The Sacramento Bee's Dan Walters column today reports on the flip side of the allegedly Republican-supported military-industrial complex: the enviornmental-corporate complex.

In contemporary California, we should be equally concerned about the rising political power of what one might term an "environmental-corporate complex," whose game works something like this:

A corporation acquires land, proposes development and incurs opposition from environmentalists. There are regulatory hearings, perhaps lawsuits, and lots of publicity. Politicians then promise to "save" the land with public money. Quite often, the purchase price is well above what the corporation paid in the first place. And everyone insists that corporate campaign contributions and fees to well-placed lobbyists played no role.

Walter's got specific cases. What a racket -- buy some land, threaten to build on it, get big money from the public treasury. At least with the military-industrial complex you get jets, bombs, ships and thermonuclear weapons. With the environmental-corporate complex you get, what? Land you're not allowed to visit or enjoy because it's environmentally sensitive? Give me bombs anytime -- at least we can drop those on terrorists' heads.