So duh, what did you think would happen?

Boycotts are a weird thing. Companies make hundreds of decisions, and large companies have hundreds if not thousands of employees that make decisions all the time. Every decision risks alienating or otherwise pissing off one group or another. For example, I went to a local restaurant with my two youngest kids once on a quiet Saturday morning, and after sitting for 25 minutes with no waiter taking our order or even bringing us water or coffee, I left in frustration and vowed never to return. I took my business to a competitor and for the next year went out of my way to not have a meal at the offending restaurant. Could it have just been a bad day, a mistake by a server, or even a disgruntled employee that was later fired anyway? Don’t know, and don’t care, because it spoiled my morning and I was determined to economically ensure my wrath was felt in the restaurants pocket book.

If that restaurant repeatedly treated customers like this, over time more and more would lose patience and go elsewhere. This is really important with restaurants because normally there are hundreds of venues in even a small city. When you have a myriad of choices, you don’t have to tolerate bad service.

Which brings me neatly to Bud Light and Target.

Remember Gillette? I used Gillette razors in the past and even introduced my wife to their female brand. Gillette could have remained the razor company for everyone, but it dipped its toe into the “toxic masculinity” bandwagon. Big mistake, because when you have options, you can go elsewhere. As analyzed here, it took a hit, potentially on the order of $350 million. I personally subscribed to Jeremy’s Razors and never looked back, and I suspect others did too.

Bud Light has always been the cheap beer choice of party goers everywhere. Need a non-offensive beer that is sure to please the limited palates of both college sororities and aging Boomer men at the local bar? Then order a Bud Light, because you can’t go wrong. That is, until you decide to insult a large portion of your customer base when they can easily pick another beer brand.

Budweiser is suffering the same fate as Gillette. What happens when its customers discover there are plenty of non-patronizing beer brands happy to serve you a fine brew without all the woke silliness? Once they get hooked, do you think those people are coming back, no matter what sort of American flag/military colors/Clydesdale commercials you run after? Not happening. That might have worked before the microbrewery revolution, but that strategy is no longer viable.

Target seems to have joined that group. You can get away with a lot when you’re quiet about it. Target had a small boycott scare once with its bathroom policy. Honestly, had it simply changed its policy on its website and stayed relatively quiet, I’m betting most people wouldn’t have cared much. But its latest pride month clothing line, conveniently right before the rush to buy summer clothes, was too big to ignore. The first day of the boycott was interesting, but when your stock plunges to the lowest price this year during a time its supposed to be high…that’s bad news.

It seems conservative customers are finally waking up to the notion they have real choices. It’s not hard to find clothing stores without rainbows in June, beer that actually tastes good, or razors that don’t lecture you while you shave. Perhaps the next big test will be in June. What if conservative voters choose to not eat or purchase items from places displaying a Pride flag? A month is a small amount of time to boycott, but its long enough for a company to see damaging results, and enough damage will make even a die-hard executive scale things back.

You don’t have to protest, post on Twitter or even tell your friends, because the simple act of no longer spending your money in these places tells the foolish executives is always going ring much louder than any letter or social media post.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency. Speaking of making choices, why not buy the author’s book and donate to DaTechGuy?

Let them kill their own

The day that Jordan Neely, my Google News search gave me a million articles about how crazy it is that a white man can literally kill a black man in cold blood and get away with it. Applying my normal rule of “Wait 72 hours till the truth comes out,” and low and behold, we get some facts:

Daniel Penny gets charged, but not the black or Hispanic men that helped him
Multiple eyewitnesses say Penny didn’t do anything until Neely threatened to kill people
The news media plays lots of clips of Jordan Neely doing Michael Jackson impressions
As always we get protests and people comparing Neely to George Floyd

If you want a good summary, watch the Actual Justice Warrior break it all down:

Likely Penny’s only crime was being white and making the mistake of thinking he should stop Jordan Neely from potentially killing someone. Anyone who has sat through a self-defense class knows that the first rule of self-defense is to get yourself out of the situation if you can, because things can go south quickly. It can take seconds to go from begging for food to stabbing someone to death, and given you can’t exit the subway, that would frighten any normal person.

Anymore though, I say abandon the cities that want to live like this.

Why bother defending others in these situations? I bet plenty of the people riding the subway voted for the current NYC mayor. Sure, they might testify on behalf of Penny, but I doubt it, since NYC has a track record of intimidating witnesses to make a case work. Penny defended a bunch of people that actively voted against his own interests, and those people will try to send him to jail. Sadly, that makes him more of a sucker. Anyone that is living in NYC and not either working to actively change it or leaving is a sucker, because if the local government has become this tyrannical, you can’t put your head in the sand anymore.

