Tag Archives: military

Just This Side of Hell (Video Commentary)

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faWUANkilho?rel=0&w=560&h=315]

Defense Spending and the Ohio National Guard

By Rep. Steve Austria

As a nation, we have asked more of our men and women serving in our National Guard with longer deployments and more missions. As a Member of the Homeland Security Committee, I have attended many deployment ceremonies and traveled to Afghanistan to visit our soldiers.

In addition to playing a vital role in protecting our nation, the Springfield Air National Guard Base and Rickenbacher Air and Army National Guard Base missions help support and strengthen our local economy. We now have an opportunity to expand the Ohio National Guard’s role in Springfield and Ohio with the National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC) from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and in Fairborn with Calamityville, a homeland security response team.

Given the integral role the National Guard plays both home and abroad, it is critical it receives adequate funding. Currently, Guard and Reserve operational functions are financed through the “Overseas Contingency Operations” budget, a supplemental account that also funds the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. However, as these missions continue to wind down, this account will inevitably become obsolete.

Replacing the current account with a more certain, dedicated stream of funding must be a priority. The National Guard will continue to be critical in protecting our nation as it expands its role from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to the current and future homeland security challenges we face. Thus, it is imperative that the National Guard have the necessary funding to successfully complete their missions and return home safely.

Liberals Memorial Weekend Assault On America’s Military

On the eve of the weekend that we honor members of the military who have served and those who have fallen to protect our nation, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to use our military for social engineering to benefit the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) political agenda.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi only gave Member of Congress a total of 10 minutes to debate the overturning of a 1993 law that bans homosexuals from openly serving in the military. Congress spends more debate time naming Post Offices than they gave to this historic policy shift in how our military functions.

This will fundamentally change our military – yet Pelosi thought it was so unimportant that she only gave five minutes for supporters of the ban and five minutes to the opponents of the ban to debate this issue. This is an outrage of immense proportions! Now the Senate will attempt to ram the repeal through when they return in two weeks.

The liberal controlled House of Representatives added an amendment to the Defense Authorization bill that overturns the 1993 ban on gays serving openly in the military.

Isn’t our military worth more than 10 minutes of debate? Not to liberals.

The failure to permit an honest debate on this amendment is an affront to every soldier, sailor and marine who has ever fought and died to protect this nation from foreign and domestic threats.

The rush to pass this measure is evidence that liberals know their time is short to impose LGBT social engineering upon our military before the mid-term election. The overturning of the 1993 ban is simply Obama’s way of paying back his LGBT supporters who helped get him elected. It has nothing to do with concern for military readiness, morale or unit cohesion.

The men and women we honor this weekend didn’t give their lives so that a zero tolerance program could be instituted in the Armed Forces to silence criticism of homosexual conduct – or to force our military into sensitivity training sessions to affirm gay, bisexual, lesbian and transgender sexual behaviors. Yet, this is apparently what our leftist “Representatives” think.

Federal courts have upheld the constitutionality of the law banning homosexuals in the military. The 1993 law states “there is no constitutional right to serve,” and the military is a “specialized society” that is “fundamentally different from civilian life.” In living conditions offering little or no privacy, homosexuality presents an “unacceptable risk” to good order, discipline, morale and unit cohesion—qualities essential for combat readiness.

Legalizing homosexual conduct in the military will inevitably lead to the destruction of our all-volunteer forces and potentially bring back the draft. Why? Because heterosexual warriors and patriots know instinctively that homosexual sex is abnormal and threatens to create all sorts of problems within the Armed Forces.

In 2008, the Military Times reported the results of a poll regarding lifting the ban on gays in the military. It showed that 10% of our military will not re-enlist or extend their service if the ban is overturned; another 14% said they would consider not re-enlisting or extending their service. In essence, this could result in a loss of up to 323,000 men and women from the service.

This loss of hundreds of thousands of patriotic soldiers will threaten our national security, yet liberals don’t care.

This Memorial Day let’s remember our fallen soldiers, but also remember that our current soldiers face a domestic enemy in our Congress and among lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender activist groups who seek to exploit the military for their political gain.

We must put an end to the liberal-gay dominance of our Congress this November. The future of our national security depends on it. Remember this: Our soldiers can’t defend themselves in the political realm. We must do it for them. They’re willing to die for you; are you willing to protect them from social engineering by LGBT zealots?

Source: Traditional Values Coalition, email newsletter, May 28, 2010.

Revolving door undermines public trust in government

By John Mitchel

RE: Local contractors under scrutiny for using paid military “mentors”, Dayton Daily News, December 30, 2009: Many consider Gen. Bill Creech as “father of the modern Air Force.”

During his distinguished career and before he died in 2003, Gen. Creech practiced and preached the notion that the most important responsibility of a leader is to train new leaders. “Mentoring” was on Gen. Creech’s short list of important tasks required to prepare Air Force leaders for the future. However, simultaneous receipt of $1600 a day mentoring fees plus a six-figure military pension plus hundreds of thousands in consulting fees from defense contractors doesn’t seem to fit Gen. Creech’s noble intentions of preparing Air Force leaders for challenges they may face in the future. Besides, each senior officer participating in the Air Force mentoring program has more than 30 years experience on active duty. That should be sufficient time to positively instill the core values of duty, honor, country in subordinates of all ranks, and especially the senior troops who more senior officers deal with on a daily basis.

“Mentors for hire” may seem abusive to some, but it pales in comparison to the ease and speed in which elected officials and their staff members pass through the “revolving door.” Take for example Congressman Dave Hobson, who retired a multi-millionaire after nearly 30 years of public service, then took a job as a lobbyist for Vorys Advisors, a subsidiary of Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease, LLC, a Columbus law firm. And let’s not forget Congressman Steve Austria’s wife Eileen, who moved from Congressman Dave Hobson’s District Director to Director of Sales and Marketing with Nextedge Development Corporation, a non-profit, tax exempt company 60-70 percent financed by tax dollars including federal earmarks requested by Dave Hobson and Third Frontier and other state funding sponsored by Steve Austria when he was in the Ohio General Assembly. It’s no wonder approval ratings for Congress are at all-time lows.

If the revolving door between government and the private sector should exist at all, it should be with two conditions; full and open disclosure, and a reasonable cooling off period, especially at the most senior levels. Instead, the usual suspects prefer to conceal their self-dealing with faceless private corporations, and more often than not, through non-profit, tax exempt entities financed mostly with taxpayer dollars. Term limits, self imposed or otherwise, would be a step in the right direction to mitigate the revolving door issue for federal elected officials. That would motivate our congressional leaders to act as citizen legislators who serve for a time, and then return to their home districts to enjoy the liberty and freedom they helped protect as representatives of the people. The longer we allow the self-dealing career politician mindset to prevail in Washington and Columbus, the closer we will come to America falling into the abyss.

John Mitchel was a candidate for Ohio governor in 1998 and ran for U.S. House of Representatives in the 7th Congressional District in 2008. In 2006 he wrote and self-published America at the Abyss: A View from the Heartland.