While media covered, sometimes briefly on TV/radio news, the administration’s proposed reduction in Army troops from the current 520,000 to between 440,000 and 450,000 --- putting them back to the pre-World War II level --- other cuts were not widely emphasized or even mentioned, notes Grumpy Editor.
Among eyebrow-raising other items, with the Pentagon’s blessing:
✔ Reducing the Army’s helicopter fleet by one fourth.
✔ Retiring all of the Air Force’s A-10 Warthog ground attack jets.
✔ Placing a limit on military pay raises.
✔ Cutting subsidies for military commissaries that lead to discounted goods for families of those in uniform.
✔ Hiking military families’ health-care fees on some non-urgent care.
✔ Putting new limits on troops’ housing allowance increases.
✔ Closing additional military bases.
In addition, overlooked at a time when drug smugglers are increasingly turning to the high seas, a 25 percent reduction of operating costs has hit the Coast Guard, sole U.S. military service able to make drug arrests hundreds of miles offshore in international waters.
AIR FORCE ONE OPERATING COSTS JUMP
Meanwhile, an unaffected military aircraft --- Air Force One, the Boeing 747 that shuttles the president and his entourage --- will see increased flight time in coming weeks as its operating costs per hour have jumped to $228,288 from $179,750 two years ago. Additional costs stem from supporting aircraft on each presidential trip.
Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank tallied that after a Mexico visit last month, President Obama this month was slated to fly to the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy and Saudi Arabia, followed next month by visits to Japan, Malaysia, South Korea and the Philippines. In addition, noted Milbank, the president “has committed to doing at least 18 fundraisers this year.”
Also on the move this month will be Michelle Obama flying --- without the president --- to China for a week-long visit, March 19 to 26. She will be accompanied by daughters, Malia and Sasha, and her mother, Marian Robinson.
In case you missed these…
WHEN IT RAINS, IT POURS…BUT. No sooner did a whopping up to nine inches of rain from two storms get dumped on parched California over the past few days when the word BUT appeared (usually followed by “not enough") leading off the next sentence in news stories. Or, as the second paragraph of an Associated Press story put it: “It didn’t put a major dent in a drought.”
PALIN ON TARGET WITH UKRAINE SIX YEARS AGO. When she was a Republican vice presidential nominee, Sarah Palin told a Reno audience on Oct. 20, 2008: "After the Russian army invaded the nation of Georgia, Senator Obama's reaction was one of indecision and moral equivalence – the kind of response that would only encourage Russia's Putin to invade Ukraine next.”
TURNING THE TABLES. Actor Alec Baldwin, not noted for warm relations with the media, plays a newspaperman on NBC’s "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” that airs March 19.
LOOKS LIKE MORE BUSINESS AHEAD FOR GOLDEN STATE LAWYERS. A record 1,590 California prisoners with life sentences have gone free over the past three years, with approval from Gov. Jerry Brown. More than 80 percent of lifers go behind bars for murder, while the rest are mostly rapists and kidnappers. Some people worry that parolees could pose a danger to the public and crime victims involved in their cases.
A NEW VIEW OF NEW YORK CITY. News Corp. chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch paid $57.25 million for the top four floors of a new 60-unit tower in Manhattan. The four floors total 10,160 square feet. The penthouse alone has five bedrooms and five and a half baths.
An autographed two-volume set of Adolf Hitler's Nazi treatise Mein Kampf, from 1925 and 1926, was purchased for almost $65,000 by an unnamed buyer at a Los Angeles auction.
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