ZadekpediaMatt Welch is a guest on The Bob Zadek Show, appearing in episodes from 2010, 2014 and 2021. He is identified on the show as editor-in-chief of Reason magazine A Libertarian Plan (2010) and later as editor at large at the same magazine Parents Voting With Their Kids’ Feet (2021). In the 2010 episode Bob Zadek introduces him as editor-in-chief of what Zadek calls his favorite magazine publication, and Welch describes Reason as published by a nonprofit foundation based in LA called the Reason Foundation, with the magazine available at reason.com/subscribe for 11 issues a year for 20 dollars A Libertarian Plan (2010). In the 2021 episode Zadek describes Welch as editor at large at Reason and as co-author, with Nick Gillespie, of The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What’s Wrong with America Parents Voting With Their Kids’ Feet (2021).
On the show
2 appearances, 2010–2021.
- 2010-10-10 · A Libertarian Plan · 49:13 — Balancing the federal budget through constitutional limits.
- 2021-09-06 · Parents Voting With Their Kids’ Feet · 52:27 — Families fleeing government-run schools and school choice.
Enumerated powers and the 2010 budget episode
The 2010 episode, titled “A Libertarian Plan,” frames the discussion around the constitutional limits of federal power. Zadek contrasts a quotation he attributes to Representative Pete Stark — that there are no constitutional limits to what the federal government can do — with James Madison’s statement in Federalist 45 that the powers delegated to the federal government are few and defined. Zadek credits Madison with writing the first draft of the Constitution and being the leading proponent of the Constitution in the Convention of 1787 A Libertarian Plan (2010). Welch’s own contributions in the excerpt are the specific budget proposals rather than the constitutional framing.
Welch’s first proposal is to get the government out of the housing market. He cites Fannie and Freddie, into which he says 150 billion dollars of bailout money had already been thrown, and which guarantee trillions of dollars worth of mortgages including what he calls the toxic stuff. He argues that countries without a similar institution have the same if not higher level of homeownership, and that unwinding the arrangement is at the root of the financial and economic crisis A Libertarian Plan (2010). Zadek adds that Fannie and Freddie guaranteeing mortgages is a relatively new federal activity and that for most of the country’s history people bought houses without any federal guarantee.
On agriculture, Welch says more than 20 billion dollars a year is spent on direct payouts to the richest country in the world’s richest farmers, naming Monsanto, big agribusiness and Archer Daniels Midland, and argues the money directly impoverishes third-world farmers. Zadek responds that closing the Department of Agriculture would make supermarket prices cheaper immediately A Libertarian Plan (2010). Welch then turns to the FCC, which he says was launched to allocate scarce broadcast spectrum, a scarcity he says no longer exists, and which he describes as trying every day to come up with new ways to censor. Zadek says firing everyone at the FCC and closing it would cause zero disruption except that everything would be cheaper.
Welch also raises dismantling the Davis-Bacon Act, which Zadek says was passed in 1931 to keep Blacks out of the government contracting market and which he says costs everybody in a hidden way because the government must overpay on every contract. Welch calls the prevailing wage requirement a hidden tax and mentions living wage ordinances on hotels near LAX. He proposes repealing the stimulus, citing 300 billion dollars in unspent stimulus money and the theoretical multipliers that promised 1.60 dollars in economic benefits for every dollar spent. His final proposal is to bring the troops home, saying the Cold War is over and that troops should leave Germany, Korea and anywhere else, a position he attributes to Gary Johnson, who Zadek says will be his guest the following week A Libertarian Plan (2010).
Executive overreach and the Bergdahl controversy
In the 2014 episode with Matt Zwolinski, Welch appears only through a recorded clip played by Zadek, who introduces him as working at Reason magazine and the Reason Foundation and as a participant on a television show supported by Reason called The Independents, on Fox every weekday evening Matt Zwolinski on Bleeding Heart Libertarianism (2014). Zadek’s own framing, before the clip, is that the Bowe Bergdahl controversy is an example of the accumulation of power in the executive at the expense of the legislative and judicial branches, and that Congress had enacted a statute, signed by the president, requiring 30 days’ advance notice to certain members of Congress before releasing prisoners from Guantanamo, which the Obama administration ignored.
In the clip, Welch says the president was elected as a constitutional scholar to restore balance to the runaway executive branch, and that disregarding the statutory authority to inform Congress 30 days’ notice — instead of, as he puts it, five hours before or after the fact — shows how far the president and his supporters have come unmoored from the basis of his presidency, which Welch describes as rolling back the Bush-Cheney expansion of executive power. He calls it egregious and notes that supporters including Jeffrey Toobin in The New Yorker say it is illegal but shrug at it Matt Zwolinski on Bleeding Heart Libertarianism (2014). The excerpt ends mid-sentence with Zadek saying “Here we have a president.”
Education and families leaving government-run schools
The 2021 episode, “Parents Voting With Their Kids’ Feet,” returns Welch to the show to discuss education. Zadek frames the pandemic as a stress test that has led people to question assumptions about how education is provided, asking who gets to decide, where the money goes, and what the roles of parents, unions, government and the CDC are Parents Voting With Their Kids’ Feet (2021). He notes that Welch is a customer of government-run schools living under the control of the New York City school system, and cites a Welch article in Reason headlined “Families are fleeing government-run schools.” Welch’s own remarks in the excerpt are limited to thanking Zadek for the description of Reason and saying he has been happy to work there for most of the last 20 years.