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Government Corruption

FEMA Fraud: 20 Times More Applicants than Homes in Los Angeles Fires

2025-03-22

Clarification of yesterday’s report.

[BREITBART] FEMA clarified to Breitbart News that the 270,000 number refers to individuals and households, not just homeowners.

As Breitbart News has reported, many displaced residents had tried applying for FEMA relief, only to find that someone else had already applied in their name and with their address, locking them out of the system.

FEMA attempts to make relief funds easy to apply for, but the downside is that fraudsters can more easily take advantage of the system. A FEMA official said that problem was a major reason for closing applications at the end of the month, instead of extending them for a full year, as Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) requested.

Identity theft in natural disasters may seem shocking, but it is not uncommon — especially when maps of affected areas and addresses are easily available online. Several individuals have already been arrested for fraud in connection with FEMA grants in the L.A. fires — one of whom is suspected of having collected on similar fraudulent applications for two decades, going back to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005.

Newly-installed Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman had warned in January that fraudsters would descend on L.A. Victims have been asked to contact the FBI, at 1-800-CALL-FBI/.

Link

-Lurid Crime Tales-

FEMA Fraud: 20 Times More Applicants than Homes in Los Angeles Fires

2025-03-21

[Breitbart] The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has received 270,000 applications from purported homeowners in the recent L.A. fires — though only abut 13,000 homes were destroyed.

A FEMA official gave the staggering figure — more than twenty times the number of eligible applicants — as concerns about fraudulent applications continue to plague the agency, more than two months after the fire.

As Breitbart News has reported, many displaced residents had tried applying for FEMA relief, only to find that someone else had already applied in their name and with their address, locking them out of the system.

FEMA attempts to make relief funds easy to apply for, but the downside is that fraudsters can more easily take advantage of the system. A FEMA official said that problem was a major reason for closing applications at the end of the month, instead of extending them for a full year, as Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) requested.

Identity theft in natural disasters may seem shocking, but it is not uncommon — especially when maps of affected areas and addresses are easily available online. Several individuals have already been arrested for fraud in connection with FEMA grants in the L.A. fires — one of whom is suspected of having collected on similar fraudulent applications for two decades, going back to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005.

Newly-installed Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman had warned in January that fraudsters would descend on L.A. Victims have been asked to contact the FBI, at 1-800-CALL-FBI/.

Link

-Land of the Free

Americans spending Thanksgiving in tents after Helene as heat, electricity, food still hard to find

2024-11-28

[FoxNews] Some North Carolina residents struggling to rebuild homes due to government regulations or lack of funds

As the holiday season begins, residents of western North Carolina who lost everything during Hurricane Helene want their fellow Americans to keep them in mind.

Some people in hard-hit areas like Swannanoa and Burnsville, or in hard-to-reach places nestled in the Appalachian Mountains, are still living in tents or RVs where their homes once stood.

"We've been delivering campers," Robert Pearson, a member of the Louisiana-based rescue organization Cajun Navy 2016, told Fox News Digital. "We delivered one just an hour before we're doing this interview, and we've got two more we're going to deliver this afternoon. But people have been donating campers to us, and we've been doing whatever we can to try to help. We have a list of people that need help."

Cajun Navy 2016 is a group of civilian volunteers that formed after Hurricane Katrina to help those in need during and after disasters. They have had volunteers on the ground, including Pearson, since Sept. 27, the day Helene struck the North Carolina mountains.

When we first got here, it was just utter chaos. There was a complete infrastructure failure. There were no phones, no electric, no water," Pearson said. "And I'll be honest with you, nobody knew what to do. We had wound up in a little town called Clyde, and they had their fire department destroyed. Like, just one whole section of town just had gotten wiped out there. And we stayed there."

The town of Montreat offered Cajun Navy 2016 a building to house 30 beds, and when volunteers filled all 30 beds, Montreat gave them another building for more beds, Pearson said.

People are still without cars, heating or internet in some places.

"Just looking at it in person [versus] seeing the pictures, it's just hard to imagine how bad it is. … I went through Katrina, and this is Katrina-like to me," Pearson said. "The damage is every bit as bad. It's just different because it's in the mountains, 100 yards this way, everything's fine. But 20 miles down this river, it's just utter chaos."

