7 ms·

Turmoil shakes California National Guard with firing, suspension of top generals

37 points by arkadiyt 6y ago

a3n 6y ago
It sounds like news of historical Rome. The governor of a far trans mountain province. Generals sent there to protect the empire against even more distant threats. Shady deals between the governor and the generals. Hastily assembled legions made from local men, to put down protests against the empire's treatment of freed men.
- maj0rhn 6y ago
  Not hastily: the National Guard goes back to 1636 and is the oldest military force in the United States.
  - a3n 6y ago
    "hastily" referring to the 800 that were to be deployed with a day or so of relevant riot and weapons training. Salute!
anm89 6y ago
I'll never understand the model of the L.A times putting everything behind a subscription wall. Sure maybe a handfull of papers like the NYT or WAPO could pull it off because they are designed to be a one stop shop. But once you are into the second tier, what am I supposed to subscribe to 100 different newspapers so I can occasionally read an article from them. At least the LA Times is kind of big. I've seen much more egregious examples than that, for example the Mercury in SF.
- nl 6y ago
  If you live in LA presumably the LA Times has local, relevant news so might be worth subscribing to for some?
  - anm89 6y ago
    Not sure why this is being downvoted. I'm guessing this is basically the economic justification. I'm also skeptical that this is a sustainable business model although I hope I am wrong.
  - _ph_ 6y ago
    Not only LA, but for all of California/West coast. If you subscribe to one major news paper, the most local one is also more likely to have a deeper insight into local affairs.
- jonas21 6y ago
  The LA Times is not a small paper. It has the fifth-largest circulation in the U.S. (greater than the Washington Post) and over 40 Pulitzer Prizes. It's arguably the only major newspaper in the U.S. not based on the east coast.
  - alrs 6y ago
    ..and they put up a strong fight as newspapers were waning. The NYT was already garbage in 1999 when LAT was going strong and publishing stories about the primary function of the US intelligence establishment being economic espionage.
  - rsj_hn 6y ago
    > The LA Times is not a small paper. It has the fifth-largest circulation in the U.S., Unfortunately in 2002 it was the second largest, at just under a million subscribers, and is now down to 600K in 2019, and is $50 million in the red. So whatever its former glories may have been, that does not mean its business model is working -- it's clearly not working, and its digital strategy has been one of the worst sources of dissapointment with only 250K digital subscribers in 2020[1]. So when someone criticizes the business model by pointing out that it's unlikely that people will pay for a digital subscription to the LA Times, and this is reflected in fantastically, embarassingly, shockingly[2] low digital subscription rates compared to what you believe the LA Times peers to be, then that suggests that either the LA times is not in the same peer group, or its digital offerings are uniquely unappealing, or both. In either case, throwing up a paywall doesn't seem to be working. [1] https://www.pressgazette.co.uk/news-publishers-surpassed-100000-digital-subscriptions/ https://www.pressgazette.co.uk/news-publishers-surpassed-100... [2] See this hacker news thread about how dissapointing their digital numbers were: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20576544 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20576544
  - anm89 6y ago
    To me this just proves the point. Am I really going to subscribe to the top 5 news papers? Where do you draw the line? I'm probably not going to subscribe to more than one general paper, because they probably have 90% overlap in coverage meaning even the second subscription is drastically less valuable than the first. There is no way I'm making it to 5. Realistically I can get 85% percent of that news without subscribing to any meaning even one subscription is a stretch and there is no way I'm doing more than that. In the event that there is one article every three months that is LAT specific that I just cannot go without reading, I'll find some way to breach the paywall in that instance. For the record, I'm not claiming NYT or WAPO are better papers than the times. In fact I hate the NYT and have more or less no opinion of the LAT.
- throwawayboise 6y ago
  Firefox reader mode bypassed it for me. Normally does for newspaper paywalls. Sometimes it needs an extra page refresh.
  - cpncrunch 6y ago
    Safari reader mode also works.
YeBanKo 6y ago
