The Worst People In The World
They really don’t want anyone in the lower classes to retire. The corporate overlords want to destroy every form of pension available to anyone, and force them to work until they die, so they can loot all of the money people put away for a little peace and quiet at the end of their lives.
They have already looted all of the decent pension systems in the private sector, and now they are going after not only Social Security, but the military retirement system.
They brought in a panel of ‘business leaders’, you know, the people who destroyed the economy, and asked them to recommend changes in the retirement system. These people don’t understand the core place that the retirement system fills in maintaining ‘good order and discipline’ in the military, or the necessity of the system to keeping experienced people in the military after they have received extensive and very expensive training and education.
Suggesting that the military go to a f**king 401K system after the disaster not three years ago, is insulting and demeaning to the members of the military. Do they think that the military doesn’t understand what happened to people when the markets crashed?
Twenty years in the military is not the same as twenty years in a normal business, so normal business practices, even good ones, don’t work. If you are going to convince people to give up many of their civil rights, and face the possibility of being killed as part of their job, you had damn well better be prepared to offer them more than a f**king 401K at whatever advanced age the corporate owners to finally allow them to retire.
18 comments
The corporate idiots believe people are just “resources” and if the lifers leave the military, they’ll just hire more people for minimum wage just as they did with their corporations. It’s the same nonsense that destroyed virtually every American corporation once the MBA’s took over from the people who built the company (who typically knows better), the MBA’s don’t believe in anything they can’t plug into a spreadsheet, and things like “corporate culture” (or military culture, in this case) simply don’t compute for them.
Get rid of the lifers and you get rid of the institutional memory of the military. You end up with a bunch of yahoos who don’t know how to use all the expensive equipment that the corporate bastards are ripping the American public off for, like jet fighters that don’t fly and supposed combat ships armed only with a single 57mm popgun (which for most purposes is about as useful as pointing a picture of a gun at an enemy vessel and shouting “bang bang you’re dead!”). You destroy the military culture that accounts for so much of the effective of the U.S. military, and turn it into just another armed rabble little different from the militaries of the third world nations that the U.S. regularly knocks over just to prove it can.
Yeah, the b*****ds talk about supporting our troops, but talk is cheap. Looks more like they’re going to have the Austerity Fairy apply the Austerity Fairy’s Wand of Austerity to the anal sections of our troops, good and hard. And if they think *that* isn’t going to affect the “good order and discipline” of our troops, they’re *asking* for a military coup. Which rarely turns out well…
Well, Duffer, there’s this little thing called CAPITALISM which incorporates this thing called the FREE MARKET which provides incentives for people to behave in ways that society values. If someone starts jerking you around by taking away incentives to do your job, you go elsewhere. That’s the free market in action. I volunteered to work at my current company too, but if my current company started jerking me around, I’d go elsewhere, and my current company would be up a creek without a paddle because I’m not fungible — there are very few people on the planet with my particular skill set, and let’s just say that they’d have to pay a significant six-figure sum of money to hire one of them (significantly more money than they pay me, although I’m not cheap), or else lose a capability that would set them back literally years in their projects as they slowly train up someone new to do what I do.
The military has tens of thousands of people like me who are basically irreplaceable without paying a *lot* of money, because there simply aren’t many people on the planet with the skills the U.S. military possesses, skills built up over the course of literally decades, skills that aren’t taught in any college and can’t be put on any spreadsheet but without which, you lose capabilities that perhaps are even critical to the survival of the nation. To drive this talent away with short-sighted screwing with their pensions is going to result in the same sort of loss of skill that has resulted in America going commando if the helpful Chinese don’t send us our monthly shiploads of underwear because nobody on this side of the pond knows how to make undies anymore, it’s a skill we’ve lost. But not knowing how to kill America’s enemies is a far greater skills loss problem than not knowing how to make undies, methinks…
– Badtux the Capitalist Penguin
Duffer, I’ve never seen Bryan mad enough to use obscenities in a post… until this one. If I were you… if I were an arrogant asswipe with a two-bit Typepad blog that I didn’t want to see eradicated summarily from the web… I think I would not deliberately provoke a 30+-year veteran IT professional. You just never know what might be in his skill set.