Some can't rebuild due to government regulations; others can rebuild but don't have the money. Some are still without vehicles, and others have not found new work after losing their jobs. Bridges across towns and counties were destroyed and will take time to replace.

Pearson recalled delivering a camper to one family after their house was damaged by about 18 inches of flooding during Helene.

"So, definitely salvageable. Everything could be fixed. But they got this big sticker on the door that says the house has to be razed," Pearson said. "So … there was a mortgage on the house. It's not covered by homeowner's insurance because the river took it out. They didn't have flood insurance because it wasn't a flood zone. … They owe a mortgage. They don't have a house they can live in. What are they going to do? I don't have an answer for that."

Pearson delivered another camper to a family of five, including three children, who lost their house in a mudslide.

"I don't think they had insurance. This was a 200-year-old home that had been handed down to the family for years and years. They're just not well-off people, but great people. And they're running off of generators because they don't have a house to hook [a] power pole to," Pearson said.

Counties that were dependent on the fall tourism season lost millions of dollars in revenue. Buncombe County officials are estimating a 70% loss in revenue for businesses reliant on tourism and hospitality in the final quarter of 2024, according to WFAE.

Volunteer organizations like Samaritan's Purse, as well as churches and ministries from across the United States, still have boots on the ground in various towns around western North Carolina. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) also has employees still deployed in the area.

FEMA recently came under fire after former supervisor Marn'i Washington instructed the agency’s relief workers to avoid reaching out to homeowners in Florida who had Trump signs displayed outside their homes after Hurricane Milton, which struck the U.S. about two weeks after Helene. Washington appeared on "Fox News @ Night" on Nov. 14 and said she was "simply executing" orders from her superiors to avoid political encounters that could be hostile.

FEMA did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital when asked to comment for this story.

In North Carolina, FEMA has so far approved "$722 million to support survivors with housing repairs, personal property replacement and other essential recovery efforts" and $1.1 billion for debris removal and other emergency protective services, according to a press release from the agency. FEMA has also deployed more than 4,800 personnel to the affected areas.

Americans from across the country have been donating everything from RVs to cars to tree-cutting and roof repair services to those in need. But what western North Carolina needs most now is money, according to those in the area.

Coree Loffink, a resident of Bakersville, told Fox News Digital that locals are struggling to get their day-to-day necessities because some large grocery stores are still closed and certain roads remain inaccessible.

"A lot of people are still living out of campers or looking for campers to live out of because they're … living out of their cars or living in neighbors' houses," Loffink said. "But yesterday is going to be our last day of warm weather after this. … The high next week on Tuesday is 28 degrees, the low is like 14. So it is going to be a struggle for having heating sources out here."

Even two months after Helene, while many roads and properties look better than they did after Sept. 27, "there's still so much struggle and so much personal struggle and individual struggle from family to family," Loffink said.

"It's going to be a problem here for at least a few years for rebuilding, you know, creating jobs, just people trying to figure out their lives." she said. "Do they want to stay? Do they want to go? If they stay, they have to try and rebuild. It's just there's a lot of complicated and stressful things that have popped up since the hurricane for families here."

Loffink said it's been hard to drive by the same destruction every day that cost some people their lives.

"There's people out here who just cry every day because it's so upsetting," Loffink said. "I mean, you drive down Green Mountain and you see all the destruction out there. … There are some houses, and they got completely washed away in the Green River, and there's a cross there. Those families did not make it, and it's really unfortunate, but they had nowhere to go. And you still [are] going to see that stuff every day when you're driving around."

Volunteers are organizing hot Thanksgiving meals or delivering boxes of Thanksgiving food directly to people to cook themselves at home.

An Asheville-based charity called Chances for Children Carolinas, which was created by a group of children as a Destination Imagination Club service project to help other children receive scholarships for extracurricular activities, partnered with Grateful Village to host a holiday fundraiser for Helene survivors.

Volunteers with Chances for Children Carolinas organized a holiday pop-up store with donated giftable items that locals could purchase with vouchers, and 100% of the proceeds go directly back to families in need in western North Carolina.

