I did something really dumb. I lost my cool with someone I presumed to be a troll or Falafalbot. I engaged in name calling which was inexcusable. I received my first ever donuts. I apologized. My frustration level is at an all time high given our elected officials' unwillingness to even try enforcing the law.
My TU status evaporated almost instanteously presumably due to my boorish behavior--not a huge deal other than as a constant reminder of my unenlightend behavior and lack of patience. It stings but my hope is that I will someday be invited back into the fold. I thought as penance I'd put some effort into bringing a timely issue to light and one of personal relevance because I have a veteran uncle stuggling with this problem--veteran homelessness and housing.
According to the August 2007 GAO report to Congress, on any given night, at least 194,000 veterans were homeless in fiscal year 2005--about 1/3 of the adult homeless population. Veterans returning from service in Iraq and Afghanistan, many suffing physical and psychological disabilities, will only compound this problem as a sizeable number will become "low income" renters.
An estimated 2.3 million (about 53% of all veteran renter households nationwide had household incomes that were 80% or less of their areas' median household incomes) veteran households had problems affording their rent. On the bright side, according to 2005 Census data, 20% of the 111.1 million households nationwide are "veteran households" of which 80% are homeowners--a significantly higher percentage than for nonveteran households. Nevertheless, an estimated 39% (887,000 households) of these "low income veteran households" had at least on veteran member with a disability.
Generally speaking, veteran renter households were less likely to have affordability or inadequate housing problems by comparison to nonveteran low income households. While that is heartening, I wouldn't go so far as to suggest there isn't still a very serious problem given the large aggregate numbers. As we are all aware, HUD is the agency generally tasked with administering low income rental assistance programs. Unfortunately, only 41% of the largest Public Housing Authorities offer some type of "veterans' preference" in awarding assistance.
Studies by HUD and others point to an increasing problem. Many renters are struggling to find affordable rents because growth in household incomes has struggled to keep pace with rising rents in many regions of the country. And while the VA does provide assistance to homeless veterans and assistance for veterans to achieve homeownership, it does not provide rental assistance.
The recently submitted report authored by Donna Shalala and former Sen. Bob Dole estimated that the cost of implementing its 35 proposals to "steamline and integrate" veterans care could reach as much as a "whopping" $1 billion per year. Here come the punch lines:
U.S. nuclear weapons currently consume some $35 billion a year, with about $25 billion going toward operating and maintaining the arsenal and the remainder allocated to environmental remediation and waste management, arms reduction measures, and the storage and disposition of excess fissile materials (these figures are in 1998 dollars). This equals about 14 percent of all defense spending.
These estimate comes from a 1998 book entitled "Atomic Audit" edited by Stephen I. Schwartz with very informative sections reproduced on the Brookings Institute website.
Just to add injury to insult, no less than $10 billion has been "lost" simply to undocumented transactions and bad bookkeeping. And lest we forget, $12 billion in cash just "up and disappeared." Of course there is the disturbing $19 billion in "lost" equipment. Last but not least we've recently learned our hard earned tax dollars get flushed down the toilet by unscrupulous washer contractors and Pentagon bureaucrats who apparently don't even scrutinize the most dubious of shipping costs.
Like I said I've been having a pretty bad couple of days. But really, is it a lot to ask from my country and its elected officials that they seriously look into fraud, waste, and war profiteering? Seriously, I could link hundreds of examples and I'm just your basic technology idiot. Would it really be all that difficult to show veterans a preference in housing or stop the internecine bureacratic backbiting that forces a returning veteran's family to shoulder all the load of his/her care?
We've done the unthinkable. We've asked mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, sons and daughters to sacrifice their bodies and minds on the altar of the four basest human impulses--greed, fear, lying and violence. Yet mysteriously, our elected officials can't take a break from naming post offices and falling all over themselves not to uphold the Constitution long enough to do the one moral thing that is within their apparently very limited powers--provide funding and navigable institutions that assist veterans in obtaining adequate medical care, adequate housing, and meaningful work.