Mr. Duff, the situation is that instead of a shilling, they were given 8p with a promise to get the other 4p after 20 years of service. Now the ‘Queen’s ministers’ are saying they don’t want to pay the other 4p. To be valid a contract must be binding on both sides. When one side will go to prison for violating the contract and the other gets to change the terms at will, there is no valid contract.
When the government says that the financial looters that required hundreds of billions of dollars must be paid billions in bonuses because ‘they have a contract’, it cannot turn around and say that people who are ask to risk death for their country and have broken no laws, shouldn’t be compensated in accordance with the provisions of the contracts they signed.
I left the Air Force after 8 years. I was one of 6 people in the military with my level of training at the time, and one of only two people already qualified for the particular mission that was the goal of an intelligence restructuring. I was on the list for a promotion at the end of the month I left. I was being assigned to a unit that a dozen of my closest friends had already joined. The primary reason I left was because the Nixon administration had started talking about making the retirement 30 years, instead of 20. No f**king way was I going to attempt to stay alive for an extra 10 years, doing what I was doing for an extra decade.
To convince me to re-enlist the first time they gave me $10K, a school assignment, with a follow-on assignment in Europe, as I was sick of Asia and Pacific islands. The majority of my 30-days annual leave was used to move between multiple duty assignments, as I was considered ‘available for immediate deployment’. I was not going to spend another 10 years living out of a suitcase.
A change of the basic rules is a violation of trust, and you can’t be effective if you can’t trust those above you to keep their word.
Good God Bryan I haven’t seen you so demonstrably angry before.. and with bloody good reason
Well, Jams, you were in Civil Service, and one of the big reasons people put up with it is ‘deferred compensation’. You get paid a below market salary in return for job security and the benefits. Now they have destroyed the promise of job security, and are attempting to eliminate all of the benefits. Without a corresponding rise in salary, qualified people are not going to work in civil service.
Only politicians join the government to become wealthy, but now they are working to ensure that government workers can no longer expect a middle class life.
I’m angry for two reasons. I know a lot of people my age who were planning to retire but can’t because of losses in their 401Ks mean they can no longer afford to, and I know a lot of military people who are going to be really stressed by this. With multiple wars going on, the military doesn’t need any more stress. If they wanted to do this, or even discuss it, they should have ended a few wars.
Some of the people who were on that helicopter that was shot down in Afghanistan were locals. This is not a good time to be discussing cutting military benefits.
I’ve put off commenting because I was so angry I had to turn occ the PC and go into town to my fave cafe/bakery to be with sane people. I’ve been going there almost 2 years now, and the staff know me well. When I went in and sat down, the Manager came over and asked what was wrong in obvious concern, and the other staff were giving me concerned looks also. I couldn’t handle it, I just stood up apologized and said I was OK, just needed to work something out, and left. I walked around the botanical gardens for over an hour. BTW, it was pissing down rain. I did a lot of thinking, and managed to calm down and went back. They all looked at me and I gave them a sheepish smile, and they all smiled (in relief I could tell). It was quiet there (not many were out in the downpour), so they came over and sat with me and asked what had happened. So I explained. Some knew some of my background, and I explained for the others. And you know… they all got angry too! And I actually felt some relief! These were *good* people, and they understood. SO, I was going to comment last night, and saw that retarded moron’s comment above, and got angry again!! Duff, if you have never believed anything in your totally worthless life, believe this! You are lucky you live on the other side of the World! And don’t think for q second I couldn’t find you if I had a need to! I really hope that even though you are so obviously a moron, you have some survival instincts!! I’ve had enough. I am not joking.
