I just read a post on Facebook, the "status" for today posted by the wife of a good friend.

President Obama has proposed a 1.4% pay increase for active duty military in 2011. This is THE LOWEST SINCE 1973! Nice to know that during a time of rampant inflation, while war is fought in 2 theatres, our men and women in uniform get A LOWER PAY INCREASE THAN WELFARE RECIPIENTS. Please repost if you support our troops.

My first thought was that perhaps active duty military personnel should be happy to be getting any sort of an increase at all, since the rest of us certainly aren't getting one. My mom, who gets a pittance in social security (and I do mean a pittance...couple hundred a month) got no increase for 2010. I don't know what the increase is for 2011, but I imagine it will be negligible again. After all, I don't believe the COLA went up this year. It did not get more expensive to live for most of us. It didn't get any cheaper, either, and with many household incomes decreasing, it made it seem like it got a bunch more expensive to live simply because there wasn't as much money for the same expenses.

And I dispute the notion that we are at war. I would not insult men and women in the military by suggesting it to their faces, since their situations are certainly not any easier or less dangerous simply because what our nation is trying to do in the middle east isn't exactly "war" as we define it. If it makes them feel better about the danger they are in by calling it "war", that's okay by me.

But it ceased being "war" when Baghdad surrendered, and when the Taliban were ousted. It became something else at that time, something more akin to what our police officers do in American cities every day, except with better guns and technology.

Still, they are serving our country in the way that our country asks them to, so it seems like it isn't fair to not give them as much of an increase in their pay as "welfare recipients" are getting. The trouble is, I don't know if this is true. Saying it doesn't make it so.

I asked for sources, and her response was that she heard it from a friend whose sister is married to someone in the military.

I suppose that I should be glad that she didn't get it from Glenn Beck.