Oregon Gov. Cutting Veterans Funding by $10 Million? Now?

"Huge betrayal": Kate Brown angers veterans with cuts despite Measure 96
The Oregonian/OregonLive
By Hillary Borrud
December 09, 2016

Rep. Julie Parrish, R-West Linn, who was a leading advocate for Measure 96, called the governor's budget proposal "a slap in the face to Oregon voters." Parrish's husband, Mark, served in the Army during the Persian Gulf War and later in Iraq in 2009 and 2010.

Oregon veterans are taking Gov. Kate Brown to task for proposing millions of dollars less for services than voters might have assumed when they passed Measure 96 in November.

Measure 96 was the most popular measure on the fall ballot, winning 84 percent to 16 percent. It sets aside 1.5 percent of Oregon Lottery funds for services such as education, housing, health care and helping veterans better access their benefits. That's expected to hit more than $18 million over the next two years.

Brown's budget, revealed last week, includes that funding as directed. But at the same time, it would cut $10 million from the state's current spending on veterans' services. If lawmakers agree next year, that means veterans and their supporters could see far less money than expected.
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Veterans Stand Down: Here Comes the Judges

Veterans affairs: Judges volunteer at Stand Down to help vets with legal issues
Monterey Herald
By Dennis Taylor
July 4, 2014

SEASIDE
At least nine judges from six California counties will be among dozens of volunteers on hand Aug. 1-3 at Stand Down, a three-day tent city offering free medical, legal, housing, education, life skills and other services to homeless veterans.

The event, staged every other year by the Veterans Transition Center, will be held at Fort Ord's motor pool location, Eighth Avenue and Lloyd Way, north of Giggling Road.

The judges, including Monterey County Superior Court Judge Sam Lavorato, will hold court sessions to help homeless veterans resolve outstanding cases. In many instances, the judge will assign the veteran community service. Once that obligation is completed, the judge may dismiss the case. Monterey College of Law may then assist the veteran with a motion to clear his or her record.

"Once an individual's record is cleared, then that person has more of an opportunity for obtaining a job," Lavorato said. "Hopefully, my presence will help make a veteran whole again."

Other judges who have confirmed they will be there include John Gallagher of Santa Cruz County, Judge Stephen Manley of Santa Clara County and John Grandsaert of San Mateo County. Fresno, Solano and Alameda counties also have expressed interest in sending judges.
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University keeps vets story project alive

University keeps vets story project alive

By Janese Silvey - The Columbia (Mo.) Daily Tribune via AP
Posted : Monday Jul 12, 2010 14:47:12 EDT

COLUMBIA, Mo. — As a veteran of Afghanistan and an active member of the Army National Guard, Rep. Jason Kander knows the importance of sharing stories from combat. But he isn’t keen on the idea of doing that on taxpayers’ dimes — 6 million dimes, to be exact.

Kander was one of the state lawmakers who helped scrap $600,000 from the upcoming state budget that had been requested to support Missouri Veterans Stories, a project that records Missouri veterans talking about their war experiences.

Now, he and several other representatives are teaming up with the University of Missouri to recreate that veteran video program in a way that benefits students and saves taxpayer dollars.

Missouri Veterans Stories debuted in 2007 and has since produced about 1,300 videos of men and women sharing their memories from World War II. It has been operated out of Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder’s office and managed by a private video company, Patriot Productions.

When Kander began questioning the allocation during a budget committee meeting this past session, he learned that the state was the company’s only client. Further investigation revealed that those affiliated with Patriot Productions also made campaign contributions to Kinder, said Kander, D-Kansas City.
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University keeps vets story project alive

Bill Of Rights For American Veterans

Oct 20 2008 8:04 AM EDT

Bill Of Rights For American Veterans: Breaking Down The Petition's Calls To Action
The BRAVE petition urges the next president to support veterans' key issues.
By Andrew Millard

With Election Day right around the corner, there's one issue that, no matter how you define yourself politically, we can all agree on: Veterans deserve the best care and support possible.

That's why MTV has teamed up with vet organizations around the country to introduce the Bill of Rights for American Veterans (BRAVE), a petition urging the next president to raise awareness and support veterans' issues, such as employment, health care, homelessness and education.


