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Thousands of California soldiers forced to repay enlistment bonuses

250 points by ftrflyr 10y ago

mg231962 10y ago
If there was no contract how and why did they receive the monies.they joined right,there entitled to what they receive from the recruiters legally and not have to pay it back. Make the recruiters pay out of pocket for there corruption and lies to the soldiers!!!!!!!!!!!
serg_chernata 10y ago
So much of war is already unapologetically about about money. This is just adding insult to injury.
- apsec112 10y ago
  Looking down Wikipedia's list of active conflicts (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_armed_conflicts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_armed_conflict...), it's hard to believe that money is a primary cause of any of them. I'm sure someone somewhere is making a profit, but that's different from the conflict being "about money".
  - smitherfield 10y ago
    I'd say it's the primary cause of the Mexican drug war. Perhaps the exception that proves the rule on that page.
  - Skeptique 10y ago
    It would be poor press to announce that a war is about money, but the veneer of pretense is thin. The Syrian war, especially given Russia's involvement is almost certainly about securing passage for natural gas pipelines. Who thinks the Iraq war was actually about Freedom? That might have been the rallying cry but it was about securing access to oil and securing massive re-building contracts and/or reparation money. Many argue that the 1990s stock market boom was a direct result of the US getting $10/barrel oil via the Iraq war reparation deal, where they repaid the US for the costs of having to attack the US. Any war where people suddenly have an interest in saving humanity should be viewed very skeptically, since there are hundreds of crises of freedom around the world. If the crisis happens to be on top of a giant oil field, well, then there may be some conflating variable.
    - apsec112 10y ago
      "The Syrian war, especially given Russia's involvement is almost certainly about securing passage for natural gas pipelines." Do you have a cite for that? No one on any side is building pipelines in Syria anytime soon, because, well, war. Also, pretty sure if I told Suheil al-Hassan or Abu Mohammad al-Julani they were fighting for natural gas pipelines, they'd knock my teeth out.
      - Skeptique 10y ago
        Lets be serious here. Do you think the US or Russia will announce on their newspapers their actual interests and actually note money/commodities/whatever? This is big business on a global scale with decade-long goals. The pipelines can wait some years. But lets say you are right -- do you think Russia is suddenly interested in some far-away humanitarian conflict or...perhaps there is something more? Also, given the vast injustices around the world, any opinions on why the US decided to suddenly instill freedom in Iraq in 1992?
      - cameldrv 10y ago
        I have no idea if or how much this factors in, or even if it's true, but the story I've heard is that several years back, there was a plan for a pipeline that would go from Qatar and Saudi Arabia through Jordan, Syria, and Turkey to Europe. This would be a significant economic threat to Russia, since gas exports are about $25 billion/yr, about 2% of Russia's GDP, and a big source of hard currency, but also important is Russia's use of its gas pipelines to Europe to threaten to cut off supplies to countries in Eastern and Central Europe, which would not be possible if there were a gulf source of gas available. Saudi Arabia and Qatar have a lot of gas that is going to waste or is staying in the ground, so they could easily supply the European market. Supposedly, Assad turned down the deal, and the civil war started shortly after.
        jcranmer 10y ago
        The main Russian alternative pipeline I'm aware of is Nabucco, which would be from Iraq, Azerbaijan, and Turkmenistan via Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Austria and Germany. I've not been aware of any pipeline projects from Qatar and Saudi Arabia--their natural gas is exported mostly via LNG. Considering that, unlike oil, natural gas prices are not priced equally around the world, and that the price for natural gas is much, much higher in Asia than elsewhere (Europe is about 20% the price of Asia and the US about a third to a half that of Europe (yay fracking!)), it's much more profitable for them to export to Asia. Edit: After doing some research, I did find that there was a proposal for a Qatar-Turkey pipeline in 2010 (see https://web.archive.org/web/20120228125310/http://pipelinesinternational.com/news/pipeline_projects_in_the_middle_east/040183 https://web.archive.org/web/20120228125310/http://pipelinesi... ). It was proposed to connect to Nabucco, which hasn't been built. The articles that link the Syrian civil war, or more specifically Qatari involvement in said war, contend that Qatar wants a Muslim Brotherhood government to build the pipeline, which ignores Saudi coolness to the idea of the pipeline (Saudi Arabia also funds rebels in the civil war) and the fact that Qatar also funded the uprisings in Libya and Egypt, in the path of no contended pipeline. In other words, the idea that the Syrian civil war is mostly about gas pipelines looks rather like people trying to find some resource that the war must be about because they can't believe war is about anything other than resources.
  - wallace_f 10y ago
    Marx said of history that war is always about an economic motive. He wrote that even going back through evolutionary history, wars are a struggle over control of resources. I don't agree with Marx on a lot, but I think a sad fact is that he was right about that, at least over 90% of the time. US independence can be largely seen in this way, Germany's aggression in WWII after the league of nations crippled the German economy, Japan's aggression in WWII, Korea, Vietnam... Worst thing about this is the scarcity problem--what economists regard as a problem of having enough resources--today is pretty much solved. For example, already enough food is produced for everyone on earth. We don't have a pressing need to go to war over resources. We do drive large cars, trucks and SUVs, and live in oversized houses that we don't need. A person looking at this from another planet would shake their head and ask what will ever be enough for us to stop bloodshed.
