Monthly Archives: April 2011

Department of Defense, Politics

Ugly Wisconsin Could Be Coming To A Theatre Near You

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Is this stuff a matter of Veterans Affairs? Well sort of, mostly because when juxtaposed with War on three fronts and the intense need for moral support for our troops who are “liberating” the oppressed peoples in autocracies around the world, we cannot seem to put our own house in order with the civility that we are trying to export in the form of sane democratic principles.  Are the people of Wisconsin just a mirror for the nation? Is this what the soldier is coming home to see and live with during transition to civilian life? No wonder they are serving multiple tours. It reminds me of the riots in Chicago and the Moratorium in 1969, where the lowest common denominator of equanimity was center stage.  How little we have evolved as a Republic.

 

I get endless emails about the stuff the Main Stream Media does not cover. This one seems to be compelling, not just because it came from my cousin who lives in Wisconsin, but for the need to have intervention, maybe even psychiatric, into the political process. The rise of identity politics and the drawing of lines in the sand is a bit out of hand. And we all know why…..its because the divisiveness is paid for in advance.

Whether it be the Koch brothers on one side and George Soros on the other, this “Hatfield and McCoy” mentality is premeditated and financed by corporate interests who could give a damn about the commoner or e pluribus unum.  This is not what are soldiers are fighting for in lands afar.

The contextual truth begs to be told. The travails in Wisconsin, which could be in Arizona next week, are not about unions and collective bargaining. It is about the movement to privatize all, yes all ladies and gentlemen, all of our State operations. When the day comes that we need our troops to protect private corporations within our own state borders, the Republic is fini. The very reason that George Washington warned about the dangers of the two party system; “it will enfeeble the nation,” have now become prophecy.

A military coups inside the United States is not science fiction.  Read a short story in the Army War College magazine, Parameters,” The Origins of the Military Coups of 21012.” It was written in 1992!

Wisconsin is prologue. Pay attention.

 

When they find out how you voted, will they come for you and your children and grandchildren next ?  Is this the freedom our ancestors died for?  What should we do about this ?

This is not the Wisconsin I know!—About Representative Keith Ripp
Have you seen this kind of behavior ?   Keith had written a lengthy, thoughtful article in a recent Waunakee Tribune, giving a lot of information you don’t get from the media or protesters who neither live, work or pay taxes here. He understands the problems our state is facing. Hopefully spring weather will help make people more tolerant and accepting of one another.
This is not the Wisconsin I know!—About Representative Keith Ripp 

Had a ‘trying day ‘ yesterday as I stopped at a friend and clients of mine: Representative Keith Ripp owns and operates with his family a  feedlot in Dane, Wisconsin. Keith is also a State Representative in  Wisconsin. He voted in favor (with Governor Walker) of eliminating
COLLECTIVE BARGAINING in trying to balance Wisconsin‘s budget deficit.  His wife (Lori) came out and ‘broke down and cried ‘ during our talk.  Keith and his family have been terrorized since the VOTE. His church has told him ‘he is no longer welcome there ‘.  Many of his neighbors
have told him ‘to never talk to them again ‘.  His son Radley (9 th grader) has been persecuted by his teachers. Keith has received over 800 threats. Lori has been sworn at, spit on, etc. Daily Union  people pull into their driveway and harass them! Even the local firemen have told him, “don‘t bother calling if you have a fire “because we probably cannot FIND your farm in time‘.

