Tag: US military

So how much will military retirees lose if the current retirement system is replaced with what is basically a 401k?  Well the Military Officer’s Association of America has done the analysis and it will be hundreds of thousands of dollars:

For example, critics of the current system say it’s unfair the 83 percent of entrants who leave before 20 years of service receive no retirement benefits. The commission’s hybrid retirement package with a vesting 401(k) and government match would be attractive to those who are uncertain of or do not intend to make the military a career.

However, we’ve got serious concerns whether this proposal will draw people to 20 years of service and our analysis shows these changes come at the price of reducing the overall pension value to those that stay beyond 20 years of service — and it only gets worse the longer you stay in service. Our conservative estimates show an E-7 retiring with 20 years of service under the new proposal could lose $262,000 in lifetime retirement value. However, if the same E-7 stays for 30 years and is promoted to E-9, the lifetime loss in retirement rises to $740,000. That’s assuming a 5-percent government match and a 5-percent rate of return in the Thrift Savings Plan.  [MOAA]

You can read more at the link and remember this analysis is assuming growth in the servicemember’s retirement investment when they retire.  What happens to those who retire during a financial crisis like we saw in 2008 and have their 401k hammered?  Also this loss in retirement money would also come on top of other proposed cuts to health care and commissary benefits.

If these same cuts were recommended to for Social Security and Medicare there would be an absolute up roar.

Why the Asia-Pacific region matters to the United States: http://t.co/oQnWdtesv3

— Stars and Stripes (@starsandstripes) February 13, 2015

This article about military retirements hits on one of the main reasons for the current system that I have highlighted in the past, military retirement is basically receiving the second half of your pay in the military:

To an outsider, military pensions sound ridiculous; you can put in 20 years starting in your late teens or early 20s and “retire” at the time when most people are hitting their peak earning years. Obviously, that’s a very expensive benefit for the government to provide. Should we ratchet up the retirement age? Some economists think we should.

People supporting the status quo will probably argue that the military is more physically demanding than most jobs, and therefore you have to expect people to retire earlier. But the pension is available to everyone in the military, not just infantrymen. Moreover, it is disproportionately used by officers, not enlisted men, and by the time they have 20 years in, officers are spending a lot less time hauling heavy things and running around in the mud.

But there’s another problem with rejiggering the Army’s pension schedule, and that’s the way it interacts with the “up or out” system that the military uses for officers’ careers. Basically, officers who don’t get selected for promotion get fired.

The military is not the only institution that uses this method. It’s also popular with consultancies, law firms and investment banks. That system is archaic and barbaric, and whatever it gains you in reduced payroll costs, it loses you in accumulated human capital, and it also earns you a backstabbing corporate culture.

Of course, no one asked me, and I expect that those sorts of firms will continue to use up-or-out pyramids for the foreseeable future. But what do all these firms have in common with each other, and not with the military?

They pay really well. The senior people who survived the tournament get paid even better, of course. But even the entry-level jobs pay better than most of the alternatives.

The opposite is true in the military. It pays badly in the beginning and it pays badly at the end, relative to what those folks could have been making if they’d been steadily moving up through the ranks in a normal industry.  [Bloomberg]

You can read more at the link, but the article goes on to discuss other issues such as constant moves and spouses being unable to start careers which is very different from civilian counterparts.  The article than says that if the government wants to do away with the defined benefit pension than it needs to be prepared to pay more up front or watch the quality of military careerists decline.

This posting can pretty much encompass all combat arms and even some of the support branches. So how many have you slept in?

Top 7 Best Places for an Infantryman to Sleep

7. On a cot less than a foot away from the grunt next to you

6. On the floor of an Air Force terminal before deployment

5. The back of a cramped C-130 transport plane

4. The bottom of a foxhole

3. Inside a ridiculously-noisy helicopter

2. The tried-and-true Humvee

1. In the dirt (We Are Mighty)

You can read the whole thing at the link, but I have slept at each of these locations. Something the author left out was sleeping in a Bradley. Nothing worse than trying to sleep in a Bradley turret. Best place to sleep if it cold is on top of the Bradley engine after turning it off. My favorite place was simply on the ramp. Bradley drivers had the best place to sleep though in their location.  By combat arms standards the driver’s compartment was like having your apartment in the field. Here is an actual picture of how my unit in Kuwait was sleeping before moving into Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom 1; not exactly the Hilton:

Anyone have some good military sleep locations they want to share?