Founder Mary Hudson Harrelson and her mother, Anna Harrelson, said they wanted to create a way for people who lost everything to purchase gifts with dignity rather than collect free donations. Harrelson described the people of western North Carolina as resilient and said even those who have lost homes and vehicles are still volunteering to help their neighbors.

Chances for Children Carolinas is collecting monetary donations through its website, chancesforchildrencarolinas.com, which they put directly into the hands of those in need who apply for assistance.

Link

-Signs, Portents, and the Weather-

Hurricane Milton News Roundup for October 10th, 2024

2024-10-11

Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
Hurricane Milton Causes Massive Destruction in Florida
[Regnum] Hurricane Milton, which hit the American state of Florida, caused powerful tornadoes. Several people became victims of the elements. Wind speed reached 195 km/h. Heavy rains also fell in Florida, and in a few hours the level of precipitation exceeded the multi-month norm.

According to PowerOutage.us, due to the collapse of transmission line supports, broken wires, and destruction of substations, about 2.8 million homes and buildings and over 3 million consumers were left without electricity. In some counties, 97% of consumers lost power.

Strong winds tore off the roof of Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg. Water was cut off to homes due to damage to water systems. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said about 125 homes were destroyed. Flooding was reported in parts of the state in just a few hours. Strong winds tossed cars around. Part of the roof collapsed at Orlando International Airport. DeSantis said the storm was strong, but not the worst-case scenario.

Milton has left land and is moving over the Atlantic Ocean, with a flood threat remaining for the East Coast.

As reported by the Regnum news agency, at least 10 people have died as a result of the Milton tornado in Florida, confirmed US Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas.

Milton made landfall on the Florida coast on the evening of October 9. Experts predicted that it would be the most destructive hurricane in history, surpassing Hurricane Katrina in 2005. In anticipation of the storm, a mass evacuation began on October 7. More than 5.5 million people were forced to leave the west coast of Florida, which became one of the largest evacuations in the state's history.

Even more from regnum.ru
Hurricane Milton Florida death toll rises to 10
At least ten people have died in tornadoes that accompanied the impact of the devastating Hurricane Milton in Florida, US Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas said.

“We have received information that at least ten people have died from Hurricane Milton,” RIA Novosti quotes him as saying.

NBC News later reported, citing local officials and police, that five people have now been confirmed dead in St. Lucie County on the Atlantic coast.

Preliminary reports indicate two more people have died in St. Petersburg. The Volusia County Sheriff's Office also reported three deaths. In Citrus County, police said one person was killed when a tree fell on a car.

More from regnum.ru
Hurricane Milton May Reach Russia, Says Forecaster Pozdnyakova
Hurricane Milton, which hit the United States, has entered the Atlantic Ocean and has begun to slow down. However, there is a risk that its echoes will reach Russia, said Tatyana Pozdnyakova, chief specialist at the Moscow Meteorological Bureau.

“The aftershocks of the hurricane may be felt in the north of Scandinavia and in the north of Russia – in the Murmansk region,” KP.RU quotes the forecaster as saying.

According to Pozdnyakova, if Milton comes to Russia, it can only bring stronger winds and precipitation. But this can in no way be called "hurricane power", the specialist concluded.

As reported by the Regnum news agency, Hurricane Milton reached the coast of Florida on the evening of October 9. According to experts, it could become the most destructive in history, as it is more powerful than Hurricane Katrina, which caused major damage to the United States in 2005.

Amid Hurricane Milton, tornadoes hit the US state of Florida. More than 120 homes were destroyed, there are victims and injured.

Even more from regnum.ru
Hurricane Milton Leaves More Than 3.3 Million Florida Residents Without Power
In the state of Florida, due to Hurricane Milton that hit the region, the number of consumers left without electricity has exceeded 3 million. This is evidenced by data from the monitoring resource PowerOutage.

Currently, more than 3.3 million consumers are experiencing power outages.

The New York Times reported that the hardest hit area was Hardee County, about 40 miles from where the storm made landfall, with 98 percent of customers without power.

Power engineers are working in an enhanced mode due to the large number of calls regarding power outages.