Finally, Keith‘s sister-in-law is a teacher at a local high school. The Ripp family was all to get together for Easter dinner at Keith’s moms house (his father died of cancer 3 years ago). Keith‘s sister-in-law refuses to go to dinner at Easter dinner IF KEITH AND HIS FAMILY ATTEND! By
the way- the sister-in-law (teacher) has HER KIDS ATTEND A PRIVATE  SCHOOL! Complete harassment. What kind of people are these Democrats‘  Scum of the earth!
This man and family, whom are wonderful people, are being subjected  to a RECALL- due to him voting to balance the budget. Shame on Wisconsin!
Next, I went down to another friend and client Fritz Wyttenbach. He lives in Sauk City, Wisconsin. He owns a feedlot and a meat market. Fritz is on the school board. He voted to FREEZE teachers wages and reform their insurance policy to more align it with private industry
standards.
Since then ‘the local teachers have picketed his business. Threatened  him and his family. Restaurants whom have purchased beef and meat from his meat market for years cancelled orders and discontinued buying from him because  they are on the side of the  teachers ‘. He has received death threats and e-mails that his business will be burned and destroyed. Fritz is one of the finest Christians I know of. A wonderful person. If you drive through Sauk City you will daily see teachers PICKETING on the bridge crossing the Wisconsin river. Many are toting signs to boycott Wyttenbach Meat Market. What a tragedy! May I suggest if you are driving through that part of Wisconsin that you stop and purchase some meat products from Fritz. His spirits are pretty low today.
I am convinced that Unions are little more than organized mafia  movements. I am convinced that this era of American history (2008-2011) will be termed the GREAT DENIAL PERIOD in the future history books. Either we need to balance the budget and rid ourselves of entitlements or we will continue to move toward socialism.  I spent some time in France last year. I saw and heard how bad socialism is. The French hate it  but they can ‘t change it.
The reason I write this to you is to uncover the truth and outrageous injustice that is occurring currently in America. It is hard for me to believe that such outlandish activities are occurring
in our good old USA without the press covering this. Wow! If these activities were going on to non-Caucasians ‘.it would be deemed harassment and discrimination. It was a tough thing for me to experience. I did not know how to console these friends of mine ‘ Pray for them. I believe they are doing the right thing ‘..and they are brave people. As Fritz always says Attitude is Everything. They will press on.
So, in summary ‘.I realize we are currently in a sort of ‘CIVIL WAR ‘ in America. I can‘t believe that there is so much HATE in the U.S. amongst people whom are arguing about benefits. I hope and pray it doesn‘t come to physical conflict and it should not!  However, people during the Civil war put their life on the line for what was the ‘right thing to do for America ‘. I wonder if today‘s citizen is as convicted to do the correct thing for our future ‘
We need some new  leadership in this country. This will only occur if people are brave enough like the Ripps and the Wyttenbachs to stand up and do the right thing without worry about their personal loss and repercussions. I take my hat off and applaud these people. Everything I divulged above is current and true. It still baffles me how these injustices are occurring right under our noses.
No press to cover this side of the story. These families are concerned about going broke but they are standing up for what is right and risking their livelihood for the right thing! God Bless- Tom Peters
P.S. Remember- politics is NOT a spectator sport. We all need to get off the couch and GET ENGAED in correcting the system. The forefathers of our constitution would be turning over in their graves if they say the current state of the political system in America. We should and CAN fix this system with intellect and some sacrifices. Brutality and threats are not the answer. Ignorance currently rules. Knowledge and persistence will prevail. However, this system will NOT change unless smart people become enraged enough to participate in changing the system.
Perhaps I finally realized I am a TEA PARTY member ‘ Neither Republicans nor Democrats are correcting the injustices that have accumulated during the last 30-40 years.
Veterans Benefits

Mortality Rates Of Vietnam Veterans

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Thank you Patrick Brady for shedding some truth to the rapidly circulating rumors that we are passing on to glory at an accelerated rate.  Some good news for Vietnam Veterans is always welcomed. I for one intend to be staring into the camera on the History Channel one day when they introduce me as the, “oldest living Vietnam Veteran! I am a Life Member of VVA and a past president. I have nothing but the utmost respect for this fraternal organization and the purity of their advocacy. The VVA motto of never leaving another veteran behind is taken seriously.

Go to VVA.org to see their award winning publication, “The Veteran.”
Not Dead Yet
Patrick S. Brady
Mortality Rates Among Vietnam Veterans

Recently, the Internet has beena wash with dire predictions of the imminent demise of all Vietnam veterans. Both alarmed and suspicious, Vietnam veteran Pat Brady did some investigating.Here’s what he found.

“If you’re alive and reading this, how does it feel to be among the last one-third of all the U. S. Vets who served in Vietnam?” Like a ritual salute, this question has passed from one veteran website to another in the past 18 months, accompanied by a drumbeat of numbers: 711,000Vietnam veterans died between 1995 and 2000, or 142,000 deaths every year, 390 every day; no more than 850,000 Vietnam veterans remain out of 2.7 million, meaning at least 1.8 million have fallen to the swift scythe of the Grim Reaper; and “only the few” will still be around by 2015. “We died in ’Nam,” reckoned one veteran, “just haven’t fallen over yet.”

