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Thats the not internet way! Double down bud

This from a nav…

Checks. OMB / Project 2025 / Christian Nationalist Russ also wants to end concurrent receipt of mil pensions and VA disability payments. https://www.heritage.org/budget/pages/recommendations/2.600.22.html Needless to say I don’t support that policy idea. You earned your mil pension as delayed compensation and part of your overall benefits package for serving, and if you become disabled as the VA defines it, you should receive those payments as well. The two are not in any way connected (one is for your service, the other is for your disabilities; you can serve for 20+ and be 0% or you can do a single enlistment or less and be 100% or any combo inbetween) other than serving in uniform is a prerequisite for both.

The core problem in our society boils down to one thing - too many people have no skin in the game. It's reflected in this conversation right now. We are lamenting the 69 people who don't pay enough in taxes. Roger. I get that, and they should pay more than their 15% or whatever it is they're paying - it's a lot less than the 40-50% you and I pay. That said, there is far, far, far, faaaaaar greater moral and social consequence to the functioning of society when 50% of us pay nothing, or next to nothing. I'm not saying don't tax Elon, Jeff, and Bill more - at least to parity. But we absolutely *must* start charging people for what they consume. Want welfare benefits? Cool. Here's welfare and a 40-hour per week job filling up pot holes. The free lunch has to stop. Benefits have to go hand in hand with some sort of exchange of labor, long-term debt, or generational/familial accounting. Free has to end.

Did somebody say Cold Stone? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Elon gets to cosplay as POTUS since he can't be one. He also gets to dismantle agencies, some illegally, that give him grief (i.e., EPA, SEC, IRS, etc.). He gets to "audit" competitors within the DoD/NASA and their contracts, and more importantly, he gets to data mine American data to train the data sets on his Grok 3.0 AI. If he gets in trouble with the Feds, Trump will order the DOJ to turn the other way, like Eric Adams, or use the pocket pardon he probably promised Elon. Trump, on the other hand, gets to just go after the people who wronged him with the DOJ since the SCOTUS said he's got a "Stay out of Jail" card for official acts. Plus he's a lame duck POTUS after this term, so he doesn't give a shit about anything else other than making him, Elon, and fellow billionaires richer. Fuck the working class with tariffs that the rich can afford day-to-day, then when the working class sells their property to survive after the economy crashes, have all the private equity billionares circle like vultures to buy it all up for pennies on the dollar. Farmer and ranchers that largely voted for Trump? Fuck them. Make it almost impossible to farm or ranch, so private equity billionaires could come in after they sell and scoop up all their property. Then they go and rehire the illegals that ran away to begin with. Capitalism baby. Congress *could* check Trump's power with an impeachment, but the GOP isn't going to do that since Elon said he'd spend $100M to primary any GOP member of Congress that opposed Trump. They're all going to turn their heads and look the other way. McConnell voted against RFK, but I can almost promise you had he been the deciding vote, he would've voted to confirm. It's a lot easier when it's not as close as that. Russell Vought gets to finally live his Christian Nationalist dream by deporting the browns and having the GOP and Elon push their breed kink to have a lot of kids. Gotta replace the working class/proletariats to work for the bourgeoisie billionaires that now own everything.

Most mid-level officers are in the top 10% of tax payers. The top 1% is somewhere around a half mil or sightly more. I’m not saying $690K isn’t a lot of money for us normals, but seems like top 1% gets thrown out as if it only encompasses Gates, Bezos, etc. Tax the rich is a stupid and losing strategy, especially when you have half of tax payers barely providing anything, and not to mention all the people who don’t pay a dime in taxes, but suck societal resources without issue. I think both sides can agree the tax code needs improvement, but simply continuing to increase punishing successful people is a ridiculous proposition. How about we just go flat tax, no breaks/deductions (or very little at least). Something like everyone pays 10% fed, whatever that totals to is what the fed budget is. Oh that’s not enough to fund all your bullshit pet projects? Too bad, draw the cut line like the rest of us who understand basic finances do.

Y'all need to actually address the topic rather than all this e-pen** measuring.

