislature’s job in violation of the law. Yet as the judge who ruled against him noted, Newsom remains unapologetic and is far from relinquishing his authoritarian grip. With the recall vote now all but a certainty, it’s time for We the People to step up and demand a change.
Can a meme - a satirical piece of "fake news" from 2016 - be illegal? At the time, it may have fooled some people into voting online. More recently, the disseminator - infamous meme-maker "Ricky Vaughn" - has been charged with a crime. In Tablet Magazine, Eugene Volokh searches in vain for the statute he violated: It's not obvious that deceiving someone into voting in an invalid way qualifies as "injur[ing]" or "oppress[ing]." … Alleged lies about the government or national security or the economy could also be prosecuted, if the government thought they were intended to discourage people from voting. Some might applaud that, on the theory that the law should do more to punish political lies generally. But as we saw above, many courts are quite skeptical about general bans on lies in elections. The legendary legal scholar and blogger behind The Volokh Conspiracy joined me to discuss this troubling precedent for free speech. We also discuss the trend towards overbroad injunctions against free speech in age where social media makes talk cheap. Eugene Volokh is a professor of First Amendment law at UCLA School of Law, and the co-founder of the law professor blog , found at Reason.com. He is also executive editor of the new Journal of Free Speech Law .
took less than a month for the Biden administration to start dropping bombs on the Middle East. Once again, the strikes are in Syria, in response to an alleged attack on US troops in Iraq. Now, both a Republican and Democratic President have ignored the will of the Iraqi people, who voted last year to expel all foreign troops from their country. So much for spreading democracy abroad… What recourse does the private Iraqi or U.S. citizen have against a state power bent on intervening in distant lands? The radical libertarian must be content to drop ideas - not bombs. Our peaceful pact, the non-aggression principle, prevents us from using coercion, even when the State egregiously violates the Constitution and international law. And so we are left with ideas. Fortunately, in the long run, ideas and memes may be more powerful than bombs and fighter planes. Jeff Deist - President of the Mises Institute - joined me to close out this week's celebration of #RothbardWeek, which began on the late great libertarian scholar's birthday on Monday. We discussed the things that make for wealth and peace, and those things that thwart them.
Jennifer J. Schulp – the Director of Financial Regulation Studies, Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives for the Cato Institute – recently delivered testimony on the subject before the House Committee on Financial Services. In it, she defends “retail investing,” i.e., participation by everyday people in the markets alongside more sophisticated institutional investing.
New technology and app-based trading platforms like Robinhood have enabled a new class of investors to make small, highly leveraged bets. The stereotype has been that a majority of these retails investors are no match for the wit and resources of the “smart" money” on Wall Street. But when a band of video-game-loving GameStop loyalists on Reddit saw the usual suspects short-selling $GME into oblivion, they saw an opportunity to push back and send the stock price sky high. This left hedge funds with short positions (like Melvin Capital) holding the bag to the tune of billions of dollars owed to those to whom they promised to buy back the shares which they lent out at the lower price.
Unsurprisingly, both hedge funds and regulators are now calling for more oversight of retail investment, calling it “market manipulation.” The new investors in GameStop who contributed to the stock price rally say that they’re only doing what the hedge funds have been doing all along – with the roles reversed.
Jennifer joins me this Sunday to explain why restricting retail investors’ access to the markets would be a mistake with likely unintended consequences. Who’s to say that the Reddit mob didn’t have better information than the “smart money”? And what about freedom of contract?
Is this just another example of pitchfork populism run amok, or are we seeing markets evolve into something even better and more efficient at aggregating information?
Critics of social media’s monopoly power like Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz might be surprised to learn that they have much in common with progressive broadcast reformers of the mid-20th century.
In his book The Radio Right: How a Band of Broadcasters Took on the Federal Government and Built the Modern Conservative Movement, Paul Matzko, Editor for Tech and Innovation at Cato’s Libertarianism.org, documents the fascinating history of how the “Fairness Doctrine” was used to undermine the free speech rights of conservative radio broadcasters. From the Kennedy until Carter, Presidents weaponized FCC regulations to target dissenting voices under the guise of the public interest.
As a long-time radio host and active user of social media, I want to see free speech flourish. Does that mean requiring radio stations to give equal airtime to competing points of view as the Fairness Doctrine required? Or forcing social media companies to host every conservative point of view on their platforms, as Hawley’s reforms would require them to do?
Perhaps today’s conservative crusaders against Facebook have the “free speech” argument backwards. I’d much rather live in a world where government has less power to regulate all media – whether traditional print, radio, or modern social media and podcasting.
Tune to hear Paul Matzko tell “The Sordid History of the Fairness Doctrine” and call in with your questions at any time during the show.
With no end to California’s lockdowns in sight, it’s becoming clear that our state’s Bill of Rights hasn't stopped Governor Gavin Newsom from running roughshod over our constitutional framework. Governors and their bureaucrats have taken on an unprecedented number of legislative functions – not allowing a good crisis to go waste – and using the pandemic to justify unconstitutional lockdowns
It doesn’t matter how dangerous you think COVID is - state legislatures and courts have delayed too long in reasserting their constitutional roles. Where did Newsom get the authority to designate which businesses are essential and non-essential?
Daniel Dew, Legal Policy Director of the Pacific Legal Foundation, joins me to charge our officials to reclaim their responsibilities in overturning gubernatorial "emergency powers." Read Daniel’s latest for The Hill and you will understand how the policies of last spring and summer have been turned into seemingly permanent new power – just as my book Essential Liberties predicted.
Daniel and I discuss PLF’s latest legal challenges to Newsom’s unlawful color-code shutdown scheme. It’s Code Red for our liberties when our leaders violate seperation of powers so blatantly.
the last days of his term, we might label Wednesday’s botched rally and final electoral college vote as “checkmate” for the lame duck.
Is this how the Trump presidency ends? With both a whimper and a bang?
Perhaps this is the time to leave the echo chambers of mainstream and social media to reflect on not just the last year, but the last four. Joining me this Sunday is Reason Magazine’s editor-at-large, Nick Gillespie. Nick will help guide my retrospective.
We will also discuss the rather stunning events of this week at the Capitol.
How will this bizarre period be remembered, and who will write the story? Listen or read the transcript, as Nick and I dictate history’s first draft aloud, on the show of ideas.
During the 1960s, images of Cadillac-driving "Welfare Queens" were conjured up in the popular imagination to highlight abuses of the government dole. Despite the eventual welfare reform of the 1990s, both Congress and the American people continue to have a huge blindspot for a different kind of welfare that has made true kings and queens out of those who were not even poor to begin with - who might instead have already been classified as the nobility. Call it the revolving door, corporate welfare, or cronyism - this Welfare for the Rich is alive and well, as Phil Harvey and Lisa Conyers document in their book of the same name. Lisa Conyers joins me for the full hour this Sunday to discuss the new face of welfare kings and queens (and their enablers), from "sugar daddies" to sports stadiums.
Maggie McNeill, aka " The Honest Courtesan," returns to the show this Sunday to discuss her latest article for Reason Magazine on a creeping threat to free speech. She reports how Visa and Mastercard have revoked credit card payments for PornHub under intense political pressure from progressive puritans and social conservatives alike. While non-users of the platform may think this won't affect them, it is likely only the beginning of a strong push - led by a new bipartisan coalition - to censor large swaths of the internet and eliminate so-called "Section 230" protections. Don't miss our live (and uncensored) discussion, this Sunday (12/27) at 8am PACIFIC. In addition to her background as a librarian, McNeill has worked as a sex worker for much of her adult life. Her frank and compelling blog ( meticulously indexed) sheds light on the many myths and misconceptions surrounding her chosen profession. Contrary to what the Nicolas Kristoffs and Josh Hawleys of the world would have you believe, not every working girl or actor in pornography is a victim of abuse or sex trafficking. Read for yourself and find out (Safe For Work). McNeill explains why criminalization of sex worker backfires, and why we should all be concerned about our free speech rights given the way the political winds are blowing.
2020, Federal spending broke the $5 trillion barrier for the first time. In fact, it smashed through it - rising from $4.5 to $6.6 trillion. Compare that to 2009 - the year of the stimulus package - when spending rose just $500 billion over the previous year, and you will get a sense for just how deep the rabbit hole now goes.
Chris Edwards is my go-to guest for all matters related to government spending. As director of tax policy for the Cato Institute and head of the Downsizing Government project, Edwards has put federal spending into context. This Sunday, he joins the program to help me and my listeners recover from the sense of vertigo - standing on the precipice - as we await the inevitable rise in taxes in the decades to come.
“Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.” - H.L. Mencken California is going back on lockdown — once again serving up a backwards role model of command-and-control Federalism for the rest of the country. Meanwhile, politicians like Governor Newsom and NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio are epitomizing “Restrictions for thee, but not for me,” with their forced apologies for dining out and going to the gym respectively while regular Americans are being fined or even arrested for similar behavior. Jon Miltimore is not having it. The Managing Editor of the Foundation for Economic Education is something of a modern day H. L. Mencken. Miltimore has been a stalwart voice of humor and reason during the past 9 months of dour superstition from the mainstream media and government authorities. His latest article contradicts the rationale for new rounds of draconian business closures — citing three studies in prestigious medical journals that all agree: Lockdown stringency has no effect on actual COVID mortality. [ 3 Studies That Show Lockdowns Are Ineffective at Slowing COVID-19 — Foundation for Economic Education Dec. 9] In another series, he “debunks the debunkers” who claim that Sweden’s light-handed approach, recommending rather than mandating avoidance of large indoor gatherings, etc., has failed. Although the media eagerly reported this headlines, it turned out not to be true. And of course there is the issue of masks, which are already mandatory for Californians, and may soon be mandated nation-wide if Biden gets his way. Some county sheriffs are refusing to arrest otherwise law-abiding citizens (following the proper Federalist formula), but where orders are being followed, government force is being revealed as the unjustified farce that it really is. Look no further than the 22-year-old mother who has wrestled to the ground for not wearing a mask in NYC, or the Canadian restaurant owner who was arrested for trespassing on his own property. Mencken would have had a field day. Thankfully, we have people like Jon to expose these abuses of force and the farcical figures behind them.
I am eager to welcome the Cato Institute’s Michael Tanner back to the show of ideas to discuss his recent blog post sketching the contours of a libertarian “anti-racist” policy agenda.
Last time he joined the show, we discussed his book The Inclusive Economy, which I called “the definitive book on libertarian anti-poverty policy.”
This Sunday, we will focus specifically on those laws which disproportionately harm minorities in the United States, and why a subtractive approach that leaves people “free to choose” is superior to new policies rife with unintended consequences. Tanner will explain why libertarians should embrace the banner of anti-racism, albeit by proposing alternative means to achieve it than the usual Social Justice Warrior’s approach.
I will also use the opportunity to celebrate the life of Walter E. Williams (1936-2020), the George Mason University economics professor, whose teaching brought clarity, wit and wisdom to bear on the subjects of social justice and anti-racism. Williams, perhaps more than any other figure, understood the market’s power to conquer artificial barriers like racial discrimination. Walter’s passing is huge loss for classical liberals, but his legacy lives on in the work of scholars like Michael Tanner.
Join our conversation live this Sunday (12/6), at 8am PACIFIC time. As always, your calls are welcome.
The "Doctor for Liberty" explains how special interests raise drug prices and undermine the right to self-medicate.
David Lesperance is an international tax and immigration expert who sees the writing on the wall for both High Net Worth individuals (HNWIs) who remain in places like the United States, and the politicians who are depending on these Golden Geese to stay. His firm, Lesperance & Associates helps clients select from a menu of more favorable jurisdictions to legally keep as much of their wealth as possible. This year alone, a record 6,045 Americans renounced their citizenship, and many more obtained "back up" citizenship in counties like Cyprus - including former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. While progressive taxation schemes like Biden's might sound good on paper, the end result is a shrinking and fragile tax base as fewer and fewer rich stick around to get "soaked."
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David joined me to talk about the options for HNWIs, and the danger to countries like the United States of going the way of France or the UK in their treatment of their Golden Geese. We will also discuss how average Americans can achieve the freedoms that libertarians value without convincing a majority of voters of the merits of libertarian principles.
The state of the Electoral College is perhaps the most widely discussed systemic issue related to the presidential election. If the winner of the popular vote loses the general election, we are bound to hear that the result is illegitimate - even if the strategies pursued under an EC system are different than what would have resulted under a pure popular vote. Ray Haynes is former member of the California state Senate and Assembly and champion of a variation on the national popular vote - he joins me this Sunday to offer insights into the history of the initiative, its current status, and the widespread positive effects it would have on the American people. Haynes notes that, "Republicans spend all of their time attempting to persuade moderate voters in narrow regions of the battleground states to vote Republican. We get bad policy proposals from conservative candidates for president to win moderate voters in Cleveland and Miami to win Ohio and Florida." Last month, I hosted American Enterprise Institute fellow Peter J. Wallison in a lively conversation about the benefits of the Electoral College system. Tune in to hear Haynes's alternative perspective, which would maintain the state-based Electoral College system, while still electing the winner of the popular vote.
What do Elizabeth Warren and Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) have in common? They both want to break up Big Tech. Last month, the DOJ filed the highest-profile antitrust lawsuit since the Microsoft case of the late 90s, highlighting conservatives' ongoing concerns about bias, censorship, and even election meddling by Big Tech - specifically Google. There's no doubt that social media giants like Twitter and Google have increasingly begun muting certain voices, including the nation's oldest newspaper, The New York Post, and even the President himself. The post-election frenzy to take control of the narrative is further inflaming the debate, with conservatives loudening their calls for trustbusting action - a la the railroads and Standard Oil in the 19th-century. Ryan Young, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, warns that categorizing Google et al. as monopolies subject to heavy-handed regulation would be a mistake, especially with the possibility of an incoming Biden administration. Tune in as we discuss the fallout from the election and claims that the media - facilitated by Big Tech - is colluding with the Biden campaign to sway the election. Ryan will expand on his "Case Against Antitrust" in the current context, and we will take your calls any time during the hour. Although, it's clear that "Big Tech" companies like Google, Apple and Twitter are in the tank for the Democrats, their bias poses no serious obstacle to staying informed as long as you diversify your news sources and listen to independent shows like this one. There is no great threat to competition in the market for news and information - to the contrary, the internet has given us more options than we could have dreamed of. Don't miss it.
According to a certain t-shirt slogan, “Politics ruins everything.” Yet it somehow still manages to insert itself into conversation almost as frequently as the weather. And like the weather, it’s the conditions of our politics that dictate whether not it does indeed “ruin everything “or, instead, support other activities of a healthy society. Kevin Vallier is a Professor of Philosophy at Bowling Green State University, a Bleeding Heart Libertarian, and a student of diverse thinkers from F.A. Hayek to John Rawls. He joins me this Sunday to discuss the “Mandatory PPE” needed for engaging in any political conversation in the coming weeks of Total War between the two dominant factions of the American political landscape. No masks or gloves are required. Rather, we will be discussing a different kind of PPE — the interdisciplinary study of Philosophy, Politics and Economics — which seeks out a higher caliber of discussion, and better ways to disagree Vallier, whose previous book asked “Must Politics Be War?,” has a new treatise: Trust in a Polarized Age. His research, combining philosophical rigor with observational data on the body politic, aims to reverse the decay resulting from an across-the-board decline in social trust. Divergent norms and bad-faith dialogues have split Americans along tribal party lines. In a sense, Vallier argues, we are wired for war against the political other. More optimistically, however, he explains how awareness of this fact can lead to the creation of institutions that allow for healthy disagreement on ultimate values. Some say that we are already in a kind of civil war. If our national politics is this broken, we might think that a pluralistic society is impossible. However, Vallier affirms that political peace and a broad consensus on basic liberal rights is still possible if we elevate the values of reason, liberty and freedom of association above war, tribalism, and the desire to dominate those we disagree with.
Bradford R. Kane is an attorney, Washington D.C. insider, and author of Pitchfork Populism: 10 Poliitcal Forces that Shaped an Election and Continue to Change America. A combination of American history, current events, and political science, the book gives us insight into how one person - Donald Trump - managed to turn the political system upside down, and change the way the game is played. To take just one example, from Chapter 8 of Kane's book, how is it that progressives have suddenly discovered the virtues of federalism, and even of "state's rights," while many conservatives and libertarians have a newfound appreciation for executive authority? If you want to understand democracy in America, it's no longer enough to have read de Toqueville. Read the book or catch this Sunday's show to understand how changing demographics, fragmentation of media, and debates over trade and globalization will play out in 2020 and beyond. Kane and I get into some prognostication about what will transpire on November 3rd, November 4th and the days leading up to the inauguration.
Oct. 13, 2020
"I have never understood why it is greed to want to keep the money you have earned, but not greed to want to take somebody else's money." – Thomas Sowell
On Monday, the Senate is scheduled to kick off confirmation hearings for Judge Amy Coney Barrett. The stakes are high, with the seat of the most prominent liberal Supreme Court Justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, potentially being filled by a conservative in the mold of her mentor, Antonin Scalia.
Georgetown Constitutional Law Professor Randy Barnett argued before the late Justice Ginsburg, and knows Ginsburg’s prospective replacement personally. While he was on the opposite side of the ideological divide from Justice Ginsburg, he honored her recently in a Washington Post column as a gracious presence, who assisted him in an oral argument before the Supreme Court. And while Barnett and Barrett’s judicial philosophies are more closely aligned, Barrett debated some of the finer points of Professor Barnett’s book Our Republican Constitution insofar as he argues against judicial restraint when it comes to defending economic liberties.
While a full discussion of judicial philosophy is beyond the scope of a single hour on my show, I’m delighted to have Professor Barnett joining me this Sunday to discuss what we can expect in the weeks to come as Judge Barrett squares off against Vice Presidential candidate and Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member Kamala Harris. We will probe why the Supreme Court has become so heavily politicized and how the stakes have gotten so high.
Many believe that a future Justice Barrett could be the divisive vote on a number of key issues – not just Roe v. Wade but also Obamacare. Since when did nine unelected officials determine the fate of our entire lives?
We will also pick up where Professor Josh Blackman and I left off on the important question of court packing.
The English poet and literary critic Samuel Johnson is often remembered for his exclamation, "Patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels." A Washington Post journalist recently channeled this sentiment in comparing President Trump's proposal for a national patriotic education commission to authoritarian propaganda taught in China, Turkey and Hungary. In fairness to patriots, Samuel Johnson was only criticizing false patriotism used to cover up for ulterior motives. Nikole Hannah-Jones, the lead behind the NY Times' controversial 1619 Project, levies this accusation against the Founding Fathers. She claims the American Revolution was not really about independence, but rather slavery. This same narrative has been embraced in California's new ethnic studies curriculum, but not everyone is having it. Williamson M. Evers Ph.D is the Director of the Independent Institute's Center on Educational Excellence. A founding member of the Hoover Institution's Koret Task Force on K-12 Education, Evers has been warning about the watering down of educational standards in the name of diversity. Evers will join me this Sunday to explain the bewildering vocabulary being taught to schoolchildren, from "Hxrstory" to "Master narrative." This is a must-listen for those who were perplexed during this week's Presidential debate, when Biden claimed that "critical race theory" was really just another term for racial sensitivity training. Trump's "1776 Commission" represents a challenge to the apparent bias of the 1619 Project and related ethnic studies classes. Where the media sees signs of a spiral towards fascism in the attempt to dictate a national curriculum, conservatives see an effort to reverse decades of indoctrination by public schools. The unpopularity of America's founding ideals within academia has trickled down to the elementary and secondary school curricula, where students in California, for example, spend little time learning basic civics or American history. Meanwhile, the left seems to once again be rediscovering the principles of Federalism - arguing that the federal government should stay out of the business of local school districts. To his credit, Governor Gavin Newsom recently vetoed the latest bill, which would have required all California high-schoolers to take an ethnic studies course to graduate. Does the President's commission represent the true patriotism of the American founders or is it, as Johnson put it, the last refuge of scoundrels?
We are quickly approaching the November 3, 2020 general election, and questions are already swirling about whether there will be a clear winner come November 4. After Hillary Clinton's simultaneous popular vote win and electoral college loss in 2016, the NY Times began to criticize the 200+ year old method of electing the President . Their latest article on the topic [ What if We Just Counted Up All the Votes for President and Saw Who Won? By Jesse Wegman, March 13, 2020] argues that a state-by-state winner-takes-all system allows the President to ignore voters in deep Blue states like California and New York. On the right, former California state senator Ray Haynes argues that the electoral college hurts true conservatives, since Republicans have to try to appeal to more moderate voters in swing states. Writing for Law & Liberty, Peter J. Wallison of the American Enterprise Institute argues that the alternative of a national popular vote would cause much greater problems. In defending the framer's original concept, Wallison points out that the system guarantees legitimacy of the results, even when fraud occurs in one location, or when a third party candidate prevents anyone from achieving a majority of nationwide votes. As the prospect of delayed counts for mailed ballots looms, we should all hope for a clear-cut winner. Wallison joined the show this Sunday for the full hour to discuss his recent writings on both the dangers of mail-in ballots and the raison d'etre behind the electoral college.
Reason Magazine provides a public service by reminding us what Kamala Harris would have us forget: Until her recent about-face, Harris was a hardcore drug warrior and draconian prosecutor. Her record as a prosecutor isn't the only thing Harris has to explain heading into the general election. With Joe Biden's health in question, she has quickly become the most important Vice Presidential nominee in recent memory - yet little has been said about her early career in the Bay Area as a District Attorney and rising star in the Democratic Party. This Sunday, I'm joined by former San Francisco Supervisor and Judge Quentin Kopp - an elder statesman and fiercely independent veteran of California politics - to discuss his eye-opening article on a little-known story of corruption from Harris's early days as SF District Attorney. From earning multiple salaries for cushy political appointments, to denying knowledge of a hush-money settlement paid to a top aide over sexual harassment allegations, the Democratic Vice Presidential hopeful has quite a bit of explaining to do. Kopp, who recently resigned from the San Francisco Ethics Commission (calling it a waste of taxpayer dollars), has also became the chief critic of the High Speed Rail effort he led back in 2008. As it stands, he says the project has watered down the original vision too much, while the price tag has exploded. We'll discuss his new effort to found a third party in California for Independents under the banner of "Common Sense " to bring about the change that a majority of Californians want, but which neither party seems capable of delivering.
Don't miss the live conversation, this Sunday (9/6, 8–9am PACIFIC), and call in with your questions for Quentin about Harris, High Speed Rail, or whatever else is on your mind.
The Founders were clear that the maintenance of the American Republic required a certain kind of citizen. Without property owners who have a stake in good governance, they knew the experiment in liberty wouldn't last. Robert E. Wright writes with eloquence and humor about two less-than-funny trends, which have collided this year to produce the biggest blow to American Independence in our nation's history. Forced closures of "non-essential business" and the deference by local police to the widespread destruction of property have gutted America's substantial but shrinking proprietor class. In his AIER article So Long Independence? Wright shares some troubling statistics, including this one: "By the end of July, more than half the companies listed on Yelp were said to be permanently shuttered." [ 55% of businesses closed on Yelp have shut down for good during the coronavirus pandemic - MarketWatch] To interpret this as solely economic news is to miss a more important point about the instability of democracy without widespread property ownership. As G.K. Chesterton once quipped, the problem with capitalism is not that there are too many capitalists, but that there are too few. The consolidation of power in the hands of a smaller number of billionaires means fewer checks on extreme politics of both the right and the left. Wright thinks we've been far too quick to cede power to scientific experts and calls the closure of the economy the worst public policy in a century. He joined me to dig deeper into the long-term political consequences of lockdowns. We will look at California's uniquely damaging policies - many of which preceded COVID - and their effect on the middle class and small business owners.
Casey Mulligan served as the chief of Trump's Council of Economic Advisers from July 2018 to June 2019. During that time, he experienced a different version of the events that have made recent headlines (i.e., Ukrainegate) in other White House "tell-alls." Mulligan's new book, You're Hired! Untold Successes and Failures of a Populist President, has much the same cast of characters as Bolton's recent memoir, but it follows a very different script. Mulligan is an economics professor at University of Chicago and, as such, the focus of his book is on ideas - not attitude. However, we do learn a great deal about the personalities working behind the scenes, including that of the "Tariff Man" himself. Professor Mulligan joins me this Sunday to tell the story of his time crafting analysis and advice on regulations, international trade, immigration and prescription drug policy for the President. A picture emerges of a politically incorrect president who has a hard time admitting he is wrong, but who also listens to his economic advisers (in most situations). Hear from the man who has been called "the smartest man in the White House" how he used supply and demand to advance one of the biggest deregulatory pushes in recent history. Is Trump genuinely opposed to Washington insiders and special interests, or is it a self-serving act to appeal to his populist base? We will compare the legacies of Reagan and Trump on the vital issue of international trade and will also discuss how the continuation of generous unemployment benefits is adding to the costs of pandemic and delaying economic recovery.
it. From Great Wars to Great Depressions, we hope to learn from tragic failures. Ignorance can also prevent us from mimicking the successes along with avoiding the failures. The 1918 "Spanish Flu" pandemic is rife with lessons for those with ears to hear, yet we shouldn't expect the usual talking heads to tell the story when there are flashier headlines to report. Ron Jones - a historical kinesiologist, physical educator and host of the Lean Berets podcast and fitness resource center - is not a typical pundit. In his recent broadcasts via Facebook Live, Jones has muted his own opinions in favor of straight reporting on the archival records from different American cities during the peak of the Spanish Flu (roughly September to December of 1918). Jones has uncovered a treasure trove of data, which can inform our future course as fatalities begin to wane across the country. As a classical P.E. teacher, Jones is particularly concerned with ongoing school closures. The longer we isolate our children at home in front of computer screens all day, Jones speculates, the harder it will ultimately be to smoothly transition back to in-person schooling. Even in 1918, schools tended to re-open just a few weeks after the peak, and close again if necessary. Back then, the mortality rate was significantly higher for the overall population, and even more so for children. In many cities, school workers were at the frontlines of the containment and relief effort, even when schools closed. Today, teachers' unions are setting a dangerous precedent by shielding their members from a comparatively small risk at the expense of vital learning. Ron Jones joined us last week for an in-depth history lesson. We compare the responses of major cities, and helping us frame the hard decisions and trade-offs policymakers and parents are confronted with today. Producer Charlie Deist guest hosts. Charlie and Ron also discuss the health crisis facing the youth, and how government and the public school system have failed to solve the problem.
Glenn Roper is an attorney with the Pacific Legal Foundation, who has been closely following the latest developments at the state and local level. He argues in a recent article that emergency powers such as those being exercised by governors violate the separation of powers written into state constitutions. In Wisconsin, for example, health officials were delegated the authority to make the rules on business re-openings - rules which, if violated, implied criminal penalties including arrest. PLF is keeping tabs on where such rules have been enacted, and defending citizens from unconstitutional closures of their businesses. Governments should uphold separation of powers during COVID-19 | Pacific Legal Foundation As America begins to open up from the COVID-19 pandemic, various state and local stay-at-home orders, and the lifting…pacificlegal.org This Sunday, I will host Roper for the full hour on why a crisis like COVID makes it more important - not less - to enforce a strict separation of powers. If the government is going to take away our rights due to extraordinary circumstances, they must go through the elected legislature. The courts have intervened in Wisconsin, dealing a blow to the "mini-administrative state" there, but elsewhere such as Michigan, the citizens still need help. Tune in live, and support the PLF in their important mission to protect the individual rights of Americans during the COVID-19 crisis.
The Trump administration says that gangs and violent anarchists are out of control, and that governors and mayors aren't doing enough to stop them. Accordingly, they're sending in the feds, and we are witnessing Robert Higgs's "Ratchet Effect" in real time. Federal Government is using the latest crisis to justify new incursions on our liberties. Patrick Eddington, a research fellow in homeland security and civil liberties at the Cato Institute, says that the recent DHS action in Portland is an experiment on unwitting human test subjects. The preliminary results seem to have emboldened the administrative state to push forward with "Operation Legend" - an aggressive federal law enforcement action in cities across the country. President Trump says that an alphabet soup of agencies - led by the DOJ - has "no choice but to get involved." "The FBI, ATF, DEA, U.S. Marshals Service and Homeland Security will together be sending hundreds of skilled law enforcement officers to Chicago to help drive down violent crime," said Trump on Wednesday, before Attorney General William Barr took to the podium to justify his deployment of anti-gang task forces engaged in everything from a ramped-up War on Drugs to counter-protests against Black Lives Matter and related groups.
Terry Pell of the Center for Individual Rights and his plaintiff Jeffrey Barke on California's unconstitutional Section 3550.
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Millions of Americans have discovered that working as an independent contractor offers them freedom and flexibility. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo would have you believe that they are all victims of unfair labor practices – akin to the seamstresses who tragically perished in the over-crowded Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in 1911.
“As FDR, Al Smith, and Frances Perkins protected workers after the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, we too must protect workers from today's threat, which is economic exploitation." – Andrew Cuomo
Never mind that 80% of independent contractors say they prefer the more flexible arrangement to being salaried employees – with all of the restrictions and burdens that come with the benefits. State legislatures across the country, following California’s lead, are introducing legislation in an attempt to force companies like Uber to reclassify their drivers from independent contractors to employees. So far, the primary result in California has been Uber and others fighting back in court, while once-thriving independent contractors lose income in more than 300 types of careers identified so far.
California was the first state to pass its version of this kind of misguided worker “protection” – AB 5. The bill was signed last year by Governor Newsom and went into effect on January 1. Kim Kavin, a freelance writer and co-founder of Fight for Freelancers New Jersey, has a feature in the latest edition of Reason [I Don’t Want To Be Anybody’s Employee] showing how these laws – now proliferating in other states including New York and New Jersey – are harming the people they are intended to help. Instead of converting contractors to employees, thousands of contractors lost work.
Facing the prospect of unemployment, freelancers are fighting back, alongside minority small-business owners who are disproportionately hurt by the onerous new hiring requirements. “AB5 has already crushed thousands of Black businesses and will keep more form operating in the gig economy,” said California Assemblyman Kevin Kiley, echoing a statement issued by the California Black Chamber of Commerce.
Kim joins the show this Sunday to talk about the failure of legislators and their enablers in media to confront the full range of unintended consequences. It’s not just higher Uber fees, as the NY Times editorial board claims.
We discuss Joe Biden’s recent endorsement of bills like AB 5, and why a federal version would be tragic for the most vulnerable workers.
Tune in to learn how we can stop the law before it devastates the gig economy – one of the last remaining pockets of the free market – only on the show of #ideasnotattitude.
We are witnessing yet another purge on major social media networks from Twitter to YouTube. Conservative and libertarian voices are among those being banned or suspended for vague violations of the terms of service, including Stefan Molyneux, whose 15-year old channel was flagged for promoting “hate speech.”
Meanwhile, the general climate of free speech and expression is perhaps at an all time low, with cancel culture accelerating to the point that we might question how much longer our 1st Amendment protections will be worth anything.
However, I’ve taken a stand against the government regulation of social media, despite the de-platforming of voices that are quote-unquote “on our side.” The reason has to do with these companies’ status as private actors, who themselves have speech rights. To force them to publish content against their will - no matter how mild or offensive - cuts against the Framers’ vision of the 1st Amendment.
John Samples, Vice President of the Cato Institute, is part of a solution that I can get behind. As a member of the Oversight Board, he is among a diverse group of academics that will hold Facebook accountable for its policies to maximize freedom of expression without allowing its users to post harmful content. Admittedly, this is a fine line, but the power always resides in the end with users who are free to exit the platform for “freer” alternatives.
As we’ve seen with this past week’s exodus of conservatives from Twitter to the knock-off app Parler, the problem of content moderation runs much deeper than the ideological leanings of its founders. Parler quickly earned a reputation for being trigger-happy with bans, despite its claim to allow any speech that would be allowed “on the streets of New York City.” Those targeted appear to be people who dared to question that app’s less than transparent terms of service.
Twitter proves that whoever invents and sustains lively discussion on the online equivalent of the public square can get rich. This explains why the big companies are now outsourcing the role of moderation to credible outsiders like the Oversight Board, and have a vested interest in solving the problem.
This Sunday, Samples joined me for the full hour to discuss the process the Oversight Board will use to balance concerns about free speech against the need to prevent certain forms of speech which have never been protected (i.e., inciting violence).
The market of ideas is alive and well on the show of #ideanotattitude.
Supervisor Jeff Hewitt is challenging the County Health Officer on the re-opening of Riverside County.
Like clockwork, we are now seeing a modest spike in COVID-19 cases in states like Arizona, which mostly avoided the first wave of infections that hit big cities like NYC. The lockdown pre-empted many people from getting sick early only, flattened the curve, and delayed the inevitable. Now the spike in cases, and accompanying blip in fatalities, is being hyped by the media to stoke fear and continue lockdowns indefinitely.
Dr. Jeffrey Singer is one of the handful of “voices of reason” I turn to during times like these. The founder of Valley Surgical Clinics in Arizona has joined my show many times to discuss the “seen versus the unseen” in areas like the opioid epidemic. The news tells us all about the overdoses, but never talks about those living with chronic pain who are denied necessary prescription painkillers from their doctors because of draconian regulations.
Likewise, with COVID, we are seeing “Bastiat’s Law” writ large across the entire economy.
Jeff was recently interviewed by Reason’s Nick Gillespie, in which he presented a case study in that which is seen vs. that which is unseen (COVID edition #1,427):
"At first, [Singer] says, the idea was "flattening the curve," or slowing the rate of infection so medical providers were not overwhelmed by the number of cases. Now, he says, the discussion is about making sure no one gets infected, an unrealistic goal for a viral infection in the absence of a vaccine."
Jeff and I pick up where they he and Nick left off – talking about the recent spike in Singer's home state of Arizona - and whether it's something to worry about relative to other causes of death, such as suicides caused by economic desperation, cancers gone undiagnosed or treated, or preventable diseases from children who are falling behind on their vaccination schedule. The last thing we need is a measles epidemic on top of COVID.
We’ll also discuss Jeff’s recent article in the Washington Examiner and the unseen costs of one-size-fits-all government policy.
For all of the missteps and failures of Big Government during in the past several months, most Americans will give the Trump administration credit for shutting down travel from China relatively early on.
This is thought to have “flattened the curve” by delaying the start of the epidemic in the U.S., and giving us time to prepare.
Unfortunately, as Alex Nowrasteh notes, the government did not prepare in that time, and the travel ban may have contributed to a false sense of security. Alex estimates that the ban may have delayed COVID’s arrival by a couple of weeks at most. Now that it’s here, any further executive orders – such as a proposed halt on H1-B high skilled worker visas – would be pointless and counterproductive.
Long-time listeners know that Alex is my show’s resident immigration "myth-buster." We are overdue for a conversation, but that will be remedied – when he returns with a positive agenda for immigration reform which he has compiled with his colleagues at Cato in partnership with several allied organizations. We’ll discuss his new report, “12 New Immigration Ideas for the 21st Century,” featuring Grover Norquist, Robin Hanson, David Bier and others, offering alternatives to the worn-out, failed reforms of blanket amnesty, stricter border controls, and an expanded guest-worker program.
We’ll also discuss the danger of rising xenophobia towards Chinese nationals. Are we headed for a new Chinese Exclusion Act? Hopefully we will veer instead in the direction of Matt Yglesias’s bold but practical idea to open our doors to Hong Kong residents fleeing China’s oppressive regime.
Looking around the country, it might seem like Edward Glaeser was wrong to declare the “Triumph of the City” in his 2011 bestseller of the same name.
COVID-19 revealed the fragility of urban areas like New York City, as millions of inhabitants who could afford to flee have done so – leaving behind struggling unemployed workers and cash-strapped governments.
Brent Orrell of the American Enterprise Institute notes that we are seeing the acceleration of many existing trends – like remote working – which threaten to eviscerate the downtown commercial real estate market, taking city budgets down with them. Brent’s recent Law & Liberty article, Pandemics, Elites, and the Future of the Cities, mirrors many of my thoughts on the future of cities. He will join me this Sunday to explore the themes of his article in more depth.
Back in April, I was one of the first to speculate on the fate of skyscraper office buildings in my webinar on "the Future of Lending: Post-COVID." My verdict is that office space – like the financial services sector that has occupied it in places like NYC – has failed its final exam. To borrow Warren Buffett’s analogy, it took the low tide of Coronavirus to reveal who was swimming naked.
Yet in spite of the inevitable shift towards working-from-home, there are other reasons to be optimistic about cities in general. Glaeser’s main point in The Triumph of Cities was that density enables the in-person meeting-of-minds that drives innovation and creativity. Urban sprawl is a direct result of people’s growing desire to be close to the action while still having enough space to move around. Density is even more environmentally-friendly, since it eliminates the need to drive.
But the same density that drives innovation can also lead to pandemics, rioting, and other forms of social unrest. While the upwardly-mobile have been able to escape to the exurbs or the suburbs, the same low-income people being infected with COVID have no options outside the crowded urban areas in which they reside. I will ask Brent, host of the Hardly Working podcast, how the hit to commercial real estate will affect service workers. We will also discuss the need for visionary leadership by urban elites, who can implement timely zoning reforms and lighten the regulatory load on struggling small businesses.
Don’t miss the conversation as we dissect the latest turmoil in cities across the country and how 2020 will be the year that makes or breaks cities.
Perhaps now is the perfect moment for the New Urbanists, school choice advocates, and civil societarians to bring a free-market revolution to America’s battered cities.
Follow Brent on Twitter – @Orrell_b.
Civil Liability is the Remedy for Police Brutality, says "Constitutional Law Warrior" Clark Neily, Jr.
Hindu mythology holds that the whole world rests on the back of a turtle. What does the turtle rest on? According to legend, “it’s turtles all the way down.”
While many are pushing for one-world-government to address new challenges like Coronavirus, there is another approach that can be dubbed “Federalism all the way down.” In other words, why stop at devolving power from Federal Government to the states? The more we decentralize power, the more people can effectively “vote with their feet” and choose which turtle– er, jurisdiction– they will reside in.
This is one of the core premises of Ilya Somin’s vitally important new book Free To Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom. Somin, a Law professor at George Mason University and blogger at Reason’s The Volokh Conspiracy, has been on my show several times to discuss his work on eminent domain, rational voter ignorance, and most recently, court packing. These topics deal with the delicate balance of powers between majorities and minorities; the voting public and life-time appointed officials. His latest book looks at the most important balance of powers of all – that which exists among the various jurisdictions where people can chose to live.
He finds that the option to vote with one’s feet is often a more powerful lever than the ballot box for getting the political change that we all want, yet feel powerless to achieve.
Tired of calling your congressman or donating to your favorite politicians to no avail? Why not send a stronger message and withdraw your tax dollars from your city or state if you are so unhappy?
Ilya’s new book also contains a bold defense of more open migration from other countries. He takes objections seriously but answers them one-by-one. The right to move should trump the alleged rights of ethnic groups or individuals to exclude on the basis of national origin.
Ilya joined me this Sunday to discuss his new book and the prospects for Federalism in the aftermath of Coronavirus. Will states that innovate safe ways of re-opening their economy be beneficiaries of an exodus out of states that don’t? Could the U.S. relieve global poverty by opening its doors to more immigrants from countries stricken by looming famines?
John Tamny, Director of FreedomWorks's Center for Economic Freedom, makes several important observations about the problem with lockdowns and bans on "non-essential" business that has eluded the so-called "experts": "Experts are routinely called on as the answer to 'crises,' when it's more realistic to assert that the experts are the crisis," he writes in a recent piece for Real Clear Markets. In particular, the one-size-fits all diktats handed down from on high prevent the discovery of information from small-scale experiments. Individuals, acting freely as adults, possess local knowledge, which accumulates and multiplies across the millions of participants in society. This phenomenon has been called "the wisdom of crowds," but perhaps the "wisdom of markets" would be a better term. Thankfully, the crowds are beginning to wake up, and along with them, markets are coming back to life without any central planning required. Buy on AmazonTwo weeks ago, Randal O'Toole showed how government distorts incentives in transportation, and how that distortion has exacerbated the COVID-19 epidemic in New York City via mismanaged mass transit. Yet we continue to pour billions into these failing systems. When the market operates without intervention, mistakes tend to be limited - not subsidized - and the firms and individuals with bad judgment quickly go out of business. Ideally, Tamny notes, the government wouldn't need to declare an end to the shutdown - people could simply re-open as they see fit, taking into account the risks and rewards, and learning from each other's experience. Some will say that this situation is different because of the invisible nature of the coronavirus, and its infectious potential. Tamny is no stranger to this refrain that "this time it's different." He joins me this Sunday to debunk the central planning "one-size-solution" crowd and to discuss his article, "Don't Plan to Reopen; Just Reopen," for the American Institute for Economic Research. We'll dissect the recent stock market rally - is it a Fed-inflated bubble or something more sustainable? Tamny is an optimist, assuming people are allowed to go back to work on their own schedule, rather than on the governors' fickle timing. Finally, we discuss the possibility that states are exceeding their constitutional powers in continuing the lockdowns. Are we witnessing the kinds of "grassroots tyranny" that Clint Bolick warned of decades ago? And if so, should the Federal government step in as Trump seems to want to do, or is there another solution?