Priorities. Priorities. Priorities. Our country's tachometer is running in the red, the motor about to seize up, and our elected officials seem to be acting like spectators at a NASCAR crash--mouths agape, ooing, ahhing, pointing, kibbitzing and hand wringing about the next election and their "public perception and poll numbers." I'm friggin fed up. I spent a $100K to attend law school at 38 years of age and the highest elected officials of the executive branch could give a rip about trifling little things like "lawful subpeonas" or saying something other than "I can't recall" while under oath. What am I supposed to think?
Conservative, liberal, progressive--who cares. Is this what we want to point to when we explain to our children and grandchildren how exceptional our way of life is?
"See here little Timmy, Tommy and Tammy this is why America is the greatest country on earth--if you work hard, play by the rules, and make lots of money (preferably extracting something out of the ground in another country) then after awhile you don't have to work hard, play by the rules, or make lots of money because somebody else will make it for you or I give it to you when I die. See me and your daddy take the poor peoples money and we invest it in overseas companies that only pay their workers 4 cents and hour and the money we make off that gets taxed at a lot less than the poor American working man's labors. You see, working people pay taxes at about a 32% marginal rate to subsidize mommy and daddy's investments in the stock market and then when we collect our dividends or sell one of those investments we only get taxed at 15%. But really we don't even pay that because mommy and daddy have very clever accountants and lawyers on the payroll."
"What do you mean it doesn't sound very fair? Of course it is, its sort of like one big intricate shiny Rube Goldberg machine--you see the poor person puts in $74 and out shoots a stick of stale chewing gum. Mommy and daddy pocket the left over $73.97 above and beyond the cost of producing the gum in China. That's called CAPITALISM--and God ordered us to be capitalists. Says so right in the good book--commandment #11 "Thou shall not pass up an opportunity to fleece another human being." Do you see what I mean? Another way to think about it is--oh nevermind just look up Ponzi scheme on your Blackberry."
"Oh for Christ's sake kids stop coughing the air isn't that bad. You don't believe me, just look at that shaggy haired gentleman sitting next to his shopping cart full of his worldly possessions--you don't see him coughing do you? What's that--his leg and eye? Oh not to worry little dear ones--he's probably a veteran. He probably lost it in the the GWOP. See he had to choose between school and three dead end service sector jobs when he was young because he wanted to own a house someday. But because houses and school are expensive he couldn't really have it all so he joined the Army because they were willing to give him a fat signing bonus and money for school if he'd just go to the other side of the planet to knock some sense into this group of intransigent brown folks who pray differently than we do."
"What's GWOP you ask? Well dear ones, GWOP was the global war on the poor. See this really old misguided guy Lyndon Johnson wanted to fight a war against poverty in America. So did many of his young idealistic followers who were part of a now extinct bunch of do gooders known as the Democratic Party because they naively thought it was the moral thing to do and that all of society would benefit by helping the least of us learn to stand on his/her own two feet. But when those misguided "libs" as we used to like to call them lost, because us rich folk controlled all the media, we had to have somewhere to send all those poor people."
"We used to employ them to mow our lawns but after all the fresh water became polluted we had to ration it for drinking purposes only. So what we did, and this is really the genius part of it kids, is we started up a bunch of wars on the brown peoples of the world predicated on the most clever of deceptions--that we were spreading democracy and our materialistic American way of life. What's that? Of course we didn't care what kind of life they wanted because you see we know what's best for everyone in the world. Why's that? Because were rich silly."
"And to top it all off, and really kids this is the best part of all. When some of the brown people that didn't like us in their countries fought back against our poor people soldiers who just wanted to make a better life for their children and families, maiming tens of thousands of them in the process, we simply broke our promises to those that actually made it back to America. We made them pay back part of their signing bonuses, upped their health care premiums, and let them live on the street. What do you mean that isn't fair? Of course it's fair--we let them choose from a diverse palate of really rich guys to run everything in the best interest of the top 1% of the population--that's us--and it's called democracy. We really are going to have to get you kids a better Guatamalan nanny and more private tutors. Gosh, that you don't know these things by the time you're 10 is just shocking. How are you ever going to take over counting mommy and daddy's money when our genetically farmed replacement organs eventually give out in 120 years."
I think everyone gets the point.