Plenty of examples on both sides, LouisB. Please express a similar critique of Bill Clinton, just to be fair.
Assuming, of course, you want to be fair.
Reply to aruqvans comments
Stinkpalm said> comments interspersed
Other benifits that people seem to forget.
>30days paid time off a year.
mentioned that one. However, managing to take it can be problematic depending on you particular duty station. mrAru spent more time selling it back than able to take it.
>Virtually unlimited, non billable time off when sick.
Again, depends on your duty station. mrAru broke a foot bone, so they made him sit behind a desk and do walking watches in a barracks at NOB/Norfolk since he couldnt go up and down the ladder. A civillian would have taken off the time and been able to sit at home, he was at that desk 5 days[including the saturday and sunday] after breaking the bone. Since he didnt get to have real time off, and had to walk on it, they had to rebreak it later. That time he got time off. He had all of 3 days off after his hernia repair. He has shipped out on the sub after 3 days in hospital with inhaled oil induced pneumonia. He has had to go back to drills in fire control dressout within 6 hours of being rendered unconscious from heat stroke.
** If he was capable of sitting at a desk then he should have been at work. If he was a civilian then he would have been charged leave to take off work after surgery. **
>TONS of paid holidays off every year.
Not in the Navy. You have duty on that day, you are there for 24 hours, holiday or not. He stood duty every 3 days for 24 hours, having to put in a full work day the day after his duty day. Some times in stress situations he and the crew did port and starboard [12 hours on, 12 hours off for weeks at a time, NO days off.] The longest duty rotation he ever had was a 5 day rotation. When you are at sea there are no days off, when you pull into a foreign port for resupply you might get to have a few hours off if they dont have you standing a watch. Did I mention they keep an 18 hour day on a sub, in port or out? I shift on, one shift off but working and 1 shift for yourself?
** This is telling one half of the story. When these guys come in after their rotation out at sea they get a significant amount of time off. Sure they aren’t getting Veterans Day off when they are out to sea in a sub, but chances are VERY high that they will routinely get comp days after coming in from sea. Ive worked with navy guys for years and know a little about this **
>Full medical and dental for you, full med for family and reasonably priced dental for family.
Yippee. Took me 7 years to get them to recognize my diabetes and put me into a control program. They never in 10 years managed to put a crowbar in the wallet to send me out to do a full thyroid panel to diagnose this falling-out hair, drastic weight gain, roving dry alligator skin patches, low body temperature, shredding fingernails, dry eye problem that is all in my head, and the weight gain is from me sitting on my ass eating candy all the time… Oh, and Dr Death prescribed penicillian for me despite the screaming hot pink med folder. I love going in with a temp of 103+ and a history of kidney infections and kidney failure and being told that they wont culture me because I dont have bladder infection symptoms. I love being taken to an ER in an ambulance because I am now at 105 8 hours later, vomiting uncontrolably and in enough pain I can’t stand up, or sit down and I am about 24 hours from a cyst exploding. I love being told that all navy wives are going to the clinic because our husbands are out to sea and we are needing attention. Don’t mention how it took me almost a year to arrange to get a GYN exam because I wasnt active duty [active duty get first crack at the appointments, which they should] and we simply did not have the money to go offbase for one. SOmetimes you simply cant afford a 20% copay if it includes a pap smear, mammogram and other tests.
** How much did you pay for your covered health care though? Everyone knows that the on base medical can be a crap shoot at best, but its not costing you any thing. You could also get a job of your own and gain coverage from that instead of depending 100% on your husbands medical to cover you**
>FREE training that would cost a fortune in the civ sector.
I mentioned that. You forgot to mention that continuing ed courses are free, and many many service members get degrees in all sorts of spiffy things while still in, and you can save money with the government adding funds for more education once you get done with your enlistment.
>Gov housing or housing subsidy as well as food.
Well, BEQ/VHA for connecticut didn’t even cover our mortgage. Now you also have to pay rent to live in military housing, though it oddly enough costs exactly what BEQ/VHA for the area is…but you still have to pay for electricity, telephone, cable and internet. Comrats [commuted rations] are barely enough to feed one person.
