The Bob Zadek Show

Gene Healy and I broke down the articles of impeachment, and discussed the role of impeachment in restraining an unconstrained executive branch.

Don’t miss it.

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.

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

A New IJ Report Debunks Rationale for Civil Asset Forfeiture

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.

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

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.

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

The fintech revolution is upon us.

Exploring a Moral History of the United States

“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.

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

A Yale Law professor reconsiders a cherished American principle.

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.

Clearly there’s more to this picture than meets the eye.

You won’t want to miss what is a lively discussion with my guest this past Sunday (11/24), Daniel Markovitz.

Follow Daniel on Twitter (@dsmarkovits), buy the book, and be sure to tune in to the show of ideas, not attitude:

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

The Tax Foundation’s Garrett Watson explains how “soak the rich” throws

cold water on everyone.