Generals no longer retire to Vermont — they lobby for contractors in Washington

By R. Jeffrey Smith, the Center for Public Integrity

Actor Dean Jagger as a fictional general in White Christmas

“What can you do with a general, when he stops being a general?” crooned Bing Crosby in the 1954 movie “White Christmas.” “Who’s got a job for a general when he stops being a general?”

Alas, the answer, 58 years later, is now clear. Retired generals don’t open ski resorts in Vermont.  Instead, they hunker down in Washington as the paid employees of corporations that draw most of their income from the service branch in which the generals worked. Once there, they work to maintain a stream of funding from the public treasury.