The words "never let a good crisis go to waste," spoken by then-Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel, are seared into many libertarians' minds as a concise formula of the central planner's mindset. We've seen massive stimulus rammed through with little deliberation, including fat subsidies for transit agencies. Randal O'Toole, aka " the Antiplanner," has shown how central transportation planning epitomizes the misguided use of federal funds - diverting resources to expensive, energy-inefficient, underutilized "mass transit." As if that weren't bad enough, it's looking like mass transit is a key vector in the spread of mass disease. In his April 17 Cato at Liberty post, ' Why Are Transit Systems Still Running?', O'Toole observes, "I don't think it is a coincidence that 44 percent of all transit rides in 2019 took place in the New York‐northern New Jersey urban area and, at last count, 45 percent of all COVID-19 fatalities were recorded in this same area." So why is the disease vector known as mass transit running while many other industries have been deemed "non-essential"? Once again, the contradictions in the government's response are revealing what most of us already knew - that science always takes a back seat to special interests. Randal "Antiplanner" O'Toole returned to the show this past Sunday to step back from the emotional arguments surrounding COVID-19 and discuss whether it's time to re-assess the role of public transportation in American life. His brand-new report identifies transit as an "urban parasite," sucking up more and more resources despite declining ridership, and a growing maintenance backlog. The report shows the growing irrelevance of transit to most Americans' lives everywhere except NYC, where it is proving relevant but deadly. As transit systems begin to hemorrhage in the wake of even further reduced ridership from fears of contagion, the taxpayer will have to bear more of the burden. Randal suggests privatizing transportation and letting the services stand on their own two legs. While this may seem radical, many have noted how the Coronavirus shutdown has expanded the "Overton Window" - making previously impossible reforms more likely. Perhaps Rahm was right, and we libertarians shouldn't let a good crisis go to waste either.
Since well before the current lockdowns, Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie has been raising an alarm about the monopolistic and over-regulated meat processing industry, which leaves our food supply vulnerable to unexpected disruptions.
It took the COVID-19 crisis to get his colleagues in the House of Representatives to take the issue seriously, but a bill to address looming meat shortages with a local, free-market solution is finally making headway with bipartisan support.
Massie joined the Show of Ideas on Sunday (5/3, 8–9am PACIFIC) with an urgent message for all Americans, as the common-sense reform in his PRIME Act challenges special interests who want to keep a lockdown on smaller-scale meat processing.
Urge your representative to vote for the PRIME Act, and tune into this special show featuring Congressman Massie on his new bill:
Alex Tabarrok on the CDC and FDA's 'Failure of Historic Proportions'
College students who are assigned Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok's Modern Principles of Economics learn the twin concepts of market failure and government failure. To teach the former without the latter, as some textbooks do, is to present a lop-sided picture of the world and to romanticize governmental solutions that often do more harm than good. Coronavirus is making this lesson tragically real, as federal agencies like the CDC and FDA have been caught off-guard by the outbreak and subsequently stoked the public's fears while failing to provide solutions. I was recently joined by Marginal Revolution blogger and George Mason University economics chair Alex Tabarrok. He explained how these agencies' responses to COVID-19 has been a 'Failure of Historic Proportions.' Alex was recently interviewed by Reason's Nick Gillespie on the subject, and elaborates in our interview on the urgent need for government to foster the conditions for markets to function.
Alex also talked about the hindrances to new drug approval per the framework he developed with FDAReview.org. Watch Alex's free online economics courses at MRUniversity.com and listen or read the transcript to understand how the economy can recovery faster with the help of better policy and the "invisible hand."
Last week I shared my curated COVID-19 reading list, which is keeping me relaxed and confident in my belief that we are overreacting. While we should worry about the incursions of civil and economic freedoms being brought about in response, people like Jacob Sullum of Reason and Jeffrey Tucker of AIER are doing a service by calming people down about the virus itself. Don Boudreaux over at Cafe Hayek also deserves special mention for leading me to most of my trusted sources with his blog's daily links. It's hard to keep up with all of the outstanding writing he's highlighted over the past weeks, including his own increasingly relevant review of Robert Higgs's Crisis and Leviathan for the American Institute for Economic Research, and a must-read article for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review on Essential Questions about Essential Medicine. Twitter has reportedly begun to censor non-certified-expert advice on matters related to the coronavirus, so I will limit this Sunday's show to the subject of economics and politics where we are still free to opine (for now). I predict that future economics and political science students will look back in horror at this period - not for the mortality rate, which appears to be marginally higher than an average flu season - but for the acquiescence to draconian restrictions, unprecedented spending, and enlargement of state, local and federal bureaucracy (not to mention the failure of basic functions by the existing apparatus, i.e., FDA). Most media analysis misses what Frédéric Bastiat called "that which is unseen." Dead bodies being carted away by truck to the morgue is a striking image, and is seen by millions on media loop. Business closures, economic hardship, and looming inflation are harder to see and thus get downplayed in the calculus. Trump's "VERY BIG & BOLD" $2 trillion stimulus produces highly visible benefits in the short-term, but the costs are unseen - postponed to be paid by future generations. Don returned to the show to help me settle the question on all thinking people's minds: is it worth it? Is it worth the loss of liberty? Is it worth trillions in damage to the economy? Is it worth the separation from friends, family, and the myriad economic relationships that have been severed? For the sake of argument, Don and I will assume that the more dire predictions about mortality are true. Join us in asking the hard but important questions on the show of idea - not attitude.
Lawrence McQuillan, a Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on Entrepreneurial Innovation at the Independent Institute, connects the dots in his new report on California's dysfunctional housing policy. How to Restore the California Dreamexplains how the "Golden State" became the poster child for high housing costs and, relatedly, homelessness.
Much like the entrepreneurs they serve, the Atlas Network also leverages scarce resources for maximum impact. They have cultivated a global network of think tanks working behind the scenes to advance free market competition and accelerate international development. While the "problem" of development has stymied well-funded academics, and supranational government bodies, Atlas has used the same "engage and exchange" formula time and time again to spur growth and entrepreneurship without accepting a penny from any government or quasi-government institutions.
Matt Warner, the Atlas Network's president, reveals the secrets in his new book Poverty and Freedom: Case Studies on Global Economic Development. Warner recognizes development as an opportunity - not a problem. The case studies from the dozens of Atlas-supported think tanks around the world show that solutions are not handed down from on high by all-knowing government officials but discovered on the ground. Through the broader Poverty and Freedom initiative, Atlas Network is "harnessing local visions for change to free people to carve paths out of poverty." The secret is property rights, aligning incentives, finding key partners and building bottom-up coalitions. Warner is a dissenter in the world of development economics and a self-described "positive deviant."
Constitution geeks, rejoice. The book you've been waiting for has arrived. Repugnant Laws by Keith Whittington (William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Politics at Princeton) takes readers under the hood of our system of checks and balances - examining "Judicial Review of Acts of Congress from the Founding to the Present." Whittington, who writes for my favorite legal blog the Volokh Conspiracy, joins me live this Sunday. He has written a great deal about impeachment lately, but his real constitutional expertise is the main check that the judiciary exercises over the legislature - its ability to overturn state and federal laws which it deems unconstitutional. The power of judicial review was first discovered by the Supreme Court in the infamous case of Marbury v. Madison, in which Chief Justice John Marshall opined that "A Law repugnant to the Constitution is void." (Who else but the courts could decide when a law enacted by Congress is repugnant to the Constitution?) Since then, the makeup of the courts has influenced the direction of policy in subtle but powerful ways. Whittington's book analyzes thousands of cases in which the Supreme Court either upheld or overturned federal laws. He applies the precision of a scientist (a political scientist, that is) to questions of politicization and examines whether an activist judiciary is antidemocratic. RealClear Politics reports that President Trump is "Remaking the Federal Judiciary at a Historic Rate". According to Whittington's data, this will influence political outcomes for decades to come. But while judicial appointees may tend to side with the dominant political coalitions, he notes that they do not make their decisions along strict ideological lines. I have previously explored whether the courts should exercise restraint in allowing lawmakers to craft a wide range of legislation (see Overruling Government Overreach: Damon Root on the Libertarian Legal Movement). I have also argued in favor of a more activist judiciary, which defends individual rights from being overridden by majority rule, and believe that the courts are the last bulwark against excessive democracy. However, everyone seems to be in favor of judicial activism when it favors his or her politics. That explains why restraint and "minimalism" are in vogue among liberals when the conservatives are in power, and vice versa. Find out why Randy Barnett says Repugnant Laws is "Simply a must-read for any serious student of our Constitution and how it actually works." Listen to hear the condensed version of Whittington's monumental findings.
As Robert Higgs trenchantly observed in his book Crisis and Leviathan, central planning is a one-way ratchet. Governments take advantage of a crisis to introduce previously unimaginable restrictions on freedom in the name of public safety. We allow permanent erosions to the bedrock of liberty under the guise of temporary expediency.
In responding to the Coronavirus outbreak, China has ratcheted up its totalitarianism – forcibly taking people from their homes and committing them to “hospital cities,” built overnight using eminent-domain-on-steroids.
Marxist philosopher-clown Slavoj Žižek sees in Wuhan’s state of emergency a silver lining. He writes of “an unexpected emancipatory prospect hidden in this nightmarish vision.”
Brace yourself.
Not only does the crisis provide a pretext for “a new kind of communism,” Žižek suggests that the “half-abandoned streets,” and “stores with open doors and no customers,” actually “provide the image of non-consumerist world at ease with itself.”
If that’s the shot, then the chaser is Jeffrey Tucker’s recent article for the American Institute for Economic Research on the virus. Tucker, AIER’s editorial director asks, Must Government Save Us from the Coronavirus? In short, the answer is no.
While it’s easy to think of Chinese quarantines as something distinctly un-American, he points out that “the US government already has the power to create sick camps, kidnap and intern people upon suspicion that they are diseased, and keep people in camps for an undetermined amount of time.”
Tucker points out that the abuse of these powers is far more common than their discerning use.
What then is to be done?
Forget the Iowa Caucus – could the real problem be two-party democracy? Is it time break the duopoly, or as my next guest, Lee Drutman, calls it, the "Two-Party Doom Loop”?
A healthier system might grant far-left voters some representation without forcing the Democratic Party to sacrifice Bernie Sanders – one of their most popular figure-heads – on the altar of winner-takes-all electability.
Drutman notes that whatever the reason for Tuesday’s chaos, it has come at a bad time for American democracy. We are living in one of the most polarized political environments in our history. In his new book,Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America, Drutman traces our evolution from what was basically a multi-party system (including conservative southern Democrats and liberal coastal Republicans) to a true two party system.
This has made compromise nearly impossible and raised the stakes of our elections.
Lee, a senior Fellow, Political Reform Program at the New America Foundation and writer for Vox, FiveThirtyEight, and the New York Times, joined me live to discuss the way out of the vicious cycle of polarization we’re in.
This Sunday, Lenore Skenazy - aka the “World’s Worst Mom” - returns to the show to discuss the latest trends in coddling vs. free range parenting.
My home movies from Queens, New York circa 1947 show me and my best friend Susan playing with cap pistols, water pistols, a ping pong ball gun, a Red Ryder B B gun, toy tin soldiers, a boy scout knife, and a toy machine gun with blinking red lights.
Yet not one of my friends died of gunshot wounds. In fact most of us are afraid of guns.
Maybe zero tolerance is not that necessary. Perhaps some of the societal measures we are taking to protect children are even backfiring.
We hear non-stop coverage of school shootings and child predators while the threat of Childhood Lack of Resilience Syndrome (CLORS) goes virtually unreported.
Symptoms of CLORS include easily bruised feelings, obesity, depression, lack of curiosity, and fear of exposure to new ideas once the child leaves home for college. Professor Jonathan Haidt (founder of Heterodox Academy and a co-founder with Lenore Skenazy of LetGrow.org) has observed many patients in the advanced stages and found the condition notoriously difficult to cure.
They say an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Lenore Skenazy has been offering the equivalent of a CLORS vaccine since her national debut as “World’s Worst Mom” in 2008 when she wrote an article titled, Why I Let My 9-Year-Old Ride the Subway Alone, (New York Post, April 1, 2008).
Since then, she’s been leading the Free Range Kids movement – defending victims of a false hysteria that presumes all strangers “guilty until proven innocent,” despite falling crime rates. She last joined me to discuss her LetGrow initiative – helping parents let go of their helicoptering, and letting kids grow into functioning adults.
I’m thrilled to welcome Lenore back to the show this Sunday to review the latest threats our kids’ freedom to be kids – from the War on Recess to reading logs.
Mark my words – the “War on Recess" will fare just like every other government “War on [fill-in-the-blank].”
As this article in Harvard Health Publishing confirms, kids need sunshine, risk, and socialization to become functioning adults.
Lastly, we’ll discuss Utah’s new law that protects parents from the charge of neglect when they let their kids play outside by themselves. Ahh, the sweet smell of Federalism!
Follow her latest project at LetGrow.com, and tune in live to the show of ideas – not attitude.
Last month, I spoke with Gene Healy about his persuasive cover story for Reason, arguing that we should all calm down. Perhaps the Ukraine phone call was not even the most impeachable thing Trump did in the month of July of last year, but it wouldn't hurt to send future presidents the message that they cannot act with impunity. Fair enough. I have argued that on principle, a President may sometimes be duty-bound to investigate his political opponents - and even use the threat of withholding aid to a country that doesn't cooperate. Does this apply to Trumps's infamous "perfect phone call"? You can read or listen to my conversation with Gene and decide for yourself whether Trump committed an impeachable offense. Now Peter Suderman at Reason Magazine further complicates things, writing that By Withholding Funds to Ukraine, Trump Broke the Law. The Government Accountability Office agrees that the Office of Management and Budget - an agency of the executive branch - was required to submit a reason to Congress for delaying the funds under the Impoundment Control Act of 1974. Trump and his lawyers argue he was acting within the law and his presidential authority to conduct U.S. foreign policy.
Listen to John Rothmann's political commentary every weeknight from 6–9 pm on KGO 810 AM.It's a tricky issue that opens up many important questions from the balance of powers to the wisdom of foreign policy that includes sending millions of dollars in "anti-corruption aid" to places like Ukraine.
Few people have been following the impeachment as closely as John Rothmann - an author, Bay Area radio host on KGO 810AM, and frequent lecturer on American politics and the presidency. John also has one of the finest private libraries in the country - 15,000 volumes, specializing in American political history and political biography. He says Trump must go, and that if the Senate acquits it's the end of America as we know it. He joins me this Sunday for the full hour. But what would the Founders say? What are the important principles in play? And how would the analysis of the impeachment saga change if everyone took their ideological blinders off? As the Senate prepares to vote "guilty" or "not guilty" in this historic case, I urge listeners to withhold their judgment until they've heard John's perspective.
Radical environmentalists are increasingly using militant rhetoric to make the case for a proverbial “War on Climate Change.” What else is the Green New Deal if not Total War – the complete mobilization of the American economy – against the boogeyman of man-made emissions?
Myron Ebell (Director of Energy and Environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute) notes that compared to the Green New Deal, even WWII and FDR’s New Deal were moderate (WWII only lasted four years – the Green New Deal would be permanent). In other words, the GND is social engineering in green garb – naming “unjust oppression” as one of its ancillary targets, and using soviet-style central planning to achieve its objectives.
Myron was a key figure in the Trump transition team who laid a foundation for the United States’ withdrawal from the genuinely oppressive Paris Climate Accord. He and his colleague at CEI, Patrick J. Michaels, recently wrote an article for the Washington Examiner demonstrating the latest area where the eco-warriors have overplayed their hand.
We are constantly lectured on a tenuous link between hot, dry weather and fires in places like California and Australia, yet misguided land management policies have created the very conditions which are now being blamed on climate change.
Skeptics are labelled “deniers” by those who ignore a much clearer correlation between the prohibition of prescribed burns and the rise of mega-fires such as the one now devastating Southern Australia.
28 states have proposed a constitutional convention, or “con-con,” to tie federal government’s hands with a balanced-budget amendment. If the necessary 38 states pass such resolutions, we could end up with a much more dramatic event – secession.
Buckley thinks we are on the verge of a break up. The United States is no longer one country, but at least two. He’s issued this warning in previous books and on my show before. A left-leaning elite (mostly clustered in coastal cities) now comprises a “New Class” that shares little in common with the rural population that elected Trump in 2016. And although “secession” is still a dirty word for most progressives, that hasn’t stopped a number of breakaway movements like Calexit and the Second Vermont Republic from gaining momentum. If Trump is elected to a second term, these will surely gain steam.
So let’s say California got fed up and wanted to opt out. Then what? Texas tried it in 1861, but was smacked down by the Supreme Court in Texas v. White after the end of the Civil War. The Court ruled that Texas’ vote to secede from the Union prior to the war didn’t count – in other words, the relationship between states in the Union was “dissoluble.”
Nothing has changed since then, meaning the only legal route to secession is through a “con-con.” While most historians look favorably on the preservation of the Union during the Civil War, Buckley argues that there’s more to be gained today from a legally-sought secession.
Today, America increasingly looks like a unitary state than the republic the Framers gave us thanks to the explosive growth of Federal government in 20th century. This “bigness” has taken a toll on our happiness, our wealth, our freedom, and the overall effectiveness of the government.
Listen to the show to hear the full argument and the “how-to” guide for a modern day secession movement. Those who read his new book will come away with a very message. Namely, that national self-determination can be exercised for progressive reasons, and that a looming break up may in fact be the best way to avert another Civil War.
George W. Bush started it. Obama continued it. And Trump promised to end it, but hasn’t.
Ready for some depressing numbers? Take a deep breath:
2.5 Trillion – the total cost of the War in Afghanistan (including indirect costs such as military benefits and medical expenses), as estimated by the Institute for Spending Reform
2,400 - The number of U.S. military casualties since the start of the war.
18 - the number of years we’ve been in Afghanistan (note that babies born after 9/11 are now eligible to serve in the “war on terror”)
21 - the number of veterans who commit suicide every day.
For those who were paying attention, the recently released “Afghanistan Papers” showed that all of this has been for virtually nothing. They also revealed the extent to which we’ve been lied to with each extension of our military presence in the region.
Read the report Support the Institute for Spending Reform The one silver lining is that it’s not too late to get out of Afghanistan – or at least to draw down troops to a bare minimum. Jonathan Bydlak, President of the Institute for Spending Reform, released a report that puts the costs of the War in Afghanistan in perspective, and proposes potential savings of up to $400 billion over the next four years.
President Trump take note: Americans and military alike support an end to the War in Afghanistan. Drawing down just 5,400 troops would generate massive savings for the American taxpayer. What are you waiting for?
“Zadek’s Law” holds that whenever the government declares war on something, the problem gets worse.
Most liberals can see this clearly when it comes to the “War on Terror” or “War on Drugs,” but try including the “War on Poverty” in the same category and you will get blank stares, or worse.
Case in point: In a New York Times review of Great Society: A New History, @Binyamin Applebaum clearly struggles with Amity Schlaes’ central finding that LBJ’s War on Poverty hurt the very people it was intended to help. He calls the book “deeply flawed” for focusing on the failures of the Great Society while ignoring the successes.
What successes, you ask? Applebaum mentions the ever-popular Medicare and Medicaid – two enduring programs from the 1960s that are currently bankrupting the country. If that’s what successes look like, I don’t want to know about the failures – or at least I wouldn’t if Schlaes hadn’t made it a sheer pleasure to read about them in such vivid historical detail. Great Society is the latest in Schlaes’ saga of “new histories,” that began with The Forgotten Man (on the failures of the New Deal) and Coolidge, which rehabilitated the reputation of a “do-nothing” President.
LBJ, it turns out, was the anti-Coolidge – using his political skill to build a coalition of civil rights activists, technocratic know-it-alls, labor leaders, and legislators who ushered in the most sweeping social change since FDR’s New Deal.
While Johnson is the star of @AmitySchlaes’ new book, the story’s supporting cast includes Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan (before he became a politician), labor leader Walter Reuther, and socialist activist Michael Harrington.
The 1960s, we are reminded, was a period of affluence, when optimists assumed that business could always be further squeezed to support a growing public sector. But as Schlaes shows (and the stagflation of the 70s confirms), the laws of economics and of unintended consequences always have the last word.
With progressives like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren once again proposing sweeping overhauls of the U.S. economy, Schlaes’ book serves as an important warning.
⚠️ Planners take note: The free market cannot provide an inexhaustible supply of free stuff. Test its limits at your peril ⚠️.
Scott Adams often says that when it comes to politics, we’re watching two different movies on the same screen.
Impeachment is the prime example. I present two different movies:
Judge Napolitano told Nick Gillespie that “at least three or four articles” of impeachment could have been drafted.
Richard Epstein, on the other hand, called the original impeachment charge “ludicrous.”
The charge of obstruction of congress is even more complex. Who can I turn to in a situation like this?
I usually turn to my favorite scholars at the Volokh Conspiracy, and Hoover, but in this case, the layers of disagreement, nuance, and partisan spin have made it nearly impossible to figure out who’s right.
Thankfully, Gene Healy – vice president at the Cato Institute – has a new cover story for Reason Magazine, appropriately titled, “Don’t Freak Out About Impeachment.”
So, did Trump actually commit an impeachable offense? Perhaps, Healy suggests, we should set aside the phone call with Ukrainian President Zelensky for a moment:
"The third-rate shakedown attempt of Ukrainegate probably isn't even the worst thing Trump did in the month of July…" – Gene Healy, As he pointed out in his 2018 report The Indispensable Remedy: The Broad Scope of the Constitution’s Impeachment Power, impeachment is an underutilized process for reigning in the executive branch. Has Trump abused his power significantly in the past 3 years? A better question might be whether the “cult of the presidency” has grown so large and unwieldy that anyone who takes the job is implicitly agreeing to an “abuse of power”?
Maybe we should always demand that Congress impeach every president immediately after the election so that the legislature can get on with legislating. Of course, these days Congress prefers to even defer its job of lawmaking to the administrative agencies of the executive branch…
In a short video for the Cato Institute, Healy quotes founding father Elbridge Gerry, who said, “A good magistrate will not fear impeachments and a bad one ought to be kept in fear of them.”
With impeachment, Healy should have gotten his wish, but if it doesn’t hurt Trump politically, perhaps Congress should look less at partisan politics and more at the real abuses of power by the executive branch:
The military-industrial complex (including drone strikes on American citizens)
Usurpation of congress’s lawmaking authority
The corruption of science via technocratic administrative rule
Stealthy “midnight regulation”
Just to name a few that I cover in my new report on the administrative bureaucracy – a “shallow state” lurking in the swamps of DC that rivals the deep state in its unaccountable control over our lives.
If you’re not outraged by civil asset forfeiture, you’re not paying attention. Many states have passed laws protecting their citizens from this “for-profit policing”, in which law enforcement seizes private property connected to alleged crimes before a person has even been convicted. Yet federal government has given local governments a loop-hole in the form of “equitable sharing programs” that remit hundreds of millions of dollars to agencies that cooperate with federal agencies on these often legally-questionable forfeitures.
Brian D. Kelly, PhD — associate professor of economics at Seattle University — recently authored a report titled, “Fighting Crime or Raising Revenue?”, which continues the outstanding work of the Institute for Justice in pushing back against governmental abuses of power. The report takes detailed data on civil asset forfeiture and looks at how effective it is at stopping crime. Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions would have us believe that…
“[C]ivil asset forfeiture is a key tool that helps law enforcement defund organized crime, take back ill-gotten gains, and prevent new crimes from being committed, and it weakens the criminals and the cartels.”
The data, however, suggests a different theory: civil asset forfeiture is not primarily a tool for fighting crime, but rather for raising revenue in cash-strapped localities.
I’ve covered this practice periodically since Sarah Stillman brought it to the attention of the readers of The New Yorker in 2013. The cases spotlighted by Stillman and the IJ have included the most egregious abuses of power — and rightly so. As the nation’s leading public interest law firm, the IJ has used its limited resources masterfully to set solid precedents for the future. Most recently, in the case of Timbs v. Indiana, the IJ helped persuade the Supreme Court to vote unanimously in favor of a man whose expensive vehicle was seized in connection with a low-level drug offense. The value of the vehicle was well in excess of the maximum fine laid out by the State of Indiana, leading the court to overturn a lower ruling based on the “excessive fines” clause of the 8th amendment.
Kelly, on the other hand, relies less on the anomalies to make his case, instead demonstrating how ineffective the practice is on the whole in achieving its stated aims.
The Fintech revolution is upon us.
In a recent article for the Epoch Times (How the Fintech Revolution Could Liberate Us, March 22, 2019), Fergus Hodgson argues that decentralized government-service-providers are primed to outcompete clunky 20th-century states in the 21st century and beyond. He says that Bitcoin and the sharing economy are only the beginning of the ascent of digital governance.
This is a bold claim, and it’s not likely to be welcomed by the guardians of the established order. However, if history is our guide, a major change in governance cannot be stopped once structural and technological changes make it a necessity.
Once known as “the Stateless Man”, Fergus draws on his own experience as a digital nomad to make the case that all jurisdictions must think ahead to the inevitable changes coming.
He quotes fellow futurist-libertarian Max Borders, “Cryptocurrency and income tax cannot coexist,” and draws out the dire implications for raising revenue in the increasingly burdened welfare states of the western world. This is not to say that governments will not be able to fund any activity, but that they will need to think carefully – both about how they tax their citizens and, more importantly, the value they provide in return.
Does the U.S. run the risk of becoming a Venezuela if we do not adapt to the changing tides of technology?
I’m delighted to welcome Fergus back to the show of ideas this Sunday (12/8, 8-9am PACIFIC) to discuss his recent articles on everything from Airbnb and Ethereum, to competitive currencies, and the democratization of finance through crowdfunding.
We explore the analogy between governments as service providers and citizens as customers, and see what’s happening countries that are failing their “customers.” Finally, we will look at what makes countries like Liechtenstein and Switzerland potential models for “The State in the Third Millennium” (to borrow the title of a book by Prince Hans-Adams II – reigning monarch of Liechtenstein).
When the revolution arrives, you won’t want to be left behind. Subscribe to hear my full conversation with Fergus, and follow him on Twitter: @FergHodgson.
"We now live in a world wrought by the unidentified, unacknowledged union of proslavery and progressive thought."
These words come from the epilogue of C. Bradley Thompson's monumental new book, America's Revolutionary Mind: A Moral History of the American Revolution and the Declaration That Defined It. To understand this important sentence, we must contrast this unholy union with the philosophical and moral idea both schools of thought sought to uproot. That opposing idea is best summed up by the immortal words of the Declaration of Independence:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." What did the founders really mean when they penned the Declaration of Independence with words like "rights," "liberty," "equality," and "the pursuit of happiness"?
While we don't have direct access into the minds of the founders, Thompson's book takes us as close as we can get. Using extensive quotations from letters, speeches, and essays from the founding period, he makes clear that the historical changes wrought by the American Revolution began in the hearts and minds of a small number of truly revolutionary statesmen.
Thompson, a political science professor and the Executive Director of Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism (CISC), is known for his studies of John Adams - the "colossus of liberty" who stood out even among his exceptional peers as the model revolutionary. What made these revolutionaries unique, Thompson writes, was their emphasis on moral philosophy in deducing sound principles for government.
As products and proponents of enlightenment era thought, the founders grounded their actions in the intellectual revolution brought about by figures like Francis Bacon, John Locke, and Isaac Newton. Armed with a new understanding of the physical and moral universe, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine and others were able to conceive of a new ideal of liberty. It was this spiritual victory that made the military victory against the British government possible (perhaps even inevitable). Thompson goes on to ask, "What ever happened to the spirit of liberty in the United States?" Although the first century after the American founding continued the realization of this ideal - chiefly with the abolition of slavery - Thompson identifies a turning point in the early 20th century. The underlying philosophy of the defeated southern states did not disappear after the Civil War. Instead, it adopted fashionable historicist ideas coming out of Europe to cloak its opposition to the Declaration in so-called "progressive" thought. The Revolutionary Wary was won more than 200 hundred years ago, but the battle continues to this day in new forms, as progressives seek to redefine liberty and equality, and downplay the unique genius of the framers of the Declaration of Independence. Hear in the founders' own words why the Declaration and Constitution furnish texts, "to which those who are watchful may again rally and recall the people."
Lastly, learn what texts Thompson is using to educate the next generation of statesmen at Clemson - only on the show of ideas, not attitude.
It’s not every day that you hear about the “exploitation of the elite.” Usually, it’s the rich and powerful who are allegedly exploiting the poor and disenfranchised.
In the past, the working class earned that designation by working much longer hours than the bankers, lawyers, and landlords. But today, the situation has reversed and the wealthiest Americans work longer hours under insane pressures to achieve.
Daniel Markovitz, Guido Calabresi Professor of Law at Yale Law School, is a brave man to advance elite exploitation as an argument against meritocracy . This is just one of the contrarian claims that underlie The Meritocracy Trap, Markovitz’s challenge to “America’s foundational myth.”
The Founders directed their screeds at a royal aristocracy, which the American experiment intended to replace with a republic governed by the most virtuous and talented citizens (regardless of their bloodline).
However, Markovitz argues, dynastic succession is still the reality in America. Children of elite parents are under intense competitive pressures to excel— first educationally and later in their workplace achievements. This hyper-meritocracy is increasingly felt as a burden both to the parents and children, and many are starting to question whether the rat race is worth it.
When I first came across Markovitz’ argument on Vox, I was taken aback by the mere suggestion that there is a fundamental problem with meritocracy — as if being rewarded for hard work is a bad thing. But The Meritocracy Trap makes a more a subtle point about how social polarization ends up harming both the elites and working class.
In studying his arguments, I’ve come to see that the forces driving elites to accumulate more and more expertise and human capital are the same forces expanding the power of bureaucrats in the administrative state.
Have Americans become jaded by unjust inequality?
Two data points are informative.
Few expect the celebrities caught in the college admissions scandal to do jail time for their criminal bribes.
Those associated with Jeffrey Epstein appear to be unlikely to be held accountable any time soon.
Perhaps even more seriously, however, Jonathan Rothwell believes that inequality and the political forces underlying it are actually undermining the public’s faith in our government.
He says that the wave of populist nationalism that swept Trump into office is driven by a deeper discontentment and insecurity resulting from widening income inequality. [Paradoxically, Rothwell argues that many of the same nativist attitudes are also cementing the very policies that are exacerbating unjust inequality.]
Buy the book
Of course, it’s vitally important in this debate to distinguish between inequality that is the result of people’s subjective preferences for work vs. leisure, that which is based on supply and demand, and that which is based on pure political privilege.
In his new book A Republic of Equals: A Manifesto for a Just Society, Rothwell ushers an impressive body of data to show just how much of the current inequality is caused not by free markets, but by the political powers that be. In doing so, he upsets both the right and the left’s narratives around inequality.
We do not live in a perfectly free market based on mutually-beneficial exchange. From education to housing, the current political system further rewards those who have already made it with additional spoils.
As a “market egalitarian,” Rothwell claims that we do not need government to act to redistribute unjustly acquired wealth so much as we need government to set the rules of the game such that incomes more closely align with relatively evenly-distributed abilities in the population. There’s a lot to unpack there.
I spend the full hour this Sunday dissecting the poll numbers in Jonathan’s book to determine whether his thesis is correct.
A Republic of Equals envisions what would happen naturally to equality of outcome if we stopped giving those with political power special access to markets and public services.
We discuss what count as “basic liberties,” and what government must do to ensure equal access to markets and the right to engage in mutually beneficial exchange. Provide universal education? Job training for unemployed workers? Or simply get out of the way?
Don’t miss this show. Listen Now!
Mike Munger is taking Public Choice seriously.
How seriously?
So seriously that his new book calls many of the sacred cows of the free market crowd into question – asking whether real capitalism is even a stable equilibrium, or if it always morphs into its ugly twin: cronyism.
While public choice is best known for its analysis of the rational, self-interested behavior of so-called “public servants”, Munger steps back and asks when the rational interest of CEOs and corporate boards might also betray free market principles. In other words, does competitive rent-seeking becomes the norm in a world where executives are expected to get the sweetest deal possible from the government?
Is Capitalism Sustainable? is a collection of essays published by the American Institute for Economic Research that will provoke central planners and free-marketeers alike to consider how real-world frictions, ethical norms, and those pesky transaction costs muddy the waters of pure economic theory.
Find out what violations of norms provoked not one, but two old German women, to publicly shame Munger while he was living abroad… and what this has to be with the study of economics and political science.
“Tough-on-crime” is possibly the most abused political slogan – almost as bad as proposing a balanced budget by eliminating “waste, fraud, and abuse.”
Unlike empty promises to cut spending though, politicians actually keep their promises to go hard on the “bad guys.”
From a public choice perspective, acting tough on crime is the perfect ploy for a politician. Here’s why:
Prison sentences are expensive long term, but cost little up front.
The politicians gets a quick boost in the polls, and society pays the majority of the cost later, once the perpetrators are released.
In short: A good mob needs a good scapegoat.
Tough on crime was the strategy that George HW Bush used to hammer Michael Dukakis in the 1988 presidential election.
It’s also why Bill Clinton took time off the campaign trail to oversee the execution of a mentally disabled man in 1992.
Lastly, it’s why Trump frequently mentions atrocities committed by illegal immigrants in his speeches to packed arenas.
Rachel Elise Barkow is a professor of regulatory law and policy at NYU and author of Prisoners of Politics [Buy it on Amazon] – a comprehensive look at how our criminal justice system has turned the United States into the leader in incarceration. Barkow has come to the conclusion that mass incarceration is a product of too much democracy and not enough data.
Barkow’s Q&A with the Cato Institute’s Clark Neily (formerly of the Institute for Justice) is a fascinating survey of the abuses of power by federal prosecutors, who have turned plea bargains and mandatory minimums into coercive tools to deny the accused their right to a jury trial.
The Framers are rolling their graves.
While there are some silver linings, such as a bi-partisan reform that passed the Senate last year, the bitter truth is that the overall trend is toward more prisoners, more plea bargains, and more politics as usual.
New statutes consistently make it easier for law enforcement to do their job. Prosecutors are captured by special interests in law enforcement, and judges and politicians are afraid to appear lenient in the event that they let the next Willie Horton off the hook.
While no one wants to bring back Dukakis’ “weekend furloughs” for murder convicts, there are a range of common-sense reforms working their way through state and federal legislatures. These include clemency for non-violent, non-serious offenders, as well more data-driven proposals to reduce recividism rates.
A Necessary Function of the Administrative State?
Barkow’s solution to the mass incarceration crisis involves a greater role for the administrative state — the bureaucratic arm of the executive branch, which I’ve covered extensively on my show.
While most of my coverage has been negative, Barkow sheds some light on the question of when rule-by-expert might be preferable to pure democracy or congressional lawmaking. Congress could write the laws, but members of both parties seem to prefer scoring cheap political points through scapegoating over fixing a broken system.
Would an administrative agencies tasked with reforming the criminal justice system be subject to the same lobbying and electoral pressures as Congress?
Can data-driven experts fix the criminal justice system – or do we perhaps need a mass lesson in jury nullification?
Is more democratic participation or less needed to keep our prisons from filling up due for non-violent offenses?
Michael Ostrolenk is host of the #OShow - a show exploring individual and social transformation.
In this show, producer Charlie Deist asks Michael about his expertise in transpartisan politics, cybersecurity, the dangers of foreign meddling in elections, and the physiological component to disagreement.
Being against democracy does not make you an elitist.
Far from it.
It might mean that, like Aristotle, you are against demagoguery, or like Randall Holcombe, you are for liberty – even when the majority opposes it.
Today, most Americans think of “democracy” as the principle underlying government. In 1776, most Americans would have said “liberty.” Democracy was an after-thought, meant to keep elite powers at bay.
Hans Herman-Hoppe has called democracy "the God that failed." In his recently revised book Liberty in Peril, Independent Institute research fellow Randall Holcombe elaborates on the history of how the false idol of democracy has undermined freedom in America – and it's not pretty.
We must be reminded that democracy is not always in harmony with liberty.
Our Founders worried that the Constitution might lead to too much democracy, and judging by the results, it's hard to argue they were wrong.
Holcombe provides the long view in his new book (buy it here) the subject of my upcoming show this Sunday.
The transformation of the U.S. from a republic, founded on libertarian principles, to a system of majority rule threatening our liberties didn’t happen overnight.
Listen now to hear the full history from a leading scholar of liberty.
Joan Blades was an entrepreneur co-founder of MoveOn.org.
John Gable (also a tech entrepreneur) was a Republican operative — helping elect politicians like Trent Lott and Mitch McConnell.
Joan and John are the unlikely duo behind a viral TED talk on the problem of political polarization, and the founders of a technology-based solution.
AllSides.com is your one-stop shop for headlines from across the political spectrum. Like a bulldozer for bias, All Sides conveniently aggregates stories from around the web along with a rating — left, right, center, or left- or right-leaning.
Screenshot of AllSides.com. Try switching your morning news source from Drudge Report or Huffington Post to AllSides.com and see what it does to your blood pressure.
I’ll admit — it’s fun to get mad at the idiocy of the “other side” and the internet offers an endless supply of confirmation bias for whatever opinions you hold.
But the danger of such extreme political polarization is that our government may not function the way it’s supposed to.
In my book Power to the States: How Federalism 2.0 Can Make America Governable Again, I theorized that anger in politics is a result of too much power being given to Federal government.
John and Joan, however, see something else — namely, that the advent of digital communities allows us to select our news sources to fit our narrow beliefs (rather than forming our beliefs from the same set of facts).
John and Joan joined me to discuss the nature of these “filter bubbles” — our self-made echo chambers — and how their platform works to “pop” these bubbles of bias.
Be sure to catch the full conversation.
"What protectionism does is protect jobs in relatively inefficient industries by destroying jobs in relatively efficient industries.
Over time, as anyone who thinks about it can tell over time, what that does is lower the standard of living insofar as we have protections, because when you are protecting jobs in inefficient industries and protecting less productive jobs, it means you are protecting workers in less productive occupations, and that means those wages are going to be lower over time."
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No, this is not a Sunday morning radio infomercial – it's the premise of The GOAT, a new book from Academy Award-winning screenwriter Roger Simon.
Some call him the godfather of conservative media. He was nominated for an Oscar in 1990 for his screenplay of the movie “Enemies, A Love Story.”
He's also a deep political thinker, but his true art is writing stories.
He found success in Hollywood before blacklisting himself by coming out as a conservative.
He wrote the popular Moses Wine detective series, as well as the Big Fix – both the book and the screenplay) and he’s worked with Woody Allen, Bette Midler, and Richard Pryor.
Roger is also a co-founder and CEO emeritus of PJ Media - the powerhouse alternative media company that has launched conservative comedian Steven Crowder and others to fame.
He joined the show to discuss his work, his writing ethos, and why the storytelling medium is inherently conservative.
The last time Congress declared war was on December 8, 1941. In the years since then we have gone from a relatively limited executive branch — as spelled out in James Madison’s system of checks and balances — straight through the imperial presidency of undeclared wars in Korea and Vietnam, to a rogue Presidency in which all bets are off.
Historian, economist, and foreign policy expert Ivan Eland has written a new book linking the cancerous growth of the military and executive branch to Congress’s on-going abdication of responsibility.
War and the Rogue Presidency: Restoring the Republic after Congressional Failure is Eland’s latest with the Independent Institute. Senator Rand Paul calls it a must-read for “for anyone seeking a safer, freer, and more peaceful world.”
I’ve covered the growth of the administrative state dozens of times on my show, but Eland has a fresh take on how the erosion of checks and balances has taken place — not all at once, but in a ratcheting of executive power during wartime.
He shows how most major economic interventions have their origin in war: whether its taxes (i.e., income tax, progressive taxation, double taxation, tax withholding, tax expenditures, the estate tax, gas taxes, etc.) or social programs (i.e., Social Security, expansion of Medicaid, public housing and rent control, grants-in-aid to state).
Even government regulation of marriage, as opposed to the common law tradition, arose out of a Civil War interest in monitoring the moral activity of widows receiving pensions from the government.
Eland walks readers through this surprising history — including Abraham Lincoln’s “inept autocratic” wartime presidency — and the attempts by Congress to push back against growing executive authority.
