"FORT DRUM — The headquarters of 10th Mountain Division has provided the Army its recommendations for how it could slash a quarter of its budget and manpower.
With the proposal in the hands of the Army, questions remain on what kind of action will happen next and when a decision will be made. The post formally submitted its recommendations before the Army’s deadline Wednesday.
On Thursday, Lt. Col. Tage J. Rainsford, the division public affairs officer, said the post would not release its recommendations until they were reviewed by Army Secretary John M. McHugh and Army Chief of Staff Gen. Raymond Odierno, who ordered the recommendations, and a final decision was returned.
It was not revealed how many people or how much money would have to be cut to meet the Army’s goal. However, Col. Rainsford said, the headquarters has an authorized end strength of about 500 soldiers, meaning as many as 125 soldiers could be facing cuts.
The recommendations on how to make cuts were in response to an Aug. 14 memo from Mr. McHugh and Gen. Odierno to headquarters elements at the two-star level and above, such as the local division.
“Let there be no mistake, aggregate reductions WILL TAKE PLACE,” the memo reads. “The money is gone; our mission now is to determine how best to allocate these cuts while maintaining readiness. We expect Army leaders, military and civilian, to seize this opportunity to re-shape our Army. This effort will take PRIORITY OVER ALL other Headquarters, Department of the Army activities.”
The budget and staffing reduction planning stems from the approximately $50 billion in cuts that the Army must figure out for the 2014 fiscal year, which starts Oct. 1, in connection with the long-term federal budget cuts known as sequestration."
And then I have to read this:
"The recent uproar over armed EPA agents descending on a tiny Alaska mining town is shedding light on the fact that 40 federal agencies – including nearly a dozen typically not associated with law enforcement -- have armed divisions.
The agencies employ about 120,000 full-time officers authorized to carry guns and make arrests, according to a June 2012 Justice Department report.
Though most Americans know agents within the Drug Enforcement Agency and the Federal Bureau of Prisons carry guns, agencies such as the Library of Congress and Federal Reserve Board employing armed officers might come as a surprise.
The incident that sparked the renewed interest and concern occurred in late August when a team of armed federal and state officials descended on the tiny Alaska gold mining town of Chicken, Alaska.
The Environmental Protection Agency, whose armed agents in full body armor participated, acknowledged taking part in the Alaska Environmental Crimes Task Force investigation, which it said was conducted to look for possible violations of the Clean Water Act.
However, EPA officials denied the operation was a “raid” and didn't address speculation about whether it was connected to possible human and drug trafficking.
“Imagine coming up to your diggings, only to see agents swarming over it like ants, wearing full body armor, with jackets that say "POLICE" emblazoned on them, and all packing side arms,” gold miner C.R. Hammond told the Alaska Dispatch.
The other federal agencies participating in the operation were the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the Coast Guard, the National Oceanic and the Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Park Service.
The Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Land Management and Park Service are among 24 federal agencies employing more than 250 full-time armed officers with arrest authority, according the federal report, which is based on the 2008 Census of Federal Law Enforcement Officers.
The other 16 agencies have less than 250 officers and include NOAA as well as the Library of Congress, the Federal Reserve Board and the National Institutes of Health."
Our pal CDR Salamander was the first to draw my attention to the apparent militarization first of US Police forces, then of a plethora of federal agencies.
At the same time it seems quite obvious that there is a movement underway to take the teeth out of the regular military.
While I think that it is entirely possible - probable? - that this US Administration - this democrat US Administration - is harboring and implementing schemes in which there is a militarized dimension to its ever growing influence upon, and hold over, American society, I nevertheless doubt that there would be actual blueprints in the bowels of the Obama administration to deliberately and simultaneously also starve the regular US armed forces.
Because I imagine that the power and influence of the "military industrial complex", its lobbying forces, the prestige and traditions of the US military itself .... would constitute a formidable bulwark against any such deliberately planned move.
But it must certainly come in handy that the godforsaken economic mess Obama & Co. have gotten the US in gives them a magnificent excuse to urge drastic cuts in the regular armed forces.
In short:
LIKELY = Obama Administration is deliberately weaponizing its domestic agencies, because it is afraid of armed citizens
COMES IN HANDY = economic crisis necessitates budget cuts, appropriate opportunity to disarm regular armed forces, which in case of an internal conflict are most likely to side with the citizenry
And if you think Outlaw Mike has gone nuts with his conspiracy theory, listen to retired USMC Colonel Peter Martino:
BOOT 'EM OUT, you hear that, Real Americans? BOOT-'EM-OUT. Nasty Pelousy, Dirty Reid Harry, the Creep-in-Chief and the entire shebang of godforsaken lunatics that passes for the democratic party. And don't give their Republican counterparts a free pass either - they have turned into half-democrats already.
Boot them out, if you hold dear everything that made America great. Everything that made it, yes, Exceptional.
MFBB.
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