The real story starts to come out

[HDRider]

Follow the money...

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/03/us...d.html?hp&_r=0

ARLINGTON, Va. — To listen to the human side of sequestration, wait in line here for the 595 bus to Reston, Va., a journey across a suburbia grown fat and happy on a federal spending boom in the past decade, primarily military.

While the rest of the country experienced a corrosive recession, [my inserted comment - I thought we were doing so much better] unemployment in Arlington County, home of the Pentagon, never rose above 5 percent. Nearby Fairfax County, with a cyberintelligence industry that took off after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, gorged on government contracts to private companies.

[simi-steading]

I was at the Pentagon this past week, and you should have seen all the business men and women waiting to see people working there... Looked like a business person conference....

A perpetual war machine in motion... or a perpetual cash printing machine... just depends on which side of the turnstile you're standing on...

It's this whole area... restaurants are doing well, stored are always full, construction is booming, housing is selling... landscapers are busy... Plenty of money for everyone around here... and that's a big part of the reason my wife and I moved out here about 8 years ago...

We're sick of looking at the underbelly now, and are working on getting out... However, we really don't expect to see much change in the area.... The money will still flow.. just in different ways...

[where I want to]

Years ago I rode horses with a woman whose husband was a defense contractor. She regularly took their private jet on jaunts across country to go to various horse shows. Seems the government contract paid for the cost of the jet and fuel. They didn't even give a second thought to the cost.
Not that there aren't that there aren't hard working, efficient contractors. But even if people start out that way, they get corrupted by being in the environment where greed is rewarded and honesty is embarassing to all.

[plowjockey]

Is this news, that nearly everyone tied in with defense spending, does pretty well?

There are big fights, on whether to address the budget defecit, by cutting defense spending or cut entitlements, for the poor, which, for the most part, are the exact same thing, except one is certainly more lucrative, than the other.

[HDRider]

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than 1.8 million civilians work for the Federal Government, excluding the Post Office. Below is a link to the relevant BLS website, lots of good information.

Credible sources believe that the number of government contractors outnumber government employees. No one really knows how many government contractors there are.

http://www.bls.gov/home.htm

700,000 employees at the post office of 2006

226,662 work for NY state, Illinois - 105,892, CA - 335,971, TX - 284,729 and so on

Fed - 1.8M
USPS - .7M
Cons - 1.8M
States - 5M

Folks that is almost 10 million people working for the government and that does not count 1.5M people on active duty in the military, with an additional 848,000 people in the seven reserve components.

The total US workforce is 156M.