Jennifer Mittelstadt; The Rise of the Military Welfare State
Chock Block sends us a link to an essay by Jennifer Mittelstadt, a pointy-headed associate professor at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. Apparently she wrote a book entitled “The Rise of the Military Welfare State” that just came out recently, and she bolsters her supposition that the benefits members of the military receive in exchange for their youth, their health, their families is some sort of “government social welfare”. In fact, if you downloaded the text of this piece, removed every instance of the phrase “military welfare state”, it would only be a few hundred words. The phrase appears in nearly every sentence.
The US military has always performed social welfare of some kind or another. Over its long history, it provided daily support to its conscripts – food, shelter, clothing and medical care – and more elaborate benefits such as homes, family support and clubs for the career force and officers. The military also rewarded citizen conscripts for their faithful service during wartime. During the Revolutionary War, the Continental Army offered veterans land or a cash bounty. After the Civil War, the military offered veterans pensions. And after the Second World War, millions of former service personnel were guaranteed unprecedented education, training and housing subsidies.
Military leaders embarked on a new and more ambitious social welfare programme after 1973. That year, President Richard Nixon and Congress ended the draft and mandated an all-volunteer force. Military leaders could no longer force citizens to join – they had to convince them. And one of their most vital tools was social welfare benefits.
And there’s the rub. Military service, in many instances is difficult and demanding. The Pentagon needs to retain experienced troops, troops who are smart enough to be conduits for their institutional knowledge between the generations so that the military doesn’t have to relearn the basics of war fighting every time they go to fight our nation’s battles, that “continuation of politics by other means” thing.
Unlike European countries that provided nearly universal social welfare to all citizens, the US had only a patchwork social welfare system consisting of various public and private safety nets. Military leaders stepped into the gaps between them. They decided, in the words of the army motto, ‘to take care of their own’. They expanded the benefits traditionally reserved for the relatively few members of the career force and officers to every single member of the volunteer force and his or her family.
I guess that the associate professor is letting her covetousness show through, because she doesn’t get the same “safety net” that mere soldiers get because of their career choice.
The modern military welfare state of the post-1973 era never stimulated social welfare for the populace. Quite the opposite. As a smaller number and narrower cross-section of Americans volunteered for military service in the late 20th century, the divide between the military and civilians grew. So, too, did the divide between the new military welfare state and the existing civilian one. From the 1970s to the early ’90s, while many civilian welfare programmes contracted, public and private unions declined, and employers cut private employment benefits, the military expanded its welfare functions.
How did this happen?
She claims that the military pursued a “politics of separation” from the civilian world, as well they should. Look at the relative crime-free environments of military installations where military policemen still pull people over for “rolling stops” through stop signs and number of other minor infractions compared to what happens outside the gates of those installations.
Despite what many Leftists claim, folks in the military are the “best and brightest” who have myriad opportunities for employment in the civilian world and the military needs to attract them to a job where sacrifice is a daily occurrence and part of the job description. Not only do they need to attract folks to the military, they need to retain those people even after they’re aware of the sacrifice.
If the military welfare system is so down right good, why aren’t inner city youths beating down the doors at recruiters’ office to take advantage of it. I remember advising an unemployed young inner city man to visit his local military recruiter. His response was that “It’s not the 1950s”.
Reagan did more than bankroll the military welfare state. He leveraged his support of military welfare to attack the civilian welfare state. The most obvious example concerned the revival and reinvention of the GI Bill. Though previously used as an education programme to reward veterans for service, Reagan brandished the new GI Bill as a weapon against higher-education assistance for civilians – the student loans and grants so many Americans had come to depend on. Reagan and his team cast these programmes as ‘benefits [given] to those who were not serving their country’, and thus undeserved.
I’d like to see links to those quotes by President Reagan. But, even if he did say those things, he had a point. In the 70s, I couldn’t afford college because the grants and the loans didn’t exist (lucky for me, it turns out) like they exist now. If you look at the problems that those loans and grants have created in recent years, and now the entitlement attitude of college students these days, maybe Reagan was right, they don’t deserve government subsidized educations at the advanced level.
I’d remind Ms. Mittelstadt that the pay and the benefits of people in the military had been severely eroded by inflation and inattention during the Nixon, Ford and Carter years. I remember getting a pay raise of $22/month when I was promoted from E-4 to Sergeant in 1978. And, oh, yeah, Carter tried to bribe us with a 25% pay raise the month before the election in 1980, so it wasn’t just Reagan. Before that, Carter paid us pay raises with a colorful bed spread and wooden beds and wall lockers. No one was reenlisting for that benefit package.
But, if Ms. Mittelstadt is so envious of the benefits that the members of the military provides, why isn’t she at the recruiters’ desk putting her signature on the dotted line for the job security and medical benefits? Clearly she’s not getting that at Rutgers.
Category: Dumbass Bullshit
That name sounds so much like mittelschmerz, and is in this case soooo appropriate.
Roger that, Doc.
The colleges have a list of the most “dumbed down” morons they have graduated….this is the list they hire from!
Not to ruffle feathers, but I did actually read an interesting study on the evolution of college graduates which become teachers.