Market Watch has recently published one of the most atrocious articles yet that is promoting the cutting of military retirement by someone named Anne Tergesen who according to her bio has never served a day in the military, but has suddenly become an expert on military retirement.  Let’s deconstruct her article:

In recent years, countries including the U.K., Poland, Ireland and Sweden have raised the age of eligibility for military pensions.

The U.S., on the other hand, is sticking with the status quo—and at a time of strained budgets, that’s a potentially costly problem.

How is this even relevant?  Is Ireland responsible for maintaining global security and their soldiers facing repeated deployments?  If the servicemembers in these nations are not asked to do the same amount work, deployments, strain on the body, etc. of a US servicemember this is a irrelevant comparison.  The country that comes the closest to the US military that she points out is the UK military which we will discuss later.

The military retirement system permits members of the armed forces who serve full time for at least 20 years to retire as early as age 37 with a defined-benefit pension. On Jan. 29, the Military Compensation and Retirement Modernization Commission released a report that recommends no changes to the benefit eligibility requirements for the military’s pension plan, though it did recommend some significant changes in its structure.

Notice how these civilian writers looking to cut military retirement always throw in the phrase that servicemembers can retire as early as 37.  They make it sound like all these 37 year olds are chilling at the beach with scantily clad waitresses/waiters serving them mai tais.  What they never mention is how much a military retiree is making.  The vast majority of retirees are in the E6 – E7 range.  An E6 at 20 years is making $3,724 a month before taxes and other deductions.  Yes military pay has deductions for things such health care and family dental plans.  So people retiring at these ranks at 20 years are not the millionaires getting ready to chill out on the beach that Tergesen is alluding her readers to believe.  In fact using the military retirement calculator an E6 retiring in 2015 at 20 years of service with a high 3 would make $1,640 after taxes.  Yes retirement pay is taxed and also this number does not include deductions for health care.  Yes health care is not free for military retirees unlike what most people think.  For those that retire higher in rank they will have a larger monthly benefit.  Due to the up and out system few people are able to stay in long enough and achieve the higher ranks where the military retirement is quite good.  Most people retire with enough extra money coming in every month to pay the mortgage while they find a job to make money to live on.  So military retirees are not all out on the beach at age 37 getting back rubs and drinking mai tais.

Let’s continue with Tergesen’s article:

John Turner and Bruce Klein, economists at the Pension Policy Center in Washington, D.C., subsequently released their own report, arguing that the military needs to “modernize” its pension system. Their principal recommendation: To raise the eligibility age for benefits.

Note that when you hear the word modernize that is a code word for cuts not beneficial to servicemembers.

Here is the latest on the former Honorary Consul for the Republic of Korea:

WASHINGTON — Judging from her emails, Jill Kelley was star-struck by the big-name military commanders rotating between the war zones in the Middle East and her home town of Tampa, Florida. And they were equally smitten with her.

“Everyone thinks you’re a RockStar!” Kelley gushed in a 2012 email to Marine Gen. James Mattis, then commander of all U.S. military forces in the Middle East. “We agreed how amazing it must be that you’re single-handedly re-writing history,” she added, recalling how she had sung the general’s praises to several foreign ambassadors at the Republican National Convention that August in Tampa.

After another social event, she wrote a similar mash note to Mattis’s deputy, Vice Adm. Robert Harward. “What a Leader you were to these heads of State,” she enthused. “You ROCK!!!”

Replied Harward: “YOU ROCK MORE!”

In late 2012, Kelley’s talent as a Tampa hostess and her knack for charming men in uniform indirectly triggered one of the most embarrassing national security scandals of the past decade. Among other casualties, the fallout led to the forced resignation of CIA Director David Petraeus – a former four-star Army general – and the early retirement of Marine Gen. John Allen, the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan.

Kelley’s chumminess with Petraeus and the military brass had attracted the notice of the spymaster’s biographer and mistress, Paula Broadwell. She bad-mouthed Kelley in anonymous emails to military officials and others, according to federal investigators and a lawsuit filed by Kelley. The FBI got involved. Petraeus quit in disgrace. Allen retired.

The case still has not been entirely resolved. The Justice Department is deciding whether to charge Petraeus with leaking classified material to his lover. He has denied doing so.

