Industry/Pentagon Revolving Door Featured in Deputy Secretary of Defense Confirmation

“BREAKING DEFENSE”

“Mr. Shanahan, you’re not making me happy,” the chairman said. “You just ducked basically every question Sen. Fischer asked you.”

After Nebraska Senator Deb Fischer tried to elicit the nominee’s position on how to respond to Russian violations of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty, McCain stepped in.

McCain’s biggest objection to Shanahan, however, was the nominee’s 31 years at America’s second largest defense contractor, Boeing. (Only Lockheed Martin sells more to the Pentagon. And Sen. McCain, thanks to the long-running scandal over Boeing’s former tanker deal, is believed to harbor a deep suspicion of Boeing’s conduct).

“Not a good beginning. Not a good beginning,” Senate Armed Services chairman John McCain told the administration’s nominee for deputy secretary of defense this morning. “Do not do that again, Mr. Shanahan, or I will not take your name up for a vote before this committee. Am I perfectly clear?”

“Very clear,” said Patrick Shanahan, enduring a rocky confirmation hearing for the No. 2 position in the Pentagon, which remains unusually short on senior officials. Other senators at the hearing asked Shanahan about Pentagon procurement, especially about nurturing innovation, continuing the Third Off Strategy for high-tech weapons, and starting the Pentagon’s long-awaited audit this fall. But McCain repeatedly took the mike to berate the Trump nominee for non-answers on Russia and for potential conflicts of interest after his 31 years at Boeing.

In that initial exchange, Shanahan’s specific offense was giving a vague non-answer in his written testimony to the committee’s question on whether he supported providing “lethal defensive weapons” to Ukraine. In the hearing, ironically, when McCain asked Shanahan to clarify, he stated his support for arming the Ukrainians so swiftly and unequivocally that the irascible but aging senator seemed momentarily thrown before returning to the attack.

“I want to move forward as quickly as I can with your nomination,” McCain told Shanahan at the hearing’s end, “(but) I am concerned. 90 percent of defense spending is in the hands of five corporations, of which you represent one. I have to have confidence that the fox is not going to be put back into the henhouse.”

“Mr. Shanahan, I think you’re a fine man; you have an outstanding record; (but) take a look at your responses that you sent to this committee,” McCain said. “Some of them were less than specific, at least one of them (was) almost insulting.”

Citing US casualties in Afghanistan, Ukrainian casualties against Russian-backed separatists, and the US shoot-down of a Syrian jet, McCain made it clear he wants clear answers on administration policy — and if the committee doesn’t get them, it will find answers of its own as it works on the annual defense policy bill.

“I want some answers, I want some straightforward answers, (and) if they don’t give us a strategy from the people that I admire most, we’re going to put a strategy in,” McCain warned. “I want to work with this administration, I want to work with this president, I want to work with the new secretary of defense, — who I happen to be one of the most ardent admirers of — but I have to tell you, in a couple of weeks, we’re going to mark-up up the defense authorization bill….The president has two choices: Either give us a strategy or we will put a strategy that we develop into the defense authorization bill.”

“Somehow over the last several years, this committee seems to have been treated as sort of a rubber stamp,” McCain concluded. “That’s not what the Constitution of the United States says. The Constitution of the United States says that the Senate would provide advice and consent.”

McCain Hammers DepSecDef Nominee Shanahan On Russia, Boeing

VA Will Shift Medical Records To DOD’s “In-Process” Electronic Medical Records System

Image:  Military Times

Total Investment To Date Now Projected at Nearly $10 Billion

“MILITARY TIMES”

“VA has already spent more than $1 billion in recent years in attempts to make its legacy health record systems work better with military systems.

The military’s health record system is still being put in place across that department, more than three years after the acquisition process began. The initial contract topped $4.6 billion, but has risen in cost in recent years.

Shulkin did not announce a potential price tag for the move to a commercial electronic health records system, but said that a price tag of less than $4 billion would likely be “unrealistic.”

---

“Veterans Affairs administrators on Monday announced plans to shift veterans’ electronic medical records to the same system used by the Defense Department, potentially ending a decades-old problematic rift in sharing information between the two bureaucracies.