I was in a very elite unit. There were only 4 such teams. We trained for 2 years, and every day we were not on active duty there after. The life expectancy was short. We only had to complete 4 tours to get full benefits. And then we were told by the new f*kin Coalition (right-wing) Gov, that the 2 tours in Cambodia didn’t count!! Three of my best friends died there, and I was wounded twice. Now you know why I *HATE* politicians so much! They are all liers! None of them can be trusted! It’s all one big f’kin game to them! I have purposely never owned a weapon since. If I walked into Parliament House unarmed, even in the poor condition I am now in (and I believe I did this to myself subconsciously now), I would still be able to kill a few of them at least before I was put down. I have considered that as a way to end it in fact. But… I am not like them. No matter how much they all deserve to die… I have my honor, and they will never strip me of that, or those of my brothers-in-arms. And those cowardly bastards know that too! Do you think any one of those cowards would do this if they thought there was a chance one (or all) of us (people trained like myself) would decide to come after them? Not a chance! The politicians all get their lifetime pension and full perks for only a short time behind a desk! And they DARE to say we are not worth anything?! (I am REALLY struggling to keep this reasonably coherent and clean!! You all have NO idea!)
Arrrrrrghhh!!! OK… Yeah, I know some of you do have a clue, or even more! It’s damned hard to do this! I think Bryan knows me best, understands the… the potential… the possibilities.
I have to keep control. Or someone will die. It’s as simple as that.
I’ve always rejected the idea of going back to Cambodia, or other places I can’t even name where I was deployed. Because I thought it would just make me rage… But lately I have been thinking that maybe I should. Maybe seeing some of those kids all grown up now would remind me I/WE did some good, something worthy. And I realise I am actually… afraid! That they wouldn’t remember me. I have NEVER considered myself a coward since I was very young! But, maybe… in some ways, we all are. 🙂 It’s silly, I know that. *shrug* Screw it! One day!
I am glad I don’t live in the USA, or UK. My Gov is bad enough. I think a lot of people would be dead, including me, if I did live there. I feel myself occasionally, even now, slipping into that cold, calculating state as I was trained so long ago. You know what I mean Bryan. How to achieve the objective with maximum efficiency and effect. And it’s so much easier when you don’t have to consider a escape or fight-out plan. I am an exceedingly good strategist, planner, and executor, and you know… I am certain I could convince others like myself. Ask LadyMin! 😉 🙂
I’m going out now. See my friends at the bakery. It’s nice and sane there. Gives me a reason to keep control, when I see worthy innocents. And the coffee’s great too! I am grateful for small mercies these days. 🙂
You do everything you are told to do; you follow all of the stupid, inconsistent rules the way they demand; and then they change the game at the last minute.
We had to band together to pay for the monument to those who died in shoot downs of reconnaissance aircraft, and then they put in the center of a secure military installation so no one will see it. They treat you like an embarrassment to the government.
Under President Hoover, Douglas MacArthur, George Patton, and Dwight Eisenhower were responsible for sending tanks to crush an encampment of World War I veterans seeking the bonuses they had been promised. That’s what Republicans and conservatives really think of the military and veterans – an expense, a liability on the ledger.
You understand about the necessity of anger management discipline, and the need to avoid provocations like political rallies, because you can’t be 100% sure you will maintain control.
Hopefully, sanity will reign and this will be rejected out of hand, or there will be trouble.
A cat in your lap helps, as does cleaning litter boxes, although the litter boxes remind you of Congress/Parliament.
I was going to keep away from this thread. But I’ve calmed down a bit. (Thinks in no small part to my friends at the bakery, and the two dogs!) Amazing how animals know when somethings wrong with us, and they have a way of getting one away from a black mood, especially a hyper-active Jack Russel puppy! 😆 I call the little sod ‘Little Nipper’ lately! His fave game is to try to grab my fingers when I pull down the sleeve of this long sleeve thick windcheater I have. It’s not that he bites hard, he knows better, but he has sharp puppy teeth! Still… It helps keep me on my toes too. I haven’t lost any skin yet! 😆 I also have to remember to get a nip now and then, or he tries a lot harder and forgets caution! I’m happy to say, I am still a lot faster than he is (my hands, anyway). 😀 Unfortunately, he tries the same game with my housemate. And she’s nowhere near as fast as I am, nor had my high pain threshold! Poor little guy get’s confused, but I think he’s beginning to figure it out. *Me play, bite fingers! Big man play!* 😉 😀 He like to be picked up an cuddled though. The old lady (the other dog who’s 12 now, not the housemate) doesn’t and never has been keen on being picked up.
