Tag: National Guard

If you haven’t heard this yet, the state of Maryland bought $9 million in test kits and used the National Guard to defend the cargo shipment from being taken by the federal government:

Maryland authorities were so concerned about the federal government seizing a shipment of COVID-19 tests destined for the state that they made special arrangements to receive and guard the tests until they could be distributed, Maryland Governor Larry Hogan said Thursday.

Hogan cited the fate of 3 million N95 masks purchased by the state of Massachusetts — all of which were confiscated in March by the federal government at the port of New York — as the main reason for taking extra precautions to secure his state’s order of 500,000 COVID-19 testing kits from South Korea.

ABC News

You can read more at the link, but the governor’s wife is a Korean-American who helped facilitate the purchase.

It seems there could have been easier ways to get a relief for cause Officer Evaluation Report (OER) than doing something like this:

Police on Tuesday night pursued the M577 armored personnel carrier along Route 460 and Interstate 95 before the chase ended with the driver’s arrest in downtown Richmond.

Here is a story that is likely to get the blood boiling for many people this morning:

Short of troops to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan a decade ago, the California National Guard enticed thousands of soldiers with bonuses of $15,000 or more to reenlist and go to war.

Now the Pentagon is demanding the money back.

Nearly 10,000 soldiers, many of whom served multiple combat tours, have been ordered to repay large enlistment bonuses — and slapped with interest charges, wage garnishments and tax liens if they refuse — after audits revealed widespread overpayments by the California Guard at the height of the wars last decade.

Investigations have determined that lack of oversight allowed for widespread fraud and mismanagement by California Guard officials under pressure to meet enlistment targets.  [LA Times]

You can read the rest at the link, but basically California National Guard personnel were illegally giving out federal reenlistment bonuses to personnel who did not qualify in order to meet their quotas:

In 2010, after reports surfaced of improper payments, a federal investigation found that thousands of bonuses and student loan payments were given to California Guard soldiers who did not qualify for them, or were approved despite paperwork errors.

Army Master Sgt. Toni Jaffe, the California Guard’s incentive manager, pleaded guilty in 2011 to filing false claims of $15.2 million and was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison. Three officers also pleaded guilty to fraud and were put on probation after paying restitution.

Instead of forgiving the improper bonuses, the California Guard assigned 42 auditors to comb through paperwork for bonuses and other incentive payments given to 14,000 soldiers, a process that was finally completed last month.

Roughly 9,700 current and retired soldiers have been told by the California Guard to repay some or all of their bonuses and the recoupment effort has recovered more than $22 million so far.

The way I look at it is if the personnel who were given the bonuses did not know they were improperly given then why should they be forced to pay it back when they fulfilled their end of the contract?  This looks like something Congress needs to take a hard look at and rectify.

Here is the latest sexual assault / harassment story making headlines:

Katie Rapp was surprised when she was told to go to a Perkins restaurant outside Cincinnati to discuss the investigation into her claims of sexual harassment.

Rapp, a member of the Ohio National Guard, sat in a corner booth trying to fend off a panic attack as she described her experience in Afghanistan. A Beyoncé song blasted in the background.

“Everything I went through in [the] country was hard. It really sucked,” Rapp told BuzzFeed News. “But my investigation was the hardest four hours of my life.”

It’s been over two years since Rapp was sent home from Afghanistan and 19 months since her investigation interview in March 2013. In about 30 days she will learn if she will get her wish to receive an honorable medical discharge from the military, or be required to stay until her contract ends in 2018. She had been distracting herself from thinking about the case by attending classes in biochemistry at the University of Cincinnati, but has since taken some time off due to the medical board evaluation process.

Rapp’s case was assigned to Lt. Col. Lisa Gammon. The National Guard and Gammon would not comment on how many previous military sexual assault cases Gammon had investigated, but, according to her LinkedIn profile, she had been working with the Ohio National Guard since 2008.

Rapp had already become disillusioned with the National Guard by the time she met with Gammon. Rapp claims that she was repeatedly sexually harassed by men on her unit, both while deployed in Afghanistan and also during basic training in South Carolina. She said that after reporting the incidents, her captain transferred her to a different platoon, rather than punishing her alleged harassers. She was sent to a mandatory psychological evaluation, diagnosed with an “adjustment disorder,” and sent home.

“I learned that nobody believes you unless you can prove it,” said Rapp. So she decided to record her interview with Gammon, just in case the meeting didn’t go well.

In her words, “It was four straight hours of victim-blaming.” (Buzzfeed)

You can read the rest at the link.

It will be interesting to see if she gets the discharge she wants due to claiming to have PTSD for sexual harassment. Instead of discharging her they should first conduct a more professional investigation then what was reported in this article.

Considering the cover ups of such cases uncovered in the Alaska National Guard this makes me wonder if the Guard has got the memo that all sexual harassment and assault cases will be thoroughly investigated?