VA Secretary David Shulkin announced the decision Monday as a game-changing move, one that will pull his department into the commercial medical record sector and — he hopes — create an easier to navigate system for troops leaving the ranks.

“VA and DoD have worked together for many years to advance (electronic health records) interoperability between their many separate applications, at the cost of several hundred millions of dollars, in an attempt to create a consistent and accurate view of individual medical record information,” Shulkin said.

“While we have established interoperability between VA and DOD for key aspects of the health record … the bottom line is we still don’t have the ability to trade information seamlessly for our veteran patients. Without (improvements), VA and DoD will continue to face significant challenges if the departments remain on two different systems.”

White House officials — including President Donald Trump himself — hailed the announcement as a major step forward in making government services easier for troops and veterans.
Developing implementation plans and potential costs is expected to take three to six months.

But he did say VA leaders will skip standard contract competition processes to more quickly move ahead with Millennium software owned by Missouri-based Cerner Corp., the basis of the Pentagon’s MHS GENESIS records system.

“For the reasons of the health and protection of our veterans, I have decided that we can’t wait years, as DOD did in its EHR acquisition process, to get our next generation EHR in place,” Shulkin said.

Shulkin for months has promised to “get VA out of the software business,” indicating that the department would shift to a customized commercial-sector option for updating the health records.

The VA announcement came within minutes of Trump’s controversial proposal to privatize the nation’s air traffic control system. The president has repeatedly pledged to make government systems work more like a business, and in some cases hand over public responsibilities to the private sector.

Shulkin has worked to assure veterans groups that his efforts to rely on the private sector for expertise and some services will not mean a broader dismantling of VA, but instead will produce a more efficient and responsive agency.

He promised a system that will not only be interoperable with DOD records but also easily transferable to private-sector hospitals and physicians, as VA officials work to expand outside partnerships.

Shulkin is expected to testify before Congress on the fiscal 2018 budget request in coming weeks. As they have in past hearings, lawmakers are expected to request more information on the EHR changes then. ”

http://www.militarytimes.com/articles/va-share-dod-electronic-medical-records-decision

Memorial Day 2017

What Mark Thompson Has Learned Covering the Military for 40 Years

Image:  “Otherwords.org”

“Scant public interest yields ceaseless wars to nowhere”

“Straus Military Reform Project – Center for Defense Information at POGO”

“It turns out that my spending four years on an amusement-park midway trying to separate marks from their money was basic training for the nearly 40 years I spent reporting on the U.S. military.

Both involve suckers and suckees. One just costs a lot more money, and could risk the future of United States instead of a teddy bear.

But after 15 years of covering U.S. defense for daily newspapers in Washington, and 23 more for Time magazine until last December, it’s time to share what I’ve learned. I’m gratified that the good folks at the nonpartisan Project On Government Oversight, through their Straus Military Reform Project, are providing me this weekly soapbox to comment on what I’ve come to see as the military-industrial circus.

As ringmaster, I can only say: Boy, are we being taken to the cleaners. And it’s not so much about money as it is about value. Too much of today’s U.S. fighting forces look like it came from Tiffany’s, with Walmart accounting for much of the rest. There’s too little Costco, or Amazon Prime.

There was a chance, however slight, that President Trump would blaze a new trail on U.S. national security. Instead, he has simply doubled down.

We have let the Pentagon become the engine of its own status quo.

For too long, the two political parties have had Pavlovian responses when it comes to funding the U.S. military (and make no mistake about it: military funding has trumped military strategy for decades). Democrats have long favored shrinking military spending as a share of the federal budget, while Republicans yearn for the days when it accounted for a huge chunk of U.S. government spending. Neither is the right approach. Instead of seeing the Pentagon as the way to defend against all threats, there needs to be a fresh, long-overdue accounting of what the real threats are, and which of those are best addressed by military means.

The Defense Department’s Quadrennial Defense Review, which is supposed to do just that every four years, has become an engine of the status quo. The Pentagon today is little more than a self-licking ice cream cone, dedicated in large measure to its growth and preservation. 

