Top military chiefs: Cut pay and benefits

[MADem]

29. The end result will probably be that they'll slow cost of living increases--they've already been

shafting retirees on this score for a while) and they will continue to aggressively downsize.

When you send people home, you don't have to keep paying them.

The "trick" (no shooting the messenger, here--this is how former SECDEF CHENEY devised the last massive drawdown that got implemented under the Clinton administration) is to shove as many people out the door without having to pay them any retirement. How is this done?

--- You target people who need to move "up or out" and if there is an exam or some other hoop they need to jump through to get that promotion, you make it VERY hard to get through that hoop. The ones who fail get booted and you don't have to pay them anything.

---Another way to get rid of people is to piss test early and often--there's always a small percentage of weed smokers or weekend coke sniffers or name-your-poison ingesters--nail them and catapult them outta there.

---Get all "zero tolerance" over misbehavior, to include nit-picky misbehavior. Five minutes late for muster? Treat it like the crime of the century. Flunked that personnel or barracks inspection? Make it a mandatory lower mark on evaluation forms, making the servicemember less competitive against his or her peers. And if a military member gets in "civilian" trouble? Haul out the catapult and jettison them from the ranks!

---The dreaded "PT" test....make the standards more difficult, quantify the standards so the test isn't just noted as PASS/FAIL--make sure that people who barely scrape by are shamed, and those who do nothing but hit the gym are lauded. Getting a little thick around the middle, or wide across the beam? Be draconian in the imposition of weight standards, and dog the living shit out of people who don't meet the requirements. If they can't shape up quick enough, show them the door.

---Finally, if, after doing all this, you still don't get your numbers down, start offering severance packages. Say, you too can leave six months early if your enlistment is coming to an end! We'll give you a few perks to make a couple of months after we've shown you the door easier--commissary benefits, say, or a couple of months of medical care and a transition workshop. Or, alternatively, if you don't express an intention to reenlist by X date with no assignment guarantee (you could end up in Hell on Wheels, Shitville--it's a--pardon the expression--crap shoot!, we're not going to let you re-up. OR...for people who are well on their way to retirement, we'll offer those guys a "Temporary Early Retirement Authority" whereby we'll give 'em a smaller retirement, worth less, but it's still something, if they'd just hit the bricks, take their ball and go home.

I could tell you horror stories about that drawdown--a lot of good people were shoved out the door. Many didn't want to go. Feelings were hurt. People felt betrayed. Those of us who survived the axe were left with emotions that ran the gamut from survivor's guilt to giddy jubilation to shame at knowing that so-and-so over there was probably a better candidate to stay than you or someone you knew was, and damn it, life is just not fair.

It was an angst-laden and divisive time. I'm sure that's coming again. It's terribly unfortunate.