The state weather service advised using flashlights in the event of a power outage and using generators with caution.

Courtesy of Skidmark:

Military sends resources to Florida in wake of Hurricane Milton while Helene recovery efforts continue

Has any part of this level of aid yet been delivered to Georgia, Tennessee, and North Carolina?

[FoxNews] The U.S. military has flooded resources to areas in Florida impacted by Hurricane Milton, including 6,500 members of the state’s National Guard and another 3,000 from 19 other states ready to provide support, as recovery response efforts continue in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene.

Pentagon press secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder told reporters during a briefing on Thursday that 6,500 Florida National Guardsmen had been activated and mobilized along with 500 plus high-water vehicles, 26 helicopters and over a dozen watercraft from a dozen states to help with response and recovery missions.

Along with those resources, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has about 250 people helping with debris and flood control, waterway clearance and more, while U.S. Northern Command and U.S. Army North also stand ready to support the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) when needed, with 60 more high-water vehicles from Fort Stewart, Georgia, and 100 U.S. Marines from Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.

Ahead of Milton's arrival, personnel from U.S. Special Operations Command and U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) evacuated from its headquarters at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, and as of Thursday, they remained evacuated.

"The priority is the safety of personnel and their families and ensuring they have the resources they need as they recover from Hurricane Milton," Ryder said. "Both commands continue to operate out of multiple locations, ensuring no degradation to operations."

Ryder noted that Department of Defense facilities in Florida suffered "some damage, but not extensive damage."

He added that teams will have to go in and assess the damage before additional information can be provided.

Link

Government Corruption

CHUCK DEVORE: Comparing Biden-Harris bungled Helene response to past disasters

2024-10-06

[FoxNews] Media attacked Bush over Katrina, but ignores Biden-Harris failures as Americans suffer.

For five days, the U.S. Army’s helicopters stayed on the ground.

The Biden-Harris administration’s response to Hurricane Helene has been slow, weak, and deadly—but, except for Fox News, you wouldn’t know it from the major media.

Hurricane Helene made landfall on Thursday, Sept. 26, at 11:10 p.m.

The following Thursday, a reporter asked President Joe Biden about the storm zone. Biden responded, "Oh, storm zone? I don’t know which storm you’re talking about…" Biden then recovered and claimed, "They are getting what they need, and they are very happy across the board."

The day before, five full days after the storm dumped up to 30 inches of rain in some mountain locations, Biden ordered 1,000 active-duty troops to provide assistance with 22 helicopters as well as tactical vehicles from Fort Liberty (formerly Fort Bragg), some 250 miles east of hard-hit Asheville, N.C.

There are about 50 utility helicopters in the 82d Airborne Division’s Combat Aviation Brigade at Fort Liberty. The military installation in Fayetteville, the U.S. Army’s largest, has almost 100,000 active-duty and reserve soldiers available for presidential call-up—so, Biden sent 1% of Fort Liberty’s personnel and less than half of the base’s much-needed helicopter inventory.

Meanwhile, the federal government’s emergency management arm, FEMA, warned it’s out of money because it has spent $1.4 billion on aid to "sanctuary cities" swamped with illegal aliens and mostly fake asylum seekers. FEMA said it sent 150 generators to the stricken region. But there are at least double that number of generators available for purchase within an hour’s drive of any typical city.

Displaced citizens in the Appalachian region hit by Helene are at risk of illness due to contaminated water—and in danger from human traffickers who prey upon the confused, weak, and vulnerable. The hundreds of military police from Fort Liberty’s 503rd Military Police Battalion and the 82nd MP Company could prove a powerful deterrent in shelters—if they were activated.

So, how does the Biden-Harris disaster response compare to other recent events? The media and Democrats heaped scorn on President George H.W. Bush’s federal response to the L.A. Riots in 1992 and then again on President George W. Bush’s Hurricane Katrina actions in 2005.

I was a California Army National Guard captain during the 1992 L.A. Riots. Within three days, we had 10,000 Guard soldiers on the ground, quelling looting and arson. Rioting started the evening of April 29. The following evening, a National Guard MP company was on the scene. The next day, 4,000 Guard soldiers were in the city and President Bush ordered active-duty Army and Marine forces into action as well as 1,000 federal law enforcement officers. By May 2, there were 10,000 Guard members and 3,500 active-duty soldiers and Marines keeping order in L.A.

