Tag: military veterans

Senate Democrats Vote to Cut Military Pensions Benefits…Keep IRS Credit for Illegal Immigrants.

On By kingsjesterIn Politics4 Comments

veterans marchIf you ask any average American, out here in the Real World, which we refer to as the Heartland of America, if they think that Pension Benefits to our Military Veterans who have defended our freedom, should be cut, in order to keep an IRS Credit for Illegal Immigrants, they would look at you as if you were wearing your underwear on top of your head and their answer to your question would not just be “no”, but H@ll, no!

Evidently, Senate Democrats prefer to protect “benefits” for those who have entered our country illegally, instead of taking care of  those who have fought to protect and defend our freedom.

Foxnews.com reports that

A final effort by Senate Republicans to halt cuts to pensions of military retirees failed late Tuesday, after Democrats blocked an amendment to the controversial budget bill.

The two-year budget agreement, which cleared a key test vote earlier in the day, was expected to get a final vote no later than Wednesday.

Ahead of the final vote, Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., tried unsuccessfully to use a parliamentary tactic to force a vote on the amendment, which he wrote to undo the cuts for military retirees.

A provision in the already House-passed bill would cut retirement benefits for military retirees by $6 billion over 10 years.

Sessions wanted to instead eliminate an estimated $4.2 billion in annual spending by reining in an IRS credit that illegal immigrants have claimed.

He and fellow senators argued the bill unfairly sticks veterans and other military retirees with the cost of new spending.

“It’s not correct, and it should not happen,” Sessions said on the floor.

“By blocking my amendment, they voted to cut pensions for wounded warriors,” he said afterwards. “Senators in this chamber have many valid ideas for replacing these pension cuts, including my proposal to close the tax welfare loophole for illegal filers, and all deserved a fair and open hearing. But they were denied.”

Sessions’ office claimed the vote Tuesday to block the amendment was a vote to “cut military pensions instead of cutting welfare for illegal immigrants.”

Senate Budget Committee Chairman Patty Murray, D-Wash.,who brokered the budget deal with House counterpart Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., argued the GOP effort was really an attempt to kill the entire bill.

The Republican-led House passed the bill last week in an effort to avoid another stalemate leading to a potential government shutdown, like the one in October that polls showed was largely unpopular with voters.

Where was the GOP Leadership in the Senate? You know, The Sunshine Boys, McCain and McConnell? Why weren’t they supporting Sen. Sessions?

After the House passed the Budget “Compromise” last week, Rush Limbaugh made the following astute observation:

The Republicans are scared to death to say anything critical of Obama and the Democrats. And they’ll do anything to avoid a government shutdown, including giving Obama what he wants, which we just saw.

Back on October 20th, Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin wrote these words in an Op Ed, posted on Breitbart.com. They fit what is happening, regarding the Budget Issue, perfectly:

…GOP politicians claim they’re against Obamacare and promise to repeal it. But when it came time to stand up and use the Constitutional tools they have – the power of the purse strings – to finally halt the implementation, they balked, waved the white flag, and joined the lapdog media in trashing the good guys who fought for us.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes, these same politicians are covertly pushing through amnesty despite evidence that the 33 million newly legalized voters will overwhelmingly lean Democrat! Obviously this makes the likelihood of a GOP hat trick electoral victory, and hence the repeal of socialized healthcare, even more improbable.

The media wants you to believe that the partial government shutdown “fractured” the Republican machine from grassroots commonsense conservatives who go by the acronym TEA Party (that stands for “Taxed Enough Already”). No, Tea Party patriots rose up because the Republican machine “fractured” itself years ago by marginalizing its conservative base. The recent “slimdown” didn’t cause the fracture. It happened because of the fracture – because wayward Republicans have refused for years to stand up and fight for economic freedom and limited government, despite campaigning on those principles every election cycle. That’s how we got into this debt-ridden mess in the first place. They campaigned one way, but governed another.

It’s the establishment’s choice whether this fracture remains unfixed because the conservative grassroots will never give up the fight for freedom. Never. Never. Generations of our sons and daughters sent off to war to protect our freedom have paid too high a price for us to ever give up the fight.

As the Republican Establishment continues to propagate its “Live to fight another day” theme in all of its cave-ins to the wishes of Congressional Democrats, they would be wise to remember the words of the Great Communicator, Ronald Reagan, who said,

Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.

It is time for the Vichy Republicans to put down their pacifiers and MAN UP.

…If they want to keep their jobs.

Until He Comes,

KJ

I Thought the CIC Was Supposed to Support Our Troops?

On By kingsjesterIn Politics2 Comments

To say that Obama and his Administration are not our Armed Forces’ best friends is an understatement.

Foxnews.com has the story:

A veterans group is vowing to get a handwriting expert to determine if the letters sent to parents of Navy SEALs killed in Afghanistan were signed by President Obama himself or an electronic autopen that can replicate his signature.

