{"id":31078,"date":"2012-07-26T07:56:02","date_gmt":"2012-07-26T11:56:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=31078"},"modified":"2012-08-15T07:42:09","modified_gmt":"2012-08-15T11:42:09","slug":"soldiers-angels-responds-to-idiotic-allegations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=31078","title":{"rendered":"Soldiers’ Angels responds to idiotic allegations"},"content":{"rendered":"

So Yon (and Wittgenfeld) are on a tear to discredit Soldiers Angels, as you likely all know. Blackfive put up a piece yesterday<\/a>, and I wanted to do that, and get in front of the FOIA they are doing on me.<\/p>\n

First, the SA thing should be read in full<\/a> (I had nothing to do with writing it incidentally), but there’s one section that bears mentioning about the financials. As I said on Facebook last night:<\/p>\n

Soldiers’ Angels has responded to the allegations of impropriety by Mr. Yon. It is long, but it spells out why the Charity Navigator rating can be difficult to grasp sometimes. SA gets 70\/70 on transparency, where it loses is in the financial section, and that is because it choses to hire veterans (which counts as overhead) rather than pay an outside firm which would be a “program cost.” In terms of units sent overseas and veterans helped with jobs, our way is significantly better, but Charity Navigator assigns a lower rating. Anyway, read it if you get a chance.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

From the letter, a bit more on that last part:<\/p>\n

Another area which reduced our financial rating relates to a change in Soldiers’ Angels operations that we believe directly supports our mission. In 2009 we started the S.A.V.E program to employ troops leaving the military and provide a transitional period while they sought permanent work. In the early years of Soldiers’ Angels, we hired third party companies to send out care packages on a large scale each day, which was considered by Charity Navigator as a 100% Program Expense. As more troops started coming home from the wars and leaving military service, we recognized that many were struggling to find or keep jobs in the civilian sector due to the challenges of reintegration and Post-Traumatic Stress. As such, we opened our own warehouse in San Antonio to send care packages directly and staffed it with recently-returned veterans to give them a chance to transition within a safe environment mentored by fellow veterans. In this way, Soldiers’ Angels has supported close to 30 transitioning veterans. Supporting returning veterans through S.A.V.E is consistent with the Soldiers’ Angels mission and logically falls under Program Costs, but Charity Navigator declared it to be overhead, shifting a major expense into the Administrative column.
\n<\/p>\n

On the positive side of our ratings, the new Charity Navigator category, which began two years ago, is Accountability and Transparency, and this is where we stand out. For the past two years we have scored a four star rating from Charity Navigator. This category takes into account many qualitative measurements, including the fact that we have a Whistleblower policy, a Privacy policy, a Records Retention policy, and many other criteria that are meant to ensure that the Board isn\u2019t playing fast and loose with the rules as people have charged. For the most recent period we received 70 out of a possible 70 points. Our organization is an open book, and if anyone ever doubts this they have the ability to do a search at Charity Navigator or on our web site and find the information for themselves.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So there you have it. Basically everything Yon says in this regard is uber-crap. If you want to see what his actual beef is with Soldiers’ Angels, Mr Greyhawk has the definitive post on that<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The irony of all this is of course that at one point I was lauding Yon from the hilltops. I bought his book for people, read it myself, and though he was doing great things. The first time I altered from that even a little was with Yon’s fight with TSA<\/a>. He may even have been in the right, probably was, but the whole affair struck me as one of your garden variety “Don’t you know who I am?” type affairs, which annoy the heck out of me. If a government official asks how much I make, I just tell them, you know, what with it already being on my tax forms.<\/p>\n

Anyway, now Yon appears to be tied up with some real loons. He and Wittgenfeld are exchanging emails (Yon even uses the same bloated picture of me that Wittgenfeld uses) and Yon accused me of being a fatty. Um, ok. Yon also has stuff up on his page from Arthur South (himself a phony SEAL<\/a>) and Bob Golden of the “Green Beret Network.” The latter is a funny duck as well, as shown by this guy who detailed Golden’s innaccuracies.<\/p>\n

I do not accept his explanations of the discrepancies I found. His military records do not agree with his responses. In other words, Golden is lying about each and every item. His wannabee status started upon completion of Artillery OCS, 10 months after enlistment in the US Army, and has continued until today. My observations of this man from the time he came on the Special Forces List, shortly after I arrived in February 1998, until present, indicate he consistently inflates and sensationalizes any situation that will make himself look like the key figure and inflate his ego, true or not. I have always been suspect of his claims, since day one.<\/p>\n

