September's highest paid defense contractor: Northrop Grumman ($5.1 billion)

Of the seven companies contracting for the defense department that we're watching in this series, September's big winner was Northrop Grumman with awards of $5.1 billion for the month.

Nine years ago, on his first day as Northrop Grumman's new CEO, Wesley Bush decided to move the company's headquarters from LA to Washington, DC to be closer to the company's best customer: the federal government.

An updated venn for the company appears below, highlighting the overlap of Northrop Grumman with the Department of Defense and various appropriations committees. The survival of corporations like this one depends on continual US engagement in weaponized conflict and the military's ongoing consumption of their products. It's often said that war is a racket, and this overlap shows the racket in action.

(UCAS = Unmanned Combat Aircraft System)

As a corporatist entity, Northrop Grumman and the other six corporations highlighted in this series have employed lobbyists and specialists who were also hired as staff members of agencies and committees handling defense-related decisions, including the Defense Department, the departments of the Army and Navy, the House and Senate Armed Services committees, and various appropriations committees. Government staff positions like these provide former and future employees of companies like Northrop Grumman the ability to influence the direction of military funding, the awarding of contracts, even decisions regarding when and how often to engage in military conflict.

Watchlist Total Awards for September 2019:
$18,557,080,401

September 2019 totals by company:

BAE: $3,960,903,941
Boeing: $3,849,808,915
Booz Allen Hamilton: $387,765,526
General Dynamics: $732,569,140
Lockheed Martin: $2,245,553,282
Northrop Grumman: $5,134,193,906
Raytheon: $2,246,285,691

(BTW, I'm considering replacing Booz Allen Hamilton with Rockwell Collins; I'm just not sure which of the two is the larger recipient of defense contract awards. Look for more on that decision in the coming weeks.)

This information is provided to highlight just how much taxpayer money is spent, per day, to enrich companies participating in the military industrial complex. The idea that our economy requires a governmental redistribution of wealth from individual taxpayers to large corporations that are friendly and well-connected to government came from the Keynesian argument for demand “stimulus” -- that our economy's health depends on higher and higher levels of spending. For this reason, personal saving is discouraged and often penalized by the government. But because individuals still tend to follow personal incentives to save, the Keynesian argument remains in effect: that government should spend money the public is reluctant to spend through tax-and-spend policies. Its spending primarily enriches the military industrial complex, including the big seven: BAE, Boeing, Booz Allen Hamilton, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon.