pawnman

I certainly would not have devoted the time and effort for my online MBA if the AF didn't force me to. Even if the AF told me it was required for promotion, but I was going to pay for it myself, I would have mulled over my options for quite some time before committing myself to $10K + out of pocket for a chance to be slightly more competitive than my peers on a promotion board with an 80%+ selection rate. Further, if the Air Force wanted me to get a real degree, with a real time investment, they would create opportunities for it. Even with TA paying for my online school, I still took the easiest route I could. Why? The Air Force already pulls me away from my family enough with deployments, TDYs, early morning and late night flights/SOF/Top 3, OREs/ORIs, working weekends to prepare for said OREs/ORIs, the list goes on. I wasn't going to give the Air Force even MORE of my time by committing to a program that would require hours every night to complete. I was not about to tell my daughter "Sorry, I haven't seen you in three days, but I can't play right now because I have to write a 20 page thesis". If I want to invest my time, money, and effort in a real master's, having a BS online MBA won't stop that. But it does put the check in the box in the fastest manner possible. If the Air Force values education, they'll stop making it a box to check and invest in actual educational options.

It's pretty well established fact. Some of the details are still being worked out, but the basic idea is irrefutable. You can look at genetic similarities between primates, then mammals, then other creatures. You can see the vestigial organs and bones in many creatures. Fossil evidence.

Bingo. Your homeowners, car, or life insurance are not commonly dependent on employment. Health insurance shouldn't be either. De-couple health insurance from major employers, and costs will likely fall because the average person isn't willing to pay as much as an employer forced to provide insurance by law. I disagree about the estate taxes, though. Estate taxes are a large part of what let corporations take over what were traditionally family farms. Farms that didn't make a lot of income, but because they had large amounts of land they were valued so highly the heirs couldn't afford the estate taxes.

Well, step one would be a budget, period. Yeah, I do, because even in a down economy, people will still have to move for a job, and buy a house. People will still buy cars, and TVs, and videogames...just less of them. How is the reduced revenue from consumption that different from the reduced revenue when a bunch of tax payers lose their jobs and stop paying income taxes?

People will still buy gasoline, toilet paper, cable, beer....Even at it's lowest point, our economy has never completely ceased consuming things. It will likely go nowhere because Obama is ignoring all the advice of his own commission.

Maybe, but one wonders how much lower rates could be if we did a tiered "flat-tax". Maintain a somewhat progressive scheme, but eliminate all the loopholes. Then you wouldn't have multi-millionaire CEOs hiding all their cash offshore, or as stock, or as company perks. While many things in the current system are supposed to nudge the economy one way or another, what really happens is that it creates weasels. We create weird incentives that don't work as designed, then we blame people who react to the incentives instead of the incentives themselves. Every person who whines about how little Warren Buffett or Mitt Romney paid in taxes last year did everything they could to reduce their own tax burdens. Create a tax system that's easier to understand, and harder to hide income, and people will pay more. Then you can start lowering the rates. It sounds good to say the rich have a tax rate of 39%...but how does it do anyone any good if the rate they actually pay at, after deductions, credits, etc is only 15%?

That's why God created VPNs.

Assuming, of course, you have no desire to be promoted.

Yikes. AMC is harsh.

Man, I didn't see this option when I filed my taxes this year. AMC must be harsh.

Of course, this also means the beer light can be turned on at 1400 and everyone in the squadron will be able to participate.

Sort of. https://xkcd.com/932/

So do the Nigerian scam artists. Going up against the "big fish" of the US government doesn't make your cause honorable. While I agree in theory with some of their stances (like, violating Google's terms-of-service agreement shouldn't be a felony), I don't agree with their methods (punishing Sony by publishing the credit card numbers of everyone on PSN) or some of their other stances (Let's help Wikileaks spread state secrets because government is bad).

I think the answer to this one is pretty clear. Because we promote the people who check the boxes, not the people who innovate or hack the mission. This means your good leaders are passed over or given shitty jobs, while your brown-nosers are promoted until they can't do their jobs anymore, then we promote them one more time before they retire.

That is a lot of entertainment for one dollar. Sounds like a great value.

At that point, does it actually matter whether the USAF renews your security clearance?

Sold! I've seen this before...

Raising the debt ceiling is more like getting the credit limit raised on the Visa so you can take out a cash advance to pay the Mastercard.

It's worked so far, right? There's no way other countries will stop lending us money, we're a super-power!

I've seen this somewhere before... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjLkrASRWos

Man, those dirty Republicans, trying to prevent the debt ceiling from being raised.

Show at 10pm, takeoff at midnight, land around 2 in the afternoon...then 9 am show the next morning. A constant, rapid cycling from a day to night schedule for six months. I'll take the Ambien if it means I can get a full 8 hours of sleep between flights. As for not flying fatigued...who else is going to do it? We don't have the manpower anymore to give everyone comfy 9-5 schedules, especially in deployed operations. If taking Ambien means I get the required sleep during a rough schedule, then I'm still showing up rested, aren't I? You claim it's a leadership issue...guess what the leadership will ask when you are calling "knock-it-off" for ATO lines because you went from days to nights? I'm guessing at least one of those questions will be "why aren't you taking the medical help we've given you to adjust your schedule?".

The problem is, you won't stop being scheduled for those turns, especially during deployed operations. Fly for 14 hours, land, debrief, and go into crew rest for the next line. Our turns this year have been a 10pm show one night, followed by a 9am show for the following line. Schedulers only care that you've got 12 hours of crew rest for the next turn...what you do with it is your problem.

Nor I. You want an efficient use of taxpayer dollars, Planned Parenthood is it.

I was more worried about the sequestration anyway. You guys ready to fly half as much, and only turn on every other computer in the squadron to save electricity?