** What rank is your husband? The gov is not in the business of housing people in fancy houses or even in above avg housing. If your husband wasnt making enough to cover your mortgage than you were living above your means and either A) should have taken a job yourself to help cover the difference or B) lived within your means. Comrats (BAS to AF guys) is not supposed to cover food for the family. It is strictly to feed the GI. If it is barely doing so then it is the right amount of money.**
>Job security./Its VERY VERY hard to get “fired” from the military.
mentioned that. Granted, you can screw up mightily, and some people are not cut out to take orders or are simply dumber than a box of rocks [like the idiots who get nailed for DUI and turn around and get another one almost immediately, stuff like that]
>Housing and pay increases as time in increases. Just like civilian sector.
Right, but when you start out well under the income level of a civillian, 3% of piss poor pay is still piss poor pay. [or whatever the various raises end up being, the % varies over the year.]
** A single, 18yo person can survive on e-1 pay. I did it. 100s of 1000s do it every year. If a person decides to marry and have kids then they need to be prepared to make up the difference with supplemental income especially if the spouse doesn’t intend to work. If the spouse can;t work because of a medical condition or other reason and the DOD pay is insufficient for their lifestyle then they should reconsider enlisting and find a better paying job elsewhere. **
You must be either army or air force.
** AF but that’s not really important because the pay scales and entitlements are identical across the services**
SNIP to save everyone having to re-read that b.s.
If youd read my second post, youd see that i have a decent job, and am currently voluntereing for military service (as a form of public service). Sorry that I dont fit into your crack-pipe smoking american youth category... but judging from the state of America today, (due in part to your generation) Im not surprised at your youth wanting to wallow in their own inbred filth in Armpit, Ohio, rather than join your military.
Im sure that your generation has its fair share of free loaders,so feel free to tell them what to do with their lives, rather than power trip on abusing your extra years on this planet in telling yoof what to do.
This is fun, ranting away… can see why you oldies enjoy it so much 
It depends on the rank. The promotions from E1 through E4 are pretty much automatic. FromE4 to E5 (Sergeant) and E5 to E6 it is through promotion points (thats a whole other topic). Any promotions to E7 through E9 are made by a Department of the Army promotion board. Of course I am probably muddying up things. The reason for what you stated above is because there is no one in that category. I think an E7 (sergeant first class) has to have at least 9 years in to make that rank. It is very rare to make it even in 12 years. The only reason I can see why the pay table has the pay scale go down that low for that rank is for reasons that haven’t occurred for 50 years. Back in WWII it was possible to make rank very fast. My uncle made First Sergeant (E8) in three years. That will never happen again.
Obviously you missed where he had to walk rounds, and subsequently had to have his foot rebroken and reset. And I have had jobs where after an operation I was given adequate paid sick leave to recoperate, and the sick days were not taken off from my vacation days. I had a paid 2 months for an ankle break, which is the time my orthopod wanted me to sit at home. I still had all my vacation days, and sick days.
>TONS of paid holidays off every year.
Not in the Navy. You have duty on that day, you are there for 24 hours, holiday or not. He stood duty every 3 days for 24 hours, having to put in a full work day the day after his duty day. Some times in stress situations he and the crew did port and starboard [12 hours on, 12 hours off for weeks at a time, NO days off.] The longest duty rotation he ever had was a 5 day rotation. When you are at sea there are no days off, when you pull into a foreign port for resupply you might get to have a few hours off if they dont have you standing a watch. Did I mention they keep an 18 hour day on a sub, in port or out? I shift on, one shift off but working and 1 shift for yourself?
** This is telling one half of the story. When these guys come in after their rotation out at sea they get a significant amount of time off. Sure they aren’t getting Veterans Day off when they are out to sea in a sub, but chances are VERY high that they will routinely get comp days after coming in from sea. Ive worked with navy guys for years and know a little about this **
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And I have been married to a navy guy and lived with him, and experienced his ‘comp days’ Trust me. The longest comp he got after a cruise was 3 days after a 4 month northern run. It would have been 4 days, but he had to stand duty that 4th day, because he had duty when they ported [so instead of leaving the boat at 9 am like everybody not on duty, or spending the night like the people who had duty ] he got to leave at the end of the workday. I really dont consider 3 days significant ‘comp days’. [and that time after a cruise, or around holidays where you just have to phone in if you dont have the duty that day is called ‘stand down’ and not comp days…comp days are what you get as a civillian. Special liberty is what you get if you are a squid.]