  - pessimizer 10y ago
    The vast majority of the money made from war (or the entirety of the money, depending on the war) comes from supplying war materiel. If some actors can figure out how to make money from the subject of the war, fine, but the money is being made from feeding, clothing, and arming the belligerents - so the important thing is their respective bankrolls. US military aid, for example, is not given to Egypt or Israel or the Saudis or Bahrain as dollars, it's given as dollars to US companies to send goods to those countries (to suppress their own populations.) US corporate lobbyists have a multi-billion dollar interest in Bahrain using full military force on peaceful protesters. edit: There are versions of the theory of "imperial overstretch" that say that empires are forced to expand by the influence of internal elements that are enriched by the process of making war, thus increasing the influence of those elements, forcing more expansion, requiring more taxation and privation from the citizens of the empire, until eventually the entire empire collapses from the strain.
- wallace_f 10y ago
  I used to think this was more like a conspiracy. It's very far from it, though. Years ago, even one of the most powerful US Government officials, who used to be labelled the most powerful man in the world, and the US's highest ranking technocrat, Alan Greenspan, wrote that the Iraq War was largely about oil. Greenspan was an economist, and economists sometime us an analogy of looking at macro topics through the framework of a household, i.e. a national budget vs a household budget. Using that same framework, if one neighbor went to war with another over natural resources on their block and declared "he had a gun, a very big gun," as the reason -- and conveniently after the house was broken into but with nothing connecting the perpetrators to the victim, that would be clearly illegal, and probably viewed as insane. I think those of us from America are very lucky to live in a country that places high relative value (though far from perfect history) on human rights and civil liberties, and it's likely a large reason we are so successful. I want us to keep improving on it instead of devolving into something less.
CalChris 10y ago
“We’d be more than happy to absolve these people of their debts. We just can’t do it. We’d be breaking the law.” Ok. There's a law, a bad law that needs to be changed. Is Congress so dysfunctional it can't fix this monstrosity?
- withdavidli 10y ago
  Yes. Think about the 911 bill. Taking a decade to help cover medical costs of first responders and those that helped dig out dead bodies and hoping to find survivors. It was so sad to see Jon Stewart talk about this years later with only one person from the original panel because two were too ill now to show up and one died. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3350433/John-Stewart-s-poignant-return-Daily-three-chairs-Former-host-Trevor-Noah-s-guest-leaves-spaces-9-11-responders-dead-ill-join-show.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3350433/John-Stewart...
  - toomuchtodo 10y ago
    Kudos to Jon Stewart though. He walked the halls of Congress on his own time after leaving the Daily Show to shame representatives into passing the bill responsible for covering the care of first responders. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-L11Bxolo44 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-L11Bxolo44
- notwhereyouare 10y ago
  Remember this is the same Congress that overruled Obama's veto and then complained afterwards that obama should have told them not to pass the bill
  - dlp211 10y ago
    For the uninitiated: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/mitch-mcconnell-saudi-9-11-bill-228903 http://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/mitch-mcconnell-saudi-...
- a3n 10y ago
  > Is Congress so dysfunctional it can't fix this monstrosity? Well, first they'd have to get past the inevitable argument to defund Planned Parenthood. So, yes. Yes they are that dysfunctional.
deleted 10y ago
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cloudjacker 10y ago
Idiots all the way to the top, looks like something only the President or Congress can remedy
TillE 10y ago
The article doesn't quote anyone from California's Congressional delegation, or from the White House. Is there really no reaction here? We're talking about a few million dollars from the federal government to relieve an awful situation.
- rhizome 10y ago
  Personally, as a Californian I'm calling everybody on my chain-of-legislation on Monday.
  - toomuchtodo 10y ago
    THANK YOU. Only through action does change occur.
throwawayIndian 10y ago
Elsewhere, a for-profit prison extended their contract[1] with Feds barely a month after the Department of Justice said it would end[2] contracts with private prison operators. [1] https://twitter.com/i/moments/789498562904293376 https://twitter.com/i/moments/789498562904293376 [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/08/18/justice-department-says-it-will-end-use-of-private-prisons/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/08/1... These are pretty quick u-turns by an establishment that's confident about business as usual following elections. Gravy-train!
- mikecb 10y ago
  This was for a DHS immigration facility, not for a prison. (Not that it makes it any better, but it doesn't break with Justice's decision.)
erentz 10y ago
It's not clear from the article how this situation came to be. Were these soldiers told how much they would receive before enlisting? If so surely that is a contract and they don't have to repay. It only makes sense if they ALL received more than they were told and all didn't report it. But ~10,000 people doing this doesn't make sense.
- chrismcb 10y ago
  From the article "Investigations have determined that lack of oversight allowed for widespread fraud and mismanagement by California Guard officials under pressure to meet enlistment targets."