So, the elder Bush ordered 3,500 active-duty personnel into L.A. three days into the emergency while Biden took five days to decide to send 1,000 soldiers to help.

Hurricane Katrina made landfall on Monday, Aug. 29, 2005, around 4:30 a.m. At Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco’s request, President George W. Bush had issued an emergency declaration on Saturday, Aug. 27, two days before landfall. Within a day of impact, U.S. Coast Guard helicopters were already working, rescuing some 350 people from rooftops. Bush viewed the devastation from the air on Aug. 31 and was roundly criticized for flying over, rather than seeing things on the ground. On Sept. 1, Bush asked Gov. Blanco to allow a federal takeover of the relief efforts, which by then included 15,256 Guard members expected to grow to more than 40,000 personnel from neighboring states.

Bush visited the scene of the disaster only two days after landfall. Two days after Helene, Biden was on the beach in Delaware, "commanding," as he claimed, with two hours of phone calls. Vice President Kamala Harris was fundraising on the West Coast.

The U.S. military’s chain of command for this disaster runs from Biden to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin to the commander of the U.S. Northern Command. Biden’s slow and confused response to Hurricane Helene—taking two more days to come to grips with the crisis than did his two recent predecessors—speaks of a president who is out of touch and not up to the job.

The Biden-Harris administration’s sluggish and half-hearted disaster response has put hundreds of thousands of Americans at risk in Helene’s swath of destruction. Biden’s lackluster engagement in the most powerful office on the planet puts the entire nation in peril as the world spirals into chaos while Harris focuses her time and energy on running to replace Biden while hiding from the media.

Link

Fifth Column

NYPD release video showing professional 'protest consultant' at Columbia University

2024-05-01

From a comment this morning from Skid.
[Laura Ingraham at FOX] The New York City Police Department released a video showing a professional "protest consultant" who was seen on other social media videos instructing a mob of anti-Israel agitators as they took over Hamilton Hall at Columbia University overnight Monday.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams spoke about outside agitators during a press conference Tuesday evening.

"What should have been a peaceful protest, it has basically been co-opted by professional outside agitators. We were extremely cautious about releasing our intel information because our goal was to ensure the safety of the students, the faculty, and without destruction to property," Adams said. "We have sounded the alarm several times before about external actors who attempted to hijack this private protest."

Adams and members of his administration shared information about the outside actors who were creating "serious public safety issues" at the protests.

Lisa Fithian - Wikipedia: Lisa Fithian is an American political activist and "protest consultant". Early life [ edit ] Lisa Fithian, American political activist and protest consultant, [1] began her work in the mid-1970s as a member of student government in her high school and at Skidmore College .

Link

Home Front: Politix

From hope to terror: How Obama's signature failure continues to haunt our politics

2024-03-11

[Restoring America] I’d be lying if I said I didn’t still feel the faintest stir of optimism at the sight of former President Barack Obama’s once-ubiquitous "Hope" poster. Designed by street artist Shepard Fairey, the image of Obama gazing skyward in highly contrasted shadows of blue and red was perfectly suited to the caption, written in bold, blocked lettering: "Hope." New Yorker art critic Peter Schjeldahl called it "the most efficacious American political illustration since ’Uncle Sam Wants You.'"

It’s important to recall just how depressed the country was by the end of former President George W. Bush’s second term. Hurricane Katrina had leveled a beloved city. The Iraq War had become a historic disaster. The housing market had crashed, which ushered in the Great Recession. The nation was starved for a fresh vision and a leader who embodied America’s promise of a harmonious whole emerging from a diverse multitude. Obama, the son of a Kansan and a Kenyan, seemed supernaturally suited to the moment.

I’ll always hold that voting for Obama was a good bet (I pulled the lever for him twice). Political figures with his singular capacity to capture the public imagination don’t appear often. Even my father, a constitutional conservative who hasn’t voted for a Democrat since Walter Mondale, couldn’t hide his excitement when I told him I was attending Obama’s inauguration. "Cheer for Obama, sure," he said wryly, "just don’t cheer for Biden." (He remains the most astute political observer I know.)