The skinny of it is that teachers used to come from what was the top ten percent of graduates and now the system has evolved to a point where teachers are generally in the lowest 10% of college graduates.
If you can’t do anything else with your degree, it’s ok, because you can always teach.lol
Let’s see. I was on active duty for 24 years…working in various positions, but the key here is working and she wants to equate my benefits with a system of entitlements afforded to people for simply falling out of a vajajay on American soil.
This is a basic logical fallacy in that the government pays welfare therefore all government payments are welfare. Such a premise isn’t fit for an undergraduate paper, let alone any form of graduate work.
but…I’d hit it!
I’d hit it too….with a sock full of pennies.
Make sure it’s a double sock, so that you don’t lose the pennies.
Don’t hit it unless you can wipe that smirk off her simpering, smug mug.
On the other hand, she’d be telling you where, when, what, how much, and talk her way through the whole thing until you’d roll over and go home.
Head down, ass up……Bam!
I’m sure I don’t have to tell so obviously accomplished a perv as yourself that there are a wide variety of gag-type products available out there, but I’d seriously consider a purchase in that area if you want to pursue this further.
But….but…then I can’t hear the moaning stridor coming from her overburdened trachea. I kinda like that, unless she sounds like Fran Drescher snorting helium in which case the ball gag would be welcome.
Now, now-I said nothing about a “ball” gag, just that there is a wide variety of gags available. Use a ring type gag for all I care. But I beseech you, for whatever remains of your sanity, if you absolutely must-do not allow her to form words-one of you will not survive.
I find it difficult to follow her flawed logic because it seems that many of her points are based on inaccuracies (for instance, I don’t think there are more than ten million active duty troops).
However, I find your threats of assault and violent (but not quite rape) sexual acts to be offensive.
Before you insult me, I don’t care what you think, so save your keystrokes.
I challenge you to quote where I have threatened anyone.
lol…I don’t even see a microagression, let alone a threat
Some people just can’t have anything but vanilla, I suppose.
Both of us being in the medical field, where we regularly have to deal with the wide variety of human foibles and perversities (and laugh about it to stay sane) I sometimes wonder if others without that perspective think there is something seriously askew with how we look at the world.
But yeah, I am pretty sure that I made no threats (thanks for having my back).
..and I will defend to the death your right to your opinion.
However, all I personally said about her in a nutshell is that I wanna do her doggie style and listen to her moaning heavily in a state of vigorous sexual pleasure. Dunno what your interpretation was.
Before someone so rudely pointed out that she looks kinda like Bruce Jenner…which pretty much ended my fantasy right there, dammit.
Not insulting you red, but you made an accusation and got appropriate and reasonable responses. Seems fair that you do the same. Just sayin.
Too late, you already insulted me.
You seem to have the same sense of fairness of the average fifteen year old: You only demand fair treatment when you aren’t getting what you want.
In this case you seem to want me to wink and slap you on the back along with the other guys. Not going to happen.
You’re right, you both carefully phrased your comments so that they do not technically constitute a threat. Very clever, but still offensive and uncalled for.
These comments were offensive and inappropriate, but more importantly irrelevant.
I am also offended because of the mental image you invoke. When I hear ball gag, I can’t help but imagine you both in the Gimp scene from Pulp Fiction. Neither of you is the Bruce Willis character.
So you admit that you intentionally mischaracterized what was said above? Neither of us tthreatened anyone, but you felt free to toss it out there anyway? But I guess since you were offended that makes it OK to purposefully lie about what we said-who here is the 15 year old again?
Thanks for the reply Red. I find it disturbing that you think I want you to slap me. (see what I did there?)
Goodbye 2015; the year when everybody was offended by everybody else.
I take it reddevil hasn’t had a tryst with a girlfriend/whatever who is totally pissed off at someone else and want to take it out on poor ol’ reddevil.
Geezo Pete, get off the track much?
Unless you can find some way to rattle this blonde bimp’s cage a bit, that smug ‘I’m smarter than you are’ smirk from her assumed height of pseudo-intellectual superiority isn’t going to go away. All you’re pissing your pants about is angry sex.
Try flattening her argument with a counter-argument using real-world facts, instead.
All I’m saying is nothing conveys “Your argument is invalid” like filling her full of swimmers and making her sleep in the wet spot.
That still wouldn’t shut her mouth. or get her to admit she’s wrong.
That smirk of hers has the ‘I dare you to even think about looking at my ass’ about it.
Doesn’t matter, had sekks
Oh, you’re hopeless. I’m trying to reason with you and you think with your nuts.
I shoulda known better.
I’ve made plenty o’posts here in which I was using my frontal lobes vs my limbic system, just not in this particular part of the discussion. I can multitask, where and when is my choice. It’s not as though anything is going to change based upon anything I write here.
Don’t go getting defensive on me! I was just pointing at the obvious.
Yep.
Defensive?!?…not me…I’m wearing a certain college professor’s freshly flayed integument over my own. I am invincible….and kinda pretty.
I just have to ask, does your blood just produce it’s own penicillin??
After having unprotected sex in more than 30 countries over the last several decades I have acquired immunity from just about everything.
The CDC has me on speed dial in case they need antibodies immediately.
The Army motto is “take care of their own”?!?