This is why Virginians fought hard on the school board front. Many of us were happy to let the school board run without much oversight, until we realized just how bad it was. So we pushed back, hard, and its changing for the better. Most of the time, local government does a good enough job that its just not worth the time and effort to root out the corruption that exists. When it gets to the point where the government will happily throw you in jail in a sham trial, then you either fight to change it or leave.

Daniel Penny should have never been on the subway, but since he was, he should have simply let Jordan Neely stab or injure someone first, since his first thoughts should have been “I’m a white guy trying to stop a black man, how is NYC going to view that?”

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.

Maybe the military could just stay out of housing

I have never been a fan of military housing, especially in the continental United States. Military housing started out as decent idea, given that many military bases didn’t have large communities around them when they were built. Now its an old concept that needs to die.

I lived in base housing a few times, and each time was a pain. First, you have to register to get housing, and your housing choices are completely based on your rank. I was selected for a higher rank once and had to send in my selection paperwork to the housing office so I could get into a bit nicer house. Granted, being a higher rank gets you more pay and thus you can afford more house, but why is my square footage based on my rank? I have a large family, but people of the same rank as me with no kids got the same size house. I mean, if we’re going to provide equitable housing, maybe it should be based on the number of people occupying it?

Once you get selected for housing, then you have to fill out paperwork. The housing offices love to make you sign away your rights to sue them. That’s how we get the mold, bugs and genuine issues that any other landlord would have to solve or face an ugly civil lawsuit. Then they want you to register all your guns, and man do they get angry if you happen to own more than a few. When I asked the lady for two more sheets to fill out, she looked at me and questioned why I owned so many weapons. My first thought was “None of your damn business,” but I replied in a more nice fashion.

Why is it a big deal that a military member owns a bunch of guns? I’m normally paid to have weapons in a combat zone. Why every single military housing office turns up its nose at me when I have weapons is just weird.

Then once you’re in, you often get treated like a second class citizen. Want to walk into the local exchange in a tank top and shorts to purchase something? Don’t try it, military police will tell you about a dress code. Have an issue with water, or bugs, or mold? Take a number and get in line. Don’t expect the housing office to fix it any time soon either.

BTW, WiFi isn’t free either…listen to Congresswoman Kiggans at the 3:40 mark.

Don’t worry though, the base commander’s house and all the flag and general officer’s homes will be picture perfect. That way, when you make a complaint that gets routed to them, they will look at their beautiful row of homes and go “Gee, I don’t see any problems with housing.”

The military needs to get out of the business of housing. It’s far cheaper and more predictable to simply pay the Basic Allowance for Housing (BAH) for all members once they are out of basic training. I could be persuaded to keep housing near big school houses where it would be hard to find housing quickly when you’re going to school, and perhaps at overseas locations where you may need to house people on base for protection. The military is already distracted enough that it can’t execute its wartime missions well, so it shouldn’t be trying to play landlord when it needs to focus on beating China in the next war.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.

What’s worse than the military recruitment crisis?

What if the best people in the military start asking “Who is John Galt?

Anyone who has read Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged,” or like me used the audiobook because its too damn long to read on paper, knows what I’m talking about.

Spoilers ahead for those that haven’t read it.

The book is set in a future world, where American industry is slowly crumbling. Trains are a preferred method of transportation, but its becoming harder and harder to run the trains on time because of a crushing bureaucracy in government that is making it more painful for businesses to operate. Eventually one of the characters, John Galt, decides to destroy the bureaucracy by removing all the smart people from the system in what he calls a strike. He approaches the engineers, business owners and other hard workers and offers them a chance to leave to a hidden place where their efforts are appreciated instead of demonized. This causes the United States to delve into dictatorship, and eventually collapses, with John leading the strikers to now rejoin the world.

By HKDP – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6617195

It was a hit book. The first movie was good (although it wasn’t well received, go figure!), but movies 2 and 3 kinda sucked. The book teases out the interesting point that a small number of people tend to make the biggest impact on industry, and if they quit, the systems they run tend to collapse.

I’ve seen this hold true in the Navy. I’ve watched some leaders take difficult commands and turn them around, only to watch another lesser leader destroy the well-functioning command right after. It’s incredibly infuriating to spend two years building a team of people, only to watch a new person come in and squander your efforts.

When I think about military recruiting, I’m not as worried about the young people coming in. Every young generation gets looked down upon by the older ones. Every older generation thinks they were so much better at that age. Young people tend to do OK long term.

