Blogroll – Page 33 – third world county

March 8, 2007March 8, 2007

Want to Help? Jack Army Tells Me How and an Iraq Surge Update

Back when Jack Army was still in the Army recruiting business, I asked him what was allowed to give to Recruiters. I know back in my dark ages, there was a $4.95 retail value limit on “gifts,” which was revised to be something more intelligent just before I retired in 96. I thought the troops at the local station might enjoy a pizza or something like that, but I wanted to make sure so they weren’t in an uncomfortable position, If I sent a few large pizzas to their door. Not worth losing a career/position over. He gave me permission to provide some info extracted from his two emails.

“Jack” is a busy man and currently in the later part of his deployment to Iraq, but he made time to answer up. I got an answer I think we all might be able to give the overworked recruiters with:

As for your question, what is acceptable for a recruiter to accept? Certainly an occasional pizza will be heartily received and small tokens like that are fine. I don’t believe there is a regulation prohibiting recruiters from receiving gifts from private citizens, most would be too humble to receive much more than pizza and a soda or something similar.

I would tell you that the one thing that you could give a recruiter that would mean more than anything is a solid lead. A name and phone number of some young man or woman that would benefit from what the Army has to offer… you would have Army coffee cups, pens, desk calendars and just about any other lickies and chewies USAREC throws out there coming out of your ears!

I don’t need another coffee cup, but I think the recruiters could appreciate just what he asked for: Solid leads. Put your networking hats on, and get back into service, being an advocate for military service and the recruiters. We know they have problems in some areas getting into schools and universities, so complimenting their work would be a big boost for them. Keep your ears to the tracks and listening for that opportunity in a conversation to guide someone their way….and, just if you have the urge, maybe stop by with some coffee or donuts or pizza for them and tell them they are doing a great job.

Now, news from Iraq from “Jack:”

It has been a fast and furious time since about August 2005. As you probably know, I’m currently in Iraq. Things are going really well in our area of operations. Our Iraqi Army counterparts are progressing well and things in this zone are relatively quiet compared to zones on our borders. There are great things happening every day but there is still so much work to be done.

Somehow I don’t get the same picture from the MSM….so, from real boots on the ground, a senior NCO says it’s better.

While I tend to paint a rosy picture of things here (I am an optimist!), there are challenges. Corruption has been a problem. For example, Iraqi Army Soldiers and Iraqi Police officers used to demand bribes to get through some of the checkpoints in our area. The Iraqi Army commander here had signs put up at the checkpoints with his phone number on them stating that bribes where illegal and call the number to report IA or IP who demanded them. Also, obviously, he ordered the practice to be stopped as well. After he put the first violator in jail for a few days and took away a few days’ pay, that practice pretty much went away. Now, the only folks that will get hassled at a checkpoint is those that are suspicious or violate the law. Things are getting better.

Sounds like someone sees it’s time for a change, and it’s great to hear that the Iraqi officer is taking the lead in solving a problem.

So, the recruiters are in the fight, too. Help them out if you get the chance.

March 8, 2007

T-13, 1.20: 13 Things to Hate about the IRS

This is an easy one, except for the part about limiting it to thirteen things…

1. The taxpayer is always guilty until proven innocent.

2. Withholding. See #1 and add in, “Where’s the interest on the money stolen before it’s really due on April 15?”

3. The forms, the forms… *arrrrrggghhhh!*

4. About #3… I’m sure the IRS can make the print smaller and the paper of crappier rag, but I’m unsure whether they chose the ink for its ability to cause an allergic reaction leading to total mental breakdown or if that’s just a psycosomatic reaction…

5. “Advice” from the IRS. First, can ya think “Conflict of interest”? Then, go ahead: ask the same question of three (or four) folks with the IRS. You’ll probably recieve four (or five) contradictory answers, most of them designed to cause you to get a nastly letter down the pike from someone else (or sometimes the same dumbasses) saying you are in error for following their counsel. Catch 10648 (that’s Catch 22 cubed).

6. Following on 5, if the IRS makes a mistake, IT IS YOUR FAULT. Remember that one: IT IS ALWAYS YOUR FAULT. It’s a simple corrollary of number 1.

