When I hear people say “You’ve got to see the Grand Canyon at least once” I am, unfortunately, prone to responding “You’ve got to drive a loop around the DC Beltway soon. You will be simultaneously laughing, crying and shaking with rage and frustration when you finish.”
All news outlets love the beauty shots of the monuments and marble buildings in DC and Mary Miller in suburban Indianapolis with her Coexist sticker thinks that the business of government is contained within those edifices. But the Beltway is where the DC action truly is - an unending expanse of hulking office blocks and gilded palaces. Some are ostensibly private-sector concerns but all are lavishly funded by you and me.
Media reports regularly cite the “booming DC economy” without a hint of irony or comment about why and how it’s expanding.
Anyone who beholds the New Rome can only shake his head when senators and bureaucrats moan about any potential downsizing. GOP congressmen, with rare exceptions, don’t want these offices closed either - they just want to become the new landlord.
Some [buildings] are ostensibly private-sector concerns but all are lavishly funded by you and me.
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Absolutely true and a good post overall.
Maybe the African communist scumbag Ubama will buy a horse and make it a senator.
Excellent!