{"id":40177,"date":"2025-03-12T14:10:44","date_gmt":"2025-03-12T21:10:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=40177"},"modified":"2025-03-12T14:10:45","modified_gmt":"2025-03-12T21:10:45","slug":"can-veterans-stop-the-dismantling-of-veterans-services","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2025\/03\/12\/can-veterans-stop-the-dismantling-of-veterans-services\/","title":{"rendered":"Can Veterans Stop the Dismantling of Veterans’ Services?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Meyerson on TAP<\/strong> (Prospect.org)<\/td><\/tr>
Can Veterans Stop the Dismantling of Veterans\u2019 Services?<\/strong><\/td><\/tr>
<\/em>Trump and Musk have begun to cut back on services that veterans need. There\u2019s a way veterans could stop them.<\/em><\/td><\/tr>
For the past year, my Vietnam vet<\/strong> friend Skip, who has an advanced case of Parkinson\u2019s disease, has been trying to get his local Veterans Affairs office to approve the conversion of his bathtub to a more accessible shower. As I noted in a previous On TAP, a VA inspector was scheduled to come out to his home two Mondays ago to approve the setup and the funding. Instead, he called on that Monday to say he wouldn\u2019t be coming, since he\u2019d been fired over the weekend.

He was far from alone. Already, at least 6,000 VA employees have been shown\u2014make that, booted from\u2014the door, and Doug Collins, Donald Trump\u2019s designated VA secretary and decimator, has pledged to discharge another 80,000 or so. As more than 20 percent of VA workers are veterans themselves, that makes it likely that 20,000 more veterans will be Musked out of work. And there are hundreds of thousands of other veterans at work for the federal government, a sizable share of whom are also slated to be terminated.

Not surprisingly, these firings and reductions in service\u2014both the threatened and the already done\u2014have alarmed veterans\u2019 organizations. Al Lipphardt, the national commander of Veterans of Foreign Wars, called on his members to tell their congressional representatives to “stop the bleeding.” As Steve Early and Rebecca Gordon have noted<\/a>, calling out a Republican president is a departure from normal VFW practice, as its members tend to align themselves with conservative causes and elected officials. Exit polls from last November\u2019s presidential election showed nearly two-thirds of voting vets chose Donald Trump over Kamala Harris.

But rank-and-file veterans haven\u2019t always been so aligned. In 1932, at the bottom of the Great Depression, with 25 percent of the workforce officially unemployed and probably an equal share at work for fewer hours and reduced pay, roughly 30,000 World War I veterans, many with their wives and children, came to Washington\u2014a lot of them riding the rails in boxcars\u2014to demand their bonus. In the 1920s, Congress had voted to provide Great War vets with bonuses of several thousand dollars, payable near the end of the \u201930s. 1932 wasn\u2019t the end of the \u201930s, but tens of thousands of vets were at the end of their rope, homeless and hungry. They asked President Hoover to move the payment date up so they wouldn\u2019t be reduced to selling pencils on street corners.<\/td><\/tr>
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When Hoover said no, they stayed<\/strong> in place, occupying some empty office buildings but mainly camped out on an open field across the Anacostia River from the Capitol. Eventually, Hoover decided they had to go, and ordered the Army\u2014both cavalry and armored units, under the direction of Army Chief of Staff Douglas MacArthur\u2014to clear them out forcibly. The troops, led by MacArthur on a white horse, did just that, to the general horror of the nation.

We\u2019ve reached that stage in the Trump-Musk usurpation of constitutionally limited powers that demonstrations are now popping up on the National Mall\u2014last weekend, for instance, from scientists concerned about the defunding of research and the cutbacks at agencies like the National Institutes of Health and even the federal weather bureau. My sense is that if any group can assemble on the Mall and protest the wanton assaults on public services, research, and employment and win widespread, bipartisan support, it\u2019s America\u2019s veterans. I\u2019m not suggesting they camp out until the current madness is halted, but for some of them, at least, it wouldn\u2019t be a bad idea.

Remember that what ended Joe McCarthy\u2019s drunken reign of terror was his accusations that the Army was honeycombed with communists, and that, therefore, the top brass, beginning with George Marshall, should be unceremoniously sacked. The only lefty McCarthy was able to identify, however, was one low-ranking Army dentist, and when the Army started to return his fire, McCarthy came undone. If Donald Trump is to be stopped in his tracks, it might again require the Army: this time, the veterans whom we\u2019ve sent overseas and who want to live with a modicum of security and dignity now that they\u2019re home.<\/td><\/tr>
~ HAROLD MEYERSON<\/td><\/tr>
Follow Harold Meyerson on Twitter<\/a><\/strong><\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Meyerson on TAP (Prospect.org) Can Veterans Stop the Dismantling of Veterans\u2019 Services? Trump and Musk have begun to cut back on services that veterans need. There\u2019s a way veterans could stop them. For the past year, my Vietnam vet friend Skip, who has an advanced case of Parkinson\u2019s disease, has been… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40177"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40177"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40177\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40178,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40177\/revisions\/40178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}