Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/08/02/reminder-the-gop-has-been-att.html
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And if you prefer deeds over words, look at the track record for the GOP congresspersons voting against funding veterans’ support services after they come home from war. Look at the 911 First Responders. All the soldiers and police officers and firemen that the GOP proudly holds up as true Muricans get the shaft when they hold up their empty bowl and ask, “Please, Sir, I want some more.”
This continues the pattern for the GOP:
- Soldiers go to war to become veterans who are asking for too much support for their physical and psychological injuries.
- Unborn fetuses are born to become welfare babies undeserving of support and medical care.
- Working class Americans vote for the GOP and have their unions outlawed, their wages cut, their jobs outsourced, and their social services decreased.
- Et cetera
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Look, unsupporting some of our troops leaves us American Patriots more support for the remainder. That’s just math. Plus some of the troops put themselves out to be unsupported by us by being Leftists or other Democrats, or fall in to other Unpopular Minority categories like Gay, Broad or Muslin.*
Unlike Crooked Hillary, Trump will Support our Troops, believe me, by dropping them on ISIS, bigly.*
- Trump 2016!
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This. I’m so sick of politicians (and it’s not just the GOP) calling veterans “heroes” and telling us how much they respect our service… and then doing nothing to repair the epic fuckup that is the VA.
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Why stop a winning strategy?
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Abusing veterans is the logic of our economic system You know that you have a pool of people who feel called to certain professions - people feel called to be guardians. Essentially, fulfilling that calling of theirs becomes part of their compensation package.
Soldiers do a dangerous job that may involve involuntary deployment overseas, and has completely unpredictable hours. They also don’t benefit from protections that most workers have. A soldier can’t refuse unsafe work or even quit when they want to. And for this they get:
$20k?!?
Suppose we were actually homo economicus. What would you have to pay to recruit soldiers? I think it’d be easily into the six figures.
In the US, it’s not just playing on the call that some people feel to be society’s protectors, but also on the dire poverty that many people find themselves in. The US military is grotesque, and how veterans are treated is just a part of that.
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Also see: months of specialized training, a requirement to maintain physical fitness, separation from family, and a (both physically and psychologically) hostile work environment.
$20K is an insult. That’s about a year working at a $10/hr job.
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Yeah, it’s true. It’s never about providing material support for those groups. Like when Trump says he’ll be the “law and order candidate,” it doesn’t mean he’ll provide any more funding for the criminal justice system. What he really means is that he’ll discourage prosecuting police officers who kill unarmed black people - something that was made abundantly clear during the convention when the crowds cheered the announcement of the decision to drop remaining charges against the police in the Freddie Gray case.
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The GOP has decided Trump can’t deliver them the white house?
If that’s what the tea leaves say, then they’ve pretty much zero motivation to keep him on
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For a party that likes starting so many wars, they’re very bad at finishing them and cleaning up their own mess.
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Whenever any politician starts talking about needing to send troops somewhere to fight, I get CCR’s Fortunate Son stuck in my head for the rest of the day.
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That’s actually quite true, but then again, if Dubya had fought the war in Iraq the same way the allies fought Germany and Japan, there wouldn’t be nearly enough fainting couches to go around here.
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Yep.
According to data provided to the House panel, the average per-day pay to personnel Blackwater hired was $600. According to the schedule of rates, supplies and services attached to the contract, Blackwater charged Regency $1,075 a day for senior managers, $945 a day for middle managers and $815 a day for operators.
[…]
An unmarried sergeant given Iraq pay and relief from U.S. taxes makes about $83 to $85 a day, given time in service. A married sergeant with children makes about double that, $170 a day.
Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Baghdad overseeing more than 160,000 U.S. troops, makes roughly $180,000 a year, or about $493 a day. That comes out to less than half the fee charged by Blackwater for its senior manager of a 34-man security team.
And that was 7+ years ago.
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