Congress is a willing accomplice, refusing to shutter unneeded military bases due to the job losses they’d mean back home. The nuclear triad remains a persistent Cold War relic (even former defense secretary Bill Perry wants to scrap it), with backers of subs, bombers and ICBMs embracing one another against their real threat: a hard-nosed calculus on the continuing wisdom of maintaining thousands of nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert.

Unfortunately, it’s getting worse as partisan enmity grows. It’s quaint to recall the early congressional hearings I covered (Where have you gone, Barry Goldwater?), when lawmakers would solemnly declare that “politics stops at the water’s edge.” The political opposition’s reactions to Jimmy Carter’s failed raid to rescue U.S. hostages held in Iran in 1980 that killed eight U.S. troops, and to the loss of 241 U.S. troops on Ronald Reagan’s peacekeeping mission in Beirut in 1983, was tempered.

But such grim events have been replaced Hillary Clinton’s Benghazi and Donald Trump’s Jan. 29 special-ops raid in Yemen. Rancid rancor by both sides cheapens the sacrifice of the five Americans who died. It only adds a confusing welter of new rules designed to ensure they aren’t repeated. 

Yet mistakes are a part of every military operation, and an unwillingness to acknowledge that fact, and act accordingly, leads to pol-mil paralysis. It’s amazing that the deaths of Glen Doherty, William “Ryan” Owens, Sean Smith, Chris Stevens and Tyrone Woods seem to have generated more acrimony and second-guessing than the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, in which 6,908 U.S. troops have died.

There is today a fundamental disconnect between the nation and its wars. We saw it in President Obama’s persistent leeriness when it came to the use of military force, and his successor’s preoccupation with spending and symbolism instead of strategy. In his speech to Congress Feb. 28, Trump mentioned the heroism of Navy SEAL Owens, but didn’t say where he died (Yemen). Nor did he mention Afghanistan, Iraq or Syria, where nearly 15,000 U.S. troops are fighting what Trump boldly declared is “radical Islamic terrorism.”

But he did declare he is seeking “one of the largest increases in national defense spending in American history.” His $54 billion boost would represent a 10% hike, and push the Pentagon spending, already well beyond the Cold War average used to keep the now-defunct Soviet Union at bay—even higher.

“We are going to have very soon the finest equipment in the world,” Trump said from the deck of the yet-to-be-commissioned carrier Gerald R. Ford on Thursday in Hampton, Va. “We’re going to start winning again.” What’s surprising is Trump’s apparent ignorance that the U.S. military has had, pound-for-pound, the world’s finest weapons since World War II. What’s stunning is his apparent belief that better weapons lead inevitably to victory. There is a long list of foes that knows better.

It’s long past time for a tough look at what U.S. taxpayers are getting for the $2 billion they spend on their military and veterans every day. It would have been great if Trump had been willing to scrub the Pentagon budget and reshape it for the 21st Century. But the U.S. has been unwilling to do that ever since the Cold War ended more than 25 years ago. Instead, it simply shrunk its existing military, then turned on a cash gusher following 9/11.

I know many veterans who are angered that their sacrifice, and that of buddies no longer around, have been squandered in Afghanistan and Iraq.

I recall flying secretly into Baghdad in December 2003 with then-defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The bantam SecDef declared on that trip that the U.S. military had taken the “right approach” in training Iraqi troops, and that they were fighting “well and professionally.”

 Last month, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, the fifth man to hold that job since Rumsfeld, declared in Baghdad that the U.S. training of the Iraqi military is “developing very well.” His visit, like Rumsfeld’s 14 years earlier, wasn’t announced in advance.

Even as Army Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster, Trump’s national security adviser, tries to chart a path forward in Iraq, it’s worth remembering that he earned his spurs 26 years ago as a captain in a tank battle with Iraqi forces.

If we’re going to spend—few would call it an investment—$5 trillion fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan (and Syria, and Yemen), don’t we, as Americans, deserve a better return?

