Veterans for Common Sense

“That’s tragic,” said Paul Sullivan, executive director of Veterans for Common Sense, a nonprofit advocacy group in Washington. “Because the financial need is definitely still there.” 

July 25, 2008 – With patriotic fanfare, state lawmakers set aside $5-million in 2005 to help families of deployed Florida National Guard and Reserve troops facing financial difficulties.

But thus far, just $606,907 has been paid out to 172 citizen soldiers and their families.

In the last year, payments slowed to a trickle with just $128,000 paid to 32 families in need.

No news conference trumpeted what happened on July 1: Lawmakers took back most of the money, reducing the fund to a mere $400,000.

“That’s tragic,” said Paul Sullivan, executive director of Veterans for Common Sense, a nonprofit advocacy group in Washington. “Because the financial need is definitely still there.”

State lawmakers and bureaucrats struggled to explain why the Florida Family Readiness Program never performed up to lofty expectations.

State Sen. Mike Fasano, R-New Port Richey, a co-sponsor of legislation creating the fund, acknowledged that lawmakers might have overestimated the amount of money troops and their families would need.

“Maybe we put too many dollars in there,” said Fasano on Wednesday. “One of the things I wanted to be certain of when we created the program was that it wouldn’t be underfunded. I didn’t want one family turned away because of a lack of money.”

He added: “We thought it was a great idea. Never did we think the money wouldn’t be utilized.”

The program allows families or troops to get financial help for a variety of things, from paying the mortgage to car repairs or buying groceries. They must demonstrate an inability to make payments themselves.

The payments can be made up to four months after the troops return from deployments in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Joe Negron, the former member of the House who helped create the program, thinks many people are just too proud to ask for help, equating the payments to charity.

“I’ve talked to families that asked for money, and they’re almost apologetic that they had to ask for help,” Negron said. “I know in my heart many families are simply too proud or self-reliant to ask for money. And I’m not sure there’s anything we can do about that.”

While Guard officials said they are confident they adequately informed their troops about the fund, state military leaders said they thought it almost impossible to get word out to all Reserve troops.

Glenn Sutphin, legislative director for the Florida Department of Military Affairs, which oversees the program with the Guard, said Reserve troops are stretched all over the map in many different units.

That makes it harder, he said, to inform them of the fund.

Guard leaders have met with Reserve officials to better communicate. But Sutphin said, “I just think there’s an information glitch that’s more prevalent with them.”

Reserve officials could not be reached to comment. But a year ago, they said it was a myth that deployments caused financial hardships.

In fact, a RAND Corp. study found that reservists who weren’t deployed suffered a wage drop more often than those who went overseas. That might be because of extra combat pay.

Since 2005, about 3,000 Florida Guard troops have deployed overseas, and about 700 troops are currently serving in Iraq or Afghanistan. No numbers are available for the Reserve.

Ron Tittle, a spokesman for the Guard, said Florida deployments have fallen in the last three years, something that led to a reduced reliance on the assistance fund.

In another year, Florida may have as many as 5,000 troops deployed, and if the financial need increases, lawmakers will undoubtedly approve more cash, Tittle said.

The federal government allocated $1.8-million in 2007 to pay the families of active duty troops who face financial hardships, a program separate from the Guard and Reserve fund.

“They spent it all in a heartbeat,” said Sutphin, who said he didn’t know why families of active duty troops demonstrated a greater financial need than their counterparts in the Guard and Reserve.

Sutphin said his department agreed with lawmakers to reduce the Guard and Reserve fund to $400,000.

“We didn’t want to be greedy,” Sutphin said. “It wouldn’t have been fair to all the citizens of Florida to keep it.”

July 24, 2008, Topeka, KA – A national group alleged Wednesday that Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., is forcing soldiers to participate in a weekly religious event, a program that has been mentioned in a federal lawsuit in Kansas.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State sent a letter to the Department of Defense’s inspector general, asking for an investigation into the Sunday evening event, whose name was recently changed from “Free Day Away” to “Tabernacle Baptist Church Retreat Program.” The Tabernacle Baptist Church in Lebanon, Mo., has hosted the event for soldiers from the Missouri post since 1971.

A Fort Leonard Wood spokesman said the program is voluntary, and the church’s pastor said it has taken steps to ensure that soldiers know they will hear a religious message if they attend.

But Americans United’s executive director, the Rev. Barry Lynn, said soldiers at Fort Leonard Wood must either attend the program or stay on post.

“That’s not the kind of choice that ought be to be given to soldiers,” said Lynn, who described the practice as “coercive evangelism.”

