{"id":22358,"date":"2011-02-22T10:45:42","date_gmt":"2011-02-22T14:45:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=22358"},"modified":"2011-02-22T10:45:42","modified_gmt":"2011-02-22T14:45:42","slug":"civilians-copy-cat-challenge-coins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=22358","title":{"rendered":"Civilians copy cat challenge coins"},"content":{"rendered":"

At the Washington Post<\/a> is an article today about the civilian world copy catting the military challenge coin tradition. Yeah, I don’t understand the value of the Ag Department or EPA handing out challenge coins, but apparently hoping to appear to have a semblance of military bearing, the Starbuck-guzzling, sandal-wearing hippies have taken up the practice;<\/p>\n

[I]n recent years, many outside the military have adopted the tradition, turning a sacrosanct ritual, some say, into a form of military chic that is now part of the Washington power game. The coin craze extends into almost every nook of the federal government. The secretaries of education, transportation and agriculture have coins. So does the EPA administrator, and even the Department of Agriculture’s Office of Information Technology. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course, as with anything that has to do with government, the challenge coins cost the taxpayers for this bit of bureaucratic vanity.<\/p>\n

The Army doesn’t appropriate funds specifically for coins, making it difficult to come up with a total cost. But the headquarters of its Training and Doctrine Command, which has 44,000 soldiers and civilians assigned to it, spent $27,000 on coins last fiscal year.<\/p>\n

The Transportation Department spent $3,320 on coins last year. The Education Department spent $1,385. The Agriculture Department said it could not determine the cost of its coins, but said that, as with the other agencies, they are often handed out to military and law enforcement personnel as a thank-you. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In my family, we have a grand total of two – both from different Army Chiefs of Staff. My wife got one when she was a civilian nurse at Walter Reed and I got the other one during 10th Mountain Division’s preparation for deployment to Somalia. I had to buy my own regimental coin (325th AIR) at Fort Bragg’s 82d Division museum. Somehow, I missed out on the whole challenge coin thing. I guess I spent too much time in the line units.<\/p>\n

But, it’s a total waste of time and money for the Ed Department and the EPA to have Challenge Coins – do they answer the challenge with doobies instead of beer? If all of these fuckers want to play soldier, let them join the military instead of puffing out their chests with our traditions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At the Washington Post is an article today about the civilian world copy catting the military … Civilians copy cat challenge coins<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[131],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-i-hate-hippies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22358\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}