Several factors have occurred in the last forty years to compel a serious reconsideration of the role of military retirement benefits in the overall retirement system of the United States. In the last three years, there have been substantial changes through the federal legislature when it comes to Congressional benefits; there have also been changes in the system connected to Presidential retirement benefits that are set to go into effect this coming July. The situation with military retirement benefits, however, needs a serious overhaul – and now.

In April of 1986, a report was released by the Congressional Research Service regarding an evaluation of recently passed Congressional legislation concerning the military retirement system. In addition to evaluating specific changes, there was discussion about how the legislation accounted for a forty-year timeline, but only budgeted in specific income to meet the need for 35 years. It was stated in the report at the time that there was understood to be a shortfall anticipated within the next 30 years, but that at the time of the passage of the bill, there was not specific means by which to account for fulfilment of the obligation incurred with the passage of the law.

I am no expert on the pension system, especially the military pension system, but among other changes through the Congressional Appropriations processes that have taken place in the last 25 years was a discernible difference that went into effect concerning military annuities. In 2003, there was a change regarding the annuity coverage and rates of coverage regarding annuities provided to those who had served in the military. The changes included coverage at full rate for individuals who had been determined to have a disability, wherein prior to the implementation of the law the requirements around having a disability were not in effect. I contend this change had a substantial impact on the importance that concepts of liability and liability coverage had in regard to factoring in the costs associated with provision of retirement benefits, including assessments of risks involved with circulation of assets in regards to private retirement system schemes that involved portfolios that also provided for public retirement system benefits.

This is also a concern when one factors in changes that were re-implemented in August of 2017 concerning the sharing of assets between the military and law enforcement. In August of 2017 – prior to a declaration of a State of Emergency regarding two natural disasters events on the mainland of the United States and in Puerto Rico – there was a Presidential declaration that the moratorium on allowing for local police to access military surplus was being ended. This moratorium had been put into effect following the protests of police actions after the events in Ferguson, Missouri following a police shooting that resulted in death. With the attendant natural disaster declaration, there was not much attention paid to this announcement the time. There was also not a great deal of attention paid at the time to another declaration that the Federal Flood Insurance Program and its administration through the Federal Emergency Management System was approaching a point of insolvency. In fact, it was stated in late August of 2017 that if there was one more major emergency declaration declared involving flooding, that it would force FEMA through its flood insurance program into a need to declare bankruptcy in consideration of other outstanding claims connected to past flood damage, some of which were more than a decade old.

What the specifics around FEMA’s solvency and its relationship to the flood insurance program were at the time was not revealed, however, by May of 2018 the Federal Flood Insurance Program was issuing catastrophe bonds through a bank in Northern Ireland for the program. This is concerning because in July of 2017, there was another declaration of a state of emergency in Texas regarding a flood that had occurred in San Antonio and specifically identified damage caused to the Fort Hood, Texas U.S. Army installation. This would have meant that active duty members of the military would have been put into consideration along with civilians when it came to addressing resources for having been subjected to flood damage right before both the declaration of questions concerning FEMA’s solvency as well as the cessation of the moratorium on police access to military surplus.

Issues concerning designation of what is “military surplus” must be attended to, but so too must one attend to concerns regarding the implications of permitting for military assets – including assets connected to the provision of retirement benefits or that might factor into the accrual of military retirement benefits – to be valuated at a subprime rate and permitted for circulation into civilian networks, or to be assessed in accordance with resources provided to civilians. Between 2012 and 2014 there was considerable Congressional debate around the proposal to increase the federal debt ceiling. Detractors approached it from a variety of perspectives just as justifications attempted to define its advantages, but a serious question has to be considered in regard to understanding that these proposals to increase the debt ceiling were coming at a time when there would also have needed to be a reconsideration of earlier commitments specific to federal policy around military retirement benefits. Insofar as the original legislation discussed policy aims that accounted for 35 years’ worth of revenue to meet the anticipated obligation, that means that the debt ceiling discussions were occurring after 25 years of this policy being in effect. What was to be anticipated as the impact of permitting for the debt ceiling to be increased in accordance with understanding that there had yet to be an official revision to an adequate valuation and re-valuation of the anticipated military retirement system obligations and HOW they were going to be met?

I am concerned that the increase in the debt ceiling permitted for the potential development of a paradigm wherein military benefits could be put under a sort of pressure relative to their factoring into the overall budget process that enabled a form of lien to be put upon them. This lien would then permit for circulation of assets into the general public and into civilian programs that would not be adequately provided with safeguards against increased risk exposure. Leveraging liability in a military conflict situation is much different than attempting to leverage liability in connection with domestic law enforcement efforts. The potential for exploitation of these sorts of risk activities when it comes to domestic law enforcement necessarily exposes other civilian programs that are involved with and through law enforcement activities to additional risk as well.

It is not appropriate to artificially or disingenuously increase the call for greater surveillance or permissibility of increased escalation tactics in order to justify offsets of accrued military benefits liabilities that have not been properly appropriated. This becomes even more of a concern if one anticipated that this in turn permits for an increase in what is allowed to be identified as crime – including violent crime – and the lack of maintenance of appropriate boundaries between domestic law enforcement and military operations escalated acts of violent crime not only in the U.S. but in other areas wherein circulation of retirement benefits, including and especially within public retirement benefits systems, occurs concurrently.

