{"id":50571,"date":"2014-06-11T10:30:44","date_gmt":"2014-06-11T14:30:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=50571"},"modified":"2014-06-11T09:02:05","modified_gmt":"2014-06-11T13:02:05","slug":"slear-clarifies-his-wp-opinion-piece-im-still-paid-too-much","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=50571","title":{"rendered":"Slear clarifies his WP opinion piece; I’m still paid too much"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our buddy, Jeff Schlogol of the Military Times<\/a>, wrote to ask Blue Falcon LTC Tom Slear to clarify his opinion piece in the Washington Post this weekend<\/a>. Apparently, we didn’t understand what he was saying, he says and we shouldn’t get upset, mostly because he didn’t write the “provacative headline”. OK, I’ll give him that one. But it turns out that we weren’t wrong about anything else he wrote;<\/p>\n

Q: To be clear, do you feel that benefits for service members are \u201ctoo generous\u201d?<\/p>\n

[Slear:] I believe Tricare is very generous. A 10 or even 20 percent increase in premiums is reasonable. Retired pay is generous enough that the proposed 1-percent cut in the [annual] cost-of-living adjustment for those under 62 is also reasonable.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Q: Would you also be willing to take a reduction in retirement pay?<\/p>\n

[Slear:] I would be willing to take the 1-percent reduction in the [annual] cost-of-living adjustment as proposed in the budget agreement last year. I would be willing to take a larger reduction as long as it\u2019s part of a reassessment of all federal pensions and social security.<\/p>\n

Q: Based on the feedback you have received, what do people misunderstand about your arguments for compensation reform?<\/p>\n

[Slear:] The common misperception was that I\u2019m for taking a meat cleaver to military benefits. What I did say was that military benefits aren\u2019t sacrosanct \u2014 they should be part of the discussion about reducing the federal deficit.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, I’m not sure what he thinks we misunderstood about his back-stabbing bullshit trying to make veterans look like money-grubbing welfare recipients. Like I said in the initial post, Slear can refuse to accept his pension and refuse to use Tricare – he can make personal decisions if he thinks that he didn’t earn his benefits. But, I don’t see him doing it. He’ll only do that if the rest of us have it forced down out throats.<\/p>\n

Well, I’ll only go along with it if I see Congress make the hard choices and slash Federal spending across the board. If Congress closes tax loopholes for illegal immigrants and cracks down on Social Security and welfare spending for the folks who will never work maybe then I’ll think about contributing that which Slear thinks I can afford without reviewing my personal spending. <\/p>\n

So, it turns out that we didn’t misunderstand LTC Slear at all. He’s climbing on the Obama Administration’s train to roll over veterans to tell us to sacrifice even more without asking the rest of the country to sacrifice – because we used to go along to get along. As early as 2009, the Obama Administration was coming for our medical benefits when they tried to make service-connected veterans buy insurance and it hasn’t stopped. So, LTC Slear walked off the FOB in the middle of the night and surrendered himself to the White House.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our buddy, Jeff Schlogol of the Military Times, wrote to ask Blue Falcon LTC Tom Slear … Slear clarifies his WP opinion piece; I’m still paid too much<\/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":[225,84],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blue-falcons","category-military-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50571","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=50571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50571\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}