Govs want say on Guard changes
Governors insisted at a Capitol Hill hearing Thursday (June 15) that no major changes should be made to the nation’s National Guard without first consulting the troops’ local commanders-in-chief — the governors.
“We have serious concerns over the repeated lack of consultation between the Department of Defense and the governors,” Delaware Gov. Ruth Ann Minner (D), speaking for the National Governors Association (NGA), told a congressional commission working on recommendations for overhauling the National Guard and Reserves.
Frequent deployments overseas to Iraq and Afghanistan have seriously depleted Guard equipment. Before Sept. 11, 2001, Guard units not on active duty had about 75 percent of their equipment available for use. Now they have less than 34 percent.
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“Don’t have enough soldiers to fight the war? Call up the Guard. Don’t have enough border patrols to secure the border? Call up the Guard. We’ve been stretched way too thin and we just can’t continue” to be deployed at these levels, Easley said. More than 80 percent of the of the nation’s 460,000 Air and Army National Guard troops have been deployed since the 2001 terrorist attacks.
This is another unintended consequence of demanding that the federal government fix all our problems.
We have to stop thos concentration of federal powers…but more importantly we have to stop demanding that the feds fix every damn thing. We keep asking, they keep taking. That’s how it works.
That seems like too much of a stretch to be an explanation to me. This is something that’s been done by a very limited group of people — there were no problems with this kind of thing under Clinton.
On the other hand, there’s a little too much support, expressed or implied, on the part of the public for ‘benevolent dictatorship’ and a little bit too much willingness on the part of the powers that be to provide it.
The larger problem is that in this instance, the powers that be are also the wholly owned subsidiaries of various campaign contributors, so there’s a fake idealism that ensures enough public support to give the process the appearance of legitimacy while what’s actually going on in the background is the looting of both the federal government and anything resembling a free market.
The idea that the working man is carrying the wieght of the world in the form of others simply too lazy to work ought to be a little suspicious when nothing’s said about the fact that their social security is getting swiped from every check at the same time. I gotta wonder who dreamed up the idea of persuading the public that their taxes were being squandered as opposed to providing value for money, given how often this has generally been most apparent in times when the same money is being spent hand over fist.
What good are States anymore other than points of reference.
Considering that back in January of this year, the head General in charge of the National Guard informed Congress that the National Guard was “in all reality a broken force” this doesn’t really surprise me all that much that the governors are complaining.
Justin relayed the interesting statement the General made saying the National Guard was “in reality a broken force”. I spent 10 years in the Guard as a sergeant in an infantry unit and at their peak of operating potential they were pretty well broken. I’m not speaking badly about the individuals in the Guard; some were the hardest working people I have ever met, and I would like to think we did a damn good job.
Think about managing a civilian career, a military career, and a family (If you had one). Then on top of that we were expected to perform to regular Army standards in less than 1/3 of the training time. They have 1 weekend a month and 2 weeks every year to learn to work together as a team. There was always the potential for being activated for any civilian disaster that may happen and not to mention the possibility of being activated for combat. When I said pretty well broken think of all of that and add in the fact that it is the military (everyone that has ever served any branch knows how the military operates), the politics, the prima donna commanders, the budget cuts, and not enough / bad equipment … I could go on but I think you get the point.
Well I see this as all making sense if you look at this current administration’s policies and master chess playing.
1. After 9/11 all the sudden we allow ILLEGAL immigrants into this country to work, and paying them a below legal citizen min wages. I always thought this was no different that “Kathie Lee” buying shoes from sweatshops in Asia.
2.Since illegal workers come here by law legally, then that saves them the hassle of sneaking across the border. They can legally be across for a certain amount of time, this gives LOTS more time for the underground methods to sneak around the law.
Now I believe this was a master chess move to set up many actions of a police state and eventually to turn the United States into a military state. I think that “Guest workers” will be forced to have arm RFID implants, natonalized/unfied IDs, and the anhiliation of human rights..