How to dismantle the military
Our buddy, Rick Maze, at the Military Times, writes about how the liberal think tank, The Center For American Progress thinks they can dismantle our national security apparatus by slicing to pieces the things that make military service attractive to prospective recruits. Attractive enough to make a career out of service. The smelly hippies who hate the military suggest that the military cap pay raises, reduce the healthcare benefit that retirees have already paid for with their service, and reduce the retirement compensation to 40% of their pay instead of 50% and make retirees wait until they’re 60 years old to get it;
Similarly, the report endorses many of the Defense Department’s proposals for cutting health care costs by raising fees, mostly on retirees and their families. But the report goes a step further: “To truly restore the Tricare program to stable financial footing, the Defense Department should enact measures to reduce the overutilization of medical services and limit double coverage of working-age military retirees,” the report says.
One idea would be to modify Tricare for Life benefits for Medicare-eligible retirees so that the program would not cover the first $500 of costs per year and would cover only 50 percent of the next $5,000.
Another idea would be to mandate that working-age retirees could only have Tricare benefits if they or their spouses do not have access to employer-provided health benefits. The report suggests this would be an income-based restriction but does not say what the cutoff should be.
Yeah, I dare them to suggest the same things for Social Security. Tell those people on SSI for life that they can’t get it until they’re 60 and that their out-of-pocket healthcare costs are zooming up. Tell Social Security recipients that you’re going to slash their benefit. I’m not saying that Social Security recipients are itinerant lay abouts, what I’m saying is that stupid hippies would never slash their own social programs the way they attack the military’s benefit programs.
I want to compliment Rick Maze for finally noticing a liberal group and calling it such in his article. I think this is a first for him.
Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden, Liberals suck
“I want to compliment Rick Maze for finally noticing a liberal group and calling it such in his article. I think this is a first for him.” You must be in an especially good mood. Maze’s calling the Center for American Progress “liberal-leaning” is like saying Jeffrey Dahmer had unusual tastes in food. Today’s feature on that whacko Center’s website calls for reducing carbon pollution to avoid future Frankenstorms. A substory heralds the benefits of fewer religiously affiliated Americans. You can call him Rick Maze. To me he’ll always be a Dick.
I’m trying positive reinforcement for a change.
@2. Screw that.
OK, thanks for the laughs, guys!
I think we need to try out these suggestions before implementing them on the military.
How about California’s public employee unions? I’d think they would be eager to embrace the changes.
Well, these aren’t hippies who smell like goats. These are uniformed officers, commissioned, by warrant and non-commissioned, and civil servants who are developing the plans, policies, and procedures to accomplish all that is alleged.
Part of it is the Guardians who must purify the service so that it exists as it mythically did in the 1990s. Part of it is there is a rough economy out there, and if they don’t do this, they could be on the street too.
From my own experience, this has been going on for many years, but the war masked the activity.
Goat-smelling hippies wear suits starting with a 200-thread count. They went to the Ivy League and drive Jaguars and drink Pabst Blue Ribbon because their union dad and uncles did the same.
As for me, it’s been over a year, and still no proof the Army will pay me any retirement. So the stripping of retirees of their earned benefits is already happening.
Hell, they’ve already done enough over the past few years to dissuade anyone from making the military a career. I’d even go farther and say they’ve screwed the pooch so far kids are even reluctant to sign up, if they’ve seen what our guys and gals go through when dealing with the DVA for services, going back to school, etc.
malclave @ 5
You nailed it. I’ve been living in the San Diego (the “conservative” part of California) for three years now, and it has been an eye-opener.
The pension systems here are breath-taking and budget-busting. I have no problem with police and firefighters having the early retirement and generous pensions, in part because these jobs are dangerous and physically demanding. Firemen in particular tend to develop physical injuries over time because of the things they do on the job.
And in California, ALL the state employees have the same rules, because it isn’t “fair” to reward isolated groups of employees.
Unbelievable.
valerie–Wanna cure that? Make the lard-asses at the DMV man a fire line outside Alpine for a season or two.
It will not get better, with less than 1% of the population serving the military becomes an easy target because it has less and less of a voice in our society. Like it or not votes matter and the military is such a small minority that the votes of its’ members are not a force in our political landscape.
Saying you support the military while reducing its budget and taking away benefits from its personnel carries very little consequence to an incumbent. Especially in districts not directly associated with the military. Indirect association is far more difficult to gauge for most people, the laws of unintended consequences often come into play in these cases but with politics such a short game enterprise these days those unintended consequences often don’t come into play for several terms.
Yup that’ll probably kill the military. Funny how none of their hero projects were on the choping board for the budget
This article, from the Daily Mail (UK) shows that it isn’t just the US that is cutting back on military spending:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-2229832/Remembrance-Sunday-2012-How-British-Army-shrunk-dramatically-100-years.html
Granted, the Brits have only 102,000 in their Army, but their taking a 20% cut in personnel.