NBC:
The Department of Defense confirms to NBC 5 Investigates that accused Fort Hood shooter Major Nidal Hasan has now been paid more than $278,000 since the Nov. 5, 2009 shooting that left 13 dead 32 injured. The Army said under the Military Code of Justice, Hasan’s salary cannot be suspended unless he is proven guilty.
If Hasan had been a civilian defense department employee, NBC 5 Investigates has learned, the Army could have suspended his pay after just seven days.
Personnel rules for most civilian government workers allow for “indefinite suspensions” in cases “when the agency has reasonable cause to believe that the employee has committed a crime for which a sentence of imprisonment may be imposed.”
Meanwhile, more than three years later soldiers wounded in the mass shooting are fighting to receive the same pay and medical benefits given to those wounded in combat.
Retired Army Spc. Logan Burnett, a reservist who, in 2009, was soon to be deployed to Iraq, was shot three times when a gunman opened fire inside the Army Deployment Center.
“I honestly thought I was going to die in that building,” said Burnett. “Just blood everywhere and then the thought of — that’s my blood everywhere.”
Burnett nearly died. He’s had more than a dozen surgeries since the shooting, and says post-traumatic stress still keeps him up at night.
Burnett is now fighting a new battle; only this one is against the U.S. Army.
The Army has not classified the wounds of the Ft. Hood victims as “combat related” and declines to label the shooting a “terrorist attack”,
The “combat related” designation is an important one, for without it Burnett and other shooting victims are not given combat-related pay, they are not eligible for Purple Heart retirement or medical benefits given to other soldiers wounded either at war or during the Sept. 11, 2001 attack on the Pentagon.
As a result, Burnett, his wife Torey, and the families of other Fort Hood victims miss out on thousands of dollars of potential benefits and pay every year.
You know what? Burn this entire governmental monstrosity down, kill the PC cancer that courses through it rendering it moribund and malignant, and start the entire self-governance experiment from scratch.
Only this time, we shore up the Constitution by protecting language and removing the avenues for sophistry whose aim it is to weaken and deconstruct, and we explicitly factor out leftism as alien and not consonant with the founding principles and ideals, nor with a constitutional republic.
I am so thoroughly fed up with the defense of such nonsense as this.
Seriously. I’m done with it. And you know what? So long as the higher-ups in the military continue behaving like risk-averse leftists angling for political promotions, I don’t much care that they are having their budgets slashed.
Looks like the leftists have poisoned our military structure, too. So why bother feeding them?
Un-freaking-believeable. This is so wrong on so many levels, you don’t even know where to start.
Find yourself pausing before coffin warehouses? Trailing at the rear of funeral processions? Feel like stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off?
Time to go to sea.
Where men are men, and whales are annihilated.
Dave Sirota must be pissed! This money could have been spent by the National Weather Service to better monitor tornadoes!
If Hasan had been a civilian defense department employee
O come on NBC, you can play the “IF” game better than that. For instance, if Hasan had been declared an illegal enemy combatant murderer, he could have been executed within a month and now wouldn’t be.
Anything.
But a gaseous memory.
I don’t even want to know what our medical expenses have been for this piece of shit. This asshole is a problem with a $1.00 solution.
Heh, wouldn’t want to overpenetrate the piece of shit.
I don’t think the policy is particularly bad or wrong, innocent until prove guilty and all that, but why is it taking so long to begin his trial? It’s been 2.5 years since it happened.
why is it taking so long to begin his trial?
Same reason Nakoula still sits in jail. Tamp down, don’t ramp up.
Bet the victims of the Ft. Hood shooting are thrilled to hear this given that they’ve been denied certain benefits because Hasan’s handiwork was classified as “workplace violence” instead of an “act or terror.”
A trial would be newsworthy. A guy sitting in jail is not newsworthy.
It’s been 2.5 years since it happened.
Actually, three-and-a-half. November 9, 2009 – now.
Yes, three and one-half years, sorry.
Is Hasan’s pay going into his bank account or is it going into an escrow account? The sumbitch is already getting state of the art medical care on our dime—which is more than we can say for the shootees. The military is usually pretty bang-bang, so to speak, about these trials. I also don’t understand the hold up. Where’s Colonel John to give us the lowdown?
From the unintentional ironies file, headline seen at Real Clear Politics (just the headline):
Not, “Stop the Leaks New York Times”, which disclosed on its front page, seriatim, the “SWIFT” program and the “Stuxnet virus”, nor “Stop the Leaks Tom Donilon”, who Sec. Gates felt necessary to tell “Shut the fuck up!”, but “Stop the Leaks AP”, which organization was so forward as to preempt the White House’s own disclosures by a day. We couldn’t make this shit up and be believed.
Top IRS Official to Plead Fifth
Shockingly, it’s the twat who’s supposed to run Obamacare for them.
