Get off your ass and really support our troops!

There seems to be a new controversy brewing with regard to the U.S. Department of Vetrans Affairs.  Unless you've been sleeping under a rock in the last few decades you would know about the crazy wait times veterans are having to go through to receive the medical care they rate and deserve.  It would be easy to point to Obama and say it is all his fault and he does hold some responsibility for the situation but here is this blog post I'll list some things you need to think about as you hopefully then go on to contact your federal representatives and tell them you do not accept our federal government sending our young men and women into multiple wars then when they come back decide that you don't want to fund a medical system that will fix what the wars have broken.

I already see members of the GOP complaining that the Obama administration is not taking care of our veterans but they seem to selectively forget that it is they who have repeated blocked attempts to provide more adequate funding for the VA.  Mitch McConnell filibustered a 21 billion dollar bill for the VA that had passed the procedural vote 99 to 0.  Then then turned around and complained about the very bill they said they wanted.  They actively fought against helping our veterans then quickly turned around and ram through a bill that exempts the coal mining industry from environmental regulations.  They named it "Preventing Government Waste and Protecting Coal Mining Jobs in America".

Let me translate the title for you
"Preventing Government Waste" - Don't let the government regulate and test the environmental impact of coal mines to include water safety from chemicals used by the mines entering the water table.
"Protecting Coal Mining Jobs in America" - The coal industry that is already making huge profits and allowed to pollute the environment on top of receiving billions in federal subsidies, tax credits and other corporate welfare benefits needs to cut production costs even more so that their share holders make more money.

So the GOP will filibustered a bill helping our veterans but will ram through a bill that allows an already profitable industry to fuck up our environment even more.

You might ask why the VA needs more money.  Don't we give the VA billions already?  Yes but the VA has been on a bad track since the 60s.  The fact that we've doubled the amount of veterans needing care from the 2 wars the Bush administration started didn't help.  Let me be clear here.  The GOP is a war mongering party that took every opportunity to engage in military action and funding a huge military industrial complex, a.k.a. corporations that profit greatly from said wars, then consistently says that the actual people that fight the wars need to tighten their belts because it cost to much to send them to war.  We'll spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year paying companies like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, Raytheon and many otheres but can't even scrap together 3% of our military budget to handle the wounds we inflict on our soldiers by sending them to wars.

The GOP doesn't have a problem passing tax cuts of hundreds of billions of dollars a year for the rich.  Lets look at the Koch Brothers.  Each of them earn about $700,000 an hour.  That isn't 40 hours a week.  That is for every hour of every day of the year.  They save about over $100,000/hr directly from the Bush tax cuts. Even if they paid the top rate which they don't.  Each of them saves literally billions of dollars a year because of tax cuts.  They invest hundreds of millions into the GOP essentially buying politicians to ensure that the tax brakes for the rich keep coming, push for a removal of the minimum wage because paying someone $7.25/hr is creating a culture of dependency.  If you agree with him until I point out he wants to pay people even less.  What the fuck do you think will happen to a family that is already on minimum wage if they now only get 1/2 or 1/4th of their current income?  Who do you think will pick up the slack.   Note they, and the politicians they've bough, fought against bills to help returning vets with getting jobs and starting businesses. Tax cuts for the rich at the cost of fixing our broken vets seems to be one of the GOP's motives here.

You might say why do we need the VA?  Many people have an image of dirty hospitals can poor care when they think of VA centres but this is far from the truth.  When vets do eventually get the care from the VA they tend to be happier then those that are cared for by the civilian system.  The complaints about in patient care has dropped by over 20% in recent years.

While the GOP have been fighting against supporting the VA deal with over 883,000 claims in their system, more then double of 2009, they do things like try to force the Air Force to buy 42 new C-27Js when the Air Force says they don't want them, that they are already moving the some of the already purchased aircraft to the USAF storage facility in Arizona, you know the one..it is in tons of movies. Or how about the Army being force to buy dozens of new M1A1 tanks it doesn't even want.  They politicians will say it is to save jobs but the cost is stupid.  Take the C-27Js cost $53,000,000 each to buy.  The 42 aircraft will save 800 jobs at the Mansfield National Guard Base.  Who the fuck thinks that spending billions to save 800 jobs is a good idea?  I'll make a useless point and say that the air craft are produced by an Italian company but it doesn't matter.  Even if it was an "American" corporation the truth is that they are multi-national corporations that funnel most of their profits through places like the Bahamas to avoid paying taxes.  Here is what you do.  Don't spend that 2 billion dollars on aircraft that we don't need.  Don't give the money to a multinational corporation that pays almost nothing in taxes and funnel that into the VA's budget and you would have increased their capacity to take care of our vets by over 10%.
Lets just focus here BILLIONS on equipment we don't need just in these 2 cases but fuck our troops is the message that congress is send us.  This is because these corporations kick back part of their HUGE contracts into the campaign financing of politicians.  It is literally kick backs here just legal.  The politicians will call up these multi-national corporations and beg for often just tens of thousands of dollars in donations then when in office push through bills that earn these same corporations hundreds of millions to billions of dollars.

There is a bright note here with some conservatives.  Bill O'Reilly just did an interview with Carl Rove, the man that orgistrated and responsible for a war that cost over 4,000 American soldiers and well over 100,000 Iraq civilians their lives, and pointed out that during the Bush administration there was a 3 billion dollar shortfall with the VA's budget.  Bill O'Reilly then points out to Carl Rove that the VA gave the incoming Obama administration, in 2008, a report that said "that the problems and causes associated with scheduling, waiting times and wait lists are systemic throughout the VHA".  O'Reilly says "the problems existed on the day Bush left office".  Carl Rove just said "no no no" denying the facts.  This isn't a problem that happened under Obama's watch.  Sure it continued and got worse as we brought more and more troops back from those wars Carl Rove got Bush to start.  Obama couldn't just not bring back the troops and avoid the problem.  They've been trying to increase the VA's budget and bring its administration system up to date but the GOP keep blocking the funding.

It is all because multi-national corporations have huge lobby efforts with hundreds of millions and even billions of dollars to buy our politicians and our vets only have you and I supporting them.  How about do more then share a post saying you support our vets.  How about you get off your ass and call your federal politicians and tell them you want them to do right by our broken soldiers.  If soldiers are willing to put their lives on the line to protect your freedoms, even if it is because of lies by people like Carl Rove, then you can spend a bit of your time actually involving yourself with the governing of our country and actually support those that protect us.  Then after you tell your politicians that tell them you are supporting a constitutional convention to remove big money from politics and that the Wolf Pac is coming for them.

Go and see how you can help reclaim our government that is supposed to be of the people by the people and for the people not corporations.