And GUESS WHO is PICKING UP the TAB, Americans!
"taxpayer-funded career seminars [where].... they are taught how to write a resume and to network in private industry"
Did you just catch a whiff of fascism like me?
"Seminars teach senior officers how to land industry jobs" by Bryan Bender, Globe Staff / December 26, 2010
WASHINGTON — Intense competition for contracts is helping drive the industry’s insatiable desire for influential and well-connected insiders.
So is the burgeoning business of outsourcing war.
The Pentagon is increasingly hiring private firms to do work that soldiers and sailors once performed.
The result is that some generals are finding jobs in private industry performing many of the same supervisory duties they did while in service, such as managing security at military bases around the world.
To take one relatively small example, the Globe’s inquiries to the Army about the role of retired generals in the defense industry were fielded by ex-military officers who are now civilian contractors at a company called Military Professional Resources, Inc. The company provides training and logistics support to militaries around the world....
Despite widespread concerns about a corrosive effect of the phenomenon on the military, the transition of retired officers to the defense industry is actively encouraged by parts of the Department of Defense.
Since the early 1990s, the Navy and the Air Force have been sending retiring senior officers -- in some cases a full two years before they leave the military -- to taxpayer-funded career seminars on Coronado Island near San Diego. They are taught how to write a resume and to network in private industry....
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Related:
"This is the Pentagon where, a Globe review has found, such apparent conflicts are a routine fact of life at the lucrative nexus between the defense procurement system, which spends hundreds of billions of dollars a year, and the industry that feasts on those riches. And almost nothing is ever done about it....
The Boston Globe war-promoting doesn't help.
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And those under their command?
"Deployed, then unemployed; Veterans of Iraq, Afghanistan face high jobless rate" by Michael A. Fletcher, Washington Post / January 16, 2011
HAUPPAUGE, N.Y. — Joe Janssen’s experience is common among the 2 million veterans of the long-running wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. As they return home to the worst labor market in generations, the veterans who are publicly venerated for their patriotism and service are also having a harder time than most finding work, federal data show.
While their nonmilitary contemporaries were launching careers during the nearly 10 years the nation has been at war, troops were repeatedly deployed to desolate war zones. And on their return to civilian life, these veterans are forced to find their way in a bleak economy where the skills they learned at war have little value.
That's not what the TV commercials say.
Some experts say the grim employment landscape confronting veterans challenges the veracity of one of the central recruiting promises of the nation’s all-volunteer force: that serving in the military will make them more marketable in civilian life.
Should have been an officer.
“That [promise] works great in peacetime,’’ said Lawrence Korb, an assistant secretary of defense for manpower under President Reagan who is now a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. “But that does not work too well in war. . . . If you are in there four years and deployed twice, what kind of skills have you learned other than counterinsurgency?’’
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The experiences of four Iraq veterans, all attached to the same Marine reserve unit in New York, are emblematic: One is gainfully employed; he said he thinks he was hired because he is a veteran. Another has managed to get part-time work after a long and difficult search. A third is in school, with the help of government veterans benefits. And Janssen continues to look for work, a process that has nourished a desire to return to active duty.
I'm sure the military doesn't mind.
“I’m hoping to get deployed,’’ Janssen said. “Besides wanting to go to Afghanistan, I could use the money.’’
Calvin Artis, 22, joined the Marine Corps in March 2006 when he was 17. He said he was driven by a desire to serve his country and expand his career options.
“It was either that or get a job at McDonald’s or Home Depot, or go back to live with my mom,’’ said Artis, who before enlisting earned his general equivalency diploma in the National Guards’ Youth Challenge Program, which works with high-risk youths in a quasi-military structure....
Sig heil, AmeriKa.
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Also see: Pentagon lagged on pursuing porn cases
Pentagon vows action on porn cases
Related: Pentagon Perverts