  - erentz 10y ago
    But fraud on the part of the California Guard is an internal matter. If I form a contract with a company that says they will pay me some amount of money, but the company representative was committing fraud internally then too bad. The company needs to deal with that. It can't reneg on its agreement years later after having already fulfilled the terms of the agreement.
    - derekp7 10y ago
      If you buy a piece of electronic equipment from a dealer at a flea market, and it is later found out that the merchandise was stolen, you have to return the merchandise to the original owner. Even if there was a valid contract between you and the dealer that sold it to you. I think this is seen as something similar -- the people giving out the bonus money basically "stole" it, so it wasn't theirs to give. Kind of like if a sales person at a store told you "buy now and I can give you an instant rebate", then pulled rebate money from the cash register. I think you'd have to give that money back too (assuming the "rebate" wasn't authorized, and was effectively stolen money).
      - anotheryou 10y ago
        But if the dealer was known he would have to reimburse me, no? Also what if I where no longer in possession of the good?
rileymat2 10y ago
"Robert D’Andrea, a retired Army major and Iraq veteran, was told to return a $20,000 bonus he received in 2008 because auditors could not find a copy of the contract he says he signed." How is this possible? If private businesses could do this, it would be mayhem.
- dogma1138 10y ago
  I'm surprised that this is somehow even passed the slightest political oversight. You need to be a special kind of bastard to ask some one who willingly signed up to get shot at while defending their country to pay back any amount of money they got paid for doing so. Wars aren't pretty, regardless of what you think about them, and especially about Iraq and Afghanistan never ever take it out on the soldiers, they are probably on your side because unlike most of us they actually seen war. Soldiers don't decide when, where or against whom to go to war, they are not at fault I never understood how the left in the US could blame people who either got drafted (vietnam) or signed up to defend their country (post 9/11) for the atrocities of war.
  - mnem 10y ago
    Well, they decide when they enlist to go kill people when told to.
    - gtaylor 10y ago
      Some of them get out of extreme poverty or are able to go to school afterwards by enlisting. It's not as simple as that.
    - dlp211 10y ago
      Hardly, the vast majority of jobs in the US Army are non-combat. You shouldn't paint with such a broad brush, many who serve do so out of a sense of duty to the nation, to escape a bad situation including poverty or get out of a dying town, and/or to gain access to higher education through the use of tuition assistance and GI Bill programs.
Negative1 10y ago
Wasn't clear from the article; did someone or a group of people break the law so that these ("illegal") bonuses could be paid? Basically, who (or what org) will be held accountable for this so that it won't happen again?
- detaro 10y ago
  At least a partial answer is there, but presumably there are lot more people involved: > Army Master Sgt. Toni Jaffe, the California Guard’s incentive manager, pleaded guilty in 2011 to filing false claims of $15.2 million and was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison. Three officers also pleaded guilty to fraud and were put on probation after paying restitution.
  - vacri 10y ago
    It's disturbing that someone whose actions have brought such heartache and hardship to so many gets such a short sentence compared to 'blue collar' crimes. Rob a shop with a weapon, and you harm one person and get a trivial amount of money, but you'd be lucky to see a sentence that short.
ZanyProgrammer 10y ago
As an Army vet myself, the truth is is that the Army will never miss an opportunity for fucking you over. Its the nature of the system. If you can make it to 20 years, you are some combination of exceptional/lucky/broken from years of fuckery. "We just can’t do it. We’d be breaking the law" Yeah, I'm sure the California National Guard tried really, really hard not to go after their bonuses.
- dominotw 10y ago
  Is this merely a reflection of general American population that views the army as a major drain on national resources that can be better spent elsewhere. Or is there something more sinister going on inside the National Guard.
  - snerbles 10y ago
    Support from the American populace consists of flag-waving and slapping "Support our Troops" yellow ribbon magnets on their cars. Unless they're personally related to someone in the military, servicemembers and veterans are invisible at best, or seen as deranged reactionary boogiemen at worst. EDIT: I should really note that this depends on where you live. Support is certainly more sincere in the South, over here on the West Coast people by and large don't give a shit.
    - Implicated 10y ago
      As someone who has traveled the country pretty extensively, I can't agree. As someone who grew up in a large western coastal city, I would agree that perception is accurate to that locale.
      - snerbles 10y ago
        Maybe I just need to leave California, then.
        saryant 10y ago
guelo 10y ago
Not really surprised, the California Guard has been a corrupt mismanaged scandal-plagued organization for a long time.
cbreeden 10y ago
This is weird. I'm extremely surprised that some kind of statue of limitations does not apply here. I'm not sure we are getting the whole story.
dbg31415 10y ago
So did recruiters cut bigger checks than they were supposed to? If so, someone had to sign off on that... either recruiters or the managers should be held accountable. Soldiers got contracts promising one amount but received checks for another amount? Yeah, they should have to pay that back then. But who wrote checks and / or promised numbers higher than the contracts?
- DanBC 10y ago