Well, with the battery of psych evals and other tests, if I hadn’t been rock stable, I wouldn’t have been chosen. NO matter what skills I had. What really angered me, was the one of my m8’s who died did so a couple years after Cambodia about a year after we were all told *it didn’t count*. He got so bad that he wanted to blow up Parliament House… so he suicided. Like me, he knew he couldn’t guarantee to only get *the bastards that deserved it*, and he would never kill an innocent. That made things extremely hard on myself and other survivors. When we resigned, right after being told we don’t count, we were told by the Regimental commander that if we resigned, we wouldn’t get any benefits. 4 of us stood in his office and icily told him that if we did not resign, we would kill him and everyone else up to the PM. And I guess he believed us because he did fight to get us our benefits, and we did get some, but not at all what we were entitled to. And we got slapped with a 30 year NDA to get that! And I know the reasons why the Politicians didn’t want Cambodia acknowledged (even though there is official documents about it at the UN as part of UNAMIC and as part of UNTAC). Even though *officially* UNAMIC started in ’92 (I think), it had actually began many years earlier, bit only the *official* part is *officially* recognised! Teams like mine (and US Seals, UK SAS, German GSG, and others), did all the initial dirty groundwork long before the UN had enough guts to put any of their people on the ground! *shrug*
One of the ironies of life is the paranoia about proving who is a citizen, and then depending on ‘official records’ to prove things. My ‘official record’, including my official duty passport belong in the fiction section of the bookstore.
When we returned to the states from an overseas deployment the customs inspection was carried out by an officer who had most of the answers already typed on the Customs Declaration, the bits about where we were coming from and how long we had been there. Our orders were just as bogus.
The few times I used that passport, it was reviewed by foreign officials who were definitely not in the country’s customs service. The regular customs officers might have asked how you could have exit visas without having entry visas, or other embarrassing questions.
Diplomacy is hard because you have to convince a large group of people from different cultures to accept the same core set of lies as the ‘truth’, and that requires a really good memory.
Neither Saddam nor Qaddafi had changed at any time prior to being targets for removal, what changed was the number of countries willing to accept the lie that they were responsible leaders. Assad is still hanging on because Lebanon, Russia, and China are still finding the lie useful.
It is only the people at the bottom who are required to follow the rules and obey the laws, and accept whatever crap is dished out. The military in the US still pretends that it doesn’t understand why there is a major problem with suicide, although it has been explained repeatedly. The facts contradict military beliefs, so the facts can’t be right.
The bottom line is that people at the top want the power, but don’t want the responsibility for their actions.
Oh sure. I know all about that. *shrug* In DIO, my passport was purple. Amazing how many people, even officials, have never seen a purple passport. It had instructions and phone numbers in several countries to call on the page opposite where my embossed photo, fingerprints, and a couple bar codes were, with assorted dire warnings. Whenever I had to fly commercial, I had the seat nearest the exit, and was the first on and off, met by an appropriate official to bypass the normal process. I rarely had any luggage, except perhaps a briefcase. Once I had to get somewhere in a hurry, and the only seat on the next flight was the spare crew *jump seat*. Not the most comfortable way to travel, but the crew were interesting to chat with (and very curious, but had been warned to keep their curiosity to themselves). If necessary, a passenger would have lost their seat (usually a free trip on the next flight, or some other compensations).
I’ve commented before about how things are done. And that nothing get’s done without the agreement of several interested parties. I’ve done my share of *encouraging* an interested party to make the decision we required. That was part of our advanced mission in Cambodia in fact.
Nobody at the top wants any responsibility for anything. They just want their place on the gravy train secured for life. We are used to ensure that is so.
