The Road of Riches
June 28, 2005
One of our first days here I read an article in the Post entitled “The Road to Riches Is Called K Street” (June 22, 2005). The point of the story was that the work of influencing government decisions.. the profession of lobbying.. is growing by leaps and bounds. In a tidy graphic the article shows that in 2000 there were 16,342 registered lobbyists, whereas in 2005 there were 34,785. That should be a surprising statistic, as it shows that the number of lobbyists has actually doubled under the tenure of George W. Bush.
But it was my geographical curiosity that was spurred more than my political antagonism.. spurred by the mention of a specific street.. K Street. From that day I meant to get out and see it.. that street which seemed to be the place where people with government connections cashed in. “Starting salaries have risen to about $300,000 a year for the best-connected aides eager to ‘move downtown’ from Capitol Hill or the Bush administration.”
Washington is certainly well stocked with monuments and museums.. and it is never possible to get too far away from monumental Washington.. yet in the downtown are there are lots and lots of office buildings, each about the same height.. about 12 or 13 stories according to my count. There must be an official limit to the height of buildings in downtown Washington.. perhaps out of deference to the Capitol Building? Whatever the cause, the buildings present themselves as a straight row, distinguished only by slightly different takes on the sleek window-lined building exterior so common for modern buildings. K Street happens to be a center for these steady lines of buildings.
In many large American cities one would expect corporate logos to dominate: this is the headquarters for such and such corporation.. but here in Washington that is not true. The exterior walls are blank and the buildings serve as vast providers of office space.. Of course on the lower floors all the usual corporate suspects abound.. with perhaps a slightly higher number of FedEx and UPS store fronts. If you want to mail something here, just walk down a street, any street, and you are bound to run into something soon. But if you want to get coffee at Starbucks, a burger at McDonalds, or stay at the Hilton.. it is all possible in downtown Washington.
The thicket of corporate logos is dense these days.. and one could be tempted to take another look at the conservative goal of less government intrusion into the lives of citizens. That is the banner under which every policy is promoted, but it has slowly morphed into a policy of less corporate oversight. It means: let corporations do what they will. Liberals should likewise revise their position, saying: “We are not for government interference in lives of citizens, but for an active government that limits the extension of corporate power into the lives of our citizens.” By that logic, liberals are the new conservatives.. looking to protec individual from intrusive corporations.
