Slear clarifies his WP opinion piece; I’m still paid too much
Our buddy, Jeff Schlogol of the Military Times, wrote to ask Blue Falcon LTC Tom Slear to clarify his opinion piece in the Washington Post this weekend. Apparently, we didn’t understand what he was saying, he says and we shouldn’t get upset, mostly because he didn’t write the “provacative headline”. OK, I’ll give him that one. But it turns out that we weren’t wrong about anything else he wrote;
Q: To be clear, do you feel that benefits for service members are “too generous”?
[Slear:] I believe Tricare is very generous. A 10 or even 20 percent increase in premiums is reasonable. Retired pay is generous enough that the proposed 1-percent cut in the [annual] cost-of-living adjustment for those under 62 is also reasonable.
[…]
Q: Would you also be willing to take a reduction in retirement pay?
[Slear:] I would be willing to take the 1-percent reduction in the [annual] cost-of-living adjustment as proposed in the budget agreement last year. I would be willing to take a larger reduction as long as it’s part of a reassessment of all federal pensions and social security.
Q: Based on the feedback you have received, what do people misunderstand about your arguments for compensation reform?
[Slear:] The common misperception was that I’m for taking a meat cleaver to military benefits. What I did say was that military benefits aren’t sacrosanct — they should be part of the discussion about reducing the federal deficit.
So, I’m not sure what he thinks we misunderstood about his back-stabbing bullshit trying to make veterans look like money-grubbing welfare recipients. Like I said in the initial post, Slear can refuse to accept his pension and refuse to use Tricare – he can make personal decisions if he thinks that he didn’t earn his benefits. But, I don’t see him doing it. He’ll only do that if the rest of us have it forced down out throats.
Well, I’ll only go along with it if I see Congress make the hard choices and slash Federal spending across the board. If Congress closes tax loopholes for illegal immigrants and cracks down on Social Security and welfare spending for the folks who will never work maybe then I’ll think about contributing that which Slear thinks I can afford without reviewing my personal spending.
So, it turns out that we didn’t misunderstand LTC Slear at all. He’s climbing on the Obama Administration’s train to roll over veterans to tell us to sacrifice even more without asking the rest of the country to sacrifice – because we used to go along to get along. As early as 2009, the Obama Administration was coming for our medical benefits when they tried to make service-connected veterans buy insurance and it hasn’t stopped. So, LTC Slear walked off the FOB in the middle of the night and surrendered himself to the White House.
Category: Blue Falcons, Military issues
I love it when people make decisions for me.
I don’t have proof but I’m willing to bet he wasn’t well liked as a unit commander.
S&L: on the other thread about this guy, another commenter indicated Slear appared to be a USMA grad who did his initial 5 years active, then went into the reserve components.
He served 28 years, retiring as an LTC in 2001. Therefore, he almost certainly made LTC under pre-ROPMA rules (fully qualified). To do that, pretty much all he needed was 50% of CGSC, good years, and no derogatory info in his file.
Bottom line: it’s entirely possible he might not have ever commanded a unit, either active or reserve.
And as another commenter on the other thread about Slear observed: he had to apply to receive his retired pay. Receipt at age 60 (or earlier if qualified for early receipt) is NOT automatic for a RC retiree. One has to apply for it.
It’s even better than that, Jonn. This tool is dissembling. What he’s actually saying is that he’s willing to take precisely zero cut in his retired pay.
Slear likely was commissioned at age 22 in 1973. That means he turned 62 last year.
As I recall, the proposed 1% annual COLA reduction was for those under age 62. It would not apply to those age 62 and older.
Since he’s already 62, that proposed reduction would thus not affect him whatsoever.
Frankly, that proposal wouldn’t hurt most in the Reserve Components much, period. Many if not most Reservists can’t draw their retired pay until age 60 anyway (yes, there are exceptions). So most reserve retirees would only be subject to that reduction for 2 years. That’s only about a 2.01% loss in purchasing power.