There are numerous data points that epitomize Obama’s failure to capitalize on the unprecedented goodwill afforded his political ascendency, from the chaos engulfing the Middle East as a direct result of his policies to the ruination of American manufacturing to the expansion of the surveillance state and drone warfare. But nothing captures the depth of his failure quite like the attenuation of American hope.

A recent Pew poll reveals that a staggering 86% of people now report feeling exhausted or angry about the state of our politics. This was echoed in a recent NBC poll that found 81% of people are confident their children’s lives will be worse than their own. The children don’t feel much better: A recent Harvard study found that two-thirds of young people report feeling more fear than hope about the future of democracy in America.

Obama didn’t simply fail to instill hope in America. He oversaw and managed its precipitous downfall.

Link

-Land of the Free

The Hill: America’s Army is shrinking. Its missions aren’t

2023-08-13

[Shafaq News] The U.S. military’s all-volunteer force (AVF) quietly turned 50 last month. Though the end of the draft in 1973 was a seminal moment for both the U.S. military and American society, the anniversary received minimal official recognition. Celebrating the AVF’s big birthday would have entailed admitting an uncomfortable truth: that the U.S. military is in the middle of an unprecedented recruiting crisis. In fact, the military, and especially the Army, is now shrinking.

As recently as 2018, Army planners called for growing the force by 2023. Today the service is unable to even maintain current force levels. Last year the Army set an active-duty end strength target of 485,000 troops. Due to recruiting shortfalls, Congress lowered the target by 33,000 for 2023. The Army is saying it will miss this lower goal too.

A variety of factors have led to the recruiting crisis. Higher enlistment bonuses and promises to pay off college debt hold less appeal among a cohort of young Americans uninterested in military service and eager to explore job opportunities in a tight labor market.

Disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have dented confidence in military leadership. A generation that grew up amid financial crisis and a global pandemic may be more risk averse. Most importantly, 77 percent of Americans between the ages of 17 and 24 are ineligible to serve, due to physical or mental unfitness, prior substance abuse or lack of education.

This shrinking force is confronting ever more missions, both overseas and at home. President Joe The Big Guy Biden
Joe <q>The Big Guy</q> Biden

...46th president of the U.S. The very model of propity....
’s recent executive order authorizing the mobilization of up to 3,000 reserve soldiers to augment U.S. forces deployed to Europa
...the land mass occupying the space between the English Channel and the Urals, also known as Moslem Lebensraum...
highlighted the unending demands of maintaining an expansive U.S. global military presence.

The Army has a higher operational tempo now than it did at the height of the Global War on Terror. Without significant changes to its force structure or missions, the U.S. Army may be stretched to the breaking point, even though America is not at war.

The active-duty force will soon be at its smallest size since the attack on Pearl Harbor. But unlike the pre-World War II force, today’s Army carries out a host of concurrent missions in Europe, the Middle East and East Asia.

In Europe, where Army units constitute the majority of the roughly 100,000 U.S. troops in theater, five combat brigades and support elements are deployed on a permanent or rotational basis to shore up NATO
...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A collection of multinational and multilingual and multicultural armed forces, all of differing capabilities, working toward a common goal by pulling in different directions...
’s defenses as the war in Ukraine rages.

Commitments in the Middle East have also not gone away, despite a narrative of withdrawal. Iraq is home to 2,500 U.S. troops, while next door in Kuwait, combat aviation brigades routinely rotate to support the ongoing anti-ISIS mission in Iraq and Syria. Air and missile defense units, one of the most overworked components of the Army, are deployed to Soddy Arabia
...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in the Soddy national face...
to guard against Iranian missiles and proxies, even as political temperatures in the region seem to be cooling.

