Saturday, June 28, 2008

This is rich!


(I just picked an Air Force commander's comments off the Grass Roots Press this morning.)
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Albuquerque, NM is home to Kirtland Air Force Base which buys the Duke City's love and loyalties just as the military does here in El Paso where Fort Bliss has developed this city's economic addiction to the army who lets us suck the pork's hind teat for our 'economic survival.'

Bob Anderson of Albuquerque wrote of Kirtland Air Force Base commander Colonel Robert Suminsby, Jr.'s remarks that were recently made to approximately 300 civic leaders.

Dada doesn't know the occasion for the remarks, whether it was a prayer breakfast, or military appreciation day or some other event where city officials and military brass climb in bed together for an hour or two of mutual 'feel good.'

According to Anderson, Col. Suminsby said, "If left unchecked, the growth of spending on Social Security and Medicare will eventually crush the defense budget."

I didn't read any further. I stopped out of fear my eyes might start hemorrhaging. But I do have to say, this is the thinking of a very scary bastard indeed! It frightens the hell out of me, this threat that Medicare, Social Security or any other social programs (Head Start, education, Medicaid, etc.) necessitate our poor military sacrifice some fucking bombs, missiles and nuclear attack submarines (one launched just this past week).

When a military must gut its nation's very social infrastructure, cannibalizing the basic domestic needs of its own citizenry to survive, then we really won't need Col. Suminsby's god-damned air force nor the rest of our bloated military stretched thin towards breaking by our lust for total global domination. That's because we will have already lost the war. Because there will be no nation worth defending, nothing left to save.

11 comments:

Utah Savage said...

This is the best post I've read on what our military budget is costing us. This is the guts of it all. This is the cost of two wars with no tax increases to pay for them. This is monstrous. This scares me half to death. This is what happens when military contractors and the pentagon rule the world. This could quite easily become North Korea. A mighty army and starvation for the masses. All freedoms taken away to pump every last dollar into more weapons, making more billionaire arms dealers happy. Brave New World indeed.

Fran said...

Reminds me of that poster: It will be a great day when schools have all the funding they need and the air force has to hold bake sales to build bombers.

I'll pass on that cookie, thanks!

Oberon said...

......note to self.....shut the hell up.

Fran said...

pssst-- question for you in the Chalk the block post.

Dada said...

Fran:

Yes, what is it? (I couldn't find your question in the Chalk the block post.)

(BTW, we're having an incredible "Oregon day"....out on the patio under overcast skies, much cooler temps -- I have my theory about that, i.e., when it's unseasonably
cool here, it's hot in Oregon -- today being no exception -- relaxing until a sudden small shower, ok, "sprinkle" to you in Oregon, chased the three of us inside where, by the time we had resettled, the shower had gone.)

D.K. Raed said...

I used to be afraid that by the time I reached SS/medicare age, my generation would be such a burden on the younger workers, that they would declare figurative war against us rather than have to shoulder the tax rates necessary to support the SS/medicare system we willingly paid into to support our parents. But you point out another possibility ... that it won't be unarmed youth who declare a figurative war against us, but a very well-armed military who declare actual war against us. I guess our final contribution to society will be to serve as target practice.

Dada said...

DK: Yes, that is scary isn't it? A military commander with his brainwashed troops with all that fire power to back him.

But what's scarier is, while they're out there protecting America and it's *free enterprise* system, it seems the very retired folk's benefits our good ol' colonel is wailing against are paltry when compared to his fairly secure retirement for himself and his fellow military comrades.

I'm not current on how the military computes retirement pay, but I am current on what the good colonel earns for himself in today's USAF.

Using the CURRENT payscale for a military Col. and a knowledge of what retirees got when I was an army's officer's pay clerk many years ago (which may be slightly inaccurate), I compute,

Current 0-6 (Col.) w/26 yrs. svc = active duty pay of $9351.90/mo. ($112,222.80/yr.) Let's say he retires w/26 years service. I compute his retirement as $112,222.80 x 57.5% or $64528.ll/yr. or $5377.34/mo. - all of this before he reaches age 50 and he gets this for the rest of his life. (Of course, this retirement pay doesn't include other benefits just as his active duty pay above (which included housing supplements I didn't figure in?) plus medical care, BX, PX,privileges and other benies, etc.

I can see where my measily SS check (I can't begin draw even begin drawing until well into my 60's could be a huge strain on his bombs and bombers budget.

Maybe the good colonel would like to help his air force out by coughing up some of his own fucking retirement, huh?

Billie Greenwood said...

Omg, now it's "pardon me for living," is it? Perhaps they'll decide to use us seniors as cannon fodder to ease the strain on the Medicare/Social Security budgets.

Dada said...

is it synchronicity that after posting a comment or two to you under my editor Sam blog, the very next thing I came across was the following. It's a little phrase our USAF colonel may want to use in the future when pointing out what a drag Medicare and Soc Sec recipients are upon his weapons procurement and it was coined by our old WWII nemesis as he was authorizing the extermination of thousands in Poland at the beginning of that war.

He described the old, infirm and handicapped as "useless eaters." (A. Hitler)

D.K. Raed said...

hmmmm, there were a few other people included in that same "useless eater" category. Artists, gays, jews, gypsies, intellectuals, academicians of all sorts, dissenters, childless couples (if they were aryan), non-brown shirts, unemployed or employed in the "wrong" professions (such as constructing "lock boxes" for SS/medicare) ... need I go on?

I guess my big mistake was working a lifetime so that I could one day afford to be a "useless eater". Maybe I can still afford to be "useless" if I drop the "eater" part?

ps, B.E. inadvertently caused me to laugh! That phrase, pardon me for living, was one I flung out at my parents in some teenage hormonal depression/rage. Apparently I sobbed it out at stage volume & so convincingly, it has since been adopted by my whole family to use whenever appropriate. They are good mimics, so I can hear the angst in my own voice as they have flung it back at me over the ensuing years. But now, at least, I can say I've been pre-prepared for using it again ... and can even call up that raw pubescent emotion if necessary. Not that it would make a bit of difference to the Callous Colonel.

Anonymous said...

The troops need to head home and allocate everything back to the U.S. for sure.