Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for March 06, 2016

At least now you’ll know where your money is going.

Zillionaires got needs tooThey need trusting fools’Tis trueThey need meThey love you.

Here in Italy is even bad : families of the Italian soldier died in Afghanistan , Iraq or other place where we make operations are completely left alone

-I actually used to donate to DAV, until Wounded Warrior came along. So I guess I’ll just go back to supporting what turned out to be the right cause…

-It’s more than a zinger, when you consider that the watcher of that plea for funds to line the pockets of those who should be helping is a character representing those who SHOULD be helped…

-The US has a bad history of treatment of vets. After WW I, Congress had voted to give a bonus to those who had served, but it would not be paid until 1945. When the Depression set in, thousands of out of work vets gathered in Washington DC to await Congressional action to pay the bonus. They lived in encampments on federal land, like today’s homeless vets live in wooded areas near highways, except that their families lived with them.

Congress voted not to give the pay. President Hoover ordered the military to disperse the homeless vets. They were fired on; two children were killed.

Part of the reason why Franklin Roosevelt put all kinds of programs in place for returning vets after WW II (like the veterans subsidy for mortgages) was to avoid a similar situation…

Move aside, Trace Adkins, I want to see what happens with Duke.

This hits the nsil squarely on the head. I’d been giving as much as possible til I learned of the four star hotels used for meetings, squandering money on one way flights for no good reason, and lavish “retreats” for the higher echelon in the fund raiser club. No thanks.

Oh, and I’ve found thge DAV to be completely trustworthy, and a local group went out vof their way to make sure thast a WWII vet I knew got hearing asids he badly needed for decades. And, they ask fgor so very little. I’ll support them til I die. They don’t have fancy commercials, but they do have a van in my hometown to shuttle vets to the hospitasl and back.

You need to learn how apostrophes work. Fathers is plural, so the apostrophe is superfluous; and you are using its in the sense of it is, so it should be it’s.

All too true, and more often, it’s the families of the poor wounded warriors who get financially and emotionally devastated trying to take care of them. There’s a long tradition of this, going back to Elizabeth I’s repudiation of her debt to the poor peasants who saved her from the Spanish invasion of 1588.

It’s an ongoing national disgrace how our veterans have been treated – only slightly better than native Americans.

Trump loves WWP and vice versa

Lots of people online need to learn about apostrophes.

How much was Trace’s cut?

Try looking up whatever group you are considering donating to at this website: http://www.charitynavigator.org/. Or this one: http://nccsdataweb.urban.org/nccsTools.php

Most fund raising, funds more fund raising.

In the last panel, he has left the picture. Tell me it wasn’t to get his wallet…..

Guys, for those of us not in the know, what does ‘DAV’ stand for?

Yeah, I thought he had gone to get the phone, to make a donation to trump to give to WWF.

LameRandomName“Ha! Hitler said it was a socialist party and you BELIEVED him.”.

.You just believe it WASN’T socialist because it was bad and socialists are never bad..Orwell had the same problem reconciling his beliefs with the misdeeds of Stalin.

Donald Trump neither invented nor perfected con artistry, but somehow or other that’s not reassuring……..

Never give a dime to these bums. Forget them & their Chinese blankets.

The US is, to my knowledge, the only Western nation that expects its soldiers to be taken care of by private charities (apparently private for profit charities) rather than by the nation as a whole. Because, y’know, acting civilized might require rich people to pay some taxes. And besides, the military isn’t treating its veterans any differently than the private sector treats its retirees—as “resources” that are now used up and need to be disposed of as cheaply as possible.

We need a law in this country that says that if a charity uses more than 10% of the contributions it receives for administration and fund raising expenses it will be delisted as a charity and the principles of the charity should be prosecuted for FRAUD!!!!!

Hitler put “Socialist” in the name to try and co-opt the existing Socialists, who he subsequently had hunted down and taken out of the picture. His actions were in line with right-wing groups even today, and he used nationalism and Christianity as part of his propaganda. .The canard the he’s a left-winger is partly the work of right-wing apologists like Jonah Goldberg, who are anxious to deflect from their own side’s authoritarian tendencies and retroactively besmirch their opponents. Few seriously believe it, but like to say it anyway, because it annoys those who know something about history, and to those who doesn’t, it helps get their side off the hook.

The VA budget belongs in the military budget.

Veterans’ care is part of the cost of war, part of the cost of maintaining a strong military, part of national security.

Something that no Republican/Fox “news” viewer wants to admit.

puddleglum1066: your comment’s claim that the US expects veterans’ needs to be provided by private charities is a load of BS. In fact, the VA and other USG agencies spend billions on veterans’ care. Of course, there are failures, but it’s also true that many veterans are free loaders. There’s a myth that they’re the nation’s best when in fact they’re no better than average. Incidentally, I’m a veteran of the Korean conflict.

This is the first time I’ve seen B.D.’s prosthetic leg.