The problem is that the disconnect between the nation and its wars (and war-fighters) also includes us:

• Our representatives in Congress prefer not to get their hands bloodied in combat, so they avoid declaring war. They prefer to subcontract it out to the White House, and we let them get away with it.
• Through the Pentagon, we have subcontracted combat out to an all-volunteer force. Only about 1% of the nation has fought in its wars since 9/11. We praise their courage even as we thank God we have no real skin in the game.
• In turn, the uniformed military services have hired half their fighting forces from the ranks of private, for-profit contractors, who handle the critical support missions that used to be done by soldiers. The ruse conveniently lets the White House keep an artificially-low ceiling on the number of troops in harm’s way. We like those lower numbers.
• Finally, we have contracted out paying for much of the wars’ costs to our children, and grandchildren. We are using their money to fight our wars. They’ll be thanking us in 2050, for sure.

Until and unless Americans take responsibility for the wars being waged in their name, and the weapons being bought to wage them, this slow bleeding of U.S. blood and treasure will continue. “We have met the enemy,” another Pogo once said, “and he is us.”

What Mark Thompson Has Learned

2By: Mark Thompson, National Security Analyst

Mark Thompson Profile
Mark Thompson writes for the Center for Defense Information at POGO.

My Slideshow

Defense Officials Approve Expanded Veterans Online Shopping Benefit

Image:  Stars and Stipes.com

“MILITARY TIMES”

“Honorably discharged veterans could be able to shop online at military exchange websites as early as Veterans Day, barring any objections from Congress.

The change in Defense Department policy would open up online exchange shopping privileges to about 18 million more people. It won’t apply to shopping at brick-and-mortar exchange stores.

A defense official confirmed a letter announcing the change was signed Wednesday by Peter Levine, acting undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness. Copies were sent to lawmakers on four House and Senate committees, and if no objections are raised within 30 days, officials with Army and Air Force Exchange Service and Navy Exchange Service Command expect to be able to implement the new benefit by mid-November.

The change requires no taxpayer dollars; the expected increase in exchange profits would bring in more money for programs in the military community. DoD officials determined that a change in law was not required to extend the benefit, but notified Congress of their intent to change policy.

AAFES and NEX now have online shopping sites that are open to all eligible military exchange shoppers regardless of service branch – www.shopmyexchange.com andwww.mynavyexchange.com, respectively. Those eligible are limited to active duty, Guard and reserve members and retirees, along with dependent family members, and 100 percent disabled veterans (and certain others). But most of those who leave the military before retirement – about 90 percent of veterans – aren’t eligible to shop at exchanges.

Pentagon officials have been deliberating whether to extend the benefit for nearly three years.  In 2014, AAFES CEO Tom Shull said he proposed the idea as a way to give “a modest benefit to honor the service” of those who left the military before retirement age. He noted that among this group are many veterans with four, five or more combat deployments in the post-9/11 era.

Retirees won’t be the only beneficiaries, according to an internal DoD document: Expanding the online customer base will strengthen the exchanges’ online business to better serve the customers, and the expansion is expected to “conservatively double the exchanges’ online presence,” thus yielding better prices for customers and more competitive merchandise.

Exchanges sell items at a discount, without a sales tax, and any profits after operating costs are either returned to the services’ morale, welfare and recreation programs, or used for construction and other improvements to stores.

Thus, officials expect the expanded benefit will also help shore up the financial situation of morale and recreation activities, which have been under budget pressures. Exchange officials project between $18 million to $72 million in extra profits each year when the program is fully implemented and matured. Based on the exchanges’ current dividend policies, the extra profits will add about $9 million to $36 million in dividends to installation morale, welfare and recreation programs. Generally, half of exchanges’ profits go to MWR and half go to improve facilities.

Since 2014, AAFES officials have been working toward the goal of preparing for an expanded customer base, including revamping and relaunching their website. One issue will be verifying eligibility: The Defense Manpower Data Center serves as the sole source for verification of military customers and has electronic records that could verify about 87 percent of veterans.

Veterans not in the system will be able to update their files. Initial DMDC setup costs of about $500,000 will be reimbursed by AAFES, according to an internal document.”

http://www.militarytimes.com/articles/defense-officials-approve-expanded-veterans-online-shopping-benefit

Government Fraud Recovery Bounces Back in 2016

THE PROJECT ON GOVERNMENT OVERSIGHT”
 
“It is  a substantial increase over last year’s total.

A large number of recoveries came from contract fraud cases involving some of Uncle Sam’s most prominent suppliers of goods and services.