This actuarial cadence-count went viral on “Before They Go,” a nine-minute video posted on YouTube by Veterans Appreciation Alliance, a group seeking sponsors and contributions for its Grateful Red, White & Blue Appreciation Tour. One website hailed the video as a “warning that our Vietnam vets are dying off rapidly, and we need to give them a proper ‘Welcome Home’ before they are gone.” Many veterans proved quite ready to believe that their comrades were falling fast to Agent Orange, post-traumatic stress disorder, and suicide.

But others were skeptical. Passing through the blogosphere, the supposed daily death toll of 390 Vietnam veterans sprouted a spurious pedigree, with several websites attributing it to the Naval Health Research Center. This was news to the Center, whose Public Affairs Office called on the makers of “Before They Go” to remove the bogus attribution. The nine minute video disappeared from You Tube by mid-April 2010, replaced by a four-minute version cleansed of the offending mortality figures.

Yet the mournful numbers still pop up all over the Internet. Are they true? Where did they come from? First, we must face the limits of our knowledge: No one knows for sure how many in-country Vietnam veterans are alive. So anyone who tells you he is sure is making it up.

The number living must be measured against a baseline of those who were there in the first place. But no one is sure of that number either, despite a surfeit of surveys and estimates. The Department of Defense kept a consolidated file of those who died in the Vietnam War but not of those who fought it. Encyclopedias, dictionaries, and almanacs of thewar are conspicuously silent about how many actually saw duty in Vietnam.

To make up for the lack of an in-country master list, estimates and surveys have started with figures for those who served worldwide during the Vietnam era, and for those who served in the Vietnam theater, a term that includes Vietnam, its coastal waters, Laos, Cambodia, and sometimes Thailand.

Defining the era presents problems of its own, with Section 101(29) of the U.S. Code for Veterans offering two definitions of the Vietnam era: 1) February 28, 1961, to May 7, 1975, for veterans who served in Vietnam; and 2) August 5, 1964, to May 7, 1975, for those who served elsewhere. These are the same parameters used to determine eligibility for membership in VVA.Adding to the confusion, some estimates treat the Vietnam era as ending not in 1975, but in 1973, the year of the Paris Peace Accords. So different estimates of those who served and those who survive produce different results, varying according to the location of service (Vietnam itself or the Vietnam theater) and time covered (usually starting in 1961, 1964, or even 1965, and ending in 1973 or 1975).

A survey of surveys appeared in the first volume (1994) of the Institute of Medicine’s semiannual studies, Veterans and Agent Orange. Estimates of in-country Vietnam service, the Institute found, ranged from 2. 6 to 3.8 million, with most falling between 2.6 and 2. 9. Estimates for the Vietnam theater ranged from 2.7 to 4.3 million, with 3.4 million the most widely cited figure.

These numbers must be seen against the larger total of those who served worldwide during the Vietnam era, 8.75 million from 1964-73, and 9.2 million from 1964-75. Depending on the estimate, one out of three Vietnam-era veterans served in the Vietnam theater, and four out of five Vietnam theater veterans served in Vietnam itself.

With these estimates in mind, we can start closing in on what can be said about the number of living in country Vietnam veterans. Better figures are available for era veterans than for in-country veterans. The 2000 Census long form, for example, asked about period of service but not place. Estimates for living in-country veterans can be extrapolated from figures for living era veterans.

Setting a benchmark for the year 2000, the U.S. Census Bureau estimated there were 8,380,356 living Vietnam-era (here defined as 1964-75) veterans, about 90 percent of the original 9.2 million, with the death toll near 800,000. The Centers for Disease Control reached a like finding in a Post-Service Mortality Study of 18,313Vietnam-era veterans, half of whom served in country. By the end of 2000, the CDC found, about 91 percent of era veterans were living, aged 46 to 67 in the sample, with a mean of 53; death rates for veterans were lower than for all men in the U.S. through 1998; and in-country veterans suffered 7 percent higher mortality than other veterans. That difference, the CDC said, was “not statistically significant,” was confined to the first five years after discharge from active duty, and was limited to “external causes”—mostly traffic accidents, suicides, homicides, and unintentional poisonings, many of them drug-related.