>Full medical and dental for you, full med for family and reasonably priced dental for family.
Yippee. Took me 7 years to get them to recognize my diabetes and put me into a control program. They never in 10 years managed to put a crowbar in the wallet to send me out to do a full thyroid panel to diagnose this falling-out hair, drastic weight gain, roving dry alligator skin patches, low body temperature, shredding fingernails, dry eye problem that is all in my head, and the weight gain is from me sitting on my ass eating candy all the time… Oh, and Dr Death prescribed penicillian for me despite the screaming hot pink med folder. I love going in with a temp of 103+ and a history of kidney infections and kidney failure and being told that they wont culture me because I dont have bladder infection symptoms. I love being taken to an ER in an ambulance because I am now at 105 8 hours later, vomiting uncontrolably and in enough pain I can’t stand up, or sit down and I am about 24 hours from a cyst exploding. I love being told that all navy wives are going to the clinic because our husbands are out to sea and we are needing attention. Don’t mention how it took me almost a year to arrange to get a GYN exam because I wasnt active duty [active duty get first crack at the appointments, which they should] and we simply did not have the money to go offbase for one. SOmetimes you simply cant afford a 20% copay if it includes a pap smear, mammogram and other tests.
** How much did you pay for your covered health care though? Everyone knows that the on base medical can be a crap shoot at best, but its not costing you any thing. You could also get a job of your own and gain coverage from that instead of depending 100% on your husbands medical to cover you**
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I had a job. If I took the med coverage from my job, it would have been 20% copay at a non military managed care facility. If I wanted to go to the navy clinic, I would have had the same co-pay as the navy would then charge my HMO from work. I also would have ended up paying because every company I worked for in the last 15 years here in connecticut have charged for medical insurance, so when you add up chronic condition needing care [diabetes] relatively frequent flareups of pneumonia [thanks phosgene gas, I love hazmat work… anything I get tends to roll me over into pneumonia] kidney infections that are asymptomatic until I am essentially death warmed over [thanks haz mat work.] that catastrophic cap plus medication cost starts geting purgatorial. If I were the typical relatively healthy person, there wouldnt have been much problem. You try dealing with a wrecked body in todays managed health care environment.
>Gov housing or housing subsidy as well as food.
Well, BEQ/VHA for connecticut didn’t even cover our mortgage. Now you also have to pay rent to live in military housing, though it oddly enough costs exactly what BEQ/VHA for the area is…but you still have to pay for electricity, telephone, cable and internet. Comrats [commuted rations] are barely enough to feed one person.
** What rank is your husband? The gov is not in the business of housing people in fancy houses or even in above avg housing. If your husband wasnt making enough to cover your mortgage than you were living above your means and either A) should have taken a job yourself to help cover the difference or B) lived within your means. Comrats (BAS to AF guys) is not supposed to cover food for the family. It is strictly to feed the GI. If it is barely doing so then it is the right amount of money.**
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Gee, you don’t realize that Connecticut has one of the highest cost of housing, do you? We have a respectable house [well, miniscule sort of fits, we could swing a small cat in the second bedroom if we moved our roommate philippa out of it. the big bedroom is 9x12, the small is 9x8. Neither has a closet.] When we moved here, we had to rent as I was not yet finished with my divorce, and he was not qualified to have housing off base, or to move me into barracks. Dont ask why, but the boat CO had a thing against his single guys living off base and wanted them all in barracks. I understand that because of a number of COs like this the rules got changed a couple years later. We took the first available place we could find that was greater than 15 miles from base, less than 35 miles from base and could pass a VA inspection, ecause mrAru was informed that he would be finishing out the last 12 years of his career here in COnnecticut [the military stopped rotating people around the country to save money and preferred to keep subbies at bases where they coud do sea/shore rotations without moving.] What we pay in mortgage is what we would be paying in rent. When we got the place, it was $920 a month, unfortunately every 2 years for the time here our town has reappraised properties and our taxes have gone up between 10 and 30 a month tacked onto our mortgage so now we are over 1100 a month for the mortgage. Military pay had not increased to cover the towns shenanegans so by the time he retired, BEQ/VHA was not covering the mortgage. We do not live in anything approaching luxury. BTW, in Norfolk, comrats did manage to pay for the food for both of us, I cook from raw ingredients which is way cheaper than convenience foods or fast food…the cost of food in Ct is much higher than in norfolk.
