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Speaker 1: Hanging out. Want to ask Tim the lawyer is uh,

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Speaker 1: he tweets a lot? How does he? How does he

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Speaker 1: keep up on all this? Or? I find all the

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Speaker 1: stuff on Twitter? So how much time does it take

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Speaker 1: to peruse the Twitter? And I want to be one

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Speaker 1: of those people, but I just I just can't seem

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Speaker 1: to fit into my life. Well, this job is a

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Speaker 1: bit of a time suck too, but I'd imagine Tim's

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Speaker 1: is as well. Tim sander Firs, the Vice President for

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Speaker 1: Litigation for the Goldwater Institute, is the author of a

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Speaker 1: number of fine, fine books, including The Ascent to Jacob Bronowski,

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Speaker 1: Frederick Douglass, Self Made Man, which should be read by

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Speaker 1: every man, woman and child in America, and a bunch

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Speaker 1: of books about liberty, particularly economic liberty. Um, you ought

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Speaker 1: to look it up and read to or three of them. Uh,

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Speaker 1: Tim Sanderford joins us, Tim, how are you, sir? I'm great.

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Speaker 1: Thanks for having me back. It's been a while. I

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Speaker 1: can I ask one just general question that we'll get

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Speaker 1: into some of the nitty gritty. Uh, Supreme Court just

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Speaker 1: wrapped up their year. Are more or less happy with

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Speaker 1: the direction at the Supreme Court's going? Are more or

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Speaker 1: less not happy. I'm more or less happy. But you know,

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Speaker 1: the big story to me that is that is not

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Speaker 1: covered enough. Is how frustrating it is that the Supreme

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Speaker 1: Court hears fewer and fewer cases every year. It's as

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Speaker 1: if they're trying to put themselves out of business, and

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Speaker 1: they'll they'll take these cases that on a highly technical

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Speaker 1: legal issues that maybe a few people care about, and

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Speaker 1: then totally ignore major legal controversies that have to be resolved.

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Speaker 1: And of course when they don't take the case, that

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Speaker 1: just means that the lower courts get to be the

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Speaker 1: final say, and that just increases the confusion. It's very

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Speaker 1: frustrating how few cases they take. You have a couple

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Speaker 1: of examples of lower cases you think they should have

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Speaker 1: taken up big, big issues. Well, Justice Thomas has actually

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Speaker 1: been writing some decisions saying, hey, we should take these

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Speaker 1: cases cases about whether, for instance, it's legal. What the

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Speaker 1: status is a federal regulation of marijuana now that it

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Speaker 1: is is legal in more states than not, and yet

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Speaker 1: the federal law hasn't changed. Does that mean that it

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Speaker 1: violates due process to arrest somebody on federal charges in

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Speaker 1: a state where it's legal. Things like that, and the

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Speaker 1: court just shrugs and moves on. I know Justice Roberts.

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Speaker 1: Chief Justice Roberts is concerned with the court's image and

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Speaker 1: and that it not be seen as political. The rest

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Speaker 1: of it is he just overcautious. Is he leading to

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Speaker 1: court in a hypercautious direction in terms of the cases

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Speaker 1: they take on. I think that is part of it.

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Speaker 1: It's a kind of a politics, but it's not the

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Speaker 1: kind of politics were accustomed to. It's judicial politics. And

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Speaker 1: what's frustrating about that is that it tends to come

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Speaker 1: out as very arbitrary and it tends to increase the

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Speaker 1: power of judges. My favorite example of this is a

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Speaker 1: case several years ago called Bond versus the United States,

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Speaker 1: where there was a chemical weapons treaty that prohibited any

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Speaker 1: kind of poisonous substance and this woman tried to poison

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Speaker 1: her husband's girlfriend with a poisonous substance. Was brought up

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Speaker 1: on charges under of all things, the chemical weapons treaty,

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Speaker 1: which is crazy, but that is what the law said.

