41–50 of 155 posts
The article doesn't quote anyone from California's Congressional delegation, or from the White House. Is there really no reaction here? We're talking about a few million dollars from the federal government to relieve an awful situation.
Personally, as a Californian I'm calling everybody on my chain-of-legislation on Monday.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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."
But fraud on the part of the California Guard is an internal matter. If I form a contract with a company that says they will pay me some amount of money, but the company representative was committing fraud internally then too bad. The company needs to deal with that. It can't reneg on its agreement years later after having already fulfilled the terms of the agreement.
I think this is seen as something similar -- the people giving out the bonus money basically "stole" it, so it wasn't theirs to give. Kind of like if a sales person at a store told you "buy now and I can give you an instant rebate", then pulled rebate money from the cash register. I think you'd have to give that money back too (assuming the "rebate" wasn't authorized, and was effectively stolen money).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
They just buy into the narrative Either because they don't have better options (those kids have my sympathies) or they are just programmable.
"Kill the goat herder and defend freedom" downloading that narrative into somebodies head whether its a grunt or a president, is not that different from programming the robots at Google and Facebook to chant about "do no evil" and "make the world more open and connected " all the while turning the Internet into a sewer.
Hope always lies in people who aren't robots.
“We’d be more than happy to absolve these people of their debts. We just can’t do it. We’d be breaking the law.” Ok. There's a law, a bad law that needs to be changed. Is Congress so dysfunctional it can't fix this monstrosity?
Remember this is the same Congress that overruled Obama's veto and then complained afterwards that obama should have told them not to pass the bill
As 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.
Can you go into more detail? I'm not trying to dispute what you say, but as someone who's never been in the military, I'm curious what kind of trouble soldiers are likely to run into.
"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.
As 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.
Maybe on HN/Reddit and big cities in the coasts. Elsewhere it's all about "support our troops". But yes, like snerbles says, it's not much than that.