Ron Paul: Sequester Is Just A Fear Tactic...

[paulitician]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWGKjVqVkb0]Ron Paul: Sequester Is Just A Fear Tactic - CNBC 3/1/2013 - YouTube[/ame]

 

[waltky]

Sequester? What sequester?...

Feds keep hiring with sequesters in place: 400 jobs posted on first day back
Monday, March 4, 2013 - The sequester cuts are now officially in place, but many government agencies appear to be hiring freely anyway.

The U.S. Forest Service on Monday posted help-wanted ads for a few good men and women to work as “recreation aides” this summer, the Internal Revenue Service advertised for an office secretary in Maryland, the U.S. Mint wanted 24 people to help press coins, and the Agriculture Department said it needs three “insect production workers” to help grow bollworms in Phoenix. Monday marked the first regular workday under sequestration, and federal agencies posted more than 400 job ads by 6 p.m.

At a time when nearly all of those agencies are contemplating furloughs, the help-wanted ads raised questions about how agencies should decide between saving through attrition or letting people go. “Every position you don’t fill that isn’t absolutely necessary is one less person that needs to be furloughed,” said Steve Ellis, vice president at Taxpayers for Common Sense — though he said some positions that people leave need to be filled in order to meet agencies’ core missions.

Part of the problem is it’s often unclear exactly what those core missions are, said Paul C. Light, a professor at New York University who has studied government organization extensively. “When you say mission critical, it’s a phrase without meaning,” he said. “Everything’s mission critical. Therefore, we have no way of knowing what would be mission critical in a job description versus what is not.” He said agencies become “very artful” in writing job descriptions to justify why they are hiring.

Read more: Feds keep hiring with sequesters in place: 400 jobs posted on first day back - Washington Times

See also:

TSA Sealed $50-Million Sequester-Eve Deal to Buy New Uniforms
March 5, 2013 - The impending sequester did not prevent the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) from acting in late February to seal a $50-million deal to purchase new uniforms for its agents--uniforms that will be partly manufactured in Mexico.

Soon after this new investment in TSA uniforms, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano warned Americans that the lines are already lengthening at airports due to the sequester. "We are already seeing the effect on the ports of entry, the big airports for example," Napolitano told Politico on Monday. "Some of them had very long lines this weekend." "Look people, I don't mean to scare, I mean to inform," Napolitiano said."If you're traveling, get to the airport earlier than you otherwise would. There's only so much we can do with personnel and please don't yell at the customs officers, the TSA officers. They aren't responsible for sequester."

On Feb. 27, the agency announced that on Feb. 22 it had awarded a one-year contract to VF Imagewear, Inc., which owns the Lee brand and Wrangler Hero, to provide the uniforms. “This contract will address the requirements of the TSA, Office of Security Operations, TSA Uniform Program,” the award states. The TSA employs 50,000 security officers, inspectors, air marshals and managers. That means that the uniform contract will pay the equivalent of $1,000 per TSA employee over the course of the year. This is not the first time VF Imagewear has been commissioned to make TSA uniforms. The company secured a $98 million contract in 2010 that expired on Feb. 17, 2013.

The latest contract will run until Feb. 17, 2014, with a one-year optional transitional period. By next year, the DHS hopes to have TSA and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) secure their uniforms with a single combined contract. TSA's new $50-million one-year uniform contract was announced just two days before the automatic, across-the-board spending cuts, known as the sequester, took effect. The cuts, according to CBO, amount to $44 billion in reduced spending in fiscal 2013.

MORE

 

[paulitician]

Sequester? What sequester?...

Feds keep hiring with sequesters in place: 400 jobs posted on first day back
Monday, March 4, 2013 - The sequester cuts are now officially in place, but many government agencies appear to be hiring freely anyway.

The U.S. Forest Service on Monday posted help-wanted ads for a few good men and women to work as “recreation aides” this summer, the Internal Revenue Service advertised for an office secretary in Maryland, the U.S. Mint wanted 24 people to help press coins, and the Agriculture Department said it needs three “insect production workers” to help grow bollworms in Phoenix. Monday marked the first regular workday under sequestration, and federal agencies posted more than 400 job ads by 6 p.m.