The Army’s role in the Indo-Pacific theater is dominated by long-standing commitments in South Korea and Japan. Two-thirds of the 28,500 American servicemen in South Korea, including the private just detained by North Korea
...hereditary Communist monarchy distinguished by its truculence and periodic acts of violence. Distinguishing features include Songun (Army First) policy, which involves feeding the army before anyone but the Dear Leadership, and Juche, which is Kim Jong Il's personal interpretation of Marxism-Leninism, which he told everybody was brilliant. In 1950 the industrialized North invaded agrarian South Korea. Twenty-one countries of the United Nations eventually contributed to the UN force opposing the invasion, with the United States providing around 90% of the military personnel. Seventy years later the economic results are in and it doesn't look good for Juche...
, are soldiers. Although most experts believe a future Pacific war with China would be primarily an air and naval campaign, the Army has pitched itself as the "linchpin service," capable of providing critical logistics support, long-range fires and air defense.

Shrinkage in the force without commensurate cuts in overseas deployments have led to an exceedingly high peacetime operational tempo, with negative effects on the Army’s readiness for war. The Pentagon considers a 1:3 deploy-to-dwell ratio. This means that for every six months deployed, soldiers should have 18 months at home — a key benchmark for ensuring its servicemen can spend time with their families and pursue professional development. But the Army is not meeting this standard: Both combat brigades and higher headquarters units often have deploy-to-dwell ratios above the 1:2 "red line."

Overworking active-duty units has effects that trickle down through the total force. Over the last two decades, dipping into the National Guard and Army Reserve to compensate for the lack of active-duty personnel has gone from being a habit to a necessity for Army leaders scrambling to meet mission requirements. Under Title 10 authorities, the secretary of Defense can order Guardsmen to perform active-duty functions for a limited time. By the Pentagon’s count, 22,000 Guardsmen are deployed overseas on security missions or training exercises.

These deployments frequently impinge upon the National Guard’s primary duty: homeland defense. In recent years, high-profile Guard missions included supporting state efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic, handling civil unrest and responding to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

More numerous and endemic, however, are the Guard’s response missions to natural disasters such as wildfires, flooding and hurricanes, tasks that are placing ever greater demands on the Guard’s time and resources.

This tension is not new. When Hurricane Katrina ravaged Louisiana in 2006, thousands of the state’s Guardsmen were deployed to Iraq — active-duty Marines had to be hastily dispatched to New Orleans to assist with relief efforts and maintain order. In 2020, Oregon could not use six of its Guard helicopters to fight raging wildfires because they were in Afghanistan. As climate change makes natural disasters more frequent and devastating, the Defense Department will have to decide which missions, foreign or domestic, are more important for the Guard to prioritize.

America’s Army needs either more soldiers or fewer missions. Given the demographic and societal headwinds hitting military recruiting, a larger force is going to be difficult to recruit for the foreseeable future. The alternative is making difficult, overdue decisions about which deployments are truly necessary for American national security.

The Pentagon and its political overseers are resistant to such retrenchment, as they demonstrated with a business as usual Global Posture Review in 2021. But perpetuating the status quo threatens a descent into a hollow force. We have seen what one of those looks like on the battlefields of Ukraine. The United States should not risk a similar fate for its Army.

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-Great Cultural Revolution

I Felt Trapped': Sexual Abuse of Teens in the Military's J.R.O.T.C. Program

2022-07-10

[NYT] PICAYUNE, Miss. — With the rifle skills she honed in the Mississippi backwoods, Victoria Bauer had a path to escape the trap of drugs and dead-end jobs she saw most everywhere around her. Her future was in the Marines, she decided, and she had an idea about how to get there.

Across the way from her freshman algebra class, Ms. Bauer approached Steve Hardin, the retired Navy intelligence officer who guided the high school’s Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, a leadership program sponsored by the U.S. military at high schools across the country. He welcomed her into the fold, she said, and seemed interested in how her family, which traced roots back to the Four Winds Cherokee of Louisiana, had been displaced by Hurricane Katrina.

Soon, her 45-year-old J.R.O.T.C. instructor was messaging her on Snapchat late into the night, telling her that it would "drive the guys crazy" if she wore a "small bikini" during the trip to their next out-of-state shooting competition. Then one night in 2015 as he drove her home from rifle practice, she told investigators, Mr. Hardin pushed his hand into her pants and penetrated her with his fingers — the start of what she said was months of sexual assaults. Ms. Bauer, who was 15 at the time, feared that resisting him would jeopardize her shot at advancement through the J.R.O.T.C. ranks or a military career.

