Thursday, August 13, 2009

I have been Delinquent

I haven’t written a post in a while dear readers, it has been actually pretty slow in the news department with regard to the Army Reserve community. I have often thought of branching out subject matter for this blog site… but that would not necessarily encourage more readers and would be a little dangerous if I discussed anything about my current position with the Army as a civilian employee.

That second piece is a token recognition of the fact that Army Civilian employees also lose the right of free speech to a degree as we must observe all the same PAO approval, message filtering, content approval if we want to express ourselves in the media in any way…. I’ve written about the Orwellian oversight of bloggers within the military before…little has really changed.

At any rate…I just turned 49 the other day… just 11 more years until I will be able to draw a retirement check for my 24 years of active and reserve service. There has been little movement in efforts to reduce the retirement age for those of us that answered the call to active service before 2008… with impending budget constraints; I doubt the momentum to consider such a reduction is very strong.

I received a counterpoint comment to my experience at the VA the other day. I do believe the VA is a great thing and apparently does serve many pretty well. I have been having issues with them and I can’t argue that I have a different perspective than many…but… I won’t just lie down and let certain personnel in that system run over people when they are in a position of public service… Thanks to songdoglady for widening my perspective.

On to other topics – if you have an interesting topic related to retired or Active Army Reserve status…send me a comment and I’ll try to take it on.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

hey,my experience with the army reserve sort of echo's yours.In 1980,after 12 years of service an officer forged my name on a request for transfer to the IRR while I was a patient in a va hospital,in 1988 I recieved an honorable discharge for being medicaly unfit (paranoid personality)said discharge was immediately voided by a general in the HRC at St.Louis,in 1989 I recieved a retired certificate from the same general,but no retirement benefits,so...yeah,I feel I got the royal shaft from the army reserve.I think I should have had the option of either getting severance pay and or medical retirement,but i recieved neither,just a certificate to hang on my wall.Thanks for ahving this site and keep on blogging.
Sgt.Bob Mitchum (retired?)