from vets'newsltr: Soc.Sec good for 75yrs & better than now. Combat medal for Navy.

[UTUSN]

AND a joke for dessert!1 What more can anybody ask?!1

The Social Security item should allay the Rethugs' KKKarl strategy of turning generations against each other.

As for the possibility of the Combat Action Ribbon turning into a medal: I, for one, will gain one more Wizard of Oz deal-ly. (I'll have to BUY it.)


*******QUOTE*******

http://post_119_gulfport_ms.tripod.com:80/rao1.html

Social Security Fund Depletion Update 06: The Congressional Budget Office, the agency charged with providing Congress with objective analyses of federal programs, released a new report 22 AUG that shows the Social Security program is in good financial shape and will be for decades to come. In fact, the CBO report says, "future Social Security beneficiaries will receive larger benefits in retirement than current beneficiaries do, even after adjustments have been made for inflation." The report, which forecasts out 75 years, finds that while the accumulating surpluses in the trust fund will be exhausted in 2049, ongoing revenues will still be sufficient to fund about 81% of promised benefits at the end of the 75-year period (in 2082). The reason for this is that wages and Social Security revenues will continue to grow as the economy grows. The trust fund will cushion the large baby boom retirement, as it was designed to do, but most benefits will continue to be funded by direct transfers from workers to retirees, as they are now. The fact that future retirees will receive higher benefits than current retirees, even if no changes are made to the program, is common knowledge among Social Security experts, but may come as a surprise to the average American, and even to many policy makers. This may be why the CBO, headed by respected economist Peter Orszag, decided to make that point in the first page of the new report.

The report is a timely counter to the alarmism being peddled by Pete Peterson, a billionaire investment banker and Secretary of Commerce under President Nixon. The Peterson Foundation has bankrolled a new movie, "I.O.U.S.A.", billed as "An Inconvenient Truth for the U.S. economy," to sell the message that the country is on the brink of a financial meltdown. In a 60 Minutes episode that preceded the film, Peterson Foundation President David Walker raised the specter of an entitlements crisis brought on by the boomer retirement: "When those boomers start retiring en masse, then that will be a tsunami of spending that could swamp our ship of state if we don't get serious. Yet, according to the CBO projections, Social Security is in decent shape. Without any changes at all, the projected long-term Social Security shortfall equals a mere 1% of taxable payroll.

The big problem facing Social Security isn't the boomer retirement--which was fully anticipated and is the reason there is a trust fund--but rather growing income inequality. Because the earnings of most workers have stagnated while those at the top have skyrocketed, the share of untaxed earnings above the taxable earnings cap (currently set at $102,000) has grown from 10% in 1983, when the system was last in balance, to around 17% today. So a better way to address the modest shortfall than an across-the-board tax increase would be to raise or eliminate the cap on taxable earnings. Even more importantly, we need to fix our national health care system, which, as the Peterson Foundation points out, spends twice as much as other developed countries with no appreciable difference in outcomes or longevity. Controlling costs through comprehensive health care reform would not only close the projected Medicare and Medicaid gaps (which, unlike Social Security's, are genuinely large), but would also give a boost to Social Security, because money spent on health benefits gets excluded from Social Security's tax base.

(Source: Economic Policy Institute Monique Morrisey article 22 Aug 08 ++) ....

Combat Action Medal Update 02: If a nationwide veterans' group gets its way, sailors and Marines who see combat would be decorated with a new Combat Action Medal, instead of the Combat Action Ribbon for which they're currently eligible. The members of the Veterans of Foreign Wars adapted a resolution 17 AUG at their national convention in Orlando FL calling for Congress and Navy Secretary Donald Winter to create a Combat Action Medal to augment the existing ribbon. Retired Florida attorney Patrick Guarnieri, a former Seabee who served in Vietnam, drafted the resolution this winter after he realized that, of all the military services, the Navy Department's was the only personal combat decoration without a medal or badge. He pointed to a decision by senior Air Force officials in early 2007 to create a Combat Action Medal, designed to recognize the growing numbers of airmen seeing action on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, as opposed to in the skies above. If the Pentagon is interested in keeping awards consistent across the military services - to the point that commanders changed the wording on four medals earlier this year and changed the size of eight others - it's only fair that sailors and Marines be eligible for a combat medal, Guarnieri said. The VFW resolution calls on Congress to pass a law directing Winter to create a Combat Action Medal that would be retroactive to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. Every sailor or Marine who had received a Combat Action Ribbon would be authorized to wear the medal - including Guarnieri, who said he received the CAR for action in Vietnam.
(Source: NavyTimes Philip Ewing article 19 Aug 08 ++) ....


HAVE YOU HEARD: Three gentlemen are riding on a train, not speaking but casually taking note of each other. Finally one of them breaks the silence. He folds back his Wall Street journal and says "Admiral, USN, Retired, married, two kids, both of them Doctors", and proudly sits down.
The second guy folds back his Washington Post and says, "Admiral, USN, active duty, married, two kids, both of them Lawyers, and smugly sits back.
The third guy rolls up his Sports Illustrated and says "Master Chief Petty Officer, USN, Retired,
Never married, two kids, both of them Admirals"

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[Captain Hilts]

1. Good joke!

[UTUSN]

2. Is that yours? These are mine (now scrapped):

On Edit: Well, apparently my Photobucket files of the 2 ships got deleted.

[Captain Hilts]

3. Damn, PM me a link when you get one...Check the USNI photo site. Here's dad -

sitting on our left on the conning tower while XO Brad Mooney stands. Dad never did like heights.

[UTUSN]

4. O.K., re-uploaded them.

The LST (landing ship tank) was built in 1945 and, after a de-commissioning or two, we were using it in Vietnam. It had also served in Korea. It itself, quite apart from us crew, had 12 or 17 battlestars, one of the highest numbers. It was in bad shape during my year 1967-68, leaking into the tank deck, had been banged up the year before while trying to dislodge another ship from grounding. We called it the Benjo Maru, Japanese for "shit ship." So we earned our Combat Action Ribbons for activity in March '68, one of the three times being a rocket hitting the bridge and a sailor being wounded in the stomach and choppered out, this being in the up and down of the rivers in the Mekong Delta.

My 2nd one, an oiler ammunition (also supply) ship, was brand new, built in the Bremerton, WA, shipyard. We were the commissioning crew and did the shakedown cruise, taking it down from Seattle, stopping at San Diego, Acapulco, and Panama, then through the canal, then to more shakedown exercises off of Gitmo, with liberty in Haiti, N'Orlins, and Mayport, FL, before ending up in Norfolk, VA. I finished up my year before it took off for its working in the Med.

I expected the LST to be decommissioned and scrapped, but it was a total surpise that I would live to see the AOE meet the same fate.

I now have Wizard of Oz medals from a country that doesn't exist (South Vietnam) and am a plankowner of a ship that doesn't exist. What's funny is that a vet asked me whether I was Blue Water or Brown Water, and when I said, "Both," he clearly thought I was making it up.