The gilded city.

• Author: Peters, Charles
• Position: TILTING at windmills - Washington - Brief article

For many years, Washington was a city of modest lifestyles, largely determined by the civil service salary scale. That began to change in the 1970s with the growth of lobbying into a major lo cal industry and the considerably higher compensation enjoyed by its practitioners. Then came the great increase in defense spending under Ronald Reagan and the wealth it brought to the Washingtonians who assisted military equipment suppliers in procuring contracts. And then, in response to 9/11, came the explosion in contracting out other functions of government to firms like Booz Allen Hamilton and the immense profits made by its owners, the Carlyle Group, not to mention the real estate...