If in-country Vietnam veterans accounted for about a third of all Vietnam-era veterans, and if they were Dying only slightly faster than the others, then the 800,000 era veterans who died from the 1960s through 2000 should have included fewer than 300,000 in-country veterans. That fact rules out the supposed passing of 711,000 of them between 1995 and 2000 alone, a figure that forms one verse of the Internet litany.

Reaching a comparable estimate for the Vietnam theater, the VA Office of Environmental Epidemiology keeps an incomplete list of 3,056,000 Vietnam theater veterans, and counts 349,000 theater veteran deaths through 2001, a count the Office considers 95 percent complete. If four out of five theater veterans served in country and if they were dying only slightly faster than other veterans, then the 349,000 theater deaths should have included 280,000 to 300,000 in country veteran deaths through 2001, an estimate in line with the CDC and Census figures through 2000.

The VA’s Veteran Population Model for 2007 estimates that 8,448,000 Vietnam-era (1964-75) veterans were living in 2000, and 7,526,000 living on September 30, 2010. While 47,000 leaving the military joined the ranks of Vietnam-era veterans during the decade, 969,000 deaths thinned those ranks.Again, if a third of era veterans were in-country veterans who were dying only slightly faster than other veterans through 2000, they should account for 325,000 to 350,000 of the 969,000 Vietnam-era deaths from 2000 to 2010, unless their mortality rate skyrocketed far above the rate for other veterans after 2000.

There is no evidence that it did, and some that it did not. A Current Population Survey by the Census Bureau for August 2009 estimated 7,183,000 living Vietnam-era veterans, including 3,566,000 living Vietnam theater veterans. Compared to other estimates, the era figure seems low, while the theater figure seems high, but the high number may cover a longer period—1961 to 1975—and may reflect inflated self-reporting of Vietnam service. But even allowing for such complications, the survey weighs against any soaring death rate for in-country Vietnam veterans. If three million or more theater veterans are alive, and four out of five of them are in-country veterans, then 2.4 million or more in-country Vietnam veterans should still live, triple the 800,000 rumored on the Internet.

Origins Of A Myth

So, thank God, most in-country veterans are not dead yet. But who started the story that they were? Doomsday dirges do not need footnotes, but mortality statistics do, and the sources cited for these Internet numbers are few and mystifying.One of them, “the Public Information Office,” likely leads to the American War Library.As one blogger warned: “The false number of 850,000 originates from the phony website of the American War Museum, which disseminates much false information for reasons only its manager (it is a one-man operation) might know.”

The blogger misidentified the site. Otis Willie and Roger Simpson of the Public Information Office of the American War Library (not Museum) disseminated the number in a June 7, 2009, posting on alt.genealogy: “The official estimate of Vietnam War ‘survivors’ as of 25May2009 is 831,000.The number of Americans who served in Vietnam between 1945 and 1975 is 3.2 mil. To 2. 7 mil. 2.7 mil. Is the number counted by DoD in 1984 when producing ‘The Vietnam War Service Index.’” Whilemost cyberspace chats have rounded off the number of living Vietnam veterans to 800,000 or 850,000, the American War Library’s more precise number is echoed in a posting by “Stillhere” on Veterans Benefits Network that regrets “there are only 831,000 of our brothers/ sisters still alive.”

Calling itself “The World’s Largest On-Line Military, Veteran and Military Family Registry,” the American War Library asks: “If you are a Vietnam vet, have you verified that your name is listed in the Department of Defense’s Official Vietnam Veteran War Service Index?”This “official” index, the same one cited in the Library’s posting about 831,000 survivors, is often cited on the Internet as “officially provided by the War Library.”As far as I can tell, this Index is nowhere to be found.