It's generally best not to do public speaking on things you don't know much about...hasn't stopped a lot of people....

That's how we processed aircraft maintenance information when I first enlisted, a typist (not me) would input the data from the forms onto IBM key punch cards using a machine like this... I had to program the template card which created the data fields, which sat on a spool behind the little window at the middle top of the machine. We'd then take a box stacked full of those IBM cards to be run overnight, and the reports from the data came back on stacks of continuous dot matrix printer paper like CH posted. If we wanted more than one copy, there was carbon paper in between the sheets which had to be removed making a mess! A few years later I took a computer class in college, and the instructor called this "1950s technology." Of course, the USAF was still using it in the early 1980s! Shit, I feel old now... 👴👴

I haven't worn a uniform in my CAC ID picture since roughly 2008. My most recent iteration is from deployment where I was rocking a hawaiian shirt and a wildly out of regs mustache. Funny story is that I had recently been around a cat (I'm allergic) and my red eyes and ginger skin ended up with me looking like a cancer patient. It's gotten belly laughs from gate guards all the way to TSA agents at the airpot. There are zero rules saying you have to be in uniform for your CAC picture. And, if there are, no one has batted an eye.

https://thefga.org/research/universal-work-requirements/ It used to be the case. It is not the case now.

You believe that reducing taxes is "giving" money to the taxed and "taking" from the untaxed? Hot take, but very honest. Okay, then what do we do? Right now the system you believe in is running 2 trillion dollar per year deficits. This is during one of the most financially successful times in American history. We are running deficits (deficit/GDP) that have not been seen since WWII. If we keep interest rates where they are, the deficit will rise another trillion dollars as our interest payments spin out of control. If we lower interest rates we risk reigniting inflation. So what do we do with this broadly popular concept of spending more money than we have on everyone just because they like it? How much of my money do I deserve to keep, and do you believe the bottom 50% of the country with no net federal income tax liability should be contributing anything towards this massive shortfall that funds their "general welfare?"

...who has always landed with the gear down and at the correct airport 😎 You're welcome for my service

Yeah, but you gotta deploy the masses if you want to knock back the queep monster. The queep monster is a pussy at heart, it fears combat and hardship.

I’m sure billionaires have a different mechanism at their disposal, but let’s call this the Pledged Asset Line of Credit loophole where you borrow against stock (not taxed) unless you sell the stock to pay off the load (taxed as capital gains). I’ve never seen why that’s a hard one to solve. These loans have to be repaid, presumably by the sale of the underlying assets which triggers capital gains. So, let’s say when you pledge the stock against a PAL, we jot down the current value. If you sell the stock later, which you’ll eventually have to do, you get long term gains up to that amount, and any gains past that are treated as short term gains regardless of duration, and the underlying assets must be sold to pay off the balance when you die. No rolling forward shenanigans. Still leaves PALs as a reasonable financial tool but gets rid of them as a tax loophole. The dumbest way to address it is a wealth tax.

I wasn't talking about you, I was talking about Ted Cruz. I agree with pretty much everything you've written about ADS-B and concur - I fly with an ipad w/ ADS-B on the occasion that I fly private pilot-wise and it's a tremendous help. The fact that I at times can have much better SA in a $100K -172 with a < $1K iPad/puck setup compared to my $20m military aircraft is pretty messed up. I endorse all mil aircraft to have synthetic vision, moving map, ADS-B, all of the things...you and I are both familiar with the level of SA that just good software/hardware integration can bring to the fight. Don't worry grandpa, you're close enough to the grave that social security won't even have to cut payments before you start collecting 😁 Also if you're telling us your *effective* federal income tax rate is 35% then you make a shit-ton of money, easily top 1% or beyond of W2 earners. You also pay less as a % than at any time since the roaring 20s. If I were in charge I would more effectively tax the UHNW crowd and corporations first, but not gonna lie, if you are beyond a top 1% W2 earner I would ask you to pay more also - that what it will take to both get our fiscal house in better order and to continue the American standard of living and place in the world that we've come to expect. I'll say it every day and twice on sundays, you can't fix the problem with austerity. I mean, at least for now, I don't think I will. BO.net and typical AF flying squadron are massive echo chambers / amplification chambers of typical conservative & libertarian-leaning rhetoric and thought. Which is fine, many of my best friends are Republicans so it's no hard feelings. I'm happy to provide a different perspective while also learning the good parts of what many of y'all are saying. I think what I'm doing until I quit again is better than the "lol eat the rich" crowd you can find from the left online in most places. Also the vast majority of the things you listed, which I've seen neatly put together before online, are fine with me. They're classic Bush-era, bipartisan democracy & capitalism promotion around the world. I'd rather spend money like that than cede the playing field to the CCP model or the Russian gangster model.

