This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: VFW PAC

  • Ladies’ Auxillary bails on VFW PAC

    You know you’re deep in kim-chee when the VFW’s Ladies Auxillary disses you;

    October 13, 2010

    Dear Sisters,

    In light of the VFW’s position on the most recent endorsements by the VFW Political Action Committee, effective this day, October 13, 2010, the Ladies Auxiliary to the Veterans of Foreign Wars is suspending all fundraising and promotion of VFW-PAC for the remainder of the year.

    Any monies raised for PAC up to this date should be forwarded immediately to PAC for those purposes in accordance with the laws concerning political action committees.

    Department Award No. 5 as seen in the 2010-2011 National Program Book on Page 20 is hereby suspended for the remainder of the year, and the program title will hereafter be known as Legislative.

    Loyally,

    Cortina Barnes
    National President

    Hey, Sal, how do you suppose my feet taste? Still no call back.

    Thanks to Mr. Wolf (who got a call back) for the link.

  • VFW PAC insurgents

    The shit storm we started over the VFW PAC endorsements for the upcoming elections continues. Yesterday the Commander called for the PAC to rescind their endorsements;

    As determined in the VFW By-Laws, as the national officers, we have specific responsibilities to take definitive action when events can have a detrimental impact on the organization. It is clear to us that the current situation now demands direct action; therefore, we are requesting the chairman and the directors of the Political Action Committee immediately rescind their endorsement actions.

    The Board of the VFW PAC refused;

    In the political endorsement arena, there will always be party loyalists and individuals that will not agree with the VFW-PAC decision. The Board respects their position and appreciates their activism in support of the candidate of their choice. The VFW-PAC endorsement is not designed to tell people how to vote; but to point out who has demonstrated support for veterans and America’s security.

    The VFW-PAC disagrees with those who claim the endorsement process is skewed, flawed, or unfair. Some incumbents will have an advantage over another candidate because they have a good voting record on the issues. They also have a disadvantage if their votes don’t support the VFW’s position. Holding lawmakers accountable and judging them by their actions on legislative issues is a fair and necessary standard. This Congress has been very good to veterans and incumbent endorsements reflect that support.

    The VFW-PAC stands by the endorsement process used during the 2010 election cycle.

    Oddly enough, the PAC, on the web page of their refusal, continue to use the VFW logo. If there’s an insurrection over there, shouldn’t they fight their battle under another banner? The colonists didn’t fight the British under the King’s own flag, did they?

    The PAC claims that it endorsed candidates that “have a good voting record on the issues”. Really? Over the last ten years or over the session? Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi were unable to pass a defense budget this year. They had to pass two budgets last year because they couldn’t pass one for 2009 in 2008. Is that a good record? Is that a position that the VFW takes – no defense budget?

    What really pissed me off is that the Commander said that most of us who called the national office didn’t understand that the PAC was separate from our organization. I think I explained that the first day, didn’t I? We all perfectly understand the division, but the public doesn’t and I think that’s more important. And the candidates certainly don’t make the distinction for their constituents.

    Previously, I’ve kept my personal criticism of the Board between me and my pals, now you’re all my pals. have you seen the pictures of the Board of the PAC? They all look like they rode with Pershing hunting down Pancho Villa – which is probably why they’re so out of touch with politics. They’re still excited that Woodrow Wilson has promised to keep us out of The Great War.

    Hot Air outlines the absolute idiocy of the PAC’s endorsement of Boxer. In fact, Jom Hoft at Breitbart’s Big Peace has a piece today that two of the people who were endorsed by the VFW PAC, Waxman and Boxer, secured diplomatic courtesy letters for Code Pink so the smelly hippie wenches could deliver $600,000 to insurgents in Fallujah while they were fighting our troops in those streets in late 2004.

    Does the VFW want to attach itself to that clearly treasonous act?

    You can go through the (PDF) list and point out your own, if you want. If the list disappears, I have a copy.

    At a minimum, the National Commander should forbid the PAC from calling themselves the VFW PAC and rescind the authorization for them to use the logo. If they want to endorse candidates without putting a moment’s thought into it, and if they want to argue with the membership over their inability to make distinctions beyond some survey, they don’t deserve to call themselves VFW. If they can’t do that, go nuclear and disband the PAC. If the American Legion can go all of these years without a PAC, so can we.

    And, oh, the PAC still hasn’t returned my phone call a week later and they have the phone number on answering machine.

  • The VFW PAC issue revisited

    My friends have weighed in on the VFW PAC issue, which I started last week. Mr Wolf from Blackfive has a post at Breitbart’s Big Peace and he’s still advocating that you to burn your VFW membership card. Well, I can’t do that – mine is aluminum. Yes, I’ve been a member that long – nearly twenty years as a Life Member.

    That guy who calls himself Mothax, has a really well-written post up at The Burn Pit about the pitfalls of a VSO trying to remain non-partisan in a political environment. He approaches the subject from an historical perspective without dick-punching the VFW.