The American War Library seems to be a home business run by Phillip R. Coleman in Gardena, California.Various web postings have warned that “Roger Simpson” and “OtisWillie” are two of dozens of names used by Coleman; that the Library solicits personal information from veterans but does not provide free information about veterans; and that the Library and its many related websites post myriad military stories to attract attention and gain legitimacy. For examples of the warnings, Google “AmericanWar Library–exposed” or “American War Library scam,” or seewww.armchairgeneral.com/ forums/showthread.php?t=96622

Statistics are hard enough without phony numbers thrown in. But in the available statistics, we find no evidence that the number of living in-country Vietnam veterans is only 800,000, and strong evidence that it is much higher.Again, bymy own amateur extrapolations, fewer than 300,000 in-country veterans likely died before 2000, and a slightly larger number since, adding up to 600,000 or more dead, leaving two million or more alive. So if you’re a Vietnam veteran reading this, how does it feel to stand with the three out of four who are still here and mean to stay for a while?

For information used in this article, I thank Mike Wells of the VA Office of Policy and Planning, National Center for Veterans Analysis and Statistics, and James Messinger, the treasurer of the National VietnamWar Museum.

Veterans Benefits

Heal My PTSD Telephone Support Group

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Dear Mike,

Wow, yesterday’s support groups were HEATED, literally! The major topic of the day was how to deal with anger. As you can imagine there was much to discuss, including the tip below.
But first, other subjects we covered included:
  1. what to do when your family gets in the way of your recovery
  2. how to move through emotions without being overwhelmed
  3. the importance of balancing the work of recovery with something playful and fun
  4. how to develop a practice of checking in with yourself — and why you need to
  5. how to develop trust

This week’s PTSD Recovery Tip: Give yourself a plan to manage anger.

Think back to the last time you got really, really angry. How did you feel afterward? For most of us, the feeling of regret, shame, grief and embarassment is keen as we rage and then have to clean up the mess afterward.
How would it change things if you could better control that anger process? The truth is, with a simple process you can develop the muscle to muscle down that angry feeling.
For one more moment, think back to the last time you got angry.
Step One: I bet you could feel it coming on. I bet there were sensations in your body (your breathing, your pulse, your stomach, your chest, your body heat) that alerted you to the fact that a huge wave of emotion was rising.
Identify what happened in your body and your mind just before the anger really surged. Make a list of the things you noticed. This is your alarm system. It’s letting you know what’s coming: Pay attention to it!
Step Two: As you think back to that moment, what could you have done differently so that you spared the person you raged at? Make a list of alternative actions.
Step Three: Based on your answer to Step One, added to your answer to Step Two, write out a plan for how you will manage future anger.
A plan might look like this:
Step One: Notice a tightening in my stomach, feel my heart beat faster, notice my breath is shallow.
Step Two: Take a deep breath. Step away from the situation (including removing myself from the entire environment). Take some time to think through what is bothering me, what I want to say, and how to say it.
Learning to have appropriate reactions to anger is an important step in organizing and affecting your PTSD recovery. Having a strategy about how to implement a plan for this and other PTSD recovery processes is the focus of every Heal My PTSD Telephone Support Group meeting.
If you are ready to (at your own pace) become more proactive in your PTSD recovery, sign up for a Heal My PTSD Telephone Support today.
Got questions? Let’s set up a complimentary phone call to discuss!
You have enormous healing potential. The goal is learning to access it. That’s what the Heal My PTSD Virtual Support groups are designed to help you do.
Joyfully,
Michele
Michele Rosenthal, PTSD Coach

Veterans Benefits

Veterans For Change

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While I am not in agreement with all that is stated here, I do think that some of what is said is helpful for the common good of veterans. MB

Veterans-For-Change

11901 Samuel Drive

Garden Grove, California 92840

MEDIA RELEASE

 

Written by:    Jim Davis                                              IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Edited by:      Barbie Perkins-Cooper

Date:

Contact:       Jim Davis, Founder & CEO – Veterans for Change – Jdavis92840@sbcglobal.net

714-983-4919

 

Veterans Still Affected by Increasing Problems, Often Ignored

 

Garden Grove, CA – April 5, 2011 – Veterans-for-Change would like to bring to your attention the ever-increasing problems affecting veterans and their families every day.

 

President Obama has clearly stated, “Whether you left the service in 2009 or 1949, we will fulfill our responsibility to deliver the benefits and care that you earned. That’s why I’ve pledged to build nothing less than a 21st-century VA”.