The people that would get screwed royally are the active duty retirees who start drawing their retired pay in their late 30s to late 40s. That group would take it in the shorts bigtime. A 1% loss per year in purchasing power over 20 years is a cumulative loss of somewhere around 22 percent due to compounding. That’s what someone who starts drawing their retired pay at age 42 would see under the proposal.
Bet he was one of those “leaders” whose favorite saying was “do as I say, not as I do”.
Assclown is what he is…
Blue Falcon is a appropriate for him – probably would be the first one to bitch and moan when he sees the money disappear from his check and his Tricare goes up because “it wasn’t suppose to happen that way”.
I won’t say anything ugly; I’ll just simply say that I wish Slear the opportunity to enjoy extensive medical care…and all the cost that will go with it.
Don’t worry though, Slear; you can always clear the unaffordable collections actions through bankruptcy. Enjoy.
Well, gee, thanks, Tommy, for clarifying that for all us dumbs hicks out here. Apparently we are incapable of understanding all that nuance.
Except that your explanation is exactly the same as what I understood you to say the first time around.
An O-5 believes he is being paid too much and receiving too many benefits, so he wants all benefits cut across the board? Does he know that he earns more in his retirement than a retired E-9?
I say they cut him down to Enlisted-level of pay and see if he still thinks he is receiving too much.
Blue Falcon… already got his, pal!
Okay. Can anyone who was in the Army explain the WTFO it is the Kool aid that makes all the O-5s and above turn into Blue Falcons? I mean we have this chump, the Bateman bubba (who give $ to donuts will also sell out his benefits, just based on his writings), there was some female light col published in a mil-blog talking about how the military is not dealing with sex crimes very well, the list goes on and on.
I mean some or most of these folks are Gen Xers or late Baby Boomers so they should not have this entitlement mentality and should be tough enough to be adults. Yet, the public writing seems to say that nope they are wimps and air thier grievances in public and the complain when they are quoted in context by other that disagree.
Seriously, whiskey tango fox oscar is wrong with the leaders the Army is producing?
Charles:
It’s not all of them. But IMO way too many at O5 and above (and a few at E8 and E9) forget two things:
a. They get treated (and paid) way better than the more junior troops.
b. They don’t stop to think about the long-term repercussions of what they’re proposing, or consider all the applicable possibilities.
That combination seems to be the case here. Slear was essentially a classical “career reservist” (small number of years of initial AD, drilling or IMA time, one TTAD). He was also an officer, and thus relatively well-paid.
Since he was a reservist, his retired pay started at age 60. Ergo, losing 1% per year in purchasing power from his military pension until age 62 is not that big a deal (that’s only a touch over 2% loss cumulatively over 2 years). His family also reputedly has money, which would further mitigate any such loss.
He thus has no concept of how hard this will hit the E7 who retires at age 40 with 22 years of service – and who therefore loses close to 25% in terms of purchasing power from his military pension by the time he turns 62. It doesn’t affect him, and it’s outside his sphere of reference – so he probably didn’t even think about it.
You see this kind of crap all the time. Another example: in the late 1990s, the Army changed out its greens; the new version was pretty much identical to the old (very slight difference in shade of green). New greens cost about $150-200.
No big deal for an O5. Put a crimp in the finances of an O2 or W2 or E7, but was manageable. But it hit a young E4 with a wife and 2 kids pretty hard.
Hondo,
I fully understand what you mean that the concept has escaped most who are proposing cuts because almost all of them would escape the actual hammer that the cutting would create. The other thing for those old enough here to remember, some of these ideas aren’t new. Talking to a family friend who retired after 30 in the early 80s; remembered that similarly sounds were coming from the prog – left think tanks about every thing from the commissary to retirement to veterans health care. The gist is the those programs should be cut down or eliminated because the country needed to tighten it’s belt and the butter side needed to be supported more than the gun side.
The sad thing is that there are kids in who think these are great ideas and don’t understand the long term as you mentioned.
