To Comment #104

Perhaps if you actually READ some of the earlier posts, you might avoid making really absurd statements, like “a majority of homeless people are Veterans” — since the highest legitimate estimates indicate that about 1% or less are actually veterans. And since far fewer than 10% of soldiers, sailors & airmen ever see combat, the number of homeless vets that could believably attribute their degenerated existence to any combat experience seems pretty tiny, compared to the rest of the homeless population.

Another point worth noting is that in order to qualify for full VA benefits as a “veteran,” one only has to have served for 90 days or more in uniform. At 90 days, virtually every soldier is still in training in the U.S., and far from any “combat experience,” and it’s certainly germane to the discussion to ask just how many of these identified “homeless veterans” ever served in combat, or even left the United States at all? Inflating the “homeless veteran” number with people who washed out of training for Cook’s School, after 94 days in the Army, or were kicked out in their fourth month for drunkennes or drug use, makes the bleeding-heart argument even more specious.

The military is pretty good at weeding out the degenerates and weaklings, since it’s not easy for drunks and druggies to hide in a relatively “closed” military environment. Inevitably some squeak through for a year or two, or develop their habits after their initial training, when they’re observed less carefully. It’s not a great leap of logic to assume that these “bad apples” that are ejected may well make up a disproportionate percentage of these “homeless veterans.” Attributing their homelessness (or their drug or alcohol problems) to their military service, just because they shoveled shit in Fort Riley, Kansas, is disingenuous at best.

I’ve spent some time in military hospitals overseas and Stateside, including Walter Reed & Bethesda Naval Hospital, and since retirement have spent a lot of time in VA hospitals and clinics. By choice, I use VA facilities instead of military ones because the quality of care, in my experience, is so vastly superior to even Walter Reed or Bethesda. How many civilians, even, can claim that they’ve never spent more than five minutes in a waiting room? At least in the Virginia VA facilities I use, if your appointment is 3 pm, you’ll be in with the lab tech by 3:05 and probably see the doc by 3:15. Why civilian facilities never can manage anything better than a 30-45-minute wait is beyond me, but that’s standard for every doctor or clinic my wife visits.

You have grossly overstated the homeless veteran population, and, like most civilians, automatically attribute the drug, alcohol or mental problems of these people to some military experience. Perhaps if you actually KNEW some real veterans, or spent a few minutes researching the actual statistics, you might disabuse yourself of this irrational fantasy — no matter how well it reinforces your obvious preconceptions of the military and its soldiers.

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To comment #49, it is GREAT that their are millions of Veterans that are leading successful, somewhat unaffected lives. But do you not see the numbers here?Do you think it is some freak accident that a majority of homeless people are Veterans,people who were willing to sacrifice their life for us, and their country? Then they come back and everything falls out from underneath them because of PTSD WHICH LEADS TO DRUGS AND ALCOHOL TO COPE!!!! They are mentally ill, forever fucked up from this war and this country did it to them. Thank them for what they have done, given, adn sacrificed. HAVE A HEART FOR GODS SAKE!!!!!!!

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Off Topic, just a litte, back in post 93, I published a link to a article. The reason I published it was to show that not all donations to the homeless charity go to homeless vets. A lot of them got to salaries etc, in the charity. In the same post, is a list of 10 charities where the head person takes what, IMO, is a unnecessarily large salary.
The first charity on the list, Youth Development Fund

Has a salary of $363,100 listed for the CEO.
That’s $36,100 less than the salary of the President of the US. The total amount of the
funds not used for raising donations or admin expenses for 2005 is listed as $449,512. Some thing is just not right, when we have charities like this.
But my real anger is in the public radio area, take a look at charity 4 on the list. WTVS Detroit Public Radio and the salary paid the CEO to run a public radio station. But it gets worse. Take a look at Public Radio Station WNYC
whose pays their CEO $414,846. That more than the President of the US makes.
Based on all the public radio broadcasts I have heard, I think their CEOs who draw these high salaries are being paid a lot more than they are worth.
My rant in this whole post is that people need to take a serious look at the info available on charities before donating. Second, I think the public radio stations I have heard are very anti conservative. Donations to anti-conservative groups just contribute to the downfall of conservatives.

The site I used for the info is found Here

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Those who saw O’Reilly this evening may have noticed the piece he did on these alleged homeless veterans, pointing out the absurdity of John Edwards’ claims. There was a VA spokesman on before, apparently, stating that they had over 150,000 beds available for any legitimate homeless veterans, and they were perfectly willing to come and GET them if necessary. O’Reilly had made some efforts thru the homeless community to identify some of them, so this could take place. After several days, guess how many anyone could find?

Two. One who had obvious mental problems and another whose legitimacy was still being checked.