The Justice Department announced on Wednesday it had recovered for taxpayers more than $4.7 billion through settlements and judgments from False Claims Act cases in fiscal year 2016. According to the announcement, it is the third highest annual recovery in False Claims Act history. It is also a substantial increase over last year’s total.

Of the $4.7 billion recovered, $2.5 billion came from health care fraud cases. An additional $1.7 billion came from settlements and judgments in cases alleging false claims in connection with federally insured residential mortgages.

• Boeing: $18 million to settle allegations that it overcharged the US Air Force for aircraft maintenance services at Boeing’s Long Beach, California, depot. (In 2014, Boeing paid $23 million for allegedly overcharging maintenance work at its depot in San Antonio, Texas.)
• Centerra Services International: $7.4 million to resolve a lawsuit accusing the company of overbilling the Army for firefighting services in the Middle East
• Computer Sciences Corporation: $1.35 million for billing the Defense Information Systems Agency for subcontract workers who lacked the required security clearances
• Deloitte Consulting LLP: $11.38 million to resolve overbilling claims on a General Services Administration contract
• DRS Technical Services: $1 million to settle charges that employees billed the Army for hours they did not work
• L-3 Communications: $25.6 million to settle claims of selling the government defective weapon sights
• Lockheed Martin: $5 million for allegedly misleading federal and state regulators about noncompliance with environmental regulations at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Kentucky
• SRA International: $1.1 million for alleged false billing on military contracts
• United Technologies: $11 million in penalties, interest, and disgorgement of profits for overcharging the Air Force for jet engines in the 1980s
• URS Corporation: $9 million to settle allegations that a subsidiary defrauded the government into awarding it construction contracts that it was not eligible to receive. In a different case, URS paid $580,000 for allegedly overbilling labor rates on a bridge reconstruction project.

The False Claims Act is the government’s primary tool to redress fraud in the areas of health care, defense and national security, food safety and inspection, federally insured loans and mortgages, highway funds, small business contracts, agricultural subsidies, disaster assistance, and import tariffs.

In 1986, Congress strengthened the Act by increasing incentives for whistleblowers to come forward with allegations of fraud. Most false claims actions are filed by whistleblowers in qui tam lawsuits. Since 1986, the government has recovered slightly over $53 billion, awarding more than $6.3 billion of that to the whistleblowers who filed the lawsuits—often at great risk to their careers.

On the same day the Justice Department announced its annual fraud recoveries, it also announced it had collected nearly $15.4 billion in civil and criminal cases in FY 2016, one-third less than last year’s total. This amount includes recoveries in all civil and criminal enforcement cases (including those involving the False Claims Act), fines imposed on individuals and corporations for violations of federal financial, health, safety, civil rights, and environmental laws, and collected debts owed to the federal government.

How will the False Claims Act fare under the Trump administration? At least one expert foresees very little change.

Taxpayers Against Fraud acting president Patrick Burns recently observed that Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL), President-elect Trump’s choice for Attorney General, “has never winked at companies that harm American workers and consumers” and “understand[s] the value of whistleblowers and whistleblower laws when it comes to fighting corporate theft and crony capitalism.” He noted that Sessions has supported strengthening the False Claims Act and has a good relationship with Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA), the law’s key champion in the Senate.

Burns’ prediction gives us hope that active enforcement of the False Claims Act—and billions of dollars in annual recoveries—will continue for years to come.”

http://www.pogo.org/blog/2016/12/federal-fraud-recoveries-fy-2016.html

Happy Holidays from Rose Coveredglasses

Happy Birthday - Dick Reissner

 

 

Iraq And The Cost of Geopolitical Hubris

“NEW YORK TIMES”

“These leaders created a false case for invading Iraq and then utterly mismanaged the occupation.

It seems a long time ago, and in a world far, far away, that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, enthusiastically supported by Tony Blair, went to war with Iraq.

Yet now a long and long-overdue British report into Britain’s role in that war, the report of the official and independent Iraq Inquiry Committee led by John Chilcot, has been published, reopening wounds and forcing Mr. Blair back into the limelight to defend why, despite so much evidence and advice against joining in the Bush administration’s misguided enthusiasm for invading Iraq, he chose as prime minister to throw his full support behind America.