Among the issues we would like to address are the following:

Herbicide, TCE/PCE, Benzene, JP-4, JP-8 and a host of other chemicals causing Contamination (CONUS, Including Alaska, HI, and Canada, Panama Canal):

 

  • · Every day, thousands of veterans who served in Korea, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and CONUS are denied benefits they are entitled to for exposure to dioxin from herbicides and other defoliants, TCE/PCE, JP-4, JP-8, Benzene and many other chemicals.

 

  • · In addition to service overseas, we have countless thousands of veterans who served on many military bases stateside who were exposed to TCE, PCE, Benzene and approximately 35-45 more harmful chemicals, never provided safety and use instruction or equipment, and are now just as equally ill. Failure to provide safety and use instructions led to health problems that will remain for the remainder of the Veterans life.

 

  • · In both S.E. Asia and CONUS Agent Orange was used as a defoliant. In S.E. Asia, the chemicals were used to protect our troops and prevent the enemy from hiding in the foliage to kill many more of our fighting men and women. (Est. time frame of 1962-1975)

 

  • · In the CONUS, these harmful, debilitating herbicides and other chemicals were used to keep surroundings of various military buildings free from unwanted vegetation growth and keep it clean and neat looking.

 

  • · On all military bases, on board ships, everywhere mechanical components were cleaned and re-used TCE was the chemical of choice as a degreaser. PCE is the chemical of choice for dry cleaners, again never used with any protective gear.

 

  • · Veterans who served in Korea and on the DMZ are denied benefits due to erroneous reports about where these chemicals were deployed and that there is no “residual life” of Agent Orange Dioxin which if it were true then why are we in Viet Nam helping the Vietnamese government to clean up the land that was contaminated some 40 years ago?

 

Veterans-For-Change believes exposure to Agent Orange is truly exposure to a deadly chemical, regardless of the location where it was deployed. There have been far too many reports of illness, including cancers, Diabetes, heart disease, and many, many more – all related to service or tour of duty in a combat zone, or in a contaminated zone!

 

One of the chemicals in the Agent Orange herbicide combination contained contaminating traces of TCDD (dioxin). Dioxin has been shown to cause a variety of illnesses in laboratory animals. http://veteransinfo.tripod.com/Background_on_Agent_Orange.pdf. Studies also suggest that the chemical may be related to a number of cancers and other health effects in humans. http://www.publichealth.va.gov/exposures/agentorange/health_effects.asp The research data speaks for itself – Agent Orange was and is a deadly, toxic chemical, destroying the health and lives of many Veterans, including those who served in Korea and on the DMZ.

 

Many of these Veterans are continuously denied as the missions they served on were, and still to this day remain, classified by the DoD even though former President Bush signed executive order 13292 on March 28, 2003 directing classified missions beyond 25 years be declassified. Veterans-For-Change, as an advocacy group, has as its mission to broadcast and inform all veterans about their rights concerning Agent Orange, regardless of when and where the military veteran was exposed. You, the legislators of our proud and courageous country owe a debt of gratitude and benefits and care to our veterans. Please take a stand and help us to provide the best care for our veterans. Take action today!

 

We ask that you not only support any proposed legislation, but also be pro-active and introduce legislation to correct these problems!

 

No assignability and exempt status of benefits:

 

In title 38, Part IV, Chapter 53 §5301 the law is very clear on how Veterans disability benefits are protected:

 

Payments of benefits due or to become due under any law administered by the Secretary shall not be assignable except to the extent specifically authorized by law, and such payments made to, or on account of, a beneficiary shall be exempt from taxation, shall be exempt from the claim of creditors, and shall not be liable to attachment, levy, or seizure by or under any legal or equitable process whatever, either before or after receipt by the beneficiary. The preceding sentence shall not apply to claims of the United States arising under such laws nor shall the exemption therein contained as to taxation extend to any property purchased in part or wholly out of such payments. The provisions of this section shall not be construed to prohibit the assignment of insurance otherwise authorized under chapter 19 of this title, or of service members’ indemnity. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/38/usc_sec_38_00005301—-000-.html

 

Yet everyday judges across the country are tapping into, and forcing disabled veterans to use their VA disability benefit income to pay child support, spousal support and bad debts totally and completely ignoring the federal law.