The BRAVE petition makes five specific calls to action:

1. Properly Diagnose and Treat Mental-Health Issues

Some troops come home from the battlefields with scars not visible to the naked eye. Many return with intense emotional or mental challenges, like post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury.

One former Marine currently suffering from PTSD is Justin LaPree, who served two seven-month tours in Iraq. In 2003, he was part of the initial Iraq invasion, and in 2004, he was stationed in Fallujah, an area that saw some of the heaviest fighting and casualties. He was diagnosed with PTSD after his second tour.

Though he's been a civilian since 2005, he's still in recovery. With a lot of courage, Justin has managed to land a successful job in finance and is a major contributor to the Wounded Warrior Project, a program designed to raise awareness for injured servicemen and -women across the country. By signing the BRAVE petition, LaPree believes the transition will be much easier for many veterans dealing with brain injuries.

"It is extremely important for veterans to get this help so they can make the transition from the war zone to the civilian sector," he said. "This disease ... can take over your life with the use of alcohol and drugs and lead you down a road of hopelessness and despair. All veterans need to know that there is help available out there, and all you have to do is ask."

2. Prevent Homelessness Among Veterans
3. Give Disabled Vets the Benefits They Deserve
4. Veterans Hospitals Need to Be Fully Funded
5. Pay The Troops for the Work They Do
go here for all of this
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1597405/20081017/story.jhtml

John McCain needs to remember he's a veteran

GI Bill Sparks Senate War
Politico: Sens. McCain, Webb Locked In Battle Over Webb's New GI Bill
Comments 6
April 30, 2008


The Politico) This story was written by David Rogers.

From Annapolis to Vietnam and back to the Pentagon, John McCain and Jim Webb trod the same paths before coming to the Senate. Iraq divides them today, but there’s also the new kinship of being anxious fathers watching their sons come and go with Marine units in the war.

So what does it say about Washington that two such men, with so much in common, are locked in an increasingly intense debate over a shared value: education benefits for veterans?

“It’s very odd,” said former Nebraska Democratic Sen. Bob Kerrey, a mutual friend. And that oddness gets greater by the day as the two headstrong senators barrel down colliding tracks.

An Arizona Republican, McCain has all but locked up the Republican presidential nomination and is preparing for a fall campaign in which his support of the Iraq war is sure to be a major issue. Yet the former Navy pilot and Vietnam POW makes himself a target by refusing to endorse Webb’s new GI education bill and instead signing on to a Republican alternative that focuses more on career soldiers than on the great majority who leave after their first four years.

Undaunted, Webb, who was a Marine infantry officer in Vietnam, is closing in on the bipartisan support needed to overcome procedural hurdles in the Senate, where the cost of his package - estimated now at about $52 billion over 10 years - is sure to be an issue. But McCain’s support would seal the deal like nothing else, and the new Republican bill, together with a letter of opposition Tuesday from Defense Secretary Robert Gates, threatens to peel off support before the Democrat gets to the crucial threshold of 60 votes.
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John McCain loves to remind people he served during the Vietnam war and was a POW. He has held this part of his life up as a reason to make him Commander-in-Chief of the military and also seems to think this makes him the perfect person to become President. If this reason alone qualified him to become President then there are a lot of others who would also qualify to become President since there were a lot of other prisoners of war.


There are these from the occupation of Iraq

Most of the POWs were captured from the ambush of the 507th Maintenance Company when a convoy of vehicles from the 507th got lost and entered the Iraqi held town of Nasiriyah on March 23, 2003. The 507th was in charge of supporting actual combat troops but were not combat troops themselves and were ill equipped for fighting and quickly surrendered after all their weapons jammed. From their unit nine soldiers in the company were captured in the ambush and following soldiers surrendered to Iraqi forces:
Spc. Edgar Hernandez, 21, of Mission, Texas, was hit in the biceps of his right arm.
Spc. Joseph Hudson, 23, of Alamogordo, New Mexico, was shot three times, twice in the ribs and once in the upper left buttocks.
Spc. Shoshana Johnson, 32, a naturalized American from Panama, was shot with a single bullet that sliced through both ankles. She was the first black woman ever taken prisoner in the American military history.
Private First Class Patrick Miller, 23, of Wichita, Kansas
Sgt. James Riley - 31-year-old bachelor from Pennsauken, New Jersey. As the senior soldier present it was he who ordered the surrender.