  > Soldiers got contracts promising one amount but received checks for another amount? Yeah, they should have to pay that back then. No, soldiers got promised one amount, got contracts for that amount, got paid that amount, and now it's being clawed back because the people who did the original promising and paperwork filing were breaking various laws.
  - dbg31415 10y ago
    Well if they have contracts for the higher amount... how is this a thing? Unless the contracts weren't signed by someone from the government who could sign those contracts? How would the soldiers know if the government recruiter was legit or not... yeah seems fucked. Government didn't supervise their recruiters correctly. Wouldn't that make all the contracts void? Messy. If the military needs bodies, they should just go back to drafting them. Would help society see the true cost of policing the world instead of taking advantage of the poor.
thomasmarriott 10y ago
Abhorrent.
QUFB 10y ago
I'm not a veteran, I'm a desk jockey. I didn't like the foreign entanglements we've been involved with over the past 15 years. But that's not the point here. When young men and women volunteer to fight and die for our country, and are made promises by the system, these promises should be honored. This behavior by the California National Guard is disgusting.
- nucleardog 10y ago
  I don't get why it has to be at all about the role itself, the honour of the military, or anything else. If I'm extended an offer of employment including a $10,000 signing bonus, sign, take the job, receive my bonus, complete the job as agreed, and the contract expires and I go on my way... The company doesn't get to come back to me years later and say "Oh, oops, I actually forgot to have my boss sign off on that bonus I gave you. You need to give it back." If you broke agreements with your financers on where/how that money was to be spent, that's your problem. Our contract was still valid - you have broken your contract with your financer and you can deal with the penalties.
  - bww 10y ago
    Seriously. The people who illegally gave away the government's money should be on the hook for repaying it. Not the people who accepted it legitimately and in good faith.
- module0000 10y ago
  The behavior is disgusting indeed. A collection attempt to the wrong type of veteran is doing to result in that veteran categorizing the collector as a kill-on-sight target. Demanding money back from trained killers sounds like a mistake likely to result in unnecessary deaths.
olegkikin 10y ago
Sue.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
cjslep 10y ago
I imagine this only damages the USA. The next time they need heavy recruitment numbers, people will look at the signing bonuses offered and either say "My life is worth more than this amount" or "this amount is too good to be true, they'll ask for it back in the future" and not sign on.
fencepost 10y ago
It sounds like this was not at all limited to California, just that there were more cases there due to various reasons (population, individuals, policies/incentives). I'll be writing to my representative (Duckworth), both candidates to replace her, and her Senate opponent (Kirk). I expect responses at least from the two named since both are former military.
johngalt 10y ago
This smells like recruiters gaming the system while under pressure from the top to fill quotas. In the same vein as Wells Fargo. Hit this impossible target or you're fired. We can't tell you to lie/cheat people to hit the numbers but we will promote the people who do and PIP the ones who don't. Meanwhile we will go through the motions of legal compliance. Everyone gets what they want and the higher ups can come back later and act like it is a huge surprise to them that the people they hired and trained were gaming the system.
rhapsodic 10y ago
And yet we can afford to bail out Wall Street firms that pay their executives millions in bonuses for driving their companies into the ground.
Keverw 10y ago
This is so unbelievable they could mess up somthing like this. I hope this becomes major news. These people shouldn't be paying for someone else mistakes. If the money is mentioned in the contract, I don't see how they could just take it because of their mistake.
Frogolocalypse 10y ago
That is sickening
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
aplomb 10y ago
Instead of hitting the soldiers who signed what they thought were reenlistment bonuses, why don't they pommel the commanding officers who presided over these "overpayments"?
lucio 10y ago
>>Robert D’Andrea, a retired Army major and Iraq veteran, was told to return a $20,000 bonus he received in 2008 because auditors could not find a copy of the contract he says he signed. >>We’d be more than happy to absolve these people of their debts. We just can’t do it. We’d be breaking the law. - Stop quoting laws at us. We carry weapons
a3n 10y ago
I tell my son, his friends, and anyone who will listen: don't join the military unless this is your calling, indicated by God's finger touching your heart. Because the military will treat you like shit if it's merely inconvenient to do otherwise. VA. Guard units called up to combat for one day shy of the time that would qualify them for combat pay. The linked article. Institutional abuse. Forced reenlistment during questionable wars. Etc. USN, E6, 1975-1981. Not that that gives me any particular place on the moral ground. And for the record, I had a relatively easy time in the Navy. But even if I'd never been in, I'd be as outraged as I am now.
blazespin 10y ago
Maybe this is a good thing as it will make it harder to get people to go to war next time. Perhaps we might think twice about invading other countries.
AKifer 10y ago
It's a scheme as old as the world, even Julius Caesar owed money to his legions men and did not pay them.
WalterBright 10y ago
Isn't there a statute of limitations on such belated claims?
zachruss92 10y ago
Honestly, this story is just sad. I understand that there was fraud involved in order to incentivize soldiers to reenlist, but it's not their fault; It was the people who manipulated them into reenlisting. I definitely think in this case the government should "forgive" this debt - and they probably will. VA benefits are already pretty flimsy, our vets have it hard enough.