The following items are not substantiated by Golden\u2019s military records:<\/p>\n

Master Parachutist Badge, 3d Award of the Purple Heart, Army Commendation Medal, HALO Qualification, VN Master Parachutist Badge, Good Conduct Medal, Assignment to Mike Force in RVN, Retirement from the US Army.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So anyway, Wittgenfeld, South, Golden and Yon I thought was sufficient for a respectable enemies list (not Nixonian, but enough I could keep track anyway) until this comment showed up on Yon’s page on July 19:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

My first obvious question was “Who is Ray Hall, and how did I manage to piss him off.”<\/p>\n

I still have no clue how I pissed him off, because I’ve never met the guy, emailed him or anything else. I assume he’s part of the Idiots Cabal, but I honestly don’t know. The fact that his comments are right next to Wittgenfeld’s seemed a clue.<\/p>\n

So who is Ray Hall?<\/p>\n

Just a twice convicted felon waiting to go to jail<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Piedmont Councilman William \u201cRay\u201d Hall was sentenced Tuesday in Mineral County Magistrate Court to a year in jail and was fined $500, the maximum sentence he could have received for the charge of attempted extortion. Hall will also have to pay the court costs and fees….<\/p>\n

Hall had a prior felony conviction in 1982 from Arlington County, Va., and a prior misdemeanor on his record, said Assistant Attorney Cody Pancake.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course that still didn’t explain why he hated me, since I wasn’t responsible for his extortion attempt or anything. Then I found out he was also a fake Navy Special Ops\/Vietnam combat veteran:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Yeah, his DD214, at the link above, does not support those comments.<\/p>\n

So, I still don’t know why he hates me, but I like that he does.<\/p>\n

Now I am getting emails that they have requested my FOIA. Um, ok. Actually, I have a FOIA in on myself too. I’m actually kind of curious what is in there, because my fear is I actually have two seperate files, one from the reserves and one from the Guard. When I was infantry in the reserves I was with the 314th Mech out of Gettysburg. (Patch like a birthday cake with candles.) Then Clinton did away with the Infantry in the reserves. The unit got switched to MP, but I had zero desire to serve in a MP unit, so I said no, find me another unit. Then I got a letter that to this day horrifies me, I had been transferred to the 229th Engineers as a…..[oh God]…. 92W, something like Shower Point Installation Technician. The minute I got it I drove over and talked to the CO there and told him this just couldn’t happen. I was infantry. Thankfully the CO was a former grunt, and he got my paper done on the spot to go to the 29th ID. At the time it was Charlie Company 1\/170 as memory serves, out of Leesburg, VA.\u00a0\u00a0 (Would later change to C co. 3\/116 INF.\u00a0 My 2-1 file will show I was assigned as a squad leader in every company in the Battalion at one point or another.\u00a0 If you note, I was an E5.\u00a0 Yeah, I was high on the list each time, but kept getting out, refused to stay in peacetime National Guard when I had too much else going on.)<\/p>\n

Anyway, the only thing that concerns me is that when I was in Bosnia with the 29th, and later in Afghanistan, both times I got letters from the Reserves telling me I had to report immediately for service at Ft Eustice. Kinda hard when you are already deployed. Both times my First Sergeants handled it, but lord knows what made it into my file.<\/p>\n

Either way, I never claim to be something I am not, and have nothing to hide, so I really don’t care that much, except about the 92W (it might be some other similiar MOS) but I figured I might as well toss my most recent DD214 up here. I know it is missing stuff like an AAM, but I actually have the copy of that. And yes, I should have gotten the 214 right when I left, and I would have, but it was the day before class started in Law School, and let’s be honest, it’s an AAM, who cares.\u00a0 (Ditto the Good Conduct Medal they threatened to mail me last year and I told them to save the postage.)\u00a0 Also, I don’t know why block 11 doesn’t have my full infantry time, but I have other DD214’s that display it properly, from Bosnia.<\/p>\n

Either way, you can see the rest of it yourself. They could have seen it too if they’d just asked.<\/p>\n

NOTE: I took it down now, since it has served it’s purpose, but if you want it, email Jonn and I will get it to you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So Yon (and Wittgenfeld) are on a tear to discredit Soldiers Angels, as you likely all … Soldiers’ Angels responds to idiotic allegations<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":148,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31078","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\/148"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31078"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31078\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}