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For those of us in sports who like to wallow in extended misery, this has been one terrific time. The Chicago Cubs hired a popular new manager, reminding us again, interminably, that they have now gone 106 years without winning the championship, eating up 51 managers in the process.

Meanwhile, Cleveland has welcomed LeBron James back to its Cavaliers, so Cleveland is giddy with the possibility of having just one of its woebegone teams win a championship for the first time since 1964.

Now that's a heady history of disaster for Cubbie lovers to compete against. On the other hand, whereas the Cleveland teams just lose conventionally, the Cubs have learned to be masters of distraction. First, they grew enchanting outfield ivy for fans to admire. Then, these lovers of Wrigley Field flora put up with the game as they anxiously waited for its famous seventh-inning stretch — when people other than players perform, although usually just as ineptly.

So, for us observers with no dog in this fight for ignominy, it's hard to decide whether Cubs fans or Cleveland fans deserve the most sympathy for their years of cheering on futility.

Click on the audio link above to hear Deford's take on the issue.

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A new analysis takes aim at one of political science's evergreen topics: What do donors get in exchange for their campaign contributions?

The answer, according to three researchers at Arizona State University's W.P. Casey School of Business, is that "investments in on-going access to policymakers are associated with future tax benefits."

In other words, when corporations deployed lobbyists and made contributions from their political action committees to tax-writing committees, they got tangible benefits.

"Overall, we saw that donating companies experienced lower and more consistent effective tax rates in the long run," said Casey School Assistant Professor Jennifer Brown in a written statement.

The study, which looks at the Senate Finance and House Ways and Means committees, calls lobbying and contributing complementary tactics — and the effects come over the long term. It says the political marketplace "is more subtle," not a "spot market" of contributions bringing immediate favors, which would be closer to a TV show or a prosecutable quid pro quo relationship.

Scholars have tackled this question repeatedly over the years, with increasing sophistication. Twenty years ago, political scientists found no connection between campaign contributions and floor votes – not much of a surprise, since lobbyists' greatest impact is likely to come when a bill is being drafted, not months later when it hits the House or Senate floor.

Academic findings are mixed on whether political contributions correlate with corporate performance. Lobbyists, lawmakers and others on the Hill generally say contributions buy access but not results.

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For three years, Erin Maynard ran a store called The Geeky Cauldron out of her home in Phoenix. On the online artisan marketplace Etsy, she sold jewelry inspired by themes from popular books, films and TV shows: think vampires and wizards. For the most part, it made her decent income, but month-to-month sales were a roller coaster: Some months, sales topped $5,000, while other months they barely cracked $1,000.

That is, until she got in on one of the hottest — but dullest-sounding — trends in retailing. It's the subscription business, in which companies bundle up boxes or groups of products and ship them off to loyal customers.

The concept isn't new, of course, but in the past couple of years, that home-delivery model has gotten hotter than ever, for products including picture books, handmade soap, dog treats and date-night tickets.

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And the money has followed: The success of companies like Birchbox and Dollar Shave Club has captivated venture capitalists, who've poured nearly $1 billion into subscription e-commerce in the past five years, according to CB Insights, and spawned hundreds of imitators. Amazon, Target and also Wal-Mart have gotten into the action, launching subscription services for groceries and cosmetics.

In the latest evolution of the trend, mom-and-pop shops are jumping in. Maynard launched a site called Fandom of the Month Club that each month sends subscribers two to four pieces of jewelry based on a theme. Among the items in her first box were a bow-and-arrow necklace and a bird bracelet, in a nod to Katniss Everdeen of The Hunger Games. Her subscription saw quick results after launching in early October: She reached her monthly target of sign-ups in just five days.

No wonder other businesses are following suit. Companies such as Umba and Fair Ivy sell subscription boxes with products sourced exclusively from artisans and small businesses. It's also catching on among other Etsy sellers: Some 80 sellers now offer subscriptions for their handmade and artisan products, Etsy confirms, and a search for "subscription box" on the site brings up more than 140 items.

And of course, the successful idea has spawned a slew of business-to-business sites, including Subbly and Cratejoy, that offer tools to make it easier for small retailers to set up subscription services of their own.

Maynard had been mulling over the idea of launching a monthly subscription when she came across a similar provider, Cratejoy, in a Google search. The company's service was still in private beta, and once she got access and created her Fandom of the Month Club, she didn't expect it to get much notice.

"I literally threw it up there, and I woke up and had 21 subscribers," she says. Maynard ended up creating a waiting list when her shop reached 120 subscribers, because that was the maximum number of orders her supplier could meet.

With subscriptions at $13 a month, Maynard's sales are pretty modest, though she says 30 percent of her customers already have dropped the dough for 3- or 12-month packages. But for her, the guaranteed sales are a game changer. The upfront revenue allowed Maynard and her husband to finalize plans to move from Phoenix back to her hometown of Omaha.

"It's paid entirely for my move," she says. "My whole life has changed in four weeks."

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Employees work fill, label and packaging each personalized box Aug. 12 inside the distribution room at Wantable in Milwaukee. Alyssa Pointer/MCT/Landov hide caption

itoggle caption Alyssa Pointer/MCT/Landov

Employees work fill, label and packaging each personalized box Aug. 12 inside the distribution room at Wantable in Milwaukee.

Alyssa Pointer/MCT/Landov

The guarantee of regular money, is just one of the boons subscription services offer small businesses. Because items are shipped only once a month, it's also easier for retailers to manage inventory.

"That's a huge, huge deal for merchants," says Amir Elaguizy, the CEO of Cratejoy. "It makes the business so much better run."