    Me? I’m sticking it out for reform of the VFW PAC. I don’t know what their procedure is for endorsing a candidate, but obviously it’s wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. But, I don’t think that the answer is to disband a hundred-year-old organization. I’m also sure that organizations like VoteVets and IAVA are salivating at the thought of of the 2.1 million members of VFW, and their dues, in the wind.

    And, admit it, all of those guys who wrote that THIS is the reason they won’t join the VFW now, were never going to join anyway. I’ve seen the power of blogs in relation to certain organizations, and I’m putting my money on the folks who stick rather than the folks who bail on the VFW.

    Mr. Wolf says the VFW has kicked the can down the road by putting off for the next convention what they should be doing today. It’s only kicking the can down the road if that’s what we let them do. Mr. Wolf has a point, and I’ll admit that resigning my membership was my first reaction – but then I realized that it would probably do more damage than good.

    It also worries me that some of the leftists have joined in the feeding frenzy.

    But I’ll tell you what, as a twenty-year Life Member of the VFW, when a receptionist at the VFW PAC takes my name and number, and I’m like the VFW’s last ally on the internet…they’d better call me back. They’ve already called Bev Perlson back and she’s not even a member.

  • Did your head explode?

    Well, dicksmith says it did. He wrote a piece at VetsVoice about our little tiff with the VFW-PAC this week entitled “Wingnut Heads Explode When VFW Endorses War Criminal’s Opponent .”

    Of course, LTC Allen West is supposed to be the war criminal because he extracted critical intel from an enemy detainee using proven methods of instilling fear, namely firing a weapon while the detainee’s head was covered and the detainee wasn’t wearing Depends. I probably don’t need to say this, but dicksmith is a gigantic pussy.

    Anyway, this line is killer;

    So, it’s a well known fact that the PAC operated by Veterans of Foreign Wars doesn’t actually care about Vets. They care about scoring points for their own ideology…

    Dicksmith doesn’t even see the irony that someone from MoveOn.prg-supported VoteVets which is financed openly by the Soros Foundation says another organization slavishly follows it’s doctrine. Now, if the VFW-PAC was solely following it’s supposedly conservative doctrine, why was their list of approved candidates mostly Democrats, you dill hole?

    The issue that the VFW membership had with the PAC has nothing to do with doctrine – it has to do with the PAC’s utter incompetence. Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi support veterans like they support gun owners. There’s no way the PAC should be endorsing those boobs.

    Dicksmith rambles on;

    Now, I don’t know whether it’s driving them nuts because they love them some torture, or if it’s driving them nuts because the idea that VFW would endorse a Democrat is unacceptable, but heads or [sic] exploding over in the wingnutosphere as a result of VFW endorsing West’s opponent….

    Where it says “wingnutosphere” there’s a link to Blackfive – you know, that den of evil Republican assassins that meet nightly with John Boehner for their marching orders. Of course, they could have put a link to TAH there, but that’s what drew my fire in the first place while Beeker was still there and linked to TAH every time he wrote “far right nuts” or words to that effect. Dicksmith didn’t want to make that mistake a second time.

    Look, I’m not real comfortable with a Veterans organization endorsing non-Vets at all. If there is no Vet in the race or you don’t like the one in the race, just don’t endorse.

    He knows what he’s talking about – in the largest field ever of veterans running for office this year, VoteVets is supporting 10. All Democrats.

    In the last election, VoteVets gave us the sexual antics of Eric Masa – their support was given purely because he fit their profile – a vet and a Democrat.

  • That which you have wrought

    I was alerted by Mr. Wolf to the fact that this was just posted on the VFW website;

    Proud of yourselves?

    Of course, they say they’re going to bring the issue of the VFW-PAC up at the National Convention in August and it’s up to us to hold their feet to the fire and make sure that they’re not just throwing us a bone.

    I may have to attend this convention. We should make a party of this.

  • FL VFW Commander responds

    Mr Wolf from Blackfive emailed me this letter which he received from Pete Nicholsen, the Florida State Commander of the VFW, that Nicholsen sent to the Executive Director of the VFW’s Political Action Committee, Salvatore Capprichio;

    On behalf of the Department of Florida, I am writing to object to the manner in which the Veterans of Foreign Wars Political Action Committee made its endorsements for the United States Congress. This year’s process is both arbitrary and capricious and devoid of Department input. Consequently, I am asking each member of the Department of Florida to disregard the list of endorsements as published in this month’s VFW Magazine and vote their own conscience since we had no input into this year’s endorsement process.

    Apparently, the Committee has abandoned the previous years’ process of “advise and consent” whereby it provided a list of proposed endorsees to the Departments for comment, concurrence, additions and deletions. The Department of Florida certainly understands that the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the VFWPAC are necessarily separate entities, however, the PAC exists because of the support it derives from all Departments, Districts, Posts, Comrades and Sisters. Consequently, the Departments acting on behalf of its Districts, Posts and members should have an opportunity to voice its opinion on which Floridian candidates should or should not receive the endorsement of the VFW-PAC.

