The Bob Zadek Show

John Cribb on Abraham Lincoln’s Last Five Years

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.

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Philip Hamburger on Court Packing

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.

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Elizabeth Gotein on NSA Surveillance in the Big Data Era

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?

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Adam Thierer on the future of governance

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.

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Frank Buckley on Curiosity and Its Twelve Rules for Life

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.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.bobzadek.com/subscribe