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Report from Louisiana: Random Thoughts in a Transitional Week

Posted: August 8, 2022 by Pat Austin in Uncategorized
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By: Pat Austin

SHREVEPORT – Some random thoughts today.

Shreveport Mayoral Race:  At my house we are preparing to head down South this week for the Fete Dieu du Teche and I could not be happier to get out of town for the week. Shreveport keeps on getting crazier every single day. The latest? Our ineffective, bumbling, inept mayor has been disqualified from running for another term because he put a false address on his paperwork. Louisiana law requires you to list your address as the same address where you file homestead exemption. Our fine mayor did not do this. He listed another address. His excuse for this error? The media lights and cameras when he filed his paperwork distracted him.

I kid you not.

He has appealed the ruling but it doesn’t look like the court will favor him.

He probably was going to lose anyway; people of both parties are sick to death of him and his self-serving photo ops and lack of meaningful governance.

School is Back!  Teachers and students start school today and I could not be happier to not be in that club! I’m looking at my teacher friends posting their classrooms, posting their wish lists, and now their excitement and anxiety about returning to school. I do not miss it in the least. I miss my friends, but they’re still my friends and so it’s all good. I don’t have to deal with the politics and the dog-and-pony shows and I’m thrilled. But good luck to them all and I do wish all of them a good year. Loved my kids, hated the BS.

And besides, if I was still teaching, I wouldn’t be headed to my beloved Cajun country this week where the oysters are fresh and the beer is cold and the Cajun music sings to my heart. Life is good.

Lisa Graas: Our friend Stacy McCain is asking for help for Lisa Graas, a longtime blogger buddy who is now fighting cancer. A devout Catholic, Lisa is now facing expensive chemo treatments and needs help. When Stacy posted his plea for Lisa, her name resonated with me because I remember his trip to Louisiana when he got stopped in the infamous Livonia speed trap and Lisa came and picked him up. On that day, I had Stacy’s Donkey Cons book in my bag; he was going to try to come through Shreveport on his way back home and I wanted to get him to sign my book. And then he gets pulled over in Livonia and that was the end of that. Anyway, hit the link and help if you can.

Next week I’ll be posting from Arnaudville, La and the Fete Dieu du Teche. Peace out!

The Navy’s poor poker face on manpower

Posted: August 6, 2022 by navygrade36bureaucrat in Uncategorized
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It’s not often I get immediate verification of something I blog about. For example, I wrote about how we’re going to have to accept that Russia will in fact win in Ukraine, and at first that prediction looked incorrect, but as the conflict grinds on, its becoming more obvious that Russia can’t afford to lose, even at a terrible cost. I could be wrong, maybe Ukraine will pull out a big “W” in the end, but I still think its unlikely.

But the Navy’s manpower crisis…wow. That’s a gift that keeps on giving. Since the last article, Navy has released three more NAVADMIN messages that prove the Navy is in a middle-management manpower crunch.

The first is NAVADMIN 176/22, which seems like a mundane update to retirement policy. The second paragraph is most interesting:

2.  Reference (c) modified the service-in-grade (SIG) (also known as time-in-grade) requirements for O-4s.  Specifically, reference (c) modified reference (d) to require 3-years SIG for voluntary regular retirement eligibility.
NAVADMIN 176/22

Normally you can retire as an O-4 after only two years. This isn’t a huge change, however, it might push more people to stay an extra year.

But then NAVADMIN 177/22 came out, talking about incentive pay for submarine commanding officer special mission billets. There is plenty of competition to become a submarine CO, so many good people don’t select for submarine command. They can select for CO Special Mission, which is basically a way of saying “we need you to stay in the Navy to fill billets at higher levels” because so many submarine O-5’s retire at 20 years. It’s a problem that has waxed and waned over the years, but is now becoming increasingly difficult to manage.

The NAVADMIN allocates a bonus of $20,000 annually for members that sign a 3-5 year commitment. That is an awful lot of money, especially considering an O-5 submariner is likely making over $150K a year anyway. The eligibility requirements make it very obvious what problem they are solving:

    b.  Have completed at least 19 years of Active Duty Commissioned Service (ADCS) and not more than 25 years of ADCS at the start of the period of additional obligated service.
NAVADMIN 177/22

Which really means “prevent people from retiring right at 20 years and keep them in a bit longer by throwing $20K a year at them.”

Essentially, these two officer-related NAVADMINs are trying to stem the departure of mid-grade Naval Officers. Gee, I wonder why mid-grade Naval Officers would be leaving in the first place? I’ll let you debate that in the comments.

