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I went back to my job during leave accrued from ADOS. Some rando at my Reserve sq was trying to tell me that leave had to end in the local area. I disagreed and disregarded bc it is a defacto terminal leave, something full-timers who have never been part-timers are apparently unable to grasp.

Thanks for the references! @nsplayri'll let you know if we go down that road.

I use Marcus by Goldman Sachs. FYI that is a referral link…both you and I would get an extra 1% on all balances for 3 months. I referred someone recently so have my cash balances at 4.75% rn which is great. Also their daily transfer limit is $100K not some BS $5K like some other places. Easy/fast/free transfers, recurring, etc., all the stuff I have had complaints about with other companies. Before them I had a few others over the years chasing rates here and there but Marcus has been solid, they get my endorsement.

Of course but will the unions ever allow it. My grandparents are mostly blue collar workers from the northeast and as a child they attempted to indoctrinate me on the union way of life. Don't get me wrong, unions can serve a very important purpose, especially as a balance to unrestrained capitalism. That being said, modern unions have morphed into self-licking ice cream cones that don't serve the purpose of the worker. The investment in JRTOC and ROTC waxes and wanes with the times. I would bet with the current recruiting issues the investment will increase. I understand what you are saying but completely disagree when it comes to the rank argument. As has been pointed out by others, you can remove the JRTOC rank structure and the void will be filled by some other social construct, likely without supervision. Have their been problems, of course, but that is a natural distribution of bad people in society and I think there is value to an "official" framework, far better than the hunger games that will result in many of these under-resourced schools. Let's face it, that is the focus of military recruiting and has been for a long time. Minorities serve at a much higher rate than the current population distribution. Again, given the current recruiting issues, that distribution will likely increase. I understand your intent but the real issue is leadership and family structure. Debatable...the kid is wicked smart...sadly he looks just like me but he so smart I am wondering if the Fedex guy didn't make an extra stop while I was deployed. My kid is being recruited because of his academics and it is a bigger feeding frenzy than the process I went through when I was recruited but a large number of colleges to play football. Honestly I've never seen anything like it. He is only a sophomore and they are all over him. I have his email on my phone to keep an eye on things and he gets three or four emails every single day. He has been invited to summer dual enrollment programs at MIT and Georgetown this year. I haven't kept track of the smaller school but as of last month he had 28 major schools after him including Cornell, Georgetown, MIT, Vanderbilt and Miami. Enough with the dad flex, I am proud of him. I used to love Chicago, amazing city...now like most liberal run cities it has a lunatic mayor and one of the highest murder rates in the country. JROTC could be one of the pillars that helps kids find disciple and success but the overall underlying system has crumbled in Chicago. Add that to the impact of the family structure and you find the root of many problems. African America children in particular demonstrate how the lack of a family structure drastically increases the likelihood of a bad outcome.

I’m old enough to remember Facebook censoring “misinformation” posts claiming COVID leaked from a lab. How about that?

Air interdiction done dirt cheap. Interesting to see the evolution of these systems after seeing the development of them as a threat to aircraft on the ground at the various locations in bad guy land.

I got 3.95 with standard lending club bank savings

Guard and reserve guys are being told they have to move out of the dorms for the incoming academy studs. They can move to an on base house if there's availability or off base.

Kind of, this rapidly can become an apples and oranges discussion. You want to be wolf of Wall Street, well yeah you should probably have a degree from Harvard or whatever. But I know too many guys making the same money as an O-5 pilot with zero degree and doing skilled labor/own their own business in that area of expertise. A buddy’s son is 21 making 6 figures with zero debt as a lineman. That kid is crushing life compared to all of his peers racking up debt getting their bullshit degree who will then get jobs post-college that won’t touch his earnings for many years, and on top of it they’ve got debt to pay off. There’s a significant, insatiable demand for skilled labor and will be for decades to come. Oh, and now we have major airline pilots without degrees who will absolutely crush their doctor peers in long term earnings. Lots of opportunity to make a solid living without a college degree, just depends on what you want to do for a living.

if there's anything COVID taught me is to not blindly trust "the experts" usually they're naked and holding handfuls of cash

The AFI you quoted is not up to speed with law yet, so it should say “grade higher than O-3.” The key verbiage in the AFI is “or during creditable service for AFR members retiring under 10 USC § 12731.” Creditable service as interpreted by ARPC: participating status and all good years for 3 yrs TIG or if over 20 good yrs and retiring on a partial year, a pro-rated good year. Main thing is 3 yrs TIG must be 3 whole years from effective date of rank that are good or pro-rated good AND in a participating status. The relevant law is 10 USC 1370A, not to be confused with 1370(a).