>Housing and pay increases as time in increases. Just like civilian sector.
Right, but when you start out well under the income level of a civillian, 3% of piss poor pay is still piss poor pay. [or whatever the various raises end up being, the % varies over the year.]
** A single, 18yo person can survive on e-1 pay. I did it. 100s of 1000s do it every year. If a person decides to marry and have kids then they need to be prepared to make up the difference with supplemental income especially if the spouse doesn’t intend to work. If the spouse can;t work because of a medical condition or other reason and the DOD pay is insufficient for their lifestyle then they should reconsider enlisting and find a better paying job elsewhere. **
You must be either army or air force.
** AF but that’s not really important because the pay scales and entitlements are identical across the services**
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Air force service is very different than navy, you guys go to a base, and other than an occasional TDY somewhere you tend to stay in one place. NAvy on a ship you go in and out of port frequently. You tend to have 1 long cruise a year, ranging from 1 month in the caribbean doing target practice or 7 months crusining around the north sea [or pacific for west coasters] A common year for us was 1 northern or med run of 3-6 months, and then at least 1 1 month run for target practice, and 2 or 3 3 week runs [usually one northwards to play with canada, and one to florida] though the entire boat was moved to Portsmouth NH for refit for 15 months, so I was batching it here and he was in a hotel there, but that was not typical. Interspersed would be 3-5 day runs out making holes in the water. I was very accustomed to being left alone much of the year. Boomers [missile subs] were different, they would go out for 6 months at a time [usually had a ‘gold team’ and a ‘blue team’ and they would swap crews between the trips out] and they had much leisure time in between their 6 month crusies for schools and makework. The main problem with living in CT is that this area is depressed because companies have spent much of the last 20 years moving out of the area because of the high taxes and costs of running a business [rent, utilities, employees, insurance] so the jobs are scarce. I myself have been laid off from my last 3 jobs because the companies closed their divisions here. I have ben unemployed for the last 19 months, despite over 300 job applications I have had all of 3 interviews. On average, there are 1000 applicants per job opening. When you consider that my job hunting area is a circle 75 miles ONE WAY from the house, in a time and area where most people dont want to work more than 20 miles from home, this is significant. There arent even temp jobs in the area - I have managed to work 2 temp jobs, both holiday staffing. We have 3 roommates to help cover costs [our barn has the top floor finished off as a master suite, we were up there until Dragon and his wife Carolyn moved in] simply because I can’t find work. I love being told I am overqualified, underqualified or just ignored. Whatever happend to a ‘thanks for the application/resume, but sod off’ note? If I didnt do a courtesy note and phone call I would never know that they got the blasted application or resume=(
If you were both able to survive on his monthly BAS rate by eating light then thats great but it still doesn’t change the fact that BAS is provided to feed the GI not his/her family. Im sure there are families in Korea that could feed a whole family for several months on your BAS but it doesn’t mean that it HAS to.
Actually, its not really worth replying to all of your statements mainly because we disagree on what the DoD should be providing its troops.
Bottom line is this: My paycheck is provided for ME to survive on. DoD is NOT paying my family for my military service, though they do get alot of great benifits. My wife has to work so we can have what luxurys we do have. Speaking as an active duty military member, I don’t feel that its the DoDs responsibility to pay for the care of my family unless I’m KIA or deployed for an extended period of time.
Nothing personal, but it sounds like you and your husband are shining examples of people who are not cut out to live as a military family. It sounds like you guys should be living near family that can help out when you need it and your husband can get a job where he comes home every night with no issues.
Just curious, what DID you think it was going to be like when you married a Navy guy? Of course he’s going to be out to sea for long periods of time. That’s what they DO.
The point was merely to refute the implication that “everyone” must fulfill societal obligations. Yes, Bill Clinton avoided the draft, as did many others.