Mr. Blair’s message to Mr. Bush at the time — “I will be with you, whatever” — leaps out painfully from the report’s 2.6 million words, proclaiming a blind loyalty that the Iraq war only helped erode, and that seems especially archaic now that Britain’s vote to leave the European Union has raised questions about its role in NATO and its place as America’s closest European ally.

Mr. Blair’s critics are no doubt disappointed that in response to the Chilcot report, he has continued to defend his actions. “I believe we made the right decision and the world is better and safer as a result of it,” he said, which seems willfully blind to the current chaos in Iraq and beyond. But if he would not confess that he erred in his decision, he did acknowledge, “There’s not a single day that goes by that I don’t think about it.”

His plea for understanding the context in which he made his decision to stand with the United States, the confusion and the need for action after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, seems tragically inadequate and self-serving with so many lives lost — more than 200 Britons, at least 4,500 Americans and more than 150,000 Iraqis, most of them civilians — and so much treasure spent prosecuting a war that was built on falsehoods.

While there have been no consequences for Mr. Blair himself, the political judgment of the British has been decisive, rendering the Iraq war as a defining blot on Mr. Blair’s 10 years in office.

The report should not be read as an indictment only of Mr. Blair’s foolish decision. Though the United States was not the subject of the inquiry, it was the Bush administration that falsely sold and launched the invasion. There has been no comparable, comprehensive official inquiry in Washington by independent investigators into the origin and politics of the fateful decision to go to war. Years have passed, but the public, in the United States and abroad, still yearns for the full truth and deserves an American investigation on the scale of the 9/11 Commission.

Given the partisan divide in Washington, however, it is hard to believe a similar exercise would produce anything even remotely dispassionate or honest.

And yet it is the United States, far more than Britain, that needs to understand how national policy can be hijacked by lies and ideology so that there’s less chance it will happen again.”

Iraq War, Lies 13 Years Later

Military to Civilian Revolving Door is Closing

“THE WASHINGTON POST”

“A 50-year restriction on the rehiring of military retirees as Defense Department civilians would be reinstated, requiring at least 180 days from when they leave the service to when — and if — they are re-hired.

That way the job can be open to competition.

The Senate voted last week to put it to a stop as part of the massive military policy bill that now goes to the House for conference.

Since the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, military officers facing retirement have had a revolving door to walk through to a civilian job at the Defense Department.

Often it’s the same job they held while in uniform, and often they start the Monday after they retire and start collecting their military pension.

Under this arrangement, 41,630 military retirees — many of them senior officers — walked back into the Defense Department as civilians between September 2001 and August 2014, according to a government study. None of these jobs was advertised to the public. More than a third were hired before they officially retired, and more than half started their civilian careers within a pay period after taking off their uniform, an indication that no one competed with them for the job.

The Senate Armed Service Committee’s report on the issue said the current system “creates suspicions” that the federal merit system is being undermined.

The rule was waived after the Sept. 11 attacks 16 years ago to help staff up the Pentagon for the war on terror. But now the committee, led by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a former prisoner of war in Vietnam, is adamant that the flood of retirees who benefited have blocked more qualified civilians who did not serve from getting hired to Defense jobs.

Source: Committee report, National Defense Authorization Act.

“Most military retirees and other veterans already receive hiring preferences in recognition of their service,” says the committee’s report on the National Defense Authorization Act, explaining why the policy should change. “Beyond that, the committee believes veterans and retirees should compete on equal footing with other qualified applicants.”

By leaning too heavily on military retirees without allowing other candidates to compete for these jobs, the Pentagon is closing its ranks to a diverse workforce, the committee report says, “…not just in terms of diversity as it is traditionally defined, but also on diversity of thought, experience, and background within the Department that is desirable in any organization.”

McCain’s declined to comment, but his staff referred a reporter to the committee report.

The change, along with another provision of the defense bill that would scale back hiring preferences for veterans applying for federal jobs from outside the government, represent the biggest changes to the Obama administration’s push to reward veterans. Increasingly, hiring managers and members of Congress are concerned that the leg up given to veterans is not always bringing the most qualified candidates to federal agencies.

