Tax Dollars

I was able to post more pictures. As I said before it is a tedious process so I have to upload them in small increments. Last time I uploaded them on Facebook, I lost my internet connection and had to start over. Yes, this is how your tax dollars are being spent.

There are all sorts of idiosyncrasies here that you have to get used to. For example, we have a bunch of DOD contractors on base and they are charged with completing various tasks. Most of the contractors on base are merely here for supervisory purposes because we hire TCNs for everything else. I found this odd because all you hear about on the news is that Defense Contractors are creating jobs during this down economy. If they were to replace half of the TCNs with American citizens, unemployment would drop at least a half of a percent. I am sure the parent company is making money hand over fist but the rest of our tax dollars are going to other countries. I am sure we are paying them a great wage compared to what they can get at home but it is less than minimum wage. I wonder what our Democratic leaders have to say about that.

As you can see from the picture above, DLA (Defense Logistics Agency) provides us with transportation while we are here. Needless to say, it is a POS but it gets us around. To rent this lovely vehicle, DLA pays $1100 per month! To make matters more complicated, the company that rents us vehicles is owned by an Afghani warlord. So to sum it up, NATO is here to stop insurgents from being insurgents and yet we are providing them with a lot of money so that we can rent their vehicles. Now I am not a politician or a military strategist but something about providing the enemy money just doesn’t sound right with me.

There are literally thousands of Hummers on this base that are sitting in a huge parking lot waiting to be shipped home because the Marines are not allowed to drive them outside the wire. This is because a Hummer can withstand an IED blast about as well as Paris Hilton holds up in jail, not very well. Now it would make sense to let everyone on the base drive these Hummers so that we are not renting vehicles from Afghani warlords. Instead we are just waiting to ship them home. More of our tax dollars well spent.

The water over here is a little suspect so the DOD purchases a phenomenal amount of bottled water. Imagine using a bottle of water for everything you do with water (except shower). That is what it is like here. I go through at least 12 a day. Now multiply that by the thousands of Marines that are here. Yeah that is a lot of water. I am surprised that a better system doesn’t exist.

Things happen here that don’t in the US or basically every civilized country. I am convinced that if I ever get cancer, this deployment will be why. We burn everything here. If it is garbage or waste, we burn it. Now the burn pit is not located off the base, it is on the southern edge of the base. That means when they light up the burn pit, we all smell it, breathe it and feel it. When you are around a camp fire, ash falls on you. Now imagine that you are burning “waste” and it falls on you. Yeah, that is disgusting. Sadly you actually start to get used to the smell after a bit. Not always though.

Our new work building is officially complete and we are just waiting on the inspection. Hopefully we will move in on Monday or Tuesday. It is going to be nice to have some sort of privacy. I chuckle everyday because the people around me do not have a security clearance and yet I have to look at classified stuff every day and my computer is in plain sight of everyone.

I have been doing two a days at the gym and that has helped make time go faster. Hopefully it continues to fly.

I am still plowing through the DVDs that I brought and I may have overestimated how many I would need over here. An ironic thing about the government is that they prosecute individuals for sharing music and movie files but yet every Marine on this base has an external hard drive full of those items and they share it with anyone who asks. I started with about 3,000 songs when I got here and now I have about 17,000 songs. That would be one heck of a lawsuit.