#153 - Un-Fairfax
This year Culture Rover has been commuting out to George Mason University on the Washington DC Metro Line. The train's population is usually a mix of military personnel, immigrants, students, and suburbanites. But dotted among the commuters, as the train zips by the office park building for Lockheed-Martin, are businessmen engaged in conversations about private contracting for the military.
Who are these people? In his Econoclast column in the March/April issue of Mother Jones, James K. Galbraith explains what has been happening. My commute takes me through the epicenter of the Bush-led, big-government, defense-industry bubble that has -- along with housing construction -- kept the American economy afloat during the past seven years.
It's the military-industrial complex, neocon-style. As a colleague put it, the newfound riches of Northern Virginia, the rising property values, the local governments flush with tax dollars -- that's the "War on Terror" cashed in at the bank.
09 May 2007