Anyway, classic lefty smug face in the photo.
Well, it’s not as if anyone else was taking care of the troops. This lady is an idiot. There is base pay that we earned, emphasis on earned, but I don’t know any service member that worked a 40 hour week. Inspection coming up? You are looking at a 60 hour week, if you are lucky. Don’t make any plans, you have duty this weekend. Time for that Drployment, pack all your shit, kiss the wife and kids goidbye, go to the rally point at 03:30, to climb onto a truck and transported to the airstrip where you wait 14 hours in the hot sun or cold rain waiting for the aircraft to show up. And when you get there, people want to kill you. Yeah, we had it easy, once we found our safe spaces.
Not many other jobs where just training can kill you and a bunch of others.
The wing up to Brunswick (Patrol Wing 5) lost 3 aircraft and crews in an 18-month period, the first just a week or so before Christmas. Myself and 2 other guys had to go through the mail and separate out all their Christmas presents, cards,etc, for return to their families. Not a lot of fun, that.
But the lady hasn’t a clue what service is like, or why folks do it. More ivory-tower BS propaganda to fuel the message/agenda of the self-appointed betters and self-appointed aristocracy they feel our nation needs.
Kipling wrote about folks like her in “Tommy”.
Tell me about it, AW1… I was the Decedent Affairs Officer at the last hospital I was stationed at. 22 Marines and one Sailor died in 24 months on station… and I was involved in the process of sending them home. Most were young enough to be my son… some senseless stuff, some killed in training accidents or killed on liberty.
Hack said it best, “this lady is an idiot”…
I heartily encourage today’s youth to learn from her parents’ mistake and MAKE SURE TO USE BIRTH CONTROL!!! She’s also a living breathing argument AS TO why people need to have YOUR LOCAL LIBERALS SPAYED OR NEUTERED.
I think it would be much more constructive to put her into the reality-show world of real-time military life, and I do NOT mean sitting at a desk answering phones and taking messages.
Now, I don’t know what the hours were that my niece the Army trauma nurse kept in Baghdad, but I do know that she developed bursitis as a result of being on her feet for prolonged periods.
Just a bunch of people sitting on their thumbs, right?
I’d enjoy night helocasting with her into an open ocean for a 3 mile surface swim with ruck and rifle…there’s some reality. Then if she survives that, I can find something difficult for her to try.
Yeah, it got me how she interpreted “This We’ll Defend” into a kind of union version of “We Got Ours” and we ain’t giving any of it back.
Spoken from someone who probably got a side aside because of her minority status as a Woman.
Last time I checked there is no workmans comp for injuries in the military. So after wrecking one knee, one rotator cuff, and a spinal fusion I guess I was just sucking off the system that HER employer does not pay taxes into. Talk about Social Welfare, her Univiersity and all the others take FULL advantage of their tax free status and raised tuition over 100% of inflation. Many of those on the GI Bill.
POS. Those who can do, DO. Those who cannot, TEACH.
FU
I also paid into my GI Bill and am using it currently (chasing a PhD). Gotta say it’s fucking awesome, but it’s not welfare, it is a benefit. It’s no different from other perks offered in other jobs in order to sustain personnel levels and assure an organization continues to exist.
Leftism is the cancer of the world, and these leftist educators like this bimbo are spreading that cancer onto the flower of our youth.
I should write a book titled ‘The Rise of the Higher Education Welfare State’ detailing the largesse of professors doing little work without risk of losing their coveted positions or being held accountable based on tenure. They have plenty of time to spew out liberal propaganda articles, as well as ant-gun manifestos.
Meanwhile, the economically disadvantaged receive free college from Pell Grants and state aid while middle class families borrow and pays out of pocket.
I agree Pat,
That’s what cracks me up when I hear politicians and families lamenting that the poorest people can’t afford to go to school.
Generally speaking, the poorer you are the easier it is to go to school.
anybody can go to college…they may need remedial classes to get there and no one can guarantee success once there, but anyone can go to college.
And you know Lars is drooling over reading this entire book or whatever the hell it is…
Buck Fernath and Buck the rest of them….
I remember those nice (highly flammable) multi color sheets. We had one wool blanket and that thing. The multi color thing hade to one the bunk at all times.
I have never worked for a civilian employer who demand the following of me:
– on-call 24 hrs a day, 7 days a week
– full weekends of on-duty, including holiday weekends, with no extra time off or OT pay as compensation
– a barracks so old that cockroaches the size of small ships inhabited most parts of it, and we named them
– work space next door to a dangerous animal (nesting female alligators) with no protective enclosure separating the critters from us
– restriction to work space while on duty
– a demand that you attend functions in which you had no interest and were no job-related
I could go on, but you know what I mean.
I see that she conveniently forgot to include the World War I War Bond Veterans who were treated like criminals when the Government refused to give them the money they’d been promised during the Depression, far more than 10 years after the end of WWI.
I had a boss who griped a lot about the “generous” military benefits.
“You guys get free medical, free dental, free meals, free housing-”
I’d had enough and cut him off. “Yes, but you can’t tell me ‘I want you to go over there and die. Big difference.’ “
Used every single penny of my $36,000 Army College Fund / GI Bill combination getting my bachelors degree. Also worked full fucking time as well.