But what happens if the talented people decide the military isn’t worth joining? What happens if the budding young Nimitz, Marshall, or Billy Mitchell decides to leave, or never join in the first place? What happens if after they join and are greeted with an oppressive bureaucracy of our own making, they vote with their feet?

What happens if John Galt gets to them first?

Our military relies on a perilous few smart people to drive the strategic thinking of the organization. Not everyone is going to be a Nimitz. That’s fine if and only if we actually HAVE the Nimitz in our midst. But if the Nimitz decided he or she had enough beratement by lesser individuals, then we’re going to be left with more Richmond Turners, who might win in the short term through brute force, but lack the operational and tactical genius to win our long term conflicts.

Military recruitment scares me, but the ongoing brain drain as people ask “Who is John Galt” gives me nightmares.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency. If you enjoyed this article, drop some coin in DaTechGuy’s wallet!

The OPHOLDs of military members have arrived!

Truth be told, I thought it would be towards the end of the year. Guess I was wrong. Remember my list of “things the military does to fix numbers?”

Not kicking people out for physical fitness test failures

Waiving darn near everything, from age to non-violent felonies

Asking people to pretty-please stay around a few more years

Opening OCS and other admissions

Raising bonuses

Make life better for officers

Reduce opportunities to leave early

Op-Hold people

-Me!

Pepperidge Farm remembers too. That last bullet says OPHOLD, which means the military says “You know how we said we’d let you go? Yeah, about that…” Or, in meme form:

Now, while today’s story isn’t a true OPHOLD…it’s basically the same. The Army allowed officers that commissioned as aviators to serve two different requirements concurrently (as in, at the same time), then it said “actually, we meant to say consecutively,” and is now telling these officers they owe three more years of service. Up unitl that point, the Army’s HR department was telling officers that it was totally concurrent…until it wasn’t.

Previously, officials with Army Human Resources Command treated the flight school commitment as a contractual obligation, the letter said. That policy allowed officers to simultaneously serve it alongside their three-year branch of choice obligation and thus immediately resign six years after receiving their pilot’s wings, if they wished.

“We went back and we did kind of audit all of those out there,” he said. The general cautioned that the service is still “refining” the number of officers, estimated at “a little over 600.” They now can’t leave immediately after finishing their flight school commitment.
From Army Times

Whoopsie! Our bad! Sorry to majorly screw up your life!

I’m sure plenty of HR officers will be disciplined for this…said no sane person ever.

Here’s the crux though…the Army needs these officers more than the officers need the Army. Aviation is a difficult skillset that can’t be easily acquired. The Army seems to believe it’ll just order these officers to fly and they’ll just fly. That’s a Communist way of thinking about it…we tell people what to do and they just do it.

In America, you have to compete for skills, and if someone doesn’t want to provide their skills, there is little you can do about it. I predict that we’ll see the following behaviors:

A lot of aviators will smoke weed in the hopes of being kicked out. This, ironically, might make the Army legalize the substance.
Plenty of officers will begin having “headaches” or other symptoms that stops them from flying. A few sharp officers will conveniently fly enough to stay off the radar, but do little else. The Army will either have to punish them, which could result in dismissal and them leaving when they wanted, or relax the medical rules and put expensive aircraft at risk.

No one will outright strike…that would be a stupid move. Instead, people will deny the Army the use of their skills, and the Army’s aviation effectiveness will drop. On paper, the Army will look OK, but the force will be hollow, and it’ll simply be a matter of time before the Army fails against one of our adversaries.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.

Remember when we cared about classified information?

Not that long ago, I punished a Sailor for disclosing classified information. He was a pretty nice guy with a nice family. Unfortunately for him, he liked to brag, and so he bragged to more than a few people about some of the cool things he did while he was deployed. Had it been one or two innocuous items, it might have resulted in a severe a$% chewing, some signed papers and “never do this again” speech, but his material was high enough that these actions weren’t sufficient for NCIS. After busting him down a rank, he was separated from the military, and although he avoided jail time, he did have to pay back significant bonus money.

Flash forward only a year and Hillary Clinton gets away with gross violations of compartmentalized information. Not just something that is Top Secret, but items that are secured in such a fashion that maybe only hundreds or even tens of people are read-in to see it. No punishment. None. Not even a red-shirted staffer offered to appease the FBI-gods (and they like to think of themselves as gods, hence cracking down on good Catholics that don’t worship them). That case made me pause and wonder if I had booted a good Sailor by mistake.

