Stand Up For Veterans

The ongoing struggle between the government and veterans sometimes goes nuclear.

Whether or not you believe in war, it happens. Soldiers leave their family, friends, their homes to go to various parts of the world to serve their country, sometimes risking their lives.
Sometimes they return home fine, sometimes injured, sometimes in a casket draped in a flag to represent their country, the country they died for.

Oh, the government of the day will tell their citizens repeatedly, I mean over and over again, ad nauseum that they treat the veterans well. Patting themselves on the back and bragging in a self-congratulatory manner as rhetoric and champagne flows. Meanwhile vets are struggling for heat, food, medical care, even a home.

Robotic talking points about how this government has done more for vets than another other government.

I believe that most citizens respect their veterans. They know the price they paid or were willing to pay. They stepped up and left their families, friends, and homes to fight for us, to protect us, to serve us, sometimes making traumatic or even deadly sacrifices. We should repay them for their service.

Every government says they care.

All governments need to do more.

Remember our vets. Not just on Memorial Day or Remembrance Day or Veterans’ Day, but every single day.

Veterans commit suicide in countries around the world at a startling rate. Why? Because they’re not receiving the help they need.

They were of service to their country and yet services, benefits, and support they should receive are withheld, cut, and clawed back. Some vets are still looking for jobs, good luck with that.

Veterans have to once again fight, against their own government for what they were promised for serving their countries.

Meanwhile our governments spend money on important things like:

• $150,000 to figure out a way to save the human race from zombies, ummm, did someone not get that The Walking Dead is fictional?

• Millions to find ways to trim their budgets? I’ll give you this one for free – don’t spend $20 million on advice.

• A million to research how not to burst a cooked sausage?

• Millions spent studying love on the internet, intelligent life on Earth including the US Congress?

• Lawyers’ fees for allegedly inappropriate activities?

• Golf Club memberships?

• Bridges and roads to nowhere?

• Millions on computer systems that are dysfunctional, easily hacked and/or redundant?

• People that work to collect taxes also owe billions in taxes?

• Trips around the world hundreds of politicians and businesspeople?

• Billionaires get subsidies for beachfront properties, companies, mansions while the average person, including Vets struggle to make ends meet?

• Spending millions to study what food tastes like on Mars, let me help with this one, who cares?

• Millions to promote governments and what they say they’ve accomplished?

• Paying for Likes and Tweets, trolls to promote their viewpoints and put down oppositional viewpoints on social media?

• Millions/year to find out what the media is saying about their government and corporations?

• Are you reading this on Facebook? They get millions in tax refunds each year, no worries, they’re not alone, many, many other corporations got a helping hand too.

• Plane and helicopter rides as well as limos, town cars and drivers?

• $50,000 to study how to stop traveler’s diarrhea, in the Caribbean?

• Professional sports teams listed as non-profits so they get bigger tax breaks?

• Millions in audits and expenses?

• Billions in procurements on planes that aren’t operational and some that might never be, libraries that will never open, empty military bases, empty warehouses, etc.?

• Millions celebrating wars, but little money for those who survived them.

• Legal fees fighting veterans over the claw back of military pensions.

• Using drones to count sheep? Hey, maybe these people that waste your money can’t get to sleep.

 And so much more waste. It’s a disgrace.

You can tell everything you need to know about a government and a society by how they treat their most vulnerable members.

How are we doing?

Politics needs to be about service, duty, and helping citizens, less about photo ops, game playing, and manipulation.

We need to stop being victims in our own country and demand that those who are elected and appointed members serve us, not their own self-interests.