Go choke on a Taliban dick you self righteous kaitlyn jenner look-alike whore.
Congrats on your educational endeavors OldManchu always great when Joes continue to excel.
However:
Everything was faptastically fine in my brain housing group making this fukk pig squeal until you brought up Jenner…thanks for ruining the moment.lol
/all in fun
Lol I’m glad I could help.
I wanted to think she was hot, but then I saw Kaitlyn. Now I can’t shake the thought….
Why do these fucking idiots always start out these premises with a basic logic fail? If I work for an entity that rewards me with a benefit package as a component of compensation how can that be equated to any form of welfare? As a civilian with a skill set that certain manufacturers found important to their success I was compensated with a great many things besides money, from credit cards for automobile related expenses to educational reimbursements to even having access to a company vacation home for senior executives. Were those manufacturers offering me welfare? I don’t think so, I think they were trying to offer me compensation that would over ride their competition so I would not be tempted to take my skill set elsewhere. It’s no different with career military personnel many of whom were making far less than their civilian counterparts during the bulk of their careers, any benefits they receive are a component of compensation designed to retain that military personnel’s particular skill set among the active force for as long as possible. Now our good professor here, she would probably be pissed off if we were to equate her compensation package with welfare as she’s a state employee and contributes absolutely zero to the GDP of the nation and is only siphoning money out of the system that those of us who are actually creating wealth through manufacturing contribute into the system. One public sector employee bashing other public sector employees is always entertaining and illustrates further her inability to tie logical similarities into their appropriate relationships. None of the public sector produces wealth for the nation if we are going to be brutally honest, all of the public sector siphons wealth from those creating wealth. PERIOD. Consequently those of us actually creating wealth view the entire public sector as a black hole we must continually feed with money, and thanks to the likes of this asshole much of that money is apparently wasted on morons. The military is one area that our nation absolutely requires in order to function and exist. Those in… Read more »
Well said.
I’ve only skimmed the article, and will read it in full later, but I think the point of the article isn’t that the military is a welfare state in the ‘gimme free stuff’ way of thinking, but rather how the military has sustained and in some cases expanded the care of its members through various programs (aka ‘welfare’, in a broad sense), despite an erosion of such programs in the civilian sector. And, also, where it’s gone wrong with these programs. For example:
This hardly seems like an indictment of the men and women serving. It’s more targeted at the economic issues -the contracting out of support programs (again, ‘welfare’)- and how they’ve failed the men and women who serve.
It seems, in broad terms, to just be talking about what’s happening in the military as an indicator of what might happen in the civilian services & benefits sector since the two are largely independent since the 1970s.
I’d point out that the “Walter Reed scandal” wasn’t actually at Walter Reed Medical center proper, but rather across the street at a hotel used for out-patient housing.
My understanding is that Building 18 was a hotel before it was acquired by WRAMC, but at the time of the various complaints, it was an official part of the Walter Reed facility. Is that not correct?
If it is correct, I think ‘Walter Reed scandal’ is appropriate. If Mass General had problems like these with an outpatient building, we’d still call it the ‘Mass General scandal’. Both places have top notch people and medical capabilities, but that doesn’t mean they’re immune to criticism when they drop the ball.
No that’s not correct. It was a hotel. I stayed in it once and it was always a shit hole. I think that it was one of those amalgamations that was privately owned but maintained by government contractors. I wrote about it 2007.
If it was a hotel, and not a part of WRAMC, then I stand corrected. I’ll look up your old posts.
I’d love to know how she considers welfare has been cut back when we have 50 million on food stamps, fourth generation welfare families, etc.
Since 1965, the so-called Great Society programs have redistributed roughly $22-25 TRILLION of wealth. Is poverty eliminated? Hardly. Do we have a strong family system with a cohesive community? Oh, fuck no! If anything, all these gimme have done is create an entire entitlement society, where now even the so-called “conservative” party feels compelled to promise free shit for votes.
I’m not sure, but I don’t think that’s a reason to dismiss what she’s saying outright. For an invented but reasonable example, let’s say that ‘welfare’ relating to educational costs has doubled since 1965. In that sense it hasn’t been cut back. But now let’s say that educational costs have gone up 5x in that same time-frame. Now, relative to what the educational ‘welfare’ got you before, it has indeed shrunk.
That’s all separate from the genuine issue you raise about the effectiveness of these programs.
Actually, no. What that means is it hasn’t increased as much. It has still increased.
An increase is an increase – period. It may be an increase in current-dollar terms, in real terms, in both, or mixed (increase in current-dollar terms but decrease in real terms due to inflation). The claim that something not increasing enough (or as much as originally projected, or as something else has increased) is a “decrease” is simply a damned lie perpetrated by leftists and socialists to justify an ever-continuing increase in funding for their pet projects.
Don’t believe the above? Try telling the IRS that you shouldn’t be taxed on interest income because it “didn’t increase as much as the stock market (or the Yuan or inflation), so my account balance actually decreased”.
