Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

U.S. arrests former Green Beret, son, in connection with Ghosn escape from Japan

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 307 posts

Re: U.S. arrests former Green Beret, son, in connection with Ghosn escape from Japan

#251

Post by loeg »

dcposch wrote: post #237
loeg wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The numbers aren't quite apples to apples; real military don't pay income tax, while private citizens ostensibly owe taxes earned anywhere in the world. Additionally, the tax rate on contract work is higher than one might expect from W-2 work. In practice, maybe some military contractors illegally evade taxes. I am wiling to believe take-home net of legal taxes owed is higher for private contractors, but the gap is s…

I think hairsplitting pre- vs post-tax income in this context is a distraction. $20k/month is a quarter mil a year. Worst case, you live in a high tax state, you might pay $100k in total tax, state + federal + local. That leaves a take-home of $140k/year. Still almost 3x as much as a soldier making $50k/year. The larger point is that, yet again, we have a govt bureaucracy handling a budget in hamfisted ways. (Big rig…

I think I agree with you about everything you've mentioned, except that I continue to believe post-tax real income is a better frame of comparison than comparing post-tax (and missing BAH and hazard pay) to pre-tax.

(Additionally, it is not clear to me that GP's example numbers for private contractors were actually modal, or just some high numbers he heard about.)

Re: U.S. arrests former Green Beret, son, in connection with Ghosn escape from Japan

#252

Post by loeg »

wavedingo wrote: post #197
gremlinsinc wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I wouldn't give for an Eisenhower Republican resurgence and an FDR Democrat resurgence...minus the racism or segregationism allowing policies. But fiscally and socially, they were way better than anybody we've got in politics now.

That’s because we had adults voting then

Our voting population was actually much younger at the time, despite the voting age being slightly higher (21).[1]

> the median age in 1940 was 29.0 years, compared to 37.2 years in 2010

[1]: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/1940-us-census-data-released-on...

Re: U.S. arrests former Green Beret, son, in connection with Ghosn escape from Japan

#253

Post by kilroy123 »

djdjrjfbfjd wrote: post #72
blantonl wrote: post #63

It's been extremely disturbing to see how much the culture of special operations military has changed in the past 20 years. Previously, Navy Seal and Green Berets operated in silent, keeping the sausage making of military special operations quiet and secret, just doing their duty. Now, it seems like every Navy SEAL now publically writes a book, sponsors a coffee line, or slaps their name, likeness and story all over…

I worked with seals on a few projects, back when Blackwater was a thing and also more recently, and I wonder what kind of job offers these guys are getting after they leave the military. Or, frighteningly, while they’re still in it. The number and variety of corporate and private mercenary forces is much higher than most people would suspect. The size of Special Operations Command in the active duty US military is al…

Yes, and this was heavily expanded by the Obama administration. Which has always been one of my criticisms about him. When I tell people this, I get blank stares.

Re: U.S. arrests former Green Beret, son, in connection with Ghosn escape from Japan

#254

Post by jmull »

unhomedcoder wrote: post #185

you know the plausible conspiracy theory that FANG etc companies for the past 15 years have been deploying an anti-competitive strategy of soaking up tech talent into excessively compensated jobs and putting them to work on vaporware BS projects that get canned after 3-5 years? even though GoogaAppaFaceSoftZon waste billions of dollars keeping tech nerds on the hamster wheel, that is still cheaper than the risk of ha…

That conspiracy theory isn't plausible at all.

Why pay huge amounts of money for something you can get for free? As a FANG, your start-up potential competitors will overwhelmingly fail on their own, or at least fail to grow into a significant competitor. No need to pay massive amounts of money to keep them from forming in the first place.

Also, I think FANG-type companies see more of a benefit from startups than competition. Startups give them a chance to see what new ideas seem promising. When they see one with promising tech, they can acquire or copy.

Re: U.S. arrests former Green Beret, son, in connection with Ghosn escape from Japan

#255

Post by jonwachob91 »

tehwebguy wrote: post #70
9nGQluzmnq3M wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They obviously didn't? They were trying to fly from Boston to Beirut, Lebanon, where they would have been safe.

Yeah but the warrant for them has been out since Jan 30 or earlier. Weird!

A Japanese Warrant has been out since Jan. A US Warrant wasn't requested until May 6.

