Monday, April 12, 2004
Email of the Day: Jason Gets Busted on a Fact!
What goes around comes around.
Patrick Lasswell hangs me out to dry on Navy pay structures:
Check your numbers. When I was in, the progression on Sea Pay was for the length of time you were stationed aboard a ship. In the case you quoted, you would have had to spent 11 years on continuous sea duty.
Patrick's right. My first source was an incomplete table. So I went directly to the source. Scroll down a bit, and the horizontal axis of the Sea Pay table is clearly labeled "Cumulative Years of Sea Duty."
Busted.
Assuming six months out of every year at sea, then, an O-2 with 11 years in would be drawing $185/month sea pay last year and not $335/ month.
So I should have taken my own advice and gone straight to the primary source: DFAS. Mea culpa.
Now, as for the rest of your horseshit.
Uh, oh...here it comes!
I spent six of my eight years onboard destroyers. While much of my time was spent in air-conditioned spaces, by no means was all of it. I have seen heat casualties without number, and worked myself to heat exhaustion and dehydration a few times, too.
Really? Wow. Heat casualties. No kidding!
I also have spent time in the yards when the interior temperature at night got down to 18 degrees.
That warm, huh? :)
I've spent time in the Fort Knox motor pools where the exterior temerature during the day got down to 5 degrees. There've been lots of troops in environments far colder than that, although I haven't been, personally. My troops weren't drawing special pay for that, either though.
I somehow doubt that much of your time in Iraq, that I very much appreciate, was spent taking heavy rolls.
Naw. We didn't have anything like a ship's bakery on board.
Finally, when the Army was living in quarters in Germany, the US Navy was deploying to every ocean and going in harm's way. When you were risking hand grenades in discos, the USS Stark was taking Exocet missiles in the Gulf.
Hmm...I don't think the 79 Americans wounded and 3 killed at the LaBelle Disco were drawing field pay or hostile fire pay at the time. Nor do I believe the 2nd Infantry Division in Korea felt all that safe on the DMZ.
I don't begrudge the Army getting a better cut for deployment pay now that they are finally off the dime, but you can take your talk about the Navy having it easy and shove it.
Oh, I wouldn't say the Navy has it easy, by and large. There's certainly lots of hardship and sacrifice borne by the Navy, in times of peace and war alike. The entirety of my point was to point out a discrepency between Army and Navy compensation. If Navy guys (and gals) can double dip sea pay and hostile fire pay, then it seems to me that in comparison, the Army's getting a raw deal.
More reader letters:
Why spell the name of the country Rumania (Passion movie review)? It doesn't aid in pronunciation (row-ma-knee-a is close to how a native says it) and there are some complicated ethnic infighting issues which lead anti-romanian bigots to prefer this particular spelling. Romania comes from the latin for New (neo) Rome (Roma). The link back to the latin times makes a real hash of hungarian irredentist claims that they were robbed at Trianon and they should get Transylvania back. I just wonder why you would pick a variant spelling that has so much nasty political baggage.
I am so going to stay out of the Romania-Hungarian irredentist squabble. I don't have a dog in that fight. Actually, my dog is so far away from that fight that he can't mark his territory on a Bucharest fire hydrant without getting slapped with a roaming charge.
Really, I never thought about it before at all. I spelled it "Rumania" because of a really really cool recording from the Klezmer Conservatory Band I heard when I was 13.
They called it "Rumania" in Yiddish, so I've called it "Rumania" ever since, and never thought much about it. But looking around at other stylebooks, they all prefer "Romania" to "Rumania."
So I'm planning on adding it to my stylebook.
In the interests of fairness, though: are there any anti-Romanian bigots out there who would like to weigh in?
Here's my feel-good letter of the year:
I've been reading your blog and just read your Financial Tips entry. Because of my husband's service in the desert, we actually qualified for Earned Income Credit this year. In January, I made contributions of $3,000 EACH to Roth IRAs and TOTALLY MISSED the line and form where that is recorded.
I just created my amended return, which I will send off after April 15, which shows an additional $938 refund.
While I had already made the contribution, your discussion made me wonder why I didn't remember seeing a special retirement account credit. That's when I discovered the error on our form.
Debbie E.,
No hometown given
That's great to hear. The rest of you should give it a shot! If you haven't contributed already, contribute!!!!!! I mean, where else can you get up to 50% return on $2,000 (Or $4,000 under some circumstances, if you're married) right off the bat, automatically, Plus the benefits of decades of tax-free compounding?
It's a no-brainer, soldiers! Put off that new Harley and do what I tell you.
If you've already contributed and done your taxes, you may want to file an amended return to claim the credit. A lot of you will be in the same boat Debbie's in.
I get a charge out of your success stories, too, so do write me!
Another reader writes in to remind me that there was no operation named "Noble Crusade." Bush simply used the term 'crusade' to describe the war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda--a term his administration was forced to apologize for the next day.
As I said--mea culpa mea culpa mea maxima f@^#ing culpa.