So, in this Military.com article, where they talk about BAH ‘cuts’ because the proposed increase was less than market rate, the reason is… it was written by leftists and socialists? And this is just the first example I found, I can find many, many more. Here’s the relevant quote: “It would slow the growth of basic allowances for housing (BAH) by another 4 percent over the next two to three years, in addition to the 1 percent approved for this year.” [1]
Language is imprecise; people often talk about one thing, and a different group reads it while focusing on something else. Context matters. I was simply illustrating how something can appear to be increased, yet still effectively be a cut.
[1]: http://www.military.com/daily-news/2015/02/02/pentagon-2016-budget-includes-pay-raise-more-bah-cuts-tricare.html
Military.com has an agenda. The agenda – to “play” to its audience – is fairly obvious.
Part of what they refer to as “cuts” are not in fact cuts. However, some of them are – an increase in a fee charged for, say, Tricare or the establishment of a fee where one previously did not exist is a cut in the value of that deferred compensation. (And that’s precisely what benefits such as Tricare are: deferred compensation in kind, provided in exchange fora lower salary than would otherwise have been paid.) Further, the reduction in commissary subsidies is in fact a cut.
That’s talking current-dollar terms terms. In real terms, any COLA that does not keep pace with inflation when Federal law mandates it do so is arguably a cut in real terms. Unlike many other Federal benefits, military pay is required by Federal law to keep pace with inflation.
The logic failure is where she exposes her prejudice, VOV. She is operating on the stereotype that too many liberals love: that the military is composed entirely of dumb yokels who don’t do anything (unless of course there’s a war going on, then you’re massacring villages), don’t have any skills or education of any kind, and you’re probably from one of those “unenlightened” parts of the country they look down their collective nose at. Never mind the large number of Army and Marine infantry, tankers, cav scouts, and MPs who survived the last 15 years by gaining a level of knowledge about various middle eastern cultures and ethnic groups that a sociology or anthropology professor could only dream of. Or the medics and corpsmen who are trained to stabilize major trauma using improvised materials that most surgeons would never think of. Or the 19- 20-year-old kids who are trusted to properly maintain the ridiculously complex systems of $120million-dollar F-22s (because they never, ever break and surely fix themselves by magic, right?). Or the Navy technicians who have to spend four years in a rigorous college-level technical school, and upon graduation are responsible for running nuclear fucking reactors. Or any of the myriad other odd jobs that require skill, training, and constant practice, and without which Uncle Sam’s big stick ceases to function. Never mind the threat to life or limb. Or the level of diversity (supposedly the Holy Grail of liberal intellectuals), be it racial, economic, or political that’s present in the military. Or the fact that active military personnel and veterans are statistically more likely to have a college education than the general public who’ve never served, because John Kerry (did you know he was in Vietnam?) said, “stay in school or go to Iraq.” I was never in the military, but I know this stuff. A college educator (it’s getting harder and harder to use that term with a straight face) is supposed to learn stuff and pass it on to others for a living, and has considerable resources at their disposal for doing so. So why can’t… Read more »
Apparently more than this allegedly highly educated ditz.
I’ve long thought that military life was at least somewhat similar to living in a communist state. Mind it’s not a perfect comparison. All kinds of necessities are provided directly or by allowance–food, transport, clothing, shelter, education, etc, but at the cost of a helluva lot of personal freedoms. Most of the bill of rights is signed away to some degree, there is no great divide between “home” and work life, hours were long on a scale most never fully appreciate.
Not that I’m really complaining–though it sounds like it, it’s really just an observation and far from a perfect one. I wouldn’t trade my military experiences for any college in the world. I did more growing up that first half year of service than most folks do in a decade.
Jim Webb refers to the military as a “socialist meritocracy”, which is an imperfect formulation, but probably close enough for government work.
68W58,
We commonly refer to being in the military as a “monarchy supporting a democracy” in that we take our orders and carry them out.
That being said, this woman doesn’t seem to comprehend that all the benefits we receive are needed. We get food because we are in the field, at sea, or in the air more than we are near alternative places to eat. We get shelter because we are told to move every 3-5 years.
Medical because the job requires us to be in good physical condition. Family services because we are gone from families 7-12 months at a time.
Maybe she would like teaching from inside a GP medium in a combat zone with a steady diet of MRE’s for a little perspective.
The biggest difference between the military and a communist or socialist meritocracy is that we VOLUNTEERED
(DAMN-hit the wrong key- to continue)
we VOLUNTEERED to join the military. And if things get too onerous, we can volunteer to leave as well. Can’t do that with a communist or socialist government state.
(I’m discounting overall small numbers of douches, malcontents, and psychos that are involuntarily separated for many and various reasons).
I doubt she equates her pay and benefits package to Corporate Welfare.
That’s the liberal motto: “It’s okay when WE do it.”
I guess that entire pesky concept of “Exchanging labor and time for labor and benefits” never breeched that addled brain of hers.
And she will argue to the death that tenure is a necessary protection of academic freedom and not a guarantee of a job till death.
All the while sucking the public teat at a state funded organization….most entertaining truly.
With no accountability for the quality of work performed.
She needs to go suck a taliban dick! Quality aside.
Interesting stuff. This little piece is full of words spelled the British english way, yet some of her other works have the same words spelled the American way. Plagiarism??? Hmmmm.
