Tag: US military

This was bound to happen considering how many complaints servicemembers have had about this contractor:

The U.S. Department of Defense Inspector General has opened an investigation of the nearly $1 billion contract to ship servicemembers’ cars overseas.

Investigators will target the Globally Privately Owned Vehicle Contract, or GPC III, under whose auspices International Auto Logistics was chosen by the U.S. Transportation Command, which is based at Illinois’ Scott Air Force Base.

The investigation began when Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Thad Cochran, R-Miss., contacted the Defense Contract Management Agency in October to request an audit of the shipping program.

The senators’ request for the audit came after a swelling tide of complaints over the summer from International Auto Logistics customers in Illinois and the rest of the nation. The customers were upset about vehicles shipped home after military tours overseas that were either missing, arriving months later than promised or mysteriously damaged.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link, but what is most concerning about this contract are the Unification Church and North Korean connections to IAL:

Formed in August 2012 with the sole purpose of pursuing this contract, IAL submitted a bid two months later. IAL’s parent company is International Auto Processing, also in Brunswick, whose chairman is Park Sang-Kwon. Anything but a native Georgian, Park is a global financial figure who was chairman of Pyeonghwa Motors, a joint venture between North and South Korea — a rarity indeed. Billed as “The Bridge between South and North Korea,” the partnership was formed in 1999 between Pyonghwa Motors of South Korea, owned by the late Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church, and Ryonbong General Corp. of North Korea.

Though the company’s headquarters was in Seoul, Park enjoyed a close relationship with the North Korean regime. At a time when travel between the Koreas is difficult, Park has visited North Korea 200 times. In late 2012, he was even awarded an honorary citizenship in North Korea, only the second person ever to receive such a commendation. “This means that North Korea has acknowledged the trust they had put in me,” Park told Agence France Presse at the time. “They were also encouraging me to start new projects in the North, more freely and aggressively.”

Throughout its history, Pyeonghwa Motors struggled. In 2012, the joint venture ended when Park and the Unification Church relinquished their interest in the failing enterprise to the North Koreans. One report suggested the company was given to the North Korean regime for the right to conduct future business in the country. At the same time, Park submitted an application to the Ministry of Unification in South Korea to undertake new businesses in the North. It was now — as Park was dealing with this business failure — that his International Auto Processing formed IAL, which ended up with a $300-million defense contract.  [The Hill]

So it is pretty clear that Park set up IAL just to win the Pentagon contract after his failed business venture in North Korea.  So who did Park call on to help him win the contract?  I am sure most ROK Heads could have guessed this:

According to court papers, IAL lists Boyle Transportation, of Billerica, Mass., as a major subcontractor. Boyle’s board of advisers includes three retired generals: Gen. William Tuttle Jr., the former commander of the U.S. Army Materiel Command, which overseas SDDC; Maj. Gen. Charlie Fletcher, Transcom’s former director of operations and plans, and Maj. Gen. Dan Mongeon, former director of operations for the Defense Logistics Agency.

SDDC is an Army command that’s part of the U.S. Transportation Command, also based at Scott. SDDC supervises the movement of military property. It directly oversees the IAL contract. [Military.com]

You can read much more at the link.

This is something both the military and civilian law enforcement need to work together to fix to make it harder for weirdos like this guy to continue to carry out their strange fantasy against other people:

Matthew S. Carr is the type of serial sex offender public registries were designed to track.

While serving in the U.S. Air Force, Carr approached women by posing as a doctor training in gynecology. He persuaded them to submit to pelvic exams as he inserted medical instruments, drew blood samples and even administered an injection near one victim’s genitals.

A military court at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota convicted the airman in 2003 of indecent assault against seven women and sentenced him to seven years in prison.

Exactly how Carr avoided registering as a sex offender when he got out is unclear, but a critical error occurred. The military records sent to civilian authorities mistakenly described lesser assault charges, according to a federal probation officer.

When the mother of a Reedsburg, Wis., woman typed “Matthew Carr” — the name of her daughter’s new boyfriend — into sex offender registries in the summer of 2010, nothing turned up.

She soon found herself racing the 45 minutes to Reedsburg to confront Carr after another daughter’s research revealed his military crimes. By then, her daughter had already submitted to multiple “exams” by the convicted sex offender.

“My blood turned absolutely cold,” said the mother, whom Scripps is not identifying to protect her daughter’s privacy. “I’ve never felt such danger, such helplessness as a mom before.”

Charges were brought against Carr, and he was convicted and sent to prison.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link, but I always wondered if servicemembers convicted of DUI or assault for example in Korea have such crimes show up on criminal background checks back in the US as well.

