A post wherein I freely mess with Texas

Back in April, Texas Governor Rick Perry hinted that his state might consider secession in remarks to an anti-tax rally. Perry quickly walked back his rhetorical flourish, but now a hopefully small faction of Texans has picked up the standard. This new crowd isn’t just hinting – they’re outright demanding that Texas declare its independence from America (previously declared by numerous Texans as the greatest nation on Earth).

I say let ‘em go. Keep Austin as some sort of Lesotho-like island of sanity, and just bid the rest of them good riddance. But, in all fairness, I’m concerned for how the new Republic of Texas would fare.

After all, the nearly two dozen U.S. military installations in Texas employ almost 200,000 service personnel, all of whom would immediately be reassigned to other posts. That’s not counting the thousands of support-staff jobs on the various installations, which are held by local Texans, or the jobs at the ancillary businesses that spring up around any area where thousands of military folks congregate.

Then there’s Johnson Space Center, the home of NASA’s Mission Control Center. That place employs 3,000 federal employees and an additional 15,000 contractors. All of which would either move to Florida or somewhere when Texas secedes or be out of a job. Houston, we have a giant unemployment problem.

So now The Republic of Texas is dealing with massive unemployment. Too bad its citizens are no longer eligible for federal jobless assistance. Also, no Social Security, Medicaid or Medicare. No Veterans Administration benefits. No federal highway funds. And let’s hope The Republic of Texas enjoys some decent weather, since they can’t get disaster aid from FEMA anymore.

But hey, The Republic of Texas has numerous natural resources to rely on, right? Like lumber. Of course, the Republic of Texas will have a pretty hard time selling any of that lumber to the United States of America, since President George W. Bush signed into law some pretty stiff tariffs on foreign lumber. Delicious irony, that. And I’m thinking that the various Texas-based oil and natural gas companies will probably relocate back to the U.S., given the recent governmental hostility to foreign oil.

But, on the bright side, the NFL and NBA would instantly have the international presence they’ve been after. And Texas would probably see a reduction in illegal immigration from Mexico and Central America, given the whole massive unemployment thing. (Oh yeah… no Border Patrol.)

I’m being halfway facetious here. The secessionists are certainly a small faction of extremists, so it’s not like this is actually going to happen. But the thing about extremists is that they tend to push the centrists in one direction or another, even if only in increments.

There’s a real undercurrent of anti-government activism at work in our country, particularly among conservatives. And it’s pretty hypocritical when you pause to consider the hundreds, maybe even thousands of ways these very anti-government people benefit from federal jobs, funds and administrative policies.