Not really surprised, the California Guard has been a corrupt mismanaged scandal-plagued organization for a long time.
Thousands of California soldiers forced to repay enlistment bonuses
21–30 of 155 posts
Re: Thousands of California soldiers forced to repay enlistment bonuses
#22Wasn't clear from the article; did someone or a group of people break the law so that these ("illegal") bonuses could be paid? Basically, who (or what org) will be held accountable for this so that it won't happen again?
At least a partial answer is there, but presumably there are lot more people involved:
> 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.
Re: Thousands of California soldiers forced to repay enlistment bonuses
#23"Robert D’Andrea, a retired Army major and Iraq veteran, was told to return a $20,000 bonus he received in 2008 because auditors could not find a copy of the contract he says he signed." How is this possible? If private businesses could do this, it would be mayhem.
I'm surprised that this is somehow even passed the slightest political oversight.
You need to be a special kind of bastard to ask some one who willingly signed up to get shot at while defending their country to pay back any amount of money they got paid for doing so.
Wars aren't pretty, regardless of what you think about them, and especially about Iraq and Afghanistan never ever take it out on the soldiers, they are probably on your side because unlike most of us they actually seen war.
Soldiers don't decide when, where or against whom to go to war, they are not at fault I never understood how the left in the US could blame people who either got drafted (vietnam) or signed up to defend their country (post 9/11) for the atrocities of war.
Re: Thousands of California soldiers forced to repay enlistment bonuses
#24This is weird. I'm extremely surprised that some kind of statue of limitations does not apply here. I'm not sure we are getting the whole story.
Re: Thousands of California soldiers forced to repay enlistment bonuses
#25So much of war is already unapologetically about about money. This is just adding insult to injury.
Looking down Wikipedia's list of active conflicts ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_armed_conflict... ), it's hard to believe that money is a primary cause of any of them. I'm sure someone somewhere is making a profit, but that's different from the conflict being "about money".
Marx said of history that war is always about an economic motive. He wrote that even going back through evolutionary history, wars are a struggle over control of resources.
I don't agree with Marx on a lot, but I think a sad fact is that he was right about that, at least over 90% of the time. US independence can be largely seen in this way, Germany's aggression in WWII after the league of nations crippled the German economy, Japan's aggression in WWII, Korea, Vietnam...
Worst thing about this is the scarcity problem--what economists regard as a problem of having enough resources--today is pretty much solved. For example, already enough food is produced for everyone on earth. We don't have a pressing need to go to war over resources. We do drive large cars, trucks and SUVs, and live in oversized houses that we don't need. A person looking at this from another planet would shake their head and ask what will ever be enough for us to stop bloodshed.
Re: Thousands of California soldiers forced to repay enlistment bonuses
#26So did recruiters cut bigger checks than they were supposed to? If so, someone had to sign off on that... either recruiters or the managers should be held accountable.
Soldiers got contracts promising one amount but received checks for another amount? Yeah, they should have to pay that back then.
But who wrote checks and / or promised numbers higher than the contracts?
Re: Thousands of California soldiers forced to repay enlistment bonuses
#27It's not clear from the article how this situation came to be. Were these soldiers told how much they would receive before enlisting? If so surely that is a contract and they don't have to repay. It only makes sense if they ALL received more than they were told and all didn't report it. But ~10,000 people doing this doesn't make sense.
From the article
"Investigations have determined that lack of oversight allowed for widespread fraud and mismanagement by California Guard officials under pressure to meet enlistment targets."
Re: Thousands of California soldiers forced to repay enlistment bonuses
#28As an Army vet myself, the truth is is that the Army will never miss an opportunity for fucking you over. Its the nature of the system. If you can make it to 20 years, you are some combination of exceptional/lucky/broken from years of fuckery. "We just can’t do it. We’d be breaking the law" Yeah, I'm sure the California National Guard tried really, really hard not to go after their bonuses.
Is this merely a reflection of general American population that views the army as a major drain on national resources that can be better spent elsewhere. Or is there something more sinister going on inside the National Guard.
Re: Thousands of California soldiers forced to repay enlistment bonuses
#29"Robert D’Andrea, a retired Army major and Iraq veteran, was told to return a $20,000 bonus he received in 2008 because auditors could not find a copy of the contract he says he signed." How is this possible? If private businesses could do this, it would be mayhem.
I'm surprised that this is somehow even passed the slightest political oversight. You need to be a special kind of bastard to ask some one who willingly signed up to get shot at while defending their country to pay back any amount of money they got paid for doing so. Wars aren't pretty, regardless of what you think about them, and especially about Iraq and Afghanistan never ever take it out on the soldiers, they are…
Well, they decide when they enlist to go kill people when told to.
Re: Thousands of California soldiers forced to repay enlistment bonuses
#30"Robert D’Andrea, a retired Army major and Iraq veteran, was told to return a $20,000 bonus he received in 2008 because auditors could not find a copy of the contract he says he signed." How is this possible? If private businesses could do this, it would be mayhem.
I would think that the fact that they paid him should be de facto evidence that he signed a contract for the money, and that the burden of proof would be on them to show that the contract was invalid for some reason.