Ignorance
This makes me very angry: McClatchy reports that Obama says ‘no’ to pensions for WW II Alaska guards
WASHINGTON — In a strongly worded message to Congress outlining its priorities for a military spending bill, the Obama administration today said it disapproved of including money for pensions for 26 elderly members of the World War II-era Alaska Territorial Guard.
The Guardsmen are among those assigned to protect Alaska from the Japanese during World War II.
The Army decided this year to no longer count service in the Guard in calculating the military’s 20-year minimum for retirement pay, although it still counts for military benefits. As a result, their pensions were decreased in January.
An estimated 300 members are still living from the original 6,600-member unit formed in 1942 to protect Alaska, then a territory, from attack. The 26 men have enough other military service to reach the 20-year minimum for retirement pay but would lose it if the Territorial Guard service doesn’t count.
Alaska did not become a state until 1959. During World War II Alaska was a Federal territory with the governor appointed by the Federal government. The Japanese occupied the three western most islands in the Aleutian chain. The Territorial Guard were protecting Federal lands, and defending national borders under the command of a Federal officer, the governor.
Alaska served as a major link in the supply effort for the Soviet Union which is why the AlCan Highway was built. The state is still the site of major military facilities, even following the draw down following the collapse of the Soviet Union and end of the Cold War.
This blatant act of disrespect by Obama is the sort of thing that was a regular feature of the Rumfield Reign at the Department of Defense. This is nothing a real Democrat would do. This is just miserly and mean-spirited. [There is an excellent and precise term available in English for this type of action, but it causes the vapors among stupid people, so I won’t use it.]
5 comments
i know what word it is you’re not using here, but i think mean-spirited is the better choice anyway, because that’s precisely how it comes across.
that, and ignorant too.
It’s 26 people who have to be in their 80’s and have been receiving this money for years, and they just cut them off. How much money could they possibly save, a few thousand?
The damn politicians talk a good game when it comes to “support the troops” and then they turn around and screw them over whenever they want to look like they are saving money. If they want to save some real money, go after the contractors who cheat left and right.
When compared to the money wasted killing our soldiers with bad food and electrocuting showers this is peanuts and the whole idea of denying them a miserly little pension is nothing but chicken shit.
.-= last blog ..Chilly Morning =-.
Well, Monk, somebody had to say it :).
50 years ago, back before the Southern Strategy was adopted and led to the black population abandoning the Republican Party, Obama would have been a conservative Republican. The only reason he’s a Democrat now is because today’s Republican Party has become the RepubliKKKan Party, the party of racists, crazies, and idiots. I must admit to find myself more and more amused by the gyrations of Democrats upset that Obama “betrayed liberal ideals”. Uhm, no. Even a brief glance at his web site in December 2007 made it clear that Obama was no liberal. Being black doesn’t automatically make you a liberal by any means — indeed, I’ve known a number of black middle class professionals, and for the most part they are what I call “Bill Cosby Democrats” — very law-and-order, eager to shout “Pull your pants up and behave like a human being!” to black youth with sagging pants, and quite religious in a fundamentalist sort of way albeit a white middle class person attending one of their churches would probably find the experience strange (they have their own religious traditions developed over the years that aren’t exactly white bread). The only reason they aren’t Republicans is because the Republican Party has become mean-spirited, racist, and, well, stupid… otherwise that would be their natural home. And if the white liberals who voted for Obama had looked at his record and policy proposals rather than the color of his skin, they would have realized that, but they were operating from a racist premise (“black = liberal”). Siiiiigh!
Well, seven more years. At least Obama is a sane conservative who is unlikely to get us into any more insane wars and not likely to do much harm otherwise :(. But we could have done so much better…
.-= last blog ..Banned Books Week =-.
Yes, Fallenmonk, the DoD under Obama is definitely a chickenshit outfit, the same sort of crap that caused me to leave after 8 years. Nixon started talking about looking at military benefits, and that wasn’t a good sign. It took a law suit for my Dad to get back some of the benefits he had when he retired. They subtracted his Social Security benefits from his military retirement, even though he separately qualified for both, and the military billed Medicare after he reached 65. That’s how they support the troops.
That’s the crux of the problem, Badtux, racism on the part of too many liberals. Nobody wants to say that allowed, but that’s the reality. Obama was stereotyped because of his skin, and few bothered to look at the “content of his character”.