Crony Capitalism in America

Big companies have always tried to curry favor with government, because their activities perforce are highly influenced by government behavior. Thus, it may seem priggish to think that big companies should be totally outside of politics, and simply react to the environment. Successful large companies may have to play the game, in the same way politicians have to mouth cliches, and promise generally unrealistic objectives.

Yet, I still find it highly disingenuous, hypocritical, and unhelpful to the general commonweal. Fine. They are still pandering pond scum. Not that nationalizing large private companies is better: I'd rather have a scheming FedEx lobbyist than a scheming US Postal Service exec driving policy. Our political process creates too much power in Washington, and everyone who focuses there is either is a sell-out or an empty suit. That this must be so given our political system, which has arisen somewhat endogenously and seems no more corrupt than other systems, is not a reason to like it. "Is" constrains "ought", it does not define it.

So, a reason to hate Vanguard, where a 'vanguard blogger' was defending the stimulus, and found to be a heavy Democratic supporter. That isn't the worst of it:

Vanguard PAC contributions I reviewed is how clear it is that the PAC money (unlike Mr. Utkus's) is not ideological, it's transactional. For example, the PAC gave $30,000 in this cycle to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and $30,000 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee — and it also gave $30,000 this cycle to the National Republican Congressional Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee.