"One quarter of the homeless people in America are military veterans"

LINK: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/12/14/5845/

Published on Saturday, December 15, 2007 by McClatchy Newspapers
The Disgraceful Treatment of Our Veterans
by Joseph L. Galloway

...

There are some new statistics that give us reason to be ashamed for the way that our country has treated those who’ve served and sacrificed for us.

Those statistics damn the politicians who start every speech by thanking the troops and veterans and blessing them. They indict our national leaders who turn up at military bases and the annual conventions of veteran’s organizations and use troops and veterans as a backdrop for their photo-ops.

Consider this:

An average of 18 veterans commit suicide each and every day of the year, according to recent statistics from the Veterans Administration (VA). That’s 126 veterans who kill themselves every week. Or some 6,552 who take their own lives each year. Our veterans are killing themselves at twice the rate of other Americans.

One quarter of the homeless people in America are military veterans. That’s one in every four. Is that ragged man huddled on the steam grate in a brutal winter wind a Vietnam vet? Did that younger man panhandling for pocket change on the street corner fight in Kandahar or Fallujah?

...

The same people who don’t blink at spending $3 billion a week on their war of choice in Iraq were the ones who cut the VA budget and privatized maintenance at Walter Reed Army Hospital and opposed every attempt to expand benefits for veterans old and young.

They’re the same people who turned a blind eye as their corporate sponsors and private donors looted billions of dollars from the Treasury with no-compete contracts and bloated bills for everything from food for the troops to fuel for their tanks and trucks.

As a wave of wounded troops suffering brain injuries from the blasts of roadside bombs and landmines poured into military hospitals, these people, posing as fiscally responsible budget makers, were cutting in half the money spent on research into brain injuries.

These frauds who love to pose as wartime leaders sat back and did nothing as a cruel bureaucracy sent bill collectors out to harass double amputee veterans for thousands of dollars because they neglected to turn their armored vests and other gear in to the supply sergeant after they were blown apart on the battlefield.

They did nothing as the Army became ever more conservative, even stingy, in the number of injured and wounded soldiers it judged worthy of full disability pensions. Soldiers who suffered brain injuries and PTSD so severe that they couldn’t function were put on the street with a 30 percent disability pension - $700 a month - to support a wife and three children.

Neglecting our war veterans and the widows and orphans that result from our wars is as American as apple pie. It’s nothing new. But in the past we always waited until after the war’s end to forget those who’d fought the war.

This may be the first time in our history that we began to neglect and forget our troops during a war.

All of this is shameful - shameful for a people whose freedom and prosperity rests on the backs of those soldiers but who’ve forgotten them so completely that they haven’t held their Congress and their president responsible for this stain on our honor.

The next smarmy politician who shouts, “God bless our troops” ought to be tarred and feathered and ridden out of Washington on a rail for sheer hypocrisy.

:kick:

<snip>

More Than One Million Homeless Children
Although counting the exact number of homeless children is difficult, a consensus is emerging among
researchers. According to the National Coalition for the Homeless, 1.2 million children are homeless on any given night. Supporting this figure are estimates from the U.S. Department of Education that report almost 400,000 homeless children were served by the nation's public schools last year. Since more than half of all homeless children are under the age of 6 and not yet in school, a minimum of 800,000 children can be presumed to be homeless. On the basis of these data, the National Center on Family Homelessness concludes that more than one million American children are homeless today.

<snip>

http://thunder1.cudenver.edu/cye/factsheets/outcasts.pdf

A study published in 2001 found that the most at-risk group of veterans was (still) the particular cohort of post-Vietnam era veterans who were recruited after the end of the national draft and who were aged 20-34 during the 1980s, and that other groups did not appear to be at discernibly greater risk of homelessness than the general population. THe study focused on homeless men. The researchers speculated that "The observed cohort effect, which demonstrates an especially high risk of homelessness among veterans of the immediate post-Vietnam era, even as they age, may reflect the continuing influence of the early problems in recruiting for the All Volunteer Force (AVF). In contrast to the national draft, which promised a fair representation of the entire population of draft-eligible young men, the AVF also had the potential to attract young men with fewer alternative opportunities."

The full citation is: G. Gamache1, R. Rosenheck, and R. Tessler. 2001. The proportion of veterans among homeless men: a decade later. Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology 36 (10): 481-485.

If you want to help our vets...please read my thread here

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x4095151