It is just more than the retirees that are going to be thrown under the buses. It will be the veterans, even those who did 4 and got out on honorable discharges will be affected soon. How soon till they start to say the GI Bill is too generous and that it’s provisions need to be rolled back? I mean all I have seen in media has been student loan failures and the trillion dollar loan bubble. There are already grumbling at my school by some about those of us who are using our GI Bill and we don’t “pay” for our education.
It goes back farther than that, Charles. Ask anyone who’s still alive who retired in the 1960s or 1970s about that “guarantee” they had of lifetime military medical care.
Oh I am sure it goes back even further. To roll the discussion into the whole abortion that is the current VA, how often have we as a nation held up the other end of the bargain to the veterans? Yet, I am 35 yrs old, did 13 in before I was released from active duty in 2012 under the Navys downsizing plan. So I don’t have a retirement, my dad and my godfather who retired as W3 and O4E respectively have dogs in these fights. So it angers me to see shenanigans like this twit writings (and the others I mentioned) all because they feel what? Guilty they didn’t do more or that they did do enough to earn it. I am also troubled because as you or Jonn pointed out in the last piece on the VA, that we have grown as a class to a sense of entitlement with respect towards what was in the contracts we signed. I am going to be the Devils advocate here, but if I was still in and had a chance to reform the pension and retirement system, I would only to save it for the rest of us. That is, imho, break it up into 3’s. That is if you came in before date X in 1999 you are stuck with Redux. Whereas if you came in after 2000 you would see less paid out but modified TSP program to have the government do matching up to a certain percentage (like 8% of the donated wages, for a total of 16% going in) for something that a guy who does less than the full 20 is not out the monetary losses of trying to save for retirement in thier 20 and 30s, and can roll it into another retirement plan or if they become a civilian GS worker it gets rolled there (if not already authotized). The folks who are already retired see no changes to thier plans. That is broad brush stokes; but the system does need reform. The issue is all the Cold Warriors who did thier 20… Read more »
The one giant flaw in the Greatest Generation is that they raised a lot of crappy kids. The roots of all the political correctness, entitlement whores, etc. all trace their roots to the hippy and radical movements of the ’60s, when students pontificated on “how it OUGHT to be” and have been trying to polish that particular turd ever since. They in turn have raised a bunch who are with few exceptions just as waterheaded as they were. Thank God there are the exceptions who seem to have their heads screwed on straight… but figure this: Most of the idiot O-5s/above you wonder about are probably what, mid-40s to 50s? that puts them born guess when…. the ’60s and ’70s.
Could be. Maybe they thought Cheech and Chong were teaching history and civics vice performing comedic satire.
wait – they weren’t? Damn…..
Slear is a queer! Sorry, couldn’t pass it up. 😀
Again, what is so important about cutting earned military benefits instead of cutting foreign welfare and illegal benefits?
The priorities are completely retarded. Budget problems? Cut shit not earned. Don’t shit on volunteers that earned benefits.
Slear, it’s obvious that you were either a piss poor communicator or a piss poor Officer. Right now, I’m embracing the power of “And.”
How about we talk about cutting everything else first and look at military benefits last? Since it’s never been done that way before, that approach might actually work.
Hey Slear, SHIT IN YOUR MOMMA’S FACE!! You with the cuts, Bateman on guns, you Unicorn fart-sniffers need to take a look at reality, you’ve been sniffing floor wax fumes in A/C’ed HQ orifice buildings for way too long!! I want to honestly ask both of you dicklicks: WHAT does it feel like to sell your soul for political points?
Go away LTC Spear. You are giving field grades an even worse name.
I have spent thirty years serving, and like everyone else here, I can’t replace all the missed time from my family, friends, work and home. My retirement pay that I’ll receive one day won’t even begin to cover those costs.
If you, LTC, think you receive too much in retirement then send checks marked as GIFT to the US Treasury. You’ll find they’ll cash that check very quickly with little or no effort. And I’m sure Tricare will gladly let you overpay on your premiums too. Give it a try and then, SHUT UP!!
Spear, not Spear. I hate autocorrect.
I quit, y’all know who I mean.