I feel similarly about college as I do K-12. It’s bullshit and exists almost entirely to push narratives and maximize profits, while dragging Americans into debt (which begets a lot of profit). The only thing nowadays that college “makes sense” for is specific career paths that require a degree, such as doctor, engineer, or lawyer. Everyone else should go get actual training/education relevant to their chosen profession instead of wasting time and money on useless degrees.

In the late 90s, we used to do lines of Vivarin like Scar Face when I was a sheetmetal dude. I was tweaking removing all of those stuck screws on the Viper lol. Back then I lived on Malrboro Reds, Vivarin and Burger King. Lol

100%. School choice is the best and most viable solution that currently exists. Hopefully we start to see more traction, but holy hell the progressives are putting up a massive fight. Fucking teacher unions need to be destroyed.

yes!

I think this gets better by improving school choice for parents. Democrats would want you to believe that simply funneling more money to public schools fixes it but its not a total solution. Money does help but short of competition the schools have little incentive to improve. Teachers unions are a disaster and have completely become astray of any interest in the students. The bad thing about Chicago is the VAST majority of people there will never be able to afford private schooling. Mean private schooling cost is $25K/student and the average wage is still $60K/year. The JROTC academies have the potential to be something "nice" but the DoD is poorly invested in them and CPS is poorly invested in them. There is also a culture of sending problem children to military academies and not actually painting pathways to college or trade for them. Its creating a culture/perception that you see common in Democratic circles that the military is a pathway "for people who can't make it in life." NOT a place of excellence and achievement. And while JROTC does not advertise itself as a recruiting farm for the military, the city and the public school system push that narrative while trying to get rid of their social responsibility to deal with said problem children. What I'm trying to say is..... you are not getting a crop of top actors in some of these programs. And giving them some sense of artificial authority/power is not the right place to start. The right place to start is humility and a healthy ego smashing. Understanding that power and authority don't make you a better person, "more of a winner", its a role on a team. Like I've said, I'm not against JROTC at large. I think the program has value, but it should be built around the lowest common denominator, which right now, is unfortunately the inner city programs that account for 50% of all JROTC students. I'm sure the program is great for CH's son.... but I'll be frank.... I think CH is probably a pretty stellar parent and his son is going to be alright with or without JROTC, whether it has ranks or not. By the way, City of Chicago is hiring a lot of JROTC instructors right now if anyone is retiring soon and wants to help fix the problem.

Well to be fully transparent I believe all public education is dog shit at this point. If you’re ranked #1, you’re simply just the best of the worst. Someone’s #1 at nav school…but they’re still a nav! And it’s not difficult for me to personally fathom the problems, I’ve lived them first hand in a deeply progressive state that was sold as “great schools.” Turns out they’re horrendous schools from every angle you look at it. For example, the highly ranked high school in our previous district, which costs almost $19k per student, is producing less than 50% math proficient and less than 63% reading proficient. That’s an epic failure, but they’re still considered a “great” school district. Bottom line, the idea of moving to a specific area because of the “great schools” is a dead notion in our country, no such thing anymore in the public sphere…until we have a massive overhaul which will have to be nothing short of “burn it down” and build anew. Probably won’t ever happen.

I had a money market savings in the 2006-2008 time frame that was paying 5%+. I threw $100k in there and was doing quite well with it. If only that had lasted. That's $160k+ after 10 years. Sent from my SM-F721U using Tapatalk

I thinks more a combination of poor tactics, inability to effectively perform SEAD/DEAD, and lack of effective self protect against the IR threat than an issue with the platform. Whatever makes them crash/burn quickly and contributes to mort’ing their aircrew is fine by me.

