Senator McCain was recently quoted in the Army Times that he would prioritize combat-disabled veterans over all other disabled veterans in the VA system for treatment and compensation. (http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/07/military_mccain_healthcare_072308/) Making a distinction between service-disabled veterans based on how the disability was incurred simply to deny care and benefits to one group to cut expenditures is repugnant and quite telling. McCain was simply focused on combat-wounded veterans as they are a hot topic and therefore a means to gain sympathy votes from those who are not informed on his record and actual position.
The result of McCain’s plan will be a still woefully under-funded VA while shoving every other veteran out in favor of the combat-disabled to save a buck.
This is nothing new. The Bush Administration proposed creating a two-tiered VA system where, for example, a leg lost to an IED would be worth more than a leg lost in a training accident and then declare, in either case, once the veteran was able to walk with a prosthetic device that they were made whole and benefits would stop although both were still missing a leg. There was also the idea of giving the veteran a lump-sum payment for a service-connected disability before the full extent of it and its life-long implications could be evaluated.
It’s no accident under the Republicans that concurrent receipt for military retirement and disability benefits is structured with phase-ins with the actuaries betting most veterans would be dead before they could ever collect or that the VA has evolved into a system that is the veteran’s adversary rather than advocate as the object is to slash budgets on veterans' backs by directives to misdiagnose and deny disability compensation where-ever possible as evidenced by leaked VA memos.
What is not being covered in the presidential campaign coverage is that Senator McCain, despite coming from a Navy family, being an Annapolis graduate, a career Navy officer and POW, has been no friend of veterans as evidenced by his votes; he has voted against sufficient VA funding at every opportunity, watering-down current benefits, or creating new caveats to obtain them and opposed the 21st Century GI Bill.
Every voter should know and remember this: While countless veterans are on waiting lists for medical care and fighting for compensation years after their service McCain gets the very best of priority care at Bethesda Naval Hospital while collecting his Navy retirement, disability compensation and senate pay.
21-50. Out.
Friday, July 25, 2008
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Calling GWB: It IS the Economy, Stupid, Jr.
Deja vous.
Imagine George W. Bush as Calvin Coolidge. Now imagine John McCain as Herbert Hoover. Coolidge put the wheels in motion that brought about The Great Depression. Hoover takes office and the economy hits the fan.
It was the same story then as it is now: A Republican Party that embraced the wealthy and powerful who greased their political wheels in exchange for what little wealth of everyone else their was to be taken. In 1929 as now people who’ve invested for retirement or for their children will loose everything while the corporate barons walk away unscathed and wealthier while none of those responsible for their criminal deeds, to include knowingly trading “bad paper”, predatory business practices, concealing evidence of their criminal enterprises and market manipulation, will answer before any court.
The contempt for the average, working American Joe and Jane exhibited then is evident today in everything this administration and its party do. Stocks tumble, fuel prices soar with no discernable ceiling, corn is diverted for fuel as it is more profitable thus making beef, poultry, cereal, milk and every other food more expensive, more and more are unemployed thanks to globalization for cheap foreign labor, wages are stagnant for what jobs remain, health and other benefits are available for but a few, home foreclosures are epidemic, property values are plummeting, the list is endless. And let’s not forget the homeless the vast majority being veterans.
And let us examine one classic example of early “compassionate conservatism” concerning veterans during The Great Depression of which very few are aware: The Bonus March of 1929 when Hoover turned the Army against homeless, hungry, unemployed WWI veterans peacefully protesting for a benefit they desperately needed then when the Coolidge actuaries were banking they’d all be dead when the benefit was due.
Bush and McCain simply act under the radar to under-fund the VA, direct it to misdiagnose and deny benefits and warehouse the wounded under conditions that no prisoner would be subjected while fighting against better benefits for veterans. In my heart of hearts I believe that if the new generation of veterans the Bush Administration created were to march in protest concerning their treatment and the denial of benefits they would receive the same response of arms.
Bush is holding a bloody knife as he vehemently denies attempting the murder of our economy and way of life as they slowly die before us.
The Bush-McCain timing may be off from that of Coolidge-Hoover but history will indeed repeat itself if McCain takes office. The end is only nigh if we don’t remember history and act not to repeat it.