The provision on military retirees directs the Defense Department to report by January on how many were hired to civilian jobs in 2015 and 2016; whether they were officers or enlisted personnel and how many men and women were in the overall pool of applicants for civilian jobs.

Defense officials also would have to report on something that right now is hard to quantify: How the soft landing enjoyed by military retirees “has impacted .. the ability of the Department and the military services to consistently hire best-qualified individuals for federal service,” according to the committee report.

Defense Department officials declined comment because the legislation is pending.

The proposed change is drawing mixed reactions from veterans groups. The Military Officers Association of America is in opposition, spokesman Jonathan Withington said in this statement: “Existing policy is consistent with the country’s obligation to provide career opportunities to those who served, especially disabled veterans.”

But the American Legion, the country’s largest service organization, said it supports putting retirees back on equal footing with civilian job candidates.

“We support closing this loophole, because now if a military job becomes vacant it won’t be refilled by another military personnel,” said Louis Celli, Jr., the Legion’s acting legislative director. The current system is “degrading the fighting force,” he said.

And the current system benefits senior officers at the expense of junior ones, Celli said, by allowing them to walk into civilian jobs without competing for them. Someone who retired at a more junior rank would actually benefit from the extra points given to veterans competing for civilian jobs, he said.

“Senior military members seem to have the market cornered on these plush positions,” Celli said. “You’ve got these retired generals who get full retirement benefits and they start a second career, just like that.”

A spokesman for the House Armed Services Committee said lawmakers have not yet taken a position on the proposal.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2016/06/21/tktk-3/?tid=pm_politics_pop_b

Memorial Day - Remembering the Minnesota Vets Home Garden & Gardener

PUBLIC IMPROVEMENTS PROJECT - VETERANS HOME HASTINGS, MINNESOTA
 & Vet Gardner Gordy Schmidt (Deceased)
CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE

The Garden is gone and we are humming the Old Joni Mitchel Song:

"They took all the trees
And put them in a tree museum
And they charged all the people
A dollar and a half to see 'em
Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got
'Till it's gone
They paved paradise
And they put up a parking lot"

Lessons from Vietnam for the US On ISIL

BEFORE WE GET IN TOO DEEP AGAIN

MR KERRY - HAVE YOU CONSIDERED THE FOLLOWING? 

 

 

 Lessons from Vietnam for the U.S. and ISIL

Few Military Veterans in Key National Security Roles

“MILITARY TIMES”

“Too few veterans are helping shape national security decisions today.

The lack of veterans in key political posts has left a “deficit” in critical military and security discussions, and helped widen the knowledge gap between civilians and those who served in the military.

[Former Defense Secretary] Hagel said the lack of veterans in key political posts has left a “deficit” in critical military and security discussions, and helped widen the knowledge gap between civilians and those who served in the military.

“When you look at the presidential candidates today, not one is a veteran,” Hagel told the crowd of more than 200. “Our current president and vice president are not veterans. The entire senior White House security staff, none are veterans.”

“That doesn’t mean they’re bad people, that doesn’t mean they’re not smart, that doesn’t mean they don’t care about this country. But there is something missing here. And at a time when everything is hair-triggered, everything is nitro glycerine, and miscalculations can lead to a lot of trouble, we need veterans input.”

Hagel’s remarks were part of a larger event by HillVets to highlight contributions by military, veterans and advocates in politics and wider cultural efforts. The group honored Shaye Lynne Haver and Kristen Marie Griest, who last August became the first women to graduate from Army Ranger School, with a new leadership and service award.

Hagel praised their accomplishments and called the entire U.S. military the best trained and most skilled fighting force in the world.

But he also said he worries that too few Americans understand what that means.

“You all know the numbers — less than 1 percent of our society serves,” he said. “That does not mean this country doesn’t value our military or doesn’t value our veterans. Of course they do.

“But there is developing a wider and deeper gap between civilian society and our military, and our veterans.”

The Burden of War Falls on Fewer Americans Than Ever Before

The former defense secretary and two-term senator said he wants to see veterans in government “in all capacities,” including federal staffers and elected offices.

In the late 1970s, more than 70 percent of Congress has military experience in their backgrounds. At the start of the current Congress, that number dropped below 20 percent.