7. Paying the borg for the priviledge of being financially and mentally raped. Thank you, Mr. Revenooer… We pay the IRS’s wages, exhorbitant operating expenses (and screwups associated with “updating” the RS’s antiquated computer systems, etc.). So, naturally, as with other feddle gummint bureaucracies, those who pay the costs are the slaves of the servant. Figures. (See the Kipling cited in “Read more here” below *sigh*).

8. The lies I. The taxes you pay to the IRS on or before the April 15 deadline every year reflects your effective tax rate to the feddle gummint, right? Nope. That’s a baldfaced lie. You also pay ALL the taxes on ALL the goods and services (added up all down the supply chain to the end user/consumer) of ALL the businesses producing goods and services you purchase (on those goods and services you purchase). Your effective tax rate is really more like at least double what you see on April 15 every year.

9. The Lies II: Pictures like this at the smarmy IRS website:

Instead of the more honest:

10. The very thought of IRS drones feeding at the public trough. Just think: if even half of them worked at productive jobs instead (while the other half went on the public dole), we’d be far, far better off.

11. Tax courts. See #1 again.

12. Damned snoops! (And I think I may well be using the term with theological accuracy–*heh*) Even friends of tax collectors get their own place in Dante’s Inferno, IIRC…

13. The ultimate indignity: being forced, by a monstrous tax code, to pay one shark (or more!–tax lawyer, accountant, TurboTax *spit*, whomever) to snatch a small portion of one’s carcass from the jaws of a bigger shark.

I could rail all day, but then I’d probably be singled out (may well be already) for harrassment by the IRS.

Noted at the Thursday Thirteen Hub and Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, The Virtuous Republic, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, Perri Nelson’s Website, The Random Yak, basil’s blog, Stuck On Stupid, Conservative Cat, Faultline USA, Right Celebrity, Allie Is Wired, The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, Pirate’s Cove, Overtaken by Events, Blue Star Chronicles, The Pink Flamingo, Dumb Ox Daily News, High Desert Wanderer, and Gone Hollywood, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Continue reading “T-13, 1.20: 13 Things to Hate about the IRS”

March 7, 2007

So much for the “dumb hick” meme/OTA

I’ll get to the subject in a tad, but meanwhile, this is an open trackbacks post. Link to THIS post and track back. 🙂

If you have a linkfest/open trackback post to promote OR if you simply want to promote a post via the linkfests/open trackback posts others are offering, GO TO LINKFEST HAVEN DELUXE! Just CLICK the link above or the graphic immediately below.

If you want to host your own linkfests but have not yet done so, check out the Open Trackbacks Alliance. The FAQ there is very helpful in understanding linkfests/open trackbacks.

Prisons for kids lesson 10013: City kids are dumber than rural kids, at least largely because of incarceration in citified prisons for kids, AKA “public schools”.

Outrageous statement? Here’s a data set in support:

Urban Horrors

In the United States, [military] recruiters have noted a steady decline in the proportion (to their population) of recruits coming from urban areas. This is largely because so many potential recruits have to be turned down because of the poor education they have received in urban schools. While only 21 percent of Americans live in rural areas, 44 percent of the qualified recruits come from these areas. What’s strange about all this is that the rural areas spend much less, per pupil, on education, but get much better results. Part of this can be attributed to differences in cost of living, but a lot of it has to do with simply getting more done with less. Per capita, young people in urban areas are 22 percent more likely to join the army, than those of the same age in urban areas.

OK, so part of the result is because–proportionally–more rural folk volunteer for military service than citified folk. But the rub comes where more of the citified volunteers are washouts because they’re simply not good enough, smart enough or… “have a bad attitude, as well as a difficult time getting along with others, and following instructions.” Yeh, kudos for the fine “socialization skills” y’all inculcate in our youth, pubschool weenies.

The rural recruits are also a lot easier to train, and generally make better soldiers. The urban recruits often have a bad attitude, as well as a difficult time getting along with others, and following instructions. The urban schools deserve some of the blame for this, as rural schools tend to be far more orderly, and put more emphasis on civil responsibility. Many of the urban recruits are aware of these problems, and joined the service to learn useful (for getting a job) social skills. Those skills are more often found among rural recruits because out in the boondocks, people are more involved with local government, and more involved in general.