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Speaker 1: And what Justice Roberts did was he said, well, that's

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Speaker 1: not what they really meant by chemical poisons. What they

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Speaker 1: really it was stuff like mustard gas. Well, okay, maybe,

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Speaker 1: but that's not what they said in the law. So

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Speaker 1: what he's doing is essentially rewriting the law to suit

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Speaker 1: what he thinks would have been a more reasonable law,

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Speaker 1: except that's not what was actually enacted. That's very frustrating. Yeah, interesting,

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Speaker 1: interesting indeed. So I know, and I absolutely want to

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Speaker 1: get to the so called anti trust stuff that the

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Speaker 1: administration put out the other day. I saw you had

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Speaker 1: some really strong tweets on it, but I know you've

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Speaker 1: got a couple of victories recently and a couple of

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Speaker 1: different circuit courts. Right, what was that that all about?

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Speaker 1: That's right, we had three big wins in this issue

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Speaker 1: that we at the Goldwater Institute of and litigating about

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Speaker 1: state laws that forced lawyers to join bar associations to

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Speaker 1: practice law. Now, the bar association is not the same

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Speaker 1: thing as the bar exam. Everybody has to take the

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Speaker 1: bar exam. But once you pass that, then I am

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Speaker 1: forced in some states, including Arizona, I'm forced to join

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Speaker 1: this organization, which is really just a trade association, and

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Speaker 1: to pay them three four five hundred dollars a year,

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Speaker 1: which they then go and spend on lobbying the government

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Speaker 1: and publishing editorials that take a political position that I

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Speaker 1: myself might disagree with. And this happens in states across

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Speaker 1: the country, and the Supreme Court has said you can't

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Speaker 1: do that when it comes to labor unions. You can't

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Speaker 1: force somebody to join a union and then force them

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Speaker 1: to pay for the lobbying that that union does. And

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Speaker 1: yet it's okay for lawyers. So we've taken this issue

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Speaker 1: on and we want a series of cases, most recently

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Speaker 1: in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals where the court said, yes,

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Speaker 1: you cannot. It is unconstitutional to force this on lawyers.

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Speaker 1: And now when people hear about this, a lot of

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Speaker 1: times they're like, why why should I care about lawyers?

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Speaker 1: But state bars have a very powerful influence with state legislatures,

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Speaker 1: and a lot of legislatures they just assumed that the

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Speaker 1: state bars speaks for all lawyers and they defer to them,

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Speaker 1: and a lot of the time the state bar funds

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Speaker 1: political campaigns that are that are on the opposite side.

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Speaker 1: I did a case a few years ago where my

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Speaker 1: client was in favor of a ballot and he was

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Speaker 1: a lawyer. He's in favor of a ballot initiative. That

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Speaker 1: was like, it was like, no, fault um custody for

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Speaker 1: children in the case of divorce right, so that there's

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Speaker 1: no presumption for one or side at one parent or

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Speaker 1: the other. And it turned out that his mandatory bar

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Speaker 1: dues were funding the no campaign even though he was

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Speaker 1: in favor of it. In fact, the bar was the

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Speaker 1: was the largest contributor to the no campaign, So he's

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Speaker 1: being forced to fund his own opposition. Does the state

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Speaker 1: bar head tend to have a consistent ish political view. Oh,

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Speaker 1: they tend to be on the far left in most

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Speaker 1: states most of the time, taking positions on you know,

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Speaker 1: against in Louisiana for instance. In another case we did

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Speaker 1: in Louisiana, the state bar spent money to oppose free

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Speaker 1: enterprise education in the schools because I guess we can't

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Speaker 1: teach kids about free interpret Wow. Wow wow. You've mentioned

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Speaker 1: before that the law schools of America way left these days.

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Speaker 1: What happened? Do you suppose you know, people who are

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Speaker 1: not lawyers have no idea how bad the situation is.