Nothing makes the charade of airport security more obvious that standing in a ticket line behind one of the Special Operations guys traveling. They put their black cases up on the counter and the agent opens and checks the contents: submachine gun, sawed-ff shotgun, Beretta, switchblade, silencer …
Then the case is shut and locked and the guy is led through a door without going through security, even though there is no way in hell for that agent to actually know that the guy is legitimate, because airlines don’t have the clearance to see the necessary files. Old ladies have to remove their Depends, but that guy bypasses security with an arsenal. The only thing in that case that could be legally owned by any entity other than the government in the US was the Beretta.
All contemporary governments are based on the Potëmkin model – it just has to look good. A façade is enough; you don’t need substance.
Documents can be forged. It’s the layers of verification and certification behind documents that matter. Which is why the whole birther thing was (is, actually) so ludicrous. With Photoshop any document can be created saying anything — I even have a copy of Obama’s birth certificate showing he was born in *LOUISIANA*, for cryin’ out loud (I just took one of my own and did some creative cut-and-pasting of the lettering on it). In the end what matters is that the authority that issued the document says it’s real, e.g. when I applied for a passport the DoS actually contacted the births registrar in my birth state to validate that the supplied information matched their records, despite the certification by the documents validation person (at the Post Office, actually) who validated it had the correct seal on it and appeared to have the correct format. Said authorities saying its real being, of course, why your documents were as real as real could be ;).
But of course that’s not the real reason for the sudden insistence upon documents everywhere. The real reason is to be able to disenfranchise minority communities by either a) requesting documents they won’t have, or b) claiming their documents aren’t real. It happens every time there’s an economic downturn in America, as inevitable as the sun coming up in the east every morning.
– Badtux the Documented Penguin
My, true original ‘birth certificate’ was a half-sheet of yellow paper with the blanks filled in by a clerk at the hospital. The printed text was ten-point Courier, and it was written in long-hand. There were two forms on a page, one for the parents and one sent to the clerk of the township in which the hospital was located. At the town clerk’s office the information was entered, by hand, in a bound record book. To be official you had to write the book, page, and line number where the record was entered. It was written on the ‘certificate’ by the parents if they remembered to check with the clerk.
[Townships are divisions below counties in New York, and are not towns in the usual sense of the word.]
The Federal government doesn’t recognize the original birth certificates as valid, and you have to get a separate form that has a seal on it. These days you have to get it from the state, as township stills use bound record books, although they send typed copies to the state Department of Vital Statistics.
This is why it costs so much to get an ‘official New York birth certificate’ – someone has to find the right record book and look at it,
I know that a lot of older people down here never had a ‘birth certificate’. They were born at home, and that was recorded in the family Bible, if someone remembered to do it. Among poor people you had to find someone who could write. I’ve known a number of local people over the years who didn’t write their name, they drew it. It wasn’t a collection of letters, it was a picture. It was considered higher class than using an ‘X’ for their ‘mark’.
A lot of people today have no idea how recent a lot of the records they take for common really are. Poor people, especially poor people of color, avoid the government as much as possible, so they don’t have the paper trail of most younger people.
There is nothing convenient, or cheap about getting a picture ID from Okaloosa County. Both driver’s licenses and ID cards are issued by the county treasurers office, and there are only two branches in the county, and no way of getting to either by public transportation, to the extent it currently exists.
As you say, the purpose is to depress the number of voters.
My grandfather had a birth certificate that was issued twenty years after he was born because he volunteered to serve during WW1 and had to prove he was old enough. The hilarious part of his birth certificate is where they had to scratch out the “9” in “19” on the standard birth certificate form and write “8” above it because he was born in 1898. He was very proud of having that birth certificate and had it framed on his wall even though he never was selected to serve because he was illiterate and too short besides. (And was an evil little man but that’s another story).
