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The right have been jabbering about "entitlements" for my whole lifetime, and may vets have eaten it up: they voted for McCain by a 10 point margin, after all. I am sorry, but nothing gets me more pig-biting mad than people who get checks from the government--many of whom have never done job than involved any other source of income--getting all incensed about "the size of government," and "all those bums."
It's just like how the mainly elderly, Medicare-eligible tea party people got played in 2010. They didn't think that the first thing the tea party GOP in the House would do would be to cut Medicare. That's not what 2010 was about, or what they campaigned on. And yet we had a grassroots movement of people, mostly people whose medical care is paid for by the government, getting absolutely livid about the idea that people other than themselves might have... medical care is paid for by the government. And now they are grumbling about these cuts. They knew someone's ox was to be gored, but didn't expect it would be theirs.
They cannot really cut social security that much. The bottom line is that the government did borrow those funds from the trust fund, and they will be repaid. The next big category of "entitlements" to be cut are military--pensions, tricare, etc. And, make no mistake, they will be cut.
Don't blame Obama for this. This is not an Obama initiative: the board that outlined this proposal was started by Rumsfeld. It's stacked with GOP fatcats. Both Republican business fatcats and Democratic business fatcats are behind it, so it's not Obama's fault, or Panetta's.
I'm sorry, but I have a certain sense of schadenfreude about this. My great grandfather was career military (started his career when we had virtually no military, in fact, served as one of our first snipers in WWI), my grandfather was, too (20 years in the Army, combat infantry, 20 years as a civilian army employee) and my father as well (Army aviator, spent most of my childhood in Vietnam). My dad, who used to be a Democrat, now flies billionaires around for a career, and has bought the GOP party line, hook, line and sinker. All while everything he has now-his healthcare, his career, his full retirement at CW5-he owes entirely to Uncle Sam. When I ask him about how he supports cuts to programs for the poor while getting much bigger checks than any of them, he looks at me with a puzzled expression and says "But I earned it." He just didn't know, apparently, that when they were talking about entitlements, they meant military pensions. This is someone who grew up in poor, rural South Carolina, and probably would not have had much of any sort of career, if not for the Army.
And yet, many of these folks are entirely sheltered from the vagaries of the "free market system" that the rest of us face. The military is cradle-to-grave socialism. Let's assume you're born into a military family. You get born at taxpayer expense, are educated in DoD schools, and join the military, where they give you job training and you get health care and a pension nobody else gets anymore. Your base pay isn't great, but you get a uniform allowance, TDY pay, possibly housing. You can take vacations at DoD-run sites, to include ski resorts and government golf courses. There's equal pay for equal work for men and women, assuming same rank and grade, and policies that protect folks that are better than most employers. You do your time and retire, only to get a job working for the government as a civilian, thanks to veteran's preference: you're not alone, of course, since the government is the largest employer of vets, with 26% of the federal workforce having served. You do your time in the government, where your time in the military helps your pension, and you max out your thrift savings contributions, with matching money from Uncle Sam, and build a tidy nest egg. Then you retire, get paid, and vote Republican, and complain to all and sundry about deadbeats who are not economically productive, in many cases without having been economically productive for a day in your own working life. You've never helped to build, design or sell any product anyone has ever wanted, but look down upon the people who do, and don't think they should be able to form unions to demand the same sorts of rights to which you've felt entitled your whole life. Then you start listening to right-wing hate radio, and it makes you more angry, so angry that you get hypertension, stroke out and die, and are buried at taxpayer expense, on public land.
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