Eventually, he brings us to the present, in which Congress has pretty much stopped trying to check the President’s authority.
Eland makes an especially convincing case for conservatives to oppose the “rogue presidency.” He writes:
CONSERVATIVES SHOULD BE leerier of jumping into wars, not only because wars kill and destroy and because the American superpower might become overextended, especially in a time of high national debt and fiscal crisis, but also because war makes the government — that is, the executive branch — expand rapidly at home, even in areas unrelated to national security.
President Trump and the current Republican Congress are at an inflection point. After so many decades endless wars, we may be finally reaching agreements in Afghanistan and elsewhere to bring troops home. Yet Trump continues to face stiff pressures from advisors like John Bolton, who not only warn against troop drawdowns in the Middle East, but seem to be banging the drum for war in other distant regions like Iran.
Listen now to learn how Congress can resume its constitutional authority to declare war, and constrain the rogue elements of the executive branch in their thirst for power.
At this point it’s fairly clear that “Big Tech” companies like Google, Apple and Twitter are in the tank for the Democrats. However, you can easily stay informed by diversifying your news sources and listening to shows like this one.
There’s no great threat to competition in the market for news and information – to the contrary, the internet has given us more options than we could have dreamed of.
Trump meanwhile is threatening to regulate his political enemies in tech like public utilities. Whether he realizes it or not, this puts him in league with some of the leading figures of the Progressive Era – like Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis. Brandeis set the precedent that led to a “Big-is-Bad” mentality of antitrust enforcement, which persisted well into the 20th century, and is now rearing its ugly head once again.
Ryan Young, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, is at the frontlines of the antitrust issue. He’s noted the worrisome confluence (dare I say collusion?) between Democrats like Elizabeth Warren and Republicans like Trump when it comes to the issue of regulating free markets in the name of “competition.”
He observes that this Orwellian notion tends to find support during periods of rising populism – such as today – despite the FTC’s abysmal track record of policing anti-competitive practices for the so-called “public interest.” Instead, the Department of Justice’s anti-trust division and the FTC have colluded with one another to maximize their own budgets while stifling innovation and creating an entire cottage industry in Washington D.C. for Microsoft lobbyists.
Young has a new, must-read series of blog posts explaining the flaws of antitrust regulation, as well as a paper titled “The Case Against Antitrust” [view Full Document as PDF]. We’ll break the topic down to basics this Sunday on the show of ideas, including the paradox of antitrust – namely that no monopoly can survive for long without favorable treatment from the government (often in the form of previous antitrust provisions).
Harry Truman once remarked, “Give me a one-handed Economist. All my economists say 'on the one hand...', then 'but on the other…’”
In several states, politicians seem to be guided as if by these elusive one-handed economists in drafting legislation for single-payer healthcare.
In 2017, California’s state senate managed to pass a bill (still pending) that would force all Californians into a single, state-run health care system, but the state senate’s Appropriations Committee estimated it would cost more than twice the total state budget.
We can’t entirely blame politicians, since a majority of Americans seem to think that single-payer or “Medicare for All” would save them money and ensure access to healthcare.
But as Michael Munger has noted, the middleman – whether the notorious price-gouger or more mundane insurance broker – performs a vital service in a competitive market. Unfortunately, the health care market becomes less competitive with each new government intervention, so it’s no surprise that Americans are tired of the current system.
It’s time for a reality check.
Sally Pipes is the President and CEO of the Pacific Research Institute and author of several books dissecting the magical thinking that makes unworkable “Medicare for All” proposals so popular.
The False Promise of Single-Payer Health Care (2018) debunked the main claims made in favor of single payer. In January 2020, her latest book False Premise, False Promise: The Disastrous Reality of Medicare for All will be released to coincide with what could be one of the most consequential elections in our history, as Democrats promise to remake a sector of the economy that constitutes 20% of total output.
Pipes joined me to review the unfounded claims made by demagogues like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, such as:
Single-payer increases quality – By most measures, the U.S. far outranks Canada and the UK in quality of care, including wait times and rates of recovery from serious illness. There’s a reason Canadians come to the U.S. for procedures.
Single payer saves money - “Between 2001 and 2016, spending by Canada’s provinces on health care shot up 116.4 percent. Costs are growing faster than the rest of the economy,” she writes.
In the book, we also learn that Medicare is the single biggest contributor to the national debt – around $400 billion per year.
As Cato’s Michael Cannon notes, “The Medicare program is a bonanza of centralized economic planning, special-interest lobbying, pricing errors, perverse incentives, low-quality care, improper payments, and fraud. To paraphrase Lenny Bruce, Medicare is so corrupt, it’s thrilling.”
This is the same program that Bernie Sanders wants to expand into the world’s largest and most generous health care system in the world.
Listen to my interview with Sally to learn the difference between Medicare for All and the “Public Option,” and why we must stay on guard against so-called moderate proposals that are designed to give way to fully socialized medicine.
Does an overweight patient deserve more resources from the government on account of his condition?
Should Washington D.C. treat mental disorders and addiction as “diseases,” like Parkinson’s, and subsidize treatment accordingly?
As healthcare spending approaches nearly 1/5 of the US economy, we might stop to ask whether the medical profession as a whole is able to think clearly about social and political questions like these.
Theodore Dalrymple is a retired British psychiatrist and fellow at the Manhattan Institute, who has taken upon himself the unenviable task of reading through every weekly issue of the 2018 New England Journal of Medicine. His new book, False Positive: A Year of Error, Omission, and Political Correctness in the New England Journal of Medicine, discovers a persistent bias from the editors of one of the world’s most respected medical journals.
In it, the lay-person is treated to Dalrymple’s wryly humorous writing and impeccable handle on complex sociological issues and statistical analysis, which often confound the esteemed contributors to the Journal. His most remarkable discovery is perhaps the information the authors and researchers fail to mention in their prestigious studies and reviews of the relevant literature.
For example, in assessing the efficacy of a Cholera vaccine in Haiti, the authors diligently note the year the disease arrived, but fail to mention that it was a UN peacekeeping envoy from Nepal that introduced the deadly virus to the island in 2010. This oversight reveals the taboo among elites against criticizing helper organizations like the UN, despite mounting evidence of their incompetence.
Or, take the treatment of addiction — an increasingly important issue in the medical field given the opioid epidemic of the last few decades. The addict is often presented as a patient whose illness relieves him from the blame and cost of treatment. The Journal’s editorial voice never waivers from this politically-correct stance, even though a reasonably smart high schooler can understand that addicts still retain their agency (and culpability) while in the grips of the substance. To suggest otherwise is to dehumanize and infantilize people, especially the lower class.
His innumerable books underline a consistent theme — that the upper classes (including doctors) are all too willing to give the lower classes a free pass for harmful behaviors, and aren’t doing them any favors by doing so.
This Sunday, Theodore joins me for the full hour to discuss the reasons for ever-increasing bureaucratization and socialization of medicine, and how these trends are encouraging unhealthy behaviors at increasing cost to the taxpayer.
Dalrymple — colloquially known as the “skeptical doctor” — is like a responsible adult administering a bitter pill of rationality to the less mature members of his profession, who think they can “make the world a better place” through merely wishing it were so.
The LP National chair on the challenges for third parties and the trouble with Libertarian — Republican alliances.
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There is a disturbing trend of politicians and their enablers trying to make socialism cool again. Larry White gives it a fitting label — “Murder Chic.”
First came the “communist party” shirts — a clever-enough cartoon depicting Stalin, Lenin, Marx, Castro, and Mao having a rowdy time.
Then those hideous fur hats came into vogue.
But perhaps most unsettling is Kristen Ghodsee’s new book, Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism, which has the truly Orwellian subtitle, “And Other Arguments for Economic Independence.”
Let that sink in for a second…
Luckily, few are falling for the propaganda.
Ghodsee’s book sales are in the basement (#432,614 in Books and #776 in Communism & Socialism alone), while Socialism Sucks: Two Economists Drink Their Way Through the Unfree World is already ranked #1 among new releases in the “Beers” category; 38,000th (and climbing) overall — a full week before the release!
The book is a hilarious new broadside by the The Independent Institute’s Ben Powell and his co-author Robert Lawson.
“In Cuba… the central planners decided they only need two kinds [of beer]… Both taste like Budweiser that’s been left out in the sun.”
Powell and Lawson know that academic arguments did not cause the fall of the Berlin Wall. Rather, it was the superiority of goods and services available in West Berlin that forced the Soviet tyrants to let their people go… shopping. The book demonstrates this with flair—comparing the swill from former Soviet-bloc countries to the diverse and alluring brews of the free world.
What better way to dismantle the new wave of socialist propaganda than to launch Socialism Sucks to the top of the Amazon best-seller rankings before its launch?
Ben Powell returns to the show this Sunday to share his journey “drinking his way through the unfree world.”
Want to annoy a commie?
Click here to purchase from Amazon.com, and pre-order a copy for a beer-loving Bernie-supporting friend.
A good buzz may be the most effective form of persuasion out there.
Help set Ben and Bob’s book to #1 in the Communism in Socialism category. Listen to the show now.
When Donald Trump arrived in Washington D.C., the establishment went nuts. Even more so than the left-wing enclaves of San Francisco and New York, our nation’s capitol was uniquely vulnerable to the disruption Trump represented to the status quo.
Some likened him to a wrecking ball — others to an outsider, “draining the swamp.”
And in many ways, Trump has paradoxically used the power of his office to dismantle many of the executive agencies and authority that previous presidents have co-opted from the legislative branch.
At the same time, the imbalance of powers did not come about over night, and it will be impossible for any single politician to dismantle what many call “the Deep State.”
More precisely, what Trump is grappling with is an administrative state with deep roots going back to at least the Progressive Era, and likely much further as my next guest illustrates.
John Marini has written the definitive book on the historical and philosophical origins of the administrative state in his new book, “Unmasking the Administrative State: The Crisis of American Politics in the Twenty-First Century.”
Marini finds the ethos behind increasingly centralized authority in the very idea of “Progress.” Philosophers like Friedrich Hegel envisioned progressing being ushered in by a sort of secular deity — a government possessing vast scientific knowledge of the various aspects of governance, capable of remedying the most intractable social woes.
Unfortunately for Hegel and his political descendants (i.e., Woodrow Wilson, FDR, etc.), the American Constitution enshrined a very different idea of the proper role of government.
The Founders’ Constitution expressly limited the power of government and demanded that laws be made by political representatives of the people — not faraway unaccountable bureaucrats.
When De Toqueville came to America, he observed a robust civil society that seemed to cut against the alleged need for an administrative authority to manage the affairs of the citizenry. But he also saw that a creeping “democratic despotism” could arise from centralized administration such as the current alphabet soup of executive agencies that now interfere in the most minute affairs of American life.
In this episode of the show of ideas, not attitude, we put the capstone on the world’s longest running radio series on the administrative state. Bob welcomes Marini to discuss his under-appreciated scholarship, and to provide a definitive guide to the “Deep State” for a media that seems to never quite know what it means when it uses the term.
Marini is a professor of political science at the University of Nevada, Reno, is a graduate of San Jose State University, and earned his Ph.D. in government at the Claremont Graduate School.
He began to study what we now call the administrative state over 40 years ago. In Unmasking the Administrative State, we learn how bureaucracy caters to special interests and obstructs any attempts by Congress or the President to bring it down to size. He takes on the notion that politics is only for the experts and argues that the only way to restore America is by imbuing it with a spirit of democratic participation.
Dr. Jeffrey Singer, an Arizona surgeon and Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute, has a message that some Americans will consider a bitter pill to swallow:
People will always use drugs, and many will harm themselves and others in the process.
The government’s response to this fact of life has been a multi-billion dollar failed War on Drugs.
The best evidence suggests that not only has this war failed to achieve its intended aim, it has actually made the problems of drug abuse and overdose worse.
The “Doctor for Liberty” returned to the show to update me on the latest research into so-called “harm reduction” strategies that have proved much more successful than the War on Drugs in limiting addiction and fatalities from heroine overdose.
We also discussed the latest challenge to ObamaCare, which is working its way through to courts and appears likely to reach the Supreme Court before 2020. If you’ve worried about the Supreme Court becoming too political, you haven’t seen anything yet.
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5 things to know about The Vanishing Congress:
The Book - The Vanishing Congress: Reflections on Politics in Washington [Amazon]
The Topic - Former FBI Director James Comey recently denied the existence of a “deep state.” Rather, he says there is a “deep culture” of so-called meritocratic technocracy. That sounds like deep euphemism to me, but it’s worth asking what this vague and sinister term actually means before asking whether it exists.
Jeffrey Bergner, author of The Vanishing Congress, is a long-time Washington insider who has found the roots of something like a deep state in the legislative branch’s abdication of its one job: to make the laws. This might sound like a dream come true for libertarians, but since nature abhors a vacuum, this vital function ends up getting usurped by unelected bureaucrats and unaccountable district judges.
The Guest - Jeffrey Bergner served as Assistant Secretary of State for Legislative Affairs from 2005 until July 2008. He is the President and Managing Financial Partner of Bergner Bockorny, Inc., as well as an adjunct professor at the National Security Studies Program at Georgetown University.
The Problem - Bergner says that Congress has ceded too much of its authority to the executive branch — with its mutant bureaucratic army — and broken down the checks and balances that the Founders designed to ensure that government represents the people and not its own entrenched interests. When the executive branch is given such broad leverage to implement laws without express authorization of Congress, presidents and executive agencies are encouraged to legislate by fiat. Then come the executive orders…
The Solution - For starters, Bergner suggests that Congress would be 20% more efficient with 20% fewer staff. I’m conflicted, since I like the idea of shrinking government, but I’m not so sure about increasing congressional “efficiency.” Is getting more stuff done always a good thing?
I’ll question Bergner on this idea, as well as his proposal to reduce debate on cabinet nominations from 30 hours to 2 hours, and how direct election of senators forever changed the political landscape in America.
MY TAKE:
YouTube should be free to discriminate. Change my mind.
The debate over online free speech continues, with YouTube's decision to "demonetize" the channels of hundreds of controversial personalities, including conservative comedian and provocateur Steven Crowder.
I spoke to Frank Buckley about his idea for a governmental check on "woke" social media censorship.
As a libertarian, I hold that private corporations can decide what content they allow on their platforms, but Buckley thinks social networks are more like public utilities - i.e., monopolies in need of oversight.
Unlike traditional monopolies, however, YouTube can't just be split up into a bunch of smaller online video streaming websites.
Instead, Buckley says Trump should appoint a "Social Media Commissioner," in the mold of the Federal Election Commission or Board of Broadcast Governors to investigate bias in the algorithms.
Over 60 years ago, University of Chicago economist Gary Becker laid out the economic logic of discrimination and noted how the market punishes arbitrary discrimination through competition.
Robert Murphy summarizes it as follows:
“In a free market, the owner has the legal right to hire whomever he wants. After all, it’s his restaurant, and the wages he pays are (initially) his property. But if he allows nepotism to influence his hiring decision, he suffers an implicit fine of $1.50 per hour. He makes less money if he makes employment decisions based on factors, such as family relationships, that have nothing to do with the job.” — The Economics of Discrimination
San Francisco - a city notorious for its lack of affordable housing - will celebrate the 40th anniversary of rent control policies next week. Meanwhile, homelessness and housing shortages have reached crisis levels in the city. While some may look at the housing crisis as evidence for the need for more sweeping protections for tenants, those who study the subject say that such policies are in fact responsible for the current crisis. Even the socialist Swedish economist Assar Lindbeck noted that, "In many cases rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city - except for bombing it."
In his State of the Union address in February, President Trump sounded like a non-interventionist when he said, “Great nations do not fight endless wars.” Since then, he has begun to draw down America’s military presence in Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq.
Due to the growing unpopularity of drawn-out wars in the Middle East, and Trump’s focus on reelection in 2020, he probably does not want to start another endless war with Iran. However, much of his rhetoric has been hawkish — perhaps influenced by his national security advisor, arch-hawk neocon John Bolton.
The latest news is that he is growing disenchanted with Bolton, who helped design the Iraq War and has even called for a pre-emptive strike on Iran.
Conservative blogs are fond of spreading statistics like, "Most Federal Crimes Involve Immigration, Drugs and are Executed by Hispanics" [Judicial Watch] to support policies that would restrict immigration to the U.S. from Mexico. These articles are highly misleading. In most cases, the crime in question is the illegal immigration itself, which says little about immigrants rates of violent crime. In fact, if there is a link between immigration and crime, it seems to be inverse - i.e., immigrants are on average less likely to commit crimes. Articles like the one linked above unintentionally illustrate a point I often make about immigration, using the Socratic method. I ask opponents of illegal immigration which part they oppose - the "illegal" part, or the "immigrant." If it's the illegal part, there is a simple solution. It's naturalizing more immigrants, and it's the opposite of what President Trump is asking of Congress to do. After watching their bizarre contortions for a minute or so, I usually declare victory.
Sebastian Edwards on a forgotten episode in U.S. history
The United States Treasury Bill is an IOU issued by the federal government. It has long been considered a risk-free asset, and while it may not offer a high return these days, at least they promise your money back. After all, they say the U.S. has never defaulted on its debt in its 240-year history.
In studying the 16-year long saga of Argentina’s default (which began in 2001), UCLA economics professor Sebastian Edwards frequently heard this view expressed, only to discover that it was not true.
His new book, American Default: The Untold Story of FDR, the Supreme Court, and the Battle over Gold (Princeton University Press, 2018) documents a forgotten episode in which the U.S. technically defaulted on its debts in the form of President Roosevelt’s 1934 devaluation of the dollar.
When we last heard from Clif Ross, Venezuela’s socialist dictatorship seemed to be on the brink of collapse. Months later, Nicolás Maduro has managed to cling to power throughout the blackouts and riots that have darkened a country with so much natural wealth and potential for prosperity.
Clif, a poet, film director, and former Bolivarian revolutionary, lost many of his former “comrades” when he conclusively rejected socialist ideology once it became impossible for him to ignore its failure in Venezuela. His memoir, Home from the Dark Side of Utopia: A Journey through American Revolutions, documents this conversion and was the subject of Bob’s discussion with him back in January. However, that conversation left little time to dig into the current situation in Venezuela, which is deteriorating more and more each day.
Since January, Clif published a lengthy mea culpa of sorts in Quillette, documenting how he “had drifted — at first gradually, but then definitively — into the camp of my former ‘enemies,’ persuaded by their narrative and by the evidence before my own eyes.”
The article was publicized by Jordan Peterson and others whose praise further eroded whatever remaining sympathies the hard-left may have had for Clif. Despite the adulation from conservatives and libertarians, Clif remains an independent thinker who won’t be pigeonholed into any ideological camp.
Neither left nor right, Clif’s worldview is rooted in more nuanced theological and philosophical ideas. He subscribes to Thomas Sowell’s view, laid out in The Vision of the Anointed, which pits the unconstrained, or utopian worldview against the constrained, or tragic worldview. The latter assumes that people behave in their self interest, and that governments should not be too ambitious in trying to change human nature.
Clif returns to the show this Sunday with producer and guest host Charlie Deist to pick up where he left off, discussing the similarities between Bolivarian socialism and other versions of “Apocalyptic Utopian Messianic Millenarianism (AUMM)” seen throughout history.
When the tragedy in Venezuela is viewed through the lens of mankind’s religious yearnings, Hugo Chavez emerges as a kind of false messiah — one anointed by himself and his followers to usher in heaven on Earth (paging Dr. Muravchik). When the ailing Chavez failed to bring about the promised socialist utopia, he hand-picked Nicolas Maduro as his replacement in an alternative form of apostolic succession. The remaining true believers are scrambling to resuscitate the failing revolution, accusing the opposition leader John Guiado of being a puppet of U.S. imperialists, and calling the popular protests an illegitimate coup.
Charlie and Clif discuss the “synoptic delusion” of socialist dictators, which leads them to believe they can steer markets and society through centralized control. They will also touch on the dangers of holding too strong a political identity, and how ideology hampers the quest for objectivity.
Earlier this week, President Trump sat down in the Oval Office with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to talk about, among other things, Twitter’s censorship policies, and his own follower count. Trump asked if Twitter had discriminated against him — his 45 million followers pale in comparison to Barack Obama’s 105 million, not to mention Katy Perry’s 108 million.
Perhaps Trump’s ego is interfering with his ability to see clearly on this issue, but social media censorship is still a vital topic of concern for all Americans who value free speech.
In his 2003 book Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism, World Affairs Institute fellow Joshua Muravchik documents the many faces of socialism throughout history, and none of them are pretty. In a piece for the Wall Street Journal this week, Muravchik notes that even the best case scenarios for socialism have been disasters (or else morphed into something that was no longer socialism). Now he’s publishing a new edition that includes “the Afterlife,” on the recent reincarnation of the bad idea that just won’t stay dead.
During the Kavanaugh hearings, pundits and journalists mused whether the circus around his nomination hearings might be leading to a crisis of legitimacy on the Supreme Court. Notably, these musings mostly came from the left and those who opposed Kavanaugh ideologically. Their very utterance was an instance of further politicizing and de-legitimizing of the judicial branch. The Supreme Court was intended by the founders to remain "above the fray." But the political tit-for-tat around increasingly divisive confirmation hearings is just the tip of the iceberg of a legitimacy crisis that has been brewing for much longer. David Kaplan's new book, The Most Dangerous Branch, is a deep dive into the history and personalities that have turned the Supreme Court into the hyper-politicized and self-aggrandizing institution it is today. He takes readers into the heart of the "Marble Palace," where the nine black-robed justices have sat enthroned since 1935, deciding some of the most controversial issues in American life. How did we get to a place where nine individuals hold so much power - where Supreme Court Justices are viewed as demigods? Against the narrative of "Supreme Court as Jedi High Council" comes Kaplan's revealing and occasionally unflattering portrait of the Trump Court. The Supreme Court is not and ought not be our only hope, he says. The book provides a fascinating glimpse into the personalities and egos of judges - both those who have ultimately been confirmed and those whose enthusiasm and jockeying for a nomination ended up disqualifying them. It's a sobering reminder that the justices on the Supreme Court are not deities, but merely lawyers - and humans at that.
Back in October, Bob spent an hour with Stephen Moore – former president of the Club for Growth, and author of Trumponomics. Moore is a supply-side economist, meaning he thinks that many tax cuts pay for themselves in the long run. He and Bob talked about why the drop in the corporate income tax from 35% to 20% was good news for average Americans, and Bob asked why not drop it even lower? Arthur Laffer, Moore’s co-author on Trumponomics, is famous for the Laffer curve, which counterintuitively holds that you can raise even more revenue by lowering taxes, since that creates higher growth and more incentives to produce wealth, which means a bigger tax base.
Naturally, a businessman like Donald Trump would be interested in that kind of idea, so he has consulted Moore on a number of his key economic policies — including, thankfully, free trade. Moore has pushed Trump to remove tariffs, and for the time being we seem to be angling in that direction. Now, President Trump has nominated Stephen Moore to the Federal Reserve Board, which many take as a sign that of the on-going politicization of the central bank. Moore wrote an oped in the Wall Street Journal which called the Fed a “threat to growth,” and by some measures it does look like the recent tightening is going beyond what’s necessary to keep inflation in line.
Professor Emeritus David Henderson of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California joined this show’s producer, Charlie Deist, to give an update on how Trumponomics is playing out in the economy, and analyze whether the growth we have seen under Trump’s presidency is sustainable. They also discuss whether Moore is a suitable candidate for the Federal Reserve Board, or whether his pro-growth, free-market optimism would be better utilized in a different position.
Lastly, the talk about the unusual proposition of a strategic default, which would let taxpayers off the hook and leave bondholders holding the bag for the risk they took in trusting such an undisciplined spender like the U.S. government.
A few weeks ago, Elizabeth Nolan Brown explained how the War on Sex Workers is making the problems usually associated with prostitution worse. I noted that it seems like a rule that whenever government declares war on something, bad things happen.
The War on Poverty has been no exception. In the 1960s, Lyndon Johnson sought prevent and even cure poverty, much like Nixon unsuccessfully sought to cure cancer. Some 60 years later, the poor are still with us and bad policies alleviate poverty effectively trap them there.
The Cato Institute’s Michael Tanner has written the definitive book on a libertarian anti-poverty policy. The Inclusive Economy: How to Bring Wealth to America’s Poor is both readable yet scholarly. It plots the history of welfare from the Middle Ages to the present, and shows how the current system arose from two conflicting outlooks about why poverty exists. Both liberals and conservatives have missed the mark in their diagnosis and, more importantly, their cure for poverty.
Free markets and exponential growth have lifted millions of Americans out of poverty, but government continues to create artificial barriers that keep people stuck on the lower rungs of the economic ladder. We can start by pointing out the harmful effects of minimum wages, occupational licensing and the like, but it goes much beyond this.
You would think that politicians, once in power, would relish the opportunity to wield it. Yet Congress has increasingly abdicated its basic responsibility to make law. Instead, it delegates "rule making" responsibility to administrative agencies - part of the executive branch. The rules these agencies come up with often have nothing to do with the intent of the laws Congress has passed, and overreach into the lives of private citizens with no accountability. Against this anti-democratic process, the Congressional Review Act was signed into law in 1996 by then-President Bill Clinton. It requires administrative agencies to submit rule changes to Congress for an up-or-down vote. Congress doesn't have to vote, and they frequently don't, but they do have to be given the choice. Sometimes, agencies have failed to submit rule changes or tried to circumvent the CRA because they find the requirements to be vague. Now, Democrats are even calling for the repeal of the CRA. Congressional laziness is turning regulators into lawmakers, and giving the executive branch far more power than the Founders ever imagined. Frank Buckley calls the presidency an "elective monarchy." Philip Hamburger says that the power given to a runaway administrative state has morphed into the new "royal prerogative." I've covered the overreach of the administrative state nearly a dozen times on my show, including the "midnight regulations" passed into law by President Obama during the last week of his presidency. Since 2017, Congress has begun to renew its constitutional vocation as the legislative branch and exercise its authority under the Congressional Review Act to strike down questionable rule changes. Jonathan Wood, an attorney for the Pacific Legal Foundation, has been leading the charge in the courts to hold administrative agencies accountable. He recently won a victory on behalf of an Idaho ranch that was threatened by a controversial rule, which the Bureau of Land Management had not submitted to Congress for review. The sweeping rule change would have altered the status of 70 million acres of federal lands to protect the greater sage grouse - a fascinating bird by all measures, but not an endangered species. This change would have threatened the livelihood of ranchers and cost billions to the economy.
But lest anyone criticize Wood for having it in for the poor Grouse, he has also written a report on how we could improve the Endangered Species Act in The Road to Recovery. Basically, Wood says we should be rewarding property owners who keep rare species alive on their property, not punishing them with regulations and command-and-control style preservation efforts that don't get results. Fortunately, the court smacked down the administrative agency and required them to go through Congress to have the rule approved or rejected. One question still remains: will Congress do its job and vote on the rule, or will they continue abdicate power once again? Jonathan will join me this Sunday (3/17) and take your calls on the show of ideas, not attitude.
It seems like a rule that whenever government declares war on something, the problem gets worse. Elizabeth Nolan Brown is an award-winning journalist and Reason editor who writes about how hysteria around human trafficking has created a "War on Sex Workers" to complement the failed Wars on Drugs, Poverty, and Terror. The co-founder of Feminists for Liberty, she belongs to the wave of feminism that believes women are capable of making their own choices, freely, without harassment. Consider the unseen effects of criminalizing prostitution. Where it's illegal, women who would otherwise voluntarily become sex workers face the possibility of being abused by their clients with no recourse to law enforcement. Meanwhile, those who are being trafficked are forced to continue to meet inevitable black market demand. Also consider that moral theologians from Augustine to Aquinas have supported legalized prostitution. Many countries operate regulated brothels to protect sex workers, but in our Puritan-founded country, we often fail to distinguish between the clear crime of sex trafficking and the victimless crime of voluntary prostitution. Historically, U.S. law enforcement has conflated the two in order to scare the public into supporting a ban on prostitution.
George Selgin on the Mind-Bending Methods of Modern Monetary Theory:
You know you’re in trouble when your economic theories are so far to the left that Paul Krugman calls you out for neglecting the dangers of too much government spending.
Such is the dilemma of the Modern Monetary Theorists — best known for providing Bernie Sanders with the intellectual ammo for his big-spending agenda.
Modern Monetary Theory holds that we don’t need to worry about deficits, since government can always pay for its programs by making more money. When asked about the nightmares of Zimbabwe, the Weimar Republic and former Yugoslavia, the MMTers must admit that we need taxes to drain currency from the economy just before hyperinflation kicks in.
I was careful not to be too dour in my "Progress Report for Liberty: 2018," noting that many subtle victories for liberty were achieved at the state level while the vitriol of national politics raged around us like a storm. Classical liberals should be cheerful about the ongoing reforms to our drug laws, the forward march of technology, and some notably positive developments in the Supreme Court (including the landmark decision of Janus v. AFSCME). However, I also noted the frightful prospect of a national political scene in which Elizabeth Warren scores points for proposing full-on socialism sneakily disguised as the "Accountable Capitalism Act." John O. McGinnis, the George C. Dix Professor in Constitutional Law and author of Originalism And The Good Constitution (among other books), has an even more pessimistic take in his recap article, 2018: A Gathering Storm for Classical Liberalism. He notes, first, the ominous trend toward populism, and the popularity of politicians like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who promise to "protect" Americans from the very same forces of competition and free-market dynamism that have built America into the most prosperous nation on earth. 2018: A Gathering Storm for Classical Liberalism - Law & Liberty Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie Sanders, Classical Liberalism, Dear Colleague Letters, deregulation, Donald Trump…www.lawliberty.org Second, although President Trump has ostensibly done some good for free markets, his persona has contributed to what Gene Healy calls "the Cult of the Presidency," and placed government right at the center of American social life. Based on these dual forces, McGinnis forecasts a gathering storm, in which aggrandizement of the state acts as the engine for a future collectivist revival. McGinnis joined me this Sunday to discuss how the President's recent emergency declaration sets a dangerous precedent for future administrations. Your calls are welcome on the show of ideas, not attitude.
You've probably never heard of Dr. Benjamin Rush - the only doctor to sign the Declaration. Although his star has faded over time, his influence over the better-known founders was second to none. Today, Rush's name is often associated with his mistaken faith in bloodletting as the remedy for everything from mental illness to Yellow fever. Suffering from cramps? Try letting out a few ounces of blood. For persistent headaches, drain a whole pint. In the most extreme cases, like the mysterious and deadly virus that caused hemorrhaging and jaundice in many colonial cities in the decades following the American Revolution, Dr. Rush prescribed repeated and prolonged lettings of up to 75% of his patients' blood. In hindsight, his treatments of the Yellow fever epidemic were ineffective (and in some cases made his patients worse), but Rush also intuited one of the root causes in the damp, filthy streets of the time. He thought the illness resulted from a toxic miasma emanating from the moisture, when in fact it was spread by mosquitos breeding in stagnant water pools. In any event, his tireless campaigning for improved sanitation and hygiene were a major part of the solution. This was just one of his many passionate causes, along with abolition of slavery, women's suffrage and education, and prison reform. Like all of the Founding Fathers, Rush was a product of his time. He studied under the best and brightest, and tended to thousands of poor and sick with his burgeoning knowledge of medicine. It's easy to focus on his blunders, borne of the universal ignorance of medicine of his time, and look past his many humanitarian accomplishments. Harlow Unger, the prolific historian who has authored 10 biographies of founding fathers, has released the antidote to this one-sided treatment of a fascinating but little-known figure of American history in his new biography, Dr. Benjamin Rush: The Founding Father Who Healed a Wounded Nation. Unger records Rush's close relationships with Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams, and tells how he healed a divided nation at many critical junctures. In Unger's history, Dr. Rush's pioneering social work lays a foundation for the fulfillment of the Constitution's promise of equal liberty for all. Dispelling the notion that history is all dates and names, Unger casts the story of Rush's life and times in such vivid detail that the reader feels as if he was amid the horrible outbreak of Yellow fever. This disease simultaneously devastated city populations along the Eastern Seaboard but (as we learn in Chapter 6) it may have also saved the fledgling union from a rebellion brewing in New York at the hands of a zealous French envoy to the U.S. named Edmund-Charles Genet. Even the avid student of American history will learn much from Unger's book, and my recent conversation with him on the show of ideas, not attitude.
Just days ago, the European Union joined the U.S. and dozens of other countries in recognizing Juan Guiadó as the new interim President of Venezuela. While the ousting of Hugo Chavez’s strongman successor Nicolas Maduro is not a done deal, those who follow Venezuelan politics closely predict the imminent demise of the brutal socialist regime. Will this be the tipping point for one of the most repressive governments in the Western hemisphere? We may know soon.
The brouhaha around the Covington Catholic kids seems to stem from the crowd dynamics and powerful visuals displayed at the Lincoln Memorial last weekend. On one side was a group of rowdy prep school boys-some wearing MAGA hats-fired up by professional antagonists on the other. It's really no wonder many recoiled at the image of a lone native American elder surrounded by jeering faces of "white privilege," even though later video revealed a much more nuanced picture.
Robby Soave (an editor of Reason Magazine) decided to actually watch the footage in its entirety to see what really happened. Soave has a keen eye for media hoaxes on politically charged issues-he was one of the first to express skepticism when Rolling Stone released the now-debunked UVA rape story. However, his critical eye toward sloppy journalism does not make him a knee-jerk contrarian. He has also pointed out that while we should not automatically believe everyone who claims victimhood, neither should we dismiss such claims lightly.
Today, the battle over occupational licensing is playing out in the states, with California among the strictest (nearly 1/5 of working Californians need a license for their jobs). Dr. Morris M. Kleiner, a professor and AFL-CIO Chair in Labor Policy at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs, is a leading expert on licensing who studies the economic impact — seen and unseen — of forcing people to jump through hoops before practicing their chosen profession.
Erwan LeCorre, founder of the MovNat system, spent his childhood exploring the French countryside. In young adulthood he scaled walls and practiced free running (aka “Parkour”) on the streets of Paris. Today he leads an international movement of natural movers reclaiming the techniques our ancestors used to survive in a much wilder world. MovNat is short for “natural movement” or “movement in nature” – a system of physical fitness designed to free people from the grind of modern sedentary life, with a government-prescribed regimen of boring, repetitive exercise at the gym.
Here’s a riddle for my listeners. Where would you turn if you wanted to find the most reliable information on Russian interference in American politics?
Do you go first to the billionaire-owned Washington Post or New York Times?
Perhaps you check your Twitter feed, browse YouTube, or scroll through Facebook, but if we’re to believe what we’re told, these site are infected with the very misinformation we’re trying to identify.
Would you rely on Google, which has been caught tampering with search results and developing a a censored search engine for the Chinese government?
Calls for impeachment are growing louder by the day. Billionaire Tom Steyer has garnered nearly 7 million signatures through the "Need to Impeach" campaign, and with Democrats about to retake a majority in the House, Rep. Maxine Waters is saying that impeachment proceedings should begin immediately. Much of this is partisan hype, and incoming Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has already signaled that she will rein in her colleagues' excesses. She recently commented that "when and if he breaks the law, that is when something like that would come up." Allegations of campaign finance violations from Trump's hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels could fall into this category, but most experts see this is as a flimsy justification. However, there may still be valid reasons to use what James Madison called "the indispensable remedy" against Trump's abuses of the executive office. Pelosi's comments stem from a common misconception about impeachment that it can only be used when the law has been broken, when in fact it can be used to address a much wider range of "conduct unbecoming" to the Presidency. Gene Healy, a Vice President at the Cato Institute, is trying to dispel this and other myths about impeachment. Without making a specific case for impeaching Trump (with all the partisan pitfalls that would entail), Healy's latest white paper serves as a primer on the purpose, history, and scope of impeachment provisions. He concludes that the remedy is an important deterrent against the "incapacity, negligence, or perfidy of the Chief Magistrate." He argues that impeachment has probably not been used often enough in the past 230 years when Presidents have exhibited these traits without technically breaking the law. Some of the Commander-in-Chief's tweets are a prime example.
In his new book The Virtue of Nationalism, Yoram Hazony makes an intellectually rigorous case for nationalism in general and for the specific case of his own country, Israel. Hazony, President of the Zionist Herzl Institute, argues that nationalism is the only stable alternative to a creeping "liberal internationalism," which he says is merely a modern version of the age-old concept of empire. Sometimes referred to as "globalism" or "transnationalism," this rules-based order seeks to secure global peace and grow the scope of its power by limiting the ability of nations to chart their own course.
Trump's tax cuts hurt middle and upper class citizens of states with high state income taxes, because they eliminate the deduction that was previously there. Is this good policy? I say it is, because it levels the playing field and forces people to decide whether it's worth it to live in high-tax states, bearing the full brunt of the economic disincentive it poses.
Trump’s Proposed Executive Order to End Birth Right Citizenship is Unconstitutional, But Will that Stop It?
If we can say one thing definitively about government, we can say that it will not limit itself. The Bill of Rights and Constitution were the Founders’ response to the possibility that the new Republic they were creating would end up just as oppressive as the crown government they were overthrowing.
Were they successful?
This question has been the most consistent theme of my show for the past 10 years.
The topic of my show this Sunday gets to the core of this question.
There’s no better emblem of the complicated evolution of civil rights in America than the implementation of Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972. Originally passed to ensure equal access to educational resources, Title IX reads as follows:
“No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”
Although a libertarian might bristle at Title IX’s financial involvement in education, the statute otherwise seems innocuous — requiring nothing more than equal treatment for students, regardless of gender.
Since the 1970s, however, women have not only achieved parity with men in college admissions, they have surpassed men in graduation rates. Thus, the purpose of Title IX seems largely to have been achieved.
As the cultural landscape has changed, however, the focus of anti-discrimination efforts has also shifted. After omen could no longer claim discrimination at the admissions level, bureaucrats started to advocate in other areas like athletics, where men traditionally received more resources in accord with their greater interest in sports (especially at the elite level). Most people are familiar with Title IX’s equalization of athletics, but in terms of peak controversy, this was a passing phase in the law’s evolution.
Now, educational institutions have become the prime battleground in a larger culture war that includes the debates over sexual harassment, due process, “rape culture,” and transgender rights. In 2016, Republicans argued that Title IX has been perverted “by bureaucrats — and by the [then] President of the United States — to impose a social and cultural revolution upon the American people.”
How did the seemingly uncontroversial notion of non-discrimination has become such a lightning rod in the American culture war?
R. Shep Melnick is a professor of American politics at Boston College, where he focuses on the intersection of law and politics. Melnick argues that the current enforcement of Title IX has transformed the act from its original intention by politically motivated bureaucrats. He recently wrote The Transformation of Title IX [@The Brookings Institution Press (2018)] as a response to the partisan vortex that has swallowed rational discourse about the law. Shep joins the show this Sunday to discuss the problems of overly-zealous administrative lawmaking in the context of the Title IX debate.
Every 10 years, congressional district boundaries must be redrawn based on incoming census data. It sounds simple enough, but like every politicized process, redistricting decisions are made to benefit an entrenched class of incumbents and the politically powerful.
The practice of “Gerrymandering” dates back to 1812, when Massachusetts Governor Gerry (pronounced “Gary”) Eldridge signed a law enabling his party to redraw district lines such that they would remain in the majority. Oddly-shaped districts, often resembling crooked and lanky salamanders, have been a fixture of American politics ever since.
The organic industry is taking advantage of the average American's scientific illiteracy, says Pacific Research Institute Fellow Henry I. Miller
Chris Edwards Grades States on Tax Policy and Examines the Exodus from High-Tax to Low-Tax States It’s often said that “money talks; BS walks,” but previous guests on my show have marshaled hard evidence that money walks, too. IRS data shows that it tends to walk from places with high taxes and poor quality governance to places with lower taxes and a better business climate.
Back in 2013, when I interviewed Travis Brown on his book How Money Walks, the caravan of Californians to lower-tax states had already begun. Hundreds of thousands of former residents of the Golden State have traded fools gold for silver — leaving for Nevada, not to mention Texas, Florida, and Oregon. This mass exodus of citizens is hitting California’s state budget especially hard, since our state relies on the income tax more than most.
Five years later, it’s time to revisit the subject with the Cato Institute’s director of tax policy studies, Chris Edwards, who has a new white paper out grading every state governor on fiscal performance. Governor Jerry Brown of California gets a “D.” I think this is generous, yet I still choose to live here. Perhaps my decision, and that of millions of others like me who have stuck around, explains why the government hasn’t been more responsive — yet.