    It is abundantly clear that the PAC has skewed this year’s endorsements towards incumbents. By weighting selections toward the sitting members of Congress, you are encouraging complacency and taking discourse out of the electoral process. Our position is that a process that only evaluates the voting record of sitting members inherently disadvantages those candidates who challenge incumbents. The extant process negates any previous public or private sector experience of a non-incumbent candidate.

    I am concerned that the selection process adopted by the PAC will have both lasting and negative consequences on our ability to recruit and retain members in the Department of Florida. It is evident from the tone of the received emails that the VFW-PAC and by association the Veterans of Foreign Wars is not sewing the interests of some members and potential members. This regional firestorm could have been avoided if the PAC board and staff remembered the old adage that all politics are local.

    I know what Capprichio’s response will be; the PAC sent out questionnaires to all of the candidates, some didn’t respond, blah, blah, the PAC can’t make determinations based solely on whether a candidate was a veteran or a member of the VFW, blah, blah, we’re doing the best we can with we’ve got.

    Then it’s time to update your procedures, Sal. When you support candidates like Klein, whose only legislation that helped veterans was to fund a study into guide dogs, over someone like West, your shit is loose.

    When you find yourself supporting Barbara Boxer, who publicly berated a general for calling her “ma’am” instead of “Senator” because she worked really hard for the title, your shit is loose.

    When you find yourself supporting Jim McDermott who stood on the roof of Saddam’s palace and declared that Hussein was more credible than our own president, your shit is loose.

    When you find yourself supporting Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi who spent two years trying to defund our troops while our forces were engaged in a war…and still can’t get a defense budget passed because of the pork they loaded into it, your shit is loose. And Harry Reid boasts of your endorsement on his website.

    When you rest your credibility on your 2.1 million members, knowing that the vast majority of those members disagree with you, your shit is loose.

    There’s no partisanship involved – you caught shit for not supporting Tammy Duckworth over her non-military opponent in 2006. The partisan side of me says “Good for you!”, but the fairness side of me says “Your shit is loose”.

  • Contact info for VFW PAC

    By popular demand;

    VFW-PAC
    VFW Washington Office
    200 Maryland Avenue, NE
    Washington, DC 20002
    Tel. (202) 544-5868
    Fax (202) 544-8495

    Swiped from Mr Wolf;

    Email them at: vfwpac@vfw.org

    There’s a VFW PAC office in each state. Click here for the map, just roll the cursor to your state to get their phone number.

    Faxes and phone calls are better than emails.

    A very frazzled young lady answered the phone. She seemed burden with a sudden burst of phone calls.

  • VFW-PAC, you suck

    I got an email last night from Bev Perlson (Band of Mothers) that reported that the VFW-PAC (the political action committee of the Veterans of Foreign Wars) is supporting Democrat Ron Klein. Now, just because he’s a Democrat, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t merit the VFW’s support. Of course, being a rich lawyer from Boca Raton doesn’t exempt him either. Neither does the fact that he’s never served a day in the military. Reading his bio, I don’t think he’s ever laid eyes on anyone else in the military.

    What makes the VFW-PAC’s choice so heinous is the fact that Klein, the rich lawyer from Boca Raton, is running against former Lieutenant Colonel Allen West. You know Lieutenant Colonel West don’t you? He’s an infantry colonel and a veteran of the wars in the Persian Gulf – you know those FOREIGN WARS? He’s a veteran of a war that was foreign – so I can see why the Veterans of Foreign Wars Political Action Committee wouldn’t support him.

    So, of course, i went to the (PDF) list of candidates that VFW_PAC is supporting and I find they’re also supporting Barbara Boxer, Alcee Hastings, Barbara Lee, Steny Hoyer, Barbara Mikulsky, Chris VanHollen, John Dingell, Chuckie Schumer, Pat Leahy and Patty Murray – it’s like a Who’s Who of the folks who have tried to screw the troops and have contributed to the lengthening of the war in the east.

    Oh, yeah, COB6, they’re supporting your guy’s opponent, too.

    So I have to ask, as a life member of the VFW, who the Hell is running that place over there? I remember the VFW wasn’t all that concerned about the Homeland Security estimate that veterans are a threat to our national security and now I see this. Me, personally, I wouldn’t endorse Alcee Hastings, the impeached judge, for town drunk…so what the hell is the VFWPAC thinking?

    Contact information for VFW PAC which is different from any VFW contact information you might have;

    VFW-PAC
    VFW Washington Office
    200 Maryland Avenue, NE
    Washington, DC 20002
    Tel. (202) 544-5868
    Fax (202) 544-8495

    Email: vfwpac@vfw.org

    Faxes and phone calls are better than emails.