Of course the Loony Left won’t be satisfied until we send out roving goon squads, wrestling each homeless person to the ground and beating them until they admit to being veterans — and then forcibly dragging them, kicking and screaming, into the nearest VA facility.

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“The numbers of homeless veterans is much higher at the local levels”     The number of homeless who CLAIM to be veterans, you mean, and those numbers are demonstrably flaky.”The VA ignored this issue for a long time”      So YOU say. Can you name these alleged veterans who’ were ever refused care by VA?  You do realize — assuming you have a clue about the subject — that not every veteran is eligible for every type of care by VA ?  Ths so-calles “crisis” of homeless vets has yet to be found, even if you make the rather silly assumption that their mental illness or substance abuse has anything to do with their service in the first place.  You do know, I assume, that VA care is on a scale that gives priority to service-connected conditions?The contention (which you obviously swallow wholesale) that there are  vast numbers of vets among the homeless population is looking sillier each passing year in which nobody can seem to identify them.  I’d still like to hear some plausible theory as to why hundreds of thousands of junkies, drunks & loonies are refusing to apply for VA care or pay, when every homeless shelter & outreach point literally shoves the forms down their throat, and the DAV, VFW & AmLegion will even fill out the forms for them?  Two of my retired friends are VFW outreach volunteers, which is why I’m laughing at these idiotic numbers the “homeless industry” keeps flopping out as if they were real.It has become a standard liberal mantra that every unfortunate situation is someone else’s fault: evil corporate CEOs, government plotters, the military-industrial complex, and (whenever possible) George Bush & the Republicans — which makes it rather bizarre that military vets vote a heavily conservative ticket every time.  This phony crisis is no different.  Perhaps someone might actually get a grip on the homeless problem by recognizing that most of the responsibility lies within a group of people who are so devoid of character or willpower that they won’t even make an effort to help themselves.  Feeding into their “it’s not my fault” bullshit hasn’t done them much good so far, and obviously never will.Again,before you fly these big numbers at us, make some minimal effort to prove them, not just repeat nonsensical estimates that never bear out under examination. 

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It is interesting to read the comments here. In 2004 the VA reduced their homeless veterans number from 313,000 to 194,000 (or a cut of 121,000 homeless veterans). The numbers of homeless veterans is much higher at the local levels. The fact that media is covering just the 1400 from OEF/OIF disregards that fact that there are other eras of service members becoming homeless still as well. The fact of the matter was that if the VA had not ignored the issues going back to Vietnam era, the current level of crisis would not be as high as it is today. At the local level there is a lot of request for services coming FROM THE VA! Unfortunately, local and non profits cannot handle the waves being referred to by the VA. The VA ignored this issue for a long time, and now it is just another issue that is getting them hammered. The issue of drug use is overplayed, though after leaving veterans in the streets for numerous years, mental illnes and substance abuse is a common side effect of homelessness. Now a lot of these veterans are working for minimal wage jobs. Minimum Wage is not enough to secure a foot hold in society today. To add to the homelessness you have inadequate TBI screenings now, PTSD, and other factors that lead to homelessness amongst the veteran poplulation.
Just a few thoughts.

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Well stated info, Msgt White, Thank you.
During my service years, I observed several members who were removed from the service for drug use. None of them were Vietnam Vets. IMO, they were, in every case, liberals who simply had little or no moral upbring and believed that they were entitled to do as they pleased. If any of them are included in the homeless figures today, I’m sure they have invented tall tales to explain how they were abused and their lives destroyed by their military service. Their lives were ruined by the drug use, not their service.

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“That means that at least 40% of your dollars are going to such costs as fundraising and administration, including the salary of the CEO”

And generally the numbers are actually a lot worse than that, since most of the “charity” industries have learned all the bookkeeping tricks, like hiding salaries in subcontracted “programs” who probably aren’t even tax-exempt and whose books are definitely not transparent. The rackets I’m most familiar with, the larger so-called animal rescue groups (PETA, and anything with “Humane” in its name) learned to cook their books and look legitimate this way years ago, but they learned it from the other corporate charities whose associates & ex-employees set up little companies in which people rotate in and out of, just like the government’s infamous “revolving door.”

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“And your BETTER source of information is….?”

Like I indicated before — the only numbers that aren’t completely meaningless are the homeless that have proved they were veterans. Despite years of outreach from VA, and some definite hard pimping from the local governments (who’d love to get some of these guys transferred to or subsidized by VA), the number who have been checked out as legitimate veterans is remarkably low.

The substance abusers in the homeless system — a high percentage of the group — can get lots of freebies, often including a disability check, from VA just by asking for it (and actually being a vet), one natually asks, “When’s the last time a drunk or junkie has passed up free care, free Methadone, or a free monthly check?”

Calling that worthless raw data “information” is being exceedingly liberal in the terminology department.

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And your BETTER source of information is….?

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