In the letter to the Defense Department, Lynn’s group said its request was prompted by complaints from an unnamed soldier assigned to Fort Leonard Wood.

A spokesman for the Department of Defense, Cmdr. Darryn James, said he didn’t know whether the inspector general had received the letter and declined further comment.

Mikey Weinstein, president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, applauded the request for an investigation. Still, Weinstein said he doubts American United’s request will result in changes, based on his group’s own efforts to fight the practice by going through the military’s chain of command.

Weinstein’s group and an atheist soldier stationed at Fort Riley, Kan., Spc. Jeremy Hall, have filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Kansas against the Department of Defense and Secretary Robert Gates that mentioned the event. Hall and the foundation claim that the military allows and even supports a culture in which religious liberties are violated regularly.

Hall said he participated in “Free Day Away” in July 2004, during his basic training at Fort Leonard Wood.

Fort Leonard Wood spokeswoman Tiffany Ryan said soldiers are briefed about the event before they are allowed to leave post. That includes letting them know they will hear a religious message and must stay on church grounds.

Also, the Rev. Don Ball said the church recently started having soldiers review and sign a release before attending.

“We make no qualms about it. Our intent isn’t to make a Baptist out of them, but we are going to preach a Baptist message to them,” Ball said.

He said he has gone so far as to drive soldiers back to post when they feel uncomfortable about hearing the Christian message.

“I would never want to violate a person’s religious freedoms. If I do that, that gives someone the right to violate mine,” said Ball, who has been working with the ministry for 15 years.

But Weinstein said disclaimers and waivers create “a defacto religious test.” He said his foundation has heard complaints from about 300 officers and enlisted soldiers about Fort Leonard Wood since 2005.

“It’s not a remedy to have them sign something that says they know what is coming,” he said.

July 23, 2008 – The generals were nervous.

Lt. Gen. Robert Wilson moved his index finger across the page as he read his statement with a halting delivery. Maj. Gen. David Rubenstein, holding a discolored washcloth under the witness table to dry his perspiration, accidentally dropped the cloth and felt for it with his shoe.

The anxiety, even for men with two or three stars on each shoulder, was to be expected. They had come before a House Armed Services subcommittee to explain why, 16 months and at least eight fact-finding investigations after the Walter Reed scandal, the Army still hadn’t fixed the health-care system for soldiers wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Wisely, however, the generals armed themselves with a highly sophisticated and unexpected weapon: contrition.

“It absolutely needs to work better,” said Lt. Gen. Michael Rochelle, the Army’s deputy chief of staff.

“We realize that we have much work to do,” offered Wilson, of the Army’s installation management command.

“Some would say that we’re a step slow; I have no argument with that complaint,” confessed Rubenstein, the Army’s deputy surgeon general.

“Certainly, this program has been imperfect and execution uneven,” said Brig. Gen. Gary Cheek, an assistant surgeon general for “warrior care.”

It was a tactical retreat in the face of an overwhelming enemy: the facts.

Committee investigators had visited Army medical facilities and came back with ominous statistics. At Fort Hood, Tex., last month, they found that a “warrior transition unit” designed to support 649 had 1,342 soldiers, with 350 more on a waiting list. Instead of the promised 74 nurse case managers, there were 38. Other facilities “would shortly experience similar shortages” or already had.

The Army miscalculated the growth in the number of soldiers needing care (it’s now at 12,000 and is expected to reach 20,000 next year), causing it to fall below “the required level of staffing” at most facilities — despite the Army surgeon general’s assertion in February that “we are entirely staffed at the point we need to be staffed.”

“Why,” inquired the panel’s chairman, Susan Davis (D-Calif.), “did it take oversight visits from this subcommittee to identify and spur the Army to fix these issues?” She concluded: “We are very concerned that the Army took its eye off that ball, that you are not living up to the goals you set and the promises you made.”

The ranking Republican member, John McHugh (N.Y.), was no less skeptical. “In many ways, this challenge isn’t being met, and I find the current circumstances unacceptable,” he said. “Do you gentlemen agree with that?” Rochelle nodded his head. “Anybody disagree with that?” Nobody moved.

But with the choreography of a Special Forces team, the four generals, each in dark olive with well-shined shoes, professed their devotion to the cause.

“Warrior care is our highest priority, second only to the global war on terror,” Wilson said.

“We have no higher priority,” added Rubenstein, “except for putting boots on the ground itself in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

“Manning the warrior transition units is only second to manning those units preparing to deploy,” affirmed Rochelle.

The officers were careful to avoid the sort of bluster that caused their predecessors to be fired in the immediate aftermath of the Walter Reed scandal — although Rubenstein got close with his boast that “we’re doing phenomenal work.” Instead, they heaped flattery on their interrogators.