Long after the scandal broke, it remains unclear what exactly prompted Broadwell to view Kelley as a rival. Kelley has said the two never met and that she never had an affair with Petraeus, Allen or anyone else.

Nor has anyone fully explained why Allen, while busy overseeing the war in Afghanistan, exchanged a blizzard of correspondence with Kelley – between 20,000 and 30,000 pages of emails, according to some senior defense officials. Other officials have said that figure includes many duplicate notes and exaggerates the extent of their communications, adding that there were only about 300 total emails.

The Defense Department inspector general investigated and concluded in 2013 that Allen had not committed any wrongdoing. But it has kept its report and all of Allen’s emails under lock and key.

Now, a glimpse into Kelley’s relationship with military commanders has emerged from another, previously undisclosed batch of emails: her correspondence with Mattis, a legendary Marine, and Harward, a Navy SEAL, from when they served as the top two officers at U.S. Central Command headquarters in Tampa. The Washington Post requested the emails in November 2012 under the Freedom of Information Act. More than two years later, after numerous unexplained delays, the Pentagon released 238 pages of heavily censored documents.

The unredacted portions of the emails – from Mattis’s and Harward’s government email accounts – contain no evidence of improper behavior. But taken together, the records depict two wartime commanders who were easy marks for the flattery of an exuberant socialite. “I wish that we could clone a couple thousand of you, but the land is likely not ready for that big an impact,” Mattis told Kelley in a Jan. 31, 2012, email.

Mattis and Harward, who have since retired from the military, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Kelley, 39, who still lives in Tampa, referred questions to her attorney, Alan Raul of Washington. He released a statement that read, in part: “The latest set of emails made public by the government simply confirms that Jill Kelley is and was a talented, civic-minded woman doing productive work as Honorary Ambassador to Central Command in Tampa and as Honorary Consul for the Republic of Korea.”

Reading this article I see nothing really scandalous with this emails.  For those wondering how Kelley became the Honorary Consul to South Korea here is how it happened:

In January 2012, for example, the South Korean Embassy in Washington informed Kelley that she had been selected to become an honorary consul. Even though she knew little about the country, she accepted the title with gusto.

“YES!!!! Honorary Consul General. I’m soooooo excited about the humbling honor,” she wrote to Mattis on Jan. 31 to inform him of her appointment. “It’s ironic that I get the request from the state of Korea – which is NOT my expertise. However as a lover of International Politics/Foreign Affairs, I do find the Korean Statehood quite interesting . . . (I’m a lover of conflict problem solving, and have a keen sense of seeking opportunities in chaos.).”

While Kelley’s appointments as ambassador and consul general were honorary positions, the emails indicate she was eager to become a diplomatic player.

I would have to believe that she was picked by South Korea simply because of her connections to top US military leaders in CENTCOM.  Maybe the South Korean intelligence figured she was some good to collect information from simply from letting her talk because she obviously liked talking.

The real scandal out of all of this is why are all these top generals in CENTCOM hanging around with some like this?

Here is another example of a military retiree turned government civilian getting hammered by DOD for a mistake they made:

Christopher Garcia couldn’t figure out why we was being called into the civilian human resources department in Okinawa.

It had been two years since he retired as a Marine gunnery sergeant and took a job as the lead defense travel administrator in the III Marine Expeditionary Force’s disbursing office. The transition had gone so well, his office had been recognized for excellence.

But, it turns out, things were too good to be true.

Despite being promised a housing allowance when he was offered the job, the HR office was now telling him that the interpretation of the rules had changed and he no longer qualified.

Then, he essentially was handed a bill for more than $100,000.

“Regrettably, the previous determination of your eligibility for [living quarters allowance] was erroneous,” CHRO Director Deborah Summers wrote in a letter handed to Garcia on Jan. 20. “Because you have been erroneously receiving LQA payments, you are required to repay the LQA you have received.”

Garcia was in shock.

Not only was he on the hook for two years’ rent and utilities, but his housing allowance payments would stop immediately. He said it would be nearly impossible to afford his house now, and his family — with five children living at home — had just celebrated Christmas.

“When I see what this is doing to my family … It’s the betrayal of a loyal individual,” Garcia said. “I don’t have the disposable income to just throw down another $8,000 on a move.”  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link, but hopefully this gentlemen can get that debt waived because I can only imagine how much more difficult life would be for this family having to pay that huge debt back every month on top of trying to find a new place to live that they can afford.