I am not sure why using military plane, even fighter jet to survey earth quake damage is unacceptable and was resisted so much by Gen Jones. It’s inefficient, sure, but if the plane is not used for anything else and it can be used as an exercise as well, as a tax payer, I think such inefficiency is acceptable. The last paragraph is where the salt is, imo: In October, Newsom’s office denounced the Guard’s decision to send a military spy plane to suburban El Dorado Hills, where Baldwin lived, to help civilian authorities monitor demonstrations over the Floyd killing. Baldwin said the fact that he resided in El Dorado Hills, where the protests were small and peaceful, had nothing to do with the deployment of the RC-26B reconnaissance plane.
- hartator 6y ago
  I guess it slipped fast from earthquake monitoring to protest monitoring.
- john_moscow 6y ago
  In political decisions like this, the stated reason is always just an excuse for the public. The real reason usually boils down to rivaling circles of cronies competing for influence.
  - specialist 6y ago
    Yup. Rules are enforced against people who fall out of favor. Fortunately, the rules are such that no one can be in full compliance. So there's always a handy excuse.
- shard 6y ago
  As I understand it, sending one of those planes out costs tens of thousands of dollars each flight (any military personnel or military buffs that can corroborate or correct that number?). That might be insignificant from a military budget point of view, but as a taxpayer it does not exactly seem like a good use of money.
  - craftinator 6y ago
brobdingnagians 6y ago
This smells fishy. Jones' has lots of assertions (it would be interesting to hear any fact-based rebuttals to them) about misconduct by Baldwin and rather odd behavior; but Baldwin just says "I do not fire people for fictional events. The F-15C narrative is just that, a fictional event." But there are Guard members speaking out about it; that isn't fictional. He might disagree with the narrative, but it definitely might be a reason to fire people, a reason to fire him that is, if it is true. He's had previous issues too, including trying the spy plane incident in October. His comment about "his planes" comes across as controlling. And unless service members are just making up stuff about an F15 being placed on standby, then there is something going on. If they just explained what that something is, then it would be fine, but they appear to be cagey about the whole thing. Just based on their outward behavior, I'd be more likely to trust Jones than Baldwin. Baldwin comes across as dodging having to make any real assertions about facts. He makes a half baked response that a 5 year old with stolen cookie crumbs around their mouth might be proud of, but certainly not a full grown adult leading a state National Guard.
- maj0rhn 6y ago
  Any theory for the firings has to explain why the enlisted chief was fired. He would not have been involved in any orders related to the F-15. His responsibility is the enlisted force, not airplanes or their use. So I don't buy the F-15 as the cause. Also note that the Wing Commander at the F-15 wing denied in January that the airplane was put on alert. It therefore seems that the LA Times learned about this incident three months ago ... so why would firings happen now? Note that this reporter is the same reporter that wrote the 2019 story about the incident at the F-15 wing that got the previous two-star fired. I'd bet that some people in the F-15 wing have a relationship with this reporter and leaked the F-15 story months ago, but there was not enough for the paper to publish the story. The firings gave the F-15 "incident" a second life. The most likely explanation is that something related to an enlisted member was mis-handled at State Headquarters. It could have been some complaint about harassment (or worse). I doubt it was money -- the California Guard has had several stinging money incidents in recent years, and they have never been shy about disclosing the details.
gumby 6y ago
Why should the national guard need attack aircraft at all? California is covered with military bases stuffed to the gills with aircraft.
- maj0rhn 6y ago
  The F-15 wing in Fresno has an air defense mission. They are on 24/7 alert in case US airspace is threatened. The fact that they are assigned to the National Guard instead of the active duty Air Force is a money-saving move: Guard wings are much cheaper than Active Duty wings. As soon as the airplanes launch in response to a perceived threat (e.g. a civilian plane with a broken transponder), the pilots are put on active duty orders.
redis_mlc 6y ago
There are recon pods for the F-16, so not sure what the vigorous denial was about for imaging forest fires or earthquakes. What's cute is that there was a recon version of the F-5, made for KSA. One of the designers said it worked well with no vibration problems, but Northrop technicians had to tell the Saudi airport workers to stop X-raying the palettes of film. :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_F-5 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_F-5

