We don't need no stinkin' jobs (Need to secede)

Every time Congress spends another $billion on the Department of Defense, jobs are created. That is what the Republicans and all good hawks claim. Mitch "Broken Record" McConnell, their leader in the Senate, rails against any tiny incremental tax on the rich as a tax on the "job creators." And if Obama dares propose that a bill of his would hire anyone to do any actual work that results in benefits to society (e.g., building high-speed rail that brings us more in line with a European infrastructure for moving people and goods far more efficiently, in which China is investing heavily, for excellent reason), he is labeled as tax and spend.

Meanwhile, the US pulls out of Iraq, thus saving $billions for the taxpayer, right? Wrong. Those troops are parking in Kuwait. The net number in the region is the same. Troops who come home are being replaced by troops going over. It is a farce.

While we continue to watch the fiscal Niagara Falls thunder your money into the deep Pentagon Pool of Liquid Assets, we are told that economic drought is forcing massive drawdowns in the relative trickle of government assistance to every class of Americans except the rich. Hundreds of thousands of poor people, primarily single mothers seeking to simply work for a living, are now told that the one most critical piece of their tiny slice of government help--a subsidy to their child care provider, who makes it possible for them to work or go to school--is cut off.

How much do child care workers make? Very little. How much do the single mothers make? Very little, or they wouldn't qualify for this small but crucial amount of help. So, for a very small investment, we create many jobs. Or, thanks to Congress, we destroy them. Congress: the Job Destroyers, led by the likes of John "Don't Dare Tax the Rich" Boehner. Astonishingly, these people refer to the $662.4 billion they just authorized for the Pentagon FY 2012 budget--far more than any other military on Earth and a figure that does not include many military items, such as, oh yes, nuclear weapons and veterans' benefits--that obese budget is called a 'cut.'

In the midst of this set of grotesque machinations, the new "defense" authorization has violated and vacated much of the Bill of Rights, so be ye advised that Congress is making a bid to overturn what the Founders sought to enshrine in the Constitution 220 years ago. It will be legal to 'detain' you or any other American indefinitely without charge or trial, or kill you if deemed desirable. It is the next step toward tyranny, the very sort that precipitated the American Revolution. And watch the others who claim to love the Constitution so much, like Chief Justice Roberts, when this matter comes before them. This is a litmus test and we are seeing the essential anti-democratic colors of Congress and Obama revealed with this latest.

If the Occupy movement has any legs, it will pick up this critical issue and walk toward a nonviolent New American Evolution. We need to secede (this is not a new idea, especially in places like Vermont, home of our most robust secession movement). Time to care for each other, since the federal government is abdicating that role in favor of enriching the one percent. Really. We don't need a government that steals jobs instead of creating them, that seizes and tears massive chunks out of your paycheck in order to feed those who are already bloated, and which now empowers itself to lock away those it decides are inconveniently opposing those policies or otherwise irritating it. Something is quite, quite wrong and we need to make it right.