[Dragon Lady]

Okay,

Even in peacetime there are incidents and accidents. So we don't send one of these ships to a war zone, what's to say a sneak attack doesn't occur...USS Stark, and there was another where the little rubber raft got real close to a ship and blew itself and part of the ship.

So what kind of insurance do they have? There's not an insurance company in this country that is going to give reasonable life insurance rates to someone in that position. What kind of pay do they get? A whole hell of a lot better than what my husband brings home.

I'm with Keith, pay the Chiefs a decent wage! That's the only way you will keep the Salt of the Navy.

Several years ago I did a research paper for one of my college classes on the feasible economics of the base closings. At that time Congress was stating that the only way to save money would be to close several bases, which they did. However, I was able to show that although in the long run it was better; it was worse in the short term for the military financially. And worse on the economy of the surrounding communities and the States in general. I used the closing of a base in California as a case in point. The community surrounding the base could not find jobs for the civilians who were let go base. This put undue hardship on their families. The soldiers that were reassigned to other bases suddenly found that they had to sell houses in a market that was flooded which drove prices into the basement. good news for buyers, bad news for sellers. To compensate for the loss, the military was paying each home owner the difference between the price they received for the sale and the actual fair market value, which since the market tanked wasn't a whole heck of a lot.
Then there was a whole 'nother issue...what about the base property. In the case of Williams AFB, at the time, the worlds largest pilot training base, the news wasn't good for a long time. The officer's family quarters didn't meet the county's and the state's minimum requirements for public housing. It was good enough for our military's officers and their families but it didn't meet the mark for people without jobs. Then there was the bachelors barracks. They tried to turn this part of the base into some type of correctional facility, aka prison. The barracks were deemed "substandard"!

Oh, did I mention that just the year prior to closing Willey that the AF had spent in the neighborhood of over $1 million to build a new CBPO building and a new commissary?

In the end the majority of the property was sold to Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix to be used as a cargo over-flow airstrip. Now it is one of the busiest cargo airports in the US.
While they were trying to get all that settled the EPA was doing it's thing...test soil and ground water. The area surrounding the fighter hangers on the south side of the base was claimed to be a ecological hot spot and was added to the Super Fund list of clean up sites. They decided it was best to cover it under an 8" thick layer of asphalt instead.
In the end it cost the military an enormous amount of money to close even one base. I can only imagine what the total was from the base closures that occurred from 1988-2000.

But they are cutting costs! Uh huh...and I am Groucho Marx!