37 points by arkadiyt 6y ago

a3n 6y ago

It sounds like news of historical Rome. The governor of a far trans mountain province. Generals sent there to protect the empire against even more distant threats. Shady deals between the governor and the generals. Hastily assembled legions made from local men, to put down protests against the empire's treatment of freed men.

maj0rhn 6y ago
Not hastily: the National Guard goes back to 1636 and is the oldest military force in the United States.
- a3n 6y ago
  "hastily" referring to the 800 that were to be deployed with a day or so of relevant riot and weapons training. Salute!

anm89 6y ago

I'll never understand the model of the L.A times putting everything behind a subscription wall. Sure maybe a handfull of papers like the NYT or WAPO could pull it off because they are designed to be a one stop shop. But once you are into the second tier, what am I supposed to subscribe to 100 different newspapers so I can occasionally read an article from them. At least the LA Times is kind of big. I've seen much more egregious examples than that, for example the Mercury in SF.

nl 6y ago
If you live in LA presumably the LA Times has local, relevant news so might be worth subscribing to for some?
- anm89 6y ago
  Not sure why this is being downvoted. I'm guessing this is basically the economic justification. I'm also skeptical that this is a sustainable business model although I hope I am wrong.
- _ph_ 6y ago
  Not only LA, but for all of California/West coast. If you subscribe to one major news paper, the most local one is also more likely to have a deeper insight into local affairs.
jonas21 6y ago
The LA Times is not a small paper. It has the fifth-largest circulation in the U.S. (greater than the Washington Post) and over 40 Pulitzer Prizes. It's arguably the only major newspaper in the U.S. not based on the east coast.
- alrs 6y ago
  ..and they put up a strong fight as newspapers were waning. The NYT was already garbage in 1999 when LAT was going strong and publishing stories about the primary function of the US intelligence establishment being economic espionage.
- rsj_hn 6y ago
  > The LA Times is not a small paper. It has the fifth-largest circulation in the U.S., Unfortunately in 2002 it was the second largest, at just under a million subscribers, and is now down to 600K in 2019, and is $50 million in the red. So whatever its former glories may have been, that does not mean its business model is working -- it's clearly not working, and its digital strategy has been one of the worst sources of dissapointment with only 250K digital subscribers in 2020[1]. So when someone criticizes the business model by pointing out that it's unlikely that people will pay for a digital subscription to the LA Times, and this is reflected in fantastically, embarassingly, shockingly[2] low digital subscription rates compared to what you believe the LA Times peers to be, then that suggests that either the LA times is not in the same peer group, or its digital offerings are uniquely unappealing, or both. In either case, throwing up a paywall doesn't seem to be working. [1] https://www.pressgazette.co.uk/news-publishers-surpassed-100000-digital-subscriptions/ https://www.pressgazette.co.uk/news-publishers-surpassed-100... [2] See this hacker news thread about how dissapointing their digital numbers were: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20576544 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20576544
- anm89 6y ago
  To me this just proves the point. Am I really going to subscribe to the top 5 news papers? Where do you draw the line? I'm probably not going to subscribe to more than one general paper, because they probably have 90% overlap in coverage meaning even the second subscription is drastically less valuable than the first. There is no way I'm making it to 5. Realistically I can get 85% percent of that news without subscribing to any meaning even one subscription is a stretch and there is no way I'm doing more than that. In the event that there is one article every three months that is LAT specific that I just cannot go without reading, I'll find some way to breach the paywall in that instance. For the record, I'm not claiming NYT or WAPO are better papers than the times. In fact I hate the NYT and have more or less no opinion of the LAT.
throwawayboise 6y ago
Firefox reader mode bypassed it for me. Normally does for newspaper paywalls. Sometimes it needs an extra page refresh.
- cpncrunch 6y ago
  Safari reader mode also works.

