A Nauseating Example of Cronyism, Sleaze, and Corruption at the Export-Import Bank

One of my first posts on this blog featured this video showing how big government breeds corruption. I’ve periodically provided examples of how this process works, citing Alaska, Chicago, Wall Street, and Washington. Here’s another example, explicitly showing how big business and big government get in bed together to rape and pillage taxpayers. The sleazy [...]

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More Chicago-Style Corrupt Crony Capitalism

I’ve already commented on some of the sleazy behavior that infects Chicago politics. Now we have a jaw-dropping example of what’s wrong with the state of Illinois, as explained by Bill McGurn of the Wall Street Journal. Soon the Illinois state legislature will meet in special session to consider the Chicago machine’s latest favor: legislation [...]

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Shame on Pizza Hut, KFC, and Taco Bell for Trying to Mooch off the Food Stamp Program

Welcome Instapundit readers. In response to some emails and comments, allow me to add two points. First, creating more beneficiaries (even if the budget doesn’t immediately increase) will increase the number of entities that have an incentive to lobby to preserve the program and/or make it bigger. Second, this development is part of the effort [...]

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Obama’s Crony Capitalism Means the Poor Subsidize the Rich

I’ve always rejected coercive redistribution, particularly when imposed by the federal government. But some types of redistribution are worse than others, and when big business and big government get in bed together, ordinary people are the ones who get screwed. This is why Obama’s supposed “move to the center” is a bunch of nonsense. Tim [...]

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With Ethanol Handouts Up for Renewal, Will the GOP Side with Corrupt Lobbyists or Free Markets?

Tim Carney of the Washington Examiner has a great piece looking at the utterly indefensible panoply of ethanol subsidies and handouts that screw consumers and taxpayers in order to line the pockets of the politically powerful. Unfortunately, several senior GOP lawmakers have unseemly ties to the lobbyists for the industry. So this is a test, but [...]

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Are These Stories Examples of Washington Corruption? Well, if It Walks Like a Duck and Talks Like a Duck…

The “appearance of impropriety” is often considered the Washington standard for corruption and misbehavior. With that in mind, alarm bells began ringing in my head when I read this Washington Times report about Jacob Lew, Obama’s nominee to head the Office of Management and Budget. Why did Citigroup decide to hire a career DC political [...]

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The Sleazy Combination of Big Business and Big Government

There’s an article today in the Wall Street Journal showing how already-established companies and their union allies will use the coercive power of government to thwart competition. The article specifically discusses efforts by less competitive supermarkets to block new Wal-Mart stores. Not that Wal-Mart can complain too vociferously. After all, this is the company that [...]

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Taxpayers vs. Bureaucrats, Part XXVII

Another local government in California is contemplating bankruptcy. That’s hardly big news, though, since many California jurisdictions have been bled dry by greedy public sector unions and the city of Vallejo already has thrown in the towel. What is amazing, though, is that the government unions are trying to get the state to pass a [...]

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Sleazy and Dishonest Ad from General Motors Shows Why Big Government and Big Business Is a Toxic Combination

It is now fully apparent that General Motors did not pay back any money to taxpayers, and certainly did not pay back the full amount, as stated in the reprehensibly dishonest ads produced by the company. The Obama Administration took part in the lie, which exposes an additional reason why it was a terrible idea [...]

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Government Corruption Watch, Part II

Sleazy political behavior does not necessarily require a bag of money being handed to a politician in a deserted parking garage. Sometimes it is blatantly visible. A good example is the European version of “cap-and-trade” climate legislation. While the legislation produced lots of criminal activity, it also enabled big European companies to game the system, [...]

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Big Business and Big Government in Bed Together: The Example of Corrupt Pharmaceutical Companies

This column by Tim Carney in the Washington Examiner should make every honest person nauseous. It explains how the big pharmaceutical companies are Obama’s biggest allies. This is well know inside the beltway, but average Americans don’t understand that Obamacare is largely a giveaway to powerful interest groups. Two observations are worth making. First, the [...]

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Obama’s Big Tax Hike on U.S. Multinationals Means Fewer American Jobs and Reduced Competitiveness

The new budget from the White House contains all sorts of land mines for taxpayers, which is not surprising considering the President wants to extract at least another $1.3 trillion over the next ten years. While that’s a discouragingly big number, the details are even more frightening. Higher tax rates on investors and entrepreneurs will [...]

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H&R Block and the IRS: An Unholy Alliance to Ransack Taxpayers

The late George Stigler, winner of the Nobel Prize in economics, is famous in part because of his work on “regulatory capture,” which occurs when interest groups use the coercive power of government to thwart competition and undeservedly line their own pockets. A perfect (and distasteful) example of this can be found in today’s Washington [...]

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Washington vs. America

One of the dirty little secrets of Washington is that Republicans and Democrats have more in common with each other than either party has with ordinary Americans. Tim Carney has an excellent (but depressing) column in the Washington Examiner exposing how both Democrat and Republican lobbyists are raking in big buck from General Motors, even [...]

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University of Michigan Study Confirms Link Between Financial Bailout and Corruption

Since Senators engaged in open extortion and bribery to enact Reid’s government-run healthcare plan, it is hardly newsworthy that Washington is riddled with Corruption. But the magnitude of sleaze is probably far greater than most people realize. There is a new study from a couple of academics at the University of Michigan, who found significant [...]

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Was I Right Six Months Ago?

Even though the politicians in Washington have already flushed $887 billion down a rathole, Obama and the Democrats talking about another “stimulus.” I didn’t bother to post this CNBC clip six months ago, but it is completely appropriate given the current debate. Some of the points may sound familiar to those who watched my recent video. [...]

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General Electric: A Morally Corrupt Company

There are many reasons to dislike the statist economic policies emanating from Washington, and high on the list is the way big government lures companies into mooching off taxpayers rather than earning money honestly. If CEOs at least had the dignity to be embarrassed about their plunder, that would provide a bit of solace, but [...]

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Finally, a CEO to Admire

Kudos to David Farr, CEO of Emerson Electric. Speaking recently at a conference, Farr actually told the truth about how big government is crippling American manufacturing. In response, an Obama bureaucrat at the Commerce Department actually had the chutzpah to claim that the White House is trying to help companies by (this is not a [...]

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Will Big Business Screw America on Health Care?

That’s the question posed by the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, which discusses how companies often get seduced into supporting big government – or, in some cases, are active proponents of bigger government since they’ve learned how to milk the system. In the long run, of course, statism saps an economy’s vitality, which is bad [...]

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