And famous one

Jessica Lynch born April 26, 1983 in Palestine, West Virginia suffered a head laceration, an injury to her spine, and fractures to her right arm, both legs, and her right foot and ankle. She was knocked unconscious after her Humvee crashed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_P.O.W.s_in_2003_Invasion_of_Iraq

We also have these from the Gulf War

Acree, Clifford M. USMC Jan.18, 1991 POW 03/05/91
Andrews, William USAF -- MIA 03/05/91
Berryman, Michael C. USMC -- MIA 03/05/91
Cornum, Rhonda USA -- * 03/05/91
Dunlap, Troy USA -- * 03/05/91
Eberly, David W. USAF Jan. 17, 1991 POW 03/05/91
Fox, Jeffrey USAF Feb. 19, 1991 POW 03/05/91
Griffith, Thomas E. Jr. USAF Jan. 17, 1991 POW 03/04/91
Hunter, Guy L. Jr. USMC Jan. 18, 1991 POW 03/05/91
Lockett, David USA Jan. 20, 1991 MIA 03/04/91
Roberts, Harry M. USAF Jan. - 1991 POW 03/05/91
Rathbun-Nealy, Melissa USA Jan. 30, 1991 MIA 03/04/91
Slade, Lawrence R. USN Jan. 21, 19915,3 POW 03/04/91
Small, Joseph USMC Feb. 25, 1991 MIA 03/05/91
Sanborn, Russell A.C. USMC Feb. 09, 1991 MIA 03/05/91
Stamaris, Daniel USA -- * 03/05/91
Storr, Richard Dale USAF -- MIA 03/05/91
Sweet, Robert J. USAF Feb. - , 1991 MIA 03/05/91
Tice, Jeffrey Scott USAF Jan. -, 1991 POW 03/05/91
Wetzel, Robert USN Jan. 17, 1991 MIA 03/04/91
Zaun, Jeffrey Norton USN Jan. 17, 1991 POW 03/04/91
http://www.nationalalliance.org/gulf/returnees.htm

And more from Vietnam

List of 1,205 P.O.W.s
In April 1993, Harvard scholar Stephen Morris discovered a document in a Soviet archive indicating that Vietnam may have misled Americans about the numbers of P.O.W.s it held at the war's end. The document, a translation of writings allegedly prepared by North Vietnamese general Tran Van Quang, stated that North Vietnam held 1,205 American P.O.W.s as of September 1972, just a few months before the release of the 591 P.O.W.s in Operation Homecoming. U.S. government officials suggested that the discrepancy in numbers might have been an exaggeration on the part of Tran Van Quang, or that a confusion of statistics between American soldiers and South Vietnamese commandos caused by an error in translation. Several independent analysts, however, including former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, said that the document appeared authentic.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/vietnam/trenches/mia.html

Then you have survivors of the Korean War as well. But the only thing all of these people have in common is that they served their country and were held in some of the most horrific conditions anyone could endure. Fully 100% of people who have been tortured develop PTSD because of the treatment they received.

Yes, Mc Cain was a POW but he has also been a senator with a very poor record of voting for veterans. Again if being a POW qualifies him to be President then line up everyone else and let them all run against McCain. The media will not go after any of them on what they say because they never question McCain even though he has a record to either stand or fall on as a Senator.

McCain runs as a veteran but he also runs away from being one when it comes time to taking care of them. When the votes were needed to take care of the wounded from Iraq and Afghanistan, before he put his hat in the ring for the presidency, he voted against veterans. Did anyone ask him why?

These are just a few.

In mid 2007, Senator Reid noted that McCain missed 10 of the past 14 votes on Iraq. However, here is a summary of a dozen votes (two that he missed and ten that he voted against) with respect to Iraq, funding for veterans or for troops, including equipment and armor. I have also included other snippets related to the time period when the vote occurred.

