http://blog.acton.org/archives/70151-calvin-coolidges-warning-entrenched-bureaucracy.html
No method of procedure has ever been devised by which liberty could be divorced from local self-government. No plan of centralization has ever been adopted which did not result in bureaucracy, tyranny, inflexibility, reaction, and decline. Of all forms of government, those administered by bureaus are about the least satisfactory to an enlightened and progressive people. ….. –Calvin Coolidge
According to information I gleaned from a thorough scrub of several websites, a Reservist who has retired from military service under the normal circumstances (not a disability retirement) has to request payment of retirement pay beginning at age 60.
For someone who has a current DOD identification card, this may be less of an exercise than I have encountered to date. But for a “gray-area Reservist”, a member who received retirement orders pending receipt of pay after age sixty, this posed questions I thought best to get answered before I made some errors and had to resubmit.
You may never have dealt with a bureaucracy the size of the Department of Defense or the Veterans Administration. But if you have ever dealt with a local planning board or other agency, you may have some idea. Prior experience online directed me to look at the official Bureau of Naval Personnel (BUPERS). When I found the proper sub-department for Reserve retirees it directed me to another website. And a third. I used the telephone at last and actually reached a live person quickly. While the representative was able to locate my record, she could not tell me other than what I already knew. When I did find a couple forms online, editions more than sixteen years old, it seemed this information was what they already had on file.
The BUPERS website directed me to solicit assistance with retirement questions from the local military support office; I drove over to the military office that had served me while in the Navy Reserve nine years earlier. After a lovely chat with a senior enlisted personnel clerk, I spoke with a career counselor for a “package” that would include material needed for retirement pay requests. After waiting in a line, I found that all “retired” reservists like myself had to go through, yes, BUPERS, for these retirement pay questions.
I did catch one tidbit of information. The Department of the Navy is about a month late in a reported ten-month window prior to the member’s sixtieth birthday, sending a package of everything the bureaucracy needs before making payment. I will make another call to BUPERS this week to find out whether this “package” has been mailed. I probably will go back to the VA for a disability re-assessment. When dealing with a Government bureaucracy, blood pressure, headaches, dizziness, and muscle fatigue are common. That’s gotta be worth something?
Truths, Half-truths, and Sea Stories 