Anyway, I’ve always gotten a kick out of those who were jealous of the extravagant lifestyles and pay and benefits we received in the military. Makes me feel so special…
as long as she properly cites her sources it’s not plagiarism…at the doctoral level attribution is ridonkulous. Also, you often have to submit papers through safeassign and that program is like a superpogue that will detect the amount of the paper was another’s work, so not citing is scholastic seppuku.
I know that. Had to submit many of my papers for that check too.
I just find it rather odd that she doesn’t seem to know which style of English to write in, American or British. Just causes me to cast doubt on some of work.
She also was one of the fearless academics at Rutgers who petitioned to keep Condy Rice from speaking there in 2014.
Condi Rice…oh…fapfapfapfapfapfapfap
BUT …. how many times did she use the word narrative? It is de rigueur now-a-days to use that word to mean almost anything, donchaknow; e.g., “cultural narrative.” Did she say anything like “military welfare state narrative?”
Okay … I confess: I listen to NPR too much …. but, but, but … only in order to better understand the liberal narrative. [Oops, see what I just did?]
Oh … I also benefited from the GI bill; used it for both my BA and MPA. I suppose I’m guilty of the “Military & Civil Service Double-Dip Welfare State [Narrative].”
I was taught to “know your enemy”, so I too have been known to listen to NPR.
Much like the liberal NW.
Whine, bitch and cry while coveting thy neighbors good fortune and admonishing his hard work.
You know, the neighbor that works hard and put themselves through school by joining the military and serving their country.
I want more, I demand more, but I want to do less and then complain about it.
I get tired of hearing it. I just tell them: “If you do not like it, surrender your passport and I will buy you a one-way ticket to anywhere you want to go”.
This usually results in s “Fuck you, man. You don’t know” followed by a door slamming and crickets.
That smug self-righteous smirk is begging for the mushroom stamp of approval. I signed a contract with the United States Government to provide certain services in exchange for certain benefits. It’s not welfare, it’s business.
Ditto. Did that twice. I think my job skill levels and general comprehension are most likely higher than hers. But then, I don’t come from an academic background. Mine is more global.
Jennifer Mittlestadt has a PhD, and her academic background specializes in post World War II 20th Century. Her essay demonstrates a failure to do proper academic research (working on my doctorate
), and she ignores the facts and realities behind military service throughout history… thus putting her history expertise in question. I’d say this woman should be ashamed of herself, but looking the amount of licensing she gave herself with this screed, I don’t think that’ll happen.
I’m going to rebut this woman’s screed. 😀 When she worked on her PhD, she should’ve learned the importance of properly basing one’s conclusion on the facts, and making the proper logical deductions, inferences, etc.
I’d like to see the methodologies, and references, that this ding bat used to fart that essay out.
Working on my doctorate in Education, I can say with some degree of certainty that nowadays, it’s the norm to find facts that support the conclusion you’ve already drawn, rather than base your conclusion on said facts. That’s the new liberal methodology … or is it really “new”?
Not the norm where I’m getting my doctorate in (business). It’s a good way to get eaten alive, in fact one learner utilized a similar tactic in her commentary that essentially trashed US products. The smack down she got was priceless.
It always amazes me that some supposedly highly educated persons, generally of leftist political persuasion, seem unable to grasp the inherent difference between earned compensation (immediate or deferred) and unearned income redistribution. And that they often seem to mistake what is actually compensation-in-kind for “benefits”.
Virtually all military benefits qualify as the former (compensation, either immediate or deferred). Virtually all other forms of government assistance are the latter (unearned income redistribution). The only exceptions I can think of are civilian benefits/pensions and workman’s comp for Federal employees injured on the job. Even the Ponzi scheme generally referred to Social Security is in essence an inter-generational income redistribution program vice compensation.
This is actually a book, released in October… even if some of it’s content was at one time reviewed for validity as a researched paper. once it becomes a book it’s likely been chocked ful o’shite and onions.
da book:
http://www.amazon.com/Rise-Military-Welfare-State/dp/0674286138/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1451589240&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=The+Rise+of+the+Military+Welfare+State%E2%80%9D
I didn’t see it mentioned on the NY Times best seller’s list. lol
da vaginal life support unit’s (VLSU) CV:
http://history.rutgers.edu/faculty-directory/396-mittelstadt-jennifer
she has a lot of preoccupation with the military for someone that apparently never served. IME that’s generally not a good thing.
She probably got dropped by a PFC in a bar once upon a time, and she still feels the butthurt.
The little Princess has been beating this drum for years. She is nothing special. She found a topic to write her thesis on and is milking it for all she can.
What lead her into the topic was the expansion of benefits to the military during a time when welfare benefits to mostly single mothers was being restricted.
I might have stumbled around Rutgers a time or two while I was trying to complete my GED. Nice place, very pretty, exceptional landscaping.
The place is infested with people who believe they are so intellectually enlightened they have become no earthly good.
It is the Mecca of Mental Masturbation. The only saving grace was unlike Berkeley most of the women still used cosmetics.
They generally look at testosterone as some sort of disability in public, they seemed to express an appreciation for it after a few drinks.
