By Ed Evans, USMC (Ret.)
Back a month ago when federal planners first
raised the ugly head of their plan for penalizing military retirees by refusing
them a civilian retirement at the end of a second career, it just didn't seem
to go anywhere. But you know how it is,
once you put something on the Internet, it takes on a life all its own and
becomes eternal.
In other words, I keep seeing traces of this
venomous idea here and there.
It's not dead, yet.
You can read all about it here: http://www.federaltimes.com/article/20130804/DEPARTMENTS01/308040009/An-end-civilian-pensions-military-retirees
The lead paragraph and bridge read: "To
address long-term sequester cuts, the Defense Department is mulling numerous
reductions that will affect civilian employees, including doing away with
civilian employee pensions for military retirees who go back to work for the
government as civilian employees.
The
savings could be almost $100 billion over 10 years when combined with a halt to
commissary subsidies and restrictions on the availability of unemployment
benefits, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told reporters last week in summarizing
the recommendations of the newly completed “Strategic Choices and Management
Review.”
However, if I were their PR adviser my
advice would be that they not just walk away from it, but RUN! This should be dialogue written for the Saturday
Night Live comedy TV show, not a serious approach to building an effective
government workforce and viable national budget. Not to mention that, truthfully, you cannot
pay men enough to risk their very lives in combat, but to then prevent them
from earning a living and taking care of their families afterward, if they live
through it, is surely the worst kind of national cowardice. And never mind that the entire U.S. military,
the most blooded and battle-tested military in the world right now, goes about
its business on the individual level like a long-tailed cat in a room full of
rockers for reasons of upended ethical and moral guidelines of behavior,
unsound battlefield rules of engagement, and social Generals who are
administrators, not leaders.
On the one hand this policy change in
retirement rules will sow such divisiveness among the federal workforce, not to
mention the career military, as to seriously affect efficiency, production and
create infectious trust issues.
On the other hand, I cannot imagine the hit
the nation's federal workforce will take without the hand-in-glove
synchronization of the disciplined experience that military members bring to
the table, which work so effectively with civilian education and expertise.
In fact, it is such a bad idea that if I
believed even half of the conspiracy theories floating around the Internet, I
would have to believe there would be no more certain way to pull the plug on
American effectiveness in government, no better way to help America's enemies
achieve this nation's downfall and freedom's dissolution.
Bottom line, if for any reason those in the
upper head shed want to start a revolution, want to create a cause to declare
martial law as a pathway to ultimate control, this would be a good one. However, anyone who would support such a cockamamie
idea has no sense of the kind of fire they are playing with in a munitions
bunker filled with volatile, sparking poverty, pain and class betrayal. And those they are considering betraying are
the ones with the guns.
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