At a time when nearly all of those agencies are contemplating furloughs, the help-wanted ads raised questions about how agencies should decide between saving through attrition or letting people go. “Every position you don’t fill that isn’t absolutely necessary is one less person that needs to be furloughed,” said Steve Ellis, vice president at Taxpayers for Common Sense — though he said some positions that people leave need to be filled in order to meet agencies’ core missions.

Part of the problem is it’s often unclear exactly what those core missions are, said Paul C. Light, a professor at New York University who has studied government organization extensively. “When you say mission critical, it’s a phrase without meaning,” he said. “Everything’s mission critical. Therefore, we have no way of knowing what would be mission critical in a job description versus what is not.” He said agencies become “very artful” in writing job descriptions to justify why they are hiring.

Read more: Feds keep hiring with sequesters in place: 400 jobs posted on first day back - Washington Times

See also:

TSA Sealed $50-Million Sequester-Eve Deal to Buy New Uniforms
March 5, 2013 - The impending sequester did not prevent the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) from acting in late February to seal a $50-million deal to purchase new uniforms for its agents--uniforms that will be partly manufactured in Mexico.

Soon after this new investment in TSA uniforms, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano warned Americans that the lines are already lengthening at airports due to the sequester. "We are already seeing the effect on the ports of entry, the big airports for example," Napolitano told Politico on Monday. "Some of them had very long lines this weekend." "Look people, I don't mean to scare, I mean to inform," Napolitiano said."If you're traveling, get to the airport earlier than you otherwise would. There's only so much we can do with personnel and please don't yell at the customs officers, the TSA officers. They aren't responsible for sequester."

On Feb. 27, the agency announced that on Feb. 22 it had awarded a one-year contract to VF Imagewear, Inc., which owns the Lee brand and Wrangler Hero, to provide the uniforms. “This contract will address the requirements of the TSA, Office of Security Operations, TSA Uniform Program,” the award states. The TSA employs 50,000 security officers, inspectors, air marshals and managers. That means that the uniform contract will pay the equivalent of $1,000 per TSA employee over the course of the year. This is not the first time VF Imagewear has been commissioned to make TSA uniforms. The company secured a $98 million contract in 2010 that expired on Feb. 17, 2013.

The latest contract will run until Feb. 17, 2014, with a one-year optional transitional period. By next year, the DHS hopes to have TSA and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) secure their uniforms with a single combined contract. TSA's new $50-million one-year uniform contract was announced just two days before the automatic, across-the-board spending cuts, known as the sequester, took effect. The cuts, according to CBO, amount to $44 billion in reduced spending in fiscal 2013.

MORE

Why not? It's not like it's their money.

 

[Freemason9]

Job postings are constructed and purchased weeks in advance of job closing dates. Believe it or not--they aren't submitted the very morning they are published. It is extremely likely these were initiated weeks before the sequester. So this posting is stupid as hell.

If you ever had a job, you would know this.

 

[uscitizen]

You mean our military is not now so weak theat Mexico will take us over?

 

[paulitician]

And Big Brother's getting set to hand Egypt some serious Taxpayer Cash as well. Along with Libya, Syria, and many many others. It's a real shame Citizens don't have any say in this stuff.

 

[waltky]

Best and the brightest leavin' the military...

Hollowed out: US Army fights brain drain
27 March 2013 - During and after the Iraq war, many Army officers left because of the US military's gruelling pace. Now, officials are struggling with the consequences.

It is a March morning, cold and bright. The air smells like freshly mown grass at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, just outside Washington DC. Inside a classroom in an old school, a red-brick building on Belvoir Road, blinds are pulled shut to keep out the sun. The classroom is filled with Iraq veterans, including Capt Jason Allen, a 31-year-old engineer with pale blue eyes and a boyish face. He once looked for homemade bombs on roads in Anbar, a province where more than 1,300 American troops died. He and the other students are learning about military doctrine in an educational programme for officers.

During class, someone mentions the Iraqi city of Falluja, where American contractors were once killed and strung up from a bridge. The seminar leader, Zsolt Szentkiracli, changes the subject. He says later that he tries to steer people away from Iraq. Instead, he encourages them to look at the UK's war with Argentina over the Falkland Islands. Szentkiracli says Iraq is too "emotionally charged" for the seminar. Memories of the war haunt the room. One of its legacies is a gutted officer corps. Capt Allen and his classmates are exceptional: they are smart, ambitious officers, many of whom served in Iraq. Equally important, they have decided to stay in the Army. Capt Allen says his job is "to do the best I can for soldiers - to absolutely take care of them".