Okay, I’ve reviewed all the opinions contained herein, and based of her complete lack of hands-on experience, I would have to say that she doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Her judgmental ‘essay’ is not based on facts, but rather on her personal bias.
I think it would do her, and others like her, a world of good to be required to spend a minimum of two years on active duty, starting as E-1 like the rest of us, and during the first year do what the real grunts do: menial tasks that are beneath her notice.
Somebody has to run the floor bugger, you know. Oh, sorry – that should be ‘buffer’.
Most of all, I would truly like to see that smug smirk wiped off her face with a dose of hardcore reality. I know – it will never happen, but I can dream, can’t I?
“A dose of hardcore”, hmmm. I only have hours left on probation. You keep teasing me.
Gosh, I really have some insightful thoughts on your post.
I hope you saved me some gravy.
Gravy? How much do you want?
I’m making cheddar biscuits for supper.
Tomorrow being New Year’s Day, pancakes and sausage with real maple syrup.
Nuts. Now I’m starving to death.
I am making Lasagna. Yes, the pasta is home made. Bruschetta with Tomato and Basil and a Caprese Salad.
Still struggling with the wine selection. I will probably go with a Sangiovese I have been saving.
Skimming the comments and so…Is this thing allowed to breed?
Frankly, I don’t think she wants to breed. Children would be a massive inconvenience in her schedule, you see.
I tried to find a way to comment on the article, I could not figure it out. Whatever.
Social welfare? Oh yeah, I remember. In 1970 I left my job making $250 a week so that after I made PFC I could earn $127 a month. They fed and housed us because soldiers who die of starvation and exposure seem to be unable to fulfill the mission. Funny how that works.
“Jane, you ignorant slut” should be paid $127 a month. Then she can tell me how she makes out on that.
Survival should be for the fit. Living in a fantasy world is not good exercise.
Suggestion, apply Throat Punches until I get tired.
Amazon has a customer review area. Post up!
Linkee—> http://www.amazon.com/The-Rise-Military-Welfare-State/dp/0674286138
Is Jennifer the east coast version of the Infallible One?
Long lost soul mate of the Infallible One?
Just spitballing.
Ok…ahmmma newb
Who is the infallible one?
It is he whose name shall not be spoken or written.
He is just like Betelgeuse. If you see or write his name three times in a row, he appears out of nowhere and then we’re all shit out of luck.
well ok then
thanks
IDC, just making a little joke.
Here’s the straight skinny.
The Infallible One is the commenter who signs in as L. Taylor and he is a Blue Falcon Social Justice Warrior (SJW) and a real pain in the ass.
ah…yeah I’ve noticed some L T posts…thanks again
You forgot to mention he has pretty eyes.
Don’t forget that great chow. The 29 Palms Comm School chow hall had this turntable where the mess crew in the back would put “piping hot food” on it, and it would rotate to the serving side, where the Marines would just pick it up, and be on their way. At least that was the way it was described in Leatherneck Magazine. I recall one particular instance where we waited 15 minutes as the turntable continued to rotate, with nothing on it except one small bowl of dried up green beans. Meanwhile, the line waiting for food just kept getting longer. After 15 minutes, I wrote a note saying “Send food! We are desperate. About to resort to cannibalism.” A few minutes later, another notes come from the back. “Eat me!” True story.
Weird shit happened at the Stumps both times I was stationed there, Hack… good times, good times!
SPEW ALERT!!!!
Our resident “SJW” probably wacks off to this book, screaming at the top of his lungs “I KNEW I WAS RIGHT!!!!”
We now return to are regularly scheduled program – “Death Valley Days” starring John Wayne…
Another ivory tower elitist, with no real life experience, pontificating from her safe space (thanks Military Welfare State!) to other know-nothings in their academia bubble. Spend a day in the burn ward at BAMC, then get back to us, “professor.”
“The US military has always performed social welfare of some kind or another. Over its long history, it provided daily support to its conscripts – food, shelter, clothing and medical care …”
I’m done. She thinks feeding draftees who are on duty is “social welfare.”
This woman is more dishonest than John F’n Kerry’s biographer.
And less informed, if that’s possible.
They got the part about being an Ass. Professor correct.
I love it all that the folks in education and social philosophy can see is the GI Bill educational assistance. With pure green envy burning their hearts. Yet, they fail to realize that the GI Bill was to make up for the failure of the social net in WW1 (remember the Bonus Army that MacArthur and Ike ran off with horse mounted Calvary troops?) and previous wars for folks that only served the duration. Also, don’t give me that rot gut about the Confederate Widows pension BS. There is strong evidence that a large number of the Civil War Pensions that are still being paid out are probably to folks that shoddy or missing records allowed. So as to help unite the world, the Government looked the other way. That said, the even better parts of the GI Bill that most people gloss over, such as the Home Lending assistance, small business loan assistance and the now job placement assistance (via either VA job hunting assistance or vet preferences when hiring as an EEOC requirement). Most of the social philosophy types miss all of that and instead zoom into the 25k of education assistance. Ever ask why they do that sort of thing? How about because most of the social philosophy types make crap out in the real world, so they stay in school and get more debt until they are tenured teachers and pundits making the big bucks. However, they are in massive amounts of debt and they consider that unfair to the capital C of evil capitalism. They would rather have that amazing socialism, or democratic socialism (as the latest round of memes are pushing it, you know the ones that are written into the opening clauses of the Constitution that thing about general welfare); where everyone loves and prays to the state while creating and maintaining that massive social net. Except of course for those who have to manage the state. They have to get a little bit more, because well they have to work harder. Long walk, tall gallows; till even those folks are overthrown and… Read more »
We had and have friends who served in each military branch. The pay sucks (applied for SNAP). Kids best friend of the wife. Lump near knee.Cancer and operated in military hospital, doc screwed up, cancer spread. Died a year later. Judge offered $250K and said, the case will go on, take the money and have fun. Military personnel don’t get paid enough..
