Welcome to Boondoggle by me, Pat Garofalo.
This is going to be a newsletter about, well, boondoggles. Specifically, it’ll be about how and why state and city governments give public money to projects that don’t boost economic growth or create jobs, but only line the pockets of the already well off and powerful — think Amazon getting huge tax breaks for HQ2, NFL teams receiving public money for their stadiums, and governments subsidizing everything from hotels to Hollywood productions to ridiculous sporting goods stores in pyramids.
I’ll break down how those deals happen, why they don’t work, and what you can do to stop your own local officials from engaging in pro-corporate chicanery. (And believe me, your government does. Corporate tax deals of the type I write about are everywhere.)
I recently published a whole book on this subject — called The Billionaire Boondoggle: How Out Politicians Let Corporations and Bigwigs Steal Our Money and Jobs — and this newsletter is meant to be a place for more reporting, opinionating, and updating on the topics therein, as well as some new ones. If you don’t have a copy of the book and you’d like to check it out, grab one at the link.
I’ll be putting out issues as events warrant. It will decidedly not be daily or even weekly — just whenever there is a boondoggle in process that isn’t getting enough attention.
Sign up now with the shiny green button below so you don’t miss the first issue. And tell other folks to sign up too!