Chicago alone has over 30 public schools that charge on average around $35k/yr tuition and 0% of the students are grade level math proficient. One charges $52k/yr! Yeah I’d say there’s some massive problems in CPS, and cadet rank isn’t one of them. Chicago is a great example of incredible failure in so many spectrums of society. But I guess that’s what happens when you clearly have so many stupid people living together in one area - they get what they vote for.

When I was at the academy in 03-07 you could get a CD at 7%.

I'm always puzzled when people blame the construct for the behavior. Rank is just a reflection of hierarchies, which are inseparable from humanity. You get rid of cadet ranks and they will be replaced by another construct, which will act the same way. You have to structure the hierarchies in a way that promote stability. But acting as though they can be removed from the equation is like arguing that we should just remove hate, or fear, or greed. They are foundational components of humanity. The failure was not the existence of rank. It never is.

I'll take a stab at it. H.R.25 (the Fair Tax Act) would be a good solution in my opinion, but Pres. Biden has threatened to veto it if it passes. If you aren't yet aware, the Fair Tax has been proposed in Congress regularly since around 2005 but has never seen a vote. The Democrats/mainstream media try to paint it as a 30% regressive tax that will increase the middle-class tax burden. But if you read the actual bill, you'll find out why it's never seen a vote and why politicians hate it so much: it takes lobbyist money out of their pockets and takes away the control they exert with the IRS. The bill completely does away with the incompetent IRS (which fails to collect a TRILLION dollars of owed taxes each year: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-treasury-irs/irs-chief-says-1-trillion-in-taxes-goes-uncollected-every-year-idUSKBN2C0255) which costs over $12 billion to fund each year. This means there will be no federal income tax or payroll taxes withheld from your paycheck and you won't have to file federal taxes each year (it gets rid of capital gains taxes as well). The Fair Tax is also progressive in the sense that everyone (every registered household) will receive a monthly prebate (rebate) check to cover purchases of necessities up to the federal poverty level. This effectively makes the tax rate 0% up to the poverty level and then it staggers up to 23% based on what you buy. This is key because it encourages saving money and purchasing used goods since the tax will only be levied on new goods and services. You are now in control of your tax rate based on what you choose to buy or not buy. The Fair Tax would get rid of tens of thousands of pages of IRS tax code and replace it with 100-200 pages of tax code. Politicians don't like it because it closes all the tax loopholes people like Warren Buffet and Donald Trump use to pay less taxes than middle-class Americans. It also get rid of corporate (and export) taxes (which only get passed through to the consumer anyway). This will bring businesses and jobs back to American soil because there will be no reason to move them offshore any longer (except maybe wages for labor). It is also fair because everyone (regardless of income) pays the same rate. This is important because we are recently seeing a huge jump in rich people moving overseas to avoid taxation (https://calbizjournal.com/why-wealthy-people-are-giving-up-their-american-citizenship/). Also, it will potentially bring in more money because all the people that don't pay taxes now (career criminals, undocumented immigrants, pimps, etc.) will then be paying sales tax at the register for new goods/services. Most states are already equipped to collect sales tax so it won't be a huge transition. I wish people would spin the monthly prebate checks as "reparations" because then lots more people might support it. 🙂 Wikipedia has a lot of the details regarding the amount of the prebate checks, etc.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FairTax.

My favorite part about dodging wx is having an on coming car flash his lights at us as we're scud running around 15 feet AGL in a snow storm. I really wish that I would have WX CNXd that one.

To be honest, yeah I am, for stupid shit like flight suit sleeves, reflective belts, PT gear while deployed, and masks. I do plenty of the other stupid shit like useless CBTs, show up 6.9 hrs early for the rotator, 1206s, and a thousand other things I didn’t like/disagreed with. It’s called critically thinking and being OK with living in the gray (and that’s what wins fights, not zero critical thought yes men). But none of that’s important, what’s important is you’re like every shitty E-9 who has zero critical thinking skills and touts illogical shit like, “if you can’t tuck your PT shit in, how can I trust you to drop a bomb.” You’re willing to Art 15 people over nonsensical bullshit that has zero impact on mission accomplishment. I’ll give you one thing though, you are completely owning it and making it easy to know what kind of a person you are.

