This is how ‘compassionate conservatives’ reward those who buy into their propaganda:
Wounded Soldier: Military Wants Part Of Bonus Back — PITTSBURGH (KDKA) –
The U.S. Military is demanding that thousands of wounded service personnel give back [part of their] signing bonuses because they are unable to serve out their commitments.
To get people to sign up, the military gives enlistment bonuses up to $30,000 in some cases.
Now men and women who have lost arms, legs, eyesight, hearing and can no longer serve are being ordered to pay some of that money back.
One of them is Jordan Fox, a young soldier from the South Hills.
[snip]
Fox was seriously injured when a roadside bomb blew up his vehicle. He was knocked unconscious. His back was injured and lost all vision in his right eye.
A few months later Fox was sent home. His injuries prohibited him from fulfilling three months of his commitment. A few days ago, he received a letter from the military demanding nearly $3,000 of his signing bonus back.
[snip]
But Fox feels like he’s already given enough. He’ll never be able to pursue his dream of being a police officer because of his wounds and he can’t believe he’s being asked to return part of his $10,000 signing bonus.
KDKA contacted Congressman Jason Altmire on his behalf. He says he has proposed a bill that would guarantee soldiers receive full benefit of bonuses.
(© MMVII, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.) excerpted from online article – full online text available at the linked web site
Now, I hate having to say I told you so – but I did! – and it would behoove youse to listen once again:
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Bush keeps lying |
and I sincerely hope that someday a Republican’t gets the full impact of the concern and frustration for the sheer injustice of the current junta’s policies and their long term effects on the health and well being of america and americans everywhere that has caused me to drone on and on about it lo these many moons.
There’s a routine that goes on each time we have to pulverize the motherCheneying irony alert siren that makes it more difficult to come back each time, and hence each time the frelling thing goes off it is because levels have gone up again. The borrow and spend Republican’ts have tripled the national debt* for the second time while trying to tell others how to best utilize their income. While taking back some of the blood money that they offered to the marks in the first place. The rats are deserting the ship, the Mouth of Sauron has a new book out to say they made me lie for them**, the Deciderer has become the Vetoerer and can’t even give a Thanksgiving speech without bringing his bubble with him, and the Democratic candidates are sniping at each other about their positions on core Republican’ts value issues. So clearly the bar has been raised as far as outrageously ironic quaffling from the current cabal is concerned. And it’s somewhat quieter now that the irony alert siren has been pulverized once more. Until these thieving scoundrels top themselves yet again. After all, they’ve still got almost a year to go!
It’s well into the holly daze here at the Funny Farm and other than the increasingly scarce monetary units that no longer seem to reside in my wallet, life goes on much as it always has. Hope all is well with you and yours and keep on trying to squeeze some joy out of getting through the experiences you need to get through. Ciao fer now!
* – that’s not counting the clusterCheneys in the middle east (so far). Those costs will be extra…
** – perhaps a senate hearing might be in order. Just to clear things up about who was lying about which covert CIA operative the Republican’ts were trying to squelch at the time. How is that Sibel Edmonds whistleblower investigation coming?
Editors’ Note: this entry has been cross-posted at the Funny Farm]
I saw this on the news. It’s a spectacular example of how our govt screws our vets. My fishing partner had three purple hearts from Vietnam. Three! And the V.A. lost his identity, and after finally straightening that out put him in line to get some false teeth he needed. He never heard from them again.
And you liberals want these assholes to run our medical system? No! There has to be a better way. As you can see from myrid examples, if you study the issue, socialized medicine is not the answer. Our federal govt is already too large wasteful, uncaring and dishonest without handing it one-seventh of the economy (the healthcare system).
The way to attack the health care problem is to address it in pieces, rather than as an unwieldy whole.
As I’ve said previously, it’s gonna take democrats and republicans together to fix this mess, and simply tossing it to the fed govt, throwing money at it and saying “alright, fix it!” won’t work.
Comment by grimgold — November 21, 2007 @ 10:19 am
Grim, you’re way off base. And it ain’t the government screwing “our vets,” it’s us, the American people. This is our government, we supposedly voted these assholes into office, and they spent the last 30 years telling us exactly what they were going to do when we gave them the power over our lives. I do not want the current crop of assholes running the local humane society, much less our health care system. But I also don’t want some jackass with an associate degree in ladder climbing making decisions about whether I live or die while he sits with a headset on in a roomful of cubicles at the call center of U. R. Screwed Health Care Inc. I want all the corporate lackeys kicked out of Washington D.C. next year – every last one of them. I want a president who will clean house, from top to bottom. And yes, I want universal single-payer health care. In other words, I want Medicare for every man, woman and child in this country. Period. I’m sick of the health care “industry” leeches, and I don’t give a rat’s ass if we do throw 10 million parasites out of work in the process. Fuck ‘em. The heartless bastards – let ‘em go get a real job. We’ll be doing them all a big favor by removing them from a karmic disaster wheel. And even if they’re unemployed, at least they’ll have health care.