Shut up Nav. ADS-B was not a smoking gun and I didn't latch on to the ADS-B issue as casual, but as a dinosaur who now uses ADS-B religiously, I see the enormous SA benefit offered by the capability. I think if it was in use it could have been a glove save. On at least two occasions ADS-B has "saved" me. Both times were I was where I was supposed to be and others were not. I already do pay more....how much is enough? I already pay 35% AND Social Security that I likely won't get. The progressive tax schedule is pure punishment to those who are successful. Please save the progressive liberal crap justification. It is blatantly unfair and now you want more...shocking...not. I am so glad my "extra" contribution could pay for these items. - $59M for ILLEGALS to stay at the Roosevelt Hotel in NYC - $10M for "Mozambique voluntary medical male circumcision" - $9.7M for UC Berkeley to develop "a cohort of Cambodian youth with enterprise driven skills" - - $2.3M for "strengthening independent voices in Cambodia" - $32M to the Prague Civil Society Centre - $40M for "gender equality and women empowerment hub" - $14M for "improving public procurement" in Serbia - $486M to the “Consortium for Elections and Political Process Strengthening,” including $22M for "inclusive and participatory political process" in Moldova and $21M for voter turnout in India - $29M to "strengthening political landscape in Bangladesh" - $20M for "fiscal federalism" in Nepal - $19M for "biodiversity conversation" in Nepal - $1.5M for "voter confidence" in Liberia - $14M for "social cohesion" in Mali - $2.5M for "inclusive democracies in Southern Africa" - $47M for "improving learning outcomes in Asia" - $2M to develop "sustainable recycling models" to "increase socio-economic cohesion among marginalized communities of Kosovo Roma, Ashkali, and Egypt" - $1.4M contract to physically observe mailing and clerical operations - Over $32 million from various other government departments for Politico Pro, which then wrote nothing but positive stories about Biden and negative stories about Trump.

This is exactly why I left when I did. Finished up a CC tour with 22 YOS and less than zero desire to continue down the leadership track. I knew I'd just be a deadweight O-5 DSG, soaking up sorties and holding up an O-5 slot. Unfortunately, way too many of those Mr. Bumpers out there who are filling a seat, dug in like a tick, maintaining the status quo. Walked into the local FSDO a few years back and the place looked like a geriatric facility. Talking with one of the reps, most were retired military, who already were fed retirement eligible and clearly old enough to collect SS. Anyone who has worked with the FAA knows how painful some of those crotchety old dudes can be. I understand the desire to keep working, but new blood is a good thing. Hell, one of the reasons we can't get enough DPEs in the area is because the early 70s dude at the FSDO doesn't want to manage more DPEs (per a friend/DPE).

Agreed. In fact, take this as an "official" Admin warning to KIO!

Here's one of my favorite social media sites about flying... Pilot Debrief - YouTube Sure, it's not a podcast (I didn't realize anyone outside of commuters listened to those anymore, but I am outside the targeted demographic so what do I know?); but it's a good standard to measure yourself by (STS). If you're not as articulate and comprehensive as Hoover, I'd give making podcasts a miss and focus on more important things...

If you have to ask, then you must think you’re at least a little bit of a “some know-it-all asshole”, I would go with a nah, timings not right. But hey, you do you! 🍺 -Thoughts

They are very lucky that whole thing didn’t go up in flames when the wing broke off.

