Fox and Beck to go seperate ways....

[DaVinci 0]

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You're posting on an internation website hosted on Canadian servers. Typical American arrogance to make it all about yourself

Wanna compare the number of times I mention issues in Canada and political figures in Canada to the number of you and the US?

[SkyDekker 1,465]

That would prove my point lol

[rushmc 23]

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That would prove my point lol

Ah

In the context of your comment (to which he responded) it proves his point, and frames your arrogance very nicely

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[SkyDekker 1,465]

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In the context of your comment (to which he responded) it proves his point, and frames your arrogance very nicely

His point was that since I am not American I am not allowed to voice an opinion on American Politics.

You agree with him.

Since both you and him don't work for Fox and are not Beck, why the hell are you posting on this thread?

[rushmc 23]

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In the context of your comment (to which he responded) it proves his point, and frames your arrogance very nicely

His point was that since I am not American I am not allowed to voice an opinion on American Politics.

You agree with him.

Since both you and him don't work for Fox and are not Beck, why the hell are you posting on this thread?

Nope
Not his point

But I am not surprised that you miss it

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[DaVinci 0]

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Oh, I know what is wrong with the US economy. Bad oversight and continually raising expenditures while cutting taxes. Your country is on the edge of bankruptcy and your population thinks its time for more tax cuts.

Some think you should just cut spending.

Some think you should just raise taxes.

Some think that you should cut spending and THEN see if you need to raise taxes.

Raising taxes may well be needed.... BUT if you just raise revenue people will just find ways to spend it.

In the military we had this thing called "Spendex" The idea was that you were given 100 (made up number, WAY low) rocket launchers for training and you had to either use them, or turn them back in at the end of the year. If you only used 50, you would only get 50 next year and the only way to get more was to claim you used all you were given and needed more.

So every year like clockwork we would send people to the range to 'waste' ordnance.

I have taken 10 AT4's to the range and just got to play with them. I was shooting them in a high arc flight trying to drop them in on targets, I was trying to skip them off the ground (bad idea BTW).

So I basically wasted 15k dollars of ordnance that day.

http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/at4.htm

I have been sent to the range with CASES of grenades. We were seeing how many we could throw before the first one went off, we threw the boxes out into the field and tried to blast them to shit, we went around dropping them in big puddles of water to create geysers.

http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/m67.htm

Ammo.... Crap, we used to take TRUCKLOADS of ammo to the range and we would fire all day doing whatever the hell we wanted.... By the end of the day we were firing full auto and not paying a bit of attention to where the rounds went (as long as they were down range) and we were aiming the BRASS into crates so we didn't have to pick it up later.

Guys would fly C-130's to Alaska and back just to spend JP8 so they would not get less next year.

And this is just some examples from personal experience.

And this is NOTHING in the grand picture.

They issue 1000 grenades, we use 500 of them in real training and then waste the other 500 in a spendex. Next year, they gave us 1200, we used 500 in training and 700 at the spendex, the next year we got 1500.... You see where this is going?

And pretty much ALL govt programs work the same way.

Blow your budget and you will get more money next year, make your budget and they will cut your budget next year.

So instead of focusing on raising taxes to increase budgets... Lets FIRST look at getting rid of waste.... Cause if you do not start there, you will never get to there.

[SkyDekker 1,465]

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Nope
Not his point

It was his point with me giving him the benefit of the doubt
Since doubting if somebody who lives outside the US understand if there is anything outside the US borders on complete retardation.

But I am not surprised you would miss that

[DaVinci 0]

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And until the right wing admits that the problem has two sides, income will never keep up with what we owe.

And until the left wing admits that the problem has two sides, income will never keep up with what we owe.

They are the ones pushing MORE entitlement programs.

[SkyDekker 1,465]

Well Mr DaVinci, I am sure many are happy to see you have been an active part of the wastefull spending of American tax dollars. In very many words you said: Do as I say, but not as I do.

Interestingly enough, that is exactly the problem the US is facing.

There should be a law requiring a balanced budget, including a required portion of outstanding debt.

Then taxes need to be raised and expenditures lowered to meet the requirements of that law.

[DaVinci 0]

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His point was that since I am not American I am not allowed to voice an opinion on American Politics.

Not my point at all.

YOU asked Rush: "I know it's tough having to realize there are places outside the USA."

To which I replied to you: "The fact that YOU seem obsessed with *US politics* makes me question if YOU know there are places outside the US. "

To compare my posts (or Rush's) about Canada to yours about the US would support my claim that YOU may not know there are other places than the US.

So, you didn't get the point, and your posts argue against you.

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Since both you and him don't work for Fox and are not Beck, why the hell are you posting on this thread?

You know who we work for?

[SkyDekker 1,465]

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YOU asked Rush: "I know it's tough having to realize there are places outside the USA."

To which I replied to you: "The fact that YOU seem obsessed with *US politics* makes me question if YOU know there are places outside the US. "

I see that giving you the benefit of the doubt was misplaced then

[DaVinci 0]

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Well Mr DaVinci, I am sure many are happy to see you have been an active part of the wastefull spending of American tax dollars. In very many words you said: Do as I say, but not as I do.

