To Congressman Wally Herger

Does the name Steven Walberg-Riotto have any meaning to you? I doubt it does. Allow me to refresh your memory, Mr. Congressman. He was an 18-year-old Army PFC from Paradise which is in your district. For purposes of educating you, a PFC, since you never saw the need to bother yourself with military service, is a Private First Class – an E-3 – one of the youngest, lowest ranking soldiers who earns a mere $1,534.20 per month while risking the most and doing the dirtiest work in the Army.

You, sir, neither served in the military nor did you even bother to attend this young man’s funeral let alone even send a representative to give comfort to his family for their loss resulting from a war that you have blindly supported from the very beginning. Your website made no mention of the loss of this young soldier from your district as has it with any other casualties who have preceded PFC Walberg-Riotto. Then again none of your children or grandchildren, as have you, ever served in any branch of the military. It seems that service and sacrifice are for others and the privileged classes to which you believe that you and your prodigy belong are exempt from the obligatory “camouflage collar work” of the masses and their offspring.

These words, in the military known as a “dressing down” and one you well deserve, come from a service-disabled veteran who has served just under twenty-two years and who comes from a family with a long and proud record of military service dating back several generations and has lost family to combat.

You, Mr. Herger, are long on patriotic rhetoric in “support” of the troops and extremely short on action to provide that support in any tangible manner. Your voting record against legislation to improve the pay and quality of life of those serving and the benefits and medical care for those who have served is most telling of what a reasonable person could only conclude to be a poorly veiled contempt for those who bear and have borne our defense. I have personally experienced what in the kindest of terms can be described as your silent indifference to veterans having written to you numerous times. I had proposed a benefit for disabled veterans to recognize their service and sacrifices with negligible costs to the government. The end result would be additional funding for morale, welfare and recreation activities as well as additional revenues for commissary and exchange services by giving these veterans access to these services and thus benefiting the Active, Reserve and Guard components as well as their dependants. Each letter to you, sir, was ignored.

I can only conclude by your failure to be represented at PFC Walberg-Riotto’s funeral, your ignoring my proposal that would provide a benefit for disabled veterans with a return of no less $1000 to every $1 invested annually while benefiting those still serving and their families along with your failure to serve during Vietnam that you, sir, are but a self-serving hypocrite more concerned with quietly maintaining public office and enjoying its benefits with no concern for the welfare of anyone other than yourself, your family and your cronies.

While the best and brightest of this nation are on the other side of the globe risking life and limb in the Iraqi campaign which you have fully supported since the first round was fired you, as evidenced on your website, have concerned yourself with teenagers learning how to commit suicide via the internet. In the name of reason, sir, what of value of the lives of all of the teenagers in the armed forces of this nation that you have voted into death’s gaze?! Are they less worthy of your protection while in service and after their return, should they be fortunate enough to return alive, than one teenager in a million who might pursue the internet in order to end their life?

If teenage suicide is of such grave concern to you should your efforts not then be focused on improving mental health services in this nation?

I digress, but I do so only because to attempt to follow your logic leads one down a pretzel shaped path that only supports the conclusion that you are completely disconnected from your constituency if not real life.

In closing, know that there is an ever increasing population of veterans and their families, as well as your general constituency, whose level of disgust with your failures, misplaced alliances, hollow promises, blind party obedience, hypocrisy and your inability to relate to the common person are going to throw the sum total of their efforts and resources behind unseating you in 2008.

21-50. Out.