After seeing the issue of sponsorship and corporate ad placement featured on the Colbert Report last night, it was doubly nauseating to see this headline via time.com. Instead of helping out homeless vets, we're ramping up our advertisements to kids to join the Army. [Army and National Guard sponsor Nascar]
Unfortunately, in the recent round of intense budget cuts in Congress, this small funding for the homeless-shelter project was slashed, along with a total of $75 million in homeless-veteran benefits. As both a veteran and an American, I don't believe that veterans' programs should ever be isolated from budget cuts. After all, if the nation is hurting, it is we veterans who have sacrificed and will sacrifice first to protect her. But when I turn the pages of the budget to find a $7.4 million guaranteed commitment to fund a U.S. Army NASCAR sponsorship — and $20 million more from the National Guard to do the same — my blood begins to boil.
Read more: http://www.time.com/...
This is truly shameful. What happened to "support the troops" ? We weren't allowed to protest the misadventure in Iraq because of the existence of an empty slogan: "support the troops".
Meanwhile, Rethuglicans didn't hesitate to accuse Dems of wanting to cut off paychecks for the 'troops' during this recent govt shutdown debate.
**UPDATE:
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/...
That is a story from two months ago, in which a Democrat in Minnesota proposed we cut NASCAR Sponsorship. She received "threats", according to this TPM story.
Harper said he found it "ironic" that McCollum's amendment, which he said is the exact kind of government waste-cutting the new Republican majority has championed, is riling up NASCAR fans to the point of calling McCollum's office.
"We've heard innumerable times that the Republicans were elected to send a message from the people that we should stop spending money," he said. "And yet the people who sent that message want us to spend $7 million for a sticker on a NASCAR."
update 2:
Obama and General Eric Shinseski announced a major push on this policy in 2009. Progress was made! Take a look at what teabaggers want to cut: [DoD link]
Shinseki has become even more forward-leaning on the issue, vowing to achieve those aims a year ahead of schedule.
“As the president has said, ‘We’re not going to be satisfied until every veteran who has fought for America has a home in America,’” he told the Marine Corps League in February. “If you wonder what I will be working on for the next several years, this is it. We will end veteran homelessness in 2014.”
Also last month, Shinseki told the Disabled American Veterans that major progress has been made. The number of homeless veterans has dropped from about 195,000 six years ago to about 76,000, he reported. VA is working to bring that figure below 59,000 by the end of June 2012, and ultimately, to zero.
VA’s fiscal 2012 budget request includes $939 million – up more than $140 million from last year -- for programs to support this mission and build on progress made.
A comprehensive review is under way to identify vacant or underused buildings in VA’s inventory that could house homeless and at-risk veterans and their families, Shinseki told the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee earlier this month.
Advertising consultants may argue that the marketing statistics actually make the NASCAR project worthwhile, that it's great "bang for the buck" in getting the Army slogan in front of millions of young auto fans salivating at the masculine thrill of modern sport. But is this really what we've come down to in our military-recruitment strategy? Have we boiled down the science of appealing to the core of the most dedicated young Americans to simple ad placement? To more-forgiving critics, this is just a miscalculation. To me, it is a telling exposition of how removed our policymakers are from the personal narratives of the men and women who execute their orders.
Running on my 24th month as a platoon leader — 12 of them in combat — I have had the chance to hear each of my soldiers' life stories from before their enlistment. Some had seen tremendous success; others had seen horrific family pains I know I could never endure. When I ask my soldiers why they joined the Army, each of their answers is unique and far more sophisticated than a halftime commercial.
The inhumane logic that led (what presumably are) teabaggers to cut homeless vet aid is ripped apart:
That being said, when a smart, young high school student from Connecticut is considering enlistment, what sort of "ad placement" do homeless veterans on his neighborhood block present? What does that high school student think when he sees veterans unemployed or without health insurance?
An especially valid question to ask here in Los Angeles, the homeless capital of America. Many of the homeless here are veterans, as I learned from a few days of volunteering at LAHSC. (Lahsc.org says they are now defunct, interesting).
--update from DoD article online--
And they are every bit as homeless and every bit as tragic as any homeless vet we've ever had,” Mullen told a Hudson Union Society group in April 2009. “We as a country should not allow that to happen.”
At a National Guard family program volunteer workshop last summer, Mullen shared the story of meeting a young homeless veteran in Los Angeles who had served in both operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom. Mullen said the veteran told him, “I gave a 100 percent; I’d just like 100 percent back.”
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Roughly 56 percent of all homeless veterans are African American or Hispanic, despite only accounting for 12.8 percent and 15.4 percent of the U.S. population respectively.
About 1.5 million other veterans, meanwhile, are considered at risk of homelessness due to poverty, lack of support networks, and dismal living conditions in overcrowded or substandard housing.
How many homeless veterans are there?
Although flawless counts are impossible to come by – the transient nature of homeless populations presents a major difficulty – VA estimates that 107,000 veterans are homeless on any given night. Over the course of a year, approximately twice that many experience homelessness. Only eight percent of the general population can claim veteran status, but nearly one-fifth of the homeless population are veterans.
http://www.nchv.org/...
I saw a friend back in the South write a wall post about her husband not being able to find a job, and someone posted , "Well, there's always the Army." As someone who took the ASVAB test in 2008 at MEPS and would have enlisted in the Navy at that time, if it were not for legal issues, it's pretty insulting to see America's veterans discarded by the GOP establishment and its enablers over and over again.
If we can't afford to help our vets out, then we shouldn't be funneling any money to NASCAR. If anything is going to be stuck going in circles, it should be race cars and not our spending policies.
Meanwhile, veterans coming back right now from service are finding that their training often isn't enough to even land a job.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
While on tour, Smith had worked as a physician's assistant in the intensive care unit (ICU), caring for patients undergoing everything from cancer to recent brain surgery. At times, he served on the front lines treating infections. He never thought the expertise he had developed in the field wouldn’t amount to a job back home -- but when he returned he found that he couldn't get a job in medicine without the right certifications.
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More than one fifth of 18-24 year old veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan were unemployed in 2010, according to recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The unemployment rate for young male veterans was 21.9 percent last year -- more than two percent higher than their non-veteran counterparts. Those who focus on veteran rights and unemployment issues find that number disturbing.
"We're asking our young men and women to go serve in combat and make major sacrifices -- not just going into danger for their country, but the sacrifice of time from their lives. It's a moral imperative to actually support them when they get home," said Tim Embree, a legislative associate at Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America who served two combat tours in Iraq. "We spend so much money investing in the service members while they're wearing the uniform but then to just waste that? It's a waste of tax dollars," he added.
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After serving in the U.S. Navy for the past seven years, Clayton Crotty, 29, couldn't find work. Although he has applied to over 50 jobs since his terminal leave in August 2010, he has yet to be called for an interview.
"I think I'm a good candidate," said Crotty, whose fiancée is due with their first child in August. Although Crotty was never deployed during his two tours in the Navy, he was certified as a welder. "I've applied for welding jobs in Navy shipyards around Philly and can't even get interest in that,” he said. “How much more qualified can you get?"
Seniors who voted for the Teabaggers are watching Medicare come under attack. The Party of Bush used the military like the political version of a civilian shield in all of their war politicking.