The Montgomery County Council in suburban Washington killed a proposed resolution calling on the national government to throttle back defense spending and our wars abroad.

Lockheed Martin, the biggest nongovernment employer in the Maryland county, apparently thought too much peace could be bad business. It put out word. Virginia began trying to woo away Lockheed away. Oh, no! And so, with 5,200 jobs at stake, the resolution died.

As reported by the Washington Examiner:

“‘It didn’t seem terribly constructive in trying to establish ourselves as a great business climate,’ said Maryland Del. Bill Frick, D-Bethesda, who called Councilman George Leventhal, D-at large and a sponsor of the resolution, to explain why the resolution was a bad idea.”

The Maryland suburbs are home to the National Institutes of Health and a host of bio companies, inspiring some to say that Maryland is about the life sciences while Virginia, home to the Pentagon and now the Quarter Pentagon, is about the death sciences. Perhaps these days the distinctions aren’t so clear. Of course, if you go by charts from Wikipedia, it would appear that there’s a lot of Montgomery County in many places.

The Chinese, who spend less than half the percentage of GDP on defense  that we do, may well be secretly subsidizing Lockheed Martin’s lobbying operations at all levels of government. What better way of encouraging domestic unrest in the United States, given all the nondefense workers in the unemployment lines?