Iraq war: How the year US troops served defined what they saw

The war in Iraq is over for Americans, and troops are coming home from Afghanistan. So many officers have retired in recent years, though, that military leaders are now scrambling to make up for the loss. Defence analysts say that the reasons for the current disarray in the army - and the concerns for its future - are rooted in the years of conflict. There have been departures from the military at all levels. David Petraeus, who reshaped the US armed forces' entire approach to counter-insurgency, retired in 2011 and became CIA director. He left the CIA last year because of an extramarital affair.

Gen Stanley McChrystal, the former head of Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), the top-secret unit that tracked down Osama Bin Laden, lost his job in 2010 because of a Rolling Stone interview. In the article, Gen McChrystal's staff were quoted as speaking dismissively about Vice-President Joseph Biden and other officials. After both of their exits, many officers wondered about the future of the military. Others were exhausted by the "optempo," the gruelling pace of military operations - and Army life. After Anbar, Capt Allen went to Baghdad and then Afghanistan, serving a total of three years in combat. Douglas Ollivant, a retired Army officer who served in Falluja in 2004, says: "Nobody spent three years in Vietnam. "We probably don't have young men who have seen this much combat since the American-Indian wars."

More BBC News - Hollowed out: US Army fights brain drain

 

[paulitician]

Best and the brightest leavin' the military...

Hollowed out: US Army fights brain drain
27 March 2013 - During and after the Iraq war, many Army officers left because of the US military's gruelling pace. Now, officials are struggling with the consequences.

It is a March morning, cold and bright. The air smells like freshly mown grass at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, just outside Washington DC. Inside a classroom in an old school, a red-brick building on Belvoir Road, blinds are pulled shut to keep out the sun. The classroom is filled with Iraq veterans, including Capt Jason Allen, a 31-year-old engineer with pale blue eyes and a boyish face. He once looked for homemade bombs on roads in Anbar, a province where more than 1,300 American troops died. He and the other students are learning about military doctrine in an educational programme for officers.

During class, someone mentions the Iraqi city of Falluja, where American contractors were once killed and strung up from a bridge. The seminar leader, Zsolt Szentkiracli, changes the subject. He says later that he tries to steer people away from Iraq. Instead, he encourages them to look at the UK's war with Argentina over the Falkland Islands. Szentkiracli says Iraq is too "emotionally charged" for the seminar. Memories of the war haunt the room. One of its legacies is a gutted officer corps. Capt Allen and his classmates are exceptional: they are smart, ambitious officers, many of whom served in Iraq. Equally important, they have decided to stay in the Army. Capt Allen says his job is "to do the best I can for soldiers - to absolutely take care of them".

Iraq war: How the year US troops served defined what they saw

The war in Iraq is over for Americans, and troops are coming home from Afghanistan. So many officers have retired in recent years, though, that military leaders are now scrambling to make up for the loss. Defence analysts say that the reasons for the current disarray in the army - and the concerns for its future - are rooted in the years of conflict. There have been departures from the military at all levels. David Petraeus, who reshaped the US armed forces' entire approach to counter-insurgency, retired in 2011 and became CIA director. He left the CIA last year because of an extramarital affair.

Gen Stanley McChrystal, the former head of Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), the top-secret unit that tracked down Osama Bin Laden, lost his job in 2010 because of a Rolling Stone interview. In the article, Gen McChrystal's staff were quoted as speaking dismissively about Vice-President Joseph Biden and other officials. After both of their exits, many officers wondered about the future of the military. Others were exhausted by the "optempo," the gruelling pace of military operations - and Army life. After Anbar, Capt Allen went to Baghdad and then Afghanistan, serving a total of three years in combat. Douglas Ollivant, a retired Army officer who served in Falluja in 2004, says: "Nobody spent three years in Vietnam. "We probably don't have young men who have seen this much combat since the American-Indian wars."

More BBC News - Hollowed out: US Army fights brain drain

Maybe this will result in less Wars for the NWO/MIC to start? So maybe it's not such a bad thing?