Reminds me of the race to get ownership of the public domain when the government was disposing of it in part by the Homestead System in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. One gambit was for a large land engrosser to hire ranch hands, drifters, drunks, and assorted village idiots to go into the Land Office and register a homestead claim for a particular parcel, on the understanding that rights would be surrendered later to the big fish, such as a timber company or a big rancher.
Think of the "stimulus" pot of money as the 21st century's public domain.
There was a story in my local newspaper yesterday about all the great things the earmarks will do for my region (NE Iowa, home to Charles "Suicide" Grassley). As one of the local recipient says, "In a word, I think it's great."
Reminds me of the race to get ownership of the public domain when the government was disposing of it in part by the Homestead System in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. One gambit was for a large land engrosser to hire ranch hands, drifters, drunks, and assorted village idiots to go into the Land Office and register a homestead claim for a particular parcel, on the understanding that rights would be surrendered later to the big fish, such as a timber company or a big rancher.
ReplyDeleteThink of the "stimulus" pot of money as the 21st century's public domain.
There was a story in my local newspaper yesterday about all the great things the earmarks will do for my region (NE Iowa, home to Charles "Suicide" Grassley). As one of the local recipient says, "In a word, I think it's great."
ReplyDeleteIf Nobel prize winners in economics don't get the broken-window fallacy, why should anyone else?
ReplyDelete