 

In addition, when Veterans refuse, they are immediately thrown in jail for 20 days and as long as six months or more, thus unlawful imprisonment!

 

We do not know how much clearer the law can be, but Congress and the President need to step up to the plate and stop this abuse against Veterans.

 

With what little benefits Veterans receive as it is today, most are barely living at poverty level and many below poverty level.

 

We ask that you please be pro-active and introduce legislation to correct these problem and stop civil judges from taking a Veterans Benefits and using as “disposable” income.

 

President Obama has said: “We have a sacred trust with those who wear the uniform of the United States of America, a commitment that begins with enlistment and must never end”. This statement was published in April, 2009. Isn’t it time for Congress and our Government to make these strong, compelling words come true for our precious Veterans who are finding living with the difficulties, physical and emotional wounds of combat more than they can tolerate?

 

If our nation rescinds its promises and ignores its obligation to those who have fought to preserve freedom throughout the world, we compromise the right to ask our men and women to serve and defend our national principals. The choice is yours.

 

Take a stand to stop the endless spinning wheel of a hamster or guinea pig. Take a stand so our Veterans are treated as human beings, not pin cushions, or undeserving human beings. Veterans served our country with dedication to duty. Isn’t it time America and the VA treated our soldiers and veterans with the respect, and the benefits so promised.

 

Veterans-For-Change has been crying out to all 535 members of Congress now for four years as of April 2006, as President Wilson said, a leader’s ears must ring with the voices of the people! Do you hear us?

 

Veterans and their families are tired of campaign promises and yellow ribbons. We need politicians on Capitol Hill to take immediate action to truly support all Veterans.

Veterans Benefits

Veterans And The Looming Bogus Budget Wars

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This blog is intended for advocacy for veterans health and legislative issues. I am frequently asked to dip into the political fray and engage in the polemic. For the most part I have avoided that urge as the universal Tower of Babel is filled with plenty of commentary, most of which results in nothing more than a the proverbial pissing in the wind.

Enter the budget crisis, or at least the premeditated crafting of  a staged event that has been rehearsed since the midterm elections.

I wonder what John and Abagail Adams and General  George Washington would say about the crippling of our nation over subsidized pap smears!

In 1974 I was in Nursing School and working as an OR Tech in the Operating room at Tucson Medical Center, where they performed abortions on Saturdays. After assisting in two of these procedures I could no longer tolerate the work and and asked to not be assigned to that duty. I had to carry the dead babies  in a bottle over to Histology after the procedure.  I knew then my stance on abortion, and the hospital administration granted my wish.  However, I knew from that day forward that this issue would one day cripple the nation  and be more divisive than the Vietnam war, once it entered the political arena and became a hot potato for fund raising and party positioning. That day has arrived.

Not once since the passing of Roe vs Wade have I wavered in the belief that this one issue policy thinking would enfeeble our legislative process and may well even be used by outside forces to create a house divided in our nation. It is working to that end.

There was a time at the forming of our nation that the very existence of political parties and their rabid adherents posed a great deal of anxiety for the leaders of the day, including General George Washington who had strong beliefs that political parties undermined national unity. He frequently expressed his angst for what he termed, “the spirit of party.”

 

“It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments (incites),occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption…..”  George Washinton farewell address  1796

Now, this is as prophetic as Isaiah in the Old Testament!  Tell me how much we have evolved as a body politic?

“Who by taking up thought can add a cubit to their stature?’  And what may be the stature of the elected officials as we approach an impasse, in two hours, that is blatant in its red herring aspects of not addressing the budget deficit and serving solely as a megaphone for party politics. What an embarrassment to the youth of this nation and to our soldiers.

Abortion should be addressed outside the political spectrum as it will be an eternal black hole in the hands of the paid for electeds.

If we want to balance the budget, stop funding private mercenaries who number 1:1 for every member of the Armed Forces over seas. They are performing abortions of the natural democratic  diplomatic process.

Coupled with the 11 billion a month for the cost of  multiple wars and the lifetime care of disabled veterans we are going broke policing the world.

Planned Parenthood needs no guns.