War on terror putting loads of money in DC suburbanites' bank accounts

[BurtWorm]

Bushism has been very good to the inside-the-beltway crowd.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/29/AR2006082901543.html?nav=rss_politics

D.C. Suburbs Top List Of Richest Counties
Nationwide Data on Health Coverage Bleak

By Amy Goldstein and Dan Keating
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, August 30, 2006; Page A01

The three most prosperous large counties in the United States are in the Washington suburbs, according to census figures released yesterday, which show that the region has the second-highest income and the least poverty of any major metropolitan area in the country.

Rapidly growing Loudoun County has emerged as the wealthiest jurisdiction in the nation, with its households last year having a median income of more than $98,000. It is followed by Fairfax and Howard counties, with Montgomery County not far behind.

That accumulation of suburban wealth, local economists said, is a side effect of the enormous flow of federal money into the region through contracts for defense and homeland security work in the five years since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, coming after the local technology boom of the 1990s. "When you put that together . . . you have a recipe for heightened prosperity," said Anirban Basu, an economist at a Baltimore consulting firm.

The result is that the Washington area's households rank second in income only to those in San Jose, eclipsing such well-heeled places as San Francisco and the bedroom suburbs of New York.

The new portrait of Washington's affluence came into view at the same time that the U.S. Census Bureau released separate data providing a far more nuanced depiction of Americans' financial well-being. The new figures showed that a record number of Americans lack access to health insurance.

[SpiralHawk]

1. "All pigs are equal, but republicon pigs are more equal" - kommander AWOL

Oink Oink oink, all the way to the bank -- with Taxpayer Megabucks in our pockets from our WMD lies

[hootinholler]

2. Bad assumption....

It's not the WOT doing it. It would happen without the WOT, the money would be spent in other programs and these people, of which I am one but living a bit further out, would be working on other stuff. Look at Montgomery County Md. in prior years which held the record.

-Hoot

[BurtWorm]

3. WOT is this admin's engine for driving money into the suburbs.

Would you agree?

[hootinholler]

6. No I disagree...

The WOT is the method of driving money into Halliburton's and similar coffers. The people doing government contracting in this area are mostly tech and it matters little what the program is, as long as there is a program. All the government is really doing is changing what programs we are working on, cutting the old and adding WOT programs.

Just my observations.

-Hoot

[BurtWorm]

7. The point is, though, this is a boom period for the techs in the burbs

At a time when overall revenues are down, the WOT is keeping $$ flowing out of the treasury into the bank accounts of the Captitol's neighbors. Of course, the WOT isn't the only govt function the Bushists are contracting out to private hands, but it's a big one.

[hootinholler]

8. Not at all a boom period for DC burb techs...

Not at all like the 90s. The job market here is much tighter, real wages have fallen, (I'm making 75% of what I made in 1999). If you have a high level clearance, you have choice of jobs, otherwise it's tough.

The WOT is funneling money into the CEO and Corporate coffers of the military industrial sector. It is not much trickling down to us in the tech trenches. Like I said, the projects are generally WOT related at the expense of other projects that were cut.

-Hoot

[BurtWorm]

9. Your responses seem somewhat self-contradictory to me.

From the article cited in the original post, it sounds as though national security "needs" are driving dollars into hands of the private contractors who own businesses and live in the suburbs around DC. Am I misunderstanding the article's implication that these people ARE the CEOS and corporate officers of the military-technical (if not industrial) complex? It sounds like there's a class of parasite inside the Beltway that (like Halliburton in TX) claims to be private but lives off government contracts and that is thriving off WOT-related contracts in particular. This article doesn't seem to be about "tech trenchies" at all (whatever they are). In fact, here is the basis for my assumption (repeated from the original post):

That accumulation of suburban wealth, local economists said, is a side effect of the enormous flow of federal money into the region through contracts for defense and homeland security work in the five years since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, coming after the local technology boom of the 1990s. "When you put that together . . . you have a recipe for heightened prosperity," said Anirban Basu, an economist at a Baltimore consulting firm.

It sounds like some people are prospering from terror. It may be a relatively few, but they're prospering a LOT. According to the article, anyway.

[TheFriedPiper]

4. Well, we wouldn't want to waste that money doing anything like

rebuilding our infrastructure

educating our young

retraining our jobless

feeding our hungry


Nah, that would be too much like what Jesus would do for the Christians in charge to do it.

If more Christians followed the teachings of Jesus, there would be lots less evil in the world.

I mean, even though he wasn't the son of a god or anything, doesn't mean he didn't have a lot of good ideas.

[keta11]

5. I was mighty surprised when Tim Kaine (Democrat)

won Loudoun County by 5+ Points in the VA gubernatorial elections last year. You can't keep from tripping over former spooks, government workers, feeding at the WOT/ Defence contractor shops, every few miles in Loudon, Fairfax counties.