“We’re losing that perspective, and it’s not good for our country,” he said. “It’s not good for our policy making. We need the input of our veterans.”
Former Defense Secretary Hagel on Veterans In National Security Issues

Red Flags of Waste in the FY 2017 Defense Budget

"FORBES”
 
“The defense budget process for 2016 (FY 2017) has just started, with the Administration’s $582.7 defense budget.

Here are red flags of waste:

 Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO). Defense spending is divided into a base amount, in the regular defense spending bill, and another account, OCO, intended for unpredictable wars and commitments abroad, in a supplemental spending bill in 2017. Last year, Congress threatened to put massive amounts of regular weapons purchases into the OCO, to get around spending ceilings (which do not apply to OCO).

Because of last year’s deal about budget ceilings between the President and the Congressional Republicans, it seemed like the OCO maneuver, for padding the defense spending bill, would stop. Wishful thinking. It won’t. The Administration has announced a proposed $59 billion OCO, most of which would actually devoted to overseas operations (although $8 billion is in regular weapons buys). The House majority intends to treat that figure as a floor, not a ceiling, and want to fatten up defense spending via OCO by at least $15 billion, making room for defense pork.

Wasteful individual weapons. The prize, in terms of massive criticism, goes to the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), meant for combat in shallow waters. A few months ago, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter wrote a blistering memo about how the Navy had to cut back its LCS purchases. Just recently, Senators John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Jack Reed (D-R.I.) said “practically no LCS mission capabilities [have been] proven.” But, the Administration budget would still buy two, and, Congress will want more.

The next overruns of the naval aircraft carrierm known as CVN 79. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) wrote about it, “Poor Outcomes Are the Predictable Consequences of the Prevalent Acquisition Culture.” The carrier is estimated at $11.5 billion, but, says GAO, “CVN 79 is likely to cost more than estimated.” Its predecessor has been plagued with cost overruns and other problems.

 More F-35s. GAO has written voluminously about the shortcomings of the F-35. But, this Lockheed plane is a favorite of the powerful delegation from Texas, where it is made. Per the budget, the Air Force reduced its buys by 5, but, the Navy and the Marine Corps will buy 13 more. Congress will spend for even more.

The Global Hawk. Some years ago, there was an effort to cancel this. As Taxpayers for Common Sense entitled their analysis, “Pricey Drone is a Waste of Money.” It was unreliable in bad weather and needed an expensive retrofit to counter anti-aircraft, and it seemed like there was not a need for both the U-2 and the Global Hawk since both do reconnaissance.. But, the budget includes both.

For some time, the Defense Department has been preparing to undertake a whole new nuclear Cold War. For the Cold War nuclear competition with the Soviet Union, the U.S. had a triad of nuclear armed submarines, bombers, and missiles. The department envisages a complete set of new weapons for all three legs of the triad (call them #6 for submarines, 7 for bombers, and 8 for missiles), plus the new nuclear warheads (9). Altogether, the “nuclear modernization” will cost about a trillion dollars.

Kingston Reif of the Arms Control Association wrote, “The United States is planning to rebuild all three legs of the nuclear triad and their associated warheads at a cost and on a schedule that many military leaders say is unsustainable.” But this budget includes $8 billion for submarines, with $40 billion planned, fully funds the nuclear bombers, and spends $9 billion on nuclear warheads.

Further: As for the proposed $1.4 billion for new nuclear submarine, with $10 billion over 5 years, it will benefit Senator Reed’[s state (R.I.) and Senator Blumenthal’s state (Conn.) – both on Armed Services — because of General Dynamics facilities.

Further: In the realm of strategic nuclear weapons, the Defense Department budget does propose to bring to an end one gigantic white elephant, a plant to convert the old plutonium warheads to reactor fuel (MOX). But, a strong story in the New York Times showed that the delegation from South Carolina (the plant location) will probably keep funding it.

Guantanamo Bay. Secretary Carter says he still wants to close Gitmo, which would save half a billion dollars. Needless to say, Congress will not agree.”

http://www.forbes.com/sites/charlestiefer/2016/02/10/ten-red-flags-of-waste-in-the-bloated-new-2016-defense-budget/#1b30378c12a9