250 points by ftrflyr 10y ago

mg231962 10y ago

If there was no contract how and why did they receive the monies.they joined right,there entitled to what they receive from the recruiters legally and not have to pay it back. Make the recruiters pay out of pocket for there corruption and lies to the soldiers!!!!!!!!!!!

serg_chernata 10y ago

So much of war is already unapologetically about about money. This is just adding insult to injury.

apsec112 10y ago
Looking down Wikipedia's list of active conflicts (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_armed_conflicts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_armed_conflict...), it's hard to believe that money is a primary cause of any of them. I'm sure someone somewhere is making a profit, but that's different from the conflict being "about money".
- smitherfield 10y ago
  I'd say it's the primary cause of the Mexican drug war. Perhaps the exception that proves the rule on that page.
- Skeptique 10y ago
  It would be poor press to announce that a war is about money, but the veneer of pretense is thin. The Syrian war, especially given Russia's involvement is almost certainly about securing passage for natural gas pipelines. Who thinks the Iraq war was actually about Freedom? That might have been the rallying cry but it was about securing access to oil and securing massive re-building contracts and/or reparation money. Many argue that the 1990s stock market boom was a direct result of the US getting $10/barrel oil via the Iraq war reparation deal, where they repaid the US for the costs of having to attack the US. Any war where people suddenly have an interest in saving humanity should be viewed very skeptically, since there are hundreds of crises of freedom around the world. If the crisis happens to be on top of a giant oil field, well, then there may be some conflating variable.
  - apsec112 10y ago
    "The Syrian war, especially given Russia's involvement is almost certainly about securing passage for natural gas pipelines." Do you have a cite for that? No one on any side is building pipelines in Syria anytime soon, because, well, war. Also, pretty sure if I told Suheil al-Hassan or Abu Mohammad al-Julani they were fighting for natural gas pipelines, they'd knock my teeth out.
    - Skeptique 10y ago
      Lets be serious here. Do you think the US or Russia will announce on their newspapers their actual interests and actually note money/commodities/whatever? This is big business on a global scale with decade-long goals. The pipelines can wait some years. But lets say you are right -- do you think Russia is suddenly interested in some far-away humanitarian conflict or...perhaps there is something more? Also, given the vast injustices around the world, any opinions on why the US decided to suddenly instill freedom in Iraq in 1992?
    - cameldrv 10y ago
      I have no idea if or how much this factors in, or even if it's true, but the story I've heard is that several years back, there was a plan for a pipeline that would go from Qatar and Saudi Arabia through Jordan, Syria, and Turkey to Europe. This would be a significant economic threat to Russia, since gas exports are about $25 billion/yr, about 2% of Russia's GDP, and a big source of hard currency, but also important is Russia's use of its gas pipelines to Europe to threaten to cut off supplies to countries in Eastern and Central Europe, which would not be possible if there were a gulf source of gas available. Saudi Arabia and Qatar have a lot of gas that is going to waste or is staying in the ground, so they could easily supply the European market. Supposedly, Assad turned down the deal, and the civil war started shortly after.
      - jcranmer 10y ago
        The main Russian alternative pipeline I'm aware of is Nabucco, which would be from Iraq, Azerbaijan, and Turkmenistan via Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Austria and Germany. I've not been aware of any pipeline projects from Qatar and Saudi Arabia--their natural gas is exported mostly via LNG. Considering that, unlike oil, natural gas prices are not priced equally around the world, and that the price for natural gas is much, much higher in Asia than elsewhere (Europe is about 20% the price of Asia and the US about a third to a half that of Europe (yay fracking!)), it's much more profitable for them to export to Asia. Edit: After doing some research, I did find that there was a proposal for a Qatar-Turkey pipeline in 2010 (see https://web.archive.org/web/20120228125310/http://pipelinesinternational.com/news/pipeline_projects_in_the_middle_east/040183 https://web.archive.org/web/20120228125310/http://pipelinesi... ). It was proposed to connect to Nabucco, which hasn't been built. The articles that link the Syrian civil war, or more specifically Qatari involvement in said war, contend that Qatar wants a Muslim Brotherhood government to build the pipeline, which ignores Saudi coolness to the idea of the pipeline (Saudi Arabia also funds rebels in the civil war) and the fact that Qatar also funded the uprisings in Libya and Egypt, in the path of no contended pipeline. In other words, the idea that the Syrian civil war is mostly about gas pipelines looks rather like people trying to find some resource that the war must be about because they can't believe war is about anything other than resources.
- wallace_f 10y ago
  Marx said of history that war is always about an economic motive. He wrote that even going back through evolutionary history, wars are a struggle over control of resources. I don't agree with Marx on a lot, but I think a sad fact is that he was right about that, at least over 90% of the time. US independence can be largely seen in this way, Germany's aggression in WWII after the league of nations crippled the German economy, Japan's aggression in WWII, Korea, Vietnam... Worst thing about this is the scarcity problem--what economists regard as a problem of having enough resources--today is pretty much solved. For example, already enough food is produced for everyone on earth. We don't have a pressing need to go to war over resources. We do drive large cars, trucks and SUVs, and live in oversized houses that we don't need. A person looking at this from another planet would shake their head and ask what will ever be enough for us to stop bloodshed.
- pessimizer 10y ago
  The vast majority of the money made from war (or the entirety of the money, depending on the war) comes from supplying war materiel. If some actors can figure out how to make money from the subject of the war, fine, but the money is being made from feeding, clothing, and arming the belligerents - so the important thing is their respective bankrolls. US military aid, for example, is not given to Egypt or Israel or the Saudis or Bahrain as dollars, it's given as dollars to US companies to send goods to those countries (to suppress their own populations.) US corporate lobbyists have a multi-billion dollar interest in Bahrain using full military force on peaceful protesters. edit: There are versions of the theory of "imperial overstretch" that say that empires are forced to expand by the influence of internal elements that are enriched by the process of making war, thus increasing the influence of those elements, forcing more expansion, requiring more taxation and privation from the citizens of the empire, until eventually the entire empire collapses from the strain.
wallace_f 10y ago
I used to think this was more like a conspiracy. It's very far from it, though. Years ago, even one of the most powerful US Government officials, who used to be labelled the most powerful man in the world, and the US's highest ranking technocrat, Alan Greenspan, wrote that the Iraq War was largely about oil. Greenspan was an economist, and economists sometime us an analogy of looking at macro topics through the framework of a household, i.e. a national budget vs a household budget. Using that same framework, if one neighbor went to war with another over natural resources on their block and declared "he had a gun, a very big gun," as the reason -- and conveniently after the house was broken into but with nothing connecting the perpetrators to the victim, that would be clearly illegal, and probably viewed as insane. I think those of us from America are very lucky to live in a country that places high relative value (though far from perfect history) on human rights and civil liberties, and it's likely a large reason we are so successful. I want us to keep improving on it instead of devolving into something less.

