Battle of the Bilge

Update #2: This one keeps on rolling, with more stories regarding the future of TFL, so I’m pinning it to the top of the page for a while. I’ve also copied my comment (that was vetted by our legislative experts) for ease of viewing.

A quick update on a previous Bilge story regarding Tricare For Life funding. The original article can be found here.

As stated in MOAA’s Legislative Update from May 8th:

Full funding for the TRICARE program. The good news is that this is the first time in four years that the budget hasn’t included formal proposals for big hikes in TRICARE fees for retirees under 65. The bad news is that Pentagon leaders still want to raise TRICARE fees. A key difference is that this year, they’re going to ask Congress to do that rather than cutting the budget on the assumption that it will happen.

This is good news for TFL and TRICARE as a whole. Congress is very unlikely to raise fees, especially when it is not in the budget already proposed to them. Since we are still receiving the original email that was going around, the word has not gotten out completely just yet.

June 1 Addition
Just to clarify CBO does not draft legislation nor have they proposed legislation. CBO does publish a list of options or ways to reduce or increase the budget in certain areas. Included in those recommendations were changes to TFL.

Please know that MOAA is doing everything we can to improve TRICARE For Life, we hope that the only changes you do see in the future are positive ones. We wholeheartedly agree that any increases in health care premiums/copays/deductibles would be diluting the retirement benefit and could have an adverse affect on recruiting and retention.

April Fool’s Strikes Again…

BotB Verdict

Average Number of Times Received Daily at MOAA: 5

Summary

An April Fool’s Day email has been re-ignited and transmitted as fact across the web, again. There are a lot of people in the country attempting to undermine President Obama’s authority by continuing to bring up questions of his eligibility for the office due to the uncertainty of his place of birth and history.

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6 Steps to a More Fulfilling Blog Experience

Sign up for the RSS Feeds

To stay current with the blog’s articles or comments, click on one of the options you see in the lower right hand corner of the page:

This will prompt you to add the RSS (which stands for Really Simple Syndication and a description can be found here) to your bookmarks toolbar. When you want to see if a new article or comment has been posted, all you have to do is go to your bookmarks menu and scroll down to the RSS feed. It will expand and show you the last ten articles or comments. Here’s how it will look on Firefox:

A lot of email clients such as Outlook allow you to subscribe to RSS feeds as well, and new items will show up just like emails.

Comment Freely

Even if this is your first time visiting or if it is your first time getting engaged, please speak your mind or comment on a particular story or in response to other members’ comments. It is the best way to get your voice heard and if you prefer to do so anonymously, we allow that as well. We moderate comments for the sole purpose of keeping the site clean of spam and links to untrustworthy sites, so don’t let the moderation be a hindrance to your comments. We do not moderate ideas or opposing viewpoints. Post additional questions, hop in and answer one if you know the answer, and don’t worry about the discussion, we’ll step in and correct anything we see as incorrect or not supported by evidence.

But Be Respectful

While there have been nothing but respectful comments posted so far, this is a point I can’t stress enough. Getting your voice heard is better done with a cool head and without disrespecting other peoples’ views. I had a long talk with my Director the other day about how we can have such a high page view rate but relatively low comments. She speculated that it is not in the nature of officers to argue publicly and the proper way to handle contentious issues is to pull the person aside after a briefing or decision and speak to them in private. This is completely understandable in the chain of command, but out here it is different. You can be honest and forthright out in public and spur a debate without having to worry about command.

Submit Story Ideas

Anything that you are curious about that you received or just have heard and set something off in your mind as possibly out of the ordinary may make for a good article. Although we might not write articles about each one received, we will (and have) responded to each one individually. All of our articles so far have come directly from member inquiries or forwards.

Spread the Word

If you receive an email that you find suspicious, check the blog at our new Article Archive, linked at the top of every page. If we’ve already written about the subject, reply to the sender with a link to the page.

Let Us Know How to Improve

We are here to serve you. Any suggestions are more than welcome at bilge@moaa.org, from style to purpose to articles, we’re here to make the experience the best it can be.

Author’s Note: Not a very good week in Pakistan, with over 500,000 displaced civilians fleeing the war with the Taliban. Good to see Pakistan finally taking the problem head on, but it is unfortunate that it took a Taliban offensive to start it.

On to the news (for main source of each article, click on the title)…

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Please Note: The commentary in this article is not meant to imply an official MOAA position on the Gun Control debate.  While this is not a military specific issue, many of our members have contacted us and showed considerable concern.  From time to time, we will address topics that are outside of our official scope to help provide factual information as best we can.

Summary

The election of Barack Obama and the increases in majorities in both the House and Senate of the Democrats, a great deal of chatter has been transmitted across the web regarding gun control and the Second Amendment.  Because there are so many emails, blogs and websites devoted to this issue, we’re going to use a slightly different format for this article.

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