Anecdotes of special interest at work?

Miscellaneous General
1

I’m thinking of things like this, where it’s mentioned that Sens. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, and John McCain, R-Ariz. have a bill before Congress that would require Federal Reserve banks to stop putting $1 bills into circulation in as little as four years. It just so happens that Harkin and McCain both represent states that are home to businesses that profit from the production of dollar coins.

And in this video here economist Bruce Benson mentions how I-90 (east-west highway) cuts north through Montana before continuing west…because Montana had some powerful Senators who got the interstate to be inefficiently directed through their state.

Obviously examples like this abound, and it struck me that I actually don’t know of any book that collects and recounts examples like this. I would think there has to be at least one, and it surprises me that I haven’t heard of one.

Does anyone know of any??

2

Tom DiLorenzo mentions a bunch of stuff here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gy_AV5xlt8k Iirc, he mentions a few books on the subject in his lecture, but I don’t remember what they were and don’t want to watch the whole thing again.

Tom Woods has an excellent discussion of the special interests behind military spending in Rollback (stuff like ‘historical costing’ to ensure that costs keep going up, manufacturing a plane or something in as many different important states and congressional districts as possible, etc).