During the 1990s, a collaboration between Silicon Valley and the U.S. intelligence community was begun under the name of the Massive Digital Data Systems (MDDS). The project funded dozens of top computer science programs at elite universities with the goal of identifying patterns in large amounts of information to track crime and terrorism. However, its intended capabilities went beyond crime hunting. One of these grants went to a Stanford research team that would eventually turn into a for-profit search engine, Google, Inc., which now uses its algorithms to detect all kinds of patterns of human behavior. Whether these algorithms are being used today for good or evil is the subject of this Sunday’s show.
As the old adage adage goes, “If you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns.” That may be literally true in places like Nazi Germany or communist regimes that have completely banned individuals from owning firearms, but in the U.S., most attempts to merely “control” gun ownership have resulted in far greater numbers of legal guns being purchased by the American public. Today there are more guns than people in the U.S.—by a lot—thanks in no small part by progressives’ efforts to restrict our Second Amendment rights.
Early on in the Trump administration, the President tweeted, “I believe strongly in free trade but it also has to be FAIR TRADE.”
The free trade/fair trade distinction goes back to the 1980s, when then President Ronald Reagan’s free market advisers unsuccessfully plead with him to focus solely on the former. After all, they argued, free trade is fair trade. It’s fair to consumers and producers, while tariffs, quotas and other protectionist policies promote unfair business practices. Fair trade is usually just a euphemism for protecting uncompetitive domestic industries from foreign competition. Reagan understood this, but he also had the political savvy to signal loyalty to American companies, so the hybrid “free and fair trade” mantra stuck. Read more here: https://medium.com/@rzadek/stephen-moore-on-trumponomics-7f4f6a14c7e8
In designing the American Constitution, the Founding Fathers were careful to establish a balance of powers — not only among co-equal branches of federal government, but also among states, federal government, and the people themselves.
If the United States were a computer, then federalism would be its operating system. Extending the analogy, the most basic functions are performed by a “Central Governing Unit” (CGU) and strictly enumerated by Article I, Section VIII. The states were delegated the task of “programming” in the gaps — specialized “apps” to handle more localized issues. This design was supposed to serve as a bulwark against federal tyranny, although we’ve seen how the principles of federalism have been eroded by the commerce clause, and other broad powers usurped by federal government from the states.
According to F.H. Buckley — Foundation Professor at George Mason University’s Scalia School of Law and frequent guest on the show of ideas — the surprise result of the 2016 election was a product of political paradox. An establishment candidate of a counterrevolutionary and aristocratic “New Class” was defeated by a revolutionary capitalist offering a path to social mobility. Forget labels like conservative and liberal — the real divide in American politics is between this New Class of privileged elites and the rest of America. In short, it was all about economic opportunity and jobs for Americans. Donald Trump saw this, while Hillary Clinton and the Republican establishment did not.
Buckley, a Trump speechwriter and key transition advisor, introduced the idea of the New Class in his last book, The Republic of Virtue: How We Tried to Ban Corruption, Failed, and What we Can Do About It (2017). He explained this class as an outgrowth of the Hamiltonian vision of American greatness, which defended hereditary aristocracy against the Jeffersonian ideal of a natural aristocracy, in which anyone with talent and motivation could become successful.
Thankfully, the Jeffersonian aristocracy has been the norm for much of U.S. history. American’s risk-loving attitude, combined with low taxes and regulation, have created the most economically-mobile nation ever. However, a creeping “administrative state” and growing risk aversion among professionals, academics, opinion leaders, and the politically-connected have replaced American dynamism with an entrenched economic elite shielded from competition.
Buckley’s latest book, The Republican Workers Party: How the Trump Victory Drove Everyone Crazy, and Why It Was Just What We Needed (Encounter Books, 2018), takes up where his last book left off — discussing the implications of the growing gulf between the average voter and the New Class. He argues that conservatives and libertarians should embrace a truth about inequality championed (poorly) by modern liberals and socialists like Bernie Sanders. The book is about how Trump bulldozed the tone-deaf Republican establishment and created a new movement that he called the Republican Workers Party:
Frank joins Bob live, this Sunday (9/16) from 8–9am PACIFIC, with his inside view on what “Make America Great Again” means. This includes a defense of nationalism rooted in a sense of fraternity with all fellow Americans. Whether you are riding the Trump train, remain a steadfast NeverTrumper, or are waiting to see what the President does next, The Republican Workers Party is required reading (or listening) for any student of politics.
A new vernacular has emerged on college campuses over the past several years — safe spaces, “microaggressions,” triggers warnings and so on. While conservatives may find these terms easy to mock, and many dismiss them as the grievances of a few spoiled children, professors from across the political spectrum have voiced concerns about a pathological victimhood mentality that underlies their usage.
The first sign that things were getting bad was a 2015 article published in Vox titled, “I’m a Liberal Professor, and My Liberal Students Terrify Me.” Next was the Halloween brouhaha at Yale, in which a professor was shouted down by a student mob after defending his wife’s email to the student body urging them to be less sensitive about costumes that “appropriate” the markers of certain cultures. Later came the mobs — often violent — calling for heads of figures like Charles Murray, Heather Mac Donald, and Milo Yiannopoulis for voicing controversial opinions.
In 2006, while serving as a law clerk for the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia, Allen H. Loughry authored a book titled, Don’t Buy Another Vote, I Won’t Pay for a Landslide: The Sordid And Continuing History of Political Corruption in West Virginia.
Six years later, he was elected by the people of West Virginia as a justice on the same court, and on January 1, 2017, he became Chief Justice.
On June 20, 2018, Loughry was impeached by the West Virginia House for mind-boggling corruption of his own. Today, he is “living history” — facing impeachment and up to 390 years in prison.
However, this was only the beginning of the truly continuing history of political corruption in West Virginia’s Supreme Court. What began with a revelation of Loughry’s excessive spending on an office remodel — including the purchase of a $32,000 couch — implicated all five of the standing members of the Mountain State’s highest court. Now, three of them face impeachment trials, while the other two resigned to avoid the ugly proceedings into their potentially criminal “maladministration.”
Just a few weeks ago, the media was fawning over Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez and her youthful makeover of tired socialist ideas. Not to be outdone, Elizabeth Warren penned an essay in the Wall Street Journal introducing a modest proposal to completely remake capitalism as we know it. Her Accountable Capitalism Act would create an "Office of United States Corporations inside the Department of Commerce," requiring any corporation with revenue over $1 billion to obtain a federal charter. Putting aside the fact that Warren is likely using this to position herself as the hard-left favorite for the 2020 presidential election, it's worth examining what such a policy would actually mean for businesses and working people in the United States. A full analysis would require both a legal scholar and an economist. Professor Richard A. Epstein of the Hoover Institution and NYU's School of Law joined The Bob Zadek Show on 8/26/18 to explain how Elizabeth Warren's Surreptitious Socialism threatens the foundations of our (mostly) free economy.
"Free" healthcare, college education, etc. is never free. Someone always pays. Bob muses on the reason socialism always fails, with recourse to Adam Smith's famous line about the benevolence (or lack thereof) of the butcher and baker.
Larry Sharpe has a message for the caravan of ex-New Yorkers heading to Florida and elsewhere in escape of high taxes, bad schools, and a broken legal system. There is another option besides “Exit” and “Loyalty.” Sharpe is giving millions of New Yorkers a voice that many of them previously never knew they had. It is the principled voice of liberty, rejecting tribal allegiance to the two parties in favor of a practical live and let live ethos.
Libertarians have been stalwart opponents of the War on Drugs since its inception — a position which has brought them ridicule and scorn until relatively recently when the tide of popular opinion began to shift. Now, we see grassroots support for dozens of reforms across the states. However, the Federal Government clings to prohibition and refuses to admit that it has always been losing the war, and is now losing public approval.
Are people waking up to the principle of self-ownership, or is the change based on a simple recognition that the War on Drugs has failed? It costs too much to enforce and generally harms the very people it is intended to help.
Meanwhile, another War on Drugs receives less attention in the media, but the consequences and futility are no less grave. While Drug Enforcement Agency raids may ruin lives with spectacular flair and speed, the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) system of tight regulatory controls on pharmaceuticals is a silent killer.
Read more: https://medium.com/@rzadek/the-other-war-on-drugs-14588f66bfae
H. Sterling Burnett of the Heartland Institute on the Corruption of Science and the Changing Tide in Environmental Policy.
The August/September 2018 Reason Magazine cover story features an issue of bi-partisan interest - the injustice of the cash bail system, which coerces poor defendants into guilty pleas. For those who can pay, bail means avoiding jail before they even get a trial. For those who can't pay, it often means lost jobs, and mega-hassles, even if they end up being found innocent. Does this represent a violation of the great American legal principle of innocent until proven guilty?
It’s been called “federalism 2.0” — a move by states to buck the central government and try out their own policies in areas of the environment, immigration, drug policy, and criminal justice reform. California (for better or for worse) has been leading the charge on climate change issues, setting the pace for national vehicle emissions standards with its own stricter standards. But more recently, states have been particularly innovative on immigration, given the host of problems that stem from the Federal government’s failure to implement a comprehensive solution.
Joe Mathews, a syndicated columnist and California editor for Zocalo Public Square, came up with a unique legal proposal during the debate over Deferred Action (read: deportation) for Childhood Arrivals: an alternative “California resident” status. While not quite U.S. citizenship (which California can’t grant), residency would be a step towards integration for immigrant children, raised in California, whose national identity and true citizenship differ. Maybe, Mathews suggests, the best way to resolve the discrepancy is to make “Californian” into something more like a nationality — a legal relationship between non-citizen residents and state government. This would imply greater sovereignty for California and, in turn, for other states seeking to reclaim powers delegated to them by the 10th Amendment. Mathew specifically evoked the idea of federalism — referring to it as a “great American tradition” — much as Bob has been doing on this show for the past 10 years.
Is it Legal? While the Constitution gives the Federal government jurisdiction over enforcing national immigration standards, there is no explicit prohibition on states taking action. As David Davenport of the Hoover Institution notes:
“Federalism incorporates the idea that the federal government is not the only player in our constitutional republic, because state and local governments also serve important roles. The 10th Amendment of the Constitution specifically reminds us that powers not delegated to the federal government are reserved to the states or the people.
With Republicans in charge of the White House, both houses of Congress and arguably the Supreme Court, Democrats are rediscovering states’ rights and local government powers, as the out-of-power party in Washington often does. And as usual, California is leading the way in flexing state and local power, notably:
On immigration — The nearly 20 sanctuary cities and counties in California refuse to support the enforcement of Washington’s immigration laws, charting their own course at the risk of some federal funding.”
Mathews joins the show live, this Sunday, from 8–9am PACIFIC, to unpack his proposal, and explain how it would work. He and Bob will discuss the broader failures of our immigration system, and work through the logistics of a more federalist approach if the Golden State were to lead the way.
When the population of a tiny fish called the Delta smelt started to dwindle, U.S. Fish & Wildlife kicked into high gear to save them from going to extinct. They used their authority to divert federal water from the smelt’s habitat in California’s Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta — away from farming and other habitats in the San Joaquin Valley. Endangered species have no way to communicate to the regulators charged with keeping them alive, but if they could, they might echo Ronald Reagan in saying:
“The most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”
Progressive podcaster Jonathan Tasini says it’s a disaster for unions and working Americans; libertarian legal scholar Eugene Volokh says it’s a bad decision, but won’t change much.
Ever since Francis Bacon’s The New Atlantis, men have dreamed of using science to advance empirical knowledge and bring relief to the human condition. But in the area of law and governance in particular, some countries have tried to apply rational principles (i.e., Marx’s supposedly scientific laws of history) with disastrous consequences. The common law tradition — with its protections of private property and individual liberty, plus stable rule of law — has proved the best system so far, despite being an emergent, system rather than the creation of an all-wise leader or bureaucracy.
Our country's founding principles prevent me from further supporting any candidate for Federal office. Washington's constitutional mission has changed from protecting my rights to simply protecting the growth of its own power. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. I cannot further support Federal candidates since they cannot individually or collectively change Washington.
I can leverage contributions by supporting freedom-oriented think tanks and rights-defending public interest law firms, which effectively influence Washington and voters, and I can support certain candidates for state office. States are incubators of democracy. Citizens vote with their feet to smaller government and more personal freedom. States are re-acquiring that constitutional power: drug policy, school choice, eminent domain, and immigration, for example, while Washington has become more remote and aloof than King George was several centuries ago.
Empower the states and empower the people, neuter Washington.
Get Bob’s book, Power to the States: How Federalism 2.0 Can Make America Governable Again:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07KN75VXD/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
“I don’t get no respect.” — Rodney Dangerfield If we trust the media, the world seems to be constantly on the brink of nuclear destruction. Since World War II, global powers have escalated the arms race to the point “Mutually Assured Destruction,” in which it would be suicidal madness for any country to initiate a nuclear attack. Some say that this logical conclusion of nuclear war has held major conflicts at bay, but the world may be getting more dangerous as nations with less to lose unlock the technology to annihilate whole cities with a single bomb.
Hawkish conservatives love to talk about “getting tough” with countries like North Korea and Iran, whose nuclear programs threaten global stability. But while it’s tempting to toughen economic sanctions or plot a pre-emptive strike to enact favorable “regime change,” this strategy does not work according to John Glaser, the Cato Institute’s associate director of foreign policy. Glaser joins the show to break down the latest in the summits and negotiations with North Korea, and to provide some foundations for a more libertarian foreign policy in the current climate.
Most people rationally assess that their votes and actions can’t influence the Federal behemoth. Cliff Maloney Jr., President of YAL, grasped this reality and changed the organization’s strategy to give student activists a genuine sense of purpose and accomplishment. The 900+ YAL chapters across the country are already seeing results from their campaign to #MakeLibertyWin in the states, via Operation Win at the Door — starting at the most local level possible.
He joins Bob this Sunday (6/17) to talk about what’s happening on college campuses across the country, and how YAL’s new program is influencing national politics from the bottom up.
Thaddeus Russell exploded the naive view of American history in his 2010 book, showing that it was the rogues and renegades — prostitutes, drunkards, and laggards — who often pioneered freedoms we now take for granted, such as a women’s ability to walk somewhere unaccompanied, or wear makeup. To be sure, Russell is an equal-opportunity offender — dethroning sacred cows on both the left and the right. He joins the show of ideas, not attitude, this Sunday, to share his experience working at an Ivy-league university as a heterodox historian.
Hollywood loves to dramatize stories involving corporate bad guys – lawyered up multinational behemoths who plunder the land just to make a buck. Bestselling author and screenwriter Joel Engel could have taken this well-worn path, and written another clear-cut good guys and bad guys story. However, his latest book – Scorched Worth: A True Story of Destruction, Deceit, and Government Corruption – flips the script. Engel tells of a 65,000-acre forest fire in the Sierra Nevadas in 2007 that led to the aggressive prosecution of Sierra Pacific Industries. After botching the investigation protocol, the Federal government accused SPI of starting the fire based on flimsy evidence. Through his painstaking journalistic probe, Engel uncovered malfeasance by government at each step, from the failure to detect the fire to the biased findings that implicated the lumber giant. It would have been easy to jump on the bandwagon in scapegoating SPI and its ultra-wealthy founder, Archie “Red” Emmerson. Instead, he reveals a portrait of a company that carefully followed the law while wisely stewarding national resources, and a government bureaucracy that didn’t know when to quit.
A popular libertarian slogan (most recently adopted by the Free State Project in New Hampshire) aims for "liberty in our lifetimes." But since freedom is so subjective anyway, perhaps what we should really be striving for is cognitive liberty: our personal well-being, and the freedom from emotional disturbances.
Dr. Michael Edelstein returns to the show with Bob's producer, Charlie Deist, to discuss cognitive liberty – freeing one's self from the mental traps that act as obstacles to a life of joy.
Each year, the government spends $80 billion dollars on subsidies to higher education, making it more attractive for high school students to spend four of their most critical years studying topics only marginally more useful than underwater basket weaving. Bryan Caplan, professor of economics at George Mason University, admits to being an Ivory Tower academic (he jokes that he's now in the 41st grade) and that most of his students won't ever use the material he teaches. He also thinks we spend way too much for "products" like his. This honest insiders perspective only lends more credibility to his new book, The Case against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money. However, Caplan acknowledges that he’s fighting an uphill battle against rational self-interest. For most kids, college still pays, and employers still want that piece of paper certifying that its recipient is “system-approved” — i.e., smart enough to play the game, follow directions, and tolerate substantial boredom in the pursuit of abstract goals. While other economists might be afraid to voice such a contrarian opinion, Caplan has never shied away from unpopular opinion (ah, tenure).
Know any high school students considering an alternative to the elaborate and expensive system of hoops we call the University? Get them to tune in, too, and share the link to our Medium article.
In the future, barring dramatic changes in what we eat, there will only be two different kinds of people: diabetics and pre-diabetics.
Terence Kealey is a professor of clinical biochemistry at the University of Buckingham, who was already a skeptic of government-funded research when he was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes in 2010. 15 years earlier, he had published a book called The Economic Laws of Scientific Research, arguing that government-funded science does not constitute a “public good.” Rather, science flourishes under a free market, and government tends to skew research in favor of special interests. Upon receiving his diagnosis, he doubled down on his mission to dispel bad science funded by the government, specifically targeting the nutritional guidelines that led him to develop his condition. His most recent book, Breakfast is a Dangerous Meal: Why You Should Ditch Your Morning Meal for Health and Wellbeing, which applies his insights as a biochemist and philosopher of science to show just how badly the government errs when it gives incorrect advice based on inconclusive science.
Berkeley, California—The home of the “Free Speech Movement” became a center of attention last year when writer and professional provacateur Milo Yiannopoulos ignited protests on campus – testing the city’s tolerance of viewpoints outside the progressive orthodoxy. Libertarians, for the most part, have found common cause with these speakers in opposing the new threats to free speech. As Anthony Fisher of Reason has pointed out, groups like Antifa have resorted to violence against innocent parties, and labeled anyone to the left of Bernie Sanders as “fascist.” Unfortunately, the left-wing reaction has caused some libertarians to over-sympathize with members of the so-called “alt-right,” whose aims are also opposed to a free society. David Boaz is Executive vice president of the Cato Institute and author of The Libertarian Mind, The Libertarian Reader, and Libertarianism: A Primer. He visited Berkeley in February to give a warning to students who might be seduced by the alt-right, and to explain why the reactionary philosophy is incompatible with libertarianism. While libertarians have reason to be frustrated by the status quo, there is a danger of this anger congealing into hatred. “Ultimately,” Boaz says, “libertarianism is about peaceful cooperation―markets, civil society, global trade, peace, so it just isn’t angry enough for some people.” He joins Bob to make clear how alien the alt-right’s thinking is to a truly libertarian mind.
Bob talks Russia Investigation & Self-Driving Cars on Life!Line w/ Craig Roberts, on the Answer's sister station, KFAX, 1100AM.
April 17 is tax day – that morose time of year when procrastinators and libertarians alike must swallow their grudge against the government and write it a big check. Just two days later, however, taxpayers can take consolation in another holiday: Tax Freedom Day® – the day when the nation as a whole has earned enough money to pay its total tax bill for the year. Based on the calculations of the nonprofit tax watchdog The Tax Foundation, this year’s Tax Freedom Day (April 19) falls three days earlier than last year. But before you get ready to celebrate, keep in mind that the government is spending more in 2018 than ever before. If we continue on our current path, Tax Freedom Day will come later and later in the year. Joe Bishop-Henchman, Executive Vice President of The Tax Foundation, joins the show to get both practical and philosophical about the tax system. Tax policy combines all of the essential questions about fairness versus freedom, along with technical economic questions of tax incidence (who pays?) and deadweight loss (how much value gets lost in the shuffle?). Bob and Joe will discuss what changed because of the recent Tax Cuts and the Jobs Act, and do a round-up of state-based reforms. Tune in to hear the silver lining on the cloud that is tax day.
California businesses find themselves wedged between a rock and a hard place. The rock is the Federal Government's recent crackdown on undocumented workers – a head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) says his agency plans to quadruple the number of unannounced visits to work sites, and a recent raid in the Bay Area shows he's serious. The hard place is California's law criminalizing cooperation with ICE when no warrant is presented. State and local leaders are determined to defend their sanctuary status, including Oakland Mayor Libby Shaaf, who announced the upcoming raid on Twitter. This led President Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions to retaliate with a lawsuit against the state's directives opposing the Federal Government. Of course, illegal immigrants themselves are left in the ultimate predicament by our schizophrenic politics. Republicans are telling them to "Get in Line! And Stay Out!", while Democrats seem content to keep them as second-class citizens in legal limbo between naturalization and deportation. Mitch Jeserich hosts the award-winning Letters & Politics show on KPFA radio, where he frequently hosts discussions on immigration from a left-leaning perspective. He joins Bob to debate the philosophical differences between libertarians and left-liberals when it comes to immigration, and the constitutionality of the Trump administration's challenge to California's sanctuary state status.
On Wednesday night, the Republican-led House of Representatives passed a $1.3 trillion dollar "omnibus bill" to avert a government shutdown. In case you're wondering what $1.3 trillion gets you in 2018, the answer is "five more months of continued operation of the Federal Government." Of that budget, $700 billion goes toward the military. If you assume that government can only be either large and effective or small and ineffective, you might wrongly conclude that we need big spending for public goods like national defense. After all, without a strong military, what is to prevent predators from plundering our productive economy? However, Jonathan Bydlak of the Institute for Spending Reform thinks it's wrong to equate big spending with strength and safety. As a self-proclaimed "cheap hawk," he says we can have a strong military without bankrupting the country. He quotes Michael Mullen – Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff – who said, “The most significant threat to our national security is our debt.” Mullen believes out-of-control spending actually weakens the military and the resources it uses. Bydlak has started an initiative called "Guide for a Strong America" under the banner of the Institute for Spending Reform, which lays out concrete cuts to the Pentagon's budget that would make us safer. Tune in to hear how D.C.'s culture of spending – which includes GOP leaders – is setting the U.S. up for something worse than a government shutdown.
Dr. Jeffrey A. Singer – aka the “Doctor For Liberty” – recently wrote a piece for Cato @ Liberty in which he challenged the mainstream media narrative about the abuse of prescription pain pills. The Trump administration is cracking down on doctors and requiring them to jump through hoops in order to give their patients necessary medication. The War on Drugs remains what it has always been – a war on people. So much unnecessary pain will be caused in the name of staunching the opioid epidemic, which turns out not to be an opioid epidemic after all. The substances change (today, for example, we have the highly dangerous and addictive Fentanyl being illegally smuggled from Chinese factories) but the game stays the same. Prohibition policies hurt the very people they are supposed to help, and experienced professionals (i.e., doctors) are prevented from using their best judgment. Singer says we don’t need more funding for the epidemic, we need more rationality and calm assessment of the data, which suggests that restricting supply of prescription opioids is pushing people to black markets and creating more addicts, not fewer. Instead of facts, we get hysteria. Dr. Singer returns to the show to discuss America’s longest war for the full hour with Bob.
Each week, the list of celebrities accused of sexual assault seems to grow longer. Bill Cosby, Bill O'Reilly, and now Harvey Weinstein are just a few of the mighty who have fallen from grace. But while none of these three men has yet to be officially convicted of a crime, the market's retribution has been swift. O'Reilly lost his show, Weinstein lost his job, and Cosby lost his reputation as the benign, sweater-wearing father figure that America so loved. On college campuses, criminal proceedings are being jettisoned (for different reasons) in favor of Title IX discrimination hearings, which lower the standard for guilt to a "preponderance of evidence." Reason Magazine's Robby Soave has documented numerous instances in which campus tribunals have functioned as kangaroo courts – ruining the lives of innocent men and women under the banner of civil rights.
Of course, it goes without saying that sexual harassment deserves to be treated seriously. Richard Epstein returns to the show to bring his full intellect to bear on this hairy subject. He and Bob will discuss the threat to free speech posed by the Federal Government's broad guidelines on harassment issued to universities under Title IX legislation. They seek to define appropriate remedies for sexual harassment, and the market's role in punishing bad behavior. Bob will ask what culpability the enablers of sexual harassment possess for saying nothing when "everyone knew" about certain individuals' abusive behavior. Finally, Epstein will explain how anti-discrimination legislation often creates new forms of discrimination. It's time for an adult conversation about sexual harassment.
Defenders of the free market are often caricatured as calculating, utility maximizers, whose only concern is the efficient allocation of resources. Any attempt to analyze a “market for love” with intersecting supply and demand curves is bound to fall flat. However, that doesn’t mean libertarian economic thought has no implications for how the institution of marriage could be improved. Before their wedding, one year ago, Sarah Skwire and Steve Horwitz had both independently written about the libertarian answer to the hot-button question of same-sex marriage. Horwitz, a libertarian economics at Ball State University, has applied an “Austrian perspective” to explain how the evolution of the market, and the relatively recent development of “marrying for love,” is changing the way people might want to structure the marriage contract. Skwire, a senior fellow at Liberty Fund, has studied “What Marriage Was Like before Bureaucracy,” and found – incredibly – that it worked just fine. They join Bob on their one-year anniversary to discuss a Reason article they co-authored last November (Getting the State Out of Marriage) in which they advocate replacing the one-size-fits-all contract with a private system adapted to changing norms around marriage and family life. They argue that the idea of a traditional marriage system is flawed, and make the case that government’s intrusion into the institution – particularly the special benefits based on marriage status – has created unnecessary controversy.
There are several well-documented cases of collective memory lapses, in which masses of people have become convinced of something that never actually happened. Contrary to popular belief, the queen in Snow White never says "Mirror, mirror on the wall," the Monopoly man doesn't wear a monocle, Nelson Mandela did not die in prison, and the Federal Reserve did not ease monetary policy leading up to the Great Recession. Beginning in 2009, a professor named Scott Sumner became perturbed by an apparent false memory of the events around the housing crash and subsequent downturn. He started a blog called The Money Illusion, which noted certain parallels between the insufficient action taken by the Fed during the Great Depression, and the timid policy pursued under Chairman Ben Bernanke. Bernanke – himself an economic historian par excellence – gave a speech on Milton Friedman's 90th birthday apologizing to him for making the Great Depression far deeper than it needed to be. "You're right," he said, "we caused the Great Depression. We're sorry. But thanks to you we'll never do it again." Yet just a few years later, Bernanke stood idly by as nominal spending plunged, and inflation fell temporarily to negative levels. The failure to act more aggressively stood in direct opposition to Friedman's recommendations for Japan, which ushered in a whole decade of slow growth because of overly tight money. Somehow, the economics profession seemed to forget all about Bernanke's apology (and Friedman's recommendations), acting as if fiscal policy and other regulations were the only way to avoid another recession.
Professor Sumner joins Bob's producer Charlie Deist to conclude a three-part series on monetary policy and business cycle theory. Sumner is neither a Keynesian nor an Austrian economist, but rather positions himself within Milton Friedman's monetarist tradition. While Friedman advocated a simple rule for targeting the money supply to stabilize prices, Sumner has adapted monetarist ideas for the 21st century, arguing for a "nominal GDP target" (real output plus inflation) that would automatically adjust based on the market's forecast.
We moderns take pride in the fact that we no longer burn witches. But can we be so certain that we’ve emerged from the "Dark Ages" to a new enlightened state of mind? Lenore Skenazy sees some of the markings of a modern-day witch hunt in sex-offender registry laws. There’s no doubt that we need mechanisms to protect potential victims of sexual violence, but Skenazy argues that these registries enact draconian yet ineffective punishments – often branding relatively innocent minors for life, lumping them in with some of the most heinous criminals. It takes bravery to advance this view, given the unpopularity of the cause (don’t expect a March for Sex Offenders’ Rights anytime soon). But demonization hasn’t stopped Skenazy from making common-sense arguments – with a heavy dose of humor – about this and other modern-day witch hunts. She was labeled the “World’s Worst Mom” for allowing her 9-year-old son to ride the NYC subway and writing about it in the New York Post. The controversy led her to start a now-global movement of “Free Range Kids.” She now frequently speaks and writes to debunk myths like the ubiquitous kidnapper, and the incurable sex offender (the most common age of people on the sex offender registry is 14 years old). Skenazy’s latest project encourages parents and schools to grant kids more autonomy – to let go, and Let Grow – as such experiences, and the small risks involved, are essential to learning. She joins Bob – fresh off a Cato Institute symposium, titled, “You May Be a Sex Offender if…” – to restore sanity to the conversation around sexual harassment, sex offenders, and over-sensitivity on college campuses.
California has problems. After years of drought, last year’s deluge caused the Oroville Dam to burst, costing nearly $1 billion. Meanwhile, the welfare rolls are swelling, and the millionaires on whom the state depends for its tax revenues are leaving the state in droves. This would seem to be a time to get back to basics, but proponents of the high-speed rail are plowing ahead with the project despite delays, lawsuits, and cost overruns. The original bond measure — Proposition 1A — passed in 2008, with a slim majority of Californians voting for a state of the art, 220mph, electrified train from San Francisco to Los Angeles. It was to be partly funded by taxpayer money, and partly by private investment. Now, the project has morphed into a patchwork of conventional and high-speed rail, and encountered serious issues at the earliest, and allegedly easiest, stages of construction. There are now big questions for those private investors, who were supposed to emerge to foot the remainder of the bill for what is no longer the high-speed project it was supposed to be. For these reasons and more, one of the proposition’s original most ardent advocates — Judge Quentin Kopp — has turned on the idea. In fact, he now says it’s “almost a crime.” Kopp is a retired judge and former Chairman of the High Speed Rail Authority. He served as a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and in the California State Senate and joins the show to explain how the high-speed rail has gotten so far off track.
John Bechtol talks about overcoming the victim mentality and taking responsibility for the failure of the California Republican Party. John is a retired contractor, yachtsman, and graduate of UC Davis, who was raised in Sonoma County, where he still resides. This interview was conducted at the St. Francis Yacht Club on Wednesday, January 31, as part of an on-going investigation of the political formations surrounding the proposed state of New California, and the “Jefferson state of mind,” that spawned it.
Does Bitcoin signal the end of money-printing and inflation by central banks as we know it, or does it represent something larger and less predictable?
Hopland resident and long-time Californian Tom Reed think counties should be the basic unit of the State of California. However, since California operates under "Dillon's Rule," which grants state preeminence over local governments, he is advocating for the creation of a "New California," comprising northern and inland counties, outside of the major metropolitan areas.
On January 15, his group will be publishing a Declaration of Independence -- not from the United States, but from the increasingly dysfunctional State of California. Learn more about Tom and his efforts at https://newcaliforniastate.com/.
Medical advances like organ transplants and blood plasma transfusions have created new dilemmas for healthcare workers, economists, and ethicists alike. If you bring up the idea of compensating donors of bodily tissues and fluids at a dinner party, you’re likely to evoke reactions of disgust (and fewer future dinner party invitations). However, given the importance of these procedures and shortage of donors, the conversation must be had somewhere. That’s why we reserved a full hour to discuss the topic with business ethicist Peter Jaworski of Georgetown University. Jaworski advocates the legalization of blood plasma sales in his native country of Canada. Our neighbors to the north currently import the life-saving serum from the U.S., where “donations” are incentivized with small cash payments. Peter recently penned an op-ed for Canada’s National Post titled, “Canada needs blood plasma. We should pay donors to get it.” He brings a nuanced understanding of the opposing arguments, along with a convincing rebuttal that might even persuade your friends at the next cocktail party of the merits of such incentives for plasma donation (although we aren’t responsible for any friends lost over the issue). Why are some goods, namely those that come from the human body, thought to be off-limits for sale? Tune in to hear the case for legalizing the repugnant.
When Frank H. Buckley last joined the show, he surprised Bob with a cogent, intellectual case for the election of Donald Trump. Buckley, a Foundation Professor at George Mason University’s Scalia School of Law, advised Team Trump on campaign speeches, and geared his last book, The Way Back, towards a set of practical solutions to “restore the promise of America.” His latest book, The Republic of Virtue: How We Tried to Ban Corruption, Failed, and What we Can Do About It, completes the triptych that began with The Once and Future King, about the return of “crown governance” under the Obama administration. It should come as no surprise to listeners to this show we have drifted from the Founders’ vision of a balance of powers — balance between states and Federal government, and among branches of Federal government. Bob and Frank delve deeper into his arguments in all three books, focusing on the age-old problem of corruption — the quid-pro-quo of money for political influence that plagues every system of government. While everyone agrees that corruption is a problem, Buckley argues that platitudes about campaign finance reform and eliminating “dark money” miss the mark, and often worsen the problem by making the political system less competitive. Instead, he offers a set of solutions that limit the influence of lobbyists, reign in the executive branch’s authority, and break up corrupt judicial rings in the states. They also discuss the recent tax bill, and why Buckley thinks its passage is reason enough to vindicate his support for Trump.
Jayant Bhandari is not afraid to sound politically incorrect when he speaks about the importance of western capitalist institutions to the third world. An Indian-born Canadian citizen, Bhandari is often asked why he left one socialist country for another. To this, he points out that the difference of dysfunction is an order of magnitude — while Canada’s health care system may require people to wait in line for procedures, India’s general lack of a sewage system forces its citizens to wait in a different kind of line. His harsh words are not reserved for the third-world, but also for the European leaders who left a vacuum in the wake of colonialism, now filled by irrationality, demagoguery and superstition. His main points might be considered hate speech if he wasn’t an immigrant himself. He puts the enlightenment value of reason at the center of the moral fabric that holds the West together —those institutions that grant equality before the law, and encourage empathy and compassion. When the state assumes the people’s responsibility to take care of themselves and one another, the result is corruption — governmentally and, he adds, mentally. Bhandari hosts the annual "Capitalism and Morality" seminar in Vancouver, and writes for a variety of libertarian outlets, including the Mises.org and Acting Man. He joins Bob for the full hour . Tune in to hear Bhandari’s international perspective on capitalism and morality, on the show of ideas, not attitude.
Producer Charlie Deist tries to cram a semester of economics into one hour with Professor J. Bradford Delong He continues to look at the Austrian Business Cycle Theory, (see part 1), which holds central banks responsible for creating booms and busts by “pumping” cheap credit into the economy and subsequently “slamming on the breaks” when inflation results. Brad DeLong is a former deputy assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury, and a professor of economics at the University of California at Berkeley, where he is chair of the political economy major. He was also an early blogger, and is one of the most respected voices in the “neoclassical synthesis”—the hybrid of classical, Keynesian, and monetarist macroeconomics taught at universities throughout the world. DeLong has criticized Austrians for putting the blame for business cycles entirely on government. However, he too was concerned by Alan Greenspan’s excessive easing, starting all the way back in 2004, and during the lead-up to the housing bust.
Tune in to find out why DeLong considers himself a student of both Milton Friedman and John Maynard Keynes, and learn what it means to be a liberal in both the modern and classical senses.
This Sunday, producer Charlie Deist interviews Robert Wenzel (@Wenzeleconomics) – editor of the Economic Policy Journal, and Target Liberty, host of The Robert Wenzel Show, and author of several books, including The Fed Flunks: My Speech at the New York Federal Reserve Bank (January 24, 2015). He is also a financial consultant, whose advice is rooted in the so-called Austrian school of economics – based on the ideas of F.A. Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, and other like-minded economists from Austria – which is critical of government interventions in the market. The Austrians were especially aware of the dangers of printing money, having observed the hyperinflation of the nearby Weimar Republic. Their theories of how manipulation of the monetary system spurs bad investment has spawned an entire heterodox tradition, at odds with mainstream interpretations of recessions and depressions. In 2005, Wenzel wrote a blog post applying the Austrian theory of business cycles to the actions the Federal Reserve was taking at the time to prop up the economy, following the recession of 2000–2001. While Alan Greenspan tooted his own horn, Wenzel sounded the alarm. Following the crash, through an unusual series of events, Wenzel was invited to give a talk at New York Federal Reserve Bank, where he planted the Austrian seed. Now, approximately 1,000,000 people have read the speech, in which Wenzel pleaded with the scant crowd of attendees – all dedicated employees at the Fed – to leave their posts and never come back.
With interest rates having been near zero ever since, and stock market and housing prices rising to new highs, are we in need of an Austrian revival?
We’ve covered the problem of mass incarceration on this show before — but what about the flipside: the impunity of corporate executives with cozy relationships to government regulators? Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Jesse Eisinger (@EisingerJ) wanted to know why no bankers or executives went to prison after the 2008 financial crisis. In a bygone era, the Justice Department prosecuted Wall Street executives more vigorously for its high crimes and misdemeanors. Eisinger’s new book, The Chickenshit Club: Why the Justice Department Fails to Prosecute Executives, charts the decline in enforcement of white collar crime, telling the story of a passionate U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York — none other than former FBI Director James Comey — and his attempts to jam the revolving doors of power between the DOJ and private law firms. Somehow, we’ve reached a point where bad actors cannot receive the due penalty for their errors without threatening the rest of society. We’ve built a world where “too big to fail” also translates into “too big for jail.” Eisinger finds a source of this cowardice in a perfectionist culture and risk-aversion among top law students, where it's increasingly rare for the Justice Department to bring a case to a jury if there is a chance of losing.
*Jesse Eisinger is a senior reporter and editor at ProPublica. In April 2011, he and a colleague won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for a series of stories on questionable Wall Street practices that helped make the financial crisis the worst since the Great Depression.
2016 confirmed what most libertarians suspected: national elections are not the way to roll back big government. But don’t lose hope – yet. Spokane talk radio host G. R. Mobley has a surprisingly sound plan for “saving your liberties without a national election.” It requires listeners to this program to take note, and share the message. Mobley says the Constitution is a “contract” amongst the States, “to not only create and define the general (i.e. Federal) government with limited and defined powers, but… also [to create] a perpetual union of these same States.” Per contract law, Mobley asserts that context is essential for understanding the definitions and intent of a contract — in this case, the Constitution. The Ratification Debates set the agreed upon terms, which are still vital. If one part of the contract is not being enforced, the whole contract should be void. In 2017, he says the parties to this contract (i.e., the states) need to renegotiate, through a process he calls "Republic Review." Listeners should ideally read and understand these debates, which took place between the Federalists and Anti-Federalists, in and around 1787. However, a concise version appears in Bob’s new book, Secret Sauce: The Founders’ Original Recipe for Limited American Democracy. There is a path to restoring Constitutional governance, but is there a critical mass? What’s needed initially is not so much a full-fledged movement, but a small "remnant" that understands the principles of liberty, when they have ceased to resonate with the average voter. Learn what you need to know to start the ball rolling on "Republic Review."
It takes courage for a law professor to stand up for her values when she is being publicly condemned by her fellow faculty members, the dean of her law school, student groups, and a media mob. This is what U Penn law professor Amy Wax has done in the wake of her explosive op-ed, "Paying the price for breakdown of the country's bourgeois culture" (Philadelphia Enquirer, Aug. 9, 2017). In the piece, Wax and her co-author Larry Alexander presented some uncontroversial facts about the relationship between stable, two-parent homes and positive outcomes for children. They also reprimanded an upper class that no longer seems willing to preach the importance of traditional values. Some of Wax's colleagues responded to the op-ed piece with alternative theories of why poverty is entrenched, but the overwhelming message of an open letter – signed by 33 U Penn professors – was that Wax had committed an intellectual crime deserving of censure and public shaming. The debate over Wax's praise for "bourgeois values" goes deeper than her arguments for a return to norms of hard work and personal responsibility. At stake is the freedom to challenge or contradict academic groupthink, which equates any identification of legitimate advantages with an apology for unfair privilege. If the students demanding that Wax be demoted get their way, then professors everywhere will feel a "chill" on voicing their own unpopular opinions. Wax joins Bob for the full hour to describe the anatomy of a campus intimidation campaign, and explain why she continues to speak her mind.
Offering haircuts to the homeless is now illegal. Occupational licensing has gone too far. Fortunately the Institute for Justice is winning the battle in the states.
This week's guest, Dr. Michael Edelstein, helps his patients see clearly what Shakespeare intuited about the relationship between thinking and emotional health. Edelstein is a long-time libertarian and practitioner of Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy. This method leaves your childhood in the past, and instead trains you to challenge and replace distorted thinking with a more rational – even cheerful – perspective towards the things we cannot change. As the world hurtles towards an uncertain and unsettling future, we can find comfort in Dr. Edelstein’s advice on how to stay happy in a statist world. First, we need to recognize the traps that we're likely to fall into, including the sacred cow of "self esteem." Self esteem, Edelstein says, is the "unempirical, illogical and impractical" notion that we should rate our whole selves, rather than our actions, and think highly of ourselves regardless. Once we start thinking this way, we're more likely to end up with the opposite emotion when we make mistakes. When large groups or nations succumb to these stark and unrealistic self-portraits, it can lead to nationalism, wars, and even mass insanity. It’s not often that you get to hear a libertarian attorney interview a libertarian clinical psychologist on the secret to overcoming anxiety and depression. Just because the world's gone crazy doesn't mean you have to. Bob's producer, Charlie Deist, also joins the show. Learn how to respond rationally to adverse events from the Bay Area's premier vegan, anarcho-capitalist cognitive behavioral therapist, on the show of ideas, not attitude.