Wrong twat. She’s the lawyer who took the planted question. Sarah Hall Ingram is the Obamacare bitch.
Ah, you are correct. It is the other twat.
Not only that… even if it was labeled correctly, there is no promise that the victims would get decent treatment.
http://cdn.csgazette.biz/soldiers/day2.html
In no particular order:
* “The United States of America” represents a plural, not a singular.
* Unions or other forms of collective bargaining for public employees is expressly forbidden.
* Citizenship is not granted by default – native-born individuals are granted a form of “permanent resident” status, but do not receive full citizenship without effort on their part. (NOTE: I am NOT advocating the “Starship Troopers” model, per se, but would at least like to see a requirement for some demonstration of knowledge of the Constitution, etc. not unlike current naturalization exams).
* Having “skin in the game” is required in order to vote or hold elected office – whether that requires land ownership, minimal amount of taxes paid, etc. is TBD.
* Elected officials and government employees (including the military – unless the draft is re-instated) are likewise prohibited from voting or contributing to political campaigns.
* All elected offices will be term-limited. Preferably a single term for each, with a provision that candidates must have not held elective office or other government job for an amount of time equal to the length of the term prior to election. (For example, if I wanted to run for the Senate in 2016, I could have not held elected office or a public-sector job since November 2010.)
Figure that ought to be a decent start to things…
Loki, there are way too many of these kinds of stories. We have a number of poster here who have received excellent care at their VA hospitals, but none have suffered horrific injury such as the fellow in the linked story, at least to my knowledge.
It’s shameful that we send our soldiers off to war and then turn our backs on them when they need help.
Military hospitals and the VA System are separate entities. The shameful behavior of one organization should not reflect poorly on the other.
Of course, BT. I knew what I meant, but didn’t say it correctly. I should remember that multi-tasking doesn’t work while cooking supper.
it’s possible the court may hit Hasan with a hefty fine for his workplace violence proclivities
what’s for supper ?
Chili and cornbread. Hurry up though or it’ll be cold.
Leigh, you are correct that the military should not be pushing wounded soldiers buttons when they are least likely to fully weigh the consequences of not taking it anymore.
BT, pencil-pushers are going to get it in the neck one of these days if they keep it up.
thanks but had some chops and beans
I’m making Chicken Cordon Bleu tomorrow. Yes, I’m a show-off that way.
Don’t be late.
When I show up at your door unannounced, demanding to be fed, it’ll be your own fault.
just make sure to show up after 6:00 cause of before that you have to eat vegan is what Mark Bittman says
You can drop in anytime, McGehee.
Bittman has a solid recipe for tomato jam that I like.
Works as a sweet glaze for bacon which allows for some fairly minimalist BLTs.
Pro-tip: try pureed avocado with a squeeze of lemon instead of mayo.
i bookmarked
my vallarta pretty much gives romas away this time of year
If you have nice looking romas I’d also consider making some nice oven roasted rojo salsa. I can eat that by the cup without chips.
My Spanish is terrible. Adjective after noun. Salsa rojo.
If I wanted to go really off topic I’d mention that you can get Mako shark loin for $15 a pound and then ask if anyone knows whether or not this is a sustainable shark that won’t make the hippies mad at me.
Are you more likely to buy it if it isn’t sustainable? If so, it isn’t.
There is an aquarium on the internet that says it’s a sustainable shark if it’s short fin.
I sorta want to tweet Ripert. He might know.
Not that I actually know the truth of it.
Lord Invader’s calypso is fun like salsa with less dancing.
It’s hard to say, cranky.
I probably didn’t mention that I don’t plan on serving them. I’m just wondering if I can corner the market on them and play a short squeeze.
I’ll show myself a true cooking Philistine and ask why anyone bothers with skinny little Romas. I’ve started buying some kind of lumpy heirloom type, and not only are they awfully yummy, I don’t need to cut up so many for a big batch of bruschetta.
Diced tomatoes out of the can work just fine for bruschetta.
There’s much more flesh in a Roma by weight, m. That’s the real benefit.
Once you prep a few hundred you’re coring them out in a couple seconds each just the same as the larger varieties.
I do the same most times, Abe. Unless you own an Easy Chopper 2 from Nemco, you’ll have a hard time doing better.
Yes, I do own an Easy Chopper 2 from Nemco. I’m pretty fucking awesome.
You rural people and your ample space for food prep objects. Ronco-philes, the lot of you.
Heh, nah, bought that for the restaurant, Abe. It’s a miracle. Like a prep cook you can own for $200.
But they couldn’t be bothered with giving it a proper Mexican name?
the bh rocks pikachu
I figured the easy chopper would some fancy-schmancy electrical device that fails one month after the warranty expires. Instead, it’s a good old-fashioned mechanical device.