Sure, pubschools are still crappy in rural regions, but at least they’re less crappy (in turning out decent citizens) than urban schools. The reasons are legion, and worth another, separate, post. But for now, remember to be grateful for rednecks. Without them, you’d have to rely on city kids to enlist in defense of this country, and that’d be a nightmare…

March 5, 2007

Guard the Borders: A Pattern of Malicious Prosecution by U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton

[Editor’s Note: This article is reprinted with permission from American Freedom Riders.]

by American Freedom Riders

Written by his own hand, former U.S. Border Patrol Agent Gary Brugman tells how, in the performance of his duty, he was falsely charged and convicted of violating the civil rights of an alien caught entering the U.S. illegally at the Mexican border. This case, along with the cases of Ramos and Compean, Hernandez, Sipe, and who knows how many more, serves as proof of the agenda of malicious prosecution by Johnny Sutton against law enforcement officers who dare to uphold our immigration laws. (Sutton bio – Note the joined-at-the-hip relationship with George W. Bush)

Once again, as in the Ramos and Compean case, Sutton worked in concert with the Mexican Consulate to locate a deported Mexican national and paid his way back to the United States many months later to testify against a Border Patrol agent on false assault charges. A Mexican national who had registered no previous complaint against Agent Brugman. What incentive was he given? Who knows. It is known that a member of his family subsequently received chemotherapy treatment in the U.S. In a post trial interview, Johnny Sutton went so far as to thank the Mexican Consulate for cooperation in locating the deported alien. (DOJ Press Release—PDF file.)

A scandalous, but creative twist to this prosecution was that the Sutton gang also brought a convicted and incarcerated drug smuggler from his prison cell to testify against Agent Brugman. A drug smuggler who Agent Burgman himself had captured six weeks after the incident for which he was being prosecuted. Once again, there had been no previous accusation of any civil rights violation. Now however, the convicted drug smuggler conveniently offered supporting testimony to the prosecution’s false accusation that Gary Brugman was a rogue agent and a criminal. The false and vengeful testimony of this convicted drug smuggler should never have been allowed by the judge.

No one would listen to Gary Brugman several years ago and he spent two years in the general population at federal prisons wearing newspapers and magazines taped to his body as hopeful protection against inmate attacks. In view of what has recently been disclosed about Johnny Sutton’s malicious tactics, his story will be viewed with great interest now. Gary lost everything and his life was ruined but he survived his sentence and is now a free man again. Gary Brugman remains a patriotic American and tells his story now only in an effort to help Ignacio Ramos, Jose Compean, and Gilmer Hernandez prove their innocence against the power, influence, and treachery of the U.S. Attorney and George Bush water boy, Johnny Sutton.

Note: Gary has been a Harley rider for twenty years and on February 18, 2007 he rode with the American Freedom Riders and joined the families of Ramos, Compean, and Hernandez in El Paso, Texas to protest the conviction of the “Texas Three”. He is an honorable man and we are proud to call him our brother.

Read “My Story”, by Gary Brugman 2-20-07, now…

This has been a production of the Guard the Borders syndicate. It was started by Euphoric Reality to educate the public about the vulnerabilities of our open borders during an age of global terrorism and the resultant threat to our national security and sovereignty. If you are concerned about the lapses in our national security and the socio-economic burden of unchecked illegal immigration, join our blog syndicate. Send an email with your blog name and url to admin at guardtheborders dot com.

[Comment: “U.S. Attorney and George Bush water boy, Johnny Sutton”–Wow! Vicente Fox’s lapdog has a water boy!]

March 5, 2007March 15, 2007

Facing the Issues II

Last Monday, I posted a quasi stream of consciousness outline of issues facing our society–Western society in general and U.S. society specifically–and “threatened” a continuance of the post as a series of posts on individual issues. I listed, in no particular order, a non-exhaustive list of issues that I felt were ourgrowths of moral failiure on the part of our society. That list included:

The lack of a reasonable immigration/border control policy
Attacks on essential liberties/lies from the LeftÃ¢â‚¬Â¦ and the Right
The growth of anarcho-tyranny (and the death-by-inches of justice)
Islamic Jihad/GWOT
Education, so-called
Abortion, or Ã¢â‚¬Å“murder by euphemismÃ¢â‚¬Â
Science and pseudo-science (a materialistic approach to/denial of truth)
Energy, productivity and responsible management of resources
Work ethic… or lack thereof.