So are there applicable actions on the enlisted Sailor side? You betcha! The most interesting is NAVADMIN 178/22. The first two paragraphs lay it out pretty well:

1.  This NAVADMIN announces a pilot program for Senior Enlisted Advance to Position (SEA2P) designed to keep deploying units mission-ready by aggressively filling critical at-sea leadership billets.  The pilot program will convene a billet selection board consisting of senior representatives from Fleet and participating type commander (TYCOM) staffs to select those Sailors who are best and fully qualified to advance and fill specific priority sea billets.  The pilot includes the Nimitz Strike Group on the West Coast and the Bataan Amphibious Ready Group on the East Coast. Additionally, the pilot will include USS GEORGE WASHINGTON (CVN 73). Factors for consideration in determining best and fully qualified applicants include sustained superior performance, documented qualifications, platform experience, and potential to succeed in the billet.  Sailors selected must obligate service (OBLISERV) to complete 36 months in the SEA2P billet and will be permanently advanced upon reporting to their ultimate duty station.  This pilot will be limited to critical E8 and E9 sea billets and is 
separate from reference (a). 
 
2.  To be eligible for SEA2P, Sailors must have been selected or screened as a non-select for advancement to E8 or E9 by the respective fiscal year (FY) 2023 selection boards, or be advancement-eligible for the respective FY-24 boards in line with reference (b).  Time-in-rate (TIR) waivers will be approved for FY-24 advancement-eligible Sailors who are selected for SEA2P.  All Sailors selected for SEA2P billets should expect to receive permanent change of station (PCS) orders with a transfer date as early as  30-45 days after selection.
NAVADMIN 178/22

In one long sentence this says: “We are critically undermanned at sea in senior enlisted positions, yet somehow we have lots of people that haven’t selected for advancement to these senior enlisted positions, so now they can apply to fill this position and get permanently promoted when they finish the tour.”

Now, my first question is: if we don’t have enough senior people to fill these jobs, but we have people that aren’t selecting for senior positions, why don’t we just select more people? Enlisted management sits almost entirely in the Department of the Navy’s purview, unlike Naval Officers that face considerable Congressional oversight as to their selection and promotion. The DoN doesn’t appear to be upping the selection rate, and is instead opting for a tightly controlled board that meets in relative secrecy to pick people for specific jobs. There are advantages to this, since you can force someone to take sea-duty orders, but you could do that anyway (to an extent), so I’m not sure why they are opting for this method.

These NAVADMINs, coming on the heels of the messages I previously talked about, are just another indicator that the Navy is experiencing a massive flight of talent that is really getting senior leadership concerned. I think they would be far better off addressing the real concerns of junior officers and junior enlisted, and to be fair, Navy Sailors get plenty of surveys about the health of the force, but then the Navy doesn’t appear to act on any of these issues. Just like the suicide crisis on the USS GEORGE WASHINGTON, Navy has all the data, but isn’t choosing to solve the correct problem.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency. If you enjoyed this article, please like it, share it on social media, and send a tip to Peter in DaTipJar. You can also buy one of my books for yourself or a friend to help me out.

Joe Manchin’s capitulation to the Biden Regime will be catastrophically bad for the economy of the United States

Posted: August 4, 2022 by Jon Fournier in Uncategorized
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A few months ago, I praised Senator Joe Manchin for standing strong against the Democrats’ plans to fundamentally transform the United States into socialist third world hellhole.  With this article I am now singing a different story because just this past week Joe Manchin announced that he will now join forces with the Democrats in the destruction of the economy of the United States when he declared support for the ironically named Inflation Reduction Act.    

First, the bill proposes $433 billion in new spending programs, including $369 billion for “energy security and climate change” and $64 billion (at least) for more Obamacare subsidies.

Given the fact that energy prices have been soaring ever since Biden entered the Oval Office and declared war on American energy production, doubling down on green energy policies by throwing another $369 billion in subsidies for renewable energy is an unwise decision.  It will have no effect on bringing down the price of energy for the vast majority of Americans, which is one of the key drivers of inflation throughout the economy.

Inflation is commonly defined as too much money chasing too few goods and services.  When the federal government increases spending, the money supply increases.  When the money supply increases, the value of each dollar in circulation decreases.  Hence, inflation.  This is not rocket science.

Second, the bill calls for $739 billion in new taxes, including a 15-percent hike in the corporate minimum tax.  But here’s the thing: corporations do not pay taxes; people do.  When the government raises taxes on corporations, people end up footing the bill via higher prices, lower wages, less availability of goods and services, and reduced research and development.