CalChris 10y ago

“We’d be more than happy to absolve these people of their debts. We just can’t do it. We’d be breaking the law.” Ok. There's a law, a bad law that needs to be changed. Is Congress so dysfunctional it can't fix this monstrosity?

withdavidli 10y ago
Yes. Think about the 911 bill. Taking a decade to help cover medical costs of first responders and those that helped dig out dead bodies and hoping to find survivors. It was so sad to see Jon Stewart talk about this years later with only one person from the original panel because two were too ill now to show up and one died. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3350433/John-Stewart-s-poignant-return-Daily-three-chairs-Former-host-Trevor-Noah-s-guest-leaves-spaces-9-11-responders-dead-ill-join-show.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3350433/John-Stewart...
- toomuchtodo 10y ago
  Kudos to Jon Stewart though. He walked the halls of Congress on his own time after leaving the Daily Show to shame representatives into passing the bill responsible for covering the care of first responders. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-L11Bxolo44 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-L11Bxolo44
notwhereyouare 10y ago
Remember this is the same Congress that overruled Obama's veto and then complained afterwards that obama should have told them not to pass the bill
- dlp211 10y ago
  For the uninitiated: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/mitch-mcconnell-saudi-9-11-bill-228903 http://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/mitch-mcconnell-saudi-...
a3n 10y ago
> Is Congress so dysfunctional it can't fix this monstrosity? Well, first they'd have to get past the inevitable argument to defund Planned Parenthood. So, yes. Yes they are that dysfunctional.

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cloudjacker 10y ago

Idiots all the way to the top, looks like something only the President or Congress can remedy

TillE 10y ago

The article doesn't quote anyone from California's Congressional delegation, or from the White House. Is there really no reaction here? We're talking about a few million dollars from the federal government to relieve an awful situation.

rhizome 10y ago
Personally, as a Californian I'm calling everybody on my chain-of-legislation on Monday.
- toomuchtodo 10y ago
  THANK YOU. Only through action does change occur.

throwawayIndian 10y ago

Elsewhere, a for-profit prison extended their contract[1] with Feds barely a month after the Department of Justice said it would end[2] contracts with private prison operators. [1] https://twitter.com/i/moments/789498562904293376 https://twitter.com/i/moments/789498562904293376 [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/08/18/justice-department-says-it-will-end-use-of-private-prisons/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/08/1... These are pretty quick u-turns by an establishment that's confident about business as usual following elections. Gravy-train!

mikecb 10y ago
This was for a DHS immigration facility, not for a prison. (Not that it makes it any better, but it doesn't break with Justice's decision.)

erentz 10y ago

It's not clear from the article how this situation came to be. Were these soldiers told how much they would receive before enlisting? If so surely that is a contract and they don't have to repay. It only makes sense if they ALL received more than they were told and all didn't report it. But ~10,000 people doing this doesn't make sense.