Re: U.S. arrests former Green Beret, son, in connection with Ghosn escape from Japan

#256

Post by karatestomp »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #182
bravoetch wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's a developing country, then bribery.

It's still bribery in a developed country, there just might be some effort made for plausible deniability. It's partly why kids are told "networking" is so important in developed countries. Because when they grow up, it's a "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" world.

I'm pretty sure there's a bunch of corruption—skimming money, creating unnecessary "jobs" for friends, family, or co-conspirators, kickbacks, that kind of thing—in the US, it's just that most of it doesn't reach the "retail" level, if you will, and mostly occurs within and between bureaucracies both public and private, without directly affecting ordinary people outside those organizations. So it might be quite difficult and rare to bribe a person to do something for you, or to have a bribe solicited, but fairly common to interact with organizations that have tons of internal corruption going on that's hard to see from the outside.

In short I think we have a lot of corruption, we just don't let the poor or low-status participate.

Re: U.S. arrests former Green Beret, son, in connection with Ghosn escape from Japan

#257

Post by vaxman »

This is a sham, Gohn was a political prisoner and to do this before Memorial Day and during the Covid outbreak is pretty low. The US courts need to dismiss the request for extradition of American patriots who are accused of helping free him or the Administration should get involved. Canceling plans to use Japanese modules on github for a mission critical system —I don’t need drama in my tech!

Re: U.S. arrests former Green Beret, son, in connection with Ghosn escape from Japan

#258

Post by vasco »

stonogo wrote: post #142
kthxbye123 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Between their salaries, hazard pay, pensions, government hiring and contracting preferences, free lifetime healthcare, free tuition, free graduate tuition, free job retraining and zero-interest mortgages, U.S. soldiers are amply compensated, and there are plenty of legitimate opportunities available for guys from elite units like the Green Berets. None of the guys writing tell-alls or turning to a life of internation…

"Hazard pay" is $150 per month at most. The "free lifetime healthcare" gets eroded every congressional session (for a while there they took away dental coverage), and the VA health care system has a well-deserved reputation for being a nightmare factory. There is no such thing as a "zero-interest mortgage." The only benefit to a VA loan is the zero-down-payment. The only way to retire on a full-salary pension is to s…

What's the right amount of money to get to kill people in the name of who knows what?

Re: U.S. arrests former Green Beret, son, in connection with Ghosn escape from Japan

#259

Post by karatestomp »

XMPPwocky wrote: post #235
unhomedcoder wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/abcnews.go.com/amp/Internationa... . the State Dept would be the last entity on Earth who i would approach for help in a foreign hostage situation. just ask Kayla Mueller's parents. after CIA gave ISIS over $1 BILLION worth of weapons, the Obama State Dept threatened to charge Kayla's parents with Material Support of Terrorism if they paid the ransom to ISIS to free their daughter. ISIS w…

While there's hardly a shortage of things to criticize the State Department for, it's hard to argue that making exceptions to the "don't give money to ISIS" policy for ransoms is a good idea. That just encourages more kidnappings.

On the one hand, sure. On the other, if you're kidnapped for ransom by foreign terrorists or guerrillas (or even just hardened criminals without a political agenda) and no money or consideration at all is allowed to change hands, your odds of survival just went from "not ideal, but OK" to "terrible". Telling people they can't do that is basically telling them their loved one's already dead unless the murderous kidnappers respond well to "pretty please" and agree to take on the risk of a process to return the prisoner without even a token reward.

Re: U.S. arrests former Green Beret, son, in connection with Ghosn escape from Japan

#260

Post by tw04 »

unhomedcoder wrote: post #199
psychometry wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure all you need are high-level State Department contacts, not necessarily "a very particular set of skills", so to speak.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/abcnews.go.com/amp/Internationa... . the State Dept would be the last entity on Earth who i would approach for help in a foreign hostage situation. just ask Kayla Mueller's parents. after CIA gave ISIS over $1 BILLION worth of weapons, the Obama State Dept threatened to charge Kayla's parents with Material Support of Terrorism if they paid the ransom to ISIS to free their daughter. ISIS w…

It's weird how you ignored the first sentence of your link:

>Even after a failed U.S. Special Forces hostage rescue mission in Syria

So the state department literally sent in special forces to try to rescue her...

Post reply on HN