What is this "Flare" technique that everyone keeps referring too. I say it's the grounds fault for being in the way.

Watch me do a kick flip.

Hate much, or just that bitter over life’s choices?

WTF? The effing airplane is upside down, sliding down the runway, on fire at one point and idiots have their damn phones out while they’re trying to evacuate. YGBSM!

Ok, fair enough. I’ve always heard it with the other word, but I stand corrected.

At the very least it should be heavily scrutinized. Auto 50% for Sleep Apnea? How many (likely non-pilots) claiming PTSD out there who never saw a deployment outside of Qatar...nice way to pump up their VA rating. I don't believe in means testing but payouts could probably be looked at big time. I'd actually be OK with just submitting expenses that I incur to fixing/tending to all ailments from a career of high-G flying. I'm guessing by the time I'm SS eligible, it will be means tested, which is bullshit, but it is what is. Truly a take from the "rich" and give to the poor situation. If we're going to talk means testing, then DOGE is firing the wrong people. They need to take a hard look at the top of the tenure chain. Find that, retired military pension guy, 100% VA and getting paid another $100k+ from the federal gov, especially those at/near SS eligible. We've all ran across these types...the ones that are more of roadblock to progress than anything, never wanting to upset the fiefdom they have built for themselves and stuck in the days from when they were in the military.

Looks like it was more of a shit landing than anything else...welcome aboard ensign. RJ Landing.mp4

Oh cool. Musk can post a table without context on his own social media platform and folks that have screamed “do your own research” for years accept this as evidence of widespread government fraud - and spread it without critical thought. Or is it that his super genius team doesn’t understand COBOL? https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-doge-social-security-150-year-old-benefits/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43073149

Fair enough. I should educate myself on that. Yup. And here is what I'll say about that. A good government - one that is restrained to doing good and correct things for its citizens - has a (basically) fixed cost. If you accept that (which you probably don't), you would eventually be forced to conclude that a percent-based income tax is not the proper way to fund such a government, because you eventually get enough dough to pay for the services you need to provide, and taxing beyond that must, therefore, be done for other purposes. The tax system we have guarantees no upper bound on what the government can collect. That is strange. Our tax system's main purpose is to flatten peoples' quality of life - which is beyond fucked up. But that's what it's purpose is. Keep us working. Inflate the value of your past labor away. Make saving a sucker's game. Ensure that the productive keep producing just enough to sustain themselves and everyone else. Never let anyone reach the land of milk and honey. The only reason to tax citizens when you have a government that simultaneously prints the very money they tax is to generate demand for the currency, otherwise, just print what you need. Right? Or what do you think about that relationship? Austerity may be a fact of life if we don't get our spending under control. Economically, the planet is a closed system in an entropy sense. So if we print infinity dollars, the value of those dollars to the rest of the world will drop to zero. That is indisputable. And it also happens to be a major caveat to our position in the world. The reserve currency privilege is not a God-given right. It is maintained purely by the fact that other people in the world have faith that a dollar will buy something. That it is a store of value. A medium of exchange. Look to how much you think Franks were worth in the 20s and 30s. There are reasons why currencies plummet in value. We are subject to the same economic realities as everyone else, but we *act* as if we're not. This is the absolute most dangerous fact in American life right now: the idea that our position in the world is fixed.

Normalization of deviance was mentioned...

Let me caveat this with my current understanding of VA compensation: I don't know anything about VA compensation. My opinion? Yes, probably. I see guys I work with who are 100% disabled and still fly F-16s. YGBFFFM. Seriously bro? In their defense, it's also been explained to me that "disability" is probably the wrong word to use to describe what's going on. Most people aren't disabled according to the MW definition of the word. The legalistic, lawyerly, VA definition of "disability" has more to do with how much damage you've sustained over a career. Fair enough. Back to my opinion. When someone who is able to claim 100% disability can still fly a 9G jet and stands next to someone who is 100% disabled who had all four limbs blown off in AFG, I think that's a bit sick, frankly. Something is wrong with the system.

Do you support a means test for VA compensation?