So far, the biggest silver lining on the Trump presidency has been a national shift in focus toward state-level policies. In his inauguration speech, President Trump promised to return “power to the people” – devolving responsibilities previously undertaken by Federal Government to the states, where citizens can more effectively voice their opinions, or vote with their feet if that fails. Even the San Francisco Chronicle has praised the “great American tradition” of Federalism since discovering that California could use the concept to resist Federal immigration directives. Robert Alt, President and CEO of the Buckeye Institute, used to work in Washington D.C., but took the helm of the Ohio-based free market think tank in 2012 after deciding that the real change is happening at the state level. Under his leadership, the Buckeye Institute has been winning public policy victories in tax policy, workers’ voting rights, and criminal justice reform. Recently, he has been fighting to grant public sector union workers the ability to vote for their union representation. He and Bob also discuss the Buckeye Institute’s important work in criminal justice, and the need for more ground-up reforms across the 50 states. What can California learn from Ohio, and how can every state engage in novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country?
In 1956, the attorney general of Alabama tried to oust the NAACP from the state, and issued a subpoena for their donor lists. Fortunately, a unanimous Supreme Court decision protected the organization's right to keep this information private – finding that Alabama had violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process clause. Justice John Marshall Harlan II wrote, “This Court has recognized the vital relationship between freedom to associate and privacy in one’s associations.” Today, DonorsTrust helps philanthropists match their money to the principles of limited government, personal responsibility and free enterprise while remaining anonymous. They serve as a conduit between donors and organizations like the Cato Institute, Mercatus Center, and the American Enterprise Institute, and have attracted sharp criticism from politicians who oppose the ideas these groups promote. While the attacks are couched in terms of “transparency” and preventing “dark money” from influencing elections, this language conceals the drive to weaken a cornerstone of liberty in the U.S. – the right to privacy in one’s freely chosen associations. Lawson Bader (formerly the President of the Competitive Enterprise Institute) recently stepped up as President and CEO of DonorsTrust, where he takes the heat on behalf of this entire network of donors, which is “building a legacy of liberty.” Lawson notes that transparency is for government, whereas privacy is for citizens. He joins Bob to discuss the new threats to freedom of association, and explain the value of donor-advised funds like DonorsTrust – both to philanthropists and the causes they support.
Harvard Law Professor Jack Goldsmith recently wondered out loud whether Trump will destroy the very office of the presidency. His Atlantic magazine article is a must-read for anyone concerned about the expansion of executive authority. Goldsmith quotes James Madison’s cautionary words that “enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm.” That is why the founders established the checks and balances within the Constitution to allow each of the three branches of government to serve as checks on the others. Fortunately – try as he might – Trump has not been able to undo the fundamental limits on the executive branch. Although he and his predecessors, Bush and Obama, have expanded the president’s authority with their “pen and phone,” the constitution has prevented Trump from breaking the law… so far. We have the Founders to thank for that. The next time someone argues for an expansion of presidential power that favors “your side,” Think of the precedent it sets for the future, when you don’t know who might be calling the shots. Our president today has more power than any king ever had or will have. And we, through our representatives, give the power to the office. It is time to take it back; from the President and from the faceless and unelected bureaucrats who do his bidding. As presidential power grows, freedom recedes. Go libertarianminute.com for more libertarian ideas.
The talk of artificial intelligence is everywhere, but the truth is, most of us don't really know what AI is. In his op-ed in Business Insider, Luis debunks 5 major AI myths that have been manufactured due to the dominant and often misleading dystopian narrative about AI in the future:
Myth 1: AI is going to kill our jobs Myth 2: Robots are AI Myth 3: Big Data and Analytics are AI Myth 4: Machine Learning and Deep Learning are AI Myth 5: Search engines are AI
Bob and Luis focus on the first myth, which seems to arrive dressed in new garb every couple of decades. Historical figures ranging from Queen Elizabeth I (1589) to John Maynard Keynes (1930) have predicted that new inventions would give rise to mass unemployment, and the dire warnings keep coming. Today's predictions come with the added warning of impending doom. But is there anything to fear (other than fear itself)? Luis is a serial innovator, who currently directs the MIT Innovation Teams Program, MIT’s flagship hands-on innovation program jointly operated between the Schools of Engineering and Management. He joins the show to clarify the difference between automation, robotics, and true artificial intelligence. His new book Innovating: A Doer’s Manifesto for Starting from a Hunch, Prototyping Problems, Scaling Up, and Learning to Be Productively Wrong (MIT Press, 2017) also lays out a framework for thinking about innovation, which cannot be captured in any template or formula. Get ready to use your brain.
Last time writer and filmmaker* Anthony L. Fisher joined the show, he exposed the mysterious death of a 20-year-old confidential informant. His Reason TV documentary and article were later picked up by 60 Minutes, and led many to rethink the role of confidential informants in the criminal justice system. Anthony also covered the Occupy Wall Street protests back in 2011, when it was unclear what the movement stood for or where it was heading. In a column for the Daily Beast, Anthony brings his characteristic clarity and nuance to bear on the anti-fascist protesters – aka "Antifa" – that have made recent headlines. Between Nazi white supremacists and anti-fascists (aka “Antifa”), Anthony is adamant that the former possess the more odious ideology, and are responsible for far more victims than the latter. However, this does not justify the acceptance of indiscriminate violence displayed by Antifa at recent protests and rallies. Anthony notes that violent, anarchic tactics have historically bolstered far-right elements. This suggests non-violent resistance is still the best option against a rising tide of xenophobia in the United States and elsewhere. This Sunday, Anthony will take your calls on the disturbing glorification of violence by some intellectuals, and the watering down of terms like “fascist” to include individuals who merely disagree with left-wing orthodoxy. When anyone to the right of Bernie Sanders is labelled a fascist, the result is a poisoned public discourse. Can we recover civil dialogue in the midst of such intellectual laziness? Bob and Anthony will also break down the differences between alt-right, neoreactionary, and outright fascist/white supremacist groups.
We’re living through the longest period of peace the modern world has ever known, so why all the hysteria of late? John Glaser, Director of Foreign Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, says it’s past time to start closing many of the 800 U.S. military bases around the world, and retool America’s strategy for deterring threats. He argues that the current saber rattling with Iran and North Korea represent the consequences of decades of overly-expansionist interventions. The idea of a “Pax Americana,” or the pacifying influence of American military dominance, has been around since the beginning of the Cold War. It has led us to make compromises with brutal dictators to maintain bases near perceived threats, and continues to cost us hundreds of billions of dollars a year. Worse, the alleged deterrent effect of a hegemonic military power may be an illusion. In a recent Cato policy paper*, Glaser persuasively argues that certain countries, which might otherwise feel neutrally towards the U.S., end up feeling threatened, and ramp up their military spending accordingly. Did Trump’s “get tough” rhetoric at the U.N. make us more or less safe?
Back in 2015, U.S. Representative Mark Meadows took a major political risk to stand on his North Carolina constituents’ principles. He filed a motion to vacate the speaker chair held by John Boehner. Members of the House Freedom Caucus like Meadows have routinely been accused of dividing the Republican Party by holding fast to radical ideas, like cutting the $20 trillion deficit. Austin Petersen – a 2018 U.S. Senate candidate in Missouri – looks to join the ranks of Meadows, et al. in returning the party to fiscal sanity and constitutional principles. A libertarian until recently, Petersen earned his reputation as a provocative media producer and commentator, who gave Gary Johnson a run for his money in seeking the 2016 Libertarian Presidential nomination. His plan for resolving the GOP’s identity crisis invokes federalism – the principle that states reserve powers not granted to the Federal Government – and a flat tax to spur growth and shrink government. For this, he will no doubt be vilified by moderate Republicans as much as by his actual opponent, Senator Claire McCaskill. Petersen joins Bob to discuss his stance on these issues, along with those where he disagrees with the Libertarian Party, such as the non-aggression principle. You can follow Austin on Twitter at @AP4Liberty, and hear him now on the show of ideas not attitude.
The year is 1710, and the Industrial Revolution is taking off in the West, creating the world's first middle class, and giving rise to prosperous colonial outposts on the American frontier. But the colonies' new-found wealth has its critics. Cotton Mather, a Puritan minister at Harvard University, laments that "Religion brought forth prosperity, and the daughter destroyed the mother." Puritanism's offshoots – the Protestant work ethic, and arguably, the prosperity gospel – still drive the biggest engine of material wealth the world has ever seen, and Harvard types are still suspicious of its fruit. Joseph Schumpeter, the Austrian economist behind the term "creative destruction," predicted that intellectuals – who don't labor or trade to earn their income – would undermine the capitalist system and shackle the entrepreneur. Michael Strong – an intellectual and an entrepreneur, as well as critic and champion of the market – is an exception. Strong has founded multiple innovative charter schools based on Montessori, Socratic and entrepreneurial principles, written books on education and entrepreneurship, and co-founded Conscious Capitalism, Inc., with Whole Foods CEO John Mackey to promote entrepreneurial solutions to world problems. Voices like Strong's are especially important as the West loses faith in the very ideas that brought about its prosperity – just when these ideas are needed most in the developing world. Michael joins guest hosts Charlie Deist (producer of The Bob Zadek Show) and Joe Quirk (President of The Seasteading Institute) to distinguish between valid critiques of historical capitalism and dogmatic repression of the entrepreneurial spirit. Strong will also propose his biggest idea yet for unleashing human potential – the startup city.
Nancy MacLean’s Democracy in Chains purports to be a bombshell of a book. Praised by NPR, her tale of how a southern academic single-handedly masterminded a plan to subvert American democracy is perfectly crafted to inflame and entertain progressive partisans. MacLean's conspiracy theory traces the “radical right’s stealth plan,” and quotes the central bogeyman, Professor James M. Buchanan, saying “I can fight this [democracy] . . . I want to fight this.” The bad news for MacLean’s fawning reviewers is that Buchanan never said this. MacLean made it up (or at least made it sound like he said it). Vox.com delivers a death blow to the book’s premise of the shadowy origins of public choice economics – a common-sense branch of the dismal science that explains government failures in terms of bad incentives facing politicians and bureaucrats. Professor Michael Munger is both MacLean's colleague at Duke and an expert on public choice. He joins the show this Sunday to break down Buchanan’s real legacy – his Nobel-Prize winning contributions to economic science – and to help Bob understand the bizarre progressive reaction to his work. One of public choice’s central insights, and the theme of Bob’s new book, Secret Sauce, is that democracy must be limited by a constitution to protect the rights of minorities and individuals from infringement by the majority. Ironically, it is progressives who can best utilize Buchanan's insights to resist a power-grab by our democratically-elected president and congress. Don’t miss the autopsy of MacLean’s failed attempt at revisionist history (or “historical fiction,” to put it in Michael's more charitable terms).
What President Bush began, and President Obama failed to end, Trump now proposes to extend. The War in Afghanistan is the single longest military conflict in U.S. history – just beating out the 14-year-long Morro Rebellion – leading some to dub it “the Forever War.” Generals who were initially optimistic supporters of nation-building have lowered their expectations, and anticipate decades of involvement just to keep dangerous groups within the region at bay. The rationale for increasing troop presence is that more force will lead to a decisive victory. But repeating the claim that we are going to “win bigly” does not suggest a real strategy that distinguishes Trump’s policy from his two unsuccessful predecessors. Anthony Alfidi is a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army Reserve who has been to Afghanistan in uniform. He joins Bob in studio this Sunday to offer his perspective on the prospects for an eventual troop withdrawal. The country’s problems go beyond its reputation as a terrorist breeding ground. It has one of the most corrupt governments in the world, high rates of illiteracy (especially among women), and other barriers to effective political and economic development. It seems reasonable to wonder whether U.S. drone strikes and drug raids are helping. Anthony does, however, think there is hope in the form of the rising generation, which is increasingly educated. Tune in to hear how the idea of generational cycles and the “fourth turning” could signal a positive resurgence for Afghanistan.
A new "state of the climate" report from 13 Federal agencies says Americans may already be experiencing the impacts of climate change. Meanwhile, President Trump is doubling down in defense of his withdrawal of the U.S. from the Paris climate accord. This may have been a prudent decision, but Trump's reasons for ignoring the accord's emissions reductions goals are based on the same flawed logic that he's used to promote protectionist trade policy. Namely, the President says he stands for "Pittsburgh, not Paris" – suggesting that what’s good for one (environmentally or economically) is bad for the other. In June, Professor Richard Epstein corrected Trump’s zero-sum mindset on trade. The Professor returns to the show with an economic analysis of why the Paris agreement is a bad deal. Bob will pose a thought experiment to highlight the core principles (or lack thereof) behind typical environmental regulations. What are our obligations to future generations when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions? Can we analyze environmental externalities within the framework of the libertarian non-aggression principle, or is the cause-and-effect too flimsy to inflict damages on the biggest emitters? Tune in for another edition of Advanced Topics in Libertarianism with "The Libertarian” himself.
Here’s a fun fact: there are more Chinese restaurants in the United States than there are McDonald’s, KFC’s and Burger Kings combined. No doubt this is partly a result of the dedicated entrepreneurship of Chinese immigrants and the American appetite for sweet and sour pork, but there is also a story of economic discrimination behind the flourishing of dim sum dens, chop suey canteens, and Szechuan saloons. Because of the prejudicial hiring environment at the turn of the 20th century, restaurants and launderettes were among the only sectors in which Chinese immigrants to the United States could get a foothold. Even as self-employed restaurateurs, Chinese Americans faced fierce resistance from unionized competition, who hid behind a smokescreen of moral panic and virulently racist propaganda. Gabriel “Jack” Chin is a legal scholar and Law Professor at UC Davis, where he teaches Immigration Law, Criminal Procedure, and Race and Law. Chin recently co-authored an eye-opening article titled “The War on Chinese Restaurants” for Cato’s quarterly journal Regulation. He documents this sorry episode in American history, in which states and local governments persistently discriminated against Chinese immigrants – including bans on white women entering their restaurants – even after the courts declared such policies unconstitutional. The market demand for Chinese food eventually won out, but only after two pieces of federal legislation excluding Chinese immigrants.
Washington’s dysfunction is reaching epic new proportions in Congress's current repeal-and-replace debate. Last week, Will Wilkinson noted the GOP’s dilemma of wanting to use small government rhetoric while still pandering to their constituents and their favored welfare programs. Is there a solution that balances sensible, limited government principles with popular support? Joyce Cordi believes there is, and that the answer to this and many intractable political problems lies in friendly bi-partisan engagement and sensible centrist reforms with a conservative bent. Joyce hosts the “Reimagine America” radio program – a virtual town hall on 860 AM, the Answer, and brings an extensive business background to bear on the major issues dividing the American body politic. She likens government to a big, clunky business in need of better, leaner management, and a clearer vision of 21st century governance. She joins Bob to debate why health care reform is stalled, and what it would take to avert the looming disaster of ObamaCare’s insurance cost death spiral. She argues that the new health insurance entitlement is here to stay, but that government need not control every aspect of the healthcare industry. Catch Joyce Cordi every Saturday from 12-1pm, hosting her show – Reimagine America – on 860 AM, The Answer, and don’t miss this special episode of the show of ideas, not attitude.
Republicans looking to repeal and replace Obamacare are in a dilemma of their own making this week. They have branded themselves as small government defenders, promising reductions in taxes and subsidies, despite knowledge that most of their constituents oppose cuts to their favored welfare programs. This may seem like an intractable problem to the typical conservative, but Will Wilkinson – Vice President for Policy at the Niskanen Center – offers a lifeline to a struggling G.O.P. in a recent NY Times article [For Trump and G.O.P., the Welfare State Shouldn’t Be the Enemy]. He notes a paradox the core of limited government philosophy – as an empirical matter, liberty seems to be maximized when the total size of government, measured in spending, is larger. The Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom confirms that hybrid high-tax, low-regulation policies are working for some of the freest countries on earth. Behind this argument is a new wave of libertarian thought – the intellectual offspring of F.A. Hayek – that incorporates advances in institutional and experimental economics to overcome progressive objections to markets and private property. Wilkinson and the Niskanen Center are pushing a new frontier that could give Republicans space to actually govern. Why the NY Times is offering Republicans such sage advice is a question that will likely remain unanswered, but Wilkinson will take your calls and try to persuade you that his proposed “liberal”-tarian mutation is evolution in the right direction.
In a recent Washington Post op-ed, Attorney General Jeff Sessions inadvertently argued the case libertarians have been making about the War on Drugs for decades. Sessions observed, correctly, that the black market for drugs is inherently violent. He failed to see that the majority of violence stems from the illegality of the market – not from the products themselves. Prohibition, the failed experiment that never completely ended, showed signs of waning over the past 15 years. This was thanks in part to the work of economists like Milton Friedman (among the first to call for the legalization of all drugs) and more recently, Jeffrey Miron, a Harvard professor and prominent libertarian voice for ending the War on Drugs. Sessions, however, seems determined to bring it back into full force. Unfortunately, it is Sessions (and not the expert economists) who holds the levers of federal power. Professor Miron’s key point on prohibition is based on the same principle behind all libertarian thought: drug use is an individual decision, and government has no right to interfere. He has written four books including "Drug War Crimes: The Consequences of Prohibition" and "Libertarianism, from A to Z." Bob and Jeff look at the potential impact of Sessions' re-escalation of the War on Drugs, following a string of new state-based experiments in marijuana legalization and decriminalization.
It’s been called Friedman’s Law, and it holds almost as constant as any law of physics:
"It costs any government at least twice as much to do something as it costs anyone else."
But what's to be done when some amount of government spending is inevitable? People often bring up roads and infrastructure as the counterpoint to the libertarian injunction to “privatize it!” Chris Edwards – editor of the Cato Institute’s DownsizingGovernment.org – says that infrastructure isn't quite the exception government’s cheerleaders make it out to be. In a recent policy bulletin, Who Owns U.S. Infrastructure?, Edwards shows how the Federal Government can decrease its involvement in roads, bridges, ports and dams. The majority of infrastructure is already owned and operated by the private sector, with the next largest chunk owned by state and local governments – as it should be. “Asset ownership conveys responsibility;” Edwards says, “federal intervention diffuses it.” He joins Bob to discuss the true state of U.S. infrastructure (rumors of its demise have been greatly exaggerated) and the hands-off policies that can accelerate the right kind of infrastructure at the right price.
Take a guess who said the following:
"I believe strongly in free trade but it also has to be FAIR TRADE.”
If it weren’t for the all-caps giveaway at the end, the above tweet from President Trump’s could just as easily have come from his predecessor in the Oval Office, or even Bernie Sanders. To many, the statement appears perfectly sound. After all, we expect fairness in our personal dealings with others; our deals with global trading partners would seem to be no exception. Senior Hoover Institution Fellow and NYU Law Professor Richard Epstein says that fairness should guide our trade policy, but that the classical liberal view of fairness happens to align with free trade. Fraud and coercion are certainly unfair practices, but mutually beneficial trade among willing buyers and sellers is not only fair, but is the very source of our wealth and prosperity. Epstein is known for his erudite commentary on law, politics and economics. He recently discussed Trump’s wrong-headed approach to trade on his Hoover Podcast The Libertarian. On this show, the Professor is in. Richard and Bob will discuss the threat of an escalating trade war, and the value of free trade in keeping state and federal policymakers in line when it comes to domestic policies that would harm U.S. competitiveness.
For the past 70 years, Europe has proven a stable demonstration of the values of humanism, democracy, free trade, and solidarity – in a word, of liberalism. This experiment, supported by American leadership worldwide, gave rise to the hope of ever-increasing cooperation and trade among peaceful democratic nations. The European Union was supposed to spur this vision of unified diversity along. Columnist and foreign correspondent James Kirchick predicts the rapid demise of that dream, and vividly documents the beginning of the decline in his book, The End of Europe: Dictators, Demagogues and the Coming Dark Ages. Kirchick has reported on the cascade of illiberal movements sweeping across Europe – from Great Britain to Hungary – all under the specter of creeping Russian aggression. This week, British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn – the same man who touted Hugo Chavez as a champion of the Venezuelan people – celebrates his far-left party’s parliamentary victories. Meanwhile, extremists of all stripes are gaining traction across the continent. The current alternatives to the E.U. seem grim, but is its survival essential for Europe to have a prosperous, peaceful and tolerant future? James joins the show for the full hour and takes calls.
Whatever your opinion is of law enforcement, the Black Lives Matter movement, or the root causes of violent crime, you can't claim to be informed without reading Heather Mac Donald's latest book, The War on Cops: How the New Attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe. The stories and statistics brought to light by the Manhattan Institute Fellow go against much of what liberal elites and civil libertarians alike wish to believe. The prevailing narrative goes like this: inner-city violence and dysfunction result from a combination of unnecessary laws, a racially-biased legal system, and police that routinely violate the rights of the citizens they're supposed to protect. Against this narrative, Mac Donald brings evidence of a surge in violent crime – primarily victimizing African Americans – following a rising tide of anti-police sentiment among major media and politicians. Mac Donald channels former FBI Director James Comey in claiming that the fear of false accusation has caused police departments to dial back the "proactive policing" that has been credited with reducing past violent crime waves. Her speeches on college campuses have been shut down by the usual suspects (student mobs inflamed by the "threat" of a free exchange of ideas) leaving the strongest counter-counter-narratives to Mac Donald's counter-narrative unexpressed. Mac Donald joins the show to defend the police from unsupported charges of racial bias, and Bob takes calls to test the thesis of The War on Cops against a strict interpretation of the Constitution's civil liberty guarantees.
Ask a Californian what’s so special about the Golden State – you'll hear about our beaches, our redwood forests, and our high tech and entertainment hubs. 30 years ago, you'd have heard about our smog. Today's small business owners, however, will tell you about our "unique" environmental regulations. California’s emissions laws are the strictest in the nation, thanks to an exemption from the EPA’s Clean Air Act that allows special vehicle standards, as long as they're at least as strict as federal standards. The Clean Air Act of 1970 requires the EPA to submit new rules to an expert oversight panel, which it failed to do for new recommendations by the California Air Resources Board. While the Air Resources Board may have once been needed to address a crisis, its new rules go too far (modern diesel engines emit far less exhaust than engines from even 15 years ago). Ted Hadzi-Antich is the senior attorney for the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Center for the American Future, and is on the team challenging the EPA's violation of the law. He stands for thousands of small businesses that would be devastated by the restrictions on diesel vehicles, while big corporations thrive based on their ability to comply. Ted joined the show to clear the air for us Californians, and to give an overview of the EPA's regulatory overreach nationwide.
This show has repeatedly drawn attention to administrative agencies – the so-called “fourth branch of government” – and their unconstitutional take-over of legislative and judicial functions. Before revisiting this troubling erosion of checks and balances, we have some more hopeful news. Suja Thomas, Professor of Law at the University of Illinois Law School, speaks and writes of a different “fourth branch” that was actually intended by the founders: juries. The American tradition of jury trials, borrowed from English common law, is known around the world as an exceptional feature of our government "of the people, by the people and for the people." Thomas Jefferson said, "The jury is the greatest anchor ever devised by human kind for holding a government to the principles of its constitution." But with just 4% of criminal cases and around 1% of civil cases actually making it to a jury trial, this check on the other three branches of government has clearly been weakened. Bob and his producer, Charlie Deist, discuss her book, The Missing American Jury: Restoring the Fundamental Constitutional Role of the Civil, Criminal, and Grand Juries along with the classic movie, 12 Angry Men, and the controversial idea of jury nullification.
Ronald Reagan once quipped that the 9 most terrifying words are “I’m from the Government and I’m here to help.” With the Trump administration’s recent announcement of its plan to crack down on the pain pill epidemic, we may soon grow to fear the words “I’m from the federal opioid commission, and I’m here to help.” Meanwhile, the Republicans first stab at repealing and replacing Obamacare revealed a fundamental lack of seriousness. The failed American Health Care Act retained the central mandates from Obamacare that are leading to the “death spiral” of growing costs and shrinking options for insurance customers. If all of this bad news is giving you a headache, you’ll want to be sure to listen to this show. Dr. Jeffrey Singer, a general surgeon and regular guest on The Bob Zadek Show, helps Bob dissect the unintended consequences of government intervention in the sacred relationship between doctor and patient. In Arizona, where Dr. Singer practices, limits on prescription pain medication have already made it harder to optimally assist patients recovering from surgery. As government takes over greater control of the healthcare industry, we can expect less of a role for doctor discretion, and more decisions being made by bureaucrats without our best interests in mind.
It's rarely good news when Latin American politics makes headlines. For those who haven't been monitoring the situation in Venezuela, the "chavista" revolution that began in the 90’s has blossomed into a full-blown meltdown. Think 20th-century socialism was bad? Wait until you hear about Hugo-Chavez-inspired “21st-century socialism,” complete with hyperinflation, widespread famine, and narco-trafficking leaders bent on leading the country further into ruin. Chavez may be gone, but his legacy of misery lives on. Fergus Hodgson, founder of Antigua International, is a prolific writer and global citizen who has been observing Venezuelan politics for years, and has spent time in numerous Latin American countries. Fergus believes we must examine the underlying ideals of revolution in Latin America to understand why the situation is so desperate. Many Venezuelans are seeing through Nicolas Maduro’s failed policies, but the United Socialist Party of Venezuela is clinging to the dictatorship and blocking democratic paths to reform. With protests growing in size and intensity, history is being written.
Last week, Andrei Illarionov warned us about the subtle disinformation tactics the Russian government uses to undermine trust in institutions like democracy and the rule of law. Accordingly, there has never been a greater need to educate the next generation in the founding principles of our country and its 240 year-old Constitution. Kevin Shaw was doing his part, handing out Spanish-language constitutions to his fellow community college students at Pierce College in Los Angeles, when a campus administrator informed him that he would have to relocate to a 616-square-foot “Free Speech Zone.” Shaw knew his rights, and got in touch with the only organization that knows how to fight back: The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). Since FIRE filed a lawsuit against the LA Community College School District, the L.A. Times has come out with an editorial in support of Shaw and his right to free speech at Pierce. Marieke Tuthill-Beck Coon is an attorney with FIRE, who will join the show this Sunday to discuss the case. Assuming they win the lawsuit, FIRE will be one step closer to its goal in the “Million Voices” litigation campaign to free one million student voices from unconstitutional speech codes nationwide. One big question looms: will these voices exercise their freedom of speech to help preserve the Republic?
Some viewed the fall of the Soviet Union as the beginning of “The End of History.” The U.S. and its allies, it seemed, were ushering in an era of global liberal democracy. Today's headlines remind us that history is not over. Russia's aggressive imperialism in Ukraine and its meddling in the Middle East have put it back at center stage. The last 25 years of economic history in Russia are the backdrop to this foreign policy challenge to the West – a time in which the old guard “nomenklatura” gave up on the Soviet experiment and transferred economic ownership to a new set of political elites. This wasn’t anyone’s idea of a smooth transition to an independent democratic regime, but many free-market economists (including Milton Friedman) gladly offered advice on how to jumpstart Russia’s stagnant economy. Andrei Illarionov also served as an early advisor to President Putin – counseling sound monetary and fiscal policy – but resigned when it became clear how the new government was being run. Now a Senior fellow at the Cato Institute’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity and a key contributor to the Human Freedom Index, Andrei recently participated in a Cato symposium on what went wrong. He joins the show to describe the economic and political inner workings of the Putin government and the Russian oligarchy. What does economic freedom have to do with political freedom and foreign policy interventionism? A whole lot, it turns out.
Following Justice Scalia's death last year, Republicans took a gamble with their #NoHearingsNoVote strategy, refusing to confirm any Supreme Court nominee for the remainder of the election year. Ilya Shapiro, Editor-in-chief of the Cato Supreme Court Review, defended this strategy on the show last May on the principle that the election should serve as a referendum on who would nominate the pivotal 9th member to the divided court. In something of a double surprise, Trump was elected, and almost immediately made good on the promise to select a judge from his list of 21 potential nominees. Since the start of Neil Gorsuch's Senate confirmation hearings, Shapiro has been on a media blitz, cutting through the "Kabuki theater" and interpreting the exchanges between the mild-mannered Colorado judge and his senatorial inquisitors (both friendly and unfriendly). He returns to examine how the rest of the process is likely to unfold, in light of Senator Chuck Schumer's promise to filibuster. Bob and Ilya will also discuss what it means to be a judge "in the mold of Antonin Scalia," and how the founders' original intent still applies to the changed circumstances of modern times.
Last month, Senate Democrats fell a single vote short of blocking the nomination of Betsy Devos to head the Department of Education. This revealed not only an unwise expenditure of political capital, but also the undue influence of teacher unions over the Party apparatus. While seemingly more controversial picks like Attorney General Jeff Sessions or Secretary of State Rex Tillerson glided through their hearings, it was Devos who became “Public Enemy #1.” Some perceive her support of educational choice as heralding a demotion of public schools and the unions that uphold their sacred status. Others argue that Devos is unqualified for a top government office, to which libertarians have been quick to suggest a clever alternative: why not shut down the Department of Education altogether? Lisa Snell, director of education and child welfare for Reason Foundation, joins the show to give an update on state-based experiments in educational choice. Bob will also discuss the surprisingly bipartisan argument for ending the $70 billion a year behemoth. Do you or a loved one have children trapped in government schools, with nowhere else to turn?
Taxation watchdogs like Grover Norquist have sought to hold politicians accountable to small-government philosophy using “starve the beast” logic, i.e., assuming that a lower level of taxation will force government to shrink its big-spending agenda. However, in an age of money printing and short-sighted thinking, merely arithmetic constraints like a balanced budget have been brushed aside. Jonathan Bydlak of the Institute to Reduce Spending and the Coalition to Reduce Spending takes a different approach to accountability, channelling Milton Friedman’s aphorism, “To spend is to tax.” Want to know who’s really responsible for your looming IRS bill? Bydlak urges citizens to look at how much spending their representatives are voting for. The next time a Republican politician tells you to read his lips, be sure to check his rhetoric against his voting record, using SpendingTracker.org – a new project of the Institute to Reduce Spending that uses big data to rank the worst culprits (the “spenders”) and allows for comparison with the relatively virtuous “savers.” Unsurprisingly, you’ll find “Rs” at the tops of both the "spender" and "saver" lists. Jonathan returns to the show to explain how this new tool can increase government accountability where it really matters.
Mark Twain is often quoted as having said, “It’s not what you know that gets you in trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” Ironically, there is no evidence Twain ever said or wrote this line, but we can still reflect on its implications for today’s most contentious economic debates. In the case of rising economic inequality, conventional wisdom (coupled with noble motives) has produced policies that hurt the very people they are intended to help: the poor and middle class. Ed Conard – founding partner at Bain Capital and visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute – takes aim at what he sees as a wrong-headed redistributionist mindset in his latest best-selling book, The Upside of Inequality: How Good Intentions Undermine the Middle Class (Penguin). Conard goes beyond an apology for "the 1%" in explaining the real drivers of persistent poverty and relative stagnation of the American middle class. Though counter-intuitive, his insights are essential to improving policy, and the uncertain economic outlook. Conard joins to the show to help listeners understand the economic landscape like never before.
In the waning days of Obama’s presidency, Sam Batkins of the American Action Forum brought to our attention the record number of so-called “midnight regulations” being implemented by administrative agencies like the EPA. This stealthy (and costly) form of executive lawmaking bypasses the traditional legislative process and erodes the checks and balances so vital to a free republic. Luke Wake (a Staff Attorney for the National Federation of Independent Business) takes us under the hood of the emerging “Fourth Branch” of government to inspect its inner workings. Wake’s message is simple and should be uncontroversial: giving the public a voice is a moral imperative of a liberal democratic system. Whereas the legislature consists of elected officials engaged in open debate, administrative agencies are made up of unelected bureaucrats who can quietly alter the interpretations of laws without the usual required period of public notice-and-comment. As usual, it’s small businesses who take the greatest hit in their struggles with Kafkaesque bureaucracy. The result: alienation, existential anxiety, and absurdity.
When we last heard from Joe Quirk – author and “Seavangelist” for The Seasteading Institute – his visions of humanity’s oceanic future may have seemed remote to the some listeners. That, however, was in 2015. After a dizzying election year, during which all grounds for predicting the future were cast into doubt, the seasteading concept of floating free cities sounds entirely reasonable, and at least as likely as California's nascent secession scheme. Joe joins the show this Sunday after a successful diplomatic trip to French Polynesia, which led to the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding in San Francisco last month between the Institute and the French Polynesian government. Reason’s Brian Doherty calls it an “agreement to come to an agreement” regarding the creation of a seazone in Tahitian waters with a “unique governing framework”, where the first aquapreneurs can begin seasteading as early as 2018. Is this the dawning of a Blue Revolution? Bob finds out when it will be time to ready his liveaboard yacht, The Laissez Faire, for a voyage in the near future.
Latter-day patriots often speak of the U.S. Constitution as if it's sacred scripture – the wisdom of ages, revealed to men of letters through the divine faculties of reason. Although this makes for a good story, Bob and past guests have poked holes in that narrative, and revealed how certain compromises required for ratification were a bridge too far for some of the wisest Founding Fathers. The skeptics, known as the anti-federalists, worried that the limited powers outlined in the Articles of Confederation were not circumscribed clearly enough in the new constitution. Seeing the end result of these compromises – a too-powerful federal government – we must give credit to the anti-Federalists. William J. Watkins Jr., a research fellow at the Independent Institute and author of a new book, Crossroads for Liberty: Recovering the Anti-Federalist Values of America's First Constitution, says we should go a step further and seek the reforms they sought, as previewed in the Articles of Confederation. Widely viewed as a failure for granting states too much power, the short-lived Articles may be ripe for a revival, as Americans tire of a president who acts like a King, a congress removed from the people, and a judiciary that legislates from the bench. Join Bob and William as they discuss the relevance of anti-federalist ideals to current events, from Trump's executive orders to California’s new secession movement.
Under President Obama, Republicans grew accustomed to their role opposing the prevailing winds of Big Government. Apparently the fastest way to turn conservative hawks into libertarian doves is to elect a national security hawk and Democrat as president. Now, the Right’s small-government rhetoric will be put to several key tests. Chief among them is whether they will bring military and entitlement spending under control, or let the national debt grow to even more unsustainable levels. Ivan Eland (Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at the Independent Institute) spent 15 years working for Congress on national security issues, and served as Principal Defense Analyst at the Congressional Budget Office; he knows a national security threat when he sees one. He joins Bob to point out the elephant in the room – one that's not going anywhere just because of the new “elephant” in the oval office. Eland identifies the United States’ precarious fiscal situation as the single greatest threat to our security, citing retired Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen as one authority who can read the writing on the wall. President Trump may talk a big game when it comes to cutting wasteful military spending, but will he keep his promises to scale back U.S. intervention in the Middle East and elsewhere?
With the inauguration of President-elect Trump coming later this week, citizens of the United States have developed radically divergent expectations for the next four years. Those who enthusiastically pulled the lever for Trump see a man who can “Make America Great Again” with policies prioritizing domestic interests, while many others fear that he will roll back the progressive, big-government victories of the last eight years. However, the two camps may share more in common than they realize. Both, after all, view government as a primary force to manipulate industries and individual actions to improve outcomes. Dr. Tom Palmer, executive vice president for international programs at the Atlas Network, has an alternative way of looking at things. His new book, “Self Control or State Control? You Decide,” goes beyond mere ideology to questions that every thinking person should be asking. His essays (among several others featured in the book) speak to the importance of personal responsibility to freedom, and offer both a historical and practical perspective to support the central conclusion: if you seek self-determination, then you must also strive for self-control.
Libertarians constantly warn partisans of both sides to be wary of expanding executive power. With each changing of the guard, the ascendant party seems to suffer a collective amnesia in its push to grant the president ever greater authority to enact their preferred agenda. Republicans and Democrats alike neglect the fact that giving power to “Leviathan” works like a ratchet: it only moves in one direction. In the waning hours of President Obama’s lame duck term, his administration is rushing to pass hundreds of new regulations which will saddle the nation well beyond his formal exit from office. Sam Batkins, Director of regulatory policy at the American Action Forum, is putting a spotlight on the costs of this “midnight regulation.” His research shows how this is problem is getting worse with each out-going administration. Batkins joins Bob to review that latest round of administrative lawmaking, with the EPA leading General Obama’s “last stand” – battling to the end for efficiency standards for every imaginable machine and appliance. To paraphrase George Orwell, if you want to picture the future, imagine a fluorescent lamp stamping on a human face – forever.
After campaigning on a platform to crack down on illegal immigration, President Elect Trump is now facing a tall order. In enforcing his proposed policies, he will find himself at odds with many state and local governments, which have crafted their own policies in lieu of Congress’s failure to enact immigration reform. Although the issue could be largely resolved with Bob’s preferred laissez-faire approach – to “Let Them All In” – alas, this idea is not popular with everyone. In 1994, Governor Pete Wilson acted on anxieties in the state of California to promote and pass Proposition 187 – aka the “Save Our State Initiative – which would have prevented undocumented immigrants from accessing non-emergency state services, such as public education. Alex Nowrasteh of the Cato Institute writes that this policy (in addition to being ruled unconstitutional several years later) had the unintended consequence of turning California “Blue” (i.e., majority Democrat). Prior to 1994, the hispanic vote split roughly 50-50 among Democrats and Republicans. Afterwards, California steadily swung to the left, as the GOP came to be known as the anti-immigrant party. Alex returns to the show to explain how Republicans went astray, and to offer a history lesson on political parties that ushered their downfall through misguided nativist platforms. They will also discuss why Trump's proposed policies would be a disaster for the Republic, if they can be implemented at all.
Casey Given is a man on a mission. Ever since founding the UC Berkeley chapter of Students for Liberty in 2009, he has worked tirelessly to advance “a free academy and a free society” – writing and organizing on behalf of the libertarian minority on college campuses across the country. Now, as Director of Young Voices, an initiative of international nonprofit Students for Liberty, Casey helps students and young professionals jumpstart their careers as classically liberal pundits, and compete with the dominant progressive liberalism espoused by millennials. Young Voices recently published a collection of 13 essays that bodes well for the future of liberty in our lifetime (A Future for Millennials: Policies that Can Restore Prosperity). Reminiscent of Milton Friedman's classic Free to Choose, A Future for Millennials renews the case for using the power of the market to solve the most pressing issues of 2016. Casey joins Bob to talk about what is on younger people’s minds, and how the Young Voices network is penetrating the thick fog of ideological conformism on college campuses and in the mainstream media.
The last time Baylen Linnekin joined the show, he had recently helped American farmers secure a major Supreme Court win in the case of Horne v. USDA, in which a raisin farmer Melvin Horne fought back against the federal government’s takings of a portion of his crops for the "National Raisin Reserve". This was a victory to all those cherish "the right of every American to grow, raise, produce, buy, sell, share, cook, eat, and drink the foods of their own choosing." But the fight for our food freedoms is far from over, as Baylen documents in his new book, Biting the Hands that Feed Us: How Fewer, Smarter Laws Would Make Our Food System More Sustainable (Island Press). As it stands, agencies like the USDA and FDA often enact absurd rules that make our food supply no safer, while limiting options and contributing to mountains of food that Americans already waste each year. Case in point: rules constraining the sale of “ugly” fruits and vegetables in supermarkets. Furthermore, many regulations hinder small, sustainable farms, but are no hurdle for Big Agriculture, which swallows up billions in subsidies only to produce surpluses of crops that end up in landfills due to other bad policies. Baylen returns to the show to argue that while some rules are necessary and beneficial, we must be pickier when it comes to our food laws.
Every student of American government learns that the separation of powers is a key component of the checks and balances upholding our democracy. The fact that the president often meets fierce opposition from the legislature is supposed to be a feature – not a bug – of the system. It could even be argued that partisan gridlock, and Washington's inability to "get things done," are positively good things. But with a mounting national debt and innumerable other crises, partisan rancor and division seem to be hindering real reform from happening. Bob fears we will never return to the optimistic America of his youth, and that America may be in decline. His guest this Sunday offers a hopeful solution, borrowing from our friends from across the pond – Akhilesh (Akhi) Pillalamarri argues that Britain's parliamentary system could resolve some of the America's governmental dysfunction. Akhilesh is a journalist, editor, international relations analyst, and historian who writes for The Diplomat and The National Interest magazines. He argues that our presidential system, like others throughout history, has a tendency towards autocracy. Counterintuitively, this is because the president can claim to be doing "the will of the people" in a way that a prime minister elected by parliament cannot. Bob also presents his unique proposal for representative democracy, and take your calls on the future of the republic.