First, the Continental Army did not provide land grants, the states did. When I see basic facts like that screwed up, I tend to assume that the rest of the research is crap. As far as calling providing housing, clubs, and recreational outlets “social welfare” perhaps she should take a looks at what the New England mills circa 1880 offered their employees. They saw it as a draw for employment and a means to control their employees. Kind of like the military.
George Pullman did the same thing when he founded the Pullman Company (rail and land vehicle public transportation construction), founding a company town to attract better quality workers.
Mittlestadt is full of crap about this, and a lot of other things.
Same things with mining towns out west in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries.
And the town of Corning, NY, which is the home of the Corning Company, did the same thing.
The modern versions are the Facebook campus in Menlo, CA, and Google’s main campus in Mountain View, California.
There are other modern companies that provide similar facilities to their employees, to draw the best candidates for their jobs.
This is not social welfare, it is corporate welfare and it is nothing new.
Her biggest mistake is retaining her limited view that it is only the military which does this kind of thing for its employees. Completely incorrect on her part, which makes her thesis invalid.
Well, maybe I’ll splurge and get the Kindle version. But I have my own books to work on, which are more important that doing a review of a bumbling, opinionated Post Hole Digger.
http://rutgersclub.rutgers.edu
Proof of the Rutgers Welfare State (other then them paying her for her crap).
You dumb bitch. The only time your book will be in my hands will be when I have run out of toilet tissue and old Sears catalogs. BTW, the smug look with one eyebrow higher than the other is passe. Somehow in your supposed research you have missed the point entirely. The low pay of military folks have more than ever before now finding the need and availability of food stamps in several cases. So how many of you Squatty Pottie users qualify for the same “bennies” with your nine month working calendars?
As for the all liberating retirement, can you tell me the name of any enlisted man who retired after 20 and can live comfortably without picking right up on another full-time job for the remainder of his/her working days?
Nothing impresses me like the old “I Know It The Fuck All” photograph. Maybe I’ll print some copies and use them immediately after the Sears catalogs are gone. Now that I think about it, I really don’t believe I could put them on the floor and expect a puppy to house train on them. Our newest critter has more class. He’d rather crap on a copy of Bruce Jenner’s “How I Became An Associate College Professor”.
“Nothing impresses me like the old “I Know It The Fuck All” photograph”
Print it out and take it to the range.lol
Interesting premise. Have to read the book to form a more thorough opinion though.
I was thinking she was a typical ass-clown. Looking at the book reviews it seems she might actually praising the military for taking care of it’s own.
J Old Dog…You must have passed by the pages that were stuck together for some odd reason. She’s bound to have at least one reader who still spanks his monkey.
She is a fairly attractive person and would look a lot smarter with a warn sausage danglin’ out of her yap!
ah … warm or worn will do!
I can kind of understand some of her earlier historical points she attempted to make regarding the incentives different Congresses have presented as possible for military service in the different conflict she mentioned. However, with the exception of the post WWII era gains, history has shown that all those presentments she mentioned were never lived up to, not even close. As such, her argument is very misguided in its beginning approach.
Meanwhile, she continues to accept the benefits she earned from her employment. Perhaps she isn’t happy with those benefits. Maybe she is jealous that others made better deals with their employers. Or she might feel guilty about not really contributing much to society. Whatever. It doesn’t really matter.
It’s the same confusion lefties all have, or at least want others to espouse: Earned benefits (the stuff an individual contracts with an employer to receive in exchange for work) are different from welfare, the stuff individuals get for accidently being born into a group some bureaucrat and/or elected official deems worthy of receiving the largess earned by others from their labors.
There’s one more thing that the social justice morons never take into account: the money that goes into any welfare system comes from taxes. The money that goes into the DoD comes from taxes. The DoD is hardly a welfare system if it employs people, because if you will recall, Reagan started that welfare to work thing, and Slick Willie shut it down.
So where are those taxes coming from to pay for social welfare? Well, obviously, this uneducated blip on the academic radar has never explored that part of the economic system and most likely never will. I don’t doubt for one second that she takes advantage of every single tax loophole available to get out of paying her FAIR share of taxes. I could ask, but I’d probably get her office door slammed in my face for having that kind of temerity.
Well, I have to go back to my invented people (who don’t pay taxes because they are products of my imagination) and move on with their lives, angry sex and all.
Later!!!
Judging from this NYT article, she’s not exactly anti-military
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/05/08/how-to-cut-the-military/shredding-the-militarys-social-safety-net