The Spirit Realm

I wasn't talking about Willow Grove. I am stationed on the other side of the US. But the wording in the law states that only the Governors or AG's can give the consent to move or shut down a Guard base.

No, I wouldn't bet the house either. However, a few local analysts think they have a better shot than most given the circumstances. All they need is a sympathetic judge, and they could stall the process enough that they may just decide to keep it open rather than fight in court -- who knows.

Jagged - the process you describe is going on all across the nation as the BRAC announcement looms. Very few, if any bases, will survive if they are on the announced list regardless of the shennanigans the local governments try.

Well today my base goes on the chopping block. I only hope that we come out unscathed.

The only problem I have with this process is that the stated reasons (budget savings) are nearly worthless. $48 Billion sounds like a lot of money, but $48 Billion over 20 years? That's maybe 1/2 of 1% of the Military's budget for those two decades, assuming that it doesn't increase all that much?

Saving $2.4 Billion (Roughly $8 per citizen) is such a drop in the bucket compared to the $2.5 Trillion US Annual Budget that I honestly can't get that excited, particularly given that hundreds of communities are going to be heavily affected to save that pittance.

I'd rather see the military and government try to come up with some substantial savings vs. ones that appear to be little more than a shell game. If they are going to save a penny here and there and claim huge "victories" over the deficit from such small changes, we're never going to get the deficit reduced. Especially once the current Social Security suplus goes negative and the Government's quasi-legal practice of lending the surplus to itself at little to no interest backfires when it doesn't have the money to repay what it already owes to the Social Security sytem.