Cheek voiced a desire to “thank Congress for the leadership and support you provide to the Army in the development and execution of this program.” Rochelle thanked the half-dozen lawmakers at the hearing for their “continued support” for the “wounded warriors and families that we are all honored to serve.” Wilson chimed in with praise for congressional funding. And Rubenstein managed to find gratitude that committee staff members were “very open with all of their findings.”

The lawmakers were disarmed. Davis spoke of the “overall positive direction” and her confidence that the Army is “clearly providing better support” for the wounded.

Delicately, and with careful use of qualifiers, the generals argued that things had improved over 16 months. “We know we have come a long way,” Rochelle said. “We also know that we still have a long way to go.”

Rubenstein professed to be “working diligently at executing an outstanding Army Medical Action Plan,” even if there are “challenges in its execution.”

It didn’t take much questioning for the “challenges” to trip up the generals. Asked whether the Army is offering competitive pay, Rubenstein boasted that “in some communities, we are too competitive” — but a moment later complained about how he “can’t compete” with the pay at civilian hospitals.

“But you told me you were overly competitive, General,” McHugh said. “Which are you?”

After that, the generals mostly stuck with concession and contrition: “We had not sufficiently empowered our commanders. . . . We’re going to review this. . . . We’ve had our challenges. . . . It simply wasn’t nimble enough. . . . It is a logjam. . . . We are not meeting the standard. . . . That’s a valid concern.”

Finding no argument, the lawmakers brought the hearing to a prompt close, but not before another round of mutual flattery. Cheek thanked the committee for its support. Wilson thanked McHugh for the pleasant hearing. Rubenstein praised the staff for its “amazing openness.” The chairwoman found herself telling the generals: “Thank you for thanking our staff.” Rubenstein, now dry, retrieved his perspiration cloth and hid it under his papers.

July 23, 2008, El Toro, CA – El Toro Marine Air Station used to be the premiere Marine Corps aviation facility on the west coast. It closed in 1999 and is in the midst of big change; a park will soon occupy the land and new homes are being built. But while the politicians move forward and families move into new homes on the former base, contamination in the base’s water system from a degreasing chemical is staying off the radar.

Most Marines who served at the El Toro Marine Air Station in Orange. County, California would hardly recognize the place today. Since its closure in 1999, the land that used to be the Irvine Ranch, has been a hotbed of controversy. Many people wanted to see it become a large airport for Orange County, others wanted to see a more public use, and that is where it is heading.

But a group of veterans that growing quickly in number, say El Toro, along with the active Marine Corps base Camp Lejeune on the east coast, is a major TCE contaminant zone. TCE, Trichloroethylene, was a chemical degreaser used to clean the parts off Marine Corps jet fighters.

It is believed that for years, the toxic chemical invaded the water system here.

Marines have died, children have been born with birth defects, and experts like Salem-News.com’s Dr. Phil Leveque, who as a toxicologist had one of the first TCE-related court cases in the U.S., says the effects of this chemical are far reaching.

According to records, the contaminated wells were shut down in 1970, but residue from the poisonous degreaser continued to affect people because it was in the ground.

The group of watchdog Marines bringing the story forward, also say there are eyewitness accounts of many 55 gallon barrels of TCE being buried in a hole here at El Toro.

The base is now incorporated into the city of Irvine.

Irvine’s city council met last night and one of the prime items was the redevelopment of the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station. The Public Information Officer for Irvine, Louie Gonzales, explained what the city is doing with the property.

The most important thing is for Marines, family members and civilian workers who worked here, to learn of the possible health hazards so they can seek treatment.

TCE causes mutations, intestinal disorders and cancer. The federal government has not performed sufficient outreach to let Marines and former Marines know about the hazards they may face, now or in the future.

July 24, 2008 – The House Veterans’ Affairs Committee chairman vowed Wednesday to push for the restoration of Agent Orange-related benefits and health care for Vietnam War veterans who served in the air and water of Vietnam but never set foot on land.

Rep. Bob Filner, D-Calif., said a bill he is sponsoring, HR 6562, would provide justice for sailors and airmen who have been denied Agent Orange claims because of a Department of Veterans Affairs policy that applies a so-called “boots-on-the-ground” rule for determining eligibility.

“If you were there, we should care,” Filner said at a press conference, where he was surrounded by Vietnam veterans.

The bill, introduced Tuesday, was referred to Filner’s committee. Filner said he intends to move the bill through the committee in September.