And here we are today, with the rapid arrest of a National Guardsman for spilling what I’m guessing is the Chairman’s Daily Brief, which for anyone familiar with it, is posted daily on a website on a classified system. At other commands I’ve sent intelligence items for inclusion on that brief. It’s a pretty good daily laydown of big issues, and like most intelligence products produced by real intelligence people (i.e. not the FBI in Richmond) it should be accurate, even if that accuracy isn’t popular.

After all the leaks by political hacks and all the bad storage practices by people from both parties, I don’t know whether to care anymore. In bureaucratic fashion the Navy put out ALNAV 032/23, reminding. everyone of their responsibilities to protect classified data. I personally wouldn’t disclose anything because I care about my country. But if a young Sailor asked me today about the disparity between the “important” people in power, who get away leaking whatever information they want, and the little people, who get swiftly arrested and punished, I wouldn’t know what to say in response. How do you answer that question?

Nothing is going to change until we start protecting classified materials like they actually matter. Until that happens, its just an opinion subject to the whims of the people in power.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency. To the FBI and NCIS people reading this, NO, the author doesn’t condone disclosing classified information, and has never disclosed classified information, because unlike the FBI and NCIS, the author actually cares about this country. If you’d like to get an understanding of the author’s character, why don’t you go to Amazon and purchase his book?

Air Force recruiting…crashing and burning

Military recruiting is just the gift that keeps on giving. No matter how many incentives you throw at it, when young people watch our generals, admirals and politicians throw away American lives, fail to win wars, cut benefits and create a system that is hostile to a large chunk of the population, they tend to vote with their feet and not join. This comes as a surprise to absolutely nobody with an IQ over 60, and apparently that doesn’t include any of the aforementioned people.

Since I should be more joint in my criticism of recruiting, let’s talk about joints…

How did I miss this one??? It was likely buried under all the other bad news on recruiting. You can read the whole article, but essentially the Air Force will let you retest in 90 days if you pop positive for THC. The smart people on the internet tell me THC leaves your system after about 30 days, so if you don’t smoke for 3 months, its pretty likely you’ll pass the test.

I’m not surprised, and I predict that by the end of the year, we’ll have either an outright waiver on THC, OR the military services will be begging Congress to move marijuana off the controlled substance list. Plenty of fellow military members told me “fat chance of that happening,” which, speaking of fat…

The Air Force relaxed its body fat to 26% for men and 36% for women. If you are like me and wondered what that actually looks like, I found pictures, courtesy of UltimatePerformance and DavidKingsBury.

So the Air Force won’t win any more body image awards, but maybe they’ll take the cake, so to speak, in body positivity…

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency. If you liked this post, why not donate to DaTechGuy or purchase one of the author’s books?

A classified duh

It now looks like our very secret plans concerning Ukrainian movements and some of our weapons capabilities have been leaked online. Here’s a link from the Japan Times (it does NOT contain any photos of the documents, which I won’t share):

The scale of the leak — analysts say more than 100 documents may have been obtained — along with the sensitivity of the documents themselves, could be hugely damaging, U.S. officials said. A senior intelligence official called the leak “a nightmare for the Five Eyes,” in a reference to the United States, Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, the so-called Five Eyes nations that broadly share intelligence.

First, ANY leak of classified data causes a nightmare for our allies. Many of them share very sensitive data with us, which requires them to trust the U.S. to treat their data seriously. When you break that trust, those allies hesitate to share data in the future. This makes it really hard to build comprehensive war plans with them, or to cooperate in general.

Now, leaks happen, both in the U.S. and by our allies, so the response to these leaks is the important part. Given that the leaks involved information stamped “Top Secret,” its not going to take the government too long to figure out who leaked it. Here’s the kicker though…what is going to happen because of it?

When I wrote a while back about the Hillary Clinton leaks and everyone treating it as “no big deal,” I was most concerned that not punishing her would essentially excuse other people to leak classified data in the future. If you’re some mediocre bureaucrat that gets to handle classified material, and you see your boss get away with leaking it, then why not leak your material to further your own agenda?

My bet is that the DoD will either find the person, who will be some mid-range bureaucrat in the intelligence community that will, at best, be removed from his or her position, or they won’t find anyone at all, which will likely mean the person that leaked it is too connected to punish. Our allies will hesitate for a while on sharing, and China and Russia will use this as an excuse to say its proof we’re really “at war” and to excuse further transgressions on their part.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency. Don’t forget to donate to DaTechGuy or purchase one of the author’s books!