Splash, out
Jason
Patrick Lasswell hangs me out to dry on Navy pay structures:
Check your numbers. When I was in, the progression on Sea Pay was for the length of time you were stationed aboard a ship. In the case you quoted, you would have had to spent 11 years on continuous sea duty.
Patrick's right. My first source was an incomplete table. So I went directly to the source. Scroll down a bit, and the horizontal axis of the Sea Pay table is clearly labeled "Cumulative Years of Sea Duty."
Busted.
Assuming six months out of every year at sea, then, an O-2 with 11 years in would be drawing $185/month sea pay last year and not $335/ month.
So I should have taken my own advice and gone straight to the primary source: DFAS. Mea culpa.
Now, as for the rest of your horseshit.
Uh, oh...here it comes!
I spent six of my eight years onboard destroyers. While much of my time was spent in air-conditioned spaces, by no means was all of it. I have seen heat casualties without number, and worked myself to heat exhaustion and dehydration a few times, too.
Really? Wow. Heat casualties. No kidding!
I also have spent time in the yards when the interior temperature at night got down to 18 degrees.
That warm, huh? :)
I've spent time in the Fort Knox motor pools where the exterior temerature during the day got down to 5 degrees. There've been lots of troops in environments far colder than that, although I haven't been, personally. My troops weren't drawing special pay for that, either though.
I somehow doubt that much of your time in Iraq, that I very much appreciate, was spent taking heavy rolls.
Naw. We didn't have anything like a ship's bakery on board.
Finally, when the Army was living in quarters in Germany, the US Navy was deploying to every ocean and going in harm's way. When you were risking hand grenades in discos, the USS Stark was taking Exocet missiles in the Gulf.
Hmm...I don't think the 79 Americans wounded and 3 killed at the LaBelle Disco were drawing field pay or hostile fire pay at the time. Nor do I believe the 2nd Infantry Division in Korea felt all that safe on the DMZ.
I don't begrudge the Army getting a better cut for deployment pay now that they are finally off the dime, but you can take your talk about the Navy having it easy and shove it.
Oh, I wouldn't say the Navy has it easy, by and large. There's certainly lots of hardship and sacrifice borne by the Navy, in times of peace and war alike. The entirety of my point was to point out a discrepency between Army and Navy compensation. If Navy guys (and gals) can double dip sea pay and hostile fire pay, then it seems to me that in comparison, the Army's getting a raw deal.
More reader letters:
Why spell the name of the country Rumania (Passion movie review)? It doesn't aid in pronunciation (row-ma-knee-a is close to how a native says it) and there are some complicated ethnic infighting issues which lead anti-romanian bigots to prefer this particular spelling. Romania comes from the latin for New (neo) Rome (Roma). The link back to the latin times makes a real hash of hungarian irredentist claims that they were robbed at Trianon and they should get Transylvania back. I just wonder why you would pick a variant spelling that has so much nasty political baggage.
I am so going to stay out of the Romania-Hungarian irredentist squabble. I don't have a dog in that fight. Actually, my dog is so far away from that fight that he can't mark his territory on a Bucharest fire hydrant without getting slapped with a roaming charge.
Really, I never thought about it before at all. I spelled it "Rumania" because of a really really cool recording from the Klezmer Conservatory Band I heard when I was 13.
They called it "Rumania" in Yiddish, so I've called it "Rumania" ever since, and never thought much about it. But looking around at other stylebooks, they all prefer "Romania" to "Rumania."
So I'm planning on adding it to my stylebook.
In the interests of fairness, though: are there any anti-Romanian bigots out there who would like to weigh in?
Here's my feel-good letter of the year:
I've been reading your blog and just read your Financial Tips entry. Because of my husband's service in the desert, we actually qualified for Earned Income Credit this year. In January, I made contributions of $3,000 EACH to Roth IRAs and TOTALLY MISSED the line and form where that is recorded.
I just created my amended return, which I will send off after April 15, which shows an additional $938 refund.
While I had already made the contribution, your discussion made me wonder why I didn't remember seeing a special retirement account credit. That's when I discovered the error on our form.
Debbie E.,
No hometown given
That's great to hear. The rest of you should give it a shot! If you haven't contributed already, contribute!!!!!! I mean, where else can you get up to 50% return on $2,000 (Or $4,000 under some circumstances, if you're married) right off the bat, automatically, Plus the benefits of decades of tax-free compounding?
It's a no-brainer, soldiers! Put off that new Harley and do what I tell you.
If you've already contributed and done your taxes, you may want to file an amended return to claim the credit. A lot of you will be in the same boat Debbie's in.
I get a charge out of your success stories, too, so do write me!
Another reader writes in to remind me that there was no operation named "Noble Crusade." Bush simply used the term 'crusade' to describe the war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda--a term his administration was forced to apologize for the next day.
As I said--mea culpa mea culpa mea maxima f@^#ing culpa.
Splash, out
Jason
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