"DON'T CUT US OR ELSE!"

People that work inside the military industrial complex are getting mail from their particular company urging them to contact Congress immediately to prevent any cuts in military spending.

One weapons company executive told his employees that even Obama's Secretary of War Panetta feels these potential cuts could "clearly damage our national defense."  (Would Panetta take that position in public without the approval of his boss?)

Another aerospace weapons corporation told their employees that the executives were getting in touch with its suppliers and subcontractors and urging them to rally their workers to rattle the Congressional cage.

These recipients of massive tax dollars are creating fear across the nation.  They are pitting well paid war machine workers against social programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, Head start, and environmental protection.  The message: cut those "welfare and entitlement programs" but don't touch Pentagon spending.

Of course these corporate wags are not telling their workers that military spending is actually the worst way to create jobs in our economy.  They aren't telling the workers that if their production plants were converted to building solar, wind turbines, or rail systems the number of jobs would double or even in some cases triple.

Congress will likely cower under the power and influence of the military industrial complex.  I know that in Maine the Democrats routinely line up alongside their Republican competitors to cheer each killing machine that comes across the assembly line.

Eisenhower's words turned out to be more than prophetic - beware of the power of the military industrial complex. They are stealing the future from all of us.