chrismcb 10y ago
From the article "Investigations have determined that lack of oversight allowed for widespread fraud and mismanagement by California Guard officials under pressure to meet enlistment targets."
- erentz 10y ago
  But fraud on the part of the California Guard is an internal matter. If I form a contract with a company that says they will pay me some amount of money, but the company representative was committing fraud internally then too bad. The company needs to deal with that. It can't reneg on its agreement years later after having already fulfilled the terms of the agreement.
  - derekp7 10y ago
    If you buy a piece of electronic equipment from a dealer at a flea market, and it is later found out that the merchandise was stolen, you have to return the merchandise to the original owner. Even if there was a valid contract between you and the dealer that sold it to you. I think this is seen as something similar -- the people giving out the bonus money basically "stole" it, so it wasn't theirs to give. Kind of like if a sales person at a store told you "buy now and I can give you an instant rebate", then pulled rebate money from the cash register. I think you'd have to give that money back too (assuming the "rebate" wasn't authorized, and was effectively stolen money).
    - anotheryou 10y ago
      But if the dealer was known he would have to reimburse me, no? Also what if I where no longer in possession of the good?

rileymat2 10y ago

"Robert D’Andrea, a retired Army major and Iraq veteran, was told to return a $20,000 bonus he received in 2008 because auditors could not find a copy of the contract he says he signed." How is this possible? If private businesses could do this, it would be mayhem.

dogma1138 10y ago
I'm surprised that this is somehow even passed the slightest political oversight. You need to be a special kind of bastard to ask some one who willingly signed up to get shot at while defending their country to pay back any amount of money they got paid for doing so. Wars aren't pretty, regardless of what you think about them, and especially about Iraq and Afghanistan never ever take it out on the soldiers, they are probably on your side because unlike most of us they actually seen war. Soldiers don't decide when, where or against whom to go to war, they are not at fault I never understood how the left in the US could blame people who either got drafted (vietnam) or signed up to defend their country (post 9/11) for the atrocities of war.
- mnem 10y ago
  Well, they decide when they enlist to go kill people when told to.
  - gtaylor 10y ago
    Some of them get out of extreme poverty or are able to go to school afterwards by enlisting. It's not as simple as that.
  - dlp211 10y ago
    Hardly, the vast majority of jobs in the US Army are non-combat. You shouldn't paint with such a broad brush, many who serve do so out of a sense of duty to the nation, to escape a bad situation including poverty or get out of a dying town, and/or to gain access to higher education through the use of tuition assistance and GI Bill programs.

Negative1 10y ago

Wasn't clear from the article; did someone or a group of people break the law so that these ("illegal") bonuses could be paid? Basically, who (or what org) will be held accountable for this so that it won't happen again?

detaro 10y ago
At least a partial answer is there, but presumably there are lot more people involved: > Army Master Sgt. Toni Jaffe, the California Guard’s incentive manager, pleaded guilty in 2011 to filing false claims of $15.2 million and was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison. Three officers also pleaded guilty to fraud and were put on probation after paying restitution.
- vacri 10y ago
  It's disturbing that someone whose actions have brought such heartache and hardship to so many gets such a short sentence compared to 'blue collar' crimes. Rob a shop with a weapon, and you harm one person and get a trivial amount of money, but you'd be lucky to see a sentence that short.

ZanyProgrammer 10y ago

As an Army vet myself, the truth is is that the Army will never miss an opportunity for fucking you over. Its the nature of the system. If you can make it to 20 years, you are some combination of exceptional/lucky/broken from years of fuckery. "We just can’t do it. We’d be breaking the law" Yeah, I'm sure the California National Guard tried really, really hard not to go after their bonuses.

dominotw 10y ago
Is this merely a reflection of general American population that views the army as a major drain on national resources that can be better spent elsewhere. Or is there something more sinister going on inside the National Guard.
- snerbles 10y ago
  Support from the American populace consists of flag-waving and slapping "Support our Troops" yellow ribbon magnets on their cars. Unless they're personally related to someone in the military, servicemembers and veterans are invisible at best, or seen as deranged reactionary boogiemen at worst. EDIT: I should really note that this depends on where you live. Support is certainly more sincere in the South, over here on the West Coast people by and large don't give a shit.
  - Implicated 10y ago
    As someone who has traveled the country pretty extensively, I can't agree. As someone who grew up in a large western coastal city, I would agree that perception is accurate to that locale.
    - snerbles 10y ago
      Maybe I just need to leave California, then.
      - saryant 10y ago

guelo 10y ago

Not really surprised, the California Guard has been a corrupt mismanaged scandal-plagued organization for a long time.

cbreeden 10y ago

This is weird. I'm extremely surprised that some kind of statue of limitations does not apply here. I'm not sure we are getting the whole story.

dbg31415 10y ago

So did recruiters cut bigger checks than they were supposed to? If so, someone had to sign off on that... either recruiters or the managers should be held accountable. Soldiers got contracts promising one amount but received checks for another amount? Yeah, they should have to pay that back then. But who wrote checks and / or promised numbers higher than the contracts?