IYKYK

4Fans: That'd be a "why" question, but I'll take a stab. Based on what I've observed over 10 years as a reserve/guard, it is now clear to me that RegAF 1. does not "like" the part-time ARC and would rather it not be a thing, 2. Has never gotten on board with the idea that ARC members rate a retirement (or anything, really). As a result nothing has ever fundamentally changed and nothing will change, I predict. Witness Congress over the years repeatedly tell DOD to fix the ARC's systemic problems, and what happens? Study after study, making Rand rich, but no hint of systemic change ever happens, just more band-aids. Examples: 1. Early in the GWOT RegAF complained that it was "hard" to access reserves for their purposes. DOD came up with yet another duty status called ADOS (we're now up to 30 duty statuses, BTW). RegAF worried that Reserves would then easily stay on ADOS their whole career and then get a Regular retirement. The 1095 rule was born--1095 was supposed to be tied to a position, but having no mechanism for tracking this, they tied it to the person, the added benefit being that they could deny a regular retirement to individuals (for the most part). Navy & Army are much more aggressive than AF when it comes to a concerted effort to deny. 2. AFRES has been talking for YEARS about reforming basic functions such as UTAPS and AROWS, yet all they have are excuses as to why they cannot. 3. DOD whined about medical readiness in the reserve. Congress responded with making Tricare and Tricare Dental available to reservists. DOD opposed this. 4. AFRES's record-keeping system for reserve points was basically non-existent. The effect was that reservists would apply for retirement and then have to prove their service. If unable, AFRES would deny the retirement. Congress responded with a band-aid fix of mandating PCARS and issuance of the 20-yr letter which could not be revoked. AFRES opposed this idea and watered it down to include an out for themselves: "the number of years of creditable service and retirement points upon which retired pay is computed may be adjusted to correct any error." Ergo, the onus is ultimately still on the reservist, potentially, to prove his service. 5. When I first entered the SELRES I asked many benefit questions to the finance/personnelists both at my group and ARPC. I received virtually no information and the information I did receive was littered with errors/outright wrong. I concluded that these people didn't know and didn't care because they were full-timers (whether ART or AGR or attempting a Regular retirement) and it didn't affect them. It became quite obvious to me that I would need to find answers on my own starting with title 10 and go from there because the AFIs themselves are littered with errors. 6. BLAB: RegAF runs the show, does not care about the ARC, and any attempts at reform point to the desire of RegAF and ARC Full-timers to just do away with the entire concept of a part-time force because it's pesky to them. This explains the constant drum beat of "we're an operational reserve." It also explains the constant push to get rid of IRR participation (achieved by AFRES except for ALO and CAP-RAP--but they're working on it), points for correspondence courses (achieved by the Army), and the absolute disaster that the IMA program is currently devolving into, sped along by the so-called "IMA Strategic Review Team." Basically the AF wants people on active duty or not on active duty, but can't seem to get there because of their desire to deny benefits in the name of saving money.

Good to know. Thanks! EDIT: Reading @hindsight2020 above, and applying general common sense... WHY THE F IS GETTING A MILITARY BENEFIT SO F'ING HARD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Seriously. We gave you our prime years for skill learning. We gave you our prime years for child rearing. We gave you our prime years for career development. We gave you our prime years for physical output. We gave you our prime years for finding a co-level partner for marriage. Yet some 67 year old impotent congressman/senator-who-has-never-seen-so-much-as-a-parking-ticket (his driver took care of that) gets to decide what your benefits should be. I'll admit that I am one of the few lucky individuals who came out of this meat grinder with my sanity, my marriage, my self-esteem, and my perspective in tact. That's not normal. We need more veterans in congress. I argue we should have a MAJORITY of veterans in congress, most decidedly from both sides of the aisle. Dirty confession: I sincerely want many progressive veterans fighting for veterans rights. I've heard the most convincing and most accurate arguments from that side! OK OK OK yea....wrong thread... got it

Your retirement pay is based on your High-3, highest 36 months of basic pay. So if you did 18 months of O-4, and 18 of O-5, it would be an average of the two. The rank on your retirement ID is dependent on if you did 3 years TIG at that rank.

I guess this is illegal now. 🤡

https://rumble.com/v2atqge-sunday-special-ukrainistan-the-battleground-of-empires.html