Filner said the bill would provide justice for the thousands of Vietnam veterans who are suffering from illnesses or disease known to be related to exposure to the herbicide used to defoliate the Vietnamese jungles. It also would send a message to younger veterans, he said. “If we don’t treat our Vietnam veterans right, then our active-duty people know that,” Filner said.

The bill, called the Agent Orange Equity Act, would accept service in the waters surrounding or the air over Vietnam as making a veteran eligible for benefits and health care if they have one of a long list of diseases presumed by the VA to be caused by exposure to toxin.

Sea service had made someone eligible until the VA changed the rules in 2002. The restriction was appealed through the courts, with the VA’s boots-on-the-ground policy prevailing.

William Davis, who served off the coast of Vietnam aboard the destroyer Fiske in 1966, said people who served on as many as 600 Navy ships would be helped by the legislation, although it is not clear how many might have illnesses or disease that would lead to their being covered.

Richard Weidman of Vietnam Veterans of America said the Bush administration appears to have lost interest in Vietnam veterans and Agent Orange because there are no research projects or studies under way to try to learn more about exposure to the toxin and its health effects.

July 20, 2008 – The notorious butterfly ballot that Palm Beach County, Florida election officials used in the 2000 election is probably the most infamous of all election design snafus. It was one of many political, legal, and election administration missteps that plunged a presidential election into turmoil and set off a series of events that led to, among other things, a vast overhaul of the country’s election administration, including the greatest change in voting technology in United States history.

Yet, ironically, eight years after the 2000 election, and billions of dollars spent on new voting technology, the problems caused by poor ballot design have not been fully and effectively addressed on a national level. Year in and year out, we see the same mistakes in ballot design, with the same results: tens, and sometimes hundreds, of thousands of voters disenfranchised by confusing ballot design and instructions, sometimes raising serious questions about whether the intended choice of the voters was certified as the winner.

Problems with voting technology have, rightly, attracted much public attention. Scores of independent reports—including a major study published by the Brennan Center—have documented the vulnerabilities of electronic voting machines. More importantly, voting system failures lead to long lines on Election Day, voters being turned away at the polls, and lost votes. These are serious problems, and we must do what we can to ensure that poor technology and procedures do not continue to disenfranchise voters.

At the same time, when it comes to ensuring that votes are accurately recorded and tallied, there is a respectable argument that poor ballot design and confusing instructions have resulted in far more lost votes than software glitches, programming errors, or machine breakdowns. As this report demonstrates, poor ballot design and instructions have caused the loss of tens and sometimes hundreds of thousands of votes in nearly every election year.

While all groups of voters are affected by poorly designed ballots and badly drafted instructions, these problems disproportionately affect low-income voters, new voters, and elderly voters. All too often, the loss of votes and rate of errors resulting from these mistakes are greater than the margin of victory between the two leading candidates. As the examples in this report show, problems caused by poor ballot design and instructions recur in American elections, regardless of the type of voting technology a jurisdiction has used.

Some have dismissed the degree to which poor ballot design undermines democracy by arguing that voters only have themselves to blame if they fail to properly navigate design flaws. This is unfair. Candidates should win or lose elections based upon whether or not they are preferred by a majority of voters, not on whether they have the largest number of supporters who—as a result of education and experience—have greater facility navigating unnecessarily complicated interfaces or complex instructions, or because fewer of their supporters are elderly or have reading disabilities. Nor should candidates win elections because ballot designs happened to make it more difficult for voters supporting their opponents to accurately cast their votes.

July 21, 2008 – The decline of newspapers is not about the replacement of the antiquated technology of news print with the lightning speed of the Internet. It does not signal an inevitable and salutary change. It is not a form of progress. The decline of newspapers is about the rise of the corporate state, the loss of civic and public responsibility on the part of much of our entrepreneurial class and the intellectual poverty of our post-literate world, a world where information is conveyed primarily through rapidly moving images rather than print. 

All these forces have combined to strangle newspapers. And the blood on the floor, this year alone, is disheartening. Some 6,000 journalists nationwide have lost their jobs, news pages are being radically cut back and newspaper stocks have tumbled. Advertising revenues are dramatically falling off with many papers seeing double-digit drops. McClatchy Co., publisher of the Miami Herald, has seen its shares fall by 77 percent this year. Lee Enterprises Inc., which owns the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, is down 84 percent. Gannett Co., which publishes USA Today, is trading at nearly a 17-year low. The San Francisco Chronicle is now losing $1 million a week. 