Comment by Joanne from WI — November 21, 2007 @ 2:42 pm
“Plans of Adan Garcia”
http://www.ilovepoetry.com/viewpoem.asp?id=88333
Comment by tsumbra — November 21, 2007 @ 10:45 pm
Right, Grim, if you come into office, as Bush did, under the mantra that government is the problem, is it any wonder that no government program works properly? Would you hire someone to run your corporation who told you that the idea of corporations is wrong and can’t work?
The problem is the incompetent assholes Bush hires to run these programs, and the greedy thieves he subcontracts to run them. Put them under professionals with a lick of common sense and they’ll work fine.
Comment by RS Janes — November 22, 2007 @ 12:24 pm
Joanne, “at least they’ll have health care” isn’t good enough. They have that in Canada and people die because the govt makes them wait and won’t even allow them to pay for their own! They come here to get what they need. We most certainly did not vote the tens of thousands of nameless bureaucrats into office that will run healthcare if you get your way. Socialism isn’t the answer. Flush Karl Marx down the loo. We need new ideas not the same old shit. You are being heartless in your response. I mean my goodness! What will these bureaucrats do with themselves if they can’t work for the govt? Where’s your compassion?
R.S. you are wrong. It isn’t just GW. This is a problem that has been around longer than you have. A corporate model would be a good way to run govt. They certainly are professional.
But a competative method is dangerous when it comes to healthcare because when a person gets sick he doesn’t care about cost.
Both GW and Bill hired “incompetant assholes” to run stuff. You are correct about that, though you’d dearly like to blame it all on GW.
New idea – make all bidding for fed ckts competetively requiring at least three bids. If no company is capable, such as Halliburton’s competetors (they couldn’t bid because they couldn’t do the job so it went to HAL by default) the job should be split into smaller pieces and the pieces bid on.
Perhaps hospitals should be non-profit entities. That would remove some of the greed, yet not push America another step toward Communism.
Comment by grimgold — November 22, 2007 @ 2:20 pm
“Joanne, “at least they’ll have health care” isn’t good enough. They have that in Canada and people die because the govt makes them wait and won’t even allow them to pay for their own!”
Grim, have you ever used the Canadian health care system? I know two Canadians who have and tell me that they’d rather have medical treatment in Canada than here in the US. The ‘long lines’ and the other drivel you mentioned is a myth invented by the AMA and our for-profit health care corporations. Also, have you ever waited to see an HMO doctor. Several friends of mine have, in some cases waiting weeks to get an appointment. Stop talking about what you obviously don’t know.
“R.S. you are wrong. It isn’t just GW. This is a problem that has been around longer than you have.”
The problem was deeply exacerbated by Bush’s push to privatize.
“A corporate model would be a good way to run govt. They certainly are professional.”
You mean like Enron, Halliburton or Harken Oil? How about Kaiser Permanente? You have to lay off the psychedelics, Grim.
“But a competative method is dangerous when it comes to healthcare because when a person gets sick he doesn’t care about cost.”
It’s dangerous because it’s killing people, and dispensing unnecessary operations and drugs to those who are forutnate to have insurance.
“Both GW and Bill hired “incompetant assholes” to run stuff.”
FEMA worked under Clinton; the guy who ran it was a non-partisan administrator with experience in disaster management. Bush hired the idiot Brownie the horse lawyer. Case closed.
“You are correct about that, though you’d dearly like to blame it all on GW.”
Read the history of the past six years ofincredible corruption under Bush, and not the one on NewsMax or WorldNet Daily. There’s a reason over 400 historians have called him the worst president in our history.
“New idea – make all bidding for fed ckts competetively requiring at least three bids. If no company is capable, such as Halliburton’s competetors (they couldn’t bid because they couldn’t do the job so it went to HAL by default) the job should be split into smaller pieces and the pieces bid on.”
I imagine you’re referring to federal contracts here. Yes, open bidding is a good idea, and SOP until Bush was installed in office. Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root had little experience in food preparation, yet they were given a no-bid contract to feed the troops in Iraq (and did a miserable job). Stop believing the right-wing swill that ‘no other company could do the job but Halliburton’ — that’s simply not true.
“Perhaps hospitals should be non-profit entities. That would remove some of the greed, yet not push America another step toward Communism.”
Many hospitals were non-profit, before the age of HMOs. If you’re worried about the US taking another step toward Communism, you should probably tell your buddy Bush to stop borrowing $2 billion a day from China, the largest Communist nation in the world, to finance his failing wars. In fifteen years, the Chinese will literally be able to buy us, at this rate.
Comment by RS Janes — November 22, 2007 @ 8:41 pm