WHY IT MATTERS: Veterans

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WHY IT MATTERS: Veterans
Associated Press | Oct 23, 2016 | by Matthew Daly
RE: http://www.military.com/daily-news/2...-veterans.html

THE ISSUE: There are an estimated 21.6 million veterans in the United States. Among them, nearly 9 million are enrolled in health care provided by the Department of Veterans Affairs. About 4.3 million veterans get disability compensation from the VA and nearly 900,000 have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

A 2014 law signed by President Barack Obama aimed to alleviate delays many veterans faced in getting treatment at VA hospitals and clinics and end the widespread practice of fake wait lists that covered up long waits for veterans seeking health care. Two years later, many of the problems remain.

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WHERE THEY STAND

Hillary Clinton has pledged to ensure veterans have access to timely and high-quality health care and vows to block efforts to privatize the Veterans Health Administration, the VA's health-care arm. Clinton also wants to bolster veterans' benefits, including education and housing aid included in the GI bill. She would ensure that military sexual trauma is acknowledged as a disability under VA rules.

Donald Trump says he will expand programs that allow veterans to choose their doctor -- regardless of whether they're affiliated with the VA -- and still receive government-paid medical care. Trump says that's not privatized care but, he told The Associated Press, "a way of not allowing people to die waiting for doctors."

Trump also pledged to fire or discipline VA employees who fail veterans or breach the public trust. He also would increase mental health professionals and create a "White House hotline" dedicated to veterans. If a valid complaint is not addressed, "I will pick up the phone and fix it myself if I have to," Trump said.

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WHY IT MATTERS

Lifetime health care is part of the bargain for many of those who put their lives on the line in the armed forces, and it's become clear the government isn't holding up its end.

Veterans care has gained prominence since a 2014 scandal in which as many as 40 veterans died while waiting for care at a Phoenix VA hospital. Similar problems were soon discovered nationwide. Veterans waited months for care even as VA employees created secret waiting lists and other falsehoods to cover up the delays.

A law approved after the scandal broke created a program that allows veterans to seek private care at government expense, but the program is limited to veterans who have waited 30 days for an appointment or live 40 miles from a VA health center. Trump says he would vastly expand the program, calling problems at the VA under President Barack Obama "widespread and totally inexcusable."

Clinton says the VA must retain "the ultimate responsibility" for veterans care. She cites the Veterans Health Administration's leadership in areas such as prosthetics and traumatic brain injury. She promises to create an oversight board to monitor quality of care.

Veterans groups are encouraged by the increased focus on the VA, as evidenced by a recent forum that featured both Clinton and Trump. But they say the VA must do more to improve access to health care, address veterans' suicide and change VA's culture to ensure real accountability.

With nearly 370,000 employees and an annual budget of nearly $167 billion, the VA is the largest civilian agency in the government, and second overall to the Defense Department.

Veterans are also a politically consequential group. Nearly 70 percent voted in the 2012 presidential election, a significantly higher rate than the general population's 57.5 percent rate.

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This story is part of AP's "Why It Matters" series, examining three dozen issues at stake in the presidential election. You can find the series at http://apne.ws/2bBG85a

Copyright (2016) Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Related Topics
Headlines Veterans Elections Hillary Clinton Donald Trump Veteran Health Care Department of Veteran Affairs

[WateringHole]

It's another tap dance Trump is giving Veterans to get their vote the same way he got people beleiving millions of illegal aliens are taking their 30 & 40 dollar an hour jobs, even though he hasn't proved not one of those jobs was taken by an illegal alien. You're required to have proof you're qualified for such a job, have a TWIC endorcement, Social Security Card, permanent address, etc

[Boats]

Trump's Unimpressive Support From Military Leaders (9-6-16)
RE: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/...essive/498806/

His campaign announced endorsements from 88 retired generals and admirals. That’s nice, but 500 backed Mitt Romney in 2012.

Donald Trump’s campaign on Tuesday morning released a letter announcing the endorsement of the Republican nominee by “88 retired U.S. Generals and Admirals.”

Seems impressive, right? Eighty-eight generals and admirals sounds like a lot of military leaders, all rallying around the tough-talking, law-and-order candidate pledging to restore greatness to America’s armed forces.

Well, it’s actually not.

Compare Trump’s haul of 88 to the 500 retired generals and admirals who took out a full-page ad in support of Mitt Romney on the eve of the 2012 presidential election. Romney had some big names, too. The group of 500 included Army General Hugh Shelton, who served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Bill Clinton, as well as a former commandant of the Marine Corps and an Air Force chief of staff. In total, five ex-members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff backed Romney over President Obama. There are nearly 900 active general and flag officers in the military and thousands of retirees.

RELATED STORY


Why Is Hillary Clinton Courting Republican Foreign-Policy Heavyweights?