September 2007: McCain voted against the Webb amendment calling for adequate troop rest between deployments. At the time, nearly 65% of people polled in a CNN poll indicted that "things are going either moderately badly or very badly in Iraq.

July 2007: McCain voted against a plan to drawdown troop levels in Iraq. At the time, an ABC poll found that 63% thought the invasion was not worth it, and a CBS News poll found that 72% of respondents wanted troops out within 2 years.

March 2007: McCain was too busy to vote on a bill that would require the start of a drawdown in troop levels within 120 days with a goal of withdrawing nearly all combat troops within one year. Around this time, an NBC News poll found that 55% of respondents indicated that the US goal of achieving victory in Iraq is not possible. This number has not moved significantly since then.

February 2007: For such a strong supporter of the escalation, McCain didn’t even bother to show up and vote against a resolution condemning it. However, at the time a CNN poll found that only 16% of respondents wanted to send more troops to Iraq (that number has since declined to around 10%), while 60% said that some or all should be withdrawn. This number has since gone up to around 70%.

June 2006: McCain voted against a resolution that Bush start withdrawing troops but with no timeline to do so.

May 2006: McCain voted against an amendment that would provide $20 million to the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) for health care facilities.

April 2006: McCain was one of only 13 Senators to vote against $430,000,000 for the Department of Veteran Affairs for Medical Services for outpatient care and treatment for veterans.

March 2006: McCain voted against increasing Veterans medical services funding by $1.5 billion in FY 2007 to be paid for by closing corporate tax loopholes.

March 2004: McCain once again voted for abusive tax loopholes over veterans when he voted against creating a reserve fund to allow for an increase in Veterans' medical care by $1.8 billion by eliminating abusive tax loopholes. Jeez, McCain really loves those tax loopholes for corporations, since he voted for them over our veterans' needs.

October 2003: McCain voted to table an amendment by Senator Dodd that called for an additional $322,000,000 for safety equipment for United States forces in Iraq and to reduce the amount provided for reconstruction in Iraq by $322,000,000.

April 2003: McCain urged other Senate members to table a vote (which never passed) to provide more than $1 billion for National Guard and Reserve equipment in Iraq related to a shortage of helmets, tents, bullet-proof inserts, and tactical vests.

August 2001: McCain voted against increasing the amount available for medical care for veterans by $650,000,000. To his credit, he also voted against the 2001 Bush tax cuts, which he now supports making permanent, despite the dire financial condition this country is in, and despite the fact that he indicated in 2001 that these tax cuts unfairly benefited the very wealthy at the expense of the middle class.
http://www.veteransforcommonsense.org/articleid/9559

When the media finally asked him about the new GI Bill, first he said he didn't have time to read it. Imagine that! All these veterans coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan and he didn't have time to even read the bill because he was out campaigning to become Commander-in-Chief of the military. Then the media asked him again why he did not support the bill. This time he responded by saying that he didn't think it was a good idea to make it more "attractive" to leave the military than to stay in it.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, seemed to give a thumbs down to bipartisan legislation that would greatly expand educational benefits for members of the military returning from Iraq and Afghanistan under the GI Bill.
McCain indicated he would offer some sort of alternative to the legislation to address concerns that expanding the GI Bill could lead more members of the military to get out of the service.
Read the whole story here.

The questions here are very simple ones. If Mc Cain wants to run as a veteran then why does he run away from what veterans need from him? Why does he keep turning his back on other veterans? Why is the media afraid to ask him questions they would have no problem at all asking anyone else? Do they think fact checking and asking him questions would insult the fact he was a POW? If that's the case then this would qualify all POW's this nation has for taking over as President and I'm sure they could all do a much better job for the sake of their brothers and sisters who deserve and earned so much more than he is willing to provide them with.


Chaplain Kathie Costos
Namguardianangel@aol.com
www.Namguardianangel.org
www.Namguardianangel.blogspot.com
www.Woundedtimes.blogspot.com
"The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive veterans of early wars were treated and appreciated by our nation." - George Washington