{"id":57068,"date":"2014-12-12T09:00:14","date_gmt":"2014-12-12T14:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=57068"},"modified":"2014-12-12T10:57:19","modified_gmt":"2014-12-12T15:57:19","slug":"stolen-valor-wtf-over","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=57068","title":{"rendered":"Stolen Valor; WTF, over?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

You probably remember valor thief Dennis Meyers<\/a> who created a Silver Star citation, haffassedly, and convinced phony Vietnam veteran Tom Harkin to send a staffer to award it to him in a public ceremony. Here’s his poorly-crafted citation;<\/p>\n

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

Pretty damn sad isn’t it? Well, we just heard from our buddy, Doug Sterner that the reporter who wrote the original story called and told him that Myers doesn’t face any charges for his deceit. The American War Library<\/a> still sells those sorry excuses for a citation. The only thing that has changed is that Harkin is out after this Congress. <\/p>\n

This all begs the question why have Stolen Valor laws when no one intends to enforce them? You could ask the same of most laws these days. We have laws for everything these days and most of them are written by folks who want to get reelected. I was shocked to find that there are federal breast-feeding laws. The Federal Trade Commission regulates the size of theater seats. And don’t get me started on guns laws. We all know how guns laws are written with fan-fare and celebration but they never get used to actually prevent gun crimes.<\/p>\n

The latest Stolen Valor Act was approved last year with some celebration and photo events at the White House. But no one has been prosecuted under he Act to this date. The actual stolen valor itself has exploded. We’ve had nearly 200 cases added to our Stolen Valor page since March. We’ve discovered people who are stealing from the Veterans’ Administration, pretending to be POWs, wearing nearly every valor medal without earning them, wearing combat badges. The justice system is broken. <\/p>\n

Legislators write laws that make them look good and prosecutors won’t pursue those cases because it doesn’t make them look good enough. In Pennsylvania, a legislator tries to write a new law the restricts sales of valor goods. Let’s say that works, does anyone think that a prosecutor will really go after dealers? Are prosecutors going to monitor Ebay? <\/p>\n

So, that leaves enforcement of stolen valor to the shame of the village square – TAH, Guardian of Valor, Scotty and the countless others who have set up websites across the internet. But then, who protects us? You’ve all heard and read the death threats, the crappy law suits that get filed against us. You know, things that the justice system and law enforcement is supposed to protect law abiding citizens from – folks who are engaged in legal businesses and work within the law.<\/p>\n

I’m not asking for new laws, I’m just asking for the so-called justice system to enforce the laws they already have on the books – all of the laws, all of the time. You know – that whole protect and serve thing, I hear so much about. If you’re not going to do that, don’t be surprised when there are a pile of bullet-riddled bodies at the end of my sidewalk some night when one of these goofballs decides to follow through because he gets the impression that the laws don’t apply to him, because they haven’t so far.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You probably remember valor thief Dennis Meyers who created a Silver Star citation, haffassedly, and convinced … Stolen Valor; WTF, over?<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":57046,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[183],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stolen-valor-act"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57068","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=57068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57068\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/57046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}