Someone asked to make a list of lobbyists with the worst reputations on Capitol Hill probably wouldn’t add “the catfish lobby” in a million years. In fact, “the catfish lobby” sounds much more like the entrance to an exhibit at…
Commodity programs are cronyism run amok. Government subsidies (paid for by your tax dollars, of course) protect farmers from reduced crop yield and changing market conditions, at a rate of $2.20 for every dollar they pay in. And that’s not all…
A few weeks ago, we looked into the state of commodity programs from the perspective of farmers. We found that farmers tend to make a great deal of money off these “insurance” programs, as they are designed to function more…
Coal and nuclear power plants have good friends in the Energy Department. And they’re hardly afraid to cash in on those friendships. FirstEnergy Solutions has asked the Energy Department to utilize emergency powers under Section 202(c) of the Federal Power…
This morning, President Trump announced that he was imposing tariffs on steel and aluminum. That in itself would be nothing new, but the targets of these tariffs were what made Trump’s announcement surprising. They were none other than Canada, Mexico,…
Bad news: there’s another national security crisis. And no, it has nothing to do with cancelling the Iran deal or the Singapore summit. It’s cars. We don’t make enough cars. Or something like that. At least, that’s the rationale the…
As the battle over the Farm Bill has raged in the background, we’ve been spending the last few weeks looking at the cronyism that is the country’s current agriculture program. We’ve looked at sugar cronyism benefiting a few large producers…
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…
There are very few winners in a trade war, but there are always clear losers. One of the clearest losers from the Trump-initiated “trade skirmish” (which threatens to escalate into a full-fledged trade war) has been American farmers. Unfortunately, these…