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Speaker 1: The the bar is overwhelmingly left, and not just left,

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Speaker 1: but like very far ultra left, and I think a

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Speaker 1: large part of it is romanticism from the sixties. A

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Speaker 1: lot of the legal community still has this idea about

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Speaker 1: the civil rights days and they think that they're crusading

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Speaker 1: pioneers for freedom, and you know those are that is

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Speaker 1: a glorious history. Unfortunately today, that's not what they're advocating today.

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Speaker 1: With they're advocating is taking more of your earnings away

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Speaker 1: and giving it to other people, Opposing rational sentencing policies,

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Speaker 1: opposing restrictions on government's power to take away your private property,

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Speaker 1: things like that. It's a it's really unfortunate situation. Hey,

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Speaker 1: I have one more question and then maybe next segment

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Speaker 1: we can get to the whole so called antitrust stuff.

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Speaker 1: But uh, and this is this is kind of like

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Speaker 1: the opposite of the Supreme Court. This is dumb guy court.

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Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm gonna set up the case dumbly and

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Speaker 1: then we're gonna have to be dumb down the answer. Probably.

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Speaker 1: But it's it's a First Amendment thing. Um. It's it's

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Speaker 1: the big tech uh, censoring of so called misinformation, etcetera.

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Speaker 1: Deep platforming people, banning people. And the question is if

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Speaker 1: Facebook says we just ban you if you violate the

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Speaker 1: government's regulations on what is COVID misinformation, and we are

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Speaker 1: actively consulting with the government on what should be banned,

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Speaker 1: and the government has regulatory power over us and regularly

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Speaker 1: threatens our business model. Does that bother you, tim as

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Speaker 1: a libertarian. Well, I'll whip out the classic lawyer answer

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Speaker 1: and say it depends. It depends on how much government

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Speaker 1: influence you're talking about. If it's a situation where Facebook

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Speaker 1: is basically having its arm twisted by the government in

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Speaker 1: order to silence, yeah, of course that raises a serious

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Speaker 1: constitutional problem. Government can't just come in and and basically

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Speaker 1: take over a newspaper and tell them what kind of

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Speaker 1: articles they can and cannot run. But that's not been

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Speaker 1: what we normally see. What we normally see situations where

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Speaker 1: the business is authentically independently saying we're not going to

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Speaker 1: run this kind of article or that kind of article,

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Speaker 1: and maybe the government encourages them one way or the other,

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Speaker 1: and that doesn't raise a First Amendment violation. Well, in

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Speaker 1: this case, the people from Facebook said they are in

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Speaker 1: uh in in constant consultation with the government agencies about

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Speaker 1: what should be allowed and what shouldn't be that that

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Speaker 1: seems to me just farming out First Amendment violations. Once

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Speaker 1: removed Yeah, I mean it depends on what exactly they're

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Speaker 1: meaning by consultation. If it's just consultation, that would be

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Speaker 1: one thing. Or but if they're using that as a

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Speaker 1: euphemism for obeying government's mandates, then that would be a

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Speaker 1: serious problem I'm thinking about. So you mentioned law schools

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Speaker 1: have gone way left, and um, you know, there's all

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Speaker 1: kinds of examples out there. Facebook is like, what is

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Speaker 1: that law or theorem or axiom or whatever is that

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Speaker 1: everything ends up liberal over time? Yeah, right, there is. Oh,

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Speaker 1: I can't remember the name of it now, but I

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Speaker 1: look it up. But there's there's a rule that says

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Speaker 1: that any organization that is not expressly conservative will become

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Speaker 1: liberal over time. And and my experience is that that

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Speaker 1: is absolutely true. It definitely seems to be the case,

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Speaker 1: doesn't Well. I think it's because liberals tend to be

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Speaker 1: much more committed to their ideological vision, whereas conservatives tend

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Speaker 1: to want to let people live their own line. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: if you're if you're, if your ideology is I want

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Speaker 1: to be completely left alone to do what I want,

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Speaker 1: and I want to want to leave you other people alone.

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Speaker 1: Of course you're not quite as into trying to change things.

