{"id":3794,"date":"2018-01-15T12:11:23","date_gmt":"2018-01-15T17:11:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/?p=3794"},"modified":"2018-01-15T12:11:23","modified_gmt":"2018-01-15T17:11:23","slug":"cronyism-charges-jump-the-shark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/cronyism-charges-jump-the-shark\/","title":{"rendered":"Cronyism charges jump the shark"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

This is cronyism. The Tweed-Tammany ring by Thomas Nast (1871). Source: Museum of the City of New York<\/a>.<\/p><\/div>\n

If I had a dollar for every time the words \u201ccrony\u201d and \u201ccronyism\u201d appear in print these days, well, I\u2019d be flush. When I plugged those terms into Nexis, the database warned me it would take a while to tally the thousands of media stories from the past few years containing either expression.<\/p>\n

As an epithet in political discourse, \u201ccronyism\u201d has skyrocketed in use over the past two decades. Occupy Wall Street lefties and Tea Party righties alike love the term. Just last week, The Hill carried an opinion piece\u00a0decrying cronyism<\/a>\u00a0at the stodgy Postal Service, of all things.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the more often the term is used, the more often it is misused. The term \u201ccrony\u201d may have sprung from the ancient Greek word\u00a0khronios<\/em>, which roughly translates to \u2018long-lasting.\u2019 This would make sense, since the charge of cronyism denotes the dispensing of favors (jobs, contracts, etc.) to one\u2019s longtime associates (family and friends). Cronyism carries with it the connotation that those on the receiving end of the charge are incompetent and reaping favors in exchange for kick-backs (e.g., campaign donations) to their government benefactors….(Read more<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If I had a dollar for every time the words \u201ccrony\u201d and \u201ccronyism\u201d appear in print these days, well, I\u2019d be flush. When I plugged those terms into Nexis, the database warned me it would take a while to tally the thousands of media stories from the past few years containing either expression. As an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[161],"tags":[174],"class_list":["post-3794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-postal-service","tag-the-washington-examiner"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pBCzY-Zc","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3794"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3794\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3796,"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3794\/revisions\/3796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}