This is not to impugn the 88 former military leaders backing Trump, all of whom presumably served the United States with dignity and honor. Organizing the letter, according to the Trump campaign, were Rear Admiral Charles Williams, a Vietnam veteran awarded the Legion of Merit, and Major General Sydney Shachnow, a former Green Beret who was the first Holocaust survivor to become a U.S. general. Trump, Shachnow said in a statement, “has the temperament to become commander-in-chief.” Williams said the point of making the letter public was to show that military leaders trust Trump over Clinton to lead the nation’s armed forces.

None of the signatories was a service chief or led a major combatant command. The most prominent ex-military official backing Trump remains Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, who served in senior intelligence roles in Afghanistan but is best known as Obama’s appointee to lead the Defense Intelligence Agency. Flynn delivered a lengthy and impassioned address in support of Trump at the Republican National Convention and was reportedly under consideration to be his running mate. As The New York Times noted, two of the signatories on the letter are best known for their controversial statements about Islam and, in the case of Lieutenant General Thomas McInerey, for filing court documents challenging Obama’s eligibility to serve as president and command the military. Another signatory is listed as a major general in the California State Military Reserve, which is not a branch of the U.S. armed forces (although he did previously serve in the U.S. Army reserve).

Trump’s campaign released the letter on Tuesday ahead of an event the Republican was to hold in military-heavy Virginia Beach focused on veterans. The candidates are also participating in an NBC News forum later this week on national security. Trump is clearly trying to play catch-up with Clinton on the issue; last month, dozens of Republican former national-security officials released a letter denouncing Trump and his fitness for office.

Clinton received her own high-profile military endorsement from retired Marine Corps General John Allen, who served as deputy commander of U.S. Central Command, commander of the war in Afghanistan, and as Obama’s special envoy for the global coalition fighting the Islamic State. Allen joined other former military and national-security officials in speaking on Clinton’s behalf at the Democratic convention in Philadelphia in July. Trump’s public feud with the Khan family after that convention further eroded his support in the polls. And on Tuesday morning, Clinton released a new ad that is silent except for images of military veterans and families listening with concern to Trump’s comments denigrating John McCain’s capture in Vietnam and comparing his own “sacrifice” in business to that of U.S. servicemen.

The practice of retired officers endorsing candidates in partisan elections is not without controversy; critics charge that it risks politicizing the military, and the overwhelming majority of retired general and flag officers haven’t publicly endorsed either candidate.

Trump does retain one advantage over Clinton: Polling of military households and veterans shows him with a lead. Here, too, his performance trails well behind that of other recent Republican candidates. Among prominent ex-military and national-security leaders, the edge clearly belongs to Clinton, and the 88 generals and admirals backing Trump on Tuesday don’t provide quite the impressive show of unified support that it might seem on first blush.

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Why Do Veterans Support Donald Trump? (6-28-16)
By Michael T.McPhearson
RE: http://billmoyers.com/story/veterans...-donald-trump/

Many believe he can shake up the system after the leadership vacuum that has allowed so many problems to grow.

Two recent polls demonstrate that support for Donald Trump in the military and among veterans outpaces support for both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. A May Military Times survey of active-duty troops showed Trump beating Clinton by better than a 2-to-1 margin. A Morning Consult poll of veterans and active-duty members taken later the same month showed the likely Republican nominee leading his Democratic rival by 9 percentage points.

People ask me on a regular basis why so many veterans support Trump. First, we must consider that the military personnel in general seem to skew a bit to the right. If we have more Republicans in the military — through self-selection or geographically targeted recruiting in the South — it stands to reason to have more military personnel support for the Republican nominee.

Even so, the support for Trump does seem hard to fathom. This is, after all, a man whose only experience of the military came in a New York military academy where his father hoped he’d learn to control his bad behavior. Trump avoided service in the Vietnam war with four student deferments and during the campaign mocked the nation’s most celebrated POW, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ).

Neither party has brought real answers or leadership to end the wars and bring our troops home.
We must remember that veterans are not very different from civilians. We carry the same fears, hopes and anger as the rest of the country. This election cycle has been exceptionally volatile. The perceived outsider status of Trump and Sanders has brought new people into the political process and fired up the base of both major parties. Trump has masterfully used the media and large crowds to create a spectacle to build support. He has featured veterans in his stage show, using them as props to gain credibility, and making us more visible in the process.

I’ve also been asked whether Trump is filling a leadership vacuum for veterans and active-duty personnel. While veterans are very much like the rest of the electorate, concerned and upset about the same issues as everyone else, there are also differences. We are the other 1 percent — the 1 percent that takes on the burden of fighting in war. For us, 22 suicides a day is not just a statistic; it’s a reality. We miss our families, and we suffer from traumatic brain injury, post-traumatic stress disorder and broken bodies. We see and hear about our friends dying on the battlefield, and we are tired of fighting. Veterans, families and active-duty personnel suffer in ways unknown, misunderstood or ignored by most Americans.