You have no clue about the military do you?

Show me where I would be allowed to disobey a LAWFUL order?

Nothing ILLEGAL happened.

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There should be a law requiring a balanced budget, including a required portion of outstanding debt.

Yes.

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Then taxes need to be raised and expenditures lowered to meet the requirements of that law.

Ah, flip it: Then expenditures lowered and then taxes raised to meet the requirements of that law.

[DaVinci 0]

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I see that giving you the benefit of the doubt was misplaced then

I see, you stuck your foot in your mouth and instead of admitting it you asked for ketchup.

[SkyDekker 1,465]

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You have no clue about the military do you?

Show me where I would be allowed to disobey a LAWFUL order?

You had a choice between using your time on the range usefull, or to "fuck around"; your post displays the decision you made.

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Then expenditures lowered and then taxes raised to meet the requirements of that law.

Sure. My point all along has been that both need to happen. Changing the order doesn't change that fact.

(more to the point, since americans and politicians will never be able to agree on which expenditures to scrap, taxes will have to rise even more. In plain english, if you sit around waiting for expenditures to be lowered, you (as a country) are fucked.)

[DaVinci 0]

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You had a choice between using your time on the range usefull, or to "fuck around"; your post displays the decision you made.

I did what I was ordered to do. Again, you have no clue about the military. Instead of admitting that, you go off on some tangent.

And who is to say there was no useful skill learned? You? I now know that skipping an AT4 is not something that would be a good tactic. I know that I can throw 4-5 grenades before the first one goes off.... so I could decimate a large area without getting myself fragged.

Basically (once again) you are talking about a topic you have ZERO clue about.

When your 1SG tells you to do X, unless it is illegal, you do X.

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Sure. My point all along has been that both need to happen. Changing the order doesn't change that fact.

Sure it does.... As I have shown (which you ignored on went off on some tangent) when you increase funding you increase waste.

So if you want to make headway, you need to cut waste FIRST.

You are like the guy that wants to get out of debt... So he gets a second job and then buys a flat screen TV with the extra money and then wonders why he is not out of debt yet.

I am the guy that sees my budget is not working, so I drop my cable TV, I stop eating out, and THEN I get additional income.

[SkyDekker 1,465]

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You are like the guy that wants to get out of debt... So he gets a second job and then buys a flat screen TV with the extra money and then wonders why he is not out of debt yet.

I am the guy that sees my budget is not working, so I drop my cable TV, I stop eating out, and THEN I get additional income.

Fuck me, like talking to a wall....

In your first scenario, the one that is supposed to be me. Are expenditures curtailed? NO

I said both need to happen. This time I highlighted it, just in case you missed it the previous 10 times or so.

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And who is to say there was no useful skill learned? You?

If a usefull skill was learned, it wouldn't be overly wastefull. Did you communicate to your superiors that the acquired skill could have been attained more efficiently? If nobody ever does, how do you expect anything to change?

[nbblood 0]

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You had a choice between using your time on the range usefull, or to "fuck around"; your post displays the decision you made.

I did what I was ordered to do. Again, you have no clue about the military. Instead of admitting that, you go off on some tangent.

And who is to say there was no useful skill learned? You? I now know that skipping an AT4 is not something that would be a good tactic. I know that I can throw 4-5 grenades before the first one goes off.... so I could decimate a large area without getting myself fragged.

Basically (once again) you are talking about a topic you have ZERO clue about.

When your 1SG tells you to do X, unless it is illegal, you do X.

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Sure. My point all along has been that both need to happen. Changing the order doesn't change that fact.

Sure it does.... As I have shown (which you ignored on went off on some tangent) when you increase funding you increase waste.

So if you want to make headway, you need to cut waste FIRST.

You are like the guy that wants to get out of debt... So he gets a second job and then buys a flat screen TV with the extra money and then wonders why he is not out of debt yet.

I am the guy that sees my budget is not working, so I drop my cable TV, I stop eating out, and THEN I get additional income.

I DO have a clue about the military. What you describe clearly falls into waste, fraud, and abuse. You even describe it yourself as "waste". So, expending ammo for the sake of spending ammo, without clearly defined training objectives would certainly be an unlawful order.

Now, that said, you and I both know it happens and it is common. There is pressure to expend training ammo. It is a cultural expectation to expend training ammo. Though the ammo allocation process is certainly not what you explain, i.e., you don't just get more ammo because you spent all you had this year. If you don't expend all training ammo "x", then a unit could certainly expect to go through pains to justify maintaining an ammo allocation when they didn't use that particular allocation in the previous year.

Ammo allocations are based on STRAC training requirements, number of units and soldiers, and the particular requirements for that specific unit based on training and deployment missions. Training ammunition allocations are at Division level and often there are blanket allocations so each subordinate "like" unit allocation looks the same, at least initially. Those allocations are managed and re-allocated based on unit-specific missions.

