“Jeff” is a name that appears in several episodes of The Bob Zadek Show in different guises: as Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the target of criticism in a drug-war episode; as Jeffrey Tucker, a guest on coronavirus and quarantine powers; and as Jeff Singer, a surgeon introduced as a Cato Institute senior fellow. The excerpts do not present these men as a single topic. They are linked only by the host’s habit of addressing guests by a short form of their first name and by the show’s recurring concern with the scope of government power.
Jeff Sessions and the drug war
In the July 2017 episode, Bob Zadek frames the hour around Sessions, describing him as a self-described drug warrior who had complained in a recent op-ed piece that being soft on drug sentencing means more violent crime, and who had taken an oath to vigorously enforce the drug laws Miron vs. Sessions on the Drug War (2017). Zadek calls the War on Drugs flawed from its inception and says that declaring war on a concept, a “war on a noun,” is doomed to fail. He credits Sessions’ appointment under President Trump with reviving enforcement after a period in which the War on Drugs seemed to have calmed down.
The guest, Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron, is introduced as a senior lecturer and director of undergraduate studies in the Department of Economics at Harvard, a senior fellow at Cato, and the author of Drug War Crimes: The Consequences of Prohibition and Libertarianism from A to Z. Asked whether Sessions is right that drugs beget violence, Miron says he has it almost precisely backwards: it is rare that consumption of drugs induces violence, and the correct connection is that drug prohibition induces violence Miron vs. Sessions on the Drug War (2017). His mechanism is that banning a good does not eliminate supply and demand but drives the market underground, where disputes over contracts and territory cannot be resolved with courts and lawyers, so the obvious substitute is violence. He illustrates with an employer in the drug trade who wants sellers to believe that stealing the merchandise will bring reprisals, and with fights over drug territories.
Zadek restates the point in his own voice, saying the commerce in drugs is forced underground and therefore lacks the civilized system for resolving disputes, leaving only violence and guns. He also invokes Reefer Madness as part of an American mythology assuming that drug users per se commit violence. He then characterizes Sessions’ position as enforcing the drug laws because they are laws, without discussion of whether more vigorous enforcement or the laws themselves make sense. The excerpt breaks off mid-sentence as Zadek asks Miron whether that is not—
Jeffrey Tucker on coronavirus and quarantine
The February 2020 episode turns on a different Jeff. Zadek speaks with Jeffrey Tucker about an article Tucker wrote, titled in the introduction “Must Government Save Us from the Coronavirus?” Big government can’t save us from coronavirus (2020). Zadek draws a parallel to 9/11, recalling that draconian federal statutes were passed within minutes without examination, and that the public, Congress and the press offered no opposition. Tucker agrees that the plans were laid out years earlier and calls 9/11 the catalyst.
Tucker argues that fears of disease have been exaggerated in every modern panic, citing swine flu in the late 1970s, when in his account the only people who really had fatal swine flu were those who got the vaccination. He notes that the flu kills 50,000 people in the United States every year, and says a person coming from China to the US has a 10,000% greater chance of contracting the flu, even fatally, than an American traveling in China has of contracting the coronavirus Big government can’t save us from coronavirus (2020). He describes the quarantine of 400 Americans aboard the Diamond Princess, who were held for two weeks with sick people and then told they would be sent to Tokyo for two more weeks of quarantine, and he calls the tests ridiculous.
On the fatality rate, Tucker cites a health economist, George Dehner of the University of Michigan, who says the incubation period is about five days based on data from other coronaviruses and that the fatality rate is calculated by dividing known deaths by known cases. Tucker reports a rate of about 3%, roughly like the 1918 flu pandemic, but says that if there were 100,000 mild infections unknown to authorities, the rate would fall to about 0.02%, identical to seasonal flu deaths. He warns that quarantine powers are easy to abuse, invoking the Nazi ghettos and the internment of Japanese Americans, and describes a handheld thermometer used in China as pseudo-science. Zadek compares it to the TSA, calling it health theater and citing a 95% failure rate at TSA.
Tucker also says the Centers for Disease Control has plans for quarantining any element of the US population that the president wants, that those quarantined would have no lawyers and no recourse, and that resisting can be punished by being shot on the spot, while a successful escape carries a $1,000 fine. The excerpt ends as he is saying, “So if it’s up to”—
Jeff Singer and executive decision-making
The June 2020 episode introduces Jeff Singer, described by Zadek as a practicing general surgeon in Phoenix, Arizona, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute studying health policy studies among other matters, and a frequent guest whose information is database-driven and not motivated by anything other than the truth Here comes “the spike…” (2020). Singer thanks Zadek for the introduction and wishes him a happy Father’s Day.
Zadek then lays out a framework of executive decision-making, comparing the responsibilities of a family member, a small-business owner, a big-business owner and a mayor, all of whom must seek professional opinions, sort them out and decide. He says the executive branch at city, state and federal level was required to process information about the virus and make decisions affecting large numbers of people, and that the legislative branch basically ceded all power to the executive. He asks Singer to critique what the executive branch did right and wrong. The excerpt ends before Singer’s answer begins.
Across episodes
The three episodes do not argue a common question about anyone named Jeff. The 2017 episode uses Jeff Sessions as the named target of a critique advanced by Jeffrey Miron; the 2020 coronavirus episode features Jeffrey Tucker advancing his own critique of quarantine powers; and the June 2020 episode introduces Jeff Singer and poses a question he does not answer in the excerpt. The excerpts show no development of a single argument across the three, only the recurrence of the host’s concern with government power.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state Sessions’ title beyond Zadek’s reference to him as attorney general, nor the name of any bill or statute enacted after 9/11, nor what any case held or which amendment it turned on. They do not give the founding date of the Cato Institute or of any principle attributed to it, nor Singer’s response to Zadek’s question. Tucker’s sentence about what happens “if it’s up to” is cut off, and Zadek’s question to Miron about Sessions’ reasoning breaks off mid-sentence; neither is completed here.