Here is the latest military budget fight happening in Congress:

A dispute between House and Senate armed services committees over whether to slow growth in military housing allowances and raise off-base pharmacy co-payments has put at risk passage of a defense authorization bill.
“This is as bad as I’ve ever seen it,” said one armed service committee staffer, describing the impasse between House-Senate negotiators striving to reach a defense policy bill compromise two months into the new fiscal year. (Stars and Stripes)

This passage here just confirms what I have always believed that Congress rather have equipment built with no one to man it than protect personnel from cuts:

Buyer cautioned that he wasn’t speaking for the commission. But as a former lawmaker with years of experience on armed services, as a career reserve officer and as someone who has studied compensation issues for the past 18 months, Buyer said he believes the “baseline argument” that current pays and benefits are unsustainable “is false.”

“I learned immediately as a freshman congressman on the House Armed Services Committee [in 1993] about the power of the defense industrial base in Washington D.C.” Its “appetite on programmatic” defense spending “is so strong” that personnel budgets feel “tremendous pressure” and those backing other programs “will do everything they can to either cut personnel numbers or benefits to gain access to money to pay for programs.”

You can read more at the link.

There is plenty of things that can be improved with the VA disability system, but I do not think there will be much consensus to do so until the much larger SSI disability problems are addressed:

The room fell silent for seven minutes as Illinois Rep. Tammy Duckworth upbraided a government contractor.
“Shame on you,” the congresswoman scolded Braulio Castillo at an oversight hearing in Washington, D.C., last year, accusing the business owner of gaming the veterans disability system.
Castillo had filed a claim with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs after learning that a disability rating would give his technology company preferential standing for federal contracts.
His disability: A foot injury suffered playing football at the U.S. Military Preparatory Academy in 1984.
Though the injury didn’t prevent him from going on to play quarterback at the University of San Diego, the VA rated him 30% disabled — good for $450 a month, tax-free.
Duckworth, an Army veteran who lost both legs in Iraq in 2004 when her helicopter was shot down, noted that her severely damaged right arm was rated only 20%.
“You, who never picked up a weapon in defense of this great nation, very cynically took advantage of the system,” she said. “You broke the faith with this nation.”
Duckworth directed her ire at Castillo, but the real culprit was the broad eligibility criteria of the disability system itself. The contractor had played by the rules for benefits and, as many Washington lawmakers know, those benefits cover ailments from sports injuries to bullet wounds, resulting in disability payouts that totaled $58 billion this fiscal year — up from $49 billion last year.
Routinely criticized in government reviews as out of touch with modern concepts of disability, the system has strayed far from its official purpose of compensating veterans for their lost earning capacity.( LA Times)

You can read more at the link.

I hope there is more to this story that we don’t know about because there is no way this guy should be punished the way he is for enforcing appropriate dining out conduct:

The Army is moving to discharge a decorated combat pilot who intervened to stop two lesbian officers from showing what he considered inappropriate affection on the dance floor during a full-dress formal ball at Fort Drum, New York, in 2012.

Lt. Col. Christopher Downey, who was once assigned to the White House and completed tours in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, ended up being convicted administratively of assaulting a soldier trying to videotape the kissing and grabbing. Col. Downey’s attorney, Richard Thompson, says his client merely pushed down the camera to prevent photos and video that could end up on social media.

Mr. Thompson said Col. Downey’s commanding officer also convicted him of violating the directive that ended the ban on gays openly serving in the military.

“It’s political correctness run wild,” Mr. Thompson said. “Military rules do not apply to lesbian officers because of political correctness.” (Washington Times)

You can read more at the link, but to me it is amazing how many careers I have seen ruined by dining outs.

It looks like the rent to own companies who base their business model on receiving high interest payments from servicemembers will need to comply with new rules capping interest at 36%:

Defense Department officials have proposed sweeping new rules that would limit the amount of interest that could be charged to service members and their spouses on most forms of credit — including credit cards.

The new rules “would reduce predatory lending practices, significantly expand the protections provided to service members, close loopholes in current rules, and help to ensure military families receive the important consumer protections they deserve,” defense officials said Sept. 26.

The Military Lending Act of 2006 was designed to cap loan interest rates for service members at a 36 percent annual percentage rate, and Congress gave DoD broad authority to define the types of loans covered under the law, with the exception of real estate loans and purchase-money loans such as vehicle loans.

In its basic concept, the move was unprecedented on a national scale for any other segment of the population. But when DoD wrote up its regulations implementing the law in 2007, it limited the types of credit covered to payday loans, car title loans and refund anticipation loans — a decision that has been routinely criticized by consumer advocates in the years since.

The new proposed rules would expand the types of credit covered to include those that are subject to the Truth in Lending Act, except for loans secured by real estate or other property, such as a loan to purchase a vehicle. Certain fees must be included in calculating the annual percentage rate. (Army Times)

You can read more at the link, but prevention by educating servicemembers on these high interest schemes should be part of the solution as well.