With all the deployed units lately there has been an abundance of training ammunition available to units not deployed. There has been pressure to expend all this ammo for fear of reduction of allocations when there are more units in training.

But expending ammo to expend ammo is waste, fraud and abuse, no doubt. I have personally stopped actvities of that nature on several occasions. I then counselled leaders to find ways to extract training value out of the ammo allocation and was able to find creative training value and still expend the ammo at the same time. Personally, I'm more concerned about the training value than the ammo allocation. If you give me X ammo I'll find a way to extract training value that may potentially save a Soldier's life someday. You even mentioned potential training value from the scenarios you mentioned, viable training value, though I could develop that value further. Any leader worth his weight in salt could do the same. Hard right vs. easy wrong.

Blues,
Nathan

If you wait 'til the last minute, it'll only take a minute.

[billvon 3,132]

>BUT if you just raise revenue people will just find ways to spend it.

Yep. And sometimes if you cut spending, it ends up costing more.

It might be a good idea to end the GI bill spending, for example; it will not increase costs in the future. In the case you mention, it might be a good idea to stop spending on training ammunition. But it might be a very bad idea to cut all bridge maintenance spending, because the cost of replacing a bridge that has fallen down might be far, far higher than the cost of maintaining it properly.

[DaVinci 0]

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Fuck me, like talking to a wall....

Yes, talking to you is like that.

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If a usefull skill was learned, it wouldn't be overly wastefull.

You clearly have no idea what you are talking about. It does not take 15k of ordnance to figure out skipping an AT4 round off the ground or using it as indirect fire is a bad idea. They wanted me to shoot 10 AT4's, or throw a hundred Grenades, or shoot 10k rounds in one day.

Hell, on Full Auto it STILL took all day to shoot 10k rounds.

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Did you communicate to your superiors that the acquired skill could have been attained more efficiently?

Again, you have no idea what you are talking about.

We had done all the training we were planned to do... this was to get rid of the EXCESS AFTER THE PLANNED TRAINING WAS DONE.

Military conversations go like this:

1SG: Go to the armory and then go to range G and shoot these 10 AT4's
DV: Who else should I take?
1SG: Just you, there is an RO there already.
DV: Rog' top.

Seriously... Anyone that military wanna chime in and tell him how his 'suggestion' in this situation would have played out?

[DaVinci 0]

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Yep. And sometimes if you cut spending, it ends up costing more.

It might be a good idea to end the GI bill spending, for example; it will not increase costs in the future. In the case you mention, it might be a good idea to stop spending on training ammunition. But it might be a very bad idea to cut all bridge maintenance spending, because the cost of replacing a bridge that has fallen down might be far, far higher than the cost of maintaining it properly.

Find where I suggested cutting MX on bridges? I said to cut WASTE. Bridge MX is not WASTE. Blowing off 10 AT4's with no training value is waste.

[DaVinci 0]

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So, expending ammo for the sake of spending ammo, without clearly defined training objectives would certainly be an unlawful order

I would not call it 'unlawful'... Stupid sure. But the point is you admit it happens.

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Though the ammo allocation process is certainly not what you explain

It was a very basic description. It served to make the point.

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I then counselled leaders to find ways to extract training value out of the ammo allocation and was able to find creative training value and still expend the ammo at the same time.

And if you were an E5 and the 1SG told you and you alone to go blast 10 AT4's... What would you have done? Told him no?

[rehmwa 2]

Fox and Beck
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spending vs taxes vs both vs both (but how to do it)
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bombs and mortars
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you suck
no you suck
"OH CAN-A-DAAAAA, la la la la la la"
not yet
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nicely digressed in the end - fun stuff

...
Driving is a one dimensional activity - a monkey can do it - being proud of your driving abilities is like being proud of being able to put on pants

[SkyDekker 1,465]

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So, expending ammo for the sake of spending ammo, without clearly defined training objectives would certainly be an unlawful order

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I would not call it 'unlawful'... Stupid sure. But the point is you admit it happens.

Sounds like thereis enough confusion about whether the order is lawful or not. Enough for somebody so concerned about cutting waste to take a stand on the issue. However, you took the easy way out and didn't even try to take a stand. Self preservation in stead of thinking about the greater good.

Brings us back to what exactly the problem is. Nobody wants to take action when it affects them.

[kelpdiver 2]

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Sounds like thereis enough confusion about whether the order is lawful or not. Enough for somebody so concerned about cutting waste to take a stand on the issue. However, you took the easy way out and didn't even try to take a stand. Self preservation in stead of thinking about the greater good.

so do you have any useful experience about military life to make this statement? Or talking out the rear?

Why would a solider put himself at risk in a confrontation with his CO over a waste issue?

[SkyDekker 1,465]

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Why would a solider put himself at risk in a confrontation with his CO over a waste issue?

Because it would be the right thing to do.

Specially if after you had a chance to do the right thing you go on a website and tell everybody they should do the right thing.