Today, there is more money in being a rank and file officer in the military than being in the private sector as a pilot. Military pay and compensation has more than doubled since 2000 to over $122,000 per year. A very good article on this fact appeared in USA Today highlighting the boom towns of the country were those with military bases simply because the pay has gone sky high. Meanwhile at American Airlines (those whose taxes pay the military salaries) took a 30% pay cut in 2003. We are still in contract negotiations after 4 years.

I thought it best summed up by a reserve pilot I talked to on our bus ride to work. He also worked for American, but had left, temporarily, for the higher pay of the military and to accumulate years for military retirement. He told me the best deal was the nearly $100,000 that would be paid directly to him for his children’s college, even if they lived at home. This benefit is to anyone who served active duty for three years after 9-11. I didn’t make $100,000 total pay in my first three years as an officer! When I mentioned to him that it was “all printed money,” his response was “I don’t care, as long as the check cashes.” That is a very similar response to the Detroit woman who didn’t know from where her bonus welfare check came and said “It’s Obama money.”

Bear in mind, with the deficits our government is running, all pay, contracts and entitlements could be cut in half and there would still be a deficit because of the interest on the national debt, but just try to suggest cutting military pay. Let a candidate run on that as a campaign promise and see how far his campaign goes. This country is in deep, financial trouble.

http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/o/orwell/george/o79a/

“Old Benjamin, the donkey, seemed quite unchanged since the Rebellion… About the Rebellion and its results he would express no opinion. When asked whether he was not happier now that Jones was gone, he would say only “Donkeys live a long time. None of you has ever seen a dead donkey,” and the others had to be content with this cryptic answer… Benjamin was the only animal who did not side with either faction. He refused to believe either that food would become more plentiful or that the windmill would save work. Windmill or no windmill, he said, life would go on as it had always gone on — that is, badly… Only old Benjamin professed to remember every detail of his long life and to know that things never had been, nor ever could be much better or much worse — hunger, hardship, and disappointment being, so he said, the unalterable law of life… The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”

You don’t know what you have until you loose it?

And back in Tea Party land, when they are not apoplectic because some Sufi Moslems pray on Vesey Street instead of Reade Street in Lower Manhattan or cheering the idea of waterboarding dimwit Taco Bell clerks for “Liberty”, they have a new cause:

http://dailycaller.com/2010/08/19/tea-party-coalition-forming-to-push-for-balanced-budget-amendment/

This utter nonsense sponsored by the likes of Lindsay Graham and John BAILOUT McCain. These neocon statists whose moronic wars to end sexism and bring “democracy” to Afghanistan and Iraq are bankrupting America (not to mention the illegal immigration they love) – are proposing an amendment to the US Constitution (that they regularly ignore). The constitution gives the power to balance the budget to the same CONGRESS that funds the wars, No Child Left Behind, Prescription Drug benefits… – now these statists propose handing the power to balance the budget to the Supreme Court!!! The “Ruth Bader Ginsburg Sales Tax” and the “Anthony Kennedy Income Tax Surcharge”!

Other Republican Tea Party types advocate the oxymoronic “Fair Tax” which will enable the Federal Government to monitor every purchase you make!! Freedom??

Completely PATHETIC!

The problem isn’t the poll. The problem is understanding. Most Americans fail to see (because politicians and the media keep them from seeing) the hand of government in the recent residential mortgage crisis and so blame “free” market forces. Global trade, too, is far from “free” trade as government interventions won’t allow market forces from self-correcting. As to Social Security and Medicare, after contributing exorbitant sums to these programs for most or all of their careers, it is difficult not to be biased. Most Americans are not commenting on the viability of the programs so much as hoping to get a little of their money back.

I believe we need to be very careful about the language we use, as language imparts concepts. We should be using the “statist” term more often (as you certainly do) and apply it to both the so-called “right” and the left. Honestly, most people do not think in terms of a “statist, and non-” dichotomy.