Yeah, never met the man but I have three first degree connections. Two think he’s the devil. One he knocked up. 🤷 if DOGE can find billions of dollars in fraud, waste and abuse, within the confines of the law, more power to them. But we all really want them to adhere to the law because two of those folks who know him believe Elon is going to need to be checked hard at some point. But I think he’s Trump’s Sin Eater. See how far he can go, let him do all of the things you want to do but can’t. Then when he goes too far and finally finds the boundary, under the bus he goes. That’s wild conjecture though.

Galloway also has a good article on why Elon is government subsidies welfare queen. https://www.profgalloway.com/elon-musk-welfare-queen/

This is where the conversation jumps the rails. The “rich” pay their fair share and the tax system is highly progressive through the bottom 99%. Then it falls off a cliff and the “stratospherically wealthy” pay far less. I’m super fortunate to have the first world problem of getting taxed hard. Hell, I vote D 90% of the time so I even fully admit I enable it. What chaps my ass is when people who make less than me say I should pay more while the people above me proportionately pay half as much. Scott Galloway has a great discussion on who the “tax mules” are, and it’s the $500k to $2M on W2 wages crowd. A few years of that and investment income takes over at cap gains rates, plus the shenanigans you can play there.

I agree...at first I thought it was another Crazy Ivan but when you peel the onion back a little bit it makes a lot of sense. Obviously the strategic location issue but I had no idea about all the rare earth minerals, once that I came to light I was curious why Denmark wasn't harvesting everything on their own, apparently the capital investment is a bit to steep for them. interestingly the Chinese are aware, they have a heavy presence on the ground right now. What was truly surprising the extend of the independence movement in Greenland, a majority of the residents have wanted to be independent for some time. Everyone is throwing shade at Trump for bringing this up but the United States tried to buy Greenland in 1947 for $100 million. Just like we tried to buy Cuba in 1848 and again in 1854.

Latest I saw was everyone survived, 2x in critical but stable condition, several other less serious injuries. Thank god everyone lived! Next time they really gotta remember to land right side up. At least the gear is down and this was their intended destination, amirite C-17 bros? 😁

Yes: join the Navy

The top 1% pay nearly 50% of federal taxes, top 10% pay over 75%, and the bottom 50% (I say again, HALF of tax payers) pay less than 3% of total federal taxes. The top 50% pay over 97% of the taxes. It is pure insanity and completely illogical to argue “the rich don’t pay their fare share.” But it’s a nice progressive talking point to be absorbed and repeated by ignorant, intellectually dishonest, and/or unintelligent people. Other related points… - We need to rein in spending on a historic scale. Should Medicare/SS be shuttered? Well I do believe we need a social safety net (we agree on that), but these are horribly ran programs, and as of now all of my SS witholdings across adult life are literal theft because the program will be completely insolvent and defunct by the time I’m of age…unless they fix it. We need a new system along with a SS sunset - I’m OK with taxes staying flat for a short time while we solve spending problems and reduce the deficit. But reality is we the people are currently being taxed 100s of billions that are paying for utter bullshit. Thats 100s of billions that need to be back in taxpayer pockets via cuts as soon as feasible. We can’t right the wrong of the past (because we need to reduce deficit), but we should at least start righting it ASAP (e.g. start with a clean slate) - General point: conservatives aren’t anti-tax, but we are anti-tax to fund bullshit the federal gov has no business funding, let alone managing/controlling. For example, Dept of Ed had a $238B budget in 2024…that dept shouldn’t exist at all and $238B is either not required by the gov (and therefore tax reduced) or I could see still collecting it to pay down deficit (again, for a short timeframe, not forever). That’s one example from a large sea of examples.

Reducing taxes on people who make more money is not “giving” them anything…it was their money to begin with. And “taking away” from the poor is not taking anything from them as was never their resources to begin with.