My draft rating was “1-Y” which basically meant that I would be a hostage. That rating resulted from an old injury but plenty of people have accused me of dodging the draft.
Then you met your societal obligation, LouisB.
For that matter, so did Bill Clinton, Dick Cheney and George W. Bush. Bush is an honorably discharged veteran (though no war hero, by his own account). Clinton and Cheney took advantage of legal deferments. Since they were legal, they fulfilled their obligation to society by not breaking the law.
I think the law as it existed then was flawed, but there is no moral quandry to me in obeying a badly written law.
Spousal employment depends on a number of factors.
First, there have to be jobs available. Some bases are located in areas where jobs are at a premium. It helps to have specialized skills, but if there are no jobs, there are no jobs.
Second, employers want to make sure you’re going to be around a while. In places like Norfolk, it is possible for the serviceperson to spend their entire career there. However, other services rotate people in and out. If an employer knew you were only going to be there for a year or two; three at most, would they hire you, or would they hire a local resident who isn’t likely to move?
Third, military spouses don’t have the most stable work histories, largely from moving every few years. If I, as a military spouse, submitted a resume that indicated multiple jobs in multiple states, is it likely to be looked at, or will it be rejected?
Fourth, military towns are like university towns in that they cater to a particular population. And like university towns, relations can be strained. When I lived in Abilene, home to Dyess AFB, some of my friends who were Air Force wives had a hard time finding a decent job. It was felt that, since these people would be leaving within a few hears, jobs should be given to native Abilenians who, somehow, deserved them more.
Fifth, the unique nature of military service can make it hard for a spouse to find a job. If the servicemember deploys, the spouse might have to take care of children with no family nearby to help. This limits the spouse to work that can be done during the day, when the children are in school. I went to school with a nursing student who had to turn down a lucrative job because she couldn’t find anyone to take care of her kids while she would be at work. Her husband was in the Air Force and in a more-or-less permanent “on call” status.
Now, I’m not saying that inability to find work rests entirely with the military. There are people who refuse to find jobs, and there are people who have no job skills and who refuse to learn any skills that would make them more desirable. What I am saying is that military life presents challenges that make finding good jobs relatively difficult.
The military is aware of this and there is some assistance available to spouses. For example, the Air National Guard has a contract with an employment agency to help spouses find work. Family service centers also have seminars on resume writing and job hunting for spouses. Furthermore, some colleges offer special assistance to spouses in the form of tuition breaks and on-base courses. (My own university system has a residence waiver for spouses of people stationed in Pennsylvania. I only have to pay in-state tuition, which is significantly lower than the out-of-state tuition I would’ve had to pay otherwise, and I know other public universities offer the same break.)
Robin
You’re under no obligation to tell a potential employer that you expect to be leaving in a few years. Who on earth would do that? NO BODY, even those in the military, know how long they will be in a specific location with absolute certainty with the exception of tech school or tech training. Could be 1-2 years, could be 10 years. I see alot of both.
As you pointed out the military does as much as they can to help spouses find employment. Ultimately it’s the spouses job to find work though. If they can’t, then they shouldn’t have that kid or maybe the military member shouldn’t re-enlist. The military life is not as hard to plan around as some people play it out to be. Barring some unusual assignments there are no huge suprises when you get reassigned. Most people are pretty well up to speed on the “hot spots” that they could be reassigned.
I don’t want to sound like I’m being judgemental here. I realize that everyone has their own story and own situations that they are living out. Hell, I live paycheck to paycheck and I make almost 50K a year. Mainly because of a divorce and being a single father, but I don’t think the AF should be paying me more money just because I’m pinching pennies to get by. I’m getting married in a few weeks and you can bet that my wife will be working because I don’t make enough to support her and my daughter. That doesn’t mean that the AF is underpaying me though. It means that we want a certain standard of living and in order to do so she must work.
If thousands of people are able to live comfortably on E-X or O-X pay then that typically means that the people that can’t are living outside their means. It’s a decision that is made by the military family and the DoD shouldn’t have to make up the difference. If the military pay scale doesn’t meet your needs then you shouldn’t be working for the military. Unless you’re enlisted, then you can try for a commission like I did. The pay raise from E-4 to O-1E is massive.
You gotta do what you gotta do.