A recent poll shows that the U.S. public is strongly supportive of the U.S. military’s Asia pivot:

New analysis of the Chicago Council survey results on Asian issues by Dina Smeltz and Craig Kafura shows that over three-fifths of Americans now express support for the U.S. rebalance to Asia and that American favorability toward its two closest American allies in the region, Japan and South Korea, have reached their highest levels since the poll was started. Sixty-two percent of Americans recognize that Japan is one of America’s top ten trading partners and 64 percent support a long-term U.S. military presence in South Korea. (Defense One)

Though a high percentage of the public supports troops in Korea, less people have a favorable opinion of South Korea compared to Japan:

Analysis of the Chicago Council poll results for Japan by Michael Green of CSIS underscores the high level of trust among Americans toward Japan, rating Japan fourth globally in favorability (at 62 out of 100) behind only Canada (79), Great Britain (74), and Germany (65). …………

My review of the Chicago Council poll results for Korea shows a growing gap in American favorability toward South Korea (55 out of 100) versus North Korea, which at 23 out of 100 scored the lowest favorability among nations included in the poll.

You can read more at the link.

Is this a microcosm of what could happen if the US military was to drop its physical standards for women in the Infantry just to appease the feminists?:

The Secret Service has been under fire for failing to stop an armed man from jumping the White House fence and running through the president’s home, and some critics have begun asking if political correctness is partly to blame for the extent of the security breach.

As the New York Times reported on Monday, the jumper, Omar Gonzalez, “overpower[ed] a female Secret Service agent inside the North Portico entrance” of the White House and then ran past the stairway to the presidential living quarters and into the East Room where he was finally tackled by an off-duty agent. Without explanation, the Times deleted the word “female” from the opening paragraph of its story (the Washington Post similarly edited the word “female” out of its story).

Few details have been reported about how precisely Gonzalez overpowered the female agent, but it’s certainly possible that the Secret Service’s disparate physical strength requirements for men and women may be endangering the life of the president.  [The Weekly Standard]

You can read more at the link, but I do find it interesting how the mainstream media has kept the fact that the overpowered agent was female quiet.  First of all we do not know how Gonzalez overpowered the agent which could mean the lower physical standards were immaterial.  If she was overpowered simply because Gonzalez was stronger then her then we would never hear about it anyway.  However, I have repeatedly advocated for women to be given the opportunity to serve in the Infantry just like they should be able to protect the President if they can meet the same current standards that men have to meet.  If the feminists were able to get lower standards for women that protect the President then how long will it be before they demand lower standards to get women into the Infantry as well?

A US Army general was forced to retire at a reduced rank due to a sexual assault accusation:

A general fired in March 2013 after allegations he sexually assaulted a female civilian adviser said that while he denies the charges, he “accepts the responsibility for becoming intoxicated that evening” and that “due process was followed.”

Then-Maj. Gen. Ralph O. Baker was relieved of his post as head of Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa after the investigation, a copy of which was provided recently to The Washington Post via a request under the Freedom of Information Act and served as the basis of an Oct. 1 report. The Army did not respond by press time to a subsequent Army Times request for the investigation.

The Post, citing military documents, outlined the accuser’s account of an alleged July 22, 2012, incident in the back of an SUV headed to Camp Lemmonier, Djibouti, after a private party. She said Baker, who’d been drinking, put his hand between her legs. She said she fought off the alleged advances and reported the incident to the Defense Department inspector general the following January, according to the Post, after feeling too embarrassed to notify any other passengers in the vehicle. (Army Times)

You can read more at the link, but here are some quick thoughts. First of all the accusation did not bring criminal charges likely because it was another one of those he said she said cases especially since she told no one in the car of what she claims happened to her. Secondly the term sexual assault has been furthered cheapened. Having someone put their hand up your thigh is inappropriate, but should it be equated with violent rape? Thirdly why is this general drinking and fraternizing with subordinates on a deployment?  I am willing to bet that is the real reason for his relief since there was no evidence of the inappropriate contact in the vehicle by the General.  With that all said good riddance to this General because the Army does not need senior leaders that think they are still reliving their frat house fraternity days.

This author makes a good point that the Pentagon has a creditability problem in regards to complaining about unscrupulous lenders praying on military servicemembers:

Would an E-6 careerist nearing retirement accept a $30,000 car loan if forced to pay back a total of $390,000 in principal and interest?
Would an E-7 accept a $30,000 loan to make a down payment on a home or to wipe out credit card debt if the lifetime cost of that decision were $386,000 in lost retired pay?
The answer to both questions, regrettably, is: You bet.
Hundreds of career servicemembers every month make a comparable choice while in their 15th year of service. That’s when, in return for an immediate cash bonus of $30,000, they make an irrevocable decision to opt out of “High-3” retirement and accept the less generous “Redux” plan.
The loan shark here is the federal government, the same Congress and Department of Defense that like to get tough with payday lenders outside of military bases who prey on young or naïve enlisted members. Meanwhile, they offer their own rotten deal, which every year gets a little worse, say economists at the defense think tank CNA. (Stars and Stripes)

You can read more at the link.