It cannot be overlooked that the lapse in domestic policy regarding the status and stability of the military retirement system in the U.S. occurred concurrent to reforms of the European pension system. This includes in manners that were connected to massive protests by nations that were put into positions of serious economic turmoil based upon the obligations that were being attempted for acknowledgement. There were a number of conferences of economic organizations and even domestic law enforcement in Europe that occurred in time proximity to serious acts of terrorism in major European municipalities that resulted in a change in the discourse on how to address law enforcement – specifically law enforcement and its relationship to immigration – following the preponderance of these acts of terrorism. This occurred very demonstrably between 2014 and 2017.

If there was a situation wherein consideration regarding domestic military retirement obligations were allowed to lapse in order to test out schemes connected to risk leveraging and their utility in alleged national security or even military paradigms, then this is not something to be merely swept under the rubric of “classified” for national security purposes. It also needs to be considered in accordance with concerns that aspects of other legislation – up to and including provisions regarding disability considerations and research and development priorities in laws regarding the National Aeronautics and Space Administration – were permitted to be similarly disabused in order to test schemes connected to risk leveraging for their military applications. I am specifically concerned about aspects of the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958 when it comes to compensation of select employees at up to three times the level that they are qualified to perform insofar as roles that were formerly under the purview of the U.S. military may have been used under the auspices of “space technology development” (including “satellite technology development”) and the increased compensation involved engaging risks
that the literal military operational specialty did NOT have, hence creating risk variables that would not be suited for addressing within a civilian context, but through derivative processes or abstraction could be offset elsewhere.

These offsets would be addressed how? And where? The consistent characterization of certain areas or groups of people as having risks of exposure to acts of “terrorism” as opposed to “crime” creates different risk quotients when it comes to addressing the likelihood of an escalation. If there is a specific policy wherein liability is allowed to be leveraged in acts of speculation that may accord some form of bonus for successfully executed competitive behaviors then the likelihood that an area that is already destabilized will either continue to be destabilized or will be sabotaged in its efforts to address acts of destabilization increase as well. Strategically coordinated acts of “terrorism” in areas not previously characterized as having a high likelihood of occurrences of terrorism serve a specific purpose when it comes to long-term budget priorities for the areas involved. These long-term priorities can shape the likelihood of normalization to one form of high-risk activity over another and engineer political paradigms wherein legitimization or even legalization of previously illegal behavior is considered to be more acceptable than would otherwise be accepted.

And this sort of political engineering paradigm is most concerning when it comes to the need to address not ONLY the role of accrued military retirement benefits, but the manners in which lax attention to the situation regarding military retirement benefits has permitted for the proliferation of an unjustified speculation via and in regards to military contracting, specifically when it comes to what is permitted to be identified as research and development for product creation. Even a cursory look at the daily awards of contracts through the Department of Defense demonstrates that a great deal of what forms the foundation of an increasing segment of our economy is based on military capital outlay processes, but if there is an intentional effort to overlook the adequacy of accountability in regards to the military benefits and retirement system so as to normalize processes of experimentation with the impacts of manipulated human behaviors – including in manners that can lead to increased demand for products that have biological or physiological impacts that themselves impact human behavior – then we have not only overstepped the bounds of economic utility but also Constitutionality. Hence, the legitimization of the formerly illicit or illegal activities that we are in pursuit of is not a question of law enforcement and its role, but an existential question of the very existence of the State as a nation.

If an intentional effort was engaged by the United States Congress with the approval of the President of the United States and without the intercession of the Judicial Branch of government of the United States in the mid-1980s to volley speculation on the stability of the military retirement system on efforts to maximize the possibilities that deregulation had on privatization of essential government services, up to and including services that are duly provided by an effective, efficient and accountable military, then that needs to be attended to with the due consideration it deserves. It needs to be addressed as crime and as a dereliction of duty by the civilian entities that are Constitutionally charged with regulating against abuses of the military. There is a reason why the ultimate authority for the military is a civilian government and it is not to maximize the insider deals one who takes an oath to uphold the Constitution can get when it comes to accessing incentives provided by military weapons development or distribution. It is also not to permit for a misrepresentations of what are actually military duties that may have implications in civilians sectors that are NOT just law enforcement – for instance, health care, and transportation as well as natural resources and the environment. A lien on the military then becomes a lien on all of the United States. Such is not acceptable praxis for long-time security and is a disservice to those who are or would otherwise be allies of the United States.

This is not a time to obscure the shortcomings of federal obligations. Indeed, many questions remain unanswered about the future of the digital economy and the call to legitimize the cryptoeconomy that I contend find at their essence the relationship that the United States has engaged with providing for retirement and other benefits for former members of the military. I have a recommendation for a variety of processes that can be engaged concurrently to begin to address these matters comprehensively. It does not NEED to be addressed in accordance with a war effort, but if necessary, to address the material circumstances before us now, it can. We cannot permit for the proliferation of increased private security – including increased militarization of private security – without reigning in the abuses that have accumulated so far. This is certainly a comprehensive need, but it is an urgent one that must be attended to now.
 

Finished 9:43 pm CST
Proofread/edited by 9:45 pm CST
4.5.2021

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See here.