Cool.
It’s built like Alice Eve, cranky.
Yes, I am making a brick shithouse joke here.
I used to have a mouli food mill, which went the way of the wife, dang it. I miss that sucker sometimes — specially when it comes to de-seeding tomato sauce.
My wife ran off with my best friend, and lord, I miss him sooooo.
I should really learn to do stuff with tomatoes that doesn’t start with the canned versions. They really have too much salt for my taste.
Got my eye on this one myself, sdferr. Can’t justify it yet.
I want it though.
Don’t they have low-sodium shit where you live, cranky? Around here, you can pretty much get things that are free of everything. Even flavor.
heh, volume volume volume. That’un I picked up in ’79 or so, dinky lil’ job, but handy-dandy when the time came.
Back in the long ago days when relatives older than myself walked the earth, I was taught to use one that fit comfortably in my child-sized hands. Similar to tiny grandma sized hands, I suppose.
I’m not entirely sure but I think I learned the difference between clockwise and counter with the food mill before righty-tighty/lefty loose-y with screws and the like.
I think I might actually have repressed memories.
Don’t remember remembering that before.
you might could be a reverend mother
Odds are I’m not that interesting.
Odds are I’m more the sort of slub who falls asleep watching a cooking show on TV and then has a weird dream.
This one here looks about what I had, mebbe two to three quarts or so.
It’s somewhat implied in what you said (+1, BTW), but I’d add this
*Anyone receiving funds from the Treasury is ineligible to vote or hold public office for a period of four years after accepting those funds.
Yes, this means if you take welfare or Medicaid, you don’t get to vote or hold office. If you get SoshSecurrity, you don’t get to vote or hold office. If you’re an unelected bureaucrat, you don’t get to vote. If you hold office, you don’t get a paycheck.
Should keep dirty whores out of government, I should think.
And you know what? So long as the higher-ups in the military continue behaving like risk-averse leftists angling for political promotions, I don’t much care that they are having their budgets slashed.
Looks like the leftists have poisoned our military structure, too. So why bother feeding them?
This. I used to think Ron Paul’s non-defense and foreign policy was batshit crazy, but if even the military is full of Commiecrat influence….
What we need is a younger Ron Paul / Joe McCarthy hybrid.
If you hold office, you don’t get a paycheck.
Careful–then they will live on bribes. (Like some don’t already, I know, but this makes it explicit).
There is a deeper problem here. When the buying and selling is controlled by legislation, surprise, surprise, the legislators are bought and sold.
Sorry I’ll never support the further disenfranchisement of the military.
Term limits are a vain attempt to accomplish by rule what a free voting population refuses to do: throw out the unworthy. It’s a blunt instrument that will remove the eligibility for office of the few good officials (rare) and a lot of bad officials (common). This will mean either we’ll keep a comparable ratio of good to bad, or I would contend, we’ll see even more bad, since they are more common. There is also the likelihood that the staffers will end up running the show (as has happened in a lot of local governments that have passed term limits). Reforming voting rules, and tightening eligibility of voters will do a lot more toward building an electorate who will do a better job of voting responsibly than trying to legislatively limit bad choices.
Sure. Just feed the hippies to the sharks. It’s in a good cause; I’m sure they won’t mind.
Reforming voting rules, and tightening eligibility of voters will do a lot more toward building an electorate who will do a better job of voting responsibly than trying to legislatively limit bad choices.
Even that is only a half-measure. The only way to really reform our sorely damaged republic is to take Washington’s power away, as well as much of the power at the Statehouse. We need to return to a system where nobody needs to be active or up to speed on all the policy battles at the Capitol, because those battles are limited to trivial issues that have no impact on our lives.
I’ve given up on instituting such reforms legislatively, which is why I’m relying on my brutish enforcers Arithmetic and Insolvency to do my dirty work for me. Unfortunately, they’re not very good when it comes to limiting collateral damage. Alas!
Tough one, I’ll admit. But I do have misgivings over making some government employees “more special” than others. Consequently, I would argue that they entered of their own free will, and should accept the requirements accordingly.
Besides, this would also discourage people from running for office unless they had other sources of income they could rely on during their term in office. Not sure if that’s a good idea or not…
Squid says May 22, 2013 at 9:19 am
Even that is only a half-measure. The only way to really reform our sorely damaged republic is to take Washington’s power away
Quite right. The beast must be starved back to something limited and simple. Then it really will not matter who is making political donations, or how many terms are served.
One of my ideas behind this was that it would require people who had made their pile to run. Admitedly I was thinking of people like successful business owner or other self-made folks, but today pop-music stars, Hollywood idiots, or pro athletes would fall into that category too. And without the wisdom I was assuming would come with age or business success. So consider my condition of “no paycheck” rescinded.