Mike Greenberg is an attorney at the Institute for Justice who joins the show to discuss a new case in which the FBI blatantly violated the terms of their warrant in seizing over $80 million in assets from a safe deposit company called US Private Vaults. A few customers may have been breaking the law in associated with their vaults, but a majority of the assets and precious family heirlooms have now been restored to their rightful owners – but only after a fight.

Greenberg was part of the IJ’s legal team that fought on behalf of Paul and Jennifer Snitko, whose belongings were wrongly seized and photographed by FBI agents in March of 2021 without probable cause.

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Ashley Varner of the Freedom Foundation discusses the perverse nature of public sector employee unions, which can lobby the government for direct pay raises – all at taxpayer expense. The Freedom Foundation is a “Do Tank” based in Washington State that is leading a national movement of workers who are opting out of their union dues. 

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We all remember the bank bailouts of 2008, but almost nobody talks about the more recent COVID bailouts. $50 billion here; $25 billion there – pretty soon we're talking about real money. The airlines were one of several industries that enjoyed special treatment from the federal government on the grounds that they constituted an "essential business." What would happen if the airports shut down completely? Sounds scary.But the airline industry was never at risk of disappearing, notes Veronique de Rugy, a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. In a series of policy briefs co-authored with air travel guru Gary Leff, de Rugy shows the colossal waste of taxpayer dollars that took place while no one was paying attention. Rather than re-organizing under Chapter 11 bankruptcy laws, as businesses do all the time, inefficient airlines were able to keep paying dividends to their shareholders while less privileged businesses went under permanently.

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Professor Richard Epstein joins the show to review the economic case against the minimum wage.

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Todd Zywicki is a lawyer, legal scholar and educator. He is a George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law at George Mason University School of Law, teaching in the areas of bankruptcy and contracts.

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Paul Atkins, a former commissioner of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, recently participated in a Reason Foundation webinar on the impact of ESG investing on public pensions. 

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Joe Cohn, director of FIRE’s Legislative and Policy department, joins the show to discuss a new proposed rule change from the same administrative office behind the infamous 2011 “Dear Colleague” letter. The new language would turn certain kinds of constitutionally-protected free speech into a punishable offense under the broad umbrella of “sexual harassment.” Under the new rule, the “trial” that results from alleged misconduct would be conducted by a single college administrator acting as judge, jury, and prosecutor. 

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Dick Carpenter, II, senior director of strategic research at the Institute for Justice, recently published a report analyzing Yelp! reviews for six occupations across several states – some with licensing requirements and others without.

Unsurprisingly to anyone who understands the nature of licensing, the license made no difference to the service quality according to Yelp’s ratings.

In some cases, licensing actually seems to correlate with inferior service. The reality is that it represents a barrier to competition promoted by industry insiders to earn more profit.

Carpenter joins the show to explain how good intent by legislators backfires when lobbyists get their way.

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