Karen and Billy Vaughn, whose son Aaron Vaughn was one of 17 SEALs and 13 other Americans killed in a helicopter crash Aug. 6, 2011, raised the issue at a Tea Party rally in Tampa during the Republican National Convention. Karen Vaughn said she compared the signature on her letter, dated Sept. 23, 2011, with those received by other families of SEALs and determined the signature was mechanical.

“We are going to have nationally recognized handwriting experts review the letters given the strong circumstantial evidence which exists in this case.”

– Joel Arends, Veterans for a Strong America

But the White House insists every letter sent out to the families of fallen service members is signed by the hand of the Commander-in-Chief.

“The President signs every such letter personally,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said Friday.

An autopen is a machine that can be programmed to duplicate an individual’s John Hancock. Seen as more personal than a stamp but less than a hand-signature, the device was first used in the White House by President Harry Truman. President Obama made history when he became the first chief executive to use the device to sign a bill, authorizing its use to extend key provisions of the Patriot Act last year while he was in France.

Aaron Vaughn was part of a rescue team that was sent to a mountainous area in the Wardak Providence in August of last year to assist an Army Ranger unit that was under heavy fire. The team had completed their mission but their Chinook helicopter was shot down as they were departing. Nearly 40 people perished, marking it one of the deadliest single incident losses in the decade-long war in Afghanistan.

Veterans for a Strong America, a nonpartisan military watchdog group pledged to get to the bottom of the matter.

“After reviewing letters from several families of fallen Navy SEALs it appears that the letters may have been auto-penned, so we are going to have nationally recognized handwriting experts review the letters given the strong circumstantial evidence which exists in this case,” Joel Arends, chairman of Veterans for a Strong America said in a statement to FoxNews.com.

Arends also complained that the mailings are form letters, with only the names of the recipients changed. The White House conceded that point, but noted sending form letters has long been common practice for presidents, especially when war casualties mount.

In 2003, Newsweek reported that condolence letters from President George W. Bush were also form letters, “With the exception of the salutation and a reference to the fallen soldier in the text.”

However, four years later, the Washington Times ran a story claiming that Bush had sent personal letters to more than 4,000 families of soldiers killed in action and 9/11 victims during his presidency which was largely unnoticed by the public.

In a related story, also found on foxnews.com:

The Pentagon’s top lawyer on Thursday informed the former Navy SEAL who wrote a forthcoming book describing details of the raid that killed Usama bin Laden that he violated agreements to not divulge military secrets and that as a result the Pentagon is considering taking legal action against him.

The general counsel of the Defense Department, Jeh Johnson, wrote in a letter transmitted to the author that he had signed two nondisclosure agreements with the Navy in 2007 that obliged him to “never divulge” classified information.

“This commitment remains in force even after you left the active duty Navy,” Johnson wrote. He said the author, Matt Bissonnette, left active duty “on or about April 20, 2012,” which was nearly one year after the May 2011 raid.

By signing the agreements, Bissonnette acknowledged his awareness, Johnson wrote, that “disclosure of classified information constitutes a violation of federal criminal law.” He said it also obliged the author to submit his manuscript for a security review by the government before it was published. The Pentagon has said the manuscript was not submitted for review, although it obtained a copy last week.

Johnson said that after reviewing a copy of the book, “No Easy Day,” the Pentagon concluded that the author is in “material breach and violation” of the agreements.

The book is to be published next week by Penguin Group (USA)’s Dutton imprint. The Associated Press purchased a copy Tuesday.

First, Obama is “too busy” to actually sign letters to the families of our fallen, and now his administration wants to “take legal action” against a Navy Seal, for “divulging” a raid that happened a year ago, which Obama has been taking credit for. I realize that Bissonette committed a serious breach of protocol, but…

Given the treatment of our Armed Forces by their CIC, it is no wonder a Rasmussen Poll, taken in July, showed that

…military veterans prefer Mitt Romney by a wide margin, 59% to 35%. Another 5% prefer a third party candidate; 2% are undecided. This poll has been echoed by Gallup, which put the two at 58-34 back in May. John McCain won some 54% of the veteran vote against Obama.

Romney’s larger lead is a sign that veterans are dissatisfied with Obama, rather than pleased particularly with Romney – Romney, after all, was not a military man while McCain famously was. The poll did not ask military vets about their feelings on the end of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” Despite Obama’s attempts to pander to veterans by offering them larger benefits and suggesting that we build a country “worthy” of our returning vets, America’s military men and women continue to prefer hawkish foreign policy and fiscal responsibility to appeasement-oriented foreign policy and heavy spending.

Perhaps it’s because our Brightest and Best believe in American Exceptionalism and actually love this country.

As opposed to…well…you-know-who.