This is cronyism. The Tweed-Tammany ring by Thomas Nast (1871). Source: Museum of the City of New York.
If I had a dollar for every time the words “crony” and “cronyism” appear in print these days, well, I’d 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 epithet in political discourse, “cronyism” 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 decrying cronyism at the stodgy Postal Service, of all things.