Credo
"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me." -- John Paul Jones
"Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature" --George Bernard Shaw, "Caesar and Cleopatra"
"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."--Friedrich Nietzsche
"A kind Providence has placed in our breasts a hatred of the unjust and cruel, in order that we may preserve ourselves from cruelty and injustice. They who bear cruelty, are accomplices in it. The pretended gentleness which excludes that charitable rancour, produces an indifference which is half an approbation. They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate."--Edmund Burke
“You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”--General Sir Charles Napier
"Μολὼν λαβέ" -- Leonidas
"Blogito Ergo Sum" -- Neptunus Lex
It sounds all good… if you’re that kind of military veteran. Until you consider that it is not the safest job in the world, and retired vets are no longer the young immortals they once were.
And of course, Lex, I would be minded to see what the pay was like when you are *not* deployed.
Hmmmm, I think I’ve heard what Greg said before in different contexts. But isn’t Gregory is a strange name for a ‘Mom’?
Hehe…that “current (within 8 months) experience in OIF” thing kinda sticks, but hell, what would the grandkids do without their own personal security contractor? Priorities. It must stink to be a granddad in theater.
When I saw PSD, I thought this was going to be about a surly DK/PN/PS or whatever TLA they are called these days
So, Cap’n, how much would they pay you to orbit overhead (maintenance and fuel expensed, of course) until yer speshul skillz were needed, to obliterate nasty bad troublemakers from on high?
There _is_ provision in the Constitution for Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and captures on land and at sea.
Oh, and we never signed the Declaration of Paris, y’know!
Hey, even Jack Aubrey did some good work as a privateer!
If you survive, it could be a nice living. Didn’t Josey Wales offer some good advice on this subject?
Sounds like fair pay for the work required.
Of course, the pay scale for our guys and gals in uniform doing similar tasks should be compensated fairly as well. They sure earn more than they get paid. And, they darn sure deserve a lot more than the Congresscritters who dither and debate and dodge responsibility while spending at rates that drunken sailors could only dream of.
They are specific because they already know “who” they want to “hire”. Just making it official as part of the contract…
b2
Turns out there’s good money in being a bad a**.
Yeah, you better be a bad a** ’cause when you pull out on a pump you are dam* sure on your own. No air support, no backup, no picking up the radio and calling in QRF. You and what you got is it. When you pull three or four tours as a Grunt NCO you get used to having a battalion of your closest buddies there with you. Doesn’t happen with private.
And your options when you are down the food chain and a combat Grunt? Pretty much law enforcement unless you want to lie on your apps and say you have never been to Iraq. Firefighter as well if you can catch them actually hiring and not go through six months training to be told the budget has just been cut and “Thanks for coming out”. Heaven help you if your experience covers OIF1 through 4. Then you get a “probation” period and get to have lovely talks with The Wizard on a weekly basis. You know, just to make sure you won’t go all flashback and ballistic. You get the opportunity of constantly being evaluated by a psychologist whose records are not doctor/patient protected while those you may arrest or guard in jail get psychiatrists whose records cannot be entered into court record. So basically they can rip you apart on the stand in a courtroom because you are “damaged” goods since you pulled three or four tours doing what your Country asked of you. You can’t even get SWAT until you’ve proven you won’t bust loose and climb the tower in Baton Rouge!
But there’s really nothing wrong with not having opportunities if you’re a lowlife baby killing scum sucking ground combat Grunt eh? We support the troops. Welcome to the “new” backdoor discrimination.
Is this a great country or what? Heh!
The best option for combat pointy spear Grunts is to go back to school. Allow those two to four years to pass and then come out with a degree and specialty. Tech school is a good thing as well. That way all the “probation” periods will have elapsed and one would be much more “employable”. If your MOS was tech then you won’t have the same requirements to meet as the Grunts whose spare time was spent killing people and breaking things. Or you know someone.
Unless of course you’ve overrun Detroit and razed mosques. Then you might have a problem!
And watch the Army flail as the NCOs with those “special skillsets” leave for the big bucks for a few years, then come back to Mama Army to finish out and get the retirement. Pissed off Army so much that one point they declared that if you left SO to go contractor, you weren’t getting back into the Army, much less SO. Don’t know how it stands now, though, that was in year three of the eternal Iraqi campaign.
ooh, i luvs me that Falconview program.
Interestingly, a couple big pharma companies here in the midwest are bulking up their executive protection details with former military types via those security contractor firms. Met a few last week, former marines, and they couldn’t decide which they liked the least– desert heat or Chicago snow.
So that’s the ad for Britany Spears’ new bodyguard. I’d heard that it was out there.
Ok, I have to throw a slight monkey wrench in there…it’s not completely tax free. I can speak from experience, as DH (Army retired) is currently a contractor in Balad. Not this type of contractor mind you, but the basics are the same. You must file a Form 2555 in addition to the 1040. The exclusion is capped out, and that amount changes from year to year. It’s $85700 this year. And to qualify, you must have 12 consecutive months overseas, excluding 30 days vacation. The qualifying months do not have to be within the same tax year though. For instance, when DH went the first time, he was gone from Nov to Nov. That qualified us.
However, the allowed amount is pro-rated by the number of days you’re actually there. You count the days in travel once you enter another country’s airspace. So if you leave from your R&R in the evening of the 12th, but don’t cross into England’s airspace until the 13th, you start counting on the 13th. So, from the case given above, we had to pro-rate the allowed exclusion by the number of days acutally spent in a foreign country.
Leave it to the IRS to make things difficult.
But I hate to let an untruth, even slight that it is, stand. It tends to get so many people in trouble.
Sorry to be the bucket of cold water…
I’d take $87500 a year tax free. Heck, I’d like to make $87500 a year period. . .
Well, Steve, considering I’m 27, unmarried and unabashedly a man, it would be difficult for me to mb a ‘Mom’.
Anyways, you’re lucky I didn’t say something stupider like ‘First!’
Nor do I want to throw cold water on the idea. It’s just that when you’re young, dumb and horny, a whole lot of things seem possible. In fact, they still seem possible to me. But if I’ve done my 20, so to speak, all I’m sayin’ is I’d take a second and third look before signing up.
And for those who would take the 87.5k, guys, for private hazardous duty pay, I’d like no less than 100k. Plus an insurance policy. Maybe two (and some riders). And full healthcare. Room and board too, you bet. And some plate armour, while I’m at it.
Seconding Tankers Wife:
I’m herein Baghdad as a contractor. Military gets tax free status on Federal Income taxes while in a combat zone (but still has to pay state taxe, FICA, Social Security, Payroll tax etc.)
Private contractors pay all of that as well. We get the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion IF we meet those criteria like less than 35 days/12 month period physically in the US. You can look it up on the IRS.GOV website.
Yes, it is still a large paycheck after taxes, but it also puts us into the envy-rate of tax brackets. After the FEIE I still pay about a third of my income in Federal Income tax alone. Yes, my Social Security caps out at $97k. Big deal.
But I took on a job here to try to raise my circumstances and those of my family, as well as helping out the effort here, after those years of pay as an enlisted man (with a medical discharge the only thing between me and 20 year retirement). I don’t feel bad about making big bucks, I just wish I got to keep more of what my time, effort, risk, inconvenience, loneliness, and family stress earned.
BTW, I wish you all got to keep more of what you earn as well.