21-50. Out
Imagine George W. Bush as Calvin Coolidge. Now imagine John McCain as Herbert Hoover. Coolidge put the wheels in motion that brought about The Great Depression. Hoover takes office and the economy hits the fan.
It was the same story then as it is now: A Republican Party that embraced the wealthy and powerful who greased their political wheels in exchange for what little wealth of everyone else their was to be taken. In 1929 as now people who’ve invested for retirement or for their children will loose everything while the corporate barons walk away unscathed and wealthier while none of those responsible for their criminal deeds, to include knowingly trading “bad paper”, predatory business practices, concealing evidence of their criminal enterprises and market manipulation, will answer before any court.
The contempt for the average, working American Joe and Jane exhibited then is evident today in everything this administration and its party do. Stocks tumble, fuel prices soar with no discernable ceiling, corn is diverted for fuel as it is more profitable thus making beef, poultry, cereal, milk and every other food more expensive, more and more are unemployed thanks to globalization for cheap foreign labor, wages are stagnant for what jobs remain, health and other benefits are available for but a few, home foreclosures are epidemic, property values are plummeting, the list is endless. And let’s not forget the homeless the vast majority being veterans.
And let us examine one classic example of early “compassionate conservatism” concerning veterans during The Great Depression of which very few are aware: The Bonus March of 1929 when Hoover turned the Army against homeless, hungry, unemployed WWI veterans peacefully protesting for a benefit they desperately needed then when the Coolidge actuaries were banking they’d all be dead when the benefit was due.
Bush and McCain simply act under the radar to under-fund the VA, direct it to misdiagnose and deny benefits and warehouse the wounded under conditions that no prisoner would be subjected while fighting against better benefits for veterans. In my heart of hearts I believe that if the new generation of veterans the Bush Administration created were to march in protest concerning their treatment and the denial of benefits they would receive the same response of arms.
Bush is holding a bloody knife as he vehemently denies attempting the murder of our economy and way of life as they slowly die before us.
The Bush-McCain timing may be off from that of Coolidge-Hoover but history will indeed repeat itself if McCain takes office. The end is only nigh if we don’t remember history and act not to repeat it.
21-50. Out
Saturday, July 05, 2008
Attention all units: Fuel thefts are rising rapidly
It's happening across the country from big cities to small rural communities and it's growing in scope daily. In the farming parts of the country where there are diesel tanks to fuel equipment in the fields the thieves are steeling hundreds of gallons nightly from single sites. It simply boils down to this:
Invading Iraq created instability in that oil producing region, gave commodities traitors, er, traders, a means to rape the consumer and driven up the cost of everything while destroying our economy in the process. The no-bid oil contracts that the Bush Administration helped to broker though the puppets of the Iraqi Oil Ministry while McCain states that he wants to keep us there for 100-years or longer is proof that big oil is a benefactor of the Republican Party for large contributions and the blood of our service members was for no other reason than to secure and protect oil for market control and limitless profit.
It's no coincidence that oil shot from $36 per barrel prior to the invasion to the $144 of today. The result of unlimited, government-enabled, corporate greed is only more economic suffering for the average, working schmuck by at the hands of big oil and the incentive for thieves that gouging has created to add to that misery.
Bush, his party and their ubber-wealthy enablers are thieving, conniving, calculating, greedy, selfish, short-sighted, trecherous, unpatriotic, cowardly, sub-human scum void of all human decency - period.
21-50. Out.
Invading Iraq created instability in that oil producing region, gave commodities traitors, er, traders, a means to rape the consumer and driven up the cost of everything while destroying our economy in the process. The no-bid oil contracts that the Bush Administration helped to broker though the puppets of the Iraqi Oil Ministry while McCain states that he wants to keep us there for 100-years or longer is proof that big oil is a benefactor of the Republican Party for large contributions and the blood of our service members was for no other reason than to secure and protect oil for market control and limitless profit.
It's no coincidence that oil shot from $36 per barrel prior to the invasion to the $144 of today. The result of unlimited, government-enabled, corporate greed is only more economic suffering for the average, working schmuck by at the hands of big oil and the incentive for thieves that gouging has created to add to that misery.
Bush, his party and their ubber-wealthy enablers are thieving, conniving, calculating, greedy, selfish, short-sighted, trecherous, unpatriotic, cowardly, sub-human scum void of all human decency - period.
21-50. Out.
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