DanBC 10y ago
> Soldiers got contracts promising one amount but received checks for another amount? Yeah, they should have to pay that back then. No, soldiers got promised one amount, got contracts for that amount, got paid that amount, and now it's being clawed back because the people who did the original promising and paperwork filing were breaking various laws.
- dbg31415 10y ago
  Well if they have contracts for the higher amount... how is this a thing? Unless the contracts weren't signed by someone from the government who could sign those contracts? How would the soldiers know if the government recruiter was legit or not... yeah seems fucked. Government didn't supervise their recruiters correctly. Wouldn't that make all the contracts void? Messy. If the military needs bodies, they should just go back to drafting them. Would help society see the true cost of policing the world instead of taking advantage of the poor.

thomasmarriott 10y ago

Abhorrent.

QUFB 10y ago

I'm not a veteran, I'm a desk jockey. I didn't like the foreign entanglements we've been involved with over the past 15 years. But that's not the point here. When young men and women volunteer to fight and die for our country, and are made promises by the system, these promises should be honored. This behavior by the California National Guard is disgusting.

nucleardog 10y ago
I don't get why it has to be at all about the role itself, the honour of the military, or anything else. If I'm extended an offer of employment including a $10,000 signing bonus, sign, take the job, receive my bonus, complete the job as agreed, and the contract expires and I go on my way... The company doesn't get to come back to me years later and say "Oh, oops, I actually forgot to have my boss sign off on that bonus I gave you. You need to give it back." If you broke agreements with your financers on where/how that money was to be spent, that's your problem. Our contract was still valid - you have broken your contract with your financer and you can deal with the penalties.
- bww 10y ago
  Seriously. The people who illegally gave away the government's money should be on the hook for repaying it. Not the people who accepted it legitimately and in good faith.
module0000 10y ago
The behavior is disgusting indeed. A collection attempt to the wrong type of veteran is doing to result in that veteran categorizing the collector as a kill-on-sight target. Demanding money back from trained killers sounds like a mistake likely to result in unnecessary deaths.

olegkikin 10y ago

Sue.

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cjslep 10y ago

I imagine this only damages the USA. The next time they need heavy recruitment numbers, people will look at the signing bonuses offered and either say "My life is worth more than this amount" or "this amount is too good to be true, they'll ask for it back in the future" and not sign on.

fencepost 10y ago

It sounds like this was not at all limited to California, just that there were more cases there due to various reasons (population, individuals, policies/incentives). I'll be writing to my representative (Duckworth), both candidates to replace her, and her Senate opponent (Kirk). I expect responses at least from the two named since both are former military.

johngalt 10y ago

This smells like recruiters gaming the system while under pressure from the top to fill quotas. In the same vein as Wells Fargo. Hit this impossible target or you're fired. We can't tell you to lie/cheat people to hit the numbers but we will promote the people who do and PIP the ones who don't. Meanwhile we will go through the motions of legal compliance. Everyone gets what they want and the higher ups can come back later and act like it is a huge surprise to them that the people they hired and trained were gaming the system.

rhapsodic 10y ago

And yet we can afford to bail out Wall Street firms that pay their executives millions in bonuses for driving their companies into the ground.

Keverw 10y ago

This is so unbelievable they could mess up somthing like this. I hope this becomes major news. These people shouldn't be paying for someone else mistakes. If the money is mentioned in the contract, I don't see how they could just take it because of their mistake.

Frogolocalypse 10y ago

That is sickening

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aplomb 10y ago

Instead of hitting the soldiers who signed what they thought were reenlistment bonuses, why don't they pommel the commanding officers who presided over these "overpayments"?

lucio 10y ago

>>Robert D’Andrea, a retired Army major and Iraq veteran, was told to return a $20,000 bonus he received in 2008 because auditors could not find a copy of the contract he says he signed. >>We’d be more than happy to absolve these people of their debts. We just can’t do it. We’d be breaking the law. - Stop quoting laws at us. We carry weapons

a3n 10y ago

I tell my son, his friends, and anyone who will listen: don't join the military unless this is your calling, indicated by God's finger touching your heart. Because the military will treat you like shit if it's merely inconvenient to do otherwise. VA. Guard units called up to combat for one day shy of the time that would qualify them for combat pay. The linked article. Institutional abuse. Forced reenlistment during questionable wars. Etc. USN, E6, 1975-1981. Not that that gives me any particular place on the moral ground. And for the record, I had a relatively easy time in the Navy. But even if I'd never been in, I'd be as outraged as I am now.

blazespin 10y ago

Maybe this is a good thing as it will make it harder to get people to go to war next time. Perhaps we might think twice about invading other countries.

AKifer 10y ago

It's a scheme as old as the world, even Julius Caesar owed money to his legions men and did not pay them.

WalterBright 10y ago

Isn't there a statute of limitations on such belated claims?

zachruss92 10y ago

Honestly, this story is just sad. I understand that there was fraud involved in order to incentivize soldiers to reenlist, but it's not their fault; It was the people who manipulated them into reenlisting. I definitely think in this case the government should "forgive" this debt - and they probably will. VA benefits are already pretty flimsy, our vets have it hard enough.