This argument doesn't even make sense in 2025 when you consider the many ways in which our standard of living has declined while our tax burdens have increased. And don't give me some bullshit about cheap toys like consumer electronics and the like. I want affordable homes, reliable cars, and cheap energy, not a $100 LCD monitor or a $15 polyester sweater made in Bangladesh. What's the point of my taxes going up, of seeing the numbers on the GDP chart go up every year, if I can't even do something as simple as ordering a beautiful and affordable kit home from the Sears catalog anymore? This house would cost $45,000 today after adjusting for inflation. According to your logic, life in 2025 should be better than it was in 1995, 1985, or 1955 because we pay more taxes, but a man in 1940 could live better than me... The whole point of "hard power" and "soft power" is to enable us to live in peace and prosperity, either through the carrot or the stick. But instead of building onwards and upwards from the success of our predecessors, we chose to coast on their legacy. Now I have to regularly worry about something as ridiculous as being accosted by a drugged out schizophrenic when taking public transportation in most major cities, which would have been a once-in-a-lifetime experience for my grandfather. It's just death by a thousand little cuts with this kind of stuff, and it fatigues the collective consciousness of our society... and empties our wallets... We need to seriously rethink our approach to these things. Higher taxation is not the answer. We need less spending, but it's almost impossible to achieve because people can't fathom the thought of losing enormous cash cows like Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security. "I paid into it, other people should too!!" And while we're figuring out this domestic spending crisis, we certainly shouldn't be spending any money on condoms for Gaza, transsexual theater troupes, DEI bullshit, and countless other misallocations of taxpayer money.

If you don’t look for the outcome you don’t want, it’s a lot harder to find it.

The government deserves more of your money, especially if you are a high earner, based on what the American people expect the government to do and provide. If you want to become a second-rate power relegated to the sidelines of world affairs, go ahead and austerity yourself there I guess. I however do not want that fate. We need more ships, more jets & flying hours, more munitions, more space launch & satellites, more primary care & preventive medicine, more rural hospitals and medical providers, more support for farms & farmers, better disaster response, more basic scientific research, more investment into AI and AI safety, and more support for hungry and poor children in particular. Just the first handful things off the top of my head. If we can find efficiencies, which we can, great, I'm for it. We've all seen wasteful stuff in the course of government employment. I've also seen waste in the private sector that would rival any government department. But "finding efficiencies" is not a mission for an axe, that's a mission for a scalpel. Our capitalist economic system and the overall entrepreneurial drive of Americans can provide a lot of that stuff (for a price), but the government needs the resources to make that stuff happen too - you don't get a new sub or F-35 or rural hospital from the free market alone. You don't get any of that stuff by wantonly firing government employees, cancelling contracts, or otherwise destabilizing an otherwise steadying piece of our overall economic castle. Burn it all down with vague promises to built it back better & more efficient is a strategy you can try with a little bird app or a small company - it's not a good idea for the government of the world's premier superpower. There's a reason some things are designed to move fast and other things are designed to move slow. That's my view - I'm very sure I can't convince you of anything though so I'm sure you will disagree.

The pendulum is swinging comically hard toward strict-interpretation queep bullshit. We gotta have another war to actually focus up on shit that matters, only half kidding... Who put a barbed wire baseball bat up these people's asses?? Leadership is busy funging everything in sight, with no end in sight. Funge = fun sponge for those who are uninitiated. I for one can't wait to do my open ranks inspection in service dress with a super straight gig line and not a single hair besmirching my ears on a cancelled Family Day while also not teleworking during no-longer-Women's History month! /sarcasm

No one should be interested in the things I'm not interested in anymore.

Completely agree. Also, IPT doesn't emphasize emergency procedures. Not to mention, UPT took out the T-1 syllabus. So students going T-6 direct to heavies will show up to FTU with limited exposure to how we do things in military aviation. Time will tell... Vance isn't doing IPT and at this moment there's been no words passed that they will. I don't know the class number but this was last week at Vance: T-1 class: even split of 17s and 135s, couple of C-130Hs for the guardies/reservists,1 or 2 C-130Js and 1 C-146 T-38 class: T-38 FAIP, T-6 FAIP, F-16, 2x F-35s, HC-130. A more encouraging drop for those hoping for fighters. We were told fighter slots are becoming increasingly rare

Bang Ding Ow... Ho Lee Fuk...