In other words, increasing taxes on corporations compounds inflationary pressures because it deters production; therefore, we get less in goods and services.

This pile of refuse will also cripple the economy of the United States by raising taxes, despite the protestations of the factually challenged Democrats who wrote this bill, which is nothing more than a lighter version of the Green New Deal.

The Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation found that taxes would jump by $16.7 billion on American taxpayers making less than $200,000 in 2023 and raise another $14.1 billion on taxpayers who make between $200,000 and $500,000.

During the 10-year window, the average tax rate would go up for most income categories, the Senate GOP said, citing the data from the joint committee. And by 2031, new energy credits and subsidies would have people earning less than $400,000 pay as much as two-thirds of the additional tax revenue collected that year, the release said.

“Americans are already experiencing the consequences of Democrats’ reckless economic policies. The mislabeled ‘Inflation Reduction Act’ will do nothing to bring the economy out of stagnation and recession, but it will raise billions of dollars in taxes on Americans making less than $400,000,” said Sen. Mike Crapo, an Idaho Republican who sits on the Senate Finance Committee as a ranking member, and who requested the analysis.

As always, the Democrats can only claim the Inflation Redaction will be beneficial to the economy of the United Stated by playing fast and loose with the truth.

Democrats are at it again using budget gimmicks and fake sunsets to create savings on paper – just like they did in the $5 trillion Build Back Broke bill that passed the House last year – while in reality delivering more spending, more inflation, and more debt. In total, the Democrats’ current inflationary reconciliation bill will spend $728 billion and add $114 billion in new debt. It will dump more fuel on the inflation fire while layering on top billions in new taxes that will hit middle class families and U.S manufacturers. One has to ask a simple question, how will this do anything to help lower prices?

Joe Manchin appears to be delusional when he announced support for this farce.

I always wanted to do something I could for my country, and this is all about my country,” Manchin outlined. “It’s not about my politics or someone else’s politics or my friends on the Republican side or my friends on the Democrat side or whoever is upset with me. It had nothing to do about any of us. This is about what can we do for the country.”

He continued, “And right now, inflation is the greatest threat that we have. It’s hurting every West Virginian, I can assure you, at the gas pump, at the food store, and their energy bills, and just their daily lives. And if we have a chance — and I’ve said this all along — if I ever had a chance to have an energy policy that was balanced and we could basically make sure we were producing more energy for what we have rather than going around the world asking other people to produce for us, shouldn’t we do that? That’s something we all wanted, and that’s what we got out of this. It’s a great bill.”

The First Step Toward Recovery is Admitting You Have a Problem

Posted: August 4, 2022 by datechguy in Uncategorized
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One of the problem with the woke world and giving into it is that if you are in an industry where the use of your product is voluntary people may choose to go elsewhere.

Take Aunt Jemima Pancake mix

For over 100 years that Aunt Jemima brand and image sold pancake mix all over the country. It was a good pancake mix (I prefer Hungry Jack myself but it’s not available locally).

Then a few years back the woke mob decided that the Aunt Jemima image with the kerchief on her head was too slavish so the company gave in and removed the kerchief from the label.

Then a few years later the image itself was deemed offensive because God forbid people buy pancake mix with the image of a black woman on it, so the image went away and just the Aunt Jemima brand remained.

Then finally last year the company noting that the woke mob was still unsatisfied (imagine that!) just took the name Aunt Jemima off the box and replaced it with Pearl Milling Company.

I can’t speak for others but that was the last straw for me. I haven’t box a box of it since. Fortunately there are plenty of other brands of pancake mix available so when I want pancakes that’s what I buy.

Well apparently plenty of other people must be doing the same thing because when I went to the store today knowing I needed pancake mix I was looking though my choices when I noted that the Pearl Milling Company box had a little addition in the lower right corner. A small section that declared it was the same mix as Aunt Jemima.

It was a very thing, couldn’t be more than a couple of inches but there were those dreaded words Aunt Jemima for all the world to see.

I’m guessing that the good folks at Pearl Mill are slowly figuring out that for the sake of the woke mob, who is likely buying organic mixes anyways they tossed aside a trusted brand name that had built said trust for generations and alienated a bunch of people who are sick of cancel culture and folks who declare that righteousness at the expense of others.

It’s a small start, but you can’t walk before you run I look forward to the day when they decide they want my business back and the Aunt Jemima brand name is back on the box where it belongs.

I suggest they don’t wait too long however. Because once we folks who took a hike develop a brand loyalty to a different mix it’s game over.

I

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