I went through the first N years of my life without a certified copy of my birth certificate, just that “verification of live birth” form that you mention. Then around 1991, suddenly people started wanting to see official certified birth certificates. School districts wanted to see it before they’d hire you, the state Department of Education wanted to see it before they’d issue you a teaching certificate… WTF is with that? I mean, they fingerprinted me and saw my state-issued ID so clearly they were checking me out with NCIS, and I can understand why they wanted to see my official certified NTE test scores and official college transcripts, but what information does a birth certificate add to that? Especially since, as far as I know, they never verified any of the information on the birth certificate, unlike the Department of State — they just looked at it, maybe made a photocopy, and handed it back to me.
This whole documents fetish that has infested the U.S. since the fall of the Soviet Union is baffling because while the desire to disenfranchise minorities certainly has some part of it, there’s other requests for documents that seem to be just because they can, not because there’s any reason for the request. And they don’t even check out the documents they request with upstream sources to check for validity — they just collect them, file them, and that’s that. Inexplicable. No wonder it’s so easy to get by on forged documents here in the USA, everybody just accepts that a document with the right stamp on it is real, even though it’s meaningless.
Puerto Rico had to go through the process of re-issuing all of its birth certificates because someone burglarized schools and made off with all of the ‘official, stamped, witnessed, and totally legal’ birth certificates the schools had been collecting from kids over the years, and were selling them in the US. These weren’t forgeries, they were the real thing, and as Puerto Ricans are US citizens, they were highly valued among the undocumented Hispanic population on the mainland.
How many people at the DMV are going to know the difference between a Puerto Rican and Guatemalan accent?
Working for law enforcement tends to lower your regard for ‘documents’. Hearing that US Passports are actually being manufactured in Thailand, means that the forgers can start with the real base document, they don’t need to make one from scratch.
What a joke.
There are certain places in certain countries where certain documents and other things and services, can be obtained, when required for very high prices. They are extremely good. Even legitimate credit cards. And for an extra price, they can even ensure that such documents are properly on file where required. Finding them is not at all easy, and it’s not a good idea to look for them. They are extremely good at making themselves useful to a wide variety of organizations, legitimate, and otherwise. They have *friends* everywhere. If they don’t have an agreement with you or your organization, they will ignore you. If you are lucky. Amongst other services they can provide, they have very effective tiger teams. Some of these groups can even be used as mediators, or intermediaries. 🙂
We (in Aus.) have a security classification that is one level above the Prime Minister. The fiction is that it’s used by the Queens representative here (the Governor-General) to communicate with HRM. (It’s one of the reason why we are still *officially* a Monarchy, and why any PM (unless they are complete morons after it’s been carefully explained) will do whatever they have to to ensure we don’t become a Republic). It’s a very handy fiction. Most of what was done in my day was done at that level, and why the agencies were directed by civilians. Plausible deniability. Many other countries do something similar. Howard, of course was a moron. He changed that. Merged departments, appointed Military and Political directors. He even began the great *Republic* debate! He overestimated his power. These things have a lot of inertia, and there are far too many who want the status-quo kept. After all, Governments usually have short run’s, and they come and go. 🙂
Sometimes, a Nations leader will go too far to upset the *natural way of things* and may suffer a fateful accident. It’s happened several times throughout history, even here.
One of the purposes of a Government having a requirement for *official documentation* for this and that, is so that the powers that be can make use of that for their own purposes. People are indoctrinated to not question *official documents*. It’s also an effective way to generate revenue, track citizens who don’t have the capability to game the system, and to sow appropriate confusion when required. 🙂 Luckily for mot people, the ones whose task it is to ensure all this works, are generally overworked, underpaid and/or incompetent. 😉
I do love irony. And I saw it, and still see it, everywhere! 😆
As a result of the Empire for many years the ‘right people’ were in the ‘right positions’ throughout the world, having met as school boys in a limited number of public schools in Britain. That was the real back-channel for much of the 20th century.
Hell, you can get documents that are often better than the real ones in any large US city, the expense is having people in place to ensure they will pass initial inquiries if someone gets suspicious or officious, and getting the people using them to understand when the ‘inquiry’ is a standard request for a bribe. It’s always important to know the standards for bribery among the levels of officials in foreign countries. Paying too much arouses suspicion and makes officials greedy.
The joys of working in the international playpen.