"I gave all the body-language signals that I didn’t want it," Ms. Bauer said in an interview. "I didn’t feel like I had a choice."

Link

-Lurid Crime Tales-

New Orleans mom, Iraq war vet pulls gun on man trying to enter her car: 'Locked and loaded'

2022-02-16

[FOX] A Louisiana mom and Air Force veteran pulled a gun on a man who tried to get into her car while she was sitting in gridlocked traffic with her 2-year-old son.

"You shouldn't have to navigate your own city like a war zone. It's un-American," Charise Taylor, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, told WDSU. "The crime is out of control and it's terrifying. At this point, having to use the same tactics in an American city that you use in Iraq and Afghanistan simply to navigate through the city, it's scary, and I'm not the only mom feeling this way."

Taylor said she was on her way to pick up her husband on Friday in New Orleans when she got stuck in traffic on Interstate 10. While navigating the backup, a group of people in a truck motioned to her to let them into her lane. She let them in, but soon after a man came up to her passenger door and began pulling on the handle.

"So, as he comes up he's close, and he's pretty aggressive trying to get the car door open, makes eye contact with me, he's still trying to get it open a couple times," Taylor said.

She picked up her gun and recalled warning him: "It’s locked and loaded."

The suspect ran off and she was not forced to fire her weapon - though she said she was ready to do so in order to protect her son.

"The emotions honestly your body takes in a different form. I stayed in my body of course, but everything transformed. I'm trained to do this. I've gone to classes. I'm prior military. If I have to pull this trigger, that's what I have to do," Taylor said.

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-Short Attention Span Theater-

Mold, termites and rotting wood. It's the Pitts! Only SIX of the 109 affordable homes Brad Pitt built for $26.8M and sold to survivors of Hurricane Katrina for $150,000 are in livable condition - and none are built to withstand NOLA's climate

2022-02-02

[Daily Mail, where America gets its news]

Just six of the 109 affordable homes Brad Pitt's Make It Right Foundation built in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina are still in livable condition

A majority of the homes are riddled with construction-related problems that have led to mold, termites, rotting wood and flooding

Six of the homes are now vacant because of the mold, rot and structural issues

Two have also been demolished because of severe mold, and New Orleans city officials are now seizing one of the properties as a 'safety hazard'

Residents have sued the organization, but it has not yet made the necessary repairs - and it appears to have become defunct

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-Lurid Crime Tales-

Dozens of San Francisco area stores, pharmacies hit by mobs of smash-and-grab looters: 'Hurts us all'

2021-11-24

[FoxNews] The thieves targeted pharmacies and marijuana dispensaries in Oakland.

Mobs of thieves ransacked at least two dozen San Francisco area businesses over the weekend, as smash and grab incidents rage in the Bay Area.

"At least two dozen businesses were impacted," Oakland Police Chief LeRonne Armstrong told CBS SF. "Roving caravans of vehicles, targeting cannabis operations, retail shops, pharmacies, throughout the city of Oakland."

The mobs of thieves hit a handful of pharmacies and marijuana dispensaries in Oakland, including the Wellspring pharmacy that released surveillance video of the scene to the media. Police added that the mobs in Oakland fired 175 shots during the incidents, forcing officers to pull back to safe locations, The Mercury News reported.

'Experts' blasted for cautioning against use of term 'looting' to describe large-scale California thefts

[FoxNews] The affiliate pointed out that they did not yet know the identities and races of the perpetrators of the recent wave of thefts, before noting that they occurred following last Friday's acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse.

It then cited Martin Reynolds, co-executive director of the Robert C. Maynard Institute of Journalism Education, who was reminded of Black residents in New Orleans that were described as looters for committing "crimes of survival" following Hurricane Katrina in 2005 when they stole water, food and other supplies prior to receiving aid from the federal government.

"This seems like it's an organized smash and grab robbery. This doesn't seem like looting. We're thinking of scenarios where first responders are completely overwhelmed, and folks often may be on their own," Reynolds said.

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