Trump versus Hillary. Four years ago, the prospect of such a face-off would have seemed absurd. Now it's hard to remember what life was like before the non-stop media spectacle. The choice between "R" and "D" has never felt more superficial, yet the stakes have never been higher. The next president will nominate at least one, and probably several Supreme Court justices, leaving a legacy far beyond whatever harm he or she might "accomplish" through their agenda. Trump has promised a nominee in the mold of Antonin Scalia, but can anyone take his words at face value? It was only this Thursday that he acknowledged that he would accept the election results as valid... and only if he wins! This Sunday Bob is privileged to be joined by John Rothmann, a Bay Area radio veteran and expert on American politics, for a round-up discussion of all things Election 2016™. Together, they will try to make sense of the political circus – from the debates, to Supreme Court picks, to the odds of various scenarios unfolding on November 8. Back in simpler times, when Bob was first starting in radio, Rothmann served as an invaluable mentor to him. Rothmann sees Trump as a clear danger, who must be stopped. Bob makes the case that a vote for a third party candidate – cough Gary Johnson – is far from a wasted vote. Call them with your questions and comments, this Sunday (8-9am PT), at (424) BOB-SHOW.
According to author and historian Dr. Alan Axelrod, ISIS isn't the greatest threat to American security. Our leaders are. This might sound sensationalist, until you recall that our national debt is quickly approaching $20 trillion, and has already surpassed the total GDP of the United States. This Sunday, Halloween comes early with the scary message Axelrod brings in his new book, Full Faith and Credit: The National Debt, Taxes, Spending, and the Bankrupting of America. Axelrod, author of more than 140 books, joins Bob to discuss his sweeping examination of the origins of the U.S. national debt, its beneficiaries, and (hopefully) its possible solutions. Axelrod finds the source of fiscal irresponsibility in the core architecture of the growing "administrative state," in which unelected career bureaucrats carve out fiefdoms, going beyond the powers prescribed by the Constitution. After tracing the gradual rise of the current administrative state, Axelrod devotes special attention to the dangers of the military-industrial-(congressional)-complex, and shows how support for major spending categories transcends partisan divides (as long as the members of congress are "getting theirs").
The recent 15th anniversary of 9/11 came and went with little ceremony, indicating that the symbolic resonance of the events may be gradually fading. For younger Americans, including some of the "millennial" generation born between 1980 and 1997, the events can hardly be remembered at all. What looms larger in millennials' minds is the War on Terror that has been waged in the wake of the attacks – the botched foreign interventions and erosion and civil liberties at home under the pretext of national security. Trevor Thrall is a professor at George Mason University's Schar School of Policy and Government and a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute's Defense and Foreign Policy Department who has a particular interest in millennials' attitudes toward foreign policy. Last year, Thrall and his colleague Erik Goepner published a paper, Millennials and U.S. Foreign Policy: The next Generation’s Attitudes Toward Foreign Policy and War (and Why They Matter), exploring the impact of events that occurred in millennials' formative years on their perception of different threats and the appropriate response to them today. Does their skepticism about using force abroad mean that we are in good hands, or have the events since 9/11 led the rising generation to underestimate real threats apart from terrorism? Find out , on this week's episode of the Bob Zadek Show.
Andrew Sadek was 20 years old when he was caught dealing small amounts of marijuana on his college campus in North Dakota. He was told by law enforcement that he could possibly face up to 40 years in prison, or accept a deal to aid campus drug busts for a time as a confidential informant. Soon after signing on, but before completing the terms of the deal, Andrew went missing; a few days later his body was found, with a gunshot wound to the head, wearing a backpack full of rocks. The law enforcement agency which had assigned Sadek his task not only failed to inform Sadek’s parents of his role as a confidential informant when he went missing, they also dragged their feet in investigating the death (still a mystery). Anthony Fisher, an Associate Editor at Reason Magazine, picked up the story, which has since been covered by 60 Minutes – shining a light on a very shady corner of the U.S. Justice System. Bob welcomes Anthony back on the show this Sunday to discuss the lack of accountability surrounding the use of confidential informants.
Bob and Ayn Rand Institute fellow Don Watkins interpret the American Dream through an objectivist lens, in which opportunity is the result of effort and ability plus freedom, not the redistribution of wealth and political privilege. Watkins, a fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute, dropped out of university to attend business school at night while working full-time during the day. After this, he could have gone to work on Wall Street or a Fortune 500 company, and glided into America’s notorious 1% – only to be vilified by the growing choir of income inequality critics. Watkins' crime in their eyes would not have been fraud, or embezzlement. His “privilege” alone would have been sufficient cause for many to indict him, despite the value created through honest finance, such as increased opportunities for those with low incomes to afford a college education, or buy homes and durable consumer goods. Watkins instead chose to apply his talents to the realm of ideas and the foundation of a free society. In his new book Equal is Unfair: America’s Misguided Fight Against Income Inequality, Watkins and his co-author, Yaron Brook (Executive Director of ARI), mount a bold attack on a popular narrative about the injustice of current levels of inequality.
The George Mason University economics department is known for developing new ideas into influential ideas. The Virginia-based bastion of free market thought has been producing groundbreaking scholarly work for decades, and shows no signs of slowing down. Last month, GMU PhD Candidate Mark Lutter defended his thesis, “Three Essays on Proprietary Cities.” His committee included Donald Boudreaux, Tyler Cowen, and Richard Wagner. Lutter’s academic interest in proprietary, or free cities is part of a trend among scholars and thought leaders studying the incentives that drive government decision-makers. If politicians respond to rewards and punishments just like you and I do, shouldn’t we consider giving them a larger stake in the profits and losses of the underlying jurisdiction? A proprietary city, Lutter argues, could achieve this, with tremendous benefits for both the developing and the developed world. He makes a convincing case on his blog, FreeCitiesInitiative.com, and joins Bob to defend the idea that the time for free cities has come.
With just three months to the general election, voters must now come to grips with the grim reality of their choice between the major parties’ presidential candidates. Naturally, the conversations around the “lesser of two evils” have begun, along with the ensuing mental gymnastics by those looking to justify their preference for either Trump or Clinton. There may be a silver lining, however. While former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson may not be the political savior many are hoping for, he is getting a hearing from a large swath of the electorate who otherwise would never have considered backing a third party candidate – let alone a libertarian. Jeff Singer, a general surgeon and libertarian from Arizona, has voted for the lesser of two evils for most of his life – but now he's had enough, and is casting his lot in with Johnson. Is it true that a vote for Johnson is a throwaway, or that it makes a victory of the greater of two evils more likely? Bob and Jeff spend the hour on the intricate question of how one can still vote smart, and on principle, in the unusual times we find ourselves in.
This show strives to be an oasis in a media desert of gossip, clickbait, and misinformation. The message from this show's guest is especially helpful for navigating this bleak landscape when you don’t have Bob and his guests to break down the issues. It's rare to find a thinker as well-versed in both the lessons of history and techniques of persuasion as Robin Koerner. A Cambridge-educated native of the UK, Koerner has managed to make a successful career as an observer and activist in American politics. Even more remarkably, he has carved a niche for classical liberal ideas on the pages of the Huffington Post. Most remarkably of all, Koerner recently cleared our nation’s many immigration hurdles to formally join the world’s largest experiment in freedom as a U.S. citizen. But lately, Koerner notes, this experiment isn’t going so well. His new book, If You Can Keep It, answers why few people make the right diagnosis of the sickly politics that keep eroding our liberties. By revealing what’s missing from partisan debates, Koerner teaches us how to persuade (almost) anyone why it’s liberty that they really want – not the various “isms” that always get the most votes. After hearing his outsider’s perspective, you won’t be able to see American politics in the same light.
There's a wave of state-based reform sweeping the nation, and it's giving hope to thousands of terminally-ill patients. Since just 2014, 31 states have passed so-called "right to try" initiatives, which allow those with incurable and life-threatening illnesses to access potentially life-saving experimental treatments that have not yet been approved by the FDA. Leading this legislative cascade is Arizona's Goldwater Institute. They believe the Food and Drug Administration has been overly paternalistic in making what amounts to an incredibly difficult, yet personal decision, on behalf of all Americans. When early "Phase I" evidence shows a treatment's potential, physicians in Right to Try states are able to take the experimental treatments out of the laboratory in an attempt to save their patients. Christina Sandefur, executive Vice President of the Goldwater Institute, is a co-drafter of the Right to Try initiative and has been pivotal in getting these laws passed around the country. She joins Bob to make the case to the remaining 19 states – including California.
Dr. Rick Doblin, founder of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, joins the show to discuss the history of the War on Drugs, and the efforts to legalize certain scheduled substances through formal FDA approval.
Founded in 1986, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit research and educational organization that develops medical, legal, and cultural contexts for people to benefit from the careful uses of psychedelics and marijuana.
In numerous past shows, Bob and his guests have exposed the worrisome growth in executive power taking place through the overreach of administrative agencies. Too often, the courts simply defer to agencies like the EPA, leaving citizens without recourse to challenge the dictates of unelected bureaucrats. Finally, we have a guest with good news to report. In the recent case of U.S. Army Corp of Engineers v. Hawkes, a landowner (Hawkes) believed that the government was making an overly broad assertion of jurisdiction in claiming that his 160 acre parcel was “wetlands,” subject to federal restrictions under the Clean Water Act. Mark Miller, an attorney with The Pacific Legal Foundation, represented Hawkes in front of the Supreme Court in what turned out to be a resounding victory for property owners everywhere. He joins Bob to discuss the 8-0 decision, reaffirming landowners’ rights to immediate judicial review when issued a “jurisdictional determination” by the Army Corp. In the past, such determinations have put property owners in an impossible situation – having to choose between a costly, years-long permitting process with no guarantee of success, or giving up on their plans for the land’s use altogether.
Sensing a wave of populist frustration, the Democratic Party has embraced the narrative of the 99% versus the 1%, and called for a new round of socialist policies. Conservatives, seeing the failures of socialism, have downplayed the severity of inequality, and all but ignored the even greater problem of economic immobility. Mitt Romney, for his part, spoke of the “47%” who would always vote for bigger government to receive the benefits, and he was roundly rejected by voters. Yet both sides may have a point – America does increasingly resemble an aristocracy with a dependent class, stuck in poverty. In his new book, The Way Back: Restoring the Promise of America, Francis H. Buckley puts a face to the modern inherited aristocracy, which Founders like Thomas Jefferson had hoped to do away with for good. A Professor at George Mason University School of Law, Buckley honestly admits that he is one the “New Class” – those whose education and birthright advantages have enabled them to ride the wave of globalization and technological progress that has gutted the middle class. This gives him a unique vantage point to describe what he sees standing in the way of opportunity and justice for all. Buckley joins Bob to discuss how America lost the promise of economic mobility for the hardworking poor, and how he thinks we can find our way back. While Buckley sees a revolution brewing in the form of Donald Trump's presidential campaign, Bob says, "Not so fast."
“[T]he future has arrived, well in advance of the policies needed to support it,” says Arun Sundararajan, Professor of Information, Operations and Management Sciences at New York University's Leonard N. Stern School of Business. Nowhere can this phenomenon be seen more clearly than in the rapidly-expanding "sharing economy," made up of digital platforms like Uber and AirBnB, which must battle with regulators in some locales to keep their innovative services running. Sundararajan's new book, The Sharing Economy: The End of Employment and the Rise of Crowd-Based Capitalism (MIT Press), contains everything you need to know – both cause and effect – about the radical disruption that is underway. An academic by trade, Sundararajan blends sociology, economics, technology and political science with a keen intuition to highlight the many tensions of the sharing economy, or as he calls it, "crowd-based capitalism." The sharing economy, he notes, is both capitalist and socialist, market-based and gift-based, and largely unregulated yet governed by complex rules and norms. Arun joins Bob to help listeners think about their place in the emerging landscape. Will we manage to harness these changes to become an "empowered entrepreneurs," or is technology turning us into "disenfranchised drones"?
When Rebecca Friedrichs first started teaching in Orange County nearly 30 years ago, she was surprised to discover how little recourse her school had to remove poor quality teachers from their posts. For decades, she would do her best to contain her frustration with a system – backed by powerful public sector teacher's unions – that protects inept, long-time insiders (read: tenure) at the expense of students and outstanding young faculty. Finally, an opportunity arose for Friedrichs to become the lead plaintiff in a free speech case against the California Teachers Association, and take a stand against mandatory dues for non-members who oppose the union's practices. Her side appeared on the verge of a landmark Supreme Court victory when Justice Antonin Scalia passed away suddenly – leaving the court divided 4-4, which affirmed the lower court's ruling in favor of the union. Friedrichs and her attorney, Terry Pell (President of the Center for Individual Rights), join Bob to explain why they are still fighting on behalf of teachers and students to have Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association reheard once a ninth justice is confirmed. The saga of Scalia's Supreme Court vacancy continues on the show of ideas, not attitude.
Technology is rapidly changing the way law enforcement operates, and as we’ve learned from previous guests, such as Adam Bates on StingRay Surveillance, the change is not always for the better. On the other hand, the recent adoption of body cameras by a growing number of police departments would seem to increase accountability and civility in officer-civilian interactions without much of a downside. Matthew Feeney, policy analyst at the Cato Institute, says the technology – while promising – is not a panacea. The public widely supports the adoption of body cameras, but could there be a risk that new technology is getting ahead of sound policy, and putting our privacy at risk? What appears like a simple criminal justice reform turns out to have multiple complex considerations, including whether or not police can view the footage before submitting a statement. It takes a Cato analyst to explain the nuances of best practices for body cameras. Bob and Matthew discuss how we can get the best of both worlds: keeping police accountable while keeping our privacy too.
The second edition of Ilya Somin’s Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government is Smarter could not have arrived at a better time. Most of us can sense something wrong with our democracy, but the source of our problems is often overlooked in the face of the symptoms: botched wars, corruption, and political parties that fail to deliver decent, principled candidates. Somin, a Law Professor at George Mason University and contributor to the Washington Post's Volokh Conspiracy blog, asks us to consider that the issue may a bit closer to home. Might the problem reside partly in our own ignorance, and the reasonable decision of a majority of voters to live their lives rather than obsess about an unaccountable central government? Somin is not taking aim at “stupid voters” or blaming them for the problems of society, but proposing alternative mechanisms for improving governance that depend less on a perfectly informed citizenry. He joins Bob to explore more realistic correctives to the slide towards idiocracy, including a new spin on federalism in the form of "foot voting."
Last week, Bob examined how the United States has ended up in a situation that would have frustrated the Framer's intentions, had they seen it coming. The next president will likely hold more authority than was ever supposed to be granted to a single person, by virtue of nominating the ninth judge to a sharply divided “4-4” court. Ilya Shapiro is carefully observing the political chess game around the Supreme Court nomination, and urges Senate Republicans not to hold hearings or a confirmation vote for President Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland. Instead, he says they should wait until after a new president is elected – making the judicial pick the paramount issue in the coming election. Shapiro joins the show to argue that “We, the People” should make the choice of who determines the make-up of the court, with so much on the line.
It’s tempting to divide the world, in its unyieldingly complexity, into "good guys" and "bad guys." This provides endless plots and ratings for Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, but it often hides the messy reality of our criminal justice system, where overzealous prosecution can make new victims out of innocent people. Sarah Stillman is an award-winning journalist and staff writer for The New Yorker, with a talent for bringing clarity and nuance to murky topics. The last time Stillman joined the show, she had written a gripping exposé on civil asset forfeiture – the unconstitutional takings of private property by police from suspects who have not been convicted of any crime. Now, she joins Bob to discuss her latest New Yorker piece, The List, on an even more delicate subject: minors placed on the sex-offender registry for their youthful mistakes. Stillman reports on a sampling of tragic cases, which cast doubt on laws that lead to harsh sentences and life-long scarlet letters for kids – some as young as 10 years old. We all want to protect victims. Tune in, and you may be surprised to learn how poorly the system works, even by that measure.
An unknown sage once quipped, “There may be two libertarians in the world who agree on absolutely everything, but I am not one of them.” This condition of free-thinking individualism applies to much – if not all – of the freedom movement. How then can a movement based on the ideas of liberty be nurtured in a world that is divided not only by language barriers and artificial borders, but ideological and cultural distinctions as well? Enter Atlas Network, which coordinates and promotes outstanding work from 470 think tanks across 90 countries. Brad Lips is CEO of Atlas Network, making him responsible for overseeing this vast web of individuals, major think tanks, and regional organizations – each with their own needs, aims, and solutions. Atlas Network strives to help its members achieve growth and impact in the marketplace for ideas, where there are no prices to guide decisions. Brad joins Bob to talk about how he applies a private-sector mindset to managing a network of independent nonprofits. Even the most ardent individualist will learn something from his approach to enlisting partners in the cause.
If there’s a silver lining on the homogenous new “Common Core” educational standards, it is that over a dozen states have responded by providing or expanding educational choice opportunities to their citizens. Research has consistently shown that increasing choice and competition in education improves outcomes – at least for the students who have been lucky enough to participate in the handful of experiments with charter schools, vouchers, education savings accounts and the like. However, a new study on a Louisiana voucher program has unearthed a troubling finding for supporters of a freer market in education. Students zoned to failing public schools who applied for and received a voucher by lottery performed worse on math and English tests than those who lost the voucher lottery in the first two years of the voucher program. Jason Bedrick, a policy analyst with Cato’s Center for Educational Freedom, has a theory on the outlier research paper. He joins Bob to solve the puzzle.
Cuban dissidents and political prisoners have waited a long time for meaningful reforms in their country – and the wait isn’t over. Even since 2006, when Fidel “El Libertador” Castro ceded power to his younger brother Raul, the government has continued to oppress its people and shackle its economy. Despite rumors of a sunny socialist utopia 90 miles from the Florida Keys, the reality is that Cuba remains mired in poverty and human rights abuses at the hands of its authoritarian leaders. However, there have been doubts about the effectiveness of the United States’ attempts to undermine the Castro regime, especially when it comes to the long-standing trade embargo. Such policies may just provide ammunition to the Cuban government in the form of an external excuse for the widespread misery brought about by central planning. Ian Vasquez claims that freer travel and (eventually) trade with the U.S. may not defeat the communist regime, but they will help advocates for a free Cuba by growing the small, “informal” private sector in an economy mostly run by and for the state. Vasquez is director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity. He joins the show this Sunday against the backdrop of President Obama’s recent visit to Cuba to discuss the changes that are taking place. Bob will look to uncover a realistic view of the prospects for a free Cuba, and find out how Americans can help support a thriving civil society, as philanthropists, consumers and tourists.
When video surfaces featuring scores of Yale students signing a petition to repeal the First Amendment, “hope” seems to be the hardest word to say. Sadly, the Bill of Rights appears to be on life support, and the up-and-coming generation of Ivy-educated citizens seems less than enthusiastic about resuscitating it. At the same time, the ideas of individualism and free enterprise are still alive and well in the general population, and it’s difficult to imagine anything replacing them. Bob embraces this silver lining with Skip Young, a SF-based entrepreneur and author of The Wisdom of 76: Young America’s Way to Wealth. In his debut book, Skip aims to inspire young audiences to the magic of the “invisible hand” – an idea which Adam Smith first put into print the same year that the Declaration of Independence was written. In just 10,000 words, Skip leads readers on a poetic journey of hope and discovery through the Declaration, The Wealth of Nations, Common Sense, and the “Way to Wealth.” A mix of engaging history and hypnotic monetary metaphors, Skip’s tract makes a compelling case that everyone can share in the American Dream with modest effort and a bit of bravery. The Wisdom of 76 may just hold the secret to saving the next generation before they are indoctrinated by the educational system.
Vaulted behind a thick glass display case at the National Archives, and revered above the marble edifices and monuments of Washington D.C., sits a faded piece of parchment. In the eyes of many, the Bill of Rights to the U.S. Constitution symbolizes the bedrock ideas on which our country was built. Yet history tends to look past the true origins of this foundational work – a set of amendments, which most in the First U.S. Congress deemed either unnecessary or ineffective at protecting individual liberty. Few know the actual story of the drafting of the Bill of Rights better than Carol Berkin, an award-winning history professor and author of The Bill of Rights: The Fight to Secure America’s Liberties. Berkin joins Bob to trace the history leading up to its formation, with vivid detail on the context and thinking of the key figures in the debate. We learn, for example, that the Bill of Rights is indeed a symbol: Perhaps more than anything, it symbolizes the compromise and perseverance that were required to unite a deeply divided new nation, against all odds. Hear the whole story.
Mobile technology has brought uncountable conveniences into modern life, making it easier to locate new restaurants, get a lift across town, and listen to your favorite radio personalities on the go. On the flip side, some innovations have enabled both criminals and law enforcement to abuse technology, and use shadowy means to evade accountability. Adam Bates, a policy analyst with Cato’s Project on Criminal Justice, has been tracking the government’s surreptitious use of portable ‘Stingray’ devices, which can locate and obtain data from cell phones by masquerading as a cell phone tower (often without a warrant). Many criminals and malicious hackers have long known about police surveillance of cell phones, and sought more covert methods of communication. Thanks to groups like the Cato Institute, Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the ACLU, the rest of the public is now learning of the potential violations of their privacy taking place in the name of public safety in virtually every jurisdiction in the country. This Sunday, Adam will explain how the use of Stingrays is undercutting our Fourth Amendment rights, and could be undermining efforts to put real criminals behind bars.
The recent passing of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia heralds an unprecedented moment in American politics. The sad news came as a surprise to his defenders and detractors alike, but the eulogies have been quickly eclipsed by the debate his vacant seat spawns. It's hard to overstate the importance of the next appointee to the Supreme Court bench (not to mention the others likely to come soon). Furthermore, the looming senate confirmation process injects yet another contentious issue into an already heated election year. To see where this battle is headed, Bob will be joined by University of San Diego Law Professor Gail Heriot. Heriot positions Scalia's legacy in terms of his deference to the logic of constitutional governance over any individual or narrow majority's final authority.
Who will be confirmed, and how will it all unfold?
Almost two years ago, approaching the 2014 mid-term elections, Bob interviewed Edward Hudgins of the Atlas Society on his book The Republican Party’s Civil War. The book's premise was that warring factions within the GOP could present an opportunity for the libertarian wing of the party to emerge at center stage. Hudgins made his optimistic case at a Cato Institute panel, with the opposing perspective presented by Henry Olsen, a Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, who predicted that no such "libertarian moment" was in progress. Now, Olsen joins the show to expand on this argument, having examined hard data from past primary elections to compile his new book The Four Faces of the Republican Party. Olsen's thesis illustrates the messy nature of our democracy, and how the balance of power among factions determines election outcomes, rather than pure principles like limited government. While the upcoming presidential election may not bode well for liberty in the short term, it can instruct us on what a winning coalition might look like in the future.
Andrew M. Schocket, Professor of History and American Culture Studies at Bowling Green State University, wants his students and readers to think more clearly about our collective “memory” of the American Revolution. In Fighting Over the Founders: How We Remember the American Revolution, Schocket compresses thousands of political speeches, as well as films, museum exhibits, re-enactments and “originalist” movements, in a single, readable volume, in which he teases out the most common portrayals of our country’s critical founding period. His computer-aided research techniques have given him a high-altitude view of history, from which he sees two main competing visions – each with ideological consequences. Can you guess which party’s candidates are more likely to use the phrase “A More Perfect Union” in campaign speeches? Or, alternatively, which party refers to the “Founder Fathers” more often? Schocket's history lesson is a reminder of the importance of stories and memory in passing the ideals of liberty on to the next generation. Don't miss this Sunday's show, on Talk910 AM, to get the full picture.
There are many reasons why patients end up needing a new kidney, but only one reason why 12 of them die every day from their treatable illness: the shortage of willing donors. Compensating organ donation remains highly taboo, and federally illegal, even as we rely on monetary incentives for everything else we need (from hamburgers to heart surgery). 10 years ago, AEI Scholar Sally Satel, M.D., nearly succumbed to the long wait for a healthy kidney. She now fights for those who are still waiting, and who will continue to suffer until an educated public demands change. Sally is author of When Altruism Isn’t Enough: The Case for Compensating Organ Donors, and has brought her case to Congress, along with the readers of the New York Times & the Washington Post. Bob and Sally will explore the pitfalls of using political correctness and “gut feeling” as the compass for rational policymaking when so many lives are on the line.
The Cato Institute’s Randal O’Toole (aka the @antiplanner) returns to the show to discuss the epidemic of rising rents in metropolitan areas across America. As usual, planners at the federal, regional, and local levels have a policy solution in search of a problem, and are creating new problems in the process. They cite the lack of affordable urban housing near public transit as justification for “growth management”, but their plans end up discouraging developers from increasing the supply of the most-needed kinds of housing. Basic economics predicts the devastating endgame for the lower and middle classes: The rent is too damn high. One solution, on which even partisans can agree, is land deregulation. Yet top-down urban transformations like Plan Bay Area, for example, continue to rule the day. While O'Toole grants that some planning and regulation is necessary to minimize the negative externalities of large numbers living in urban areas, he argues that “urban planning itself has become the externality.” Tune in for the show of ideas, not attitude – on Talk910.com or 910AM in the SF Bay Area.
Not long ago, Barack Obama's peers knew him as a moderate. As a constitutional law professor, Obama generally subscribed to the dominant progressive ideology at Harvard Law School, but voiced a strong belief in separation of powers and other checks on the executive branch. Many hoped he might become the first civil libertarian president. Now, even liberal law professors (not to mention liberal Supreme Court justices) are questioning the legal reasoning behind the Obama administration’s increasingly brazen edicts. David Bernstein, a constitutional law professor at George Mason University, has documented the worst of these abuses power in his new book, “Lawless: The Obama Administration’s Unprecedented Assault on the Constitution and the Rule of Law” – drone strikes without Congressional approval are only the tip of the iceberg. Regardless of your political tribe, you must listen to Bernstein’s warning. Obama supporters should be especially wary – after all, who knows who will be wielding these expanded powers down the road? Call in with your thoughts to the show ideas, not attitude. Every Sunday at 9am PACIFIC. 1-800-345-5639.
If you're flying home from vacation this weekend, you have one more gift to look forward to before you reach your gate: a TSA body scan. As of this week, opt outs of the invasive technology will no longer be granted to all those who ask for the alternative pat down. Jim Bovard has written for over a decade on the Transportation Security Agency’s encroachments of liberty. A frequent “opter-out” of the scanners in bygone times, Bovard has not flinched in the face of the screeners’ intimidation tactics. In addition to his repeat encounters with TSA agents, Bovard stands out among libertarian writers for his widely-read USA Today columns denouncing the climate of fear created by government to justify their privacy violations. He joins this special holiday edition of The Bob Zadek Show to dissect the carefully constructed “security theater” that we are forced to attend every time we fly. Tune in at 9am Pacific and call in with your nightmare experiences at airport security.
The last time Alex Nowrasteh joined the show, several listeners called in with concerns over Bob and Alex’s boldly open stance on immigration. As a leading immigration scholar with the Cato Institute, Nowrasteh researches, blogs, speaks, and tweets tirelessly in support of a more sane and open border policy. Bob says, “Let them all in” (with a few obvious exceptions). For each alleged issue the callers raised against open borders, Nowrasteh presented actual statistics debunking their misconceptions. You could hear their minds changing in real time. With the Republican primary heating up, we must be educated on the facts of the immigration debate in order to see through the fog of fear-based rhetoric. Bob and Alex will provide a brief history of immigration policy in the United States, and discuss the major presidential candidates' positions on a legal pathway to citizenship, i.e., "amnesty."
In the past, The New York Times has solicited new online subscribers via a pop-up banner reading, “You look like someone who enjoys a good story." This is is particularly apt for the editors of the Times, who seem to prefer dramatic story-telling over unbiased journalism. Walter Olson, the Cato Institute's "Intellectual Guru of Tort Reform," has been monitoring a particularly skewed narrative, endorsed by a series of NY Times articles that assault private arbitration. Businesses and consumers have embraced the arbitration alternative over expensive and unpredictable courtroom trials, which often enrich trial lawyers but do little for litigants. Most lawyers are the good guys in America, defending liberty and keeping consumer prices low, but some members of the profession do quite the opposite. Want to talk about money in politics? Olson explains how the trial lawyer lobby became one of the most powerful special interests around.
On October 30, a war-weary American public once again heard its President announce the need for U.S. “boots on the ground” in the Middle East. Obama’s new strategy – a reversal of prior assurances – came in response to the civil war in Syria, which has ignited conflict in the entire region. Michael O’Hanlon, Director of Foreign Policy Research at the Brookings Institution, joins Bob to explain recent events, including Turkey’s downing of a Russian jet, and his new book, The Future of Land Warfare. O'Hanlon argues that the current crisis in the Middle East can be resolved, but it will take more than drone strikes and training Syrian ground forces. Experts seem to agree the U.S. military is facing many bad options.
Rand Paul has followed in his father Ron Paul's footsteps in more ways than one. The Kentucky Senator’s presidential campaign began soon after the elder Paul's aspirations faded. Rand remains a champion of his father's core issues – sound money, a balanced budget, and limited government interference with individual liberties. His critics contend that a recent filibuster over the endlessly expanding debt ceiling was "grandstanding," but his supporters will tell you that his legislative principles are the main reason they #StandwithRand. Campaign for Liberty's Norm Singleton worked closely with Ron Paul from 1997-2012, and is one of the most prolific commentators and keenest observers of the Republican Liberty Caucus. He joins Bob live for the full hour to talk about the latest battles in the Senate, specifically, the grassroots movement to Audit the Fed, and why so many in the media and politics just don’t get it.
Ever since Marbury v. Madison institutionalized the process of judicial review, the judicial branch has been responsible for deciding whether legislation is consistent with the federal Constitution. Some conservative critics of the Supreme Court decry its “judicial activism,” i.e., the imposition of judges’ personal policy preferences as constitutional commands. Other critics fault the Supreme Court for its “judicial restraint,” i.e., the court’s acceptance of government policies (like Obamacare) that mandate or regulate behavior, even when a plain reading of the Constitution seems to prohibit it. The Institute for Justice, the nation's premiere libertarian public interest law firm, is responding to this debate by calling for judicial engagement, or active judicial enforcement of the Constitution’s guarantees of individual liberty. Evan Bernick is the Assistant Director of the Center for Judicial Engagement at the Institute for Justice, and principal author of a new report, Enforcing the Constitution, featuring twenty case studies in both judicial engagement and its opposite, judicial abdication. Bernick has written extensively for the Huffington Post on how the Supreme Court can and should remain a bulwark of individual liberty. He joins Bob to highlight a few of these cases and prognosticate about the prospects for proper judicial enforcement of constitutional liberties.
The Common Core State Standards Initiative was unpopular with many Americans when states began passing it five years ago. The initiative details what K-12 students should know in English and math at the end of each grade level, and has since been adopted in 42 states. Now, the results are beginning to come in. While outcomes are trending positive in many states, the tests revealed that California has been performing poorly – worse than previously known under more relaxed standards. Robert Pondiscio is vice president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, where he writes about education and education-reform issues. Pondiscio recently wrote an op-ed in the San Diego Union Tribune, arguing that we shouldn’t shoot the messenger, i.e., blame the new standards. Having spent time both in the classroom and the policy arena, Pondiscio is positioned to see how it functions and how it falls short. He joins Bob this Sunday to discuss how California is failing to prepare many of its students for the future, and how increasing educational choice through charter schools can help.
John Chisholm has 30 years of experience as an entrepreneur, CEO & investor. The founder of two successful internet companies, CustomerSat & Decisive Technology, John has some surprisingly simple yet powerful pieces of advice for the aspiring entrepreneur. His new book, Unleash Your Inner Company: Use Passion & Perseverance to Build Your Ideal Business, instructs would-be entrepreneurs to live below their means, favor people over possessions, and find positive feedback loops by affirming their teammates' best qualities. But John's book is more than just an entrepreneurship how-to book – it's a thorough roadmap to the new economy, where nearly everyone will have to be an entrepreneur of one kind or another. Lastly, Unleash Your Inner Company is a manifesto for the independent thinker who wants to create positive-sum value.
Of all the areas where liberties are under assault, college campuses may be the battleground with the highest stakes. This show has covered the rise of restrictive campus speech codes, which have a "chilling effect" on free thought and expression. But at the same time, resistance is growing. Students everywhere are looking for alternative outlets to the classroom, where they can voice opinions that might otherwise be silenced or punished. Student groups, comprising like-minded liberty-lovers, may be the last, best hope to keep the flame of freedom alive. Casey Given is Director of Communications for Students for Liberty, a growing network of liberty-oriented college clubs. Casey joins Bob from Washington DC to explain how SFL is empowering students to push back against their professors' not-so-hidden political agendas, and to becoming a force capable of challenging the status quo in years to come. Bob and Casey will also discuss the ever-important question of why we must defend our liberties, in spite of the relatively low short-term reward of such sacrifices.
As the U.S. tires of military involvement in countries like Iraq and Syria, the vacuum of power left in our wake has created new opportunities for extreme groups like the Islamic State to seize local control. Some libertarians argue on principle that complete exit is the only solution, since prior mistakes by Western powers seem implicated in the current mess. But even if we leave, ISIS may not be content to leave the rest of the world alone. Islamic State radicals are strengthening existing strongholds in the Middle East, while expanding into North Africa and planning new ways to ignite conflict across the globe – a precursor to their stated goal of a world-wide Caliphate. To understand where the real threats lie, and the appropriate response by a weary Western world, Bob is joined by Anthony Alfidi, a Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve, and Founder and CEO of Alfidi Capital. Alfidi served in Iraq, where he observed the preconditions to the current situation unfolding firsthand. Based on his experience and research, he believes the media is not accurately portraying the threat posed by ISIS. Regardless of your stance on U.S. foreign policy, you won't want to miss this rare opportunity to hear the perspective of a military officer, rather than the usual talking heads.
Libertarians don’t quite seem cut out for politics. A Republican or Democrat has occupied the White House since 1852, and the two party system shows no signs of weakening in 2016 or beyond. This election cycle, however, there is a Republican candidate with liberal social leanings, apart from his conservative views on taxes and regulation. In other words, Rand Paul is a libertarian. Robin Koerner thinks Paul will get more votes if he opts for a different label: Blue Republican. Koerner, a Cambridge polymath and UK native, made his name as an observer of American politics (he lives in the US and is becoming an American citizen), but then found a calling in rebranding the GOP with certain humane values more often expressed by the left. Koerner advocates simplifying the Republican platform to a few issues: restoring civil liberties, ending foreign wars, and slashing corporate welfare. He and Bob discuss the Blue Republican platform, and Koerner’s new project Ready for Rand, a PAC dedicated to winning converts to the cause of liberty, rather than arguments about libertarian principles.
Reading recent headlines, one might start to think the world is unraveling at its seams. But dig beneath the surface of attention-grabbing press, and a different picture emerges. Consider a few surprising truths the media rarely reports: The cancer "epidemic" only appears as such because of longer lifespans. As countries get wealthier, they are able to afford a cleaner environment. GMOs have saved billions of lives. All three of these facts run counter to the doomsday narratives, so loved by sensationalist media and environmental-activists-in-scientists'-clothing alike. Award-winning Reason science correspondent Ronald Bailey has made it his mission to look honestly at the ecological impact of civilization, and correct the dire predictions of environmentalists which consistently fail to materialize. Bailey joined Bob for the full hour to discuss his new book, "The End of Doom: Environmental Renewal in the Twenty-first Century."
Two weeks ago, Bob welcomed Czech native Vit Jedlicka to the show, to discuss his nascent new country of Liberland, located in the no-man's-land between Serbia and Croatia. While Vit is busy recruiting a global legion of volunteers and ambassadors for his new country effort, a related movement is picking up steam right here in the San Francisco Bay Area. The Seasteading Institute, founded in 2008 in Silicon Valley, is a nonprofit organization leading the push to populate the high seas with hundreds, or even thousands, of brand-new “startup” societies. Each “seastead” would compete for citizens like businesses compete for customers. This would force innovation, since people could “vote with their boats,” i.e., move to another seastead, if the government failed to provide services or began taxing too much. Joe Quirk is The Seasteading Institute’s Communications Director, an acclaimed author of both fiction and nonfiction, and the world’s most prolific “seavangelist.” He joins Bob live in the studio this Sunday to explain why we need seasteading to reinvigorate the frontier and jumpstart both technological and political progress. Quirk’s words have inspired audiences worldwide to the cause of seasteading – and not just libertarians. His eight great moral imperatives video series made the case for a “Blue Revolution” in sustainable seafood production, under the stewardship of more efficient, innovative governance. It’s a message that should appeal to people across the political spectrum. Listen with a friend and find out you share more common ground – in the ocean – than you thought.
The State of California is dreaming, according to Lawrence McQuillan – an economics and finance expert with the Bay Area’s own Independent Institute. His new book (California Dreaming: Lessons on How to Resolve America’s Public Pension Crisis) points out that Governor Brown and the Democrats in the legislature are failing to deal plainly with the reality of economic trade-offs: it’s either worker pensions or government services. There's simply not enough revenue for both with the promises we're slated to make to public sector workers. Perhaps the Golden State has gotten away with tax hikes for so long because of its natural beauty and ideal weather, but McQuillan says this is no longer an option. He joins Bob to discuss the real reason behind UC tuition hikes and cuts to state and local services. Learn how politicians like Gray Davis sold out future generations, raising pensions during the dot-com boom, bankrupting California both financially and morally. Let’s hope Governor Brown is listening.
In this special edition of the Bob Zadek Show, Bob not only welcomes his first head-of-state and first Croatian guest, President Vit Jedlicka, but he introduces him on a boat, speeding down the Danube, fresh off of a visit to the world's newest country – Liberland.
Bob is also joined by his producer, Charlie Deist, who recently met up with Vit and his delegation in New York City, during their U.S. Tour
Every once in a while, it’s good to be reminded of how bad the government is at its job. In the private sector, we occasionally learn about crooked CEOs cooking the books. In the public sector, mismanagement and corruption practically seem like requirements. Chris Edwards, curator of the Cato Institute’s Downsizing Government project has masterfully documented the waste, graft and abuse across all Federal departments and agencies, from the Post Office to the Department of Defense. Read more at http://www.bobzadek.com
Every once in a while, it’s good to be reminded of how bad the government is at its job. In the private sector, we occasionally learn about crooked CEOs cooking the books. In the public sector, mismanagement and corruption practically seem like requirements. Chris Edwards, curator of the Cato Institute’s Downsizing Government project has masterfully documented the waste, graft and abuse across all Federal departments and agencies, from the Post Office to the Department of Defense. Read more at http://www.bobzadek.com
Every once in a while, it’s good to be reminded of how bad the government is at its job. In the private sector, we occasionally learn about crooked CEOs cooking the books. In the public sector, mismanagement and corruption practically seem like requirements. Chris Edwards, curator of the Cato Institute’s Downsizing Government project has masterfully documented the waste, graft and abuse across all Federal departments and agencies, from the Post Office to the Department of Defense. Read more at http://www.bobzadek.com
Every once in a while, it’s good to be reminded of how bad the government is at its job. In the private sector, we occasionally learn about crooked CEOs cooking the books. In the public sector, mismanagement and corruption practically seem like requirements. Chris Edwards, curator of the Cato Institute’s Downsizing Government project has masterfully documented the waste, graft and abuse across all Federal departments and agencies, from the Post Office to the Department of Defense. Read more at http://www.bobzadek.com
Every once in a while, it’s good to be reminded of how bad the government is at its job. In the private sector, we occasionally learn about crooked CEOs cooking the books. In the public sector, mismanagement and corruption practically seem like requirements. Chris Edwards, curator of the Cato Institute’s Downsizing Government project has masterfully documented the waste, graft and abuse across all Federal departments and agencies, from the Post Office to the Department of Defense. Read more at http://www.bobzadek.com
Every once in a while, it’s good to be reminded of how bad the government is at its job. In the private sector, we occasionally learn about crooked CEOs cooking the books. In the public sector, mismanagement and corruption practically seem like requirements. Chris Edwards, curator of the Cato Institute’s Downsizing Government project has masterfully documented the waste, graft and abuse across all Federal departments and agencies, from the Post Office to the Department of Defense. Read more at http://www.bobzadek.com
Every once in a while, it’s good to be reminded of how bad the government is at its job. In the private sector, we occasionally learn about crooked CEOs cooking the books. In the public sector, mismanagement and corruption practically seem like requirements. Chris Edwards, curator of the Cato Institute’s Downsizing Government project has masterfully documented the waste, graft and abuse across all Federal departments and agencies, from the Post Office to the Department of Defense. Read more at http://www.bobzadek.com
Every once in a while, it’s good to be reminded of how bad the government is at its job. In the private sector, we occasionally learn about crooked CEOs cooking the books. In the public sector, mismanagement and corruption practically seem like requirements. Chris Edwards, curator of the Cato Institute’s Downsizing Government project has masterfully documented the waste, graft and abuse across all Federal departments and agencies, from the Post Office to the Department of Defense. Read more at http://www.bobzadek.com
Every once in a while, it’s good to be reminded of how bad the government is at its job. In the private sector, we occasionally learn about crooked CEOs cooking the books. In the public sector, mismanagement and corruption practically seem like requirements. Chris Edwards, curator of the Cato Institute’s Downsizing Government project has masterfully documented the waste, graft and abuse across all Federal departments and agencies, from the Post Office to the Department of Defense. Read more at http://www.bobzadek.com
Every once in a while, it’s good to be reminded of how bad the government is at its job. In the private sector, we occasionally learn about crooked CEOs cooking the books. In the public sector, mismanagement and corruption practically seem like requirements. Chris Edwards, curator of the Cato Institute’s Downsizing Government project has masterfully documented the waste, graft and abuse across all Federal departments and agencies, from the Post Office to the Department of Defense. Read more at http://www.bobzadek.com
Every once in a while, it’s good to be reminded of how bad the government is at its job. In the private sector, we occasionally learn about crooked CEOs cooking the books. In the public sector, mismanagement and corruption practically seem like requirements. Chris Edwards, curator of the Cato Institute’s Downsizing Government project has masterfully documented the waste, graft and abuse across all Federal departments and agencies, from the Post Office to the Department of Defense. Read more at http://www.bobzadek.com
Building a Bipartisan Coalition to Restore Local Spending Authority to the States by TheBobZadekShow
Locavore’s eat locally grown food, why not spend locally-grown dollars locally by TheBobZadekShow
Bob hosts a very special guest and elder statesman in the truest sense of the term, Senator James Buckley. In addition to acting as U.S. Senator from New York (1971-1977), Buckley’s distinctions include serving as a Judge for the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and as President of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which broadcasts news, information, and analysis to countries "where the free flow of information is either banned by government authorities or not fully developed.” His freedom-fighting efforts have spanned the better part of a century, and yet he is still producing some of the freshest ideas in the public policy arena. His latest book, “Saving Congress from Itself", was sent to every member of the U.S. Senate, and we had better hope that each and every one of them reads it. Learn how the Federal government usurps state and local legislative functions through provision of “goodies”, i.e., subsidies, or “grants-in-aid,” with onerous strings attached. The 10th Amendment is being trampled. Are you going to stand for it?
