h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Major story at the moment is that National Guardsmen and Reservists who were called up for the current unpleasantness have, in many cases, not been paid for six months.

Many of these people's family's cries of desperation and frustration have fallen on deaf ears.

A Government Accounting Office spokesperson said that they will have a revised pilot plan in operation by 2005.

Pleh.

It doesn't matter who is president if the bureaucracy does as it pleases.
Terrorists at least do something. Sockdraweracy operatives sit on their butts and collect their pay. Regardless of what isn't done.

Sockdraweracy operatives? Why haven't they been paid?

It is awful treatment for what they are asking of them.
I would like to see the figures of the wounded and the number of soldiers with missing limbs. Those figures are very high.

I hope those soldiers are being cared for properly now and in their futures. They are the people that will need jobs. The ADA which is losing power better be ready to accomodate them.
That all takes money.
Last I heard the Iraq war costs had not been added to the budget.
Forget Mars money until the military has paid to take care of their own. Forget Mars until the bases are cleaned up and have to follow the same environmental laws as the non military areas.

They haven't gotten paid because the system was set up decades ago to deal with two weekends a month, not full-time duty.
The Guard system and the Reserve apparatus get old equipment and old ideas from the current military.
The fact that many of the desk jockeys now in the Guard and Reserves were lifers who did the same thing while Active doesn't make it any easier.

Abbi has a point.
Many of the military reservations have housing for the enlisted men's families that are below standards for government housing for the poor.
This is why many choose to live off-base... in government housing for the poor...

The Pentagon recently cancelled a multi-billion dollar, two decades-old airplane project, from which they got not one functioning vehicle.
They are also considering base closings in many states.
Unfortunately, the environmental concerns prevent the land and facilities from being transferred to public use or being sold to private concerns.

Recently, there was a problem near San Antonio where a military firing range had been turned into a housing development without all the old or dummy ordnance being removed.

"Sockdraweracy operatives?"

Just my bad pun on bureaucracy.

These dingdongs are buried so low in the governmental strata that they form a subset of obscure.