The amount of cronyism and subsidies in the nation’s agricultural program is too much to cover in a single article. That’s why, as the debate over this year’s Farm Bill heats up, I’ve been covering one topic a week, from…
Defense contracting is hard to get right. Unelected government officials dealing out princely sums naturally creates an area of government that is ripe for cronyism and waste if not overseen properly. That’s why the Government Accountability Office has had Department…
D.C. appears set to shoot down—barely—a proposal to replace the tip credit for restaurant servers with a standard minimum wage. Tipped wages allow restaurants to factor in tipped wages towards a server’s minimum wage, allowing them to hire more workers….
Taco Bell has been rolling out the idea of the “Taco Bell Cantina” recently, offering the typical fare of the fast food restaurant but also local craft beer and frozen margaritas. But officials in Royal Oak, Michigan, have poured cold…
Remember “got milk?” That charming advertising campaign is one of the most famous of all time, not to mention having a laudable goal in advocating for children’s nutrition. On the other hand, it’s a product of a cronyist scheme to…
Thanks to the actions of the mayor of a tiny town in the Aleutian islands and a protectionist shipping law from the 1920s, American-built fishing trawler America’s Finest will not be hiring any American fishermen. Fishermen’s Finest, an American fishing…
D.C. has been something of a factory of bad ideas of late. Last week, it was the proposal to subject servers to conventional minimum wage laws, despite the fact that they make more when they can count tips towards the…
The American sugar program is a strong contender for the poster child for crony capitalism. And this year, it’s up for reauthorization. The sugar program in the United States is cronyistic in four main ways. First, the federal government sets…
By placing Initiative 77 on the ballot for this June, D.C. joins a growing movement aiming to eliminate the “tip credit” (the difference between the general minimum wage and the base wage that restaurant owners must pay their servers) and…
The worst trade myth in American politics is that trade deficits are an important indicator of economic strength. The latest report out of the Bureau of Economic Analysis reminds us that this is not remotely the case. The BEA’s latest…