Cratejoy, which publicly launched in mid-October, has signed up some 3,300 retailers, most of them small to mid-sized. It offers three service plans, ranging from $0 to $299 a month, with transaction fees between 1.25 percent and 3.75 percent.

In fact, selling boxes full of quirky items may be a smart strategy, says John Warrillow, the founder of The Sellability Score and author of the forthcoming The Automatic Customer: Creating a Subscription Business in Any Industry.

"Retailers are getting killed by Amazon," he says. "The only way they can win is with a unique product."

Still, subscriptions aren't an automatic gold mine. Customers have almost too many choices these days, and even once they've fallen in love with the product, retailers have to stay on the ball to make sure their buyers don't get bored with the monthly shipments.

That may require regularly changing the product mix, says Warrillow. He notes that Dollar Shave Club, for instance, now sells other grooming products alongside its razors.

Also, because their inventory is limited, many subscription retailers don't allow exchanges or returns unless a product is defective or an order is incorrectly filled, which may be a turnoff for some customers.

Perhaps the biggest challenge is scaling up, especially for custom or handcrafted products — as Maynard can attest, small suppliers often have trouble filling bulk orders — and that limited capacity could put a ceiling on some businesses' growth.

Tim Ray, a co-founder of Toronto-based Carnivore Club, which sells a monthly subscription box for artisan-cured meat, says he expects his company's customer base to remain fairly small. He often scours the yellow pages for small-scale butchers to work with, and few can supply thousands of customers at a time. Carnivore Club has 2,000-odd customers right now, who each pay $50 to $55 a month, but Ray may establish a waiting list once membership hits 5,000 or 6,000.

"I think there's a natural cap on businesses like ours," he says. "It's not one you can grow indefinitely."

But for many small retailers, gaining steady sales is enough. Maynard is so pleased with her monthly-box experiment that she's decided to close her Etsy shop to focus on Fandom of the Month Club.

"Even if I don't get any more subscribers, it will pay a large portion of the bills," she says.

And that's enough for most mom-and-pops.

Do it or else. Increasingly, that's the message from employers who are offering financial incentives to workers who take part in wellness programs that include screenings for blood pressure, cholesterol and body mass index.

But the programs are under fire from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which filed suit against Honeywell International in October charging that the company's wellness program isn't voluntary and thus violates federal law.

It's the third lawsuit the EEOC has filed this year taking aim at wellness programs. The lawsuits highlight the lack of clarity in the standards these programs must meet in order to comply with both the Affordable Care Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Honeywell, based in Morristown, N.J., got a reprieve in November, when a federal district court judge declined to issue a temporary restraining order that would have prevented the company from proceeding with its wellness program incentives in 2015.

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But the issue is far from resolved. The EEOC is continuing its investigations, and business leaders are criticizing those actions. The Business Roundtable expressed "strong disappointment" in a letter to administration officials.

"The EEOC has chosen litigation over regulation," says J.D. Piro, a senior vice president at Aon Hewitt, who leads the benefits consultant's health law group.

In the Honeywell wellness program, employees and their spouses are asked to get blood drawn to test their cholesterol, glucose and nicotine use, and also have their body mass index and blood pressure measured. An employee who refuses is subject to a $500 surcharge on health insurance premiums and could lose up to $1,500 in Honeywell contributions to a health savings account. A worker and spouse are also each subject to a $1,000 tobacco surcharge if they refuse to do the screening. That means a couple could face a combined $4,000 in financial penalties.

"Under the [Americans with Disabilities Act], medical testing of this nature has to be voluntary," the EEOC said in a news release announcing its request for a restraining order. "The employer cannot require it or penalize employees who decide not to go through with it."

Honeywell sees the situation differently. "Wellness is a win-win," says Kevin Covert, vice president and deputy general counsel for human resources at Honeywell. In time, the company expects to see lower claims costs while workers avoid health problems.

Further, Covert says, it's easy for employees and their spouses to avoid the tobacco surcharge. Smokers can take a 15-minute online tobacco cessation course, while nonsmokers can simply call up the health plan and certify that they don't smoke.

Employers are watching the Honeywell case closely because many have similar incentive-based wellness plans, says Seth Perretta, a partner at Groom Law Group, a Washington, D.C., firm specializing in employee benefits.

Eighty-eight percent of employers with 500 workers or more offer some sort of wellness plan, according to a 2014 national survey by the benefits consultant Mercer. Of those, 42 percent offer employees incentives to undergo screening, and 23 percent tie incentives to actual results, such as reaching or making progress toward blood pressure or BMI targets.

The Affordable Care Act encourages employers to offer financial incentives to participate in wellness programs. It allows plans to incorporate wellness incentives — both penalties and rewards — of up to 30 percent of the cost of employee-only coverage, an increase over the previous limit of 20 percent. If the wellness activity aims to help someone quit smoking or cut back, the incentive can be up to 50 percent.

Under the Americans with Disabilities Act, employers aren't allowed to discriminate against workers based on health status. They can, however, ask workers for details about their health and conduct medical exams as part of a voluntary wellness program.

Employers, patient advocates and policy experts want the EEOC to spell out what "voluntary" means under the ADA and clarify the relationship between the two laws.

The EEOC is always reviewing its guidance, but there's no time frame for issuing new guidance, says spokesperson Kimberly Smith-Brown.

Despite employers' enthusiasm for wellness programs, "there's no good research that shows these programs actually improve health outcomes or lower employer costs," says JoAnn Volk, a senior research fellow at Georgetown University's Center on Health Insurance Reforms.

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