It is amazing how these people became millionaires by gaming a stupid program that should have never been put in place to begin with:

WASHINGTON — The Army paid a Texas couple nearly $4 million for supplying it with names of recruits who may have enlisted without their help, part of a bonus program blasted by a leading senator as a “mind-blowing” waste of taxpayer money, according to interviews and documents.
The Army’s Referral Bonus Program — hatched in 2006 during the darkest days of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and buried in 2009 — paid as much as $2,000 per recruit. It mirrored a National Guard program so plagued with kickbacks that more than 800 soldiers have fallen under criminal investigations in the last few years, according to Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri, the ranking Democrat on the financial and contracting oversight subcommittee.
Military investigators branded the scheme “sleazy but legal,” McCaskill wrote in a letter to top Pentagon officials.
Rene Agosto, a former Army sergeant currently working as a civilian in Texas for the Air Force, developed a website called OfficialArmy.com to collect names of potential recruits. The site, designed to look like the government-run Army online portal, attracted potential recruits and encouraged them to fill out a form with personal information. Agosto and his wife Vanessa submitted those names — as many as 12 at a time — to Army recruiters and collected $3,845,000, according to the Army and McCaskill. (Army Times)

You can read more at the link, but even though Senator McCaskill is completely right about this, there is a bit of the pot calling the kettle black in regards to a member of Congress complaining about wasteful spending like this.

Like I have always said, it is only a matter of time before someone in the Pentagon tries to move retirees into Obamacare:

The Defense Department could slash its enormous health care budget by requiring Tricare beneficiaries not on active duty to get health care coverage through Affordable Care Act exchanges, according to several current and former congressional budget experts.

In the past several budget cycles, the Pentagon has sought to reduce its $52 billion health budget by asking Congress to approve cost-savings measures that include increased Tricare fees for retirees, fees for Tricare For Life beneficiaries and cost-shares for active-duty families.
Some proposals, such as reducing prescription costs by promoting use of military and mail-order pharmacies, have been implemented, but for the most part, Congress has resisted changes to the status quo for those who use the military health system and its private health care network.
But, the budget analysts said, the Defense Department could realize tremendous savings if it tapped into the resources offered by the general, civilian health care system and coverage available through federal or state exchanges. (Army Times)

You can read more at the link.

If these former prostitutes win this lawsuit it seems this would open up the flood gates for lawsuits against the government for all prostitutes that every worked in Korea since the government turned a blind eye to this activity for so long:

Attorneys for a group of former prostitutes who serviced U.S. troops decades ago argued Friday they should receive compensation because the South Korean government encouraged them to “work for their country.”

The 122 women are suing the government for $1.2 million and asking for an official apology and an investigation into a system of open prostitution that operated in the military camp towns surrounding U.S. bases for several decades after the Korean War. The women claim their human rights were violated. Their attorneys say documents show the national government, including a ministry overseeing health and social affairs, was directing local health centers to manage the women’s health care.

“The plaintiffs were not aware at the time that prostitution was illegal,” Ui Eun-jin, one of several attorneys for the women, said during the first hearing in the case. “They were being educated that this was work for their country and an act of patriotism.”

Ha Ju-hee, another attorney for the women, said the national government had designated specific areas for the women to practice prostitution, forced them to register with health clinics, get regular health checkups and then treatment if they were found to have sexually transmitted diseases.

“The state caused the plaintiffs pain, so the state has a duty to compensate them,” she said, adding that the national government also praised the women for earning U.S. dollars. South Korea was desperately poor after the Korean War, and American currency was seen as a way to build up its struggling economy.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link, but the club system many of these women found themselves locked into all those years ago has been well documented in books such as this one.  Here is an example of the boards that were put up warning GIs back then of girls with STDs:

So it was pretty clear that the Korean government in cooperation with the US military back then regulated the prostitution industry outside of the US military bases.  With that said the prostitutes in the camptowns are just a tiny fraction of the total number of prostitutes in Korea over the years that the government also turned a blind eye to.  What is especially reprehensible about this is that many of these women were sold into the club system by their parents who were looking for money to support their families during Korea’s era of poverty before today’s economic miracle.  There is a lot of blame to go around in regards to all the prostitution in Korea, not just outside the US military bases.