TECH companies in the former British colony of Virginia are cleaning up by paying into election warchests, according to the Seattle Times.

It appears that the best way to get a technology company established is by hiring a lobbyist and donating cash to a campaign fund.

The newspaper cites the case of a start-up, called Mobilisa being run by Nelson Ludlow and his missus in Port Townsend. The donations initially earned them $800,000 for which they had to provide a no-bid contract to provide Internet service on Puget Sound ferries.

The Times said that Mobilisa is one of a new breed of companies which are being propped up by politicians who hand them government contracts through line-item appropriations known as earmarks.

Generally they do not have to sell their products to the experts but to the politicians in Congress.

Ludlow has paid $11,500 to Senator Patty Murray and $20,000 to Norm Dicks. That cash has netted them nine earmarks worth $20.3 million.

But as the Times points out the technologies being flogged by Mobilisa are really expensive and a bit out of date. For example one of the bar code scanners made by the outfit to swipe ID badges would cost $3,000 if it were made by Motorola, but Mobilisa charges the government $7,000.

Ludlow claims that his scanner was modified to make it easier to read in bright sunlight and he added more memory.

Some of Mobilisa's ideas seem to only look good to politicians. For example one project that earned it $5 million was a floating area network which stuck wireless hotspots on buoys.

Ludlow said he new that the navy would not like the idea because it already used satellites for ship to ship communications. So he took the idea to congress instead and Navy has been forced to run a pilot test.

Ludlow convinced the politicians that his system would be more resilient and cheaper than the satellites that the navy already had in place.

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