Friends, Cronies, Countrymen: Lend me your ears

Cronyism isn’t always vanilla-flavored, business-on-business crime — sometimes it’s chocolate, strawberry, or even rocky-road flavored. The flavor of cronyism that I detest the most – even more than praline ice cream — is when a business or industry decides that they need the government to step in to give them legitimacy when the market hasn’t. It is kind of like a celebrity endorsement, except this one comes at the expense of users, clients, taxpayers and legitimate competitors.