The Internet will not save newspapers. Although all major newspapers, and most smaller ones, have Web sites, and have had for a while, newspaper Web sites make up less than 10 percent of newspaper ad revenue. Analysts say that although Net advertising amounts to $21 billion a year, that amount is actually relatively small. So far, the really big advertisers have stayed away, either unsure of how to use the Internet or suspicious that it can’t match the viewer attention of older media.

Newspapers, when well run, are a public trust. They provide, at their best, the means for citizens to examine themselves, to ferret out lies and the abuse of power by elected officials and corrupt businesses, to give a voice to those who would, without the press, have no voice, and to follow, in ways a private citizen cannot, the daily workings of local, state and federal government. Newspapers hire people to write about city hall, the state capital, political campaigns, sports, music, art and theater. They keep citizens engaged with their cultural, civic and political life. When I began as a foreign correspondent 25 years ago, most major city papers had bureaus in Latin America, the Middle East, Europe, Asia and Moscow. Reporters and photographers showed Americans how the world beyond our borders looked, thought and believed. Most of this is vanishing or has vanished. 

We live under the happy illusion that we can transfer news-gathering to the Internet. News-gathering will continue to exist, as it does on this Web site and sites such as ProPublica and Slate, but these traditions now have to contend with a new, widespread and ideologically driven partisanship that dominates the dissemination of views and information, from Fox News to blogger screeds. The majority of bloggers and Internet addicts, like the endless rows of talking heads on television, do not report. They are largely parasites who cling to traditional news outlets. They can produce stinging and insightful commentary, which has happily seen the monopoly on opinion pieces by large papers shattered, but they rarely pick up the phone, much less go out and find a story. Nearly all reporting—I would guess at least 80 percent—is done by newspapers and the wire services. Take that away and we have a huge black hole.

Those who rely on the Internet gravitate to sites that reinforce their beliefs. The filtering of information through an ideological lens, which is destroying television journalism, defies the purpose of reporting. Journalism is about transmitting information that doesn’t care what you think. Reporting challenges, countermands or destabilizes established beliefs. Reporting, which is time-consuming and often expensive, begins from the premise that there are things we need to know and understand, even if these things make us uncomfortable. If we lose this ethic we are left with pandering, packaging and partisanship. We are left awash in a sea of competing propaganda. Bloggers, unlike most established reporters, rarely admit errors. They cannot get fired. Facts, for many bloggers, are interchangeable with opinions. Take a look at The Drudge Report. This may be the new face of what we call news. 

When the traditional news organizations go belly up we will lose a vast well of expertise and information. Our democracy will suffer a body blow. Not that many will notice. The average time a reader of The New York Times spends with the printed paper is about 45 minutes. The average time a viewer spends on The New York Times Web site is about seven minutes. There is a difference between browsing and reading. And the Web is built for browsing rather than for reading. When there is a long piece on the Internet, most of us have to print it out to get through it. 

The rise of our corporate state has done the most, however, to decimate traditional news-gathering. Time Warner, Disney, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., General Electric and Viacom control nearly everything we read, watch, hear and ultimately think. And news that does not make a profit, as well as divert viewers from civic participation and challenging the status quo, is not worth pursuing. This is why the networks have shut down their foreign bureaus. This is why cable newscasts, with their chatty anchors, all look and sound like the “Today” show. This is why the FCC, in an example of how far our standards have fallen, defines shows like Fox’s celebrity gossip program “TMZ” and the Christian Broadcast Network’s “700 Club” as “bona fide newscasts.” This is why television news personalities, people like Katie Couric, have become celebrities earning, in her case, $15 million a year. This is why newspapers like the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune are being ruthlessly cannibalized by corporate trolls like Sam Zell, turned into empty husks that focus increasingly on boutique journalism. Corporations are not in the business of news. They hate news, real news. Real news is not convenient to their rape of the nation. Real news makes people ask questions. They prefer to close the prying eyes of reporters. They prefer to transform news into another form of mindless amusement and entertainment. 

A democracy survives when its citizens have access to trustworthy and impartial sources of information, when it can discern lies from truth. Take this away and a democracy dies. The fusion of news and entertainment, the rise of a class of celebrity journalists on television who define reporting by their access to the famous and the powerful, the retreat by many readers into the ideological ghettos of the Internet and the ruthless drive by corporations to destroy the traditional news business are leaving us deaf, dumb and blind.

We are cleverly entertained during our descent. We have our own version of ancient Rome’s bread and circuses with our ubiquitous and elaborate spectacles, sporting events, celebrity gossip and television reality shows. Societies in decline, as the Roman philosopher Cicero wrote, see their civic and political discourse contaminated by the excitement and emotional life of the arena. And the citizens in these degraded societies, he warned, always end up ruled by a despot, a Nero or a George W. Bush.