Falling short…again

The Air Force finally, finally admitted that they’ll likely fall short on recruiting numbers, according to Kristyn Jones during her testimony to Congress this week:

Jones said the Air Force likely would fall short of its enlisted active duty recruiting goals by more than 10% in 2023, and the Air Force Reserve and Air National Guard are projected to miss their goals as well, but that the Space Force is expected to meet its quotas for the year.

But don’t worry, she later said that with the extra 150 million dollars allocated for recruiting, the Air Force had a 90% increase in web traffic!

Web traffic? Seriously? She has to understand this is nonsense. Web traffic means nothing. I can have an army of bots searching for my book on Amazon, which would make it seem to be popular, but unless someone actually purchases a book, it’s meaningless. Same goes for recruiting. Sure, lots of people say they’ll join the military, and even look at the website, but that doesn’t translate to recruitment numbers. Plus, let’s be honest, how many people that wanted to join the Air Force said “You know, I just can’t find what I want on the Air Force website. Guess I’ll leave and fly drones for Walmart instead!“

The Army and Navy testified as well about the issues each service has recruiting. The sad part is not one service addressed any issue of substance. Did anyone apologize for the terrible treatment of vaccine refusers? How about telling people that they aren’t inherently racist due to their skin color? How about making our housing allowance cover 100% of, you know, housing?

Nahhh….I bet that’s not an issue. In other news, China is looking ahead on how it will man three aircraft carriers, and is already recruiting 14-16 year olds. Sounds weird at first, but this makes sense, since it’ll be a few years before those carriers are commissioned. Why not build your pilots early so that they have better skills to join by the time they hit 18 years old? Smart move. Meanwhile, the US Navy keeps wishing for more ships, even though it can’t fully man the ships it has now.

Another week, more excuses, and no change in the trend of recruiting numbers.

Military says vaccine refusers can come back!

But don’t worry, most won’t be coming back.

The military changed its rules on the COVID-19 vaccine because ~~the science showed it didn’t actually work~~ Congress passed a law requiring them to do so. Now that this has changed, the military wants the members that it kicked out to come on back…or at least, some people do. Others still cling to the “You disobeyed orders and should be punished!“

With the Pentagon’s COVID-19 vaccine order lifted, troops can refuse to take the shot without risking ending their careers. But those who refused it in the past could still be booted for “disobeying a lawful order,” Defense Department officials warned lawmakers Tuesday. “It’s very important that our service members follow orders when they are lawful, and there are thousands that did not,” Gilbert Cisneros Jr., Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel, told members of the House Armed Services Committee. “The services are going through a process to review those cases to make a determination what needs to be done.”

So, in other words

Remember, we aren’t talking small numbers either:

Defense Department leaders said about 16,000 individuals refused that order without making any requests for exemption or accommodation. About 8,400 were separated from the services as a result.

I’m sure they will be coming back in droves. Remember this?

And this?

I give the Navy credit, at least all the individuals kicked out received honorable discharges. The Army was not so nice. A general discharge can impact the benefits you receive from the VA. It’s a choice by the service, and as the majority got a General Discharge, it defnitely means the discharging authority was angry over the refusal to obey orders, despite the fact the science was questionable at best on the vaccine.

I said it before, and I’ll say it again, this was NOT a good hill to die on for the military. Encouraging vaccines is one thing, but until there was a few years of data, you were just going to piss people off with mandates. Add a few young people dying after the shot, whether it was vaccine related or not, and you have a massive PR crisis on your hands.

Lawmakers are hoping many of those discharged will come back:

They did note that the vaccine refusals make up a small fraction of the total force, and said they hope that most service members continue to get the COVID-19 vaccines even without the mandate. Meanwhile, Republican lawmakers on the panel said they hope to reinstate all dismissed individuals to the armed forces with full benefits and back pay. Cisneros said officials are not looking into any such move at the present.

Fat chance. The emphasis on “small fraction” misses a key point: every single member kicked out is going to tell all their friends to not join. The military just created 16,000 influencers, a portion of whom will take to social media and create a recruiting nightmare for the military. Worse still, this doesn’t count the many members that chose to retire early or voluntarily separate rather than continue service. Remember that “unprecedented” rise in military retirements and separations noted in the Health of the Force survey? That’s not random. You can only beat down on people for so long before they start to vote with their feet. Even among people who took the COVID vaccine, there is a fairly large number that didn’t think the mandate was a good idea. I make plenty of choices that I think are smart, but I wouldn’t mandate them on others, and I’m not alone in this thinking.

The military created this mess, and its spilling over into recruitment and retention. Expect it to get worse, despite anything that Congress will do.

The post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency. If you enjoyed this post, consider donating to DaTechGuy or purchasing one of the authors books.