{"id":20769,"date":"2010-10-08T09:14:53","date_gmt":"2010-10-08T13:14:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=20769"},"modified":"2010-10-14T08:41:50","modified_gmt":"2010-10-14T12:41:50","slug":"fl-vfw-commander-responds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=20769","title":{"rendered":"FL VFW Commander responds"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mr Wolf from Blackfive<\/a> 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;<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

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.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mr Wolf from Blackfive emailed me this letter which he received from Pete Nicholsen, the Florida … FL VFW Commander responds<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,144],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-vfw-pac"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20769\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}