Rolling Thunder, a motorcycle club described as a “veterans’ advocacy group,” has descended on DC this weekend. They’ve brought with them hundreds of motorcycles that sport loud pipes, which they’ve driven through residential neighborhoods at all hours of the day and night. (Yes, I’m bitter. I’ve gotten stuck behind them on several occasionsthis weekend, and they’ve been going past my apartment building constantly for the past several days.) Now CNN reports that they’ve endorsed Bush. If “promoting legislation to increase veterans’ benefits” is one of their goals, why are they endorsing a guy who has cut veterans’ benefits in the past and proposes further cutting them if he is elected in order to pay for his tax cuts?
Categories: Election 2004, In the News
5:05 pm | 3 comments
May 30th, 2004 at 10:38 pm
I’m still confused by those articles… what benefits were reduced and what spending? I can’t find it covered anywhere but on places like veterandsforcommonsense.org and other places like that which have a definite agenda (though not along party lines, I gather).
Are these just line item cuts in the general budget?
May 31st, 2004 at 11:59 am
I remember seeing articles about it back in the April 2003 time frame, but Google News only goes back 30 days. Seem to recall that it involved cutting hazzard pay, raising user fees for veteran’s healthcare, etc. Since I can’t find news reporting on it, here are some more biased sources:
DNC: http://tinyurl.com/yuw5f
Veterans United for Kerry: http://tinyurl.com/2r5yg
American Prospect: http://tinyurl.com/3yep8
Some orgs. press release: http://tinyurl.com/2mjjl
Veterans for Peace: http://tinyurl.com/37rdy
Op Ed by Rep. Jan Schakowsky: http://tinyurl.com/29rb2
May 31st, 2004 at 2:18 pm
Yeah, I found a bunch of others… but no news reporting, which is odd. I was looking around the time he went to Walter Reed in Jan, 2003 because I remember people complaining about the contradiction then. Atrios had a blurb that pointed to a Yahoo News page that no longer exists… beyond that, can’t find anything regarding the Veterans Benefits Act of 2002 (the one that supposedly cut benefits). Most of them seemed to be restored in 2003, but the impression I’m getting is that rules weren’t changed for eligibility (the stuff that the Acts cover), but line item budgets were decreased for the VA system.