Contractors Cash Out but Try to Stay Humble

The growth in government contracting has transformed the Washington region, pumping billions of dollars into local companies, luring workers from around the country, inflating home prices and taxing already-crowded roads. It has also created a new class of multimillionaires -- entrepreneurs like Howton who started small companies, expanded them, then sold them at premium prices. If the government's influence here has led to steady jobs and pensions for the federal workforce, it is changing to include another dimension: catalyst for private wealth.

"There has been a lot of trapped, passive equity released -- released to the owners and to the local economy. Without a doubt it's billions of dollars," said Rick Knop, managing director of BB&T Capital Markets/Windsor Group, a company that helped negotiate the sale of 20 local government contractors in 2005.

If everyone would speak the same damn language, then maybe the public wouldn't be so f*ing ill informed all the time.

"Trapped, passive equity." Call me crazy, but in this context it sounds like it should be called "tax dollars," or more specifically "your tax dollars."

One more example of the con game that is conservative government.