YeBanKo 6y ago

I am not sure why using military plane, even fighter jet to survey earth quake damage is unacceptable and was resisted so much by Gen Jones. It’s inefficient, sure, but if the plane is not used for anything else and it can be used as an exercise as well, as a tax payer, I think such inefficiency is acceptable. The last paragraph is where the salt is, imo: In October, Newsom’s office denounced the Guard’s decision to send a military spy plane to suburban El Dorado Hills, where Baldwin lived, to help civilian authorities monitor demonstrations over the Floyd killing. Baldwin said the fact that he resided in El Dorado Hills, where the protests were small and peaceful, had nothing to do with the deployment of the RC-26B reconnaissance plane.

hartator 6y ago
I guess it slipped fast from earthquake monitoring to protest monitoring.
john_moscow 6y ago
In political decisions like this, the stated reason is always just an excuse for the public. The real reason usually boils down to rivaling circles of cronies competing for influence.
- specialist 6y ago
  Yup. Rules are enforced against people who fall out of favor. Fortunately, the rules are such that no one can be in full compliance. So there's always a handy excuse.
shard 6y ago
As I understand it, sending one of those planes out costs tens of thousands of dollars each flight (any military personnel or military buffs that can corroborate or correct that number?). That might be insignificant from a military budget point of view, but as a taxpayer it does not exactly seem like a good use of money.
- craftinator 6y ago

brobdingnagians 6y ago

This smells fishy. Jones' has lots of assertions (it would be interesting to hear any fact-based rebuttals to them) about misconduct by Baldwin and rather odd behavior; but Baldwin just says "I do not fire people for fictional events. The F-15C narrative is just that, a fictional event." But there are Guard members speaking out about it; that isn't fictional. He might disagree with the narrative, but it definitely might be a reason to fire people, a reason to fire him that is, if it is true. He's had previous issues too, including trying the spy plane incident in October. His comment about "his planes" comes across as controlling. And unless service members are just making up stuff about an F15 being placed on standby, then there is something going on. If they just explained what that something is, then it would be fine, but they appear to be cagey about the whole thing. Just based on their outward behavior, I'd be more likely to trust Jones than Baldwin. Baldwin comes across as dodging having to make any real assertions about facts. He makes a half baked response that a 5 year old with stolen cookie crumbs around their mouth might be proud of, but certainly not a full grown adult leading a state National Guard.

maj0rhn 6y ago
Any theory for the firings has to explain why the enlisted chief was fired. He would not have been involved in any orders related to the F-15. His responsibility is the enlisted force, not airplanes or their use. So I don't buy the F-15 as the cause. Also note that the Wing Commander at the F-15 wing denied in January that the airplane was put on alert. It therefore seems that the LA Times learned about this incident three months ago ... so why would firings happen now? Note that this reporter is the same reporter that wrote the 2019 story about the incident at the F-15 wing that got the previous two-star fired. I'd bet that some people in the F-15 wing have a relationship with this reporter and leaked the F-15 story months ago, but there was not enough for the paper to publish the story. The firings gave the F-15 "incident" a second life. The most likely explanation is that something related to an enlisted member was mis-handled at State Headquarters. It could have been some complaint about harassment (or worse). I doubt it was money -- the California Guard has had several stinging money incidents in recent years, and they have never been shy about disclosing the details.

gumby 6y ago

Why should the national guard need attack aircraft at all? California is covered with military bases stuffed to the gills with aircraft.

maj0rhn 6y ago
The F-15 wing in Fresno has an air defense mission. They are on 24/7 alert in case US airspace is threatened. The fact that they are assigned to the National Guard instead of the active duty Air Force is a money-saving move: Guard wings are much cheaper than Active Duty wings. As soon as the airplanes launch in response to a perceived threat (e.g. a civilian plane with a broken transponder), the pilots are put on active duty orders.

redis_mlc 6y ago

There are recon pods for the F-16, so not sure what the vigorous denial was about for imaging forest fires or earthquakes. What's cute is that there was a recon version of the F-5, made for KSA. One of the designers said it worked well with no vibration problems, but Northrop technicians had to tell the Saudi airport workers to stop X-raying the palettes of film. :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_F-5 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_F-5