What does whiskey have to do with encroaching regulation and bureaucracy? Fortunately, for most of history, the answer has been "very little," as the two domains have remained relatively separate. Distilleries have cooperated peacefully, at least by proxy, with millions of other intermediate producers to yield a variety of complex end products, each with distinct tastes, undertones, and trademarks. The Competitive Enterprise Institute seeks to keep these entrepreneurial energies flowing, unimpeded by regulators who know little about the underlying industries and transactions they seek to control. Lawson Bader, whiskey aficionado and President of CEI, thought this point should be made even more clearly, in documentary form – continuing a video series originally based on Leonard Read's classic work, I, Pencil. Lawson joins Bob to talk about a new crowdfunding campaign to support the I, Whiskey project: a full-length documentary to bring the spontaneous order of the free market to life, through the story of a simple bottle of whiskey. Sit back and listen with a tumbler of your favorite spirit.
Bonus topics include CEI's current lawsuit against the TSA, strategies for rolling back the administrative state, and how to stay sane in a regulation-obsessed area like the Bay Area.
What does whiskey have to do with encroaching regulation and bureaucracy? Fortunately, for most of history, the answer has been "very little," as the two domains have remained relatively separate. Distilleries have cooperated peacefully, at least by proxy, with millions of other intermediate producers to yield a variety of complex end products, each with distinct tastes, undertones, and trademarks. The Competitive Enterprise Institute seeks to keep these entrepreneurial energies flowing, unimpeded by regulators who know little about the underlying industries and transactions they seek to control. Lawson Bader, whiskey aficionado and President of CEI, thought this point should be made even more clearly, in documentary form – continuing a video series originally based on Leonard Read's classic work, I, Pencil. Lawson joins Bob to talk about a new crowdfunding campaign to support the I, Whiskey project: a full-length documentary to bring the spontaneous order of the free market to life, through the story of a simple bottle of whiskey. Sit back and listen with a tumbler of your favorite spirit.
Bonus topics include CEI's current lawsuit against the TSA, strategies for rolling back the administrative state, and how to stay sane in a regulation-obsessed area like the Bay Area.
What does whiskey have to do with encroaching regulation and bureaucracy? Fortunately, for most of history, the answer has been "very little," as the two domains have remained relatively separate. Distilleries have cooperated peacefully, at least by proxy, with millions of other intermediate producers to yield a variety of complex end products, each with distinct tastes, undertones, and trademarks. The Competitive Enterprise Institute seeks to keep these entrepreneurial energies flowing, unimpeded by regulators who know little about the underlying industries and transactions they seek to control. Lawson Bader, whiskey aficionado and President of CEI, thought this point should be made even more clearly, in documentary form – continuing a video series originally based on Leonard Read's classic work, I, Pencil. Lawson joins Bob to talk about a new crowdfunding campaign to support the I, Whiskey project: a full-length documentary to bring the spontaneous order of the free market to life, through the story of a simple bottle of whiskey. Sit back and listen with a tumbler of your favorite spirit.
Bonus topics include CEI's current lawsuit against the TSA, strategies for rolling back the administrative state, and how to stay sane in a regulation-obsessed area like the Bay Area.
What does whiskey have to do with encroaching regulation and bureaucracy? Fortunately, for most of history, the answer has been "very little," as the two domains have remained relatively separate. Distilleries have cooperated peacefully, at least by proxy, with millions of other intermediate producers to yield a variety of complex end products, each with distinct tastes, undertones, and trademarks. The Competitive Enterprise Institute seeks to keep these entrepreneurial energies flowing, unimpeded by regulators who know little about the underlying industries and transactions they seek to control. Lawson Bader, whiskey aficionado and President of CEI, thought this point should be made even more clearly, in documentary form – continuing a video series originally based on Leonard Read's classic work, I, Pencil. Lawson joins Bob to talk about a new crowdfunding campaign to support the I, Whiskey project: a full-length documentary to bring the spontaneous order of the free market to life, through the story of a simple bottle of whiskey. Sit back and listen with a tumbler of your favorite spirit.
Bonus topics include CEI's current lawsuit against the TSA, strategies for rolling back the administrative state, and how to stay sane in a regulation-obsessed area like the Bay Area.
What does whiskey have to do with encroaching regulation and bureaucracy? Fortunately, for most of history, the answer has been "very little," as the two domains have remained relatively separate. Distilleries have cooperated peacefully, at least by proxy, with millions of other intermediate producers to yield a variety of complex end products, each with distinct tastes, undertones, and trademarks. The Competitive Enterprise Institute seeks to keep these entrepreneurial energies flowing, unimpeded by regulators who know little about the underlying industries and transactions they seek to control. Lawson Bader, whiskey aficionado and President of CEI, thought this point should be made even more clearly, in documentary form – continuing a video series originally based on Leonard Read's classic work, I, Pencil. Lawson joins Bob to talk about a new crowdfunding campaign to support the I, Whiskey project: a full-length documentary to bring the spontaneous order of the free market to life, through the story of a simple bottle of whiskey. Sit back and listen with a tumbler of your favorite spirit.
Bonus topics include CEI's current lawsuit against the TSA, strategies for rolling back the administrative state, and how to stay sane in a regulation-obsessed area like the Bay Area.
What does whiskey have to do with encroaching regulation and bureaucracy? Fortunately, for most of history, the answer has been "very little," as the two domains have remained relatively separate. Distilleries have cooperated peacefully, at least by proxy, with millions of other intermediate producers to yield a variety of complex end products, each with distinct tastes, undertones, and trademarks. The Competitive Enterprise Institute seeks to keep these entrepreneurial energies flowing, unimpeded by regulators who know little about the underlying industries and transactions they seek to control. Lawson Bader, whiskey aficionado and President of CEI, thought this point should be made even more clearly, in documentary form – continuing a video series originally based on Leonard Read's classic work, I, Pencil. Lawson joins Bob to talk about a new crowdfunding campaign to support the I, Whiskey project: a full-length documentary to bring the spontaneous order of the free market to life, through the story of a simple bottle of whiskey. Sit back and listen with a tumbler of your favorite spirit.
Bonus topics include CEI's current lawsuit against the TSA, strategies for rolling back the administrative state, and how to stay sane in a regulation-obsessed area like the Bay Area.
What does whiskey have to do with encroaching regulation and bureaucracy? Fortunately, for most of history, the answer has been "very little," as the two domains have remained relatively separate. Distilleries have cooperated peacefully, at least by proxy, with millions of other intermediate producers to yield a variety of complex end products, each with distinct tastes, undertones, and trademarks. The Competitive Enterprise Institute seeks to keep these entrepreneurial energies flowing, unimpeded by regulators who know little about the underlying industries and transactions they seek to control. Lawson Bader, whiskey aficionado and President of CEI, thought this point should be made even more clearly, in documentary form – continuing a video series originally based on Leonard Read's classic work, I, Pencil. Lawson joins Bob to talk about a new crowdfunding campaign to support the I, Whiskey project: a full-length documentary to bring the spontaneous order of the free market to life, through the story of a simple bottle of whiskey. Sit back and listen with a tumbler of your favorite spirit.
Bonus topics include CEI's current lawsuit against the TSA, strategies for rolling back the administrative state, and how to stay sane in a regulation-obsessed area like the Bay Area.
What does whiskey have to do with encroaching regulation and bureaucracy? Fortunately, for most of history, the answer has been "very little," as the two domains have remained relatively separate. Distilleries have cooperated peacefully, at least by proxy, with millions of other intermediate producers to yield a variety of complex end products, each with distinct tastes, undertones, and trademarks. The Competitive Enterprise Institute seeks to keep these entrepreneurial energies flowing, unimpeded by regulators who know little about the underlying industries and transactions they seek to control. Lawson Bader, whiskey aficionado and President of CEI, thought this point should be made even more clearly, in documentary form – continuing a video series originally based on Leonard Read's classic work, I, Pencil. Lawson joins Bob to talk about a new crowdfunding campaign to support the I, Whiskey project: a full-length documentary to bring the spontaneous order of the free market to life, through the story of a simple bottle of whiskey. Sit back and listen with a tumbler of your favorite spirit.
Bonus topics include CEI's current lawsuit against the TSA, strategies for rolling back the administrative state, and how to stay sane in a regulation-obsessed area like the Bay Area.
What does whiskey have to do with encroaching regulation and bureaucracy? Fortunately, for most of history, the answer has been "very little," as the two domains have remained relatively separate. Distilleries have cooperated peacefully, at least by proxy, with millions of other intermediate producers to yield a variety of complex end products, each with distinct tastes, undertones, and trademarks. The Competitive Enterprise Institute seeks to keep these entrepreneurial energies flowing, unimpeded by regulators who know little about the underlying industries and transactions they seek to control. Lawson Bader, whiskey aficionado and President of CEI, thought this point should be made even more clearly, in documentary form – continuing a video series originally based on Leonard Read's classic work, I, Pencil. Lawson joins Bob to talk about a new crowdfunding campaign to support the I, Whiskey project: a full-length documentary to bring the spontaneous order of the free market to life, through the story of a simple bottle of whiskey. Sit back and listen with a tumbler of your favorite spirit.
Bonus topics include CEI's current lawsuit against the TSA, strategies for rolling back the administrative state, and how to stay sane in a regulation-obsessed area like the Bay Area.
What does whiskey have to do with encroaching regulation and bureaucracy? Fortunately, for most of history, the answer has been "very little," as the two domains have remained relatively separate. Distilleries have cooperated peacefully, at least by proxy, with millions of other intermediate producers to yield a variety of complex end products, each with distinct tastes, undertones, and trademarks. The Competitive Enterprise Institute seeks to keep these entrepreneurial energies flowing, unimpeded by regulators who know little about the underlying industries and transactions they seek to control. Lawson Bader, whiskey aficionado and President of CEI, thought this point should be made even more clearly, in documentary form – continuing a video series originally based on Leonard Read's classic work, I, Pencil. Lawson joins Bob to talk about a new crowdfunding campaign to support the I, Whiskey project: a full-length documentary to bring the spontaneous order of the free market to life, through the story of a simple bottle of whiskey. Sit back and listen with a tumbler of your favorite spirit.
Bonus topics include CEI's current lawsuit against the TSA, strategies for rolling back the administrative state, and how to stay sane in a regulation-obsessed area like the Bay Area.
What does whiskey have to do with encroaching regulation and bureaucracy? Fortunately, for most of history, the answer has been "very little," as the two domains have remained relatively separate. Distilleries have cooperated peacefully, at least by proxy, with millions of other intermediate producers to yield a variety of complex end products, each with distinct tastes, undertones, and trademarks. The Competitive Enterprise Institute seeks to keep these entrepreneurial energies flowing, unimpeded by regulators who know little about the underlying industries and transactions they seek to control. Lawson Bader, whiskey aficionado and President of CEI, thought this point should be made even more clearly, in documentary form – continuing a video series originally based on Leonard Read's classic work, I, Pencil. Lawson joins Bob to talk about a new crowdfunding campaign to support the I, Whiskey project: a full-length documentary to bring the spontaneous order of the free market to life, through the story of a simple bottle of whiskey. Sit back and listen with a tumbler of your favorite spirit.
Bonus topics include CEI's current lawsuit against the TSA, strategies for rolling back the administrative state, and how to stay sane in a regulation-obsessed area like the Bay Area.
What does whiskey have to do with encroaching regulation and bureaucracy? Fortunately, for most of history, the answer has been "very little," as the two domains have remained relatively separate. Distilleries have cooperated peacefully, at least by proxy, with millions of other intermediate producers to yield a variety of complex end products, each with distinct tastes, undertones, and trademarks. The Competitive Enterprise Institute seeks to keep these entrepreneurial energies flowing, unimpeded by regulators who know little about the underlying industries and transactions they seek to control. Lawson Bader, whiskey aficionado and President of CEI, thought this point should be made even more clearly, in documentary form – continuing a video series originally based on Leonard Read's classic work, I, Pencil. Lawson joins Bob to talk about a new crowdfunding campaign to support the I, Whiskey project: a full-length documentary to bring the spontaneous order of the free market to life, through the story of a simple bottle of whiskey. Sit back and listen with a tumbler of your favorite spirit.
Bonus topics include CEI's current lawsuit against the TSA, strategies for rolling back the administrative state, and how to stay sane in a regulation-obsessed area like the Bay Area.
What does whiskey have to do with encroaching regulation and bureaucracy? Fortunately, for most of history, the answer has been "very little," as the two domains have remained relatively separate. Distilleries have cooperated peacefully, at least by proxy, with millions of other intermediate producers to yield a variety of complex end products, each with distinct tastes, undertones, and trademarks. The Competitive Enterprise Institute seeks to keep these entrepreneurial energies flowing, unimpeded by regulators who know little about the underlying industries and transactions they seek to control. Lawson Bader, whiskey aficionado and President of CEI, thought this point should be made even more clearly, in documentary form – continuing a video series originally based on Leonard Read's classic work, I, Pencil. Lawson joins Bob to talk about a new crowdfunding campaign to support the I, Whiskey project: a full-length documentary to bring the spontaneous order of the free market to life, through the story of a simple bottle of whiskey. Sit back and listen with a tumbler of your favorite spirit.
Bonus topics include CEI's current lawsuit against the TSA, strategies for rolling back the administrative state, and how to stay sane in a regulation-obsessed area like the Bay Area.
This Fourth of July, as we reflect on our country's origins, some may be tempted to look upon the Founding Fathers with a reverence otherwise reserved for saints or the founders of great religions. Past generations erected the “Washington” Monument in “Washington” D.C. to honor and symbolize the resoluteness of the man as both a leading general in the Revolutionary War and our nation's first President. Likewise, the immortal words of the Declaration of Independence – the rallying cry of the American Revolution – are inscribed on the walls of the Jefferson Memorial in honor of the man who penned them. However, these mythologies are incomplete according to Thomas Fleming, a historian and novelist who has picked apart the American Revolution from more than a few angles. His latest book, The Great Divide: The Conflict Between Washington and Jefferson that Defined a Nation, cuts through the typical "airbrushing" of historical founding figures to reveal the political treachery that truly characterized the era. Fleming joins Bob this Sunday, for a special Fourth (Fifth) of July episode. Call in with your questions for one of the foremost experts on the riveting story of American Independence.
This Fourth of July, as we reflect on our country's origins, some may be tempted to look upon the Founding Fathers with a reverence otherwise reserved for saints or the founders of great religions. Past generations erected the “Washington” Monument in “Washington” D.C. to honor and symbolize the resoluteness of the man as both a leading general in the Revolutionary War and our nation's first President. Likewise, the immortal words of the Declaration of Independence – the rallying cry of the American Revolution – are inscribed on the walls of the Jefferson Memorial in honor of the man who penned them. However, these mythologies are incomplete according to Thomas Fleming, a historian and novelist who has picked apart the American Revolution from more than a few angles. His latest book, The Great Divide: The Conflict Between Washington and Jefferson that Defined a Nation, cuts through the typical "airbrushing" of historical founding figures to reveal the political treachery that truly characterized the era. Fleming joins Bob this Sunday, for a special Fourth (Fifth) of July episode. Call in with your questions for one of the foremost experts on the riveting story of American Independence.
This Fourth of July, as we reflect on our country's origins, some may be tempted to look upon the Founding Fathers with a reverence otherwise reserved for saints or the founders of great religions. Past generations erected the “Washington” Monument in “Washington” D.C. to honor and symbolize the resoluteness of the man as both a leading general in the Revolutionary War and our nation's first President. Likewise, the immortal words of the Declaration of Independence – the rallying cry of the American Revolution – are inscribed on the walls of the Jefferson Memorial in honor of the man who penned them. However, these mythologies are incomplete according to Thomas Fleming, a historian and novelist who has picked apart the American Revolution from more than a few angles. His latest book, The Great Divide: The Conflict Between Washington and Jefferson that Defined a Nation, cuts through the typical "airbrushing" of historical founding figures to reveal the political treachery that truly characterized the era. Fleming joins Bob this Sunday, for a special Fourth (Fifth) of July episode. Call in with your questions for one of the foremost experts on the riveting story of American Independence.
This Fourth of July, as we reflect on our country's origins, some may be tempted to look upon the Founding Fathers with a reverence otherwise reserved for saints or the founders of great religions. Past generations erected the “Washington” Monument in “Washington” D.C. to honor and symbolize the resoluteness of the man as both a leading general in the Revolutionary War and our nation's first President. Likewise, the immortal words of the Declaration of Independence – the rallying cry of the American Revolution – are inscribed on the walls of the Jefferson Memorial in honor of the man who penned them. However, these mythologies are incomplete according to Thomas Fleming, a historian and novelist who has picked apart the American Revolution from more than a few angles. His latest book, The Great Divide: The Conflict Between Washington and Jefferson that Defined a Nation, cuts through the typical "airbrushing" of historical founding figures to reveal the political treachery that truly characterized the era. Fleming joins Bob this Sunday, for a special Fourth (Fifth) of July episode. Call in with your questions for one of the foremost experts on the riveting story of American Independence.
This Fourth of July, as we reflect on our country's origins, some may be tempted to look upon the Founding Fathers with a reverence otherwise reserved for saints or the founders of great religions. Past generations erected the “Washington” Monument in “Washington” D.C. to honor and symbolize the resoluteness of the man as both a leading general in the Revolutionary War and our nation's first President. Likewise, the immortal words of the Declaration of Independence – the rallying cry of the American Revolution – are inscribed on the walls of the Jefferson Memorial in honor of the man who penned them. However, these mythologies are incomplete according to Thomas Fleming, a historian and novelist who has picked apart the American Revolution from more than a few angles. His latest book, The Great Divide: The Conflict Between Washington and Jefferson that Defined a Nation, cuts through the typical "airbrushing" of historical founding figures to reveal the political treachery that truly characterized the era. Fleming joins Bob this Sunday, for a special Fourth (Fifth) of July episode. Call in with your questions for one of the foremost experts on the riveting story of American Independence.
This Fourth of July, as we reflect on our country's origins, some may be tempted to look upon the Founding Fathers with a reverence otherwise reserved for saints or the founders of great religions. Past generations erected the “Washington” Monument in “Washington” D.C. to honor and symbolize the resoluteness of the man as both a leading general in the Revolutionary War and our nation's first President. Likewise, the immortal words of the Declaration of Independence – the rallying cry of the American Revolution – are inscribed on the walls of the Jefferson Memorial in honor of the man who penned them. However, these mythologies are incomplete according to Thomas Fleming, a historian and novelist who has picked apart the American Revolution from more than a few angles. His latest book, The Great Divide: The Conflict Between Washington and Jefferson that Defined a Nation, cuts through the typical "airbrushing" of historical founding figures to reveal the political treachery that truly characterized the era. Fleming joins Bob this Sunday, for a special Fourth (Fifth) of July episode. Call in with your questions for one of the foremost experts on the riveting story of American Independence.
This Fourth of July, as we reflect on our country's origins, some may be tempted to look upon the Founding Fathers with a reverence otherwise reserved for saints or the founders of great religions. Past generations erected the “Washington” Monument in “Washington” D.C. to honor and symbolize the resoluteness of the man as both a leading general in the Revolutionary War and our nation's first President. Likewise, the immortal words of the Declaration of Independence – the rallying cry of the American Revolution – are inscribed on the walls of the Jefferson Memorial in honor of the man who penned them. However, these mythologies are incomplete according to Thomas Fleming, a historian and novelist who has picked apart the American Revolution from more than a few angles. His latest book, The Great Divide: The Conflict Between Washington and Jefferson that Defined a Nation, cuts through the typical "airbrushing" of historical founding figures to reveal the political treachery that truly characterized the era. Fleming joins Bob this Sunday, for a special Fourth (Fifth) of July episode. Call in with your questions for one of the foremost experts on the riveting story of American Independence.
This Fourth of July, as we reflect on our country's origins, some may be tempted to look upon the Founding Fathers with a reverence otherwise reserved for saints or the founders of great religions. Past generations erected the “Washington” Monument in “Washington” D.C. to honor and symbolize the resoluteness of the man as both a leading general in the Revolutionary War and our nation's first President. Likewise, the immortal words of the Declaration of Independence – the rallying cry of the American Revolution – are inscribed on the walls of the Jefferson Memorial in honor of the man who penned them. However, these mythologies are incomplete according to Thomas Fleming, a historian and novelist who has picked apart the American Revolution from more than a few angles. His latest book, The Great Divide: The Conflict Between Washington and Jefferson that Defined a Nation, cuts through the typical "airbrushing" of historical founding figures to reveal the political treachery that truly characterized the era. Fleming joins Bob this Sunday, for a special Fourth (Fifth) of July episode. Call in with your questions for one of the foremost experts on the riveting story of American Independence.
This Fourth of July, as we reflect on our country's origins, some may be tempted to look upon the Founding Fathers with a reverence otherwise reserved for saints or the founders of great religions. Past generations erected the “Washington” Monument in “Washington” D.C. to honor and symbolize the resoluteness of the man as both a leading general in the Revolutionary War and our nation's first President. Likewise, the immortal words of the Declaration of Independence – the rallying cry of the American Revolution – are inscribed on the walls of the Jefferson Memorial in honor of the man who penned them. However, these mythologies are incomplete according to Thomas Fleming, a historian and novelist who has picked apart the American Revolution from more than a few angles. His latest book, The Great Divide: The Conflict Between Washington and Jefferson that Defined a Nation, cuts through the typical "airbrushing" of historical founding figures to reveal the political treachery that truly characterized the era. Fleming joins Bob this Sunday, for a special Fourth (Fifth) of July episode. Call in with your questions for one of the foremost experts on the riveting story of American Independence.
This Fourth of July, as we reflect on our country's origins, some may be tempted to look upon the Founding Fathers with a reverence otherwise reserved for saints or the founders of great religions. Past generations erected the “Washington” Monument in “Washington” D.C. to honor and symbolize the resoluteness of the man as both a leading general in the Revolutionary War and our nation's first President. Likewise, the immortal words of the Declaration of Independence – the rallying cry of the American Revolution – are inscribed on the walls of the Jefferson Memorial in honor of the man who penned them. However, these mythologies are incomplete according to Thomas Fleming, a historian and novelist who has picked apart the American Revolution from more than a few angles. His latest book, The Great Divide: The Conflict Between Washington and Jefferson that Defined a Nation, cuts through the typical "airbrushing" of historical founding figures to reveal the political treachery that truly characterized the era. Fleming joins Bob this Sunday, for a special Fourth (Fifth) of July episode. Call in with your questions for one of the foremost experts on the riveting story of American Independence.
This Fourth of July, as we reflect on our country's origins, some may be tempted to look upon the Founding Fathers with a reverence otherwise reserved for saints or the founders of great religions. Past generations erected the “Washington” Monument in “Washington” D.C. to honor and symbolize the resoluteness of the man as both a leading general in the Revolutionary War and our nation's first President. Likewise, the immortal words of the Declaration of Independence – the rallying cry of the American Revolution – are inscribed on the walls of the Jefferson Memorial in honor of the man who penned them. However, these mythologies are incomplete according to Thomas Fleming, a historian and novelist who has picked apart the American Revolution from more than a few angles. His latest book, The Great Divide: The Conflict Between Washington and Jefferson that Defined a Nation, cuts through the typical "airbrushing" of historical founding figures to reveal the political treachery that truly characterized the era. Fleming joins Bob this Sunday, for a special Fourth (Fifth) of July episode. Call in with your questions for one of the foremost experts on the riveting story of American Independence.
Freedom-lovers everywhere are lamenting the recent Supreme Court decision in King v. Burwell – perhaps the final blow to the constitutional challenge to ObamaCare (or as it may soon be known, SCOTUSCare). There is a silver lining, however, in the form another recent Supreme Court decision, in Horne v. USDA, which upheld the constitutional protections of raisin growers' personal property from takings by the USDA. Baylen Linnekin is Executive Director of the Keep Food Legal Foundation, an adjunct professor at both American University and George Mason Law School, and a frequent contributor to Reason Magazine. Linnekin submitted an amicus curiae brief in the Horne case, and his arguments were mirrored in the majority opinion – authored by none other than John Roberts – arguing that the USDA cannot require raisin growers to surrender a portion of their crop for the "public purpose" of stabilizing the raisin market. The ruling is a victory to all of those cherish "the right of every American to grow, raise, produce, buy, sell, share, cook, eat, and drink the foods of their own choosing." Bob and Baylen also look at the many ways our food freedoms are still being restricted. You won't leave hungry after this episode of the show of ideas not attitude.
Freedom-lovers everywhere are lamenting the recent Supreme Court decision in King v. Burwell – perhaps the final blow to the constitutional challenge to ObamaCare (or as it may soon be known, SCOTUSCare). There is a silver lining, however, in the form another recent Supreme Court decision, in Horne v. USDA, which upheld the constitutional protections of raisin growers' personal property from takings by the USDA. Baylen Linnekin is Executive Director of the Keep Food Legal Foundation, an adjunct professor at both American University and George Mason Law School, and a frequent contributor to Reason Magazine. Linnekin submitted an amicus curiae brief in the Horne case, and his arguments were mirrored in the majority opinion – authored by none other than John Roberts – arguing that the USDA cannot require raisin growers to surrender a portion of their crop for the "public purpose" of stabilizing the raisin market. The ruling is a victory to all of those cherish "the right of every American to grow, raise, produce, buy, sell, share, cook, eat, and drink the foods of their own choosing." Bob and Baylen also look at the many ways our food freedoms are still being restricted. You won't leave hungry after this episode of the show of ideas not attitude.
Freedom-lovers everywhere are lamenting the recent Supreme Court decision in King v. Burwell – perhaps the final blow to the constitutional challenge to ObamaCare (or as it may soon be known, SCOTUSCare). There is a silver lining, however, in the form another recent Supreme Court decision, in Horne v. USDA, which upheld the constitutional protections of raisin growers' personal property from takings by the USDA. Baylen Linnekin is Executive Director of the Keep Food Legal Foundation, an adjunct professor at both American University and George Mason Law School, and a frequent contributor to Reason Magazine. Linnekin submitted an amicus curiae brief in the Horne case, and his arguments were mirrored in the majority opinion – authored by none other than John Roberts – arguing that the USDA cannot require raisin growers to surrender a portion of their crop for the "public purpose" of stabilizing the raisin market. The ruling is a victory to all of those cherish "the right of every American to grow, raise, produce, buy, sell, share, cook, eat, and drink the foods of their own choosing." Bob and Baylen also look at the many ways our food freedoms are still being restricted. You won't leave hungry after this episode of the show of ideas not attitude.
Freedom-lovers everywhere are lamenting the recent Supreme Court decision in King v. Burwell – perhaps the final blow to the constitutional challenge to ObamaCare (or as it may soon be known, SCOTUSCare). There is a silver lining, however, in the form another recent Supreme Court decision, in Horne v. USDA, which upheld the constitutional protections of raisin growers' personal property from takings by the USDA. Baylen Linnekin is Executive Director of the Keep Food Legal Foundation, an adjunct professor at both American University and George Mason Law School, and a frequent contributor to Reason Magazine. Linnekin submitted an amicus curiae brief in the Horne case, and his arguments were mirrored in the majority opinion – authored by none other than John Roberts – arguing that the USDA cannot require raisin growers to surrender a portion of their crop for the "public purpose" of stabilizing the raisin market. The ruling is a victory to all of those cherish "the right of every American to grow, raise, produce, buy, sell, share, cook, eat, and drink the foods of their own choosing." Bob and Baylen also look at the many ways our food freedoms are still being restricted. You won't leave hungry after this episode of the show of ideas not attitude.
Freedom-lovers everywhere are lamenting the recent Supreme Court decision in King v. Burwell – perhaps the final blow to the constitutional challenge to ObamaCare (or as it may soon be known, SCOTUSCare). There is a silver lining, however, in the form another recent Supreme Court decision, in Horne v. USDA, which upheld the constitutional protections of raisin growers' personal property from takings by the USDA. Baylen Linnekin is Executive Director of the Keep Food Legal Foundation, an adjunct professor at both American University and George Mason Law School, and a frequent contributor to Reason Magazine. Linnekin submitted an amicus curiae brief in the Horne case, and his arguments were mirrored in the majority opinion – authored by none other than John Roberts – arguing that the USDA cannot require raisin growers to surrender a portion of their crop for the "public purpose" of stabilizing the raisin market. The ruling is a victory to all of those cherish "the right of every American to grow, raise, produce, buy, sell, share, cook, eat, and drink the foods of their own choosing." Bob and Baylen also look at the many ways our food freedoms are still being restricted. You won't leave hungry after this episode of the show of ideas not attitude.
Freedom-lovers everywhere are lamenting the recent Supreme Court decision in King v. Burwell – perhaps the final blow to the constitutional challenge to ObamaCare (or as it may soon be known, SCOTUSCare). There is a silver lining, however, in the form another recent Supreme Court decision, in Horne v. USDA, which upheld the constitutional protections of raisin growers' personal property from takings by the USDA. Baylen Linnekin is Executive Director of the Keep Food Legal Foundation, an adjunct professor at both American University and George Mason Law School, and a frequent contributor to Reason Magazine. Linnekin submitted an amicus curiae brief in the Horne case, and his arguments were mirrored in the majority opinion – authored by none other than John Roberts – arguing that the USDA cannot require raisin growers to surrender a portion of their crop for the "public purpose" of stabilizing the raisin market. The ruling is a victory to all of those cherish "the right of every American to grow, raise, produce, buy, sell, share, cook, eat, and drink the foods of their own choosing." Bob and Baylen also look at the many ways our food freedoms are still being restricted. You won't leave hungry after this episode of the show of ideas not attitude.
Freedom-lovers everywhere are lamenting the recent Supreme Court decision in King v. Burwell – perhaps the final blow to the constitutional challenge to ObamaCare (or as it may soon be known, SCOTUSCare). There is a silver lining, however, in the form another recent Supreme Court decision, in Horne v. USDA, which upheld the constitutional protections of raisin growers' personal property from takings by the USDA. Baylen Linnekin is Executive Director of the Keep Food Legal Foundation, an adjunct professor at both American University and George Mason Law School, and a frequent contributor to Reason Magazine. Linnekin submitted an amicus curiae brief in the Horne case, and his arguments were mirrored in the majority opinion – authored by none other than John Roberts – arguing that the USDA cannot require raisin growers to surrender a portion of their crop for the "public purpose" of stabilizing the raisin market. The ruling is a victory to all of those cherish "the right of every American to grow, raise, produce, buy, sell, share, cook, eat, and drink the foods of their own choosing." Bob and Baylen also look at the many ways our food freedoms are still being restricted. You won't leave hungry after this episode of the show of ideas not attitude.
Freedom-lovers everywhere are lamenting the recent Supreme Court decision in King v. Burwell – perhaps the final blow to the constitutional challenge to ObamaCare (or as it may soon be known, SCOTUSCare). There is a silver lining, however, in the form another recent Supreme Court decision, in Horne v. USDA, which upheld the constitutional protections of raisin growers' personal property from takings by the USDA. Baylen Linnekin is Executive Director of the Keep Food Legal Foundation, an adjunct professor at both American University and George Mason Law School, and a frequent contributor to Reason Magazine. Linnekin submitted an amicus curiae brief in the Horne case, and his arguments were mirrored in the majority opinion – authored by none other than John Roberts – arguing that the USDA cannot require raisin growers to surrender a portion of their crop for the "public purpose" of stabilizing the raisin market. The ruling is a victory to all of those cherish "the right of every American to grow, raise, produce, buy, sell, share, cook, eat, and drink the foods of their own choosing." Bob and Baylen also look at the many ways our food freedoms are still being restricted. You won't leave hungry after this episode of the show of ideas not attitude.
Freedom-lovers everywhere are lamenting the recent Supreme Court decision in King v. Burwell – perhaps the final blow to the constitutional challenge to ObamaCare (or as it may soon be known, SCOTUSCare). There is a silver lining, however, in the form another recent Supreme Court decision, in Horne v. USDA, which upheld the constitutional protections of raisin growers' personal property from takings by the USDA. Baylen Linnekin is Executive Director of the Keep Food Legal Foundation, an adjunct professor at both American University and George Mason Law School, and a frequent contributor to Reason Magazine. Linnekin submitted an amicus curiae brief in the Horne case, and his arguments were mirrored in the majority opinion – authored by none other than John Roberts – arguing that the USDA cannot require raisin growers to surrender a portion of their crop for the "public purpose" of stabilizing the raisin market. The ruling is a victory to all of those cherish "the right of every American to grow, raise, produce, buy, sell, share, cook, eat, and drink the foods of their own choosing." Bob and Baylen also look at the many ways our food freedoms are still being restricted. You won't leave hungry after this episode of the show of ideas not attitude.
Freedom-lovers everywhere are lamenting the recent Supreme Court decision in King v. Burwell – perhaps the final blow to the constitutional challenge to ObamaCare (or as it may soon be known, SCOTUSCare). There is a silver lining, however, in the form another recent Supreme Court decision, in Horne v. USDA, which upheld the constitutional protections of raisin growers' personal property from takings by the USDA. Baylen Linnekin is Executive Director of the Keep Food Legal Foundation, an adjunct professor at both American University and George Mason Law School, and a frequent contributor to Reason Magazine. Linnekin submitted an amicus curiae brief in the Horne case, and his arguments were mirrored in the majority opinion – authored by none other than John Roberts – arguing that the USDA cannot require raisin growers to surrender a portion of their crop for the "public purpose" of stabilizing the raisin market. The ruling is a victory to all of those cherish "the right of every American to grow, raise, produce, buy, sell, share, cook, eat, and drink the foods of their own choosing." Bob and Baylen also look at the many ways our food freedoms are still being restricted. You won't leave hungry after this episode of the show of ideas not attitude.
Freedom-lovers everywhere are lamenting the recent Supreme Court decision in King v. Burwell – perhaps the final blow to the constitutional challenge to ObamaCare (or as it may soon be known, SCOTUSCare). There is a silver lining, however, in the form another recent Supreme Court decision, in Horne v. USDA, which upheld the constitutional protections of raisin growers' personal property from takings by the USDA. Baylen Linnekin is Executive Director of the Keep Food Legal Foundation, an adjunct professor at both American University and George Mason Law School, and a frequent contributor to Reason Magazine. Linnekin submitted an amicus curiae brief in the Horne case, and his arguments were mirrored in the majority opinion – authored by none other than John Roberts – arguing that the USDA cannot require raisin growers to surrender a portion of their crop for the "public purpose" of stabilizing the raisin market. The ruling is a victory to all of those cherish "the right of every American to grow, raise, produce, buy, sell, share, cook, eat, and drink the foods of their own choosing." Bob and Baylen also look at the many ways our food freedoms are still being restricted. You won't leave hungry after this episode of the show of ideas not attitude.
Ilya Somin on Narrow vs. Broad Interpretations of Public Use in the Kelo Case by TheBobZadekShow
Ilya Somin on Historical Precedent for Eminent Domain – What Would The Founders Do? by TheBobZadekShow
Bob and Ilya Somin Discuss What "Fair Market Value" Means when Unique Land is at Stake by TheBobZadekShow
Ilya Somin on the Legislative Response the Kelo v. City of New London by TheBobZadekShow
Ilya Somin on Judicial Errors & Misinterpretation in Kelo v. City of New London by TheBobZadekShow
Perhaps you remember the story of Susette Kelo, the owner of the "Little Pink House" in New London, Connecticut that was condemned to make way for an economic development project led by Pfizer. Maybe you were even a part of the public backlash – larger than any other stemming from a Supreme Court decision in recent memory. Ten years after the Justices voted 5-4 to uphold city's abuse of eminent domain, we can start to look at the impact of this major precedent with implications for all of our property rights and individual sovereignty. The question still remains: If the government can take your house to provide land for another party's private economic benefit, what can't it do? In his new book, The Grasping Hand: Kelo v. City of New London and the Limits of Eminent Domain, Ilya Somin offers the definitive account of the case as it has impacted broader trends in American jurisprudence. Somin joins Bob to expose the special interests that are preventing effective eminent domain reforms at various levels of government. He also reveals how pivotal groups like the Institute for Justice have been in raising awareness about this issue, and how their efforts have translated into genuine change. Our property rights are at stake – Somin's message is an important one if we are going to resist the grasping hand of eminent domain.
The framers of the Declaration of Independence held the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to be self-evident. Today, however, our political leaders stand idly by as many around the world are denied these rights and given no alternative to their repressive home regimes. The GOP wants to be known as the party of freedom and opportunity, but many of its leading presidential contenders wish to limit this good fortune to those who happen to have been born within our borders. Now, Hillary Clinton has come out in favor of expanding amnesty for a large percentage of the 11 million undocumented U.S. residents, leaving Republicans struggling to appeal to hispanics without losing the approval of anti-immigration conservatives. Not a single Republican seeking the presidential nomination has yet to come out in favor of the one policy that could truly distinguish them in the eyes of both hispanics and freedom-loving conservatives: Opening the borders to all foreigners who desire to live by our laws. Alex Nowrasteh, an immigration scholar at the Cato Institute and frequent guest on the show, has pointed out that such a policy has nothing to do with granting favors or expanding government. To the contrary, open borders merely allow the voluntary movement of people to the United States. He joins the program to go over the current crop of Republican candidates’ stances on immigration, and to provide them with the intellectual ammunition to go boldly where no Republican has gone before. The question is, will they listen?
The framers of the Declaration of Independence held the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to be self-evident. Today, however, our political leaders stand idly by as many around the world are denied these rights and given no alternative to their repressive home regimes. The GOP wants to be known as the party of freedom and opportunity, but many of its leading presidential contenders wish to limit this good fortune to those who happen to have been born within our borders. Now, Hillary Clinton has come out in favor of expanding amnesty for a large percentage of the 11 million undocumented U.S. residents, leaving Republicans struggling to appeal to hispanics without losing the approval of anti-immigration conservatives. Not a single Republican seeking the presidential nomination has yet to come out in favor of the one policy that could truly distinguish them in the eyes of both hispanics and freedom-loving conservatives: Opening the borders to all foreigners who desire to live by our laws. Alex Nowrasteh, an immigration scholar at the Cato Institute and frequent guest on the show, has pointed out that such a policy has nothing to do with granting favors or expanding government. To the contrary, open borders merely allow the voluntary movement of people to the United States. He joins the program to go over the current crop of Republican candidates’ stances on immigration, and to provide them with the intellectual ammunition to go boldly where no Republican has gone before. The question is, will they listen?