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Speaker 1: So our beloved ancient President unleashed a gigantic, sprawling executive

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Speaker 1: order on Friday. It contains seventy two separate initiatives, each

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Speaker 1: of which contains several sub initiatives allegedly challenging the face

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Speaker 1: of competition in America or something or other. What is it?

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Speaker 1: What do you make of it? Oh? Yeah, well, a

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Speaker 1: lot of it is is like with the most executive orders,

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Speaker 1: it's lots of fireworks with not much fire. So most

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Speaker 1: of it is stuff that either is just you know,

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Speaker 1: we encourage agencies to do the following that sort of thing,

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Speaker 1: or it's stuff that actually they can't do to begin with.

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Speaker 1: And it you're right. It concludes seventy two different sections.

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Speaker 1: It's very long and complicated, and it includes some really

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Speaker 1: good stuff. Let's start out with the good stuff. It's

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Speaker 1: it includes some things that reduce anti free market things

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Speaker 1: that the federal government does. For instance, it says the

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Speaker 1: FDA has to allow more drug imports from Canada that

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Speaker 1: currently are not allowed by government restriction. It requires the

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Speaker 1: Department of Health and Services to allow the sale of

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Speaker 1: hearing aids over the counter instead of through the complicated

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Speaker 1: process that regulations currently require. Those sorts of things are

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Speaker 1: good and actually, Joe, I know you'll particular like this.

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Speaker 1: It tells the FTC to take action against unnecessary occupational

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Speaker 1: licensing laws. Right, These are laws that say, if you

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Speaker 1: want to braid somebody's hair, you have to get a

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Speaker 1: barber license and things like that. So it those things

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Speaker 1: are really good. Reducing government's restrictions on free competition is

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Speaker 1: always a good thing. Now here's the problem. The FTC

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Speaker 1: doesn't really have any power over occupation of licensing. I mean,

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Speaker 1: that's mostly done by state law, and the FTC can't

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Speaker 1: come in and there and tell states what to do.

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Speaker 1: It can sue states, but most of the time the

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Speaker 1: law allows states to do this, so the FTC couldn't

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Speaker 1: really even sue them in most cases. So a lot

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Speaker 1: of that is, you know, it sends a nice message,

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Speaker 1: but it doesn't really do anything. So my sink is

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Speaker 1: clogged and I ordered my dog to do something about it. Well, right,

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Speaker 1: it's that sort of thing, yeah, now, And and it

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Speaker 1: also includes some bad things. And the bad things are

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Speaker 1: um really sort of doubling down on the problems of

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Speaker 1: all antitrust law. The problem with antitrust law is that

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Speaker 1: it takes what is a good idea, which is that

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Speaker 1: that there should be a free market with lots of competition,

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Speaker 1: and then it turns it turns it completely upside down

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Speaker 1: and says government should be in charge of deciding what

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Speaker 1: kind of competition occurs, when, where and how. And of

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Speaker 1: course that's the opposite of competition, to have the government

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Speaker 1: in charge of deciding what kind of competition is allowed,

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Speaker 1: and so the way. For example, this order says that

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Speaker 1: the FTC should promulgate rules that restrict unfair competition. Well,

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Speaker 1: what is unfair competition? It's whatever a politician says it is.

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Speaker 1: If I'm selling less than the guy next door, he

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Speaker 1: thinks that's unfair, so he's going to run off to

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Speaker 1: the politician to complain about it. Right. The order tells

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Speaker 1: the FTC to to engage in greater scrutiny of mergers

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Speaker 1: between the multiple companies. Well, companies merge when it's in there,

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Speaker 1: when it's profitable to do so. Why is it profitable

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Speaker 1: to do so? These consumers willingly buy the goods and

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Speaker 1: services that these companies provide. And if a company gets

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Speaker 1: big and powerful because it's providing me with goods and

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Speaker 1: services that I want at prices I'm willing to pay.

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Speaker 1: That's a good thing. They shouldn't be punished for it.