The US has been consistently at war for at least 25 years, since the start of the so-called First Gulf War. We never stopped military operations in the region, there has been no clear victory and no end in sight. This time period has seen two Republican and two Democratic presidents. Neither party has brought real answers or leadership to end the wars and bring our troops home. Little wonder that in the current surveys both the perceived outsiders, Sanders and Trump, do better than the establishment candidate Clinton. People including veterans want answers to problems. Clinton is perceived as more of the same.

So, yes, there is a leadership vacuum. It is the same global leadership vacuum that has led to an increase in right-wing movements and the rise of hate around the world. It is the same vacuum that has allowed such an extreme concentration of wealth that — according to a 2015 Oxfam report — the top 1 percent will own more than the rest of us combined, leaving billions of people to fight over what the rich have not managed to take.

As veterans who have been told we served to protect the US Constitution and Bill of Rights, we are outraged at the targeting of people because of their religious affiliation.
The bottom line is that veterans who support Trump support him for the same reasons civilians support him. Millions believe that he, like Sanders, is an outsider who can shake up the system and solve problems. I understand feeling this way. I am also angry with the lack of progress on solving the nation’s problems — including endless war — and disregard for poor and working class people in the US and around the globe. But those are not the only issues that concern me. In January, I helped Veterans For Peace launch Veterans Challenge Islamophobia. The purpose of the campaign is to push back on the most recent wave of anti-Muslim speech and actions that are sweeping the country after the Paris and San Bernardino attacks late last year and rising in the aftermath of the horrible mass shooting in Orlando.

As veterans who have been told we served to protect the US Constitution and Bill of Rights, we are outraged at the targeting of people because of their religious affiliation and we call on all political leaders to disavow all forms of hate speech and bigoted public-policy proposals. Further, as has been said by many security experts, anti-Muslim rhetoric and polices like banning Muslims from entering the US will give ISIL a recruiting tool. Calling the attacks “radical Islamism” are not helpful in confronting hate and creating an atmosphere of unity.

Asking why veterans support Trump is a legitimate question. But the most important question is how do we meet the economic, social and security challenges before us in a way that addresses the needs of poor, working-class and average people. Failure to address these issues is why Trump has any support at all.

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MICHAEL T. MCPHEARSON

Michael T. McPhearson, executive director of the Veterans for Peace, was a field artillery officer in the 24th Mechanized Infantry Division during Desert Shield/Desert Storm. He co-founded the Don't Shoot Coalition formed after the killing of Michael Brown Jr. in Ferguson, Missouri. He has been an active member of the NAACP, the ACLU and the Association of Black Journalists in St. Louis. Follow him on Twitter: @MTMcPhearson.

[Boats]

The Daily Wire
RE: http://www.dailywire.com/news/7702/s...prestigiacomo#

Topic: Shock Poll: Who Do Our Military Troops Favor? BOTH Hillary AND Trump LOSE.

According to a new survey, American military troops favor Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson over both Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump.

Johnson, the least Libertarian Libertarian of all Libertarians, edged out Trump, the least Republican Republican of all Republicans, by almost eight percentage points among active duty military personnel: 38.7 percent to 30.9 percent, respectively. Clinton, perhaps the most corrupt politician of all time, unsurprisingly, got smacked, earning only 14.1 percent.

The survey was conducted by Doctrine Man, a popular military personality.

“Although the survey was not a scientific poll with a margin of error, it provides a snapshot of the preferences of about 3,500 active duty, reservists, retired and former members of the military and their family members, 95.7 percent of which were registered voters,” notes The Hill.

Johnson out-polled Clinton and Trump among all military services, save the Navy.

Among active, reserve and former Army members:

Johnson: 35.4 percent

Trump: 31.4 percent

Clinton: 15.3 percent

Among active, reserve and former Marine members:

Johnson: 44.1 percent

Trump: 27.1 percent

Clinton: 12.7 percent

Among active, reserve and former Air Force members:

Johnson: 39 percent

Trump: 29.9 percent

Clinton: 12.9 percent

Among active, reserve and former Navy members

Trump: 32.4 percent

Johnson: 31.7 percent

Clinton: 22.9 percent

Besides the Navy, Trump also took the top-spot with military personnel who retired after at least 20 years of service. Retirees overall, also preferred Trump, with Johnson coming in close second.

Clinton, who had a dismal showing in the survey, won among active duty troops’ families: 29.4 percent favoring Clinton, 27.5 percent favoring Trump, and 24.5 percent favoring Johnson.

Typically, Republican candidates are more well-liked by our military, hands down. But Trump isn't a conventional Republican when it comes to foreign policy, or anything else, by a long shot. Trump has repeatedly bashed former President George W. Bush for the Iraq war--bordering on conspiracy Code Pink talk. He's also said favorable things about Russian President Vladimir Putin, made troubling statements about NATO, and seems more isolationist than Clinton.

When it comes to Clinton, she's not only tied to awful Obama foreign policy decisions, but she herself has created messes globally, namely her screw-up in Libya and her subsequent lies regarding the fatal disaster in Benghazi.

And, of course, generally speaking, both Clinton and Trump have astonishingly high unfavorables.