The framers of the Declaration of Independence held the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to be self-evident. Today, however, our political leaders stand idly by as many around the world are denied these rights and given no alternative to their repressive home regimes. The GOP wants to be known as the party of freedom and opportunity, but many of its leading presidential contenders wish to limit this good fortune to those who happen to have been born within our borders. Now, Hillary Clinton has come out in favor of expanding amnesty for a large percentage of the 11 million undocumented U.S. residents, leaving Republicans struggling to appeal to hispanics without losing the approval of anti-immigration conservatives. Not a single Republican seeking the presidential nomination has yet to come out in favor of the one policy that could truly distinguish them in the eyes of both hispanics and freedom-loving conservatives: Opening the borders to all foreigners who desire to live by our laws. Alex Nowrasteh, an immigration scholar at the Cato Institute and frequent guest on the show, has pointed out that such a policy has nothing to do with granting favors or expanding government. To the contrary, open borders merely allow the voluntary movement of people to the United States. He joins the program to go over the current crop of Republican candidates’ stances on immigration, and to provide them with the intellectual ammunition to go boldly where no Republican has gone before. The question is, will they listen?
The framers of the Declaration of Independence held the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to be self-evident. Today, however, our political leaders stand idly by as many around the world are denied these rights and given no alternative to their repressive home regimes. The GOP wants to be known as the party of freedom and opportunity, but many of its leading presidential contenders wish to limit this good fortune to those who happen to have been born within our borders. Now, Hillary Clinton has come out in favor of expanding amnesty for a large percentage of the 11 million undocumented U.S. residents, leaving Republicans struggling to appeal to hispanics without losing the approval of anti-immigration conservatives. Not a single Republican seeking the presidential nomination has yet to come out in favor of the one policy that could truly distinguish them in the eyes of both hispanics and freedom-loving conservatives: Opening the borders to all foreigners who desire to live by our laws. Alex Nowrasteh, an immigration scholar at the Cato Institute and frequent guest on the show, has pointed out that such a policy has nothing to do with granting favors or expanding government. To the contrary, open borders merely allow the voluntary movement of people to the United States. He joins the program to go over the current crop of Republican candidates’ stances on immigration, and to provide them with the intellectual ammunition to go boldly where no Republican has gone before. The question is, will they listen?
The framers of the Declaration of Independence held the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to be self-evident. Today, however, our political leaders stand idly by as many around the world are denied these rights and given no alternative to their repressive home regimes. The GOP wants to be known as the party of freedom and opportunity, but many of its leading presidential contenders wish to limit this good fortune to those who happen to have been born within our borders. Now, Hillary Clinton has come out in favor of expanding amnesty for a large percentage of the 11 million undocumented U.S. residents, leaving Republicans struggling to appeal to hispanics without losing the approval of anti-immigration conservatives. Not a single Republican seeking the presidential nomination has yet to come out in favor of the one policy that could truly distinguish them in the eyes of both hispanics and freedom-loving conservatives: Opening the borders to all foreigners who desire to live by our laws. Alex Nowrasteh, an immigration scholar at the Cato Institute and frequent guest on the show, has pointed out that such a policy has nothing to do with granting favors or expanding government. To the contrary, open borders merely allow the voluntary movement of people to the United States. He joins the program to go over the current crop of Republican candidates’ stances on immigration, and to provide them with the intellectual ammunition to go boldly where no Republican has gone before. The question is, will they listen?
The framers of the Declaration of Independence held the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to be self-evident. Today, however, our political leaders stand idly by as many around the world are denied these rights and given no alternative to their repressive home regimes. The GOP wants to be known as the party of freedom and opportunity, but many of its leading presidential contenders wish to limit this good fortune to those who happen to have been born within our borders. Now, Hillary Clinton has come out in favor of expanding amnesty for a large percentage of the 11 million undocumented U.S. residents, leaving Republicans struggling to appeal to hispanics without losing the approval of anti-immigration conservatives. Not a single Republican seeking the presidential nomination has yet to come out in favor of the one policy that could truly distinguish them in the eyes of both hispanics and freedom-loving conservatives: Opening the borders to all foreigners who desire to live by our laws. Alex Nowrasteh, an immigration scholar at the Cato Institute and frequent guest on the show, has pointed out that such a policy has nothing to do with granting favors or expanding government. To the contrary, open borders merely allow the voluntary movement of people to the United States. He joins the program to go over the current crop of Republican candidates’ stances on immigration, and to provide them with the intellectual ammunition to go boldly where no Republican has gone before. The question is, will they listen?
The framers of the Declaration of Independence held the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to be self-evident. Today, however, our political leaders stand idly by as many around the world are denied these rights and given no alternative to their repressive home regimes. The GOP wants to be known as the party of freedom and opportunity, but many of its leading presidential contenders wish to limit this good fortune to those who happen to have been born within our borders. Now, Hillary Clinton has come out in favor of expanding amnesty for a large percentage of the 11 million undocumented U.S. residents, leaving Republicans struggling to appeal to hispanics without losing the approval of anti-immigration conservatives. Not a single Republican seeking the presidential nomination has yet to come out in favor of the one policy that could truly distinguish them in the eyes of both hispanics and freedom-loving conservatives: Opening the borders to all foreigners who desire to live by our laws. Alex Nowrasteh, an immigration scholar at the Cato Institute and frequent guest on the show, has pointed out that such a policy has nothing to do with granting favors or expanding government. To the contrary, open borders merely allow the voluntary movement of people to the United States. He joins the program to go over the current crop of Republican candidates’ stances on immigration, and to provide them with the intellectual ammunition to go boldly where no Republican has gone before. The question is, will they listen?
The framers of the Declaration of Independence held the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to be self-evident. Today, however, our political leaders stand idly by as many around the world are denied these rights and given no alternative to their repressive home regimes. The GOP wants to be known as the party of freedom and opportunity, but many of its leading presidential contenders wish to limit this good fortune to those who happen to have been born within our borders. Now, Hillary Clinton has come out in favor of expanding amnesty for a large percentage of the 11 million undocumented U.S. residents, leaving Republicans struggling to appeal to hispanics without losing the approval of anti-immigration conservatives. Not a single Republican seeking the presidential nomination has yet to come out in favor of the one policy that could truly distinguish them in the eyes of both hispanics and freedom-loving conservatives: Opening the borders to all foreigners who desire to live by our laws. Alex Nowrasteh, an immigration scholar at the Cato Institute and frequent guest on the show, has pointed out that such a policy has nothing to do with granting favors or expanding government. To the contrary, open borders merely allow the voluntary movement of people to the United States. He joins the program to go over the current crop of Republican candidates’ stances on immigration, and to provide them with the intellectual ammunition to go boldly where no Republican has gone before. The question is, will they listen?
The framers of the Declaration of Independence held the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to be self-evident. Today, however, our political leaders stand idly by as many around the world are denied these rights and given no alternative to their repressive home regimes. The GOP wants to be known as the party of freedom and opportunity, but many of its leading presidential contenders wish to limit this good fortune to those who happen to have been born within our borders. Now, Hillary Clinton has come out in favor of expanding amnesty for a large percentage of the 11 million undocumented U.S. residents, leaving Republicans struggling to appeal to hispanics without losing the approval of anti-immigration conservatives. Not a single Republican seeking the presidential nomination has yet to come out in favor of the one policy that could truly distinguish them in the eyes of both hispanics and freedom-loving conservatives: Opening the borders to all foreigners who desire to live by our laws. Alex Nowrasteh, an immigration scholar at the Cato Institute and frequent guest on the show, has pointed out that such a policy has nothing to do with granting favors or expanding government. To the contrary, open borders merely allow the voluntary movement of people to the United States. He joins the program to go over the current crop of Republican candidates’ stances on immigration, and to provide them with the intellectual ammunition to go boldly where no Republican has gone before. The question is, will they listen?
The framers of the Declaration of Independence held the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to be self-evident. Today, however, our political leaders stand idly by as many around the world are denied these rights and given no alternative to their repressive home regimes. The GOP wants to be known as the party of freedom and opportunity, but many of its leading presidential contenders wish to limit this good fortune to those who happen to have been born within our borders. Now, Hillary Clinton has come out in favor of expanding amnesty for a large percentage of the 11 million undocumented U.S. residents, leaving Republicans struggling to appeal to hispanics without losing the approval of anti-immigration conservatives. Not a single Republican seeking the presidential nomination has yet to come out in favor of the one policy that could truly distinguish them in the eyes of both hispanics and freedom-loving conservatives: Opening the borders to all foreigners who desire to live by our laws. Alex Nowrasteh, an immigration scholar at the Cato Institute and frequent guest on the show, has pointed out that such a policy has nothing to do with granting favors or expanding government. To the contrary, open borders merely allow the voluntary movement of people to the United States. He joins the program to go over the current crop of Republican candidates’ stances on immigration, and to provide them with the intellectual ammunition to go boldly where no Republican has gone before. The question is, will they listen?
The framers of the Declaration of Independence held the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to be self-evident. Today, however, our political leaders stand idly by as many around the world are denied these rights and given no alternative to their repressive home regimes. The GOP wants to be known as the party of freedom and opportunity, but many of its leading presidential contenders wish to limit this good fortune to those who happen to have been born within our borders. Now, Hillary Clinton has come out in favor of expanding amnesty for a large percentage of the 11 million undocumented U.S. residents, leaving Republicans struggling to appeal to hispanics without losing the approval of anti-immigration conservatives. Not a single Republican seeking the presidential nomination has yet to come out in favor of the one policy that could truly distinguish them in the eyes of both hispanics and freedom-loving conservatives: Opening the borders to all foreigners who desire to live by our laws. Alex Nowrasteh, an immigration scholar at the Cato Institute and frequent guest on the show, has pointed out that such a policy has nothing to do with granting favors or expanding government. To the contrary, open borders merely allow the voluntary movement of people to the United States. He joins the program to go over the current crop of Republican candidates’ stances on immigration, and to provide them with the intellectual ammunition to go boldly where no Republican has gone before. The question is, will they listen?
The framers of the Declaration of Independence held the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to be self-evident. Today, however, our political leaders stand idly by as many around the world are denied these rights and given no alternative to their repressive home regimes. The GOP wants to be known as the party of freedom and opportunity, but many of its leading presidential contenders wish to limit this good fortune to those who happen to have been born within our borders. Now, Hillary Clinton has come out in favor of expanding amnesty for a large percentage of the 11 million undocumented U.S. residents, leaving Republicans struggling to appeal to hispanics without losing the approval of anti-immigration conservatives. Not a single Republican seeking the presidential nomination has yet to come out in favor of the one policy that could truly distinguish them in the eyes of both hispanics and freedom-loving conservatives: Opening the borders to all foreigners who desire to live by our laws. Alex Nowrasteh, an immigration scholar at the Cato Institute and frequent guest on the show, has pointed out that such a policy has nothing to do with granting favors or expanding government. To the contrary, open borders merely allow the voluntary movement of people to the United States. He joins the program to go over the current crop of Republican candidates’ stances on immigration, and to provide them with the intellectual ammunition to go boldly where no Republican has gone before. The question is, will they listen?
Shortly after its founding in 2003, The Breakthrough Institute helped forge a “BlueGreen Alliance” between labor unions and environmentalists to modernize America’s clean energy infrastructure. While this may sound like yet another instance of special interests profiting under the guise of environmental ethics, Breakthrough’s agenda in fact offers a refreshing alternative to the usual talking points about energy and the environment. More importantly, their scholars are fiercely independent. They have heralded “The Death of Environmentalism” (at least conceived of as a movement to limit growth of industry), and when nuclear power and natural gas are found to be cheaper than solar energy, Breakthrough Institute scholars don't hesitate to say so. Alex Trembath, a senior energy analyst at The Breakthrough Institute, has done much of the research into fracking and clean energy that undergirds their positions, and joins Bob in studio to defend a nuanced technocratic approach to energy and climate. Do we really need government to invest in the next generation of clean energy infrastructure, or should we leave it up to the market?
Shortly after its founding in 2003, The Breakthrough Institute helped forge a “BlueGreen Alliance” between labor unions and environmentalists to modernize America’s clean energy infrastructure. While this may sound like yet another instance of special interests profiting under the guise of environmental ethics, Breakthrough’s agenda in fact offers a refreshing alternative to the usual talking points about energy and the environment. More importantly, their scholars are fiercely independent. They have heralded “The Death of Environmentalism” (at least conceived of as a movement to limit growth of industry), and when nuclear power and natural gas are found to be cheaper than solar energy, Breakthrough Institute scholars don't hesitate to say so. Alex Trembath, a senior energy analyst at The Breakthrough Institute, has done much of the research into fracking and clean energy that undergirds their positions, and joins Bob in studio to defend a nuanced technocratic approach to energy and climate. Do we really need government to invest in the next generation of clean energy infrastructure, or should we leave it up to the market?
Shortly after its founding in 2003, The Breakthrough Institute helped forge a “BlueGreen Alliance” between labor unions and environmentalists to modernize America’s clean energy infrastructure. While this may sound like yet another instance of special interests profiting under the guise of environmental ethics, Breakthrough’s agenda in fact offers a refreshing alternative to the usual talking points about energy and the environment. More importantly, their scholars are fiercely independent. They have heralded “The Death of Environmentalism” (at least conceived of as a movement to limit growth of industry), and when nuclear power and natural gas are found to be cheaper than solar energy, Breakthrough Institute scholars don't hesitate to say so. Alex Trembath, a senior energy analyst at The Breakthrough Institute, has done much of the research into fracking and clean energy that undergirds their positions, and joins Bob in studio to defend a nuanced technocratic approach to energy and climate. Do we really need government to invest in the next generation of clean energy infrastructure, or should we leave it up to the market?
Shortly after its founding in 2003, The Breakthrough Institute helped forge a “BlueGreen Alliance” between labor unions and environmentalists to modernize America’s clean energy infrastructure. While this may sound like yet another instance of special interests profiting under the guise of environmental ethics, Breakthrough’s agenda in fact offers a refreshing alternative to the usual talking points about energy and the environment. More importantly, their scholars are fiercely independent. They have heralded “The Death of Environmentalism” (at least conceived of as a movement to limit growth of industry), and when nuclear power and natural gas are found to be cheaper than solar energy, Breakthrough Institute scholars don't hesitate to say so. Alex Trembath, a senior energy analyst at The Breakthrough Institute, has done much of the research into fracking and clean energy that undergirds their positions, and joins Bob in studio to defend a nuanced technocratic approach to energy and climate. Do we really need government to invest in the next generation of clean energy infrastructure, or should we leave it up to the market?
Shortly after its founding in 2003, The Breakthrough Institute helped forge a “BlueGreen Alliance” between labor unions and environmentalists to modernize America’s clean energy infrastructure. While this may sound like yet another instance of special interests profiting under the guise of environmental ethics, Breakthrough’s agenda in fact offers a refreshing alternative to the usual talking points about energy and the environment. More importantly, their scholars are fiercely independent. They have heralded “The Death of Environmentalism” (at least conceived of as a movement to limit growth of industry), and when nuclear power and natural gas are found to be cheaper than solar energy, Breakthrough Institute scholars don't hesitate to say so. Alex Trembath, a senior energy analyst at The Breakthrough Institute, has done much of the research into fracking and clean energy that undergirds their positions, and joins Bob in studio to defend a nuanced technocratic approach to energy and climate. Do we really need government to invest in the next generation of clean energy infrastructure, or should we leave it up to the market?
Shortly after its founding in 2003, The Breakthrough Institute helped forge a “BlueGreen Alliance” between labor unions and environmentalists to modernize America’s clean energy infrastructure. While this may sound like yet another instance of special interests profiting under the guise of environmental ethics, Breakthrough’s agenda in fact offers a refreshing alternative to the usual talking points about energy and the environment. More importantly, their scholars are fiercely independent. They have heralded “The Death of Environmentalism” (at least conceived of as a movement to limit growth of industry), and when nuclear power and natural gas are found to be cheaper than solar energy, Breakthrough Institute scholars don't hesitate to say so. Alex Trembath, a senior energy analyst at The Breakthrough Institute, has done much of the research into fracking and clean energy that undergirds their positions, and joins Bob in studio to defend a nuanced technocratic approach to energy and climate. Do we really need government to invest in the next generation of clean energy infrastructure, or should we leave it up to the market?
Shortly after its founding in 2003, The Breakthrough Institute helped forge a “BlueGreen Alliance” between labor unions and environmentalists to modernize America’s clean energy infrastructure. While this may sound like yet another instance of special interests profiting under the guise of environmental ethics, Breakthrough’s agenda in fact offers a refreshing alternative to the usual talking points about energy and the environment. More importantly, their scholars are fiercely independent. They have heralded “The Death of Environmentalism” (at least conceived of as a movement to limit growth of industry), and when nuclear power and natural gas are found to be cheaper than solar energy, Breakthrough Institute scholars don't hesitate to say so. Alex Trembath, a senior energy analyst at The Breakthrough Institute, has done much of the research into fracking and clean energy that undergirds their positions, and joins Bob in studio to defend a nuanced technocratic approach to energy and climate. Do we really need government to invest in the next generation of clean energy infrastructure, or should we leave it up to the market?
Too often, political arguments begin with one person insinuating that his or her opponent deliberately wants to bring about a certain negative outcome, be it pollution, child labor, or an overall lower standard of living. We rarely frame our debates around the values almost all of us have in common, such as a clean planet, and abundant opportunity for future generations. This is where HumanProgress.org, a data-driven initiative of the Cato Institute, excels. Marian L. Tupy is a senior policy analyst at the Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity and the editor of Human Progress, which compiles easy-to-read charts and graphs showing the many ways we are advancing, even in terms of “progressive” values. Bob’s last show struck a pessimistic note, with Don Boudreaux lamenting the relative decline of freedom in the United States. This episode brings you the flip side – the good news about the rest of the world’s increase in freedom and prosperity. Tupy joins Bob to discuss the reason why capitalism is winning the war on poverty, while still losing the war of ideas.
Too often, political arguments begin with one person insinuating that his or her opponent deliberately wants to bring about a certain negative outcome, be it pollution, child labor, or an overall lower standard of living. We rarely frame our debates around the values almost all of us have in common, such as a clean planet, and abundant opportunity for future generations. This is where HumanProgress.org, a data-driven initiative of the Cato Institute, excels. Marian L. Tupy is a senior policy analyst at the Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity and the editor of Human Progress, which compiles easy-to-read charts and graphs showing the many ways we are advancing, even in terms of “progressive” values. Bob’s last show struck a pessimistic note, with Don Boudreaux lamenting the relative decline of freedom in the United States. This episode brings you the flip side – the good news about the rest of the world’s increase in freedom and prosperity. Tupy joins Bob to discuss the reason why capitalism is winning the war on poverty, while still losing the war of ideas.
Too often, political arguments begin with one person insinuating that his or her opponent deliberately wants to bring about a certain negative outcome, be it pollution, child labor, or an overall lower standard of living. We rarely frame our debates around the values almost all of us have in common, such as a clean planet, and abundant opportunity for future generations. This is where HumanProgress.org, a data-driven initiative of the Cato Institute, excels. Marian L. Tupy is a senior policy analyst at the Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity and the editor of Human Progress, which compiles easy-to-read charts and graphs showing the many ways we are advancing, even in terms of “progressive” values. Bob’s last show struck a pessimistic note, with Don Boudreaux lamenting the relative decline of freedom in the United States. This episode brings you the flip side – the good news about the rest of the world’s increase in freedom and prosperity. Tupy joins Bob to discuss the reason why capitalism is winning the war on poverty, while still losing the war of ideas.
Too often, political arguments begin with one person insinuating that his or her opponent deliberately wants to bring about a certain negative outcome, be it pollution, child labor, or an overall lower standard of living. We rarely frame our debates around the values almost all of us have in common, such as a clean planet, and abundant opportunity for future generations. This is where HumanProgress.org, a data-driven initiative of the Cato Institute, excels. Marian L. Tupy is a senior policy analyst at the Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity and the editor of Human Progress, which compiles easy-to-read charts and graphs showing the many ways we are advancing, even in terms of “progressive” values. Bob’s last show struck a pessimistic note, with Don Boudreaux lamenting the relative decline of freedom in the United States. This episode brings you the flip side – the good news about the rest of the world’s increase in freedom and prosperity. Tupy joins Bob to discuss the reason why capitalism is winning the war on poverty, while still losing the war of ideas.
Too often, political arguments begin with one person insinuating that his or her opponent deliberately wants to bring about a certain negative outcome, be it pollution, child labor, or an overall lower standard of living. We rarely frame our debates around the values almost all of us have in common, such as a clean planet, and abundant opportunity for future generations. This is where HumanProgress.org, a data-driven initiative of the Cato Institute, excels. Marian L. Tupy is a senior policy analyst at the Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity and the editor of Human Progress, which compiles easy-to-read charts and graphs showing the many ways we are advancing, even in terms of “progressive” values. Bob’s last show struck a pessimistic note, with Don Boudreaux lamenting the relative decline of freedom in the United States. This episode brings you the flip side – the good news about the rest of the world’s increase in freedom and prosperity. Tupy joins Bob to discuss the reason why capitalism is winning the war on poverty, while still losing the war of ideas.
Too often, political arguments begin with one person insinuating that his or her opponent deliberately wants to bring about a certain negative outcome, be it pollution, child labor, or an overall lower standard of living. We rarely frame our debates around the values almost all of us have in common, such as a clean planet, and abundant opportunity for future generations. This is where HumanProgress.org, a data-driven initiative of the Cato Institute, excels. Marian L. Tupy is a senior policy analyst at the Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity and the editor of Human Progress, which compiles easy-to-read charts and graphs showing the many ways we are advancing, even in terms of “progressive” values. Bob’s last show struck a pessimistic note, with Don Boudreaux lamenting the relative decline of freedom in the United States. This episode brings you the flip side – the good news about the rest of the world’s increase in freedom and prosperity. Tupy joins Bob to discuss the reason why capitalism is winning the war on poverty, while still losing the war of ideas.
Too often, political arguments begin with one person insinuating that his or her opponent deliberately wants to bring about a certain negative outcome, be it pollution, child labor, or an overall lower standard of living. We rarely frame our debates around the values almost all of us have in common, such as a clean planet, and abundant opportunity for future generations. This is where HumanProgress.org, a data-driven initiative of the Cato Institute, excels. Marian L. Tupy is a senior policy analyst at the Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity and the editor of Human Progress, which compiles easy-to-read charts and graphs showing the many ways we are advancing, even in terms of “progressive” values. Bob’s last show struck a pessimistic note, with Don Boudreaux lamenting the relative decline of freedom in the United States. This episode brings you the flip side – the good news about the rest of the world’s increase in freedom and prosperity. Tupy joins Bob to discuss the reason why capitalism is winning the war on poverty, while still losing the war of ideas.
Too often, political arguments begin with one person insinuating that his or her opponent deliberately wants to bring about a certain negative outcome, be it pollution, child labor, or an overall lower standard of living. We rarely frame our debates around the values almost all of us have in common, such as a clean planet, and abundant opportunity for future generations. This is where HumanProgress.org, a data-driven initiative of the Cato Institute, excels. Marian L. Tupy is a senior policy analyst at the Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity and the editor of Human Progress, which compiles easy-to-read charts and graphs showing the many ways we are advancing, even in terms of “progressive” values. Bob’s last show struck a pessimistic note, with Don Boudreaux lamenting the relative decline of freedom in the United States. This episode brings you the flip side – the good news about the rest of the world’s increase in freedom and prosperity. Tupy joins Bob to discuss the reason why capitalism is winning the war on poverty, while still losing the war of ideas.
Most people tune out when academics speak in terms of regression analysis and “agent-based modeling.” Nonetheless, we want to understand the long-term economic trends that these methods seek to illuminate in order to plan for the future. Don Boudreaux is a master of making complex economic ideas comprehensible to the layperson. He provides this service free of charge every day for the thousands of visitors to his blog, Cafe Hayek. Boudreaux’s short but powerful letters to the editor are the stuff of any libertarian’s dreams – the equivalent of a Total Knock Out in boxing. The larger battle for economic freedom is not fought solely in public discussion forums like the WSJ editorial page – it’s being waged in academic journals and in the academic marketplace of ideas. Boudreaux recently edited the Fraser Institute’s What America’s Decline in Economic Freedom Means for Entrepreneurship and Prosperity, a volume of five essays, each thick with research that Don discusses with Bob and his audience on this show.
Most people tune out when academics speak in terms of regression analysis and “agent-based modeling.” Nonetheless, we want to understand the long-term economic trends that these methods seek to illuminate in order to plan for the future. Don Boudreaux is a master of making complex economic ideas comprehensible to the layperson. He provides this service free of charge every day for the thousands of visitors to his blog, Cafe Hayek. Boudreaux’s short but powerful letters to the editor are the stuff of any libertarian’s dreams – the equivalent of a Total Knock Out in boxing. The larger battle for economic freedom is not fought solely in public discussion forums like the WSJ editorial page – it’s being waged in academic journals and in the academic marketplace of ideas. Boudreaux recently edited the Fraser Institute’s What America’s Decline in Economic Freedom Means for Entrepreneurship and Prosperity, a volume of five essays, each thick with research that Don discusses with Bob and his audience on this show.
Most people tune out when academics speak in terms of regression analysis and “agent-based modeling.” Nonetheless, we want to understand the long-term economic trends that these methods seek to illuminate in order to plan for the future. Don Boudreaux is a master of making complex economic ideas comprehensible to the layperson. He provides this service free of charge every day for the thousands of visitors to his blog, Cafe Hayek. Boudreaux’s short but powerful letters to the editor are the stuff of any libertarian’s dreams – the equivalent of a Total Knock Out in boxing. The larger battle for economic freedom is not fought solely in public discussion forums like the WSJ editorial page – it’s being waged in academic journals and in the academic marketplace of ideas. Boudreaux recently edited the Fraser Institute’s What America’s Decline in Economic Freedom Means for Entrepreneurship and Prosperity, a volume of five essays, each thick with research that Don discusses with Bob and his audience on this show.
Most people tune out when academics speak in terms of regression analysis and “agent-based modeling.” Nonetheless, we want to understand the long-term economic trends that these methods seek to illuminate in order to plan for the future. Don Boudreaux is a master of making complex economic ideas comprehensible to the layperson. He provides this service free of charge every day for the thousands of visitors to his blog, Cafe Hayek. Boudreaux’s short but powerful letters to the editor are the stuff of any libertarian’s dreams – the equivalent of a Total Knock Out in boxing. The larger battle for economic freedom is not fought solely in public discussion forums like the WSJ editorial page – it’s being waged in academic journals and in the academic marketplace of ideas. Boudreaux recently edited the Fraser Institute’s What America’s Decline in Economic Freedom Means for Entrepreneurship and Prosperity, a volume of five essays, each thick with research that Don discusses with Bob and his audience on this show.
Most people tune out when academics speak in terms of regression analysis and “agent-based modeling.” Nonetheless, we want to understand the long-term economic trends that these methods seek to illuminate in order to plan for the future. Don Boudreaux is a master of making complex economic ideas comprehensible to the layperson. He provides this service free of charge every day for the thousands of visitors to his blog, Cafe Hayek (currently down due to a malicious hacking attack). Boudreaux’s short but powerful letters to the editor are the stuff of any libertarian’s dreams – the equivalent of a Total Knock Out in boxing. The larger battle for economic freedom is not fought solely in public discussion forums like the WSJ editorial page – it’s being waged in academic journals and in the academic marketplace of ideas. Boudreaux recently edited the Fraser Institute’s What America’s Decline in Economic Freedom Means for Entrepreneurship and Prosperity, a volume of five essays, each thick with research that Don discusses with Bob on this show.
Most people tune out when academics speak in terms of regression analysis and “agent-based modeling.” Nonetheless, we want to understand the long-term economic trends that these methods seek to illuminate in order to plan for the future. Don Boudreaux is a master of making complex economic ideas comprehensible to the layperson. He provides this service free of charge every day for the thousands of visitors to his blog, Cafe Hayek. Boudreaux’s short but powerful letters to the editor are the stuff of any libertarian’s dreams – the equivalent of a Total Knock Out in boxing. The larger battle for economic freedom is not fought solely in public discussion forums like the WSJ editorial page – it’s being waged in academic journals and in the academic marketplace of ideas. Boudreaux recently edited the Fraser Institute’s What America’s Decline in Economic Freedom Means for Entrepreneurship and Prosperity, a volume of five essays, each thick with research that Don discusses with Bob and his audience on this show.
Most people tune out when academics speak in terms of regression analysis and “agent-based modeling.” Nonetheless, we want to understand the long-term economic trends that these methods seek to illuminate in order to plan for the future. Don Boudreaux is a master of making complex economic ideas comprehensible to the layperson. He provides this service free of charge every day for the thousands of visitors to his blog, Cafe Hayek. Boudreaux’s short but powerful letters to the editor are the stuff of any libertarian’s dreams – the equivalent of a Total Knock Out in boxing. The larger battle for economic freedom is not fought solely in public discussion forums like the WSJ editorial page – it’s being waged in academic journals and in the academic marketplace of ideas. Boudreaux recently edited the Fraser Institute’s What America’s Decline in Economic Freedom Means for Entrepreneurship and Prosperity, a volume of five essays, each thick with research that Don discusses with Bob and his audience on this show.
Most people tune out when academics speak in terms of regression analysis and “agent-based modeling.” Nonetheless, we want to understand the long-term economic trends that these methods seek to illuminate in order to plan for the future. Don Boudreaux is a master of making complex economic ideas comprehensible to the layperson. He provides this service free of charge every day for the thousands of visitors to his blog, Cafe Hayek. Boudreaux’s short but powerful letters to the editor are the stuff of any libertarian’s dreams – the equivalent of a Total Knock Out in boxing. The larger battle for economic freedom is not fought solely in public discussion forums like the WSJ editorial page – it’s being waged in academic journals and in the academic marketplace of ideas. Boudreaux recently edited the Fraser Institute’s What America’s Decline in Economic Freedom Means for Entrepreneurship and Prosperity, a volume of five essays, each thick with research that Don discusses with Bob and his audience on this show.
On any given night, television audiences can tune into an elaborate unscripted reality show in which the stakes are high, the stars are hungry, and the stage is global. No, this program is not The Amazing Race – it’s whatever happens to be on C-SPAN, MSNBC, or any other politically-focused news network, and politicians and pundits are its stars. The theater of politics is its own specialized arena, with jargon to match. David Mark and his co-author Chuck McCutcheon have been professional spectators (aka political journalists) of this show for decades, and have documented an elaborate vocabulary in their new political dictionary, “Dog-Whistles, Walk-backs and Washington Handshakes.” Much like a modern-day translation is needed to fully understand Shakespearean plays and sonnets, Mark and McCutcheon’s book is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand what’s really being said in political speeches, debates and interviews. David Mark is a San Francisco writer, and former senior editor of Politico. He joins Bob in the studio, just in time for the start of election season, to discuss his new book.
If Rand Paul makes it past the Republican primaries, criticisms are sure to resurface regarding an obscure comment he made on CNN in 2010 about the libertarian principle of free association. Specifically, Paul took issue with the portions of the 1964 Civil Rights Act limiting business owners’ freedom to discriminate (against their own economic interest) – a comment he has since walked back. Alas, pure libertarian principle often dictates seemingly indefensible positions, such as the right of bigots to refuse customers on a superficial basis. One man, however, has had the courage to consistently argue that the principle of freedom involved in these cases should trump our uneasiness about specific outcomes. That man is Professor Walter Block. Block has caused many a stir with his iconoclastic defenses of the seemingly indefensible. He joins Bob to discuss his recent endorsement of Rand Paul for President, in spite of the Republican candidate’s recent moves away from the principled libertarian positions of his father. Should libertarians get behind a lesser of two evils? Find out where you lie on Professor Block’s scale of libertarianism (where 100 is a “Perfect Block”).
Dr. Singer, a general surgeon and adjunct scholar at The Cato Institute, joins Bob to discuss how the electronic health record-keeping mandate translates into longer wait times, less face time for patients with doctors, and an all-around less responsive and less humane health care system.
This Easter Sunday, Bob is doing a regular show with a very special guest – a walking embodiment of the libertarian ethos: David Boaz. Since joining the Cato Institute in 1981, Boaz has been pivotal in transforming the once-obscure think tank into a powerhouse – setting the gold standard for libertarian public policy analysis. More than 15 years ago, at a time when far fewer people had even heard of libertarianism, Boaz wrote and edited a volume titled Libertarianism: A Primer.
A wide-ranging conversation on the gaping flaws in our criminal justice system, with a demystification of the term "private prisons".
A wide-ranging conversation on the gaping flaws in our criminal justice system, with a demystification of the term "private prisons".
A wide-ranging conversation on the gaping flaws in our criminal justice system, with a demystification of the term "private prisons".
A wide-ranging conversation on the gaping flaws in our criminal justice system, with a demystification of the term "private prisons".
A wide-ranging conversation on the gaping flaws in our criminal justice system, with a demystification of the term "private prisons".
A wide-ranging conversation on the gaping flaws in our criminal justice system, with a demystification of the term "private prisons".
Private prisons only account for a fraction of total corrections facilities in the U.S., so how can we account for the real injustice – the massive increase in the prison population over the last several decades? To dissect this complicated issue, Bob will be joined by prolific writer and podcast host Lucy Steigerwald. Steigerwald recently wrote an article on private prisons, which may straighten out some of the priorities of those who are still focused on the wrong injustices.
John Mueller explains the destructive nature of the American government's response to terrorism since 9/11.
In defending his belief in open borders, Bob has interviewed former two-term Governor and Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson, Cato Institute immigration expert Alex Nowrasteh, Huffington Post reporter Elise Foley, and Sophia Campos, an aspiring professional and undocumented student at UCLA. This one-hour special will include select segments from each of these interviews, along with lively debate between Bob and his numerous callers. Few subjects elicit such strong emotions from across the spectrum as illegal immigration. This is all the more reason to learn the facts and get answers to the questions you've always been too afraid to ask. Are open borders compatible with a welfare state? Why are our border regions so violent? Are the most recent waves of immigrants assimilating like past generations of newcomers to the United States?
Bob is joined by John Aglialoro, an entrepreneur who has repeatedly leveraged his own successes to create more wealth and prosperity for all. In addition to acting as CEO of fitness equipment manufacturer CYBEX International since 1997, Aglialoro serves as Mayor of the Tavistock Borough in Tavistock, New Jersey. He also bankrolled and co-produced the epic three-part film adaptation of Ayn Rand's famous novel, Atlas Shrugged. Tune in to hear why Aglialoro believes that just plain free-market capitalism is superior to the “inclusive” alternative.
In his State of the Union address earlier this month, President Obama called economic inequality the “defining issue of our time.” He is pushing an aggressive domestic agenda for reducing inequality under the banner of so-called “inclusive capitalism.” Sean McElwee, a libertarian-turned-progressive and researcher at Demos, joins the program to debate the President's proposals to increase taxes on the rich and spend more on lower and middle-class families.
You're under arrest! Three words no law-abiding citizen ever wants – or expects – to hear. Yet the dreaded possibility of unwittingly committing a crime still looms, and ever more so with the growing number of federal criminal laws on the books. Brian Walsh of the Heritage Foundation joins the show to explain what has led us into this age of overcriminalization, and how we can get out of it.
What is a consistent libertarian stance on immigration in light of Obama's unconstitutional executive order? Listen to the Libertarian Minute to find out.
Fred Smith, founder of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, joins the show to discuss the Cuban Embargo. It's been around too long for many of us to remember why it was enacted in the first place, but it has always been justified on the same stale grounds: by preventing U.S. dollars and goods from reaching Cuba, our government can weaken the country's dictatorship. However, 54 years after its enactment, Fidel and Raul Castro still retain tight control over the country. Furthermore, Cubans seem to resent the U.S. more than their own leaders for harm done by ‘el bloqueo.' So much for that logic.
“Be nice” may be excellent advice for children on the playground, workers in the service sector, and indeed, for most people in most situations. Being nice, however, does not always advance what Jonathan Rauch calls "the liberal science" – the ongoing process of harsh, public criticism that eventually brings us closer to the truth.
John Allison, President and CEO of the Cato Institute and Chairman and former CEO of BB&T, joins Bob to discuss his new The Leadership Crisis and the Free Market Cure.
As Director of Duke's PPE program and a former libertarian candidate for Governor of North Carolina, Mike Munger has both studied the role of money in politics, and experienced it first hand. He comes to a different conclusion than the liberals who reacted in horror to the 2010 case of Citizens United. Is corporate speech the problem, or is it the power we give politicians in the first place?
Markets and financial incentives could save the lives of thousands of wait-listed patients on dialysis, but the National Kidney Foundation has resisted even marginal reforms at every turn. Virginia Postrel joins the show to reflect on her manifesto, The Future and Its Enemies, and its relation to this vital issue.
Lenore Skenazy is television's "World's Worst Mom." She also wrote Free Range Kids, and joins the show to dispel irrational fears increasingly held by parents, teachers, and the rest of society.
You've never met a libertarian like Richard Boddie. This one-of-a-kind lawyer, professor, and libertarian activist has seen many political fads come and go, but he's still rowing for Team Libertarian. Once a candidate for the Libertarian Party's presidential nomination, and twice a Libertarian candidate for Congress, Boddie has never tired of spreading the message of liberty.
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We thought we got rid of the crown back in the Revolutionary War. Frank Buckley says it's rearing it's ugly head again, as some of the more astute Founding Fathers warned it would. Find out how this transition to an "elective monarchy" is taking place.
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It's Elizabeth Warren's worst nightmare – a comprehensive study of the uses and forms of consumer credit. It turns out, according to George Mason Law Professor Todd Zywicki, that credit is good for consumers and good for the economy.
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Sigrid Fry-Revere takes listeners on a journey to a repressive regime. But in Iran, where kidney sales are legal, the government is not as uniformly unfriendly towards markets as some believe.
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Reason's Senior Editor Damon Root gives the scoop on the critical battle being waged for the Supreme Court, led on the libertarian side by an "elite core of frontline fighters," like the lawyers at the Institute for Justice and scholars at Cato.
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Greg Lukianoff, President of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, joins the show to discuss the current threats to free speech – both on campus and in society at large.
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Jeremy Gillula, Staff Technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, responds to Comey’s warning over 'dark devices' (i.e., fully-encrypted cell phones), and explains the constitutional and technical issues at play.
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Adam C. Smith joins the show this Sunday to discuss the latest applications of his grandfather's "Bootleggers and Baptists" theory of regulation. Subscribe in iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/past-shows-the-bob-zadek-show/id902092400
Confused by all the talk around Halbig v. Burwell? Rumors abound that this case represents the next big legal challenge to Obamacare, but how do we know it's not just hype surrounding a technicality, as the law's supporters suggest? In Halbig, an IRS interpretation of Obamacare – dubious, but crucial to the law's implementation – was rejected by the courts as an unlawful use of administrative authority. The underlying concern is the ongoing revival of extralegal executive powers – akin to the "Royal Prerogative" of yore – under the banner of "Administrative Law." If the Halbig decision stands, it would represent at least a small win against the growth of executive power. But health care isn't the only area where increasingly absolute executive authority is eroding the checks and balances of our constitutional government. Columbia Law Professor Philip Hamburger will join the show to clear up the confusion, and to reveal the long historical struggle to constrain extralegal power as told in his fascinating new book, Is Administrative Law Unlawful?
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In this episode, Randal O'Toole of the Cato Institute joins Bob to discuss how Plan Bay Area will impact the local landscape and lives of Bay Area residents. O'Toole is equipped with the hard facts and figures that demythologize public transit, including the most romantic transportation method of all: the lofty rail. Why the seeming obsession over this outdated technology? Could the real driving force behind the fixation on rail be how well it fits in with regional planners' latest scheme for "smart growth," aka "urban densification"? As O'Toole writes, it's clear that transit has become a source of political favors to unions, downtown property owners, and rail contractors. It's less clear who else reaps the benefits.
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In 1878 the Posse Comitatus Act ended the use of the US Military to enforce state laws. Our founders uniformly abhorred any concept of a federal police force since “police power” was vested in the states. However, since the 1980s, the tactics of the local police have come to resemble those of the military. Armored personnel carriers, heavy duty attack weapons, tanks and military hardware are being used for ordinary police tasks such as the enforcement of warrants and simple arrests. The very appearance of our cops is identical to army troops. How did this happen, where is it going and what does it tell us about life in America? No one knows this better than Radley Balko, author of “The Rise of the Warrior Cop.” Radley explains how the mission of our local police has changed from our protectors to our adversaries. This show won’t make you happy but it will inform you.
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