After all these years, Trudeau still takes no prisoners. An inspiration to us all.

DAV is a much better place to give money and support veterans.

Hadn’t heard of WWP until Amazon promoted it for it’s smile.amazon.com charity pairing website (it gives part of the proceeds from your purchase to the charity of your choice, if you make your purchase from it, instead of just amazon.com). I switched to DAV about a month ago (whenever it was CBS broke the story about WWP – I wish it would have been before Christmas, though).

This is how they swindle the ’Mericans.

I’m permanent and total disabled, and a life member of DAV (Disabled American Veterans), yet their fundraising emails do get a bit “tedious” as do all charitable organizations. The do do excellent workd to serve veterans though.

Early on , Wounded Warriors did a great job helping a friend of my son (he’s also a disabled vet with multiple problems) in securing a service animal. All their ads started making me nervous though about where the money was really going, advertising versus service, as the program grew exponentially, and took on new “leadership”. I sadly wasn’t surprised to see this “scanda’” erupt. It’s too bad.

VA has served me and my son very well. I realize that this huge beauracracy has problems, but it’s more staff retention than a funding, because Congress micro-manages the legislation for their funding, and doesn’t let the real professionals make the decisions. That also is a problem of too many political appointees, not career folks, calling the shots at upper management at VA.

I got my latest hearing aids for example from VA, and the Denver folks were GREAT when I needed a repair, and they also set me up to get batteries instead of buying from my audiologist- a minor cost, but a service for the guys who are strapped for funds. My AIDS cost the VA btw less than my audiologists COST PRICE for the same devices, they DO SAVE TAXPAYERS MONEY!

That is exactly, like their negotiating drug prices, why they should definitely NOT be a part of DOD, OR ruined by “privatizing” as the Republicans want to do. THAT would totally destroy the system!!!!! Yes, they need reforms, but NOT dictated by any morons in Congress (especially right wingers) or screwed up by a “congressional committee”.

My contacts, doctors, shrinks, nurses, pharmacists, have all said the same thing. The salaries at VA aren’t that bad, but the stress of overworked folks with too few staff, especially trained and qualified staff, is the problem. When they have the best equipment, but nobody trained to use it, that’s a serious problem. Retention will depend on increasing staff, and keeping up with the workload of aging vets, and more disabled coming from continual wars abroad, not just the funding per se. BTW, new prosthesis that can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars are fantastic improvements, but must be paid for. How aout cancelling the F-35 that doesn’t work, and use the money to provide more of these devices, and treatment of vets, that DO work!! (That would be $1.3 TRILLION wasted so far on that piece of junk aircraft!) DARPA has done some great things btw, but their budget and projects also need review, as the “black box” spending there is about equal to the announced DOD “budget”.

That’s just a suggestion for a start.

Sure am glad I never sent them any $! Thought about it, and decided if Ol’ Trace wouldn’t mind coming on and sayin something like, “I shore am sorry that I had to go and record that piece of jingo bull shoot that included that line about puttin’ a boot up somebody’s a**, ’cause that helped get a whole bunch of warriors wounded.” I might just consider sending them a few bucks I don’t have, because my heart goes out to these young men and women who were abused and even killed so Cheney’s buddies in the military-industrial complex could rake in a few trillion of our borrowed money. Congress needs to stop building new military stuff-especially the stuff that doesn’t work-and start taking care of vets. Starting with the few agent orange victims who are still living.

I never gave any $ to the WWP, though donated lots to the DAV.

I have heard a lot of folks lately claim that Trump is getting support from blue collar workers, people who feel left out. I understand that they feel left out, just don’t think Trump is their man. As I said earlier, Trump has affiliated himself with the WWP and has lots of supporters in the WWP. There are lots of military folks in the GOP, people who have been led on into conflicts by the elite hawks within the establishment of the GOP. Curious to me that they would support this. It is the working poor who end up going to war and we tell ourselves it is a voluntary military, yet, many of these folks have no other alternative other than going into the military to get an education and get a job, so I am not so sure the voluntary part really applies as much as some would have you believe.

The Fisher House is one of the best for vets. There are others. WWP only returned 60% of what they took in to help the vets. Check it out. There is a site that rates these organizations that help the vets – don’t have the URL right now, but a Google search will get you there.

Sorry about that. Try the link below. The link in the articles should take you to the original article:-

NY Times first Hitler article

“Google, or any other search engine, is the enemy of such ideologues…”You’re right, of course. I keep forgetting that some people think that reading the straw men of those who oppose an idea is the same as learning about that idea, and that listening to The Great Echo Chamber is the same thing as research.

I was waiting for the bus once when a man came up to me and asked for a dollar so he could take the bus home (the bus was just a buck at the time) I felt sorry for the guy and gave him a dollar for the ride. As soon as he had the dollar in his hand he was running across the street to the liquer store, I haven’t given anyone bus money since.

Well-played Trudeau.