Today, I’m briefly addressing the last item in the list above. Briefly, because every person who reads this can supply multiple examples of poor work ethic from life experience, and because the issue is so intertwined with so many other issues that the fabric will have to be woven a thread at a time as some of the other issues listed above (and not listed) are mentioned later. But meanwhile, a few illustrative examples:

Woman Fired For Writing About Avoiding Work

“This typing thing seems to be doing the trick,” she wrote. “It just looks like I am hard at work on something very important…. I am only here for the money and, lately, for the printer access. I haven’t really accomplished anything in a long while … and I am still getting paid more than I ever have at a job before, with less to do than I have ever had before. It’s actually quite nice when I think of it that way. I can shop online, play games and read message boards and still get paid for it.”

That’s right. The woman had been told by a supervisor to stop “working” on her personal journal at work and do her job, so she started keeping her journal–which eventually reached over 300 single-spaced pages–on her work computer. Instead of doing her job. When fired, she filed for unemployment compensation, but in a rare case of judicial commonsense, her claim, taken to court, was denied, because

the journal demonstrated a refusal to work, as well as Bauer’s “amusement at getting away with it.”

At first glance, this may seem to some to be an extreme example of poor work ethics, but is it really all that much out of line with everyday slacking off? Sure, it might take two or three “normal” slackers to add up to this kind of behavior, but we can all come up with two or three slackers at any one job in our present or past, can’t we?

Teachers who are just marking time, going through the motions until that (relatively early) retirement. Repairmen who submit bills for NOT making repairs (I have more of those stories than I could possibly have room or time to relate). Supervisors who use their position to wander around (and wander off), slacking and goofing off and using company time and resources for personal use, employee (and frankly, employer–sometimes resulting in stupid damage to the company and “laying off” employees to falsely inflate the bottom line) pilfering. Government employees (though more often those in supervisory roles) wasting resources and placing roadblocks in the way of effective use of taxpayer funds.

Consider another bizarre case in which, strangely, inexplicably, the court system resulted in a commonsense result. Granted, Sandia National Lab is not a direct agency of the feddle gummint (it’s just that it’s totally funded and run under feddle meddle mandate). But it is regulated and run according to federal government rules of employment and management–most particularly security rules. And there’s the rub:

Continue reading “Facing the Issues II”

March 2, 2007

Entropy

It’s always good to re-read books you once thought were good. Sometimes, you discover that time has lent you perspective that reveals the flaws of what you once thought was good but is merely mediocre. Other times, experience allows absorption of ideas that may have bounced off a younger head. *heh* And very often re-reading a book simply brings things back to mind you once knew but had not thought about in a while, and current events or the experience of years casts those thoughts in a new light.

Jerry Pournelle insists he doesn’t write “literature”–and he’s right, if one goes by the debauched concept of literature espoused in late 20th/century early 21st century English departments or by literature critics *spit*. But he does write often cracking good fiction, extremely good (though often dense, good and readable, but densely-packed with information) non-fiction and has one of the best blogs (although he dislikes the word :-)) around. Really, his site is much, much more than a blog.

At any rate, I decided recently to re-read The Prince, a collection of stories based in his CoDominion universe. It’s pretty good fiction–not his best storytelling, IMO–though filled with pretty heavy-handed didacticism as well. Notaproblem, since the lessons he imparts are well worth absorbing… and thinking about again. A small sample from a dialog where a mercenary “technical advisor” is counseling some terrorists on effective revolution will serve to illustrate:

…the enemy will maintain superior conventional military power almost to the end. As your own plan outlines, we must keep the struggle on a political level as far as possible.” He smiled, an expression that went no further than his lips. “In this we are aided by the nature of reality, and the arrow of entropy. It is always easier to tear down than to build, to make chaos rather than order, to render a society ungovernable rather than to govern effectively.

OK, class, applications? Try to branch out farther than just “The Democratic party” OK?

🙂

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