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Speaker 1: The idea that government should go in there and punish

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Speaker 1: big companies for being big means punishing success, and that's

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Speaker 1: a large part of what the Biden administration's antitrust policy

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Speaker 1: is about. So you're all about freedom and that sort

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Speaker 1: of stuff. Now that we're almost able to say we're

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Speaker 1: on the other side of this freaking pandemic. Were you

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Speaker 1: as shocked as us and how much freedom was taken away?

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Speaker 1: And how easily people uh just said okay to it,

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Speaker 1: whether it was schools or businesses or churches or whatever.

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Speaker 1: I was shocked. I never thought that could happen, And

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Speaker 1: how willingly people were to go along with Well, you know,

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Speaker 1: part of it is this was a complicated problem for

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Speaker 1: those of us who believe in freedom, because we agree

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Speaker 1: that government has some role to play in protecting people

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Speaker 1: from disasters of this kind. And so it's not the

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Speaker 1: sort of thing like you often hear, where the government's

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Speaker 1: doing something that it should absolutely never do at all.

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Speaker 1: This was a thing where there were some things that

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Speaker 1: were okay and some things that were and that made

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Speaker 1: it harder to draw lines. But I think the real

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Speaker 1: answer to your question why did people go along with

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Speaker 1: it is because they have been trained for a century

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Speaker 1: now in the States to look to government to be

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Speaker 1: their nurturer and their protector and their supplier and their provider.

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Speaker 1: That it's there's this psychology that has developed around the

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Speaker 1: regulatory welfare state that says government is here to protect me,

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Speaker 1: and that's what government exists to do. Now you're, yeah, exactly,

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Speaker 1: that's what scared me. For instance, you know, they had

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Speaker 1: the dust up in l A County where they're making

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Speaker 1: you they said no outdoor dining and and and somebody said, hey,

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Speaker 1: so show us any proof that we can't eat outdoors.

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Speaker 1: What you've got to back that up? People just people

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Speaker 1: just took, you know, the local county health commissioner's word

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Speaker 1: for these things and then did things like build a

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Speaker 1: tent outside that then they closed all the sides of it,

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Speaker 1: which means it's not even really an outdoor. What's the difference?

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Speaker 1: You know, A lot of it was really insane, and

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Speaker 1: I think a large part of it is because we

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Speaker 1: have really, especially in California, I think, drilled into people

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Speaker 1: this idea that government is is your your protector and

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Speaker 1: your provider, and that's it's it's deprived people of the

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Speaker 1: imagination to bl wow them to understand what liberty is. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's what That's what troubles me the most is we

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Speaker 1: were so trained for so long that people just said,

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Speaker 1: I guess the school should be closed, even though I

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Speaker 1: haven't heard any good reason for it. Maybe that would

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Speaker 1: they say, well, how if government didn't do it, who

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Speaker 1: would And it's they're incapable of thinking, well, maybe private

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Speaker 1: industry could come up with a better solution to these problems. Well,

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Speaker 1: that's it reminds me of back in when the illegal

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Speaker 1: immigration was in the even hotter topic and people said

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Speaker 1: who was going to pick the lettuce? And our answer was,

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Speaker 1: all ways, somebody or nobody or a machine, let's find

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Speaker 1: out anyway, Perhaps now is a good time to I'm sorry, Tim,

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Speaker 1: We're we're like completely out of time. Um No, that's okay.

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Speaker 1: Maybe now's a good time to plug the Permission Society.

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Speaker 1: Tim's book that was inspired by conversations on this show.

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Speaker 1: It's very good and it's all about liberty and how

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Speaker 1: we've kind of lost our sense of it. Tim Sander

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Speaker 1: for the Goldwater Foundation. Thanks a million, Tim, Thank you guys.

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Speaker 1: You still have your beard, uh going on ten years now,

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Speaker 1: ten years you've had your bed. That's a good old beer,

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Speaker 1: Armstrong and Getty