Day: November 10, 2011

http://menendez.enews.senate.gov/mail/util.cfm?gpiv=2100080157.671524.210&gen=1

Dear Friend,

This Veterans Day, it is time to recommit ourselves to helping every military family across the Garden State.

We need to help businesses help veterans and their spouses build careers, make sure that our schools are doing all they can to help military kids, and all of us need to do what we can to help military families in our local communities.

But truly honoring our veterans means providing jobs. It means job training, and giving every job opportunity possible to unemployed veterans.

In New Jersey we have 453,498 veterans — 12 percent of them are unemployed. That’s why I am proud to be a co-sponsor of the VOW to Hire Heroes Act that gives businesses a tax credit for hiring returning veterans, and more of a tax credit if they hire a wounded veteran.

As our troops begin coming home from Iraq, our duty to them is not just remembering their service, not just saying thank you on Veterans Day, it’s delivering on the promise of a grateful nation every day.

New Jersey’s hero-sons-and-daughters did not wait to sign up to serve this country, and they should not have to wait to get the benefits they have earned defending it. And they should not have to come home only to stand on the unemployment line after putting themselves on the line serving this nation.

That’s why the Veterans jobs bill encourages employers to hire veterans, ensures that disabled veterans who have exhausted their unemployment benefits get the training and rehabilitation they need, the Vocational Rehabilitation and Employment benefits they need and job assistance tailored to today’s job market.

The bill provides a competitive grant program for nonprofits that provide mentoring and training programs for vets. It allows employers to be paid for providing on-the-job training to veterans and it would provide Work Opportunity Tax Credits for businesses that hire veterans — and more for businesses that hire disabled vets.

We made a promise to veterans, and it’s a promise we must keep.

Happy Veterans Day to all.

May God bless our troops. And may God bless America.

Sincerely,

Robert Menendez

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I found this email condescending at best, and socialistic at worst.

First the greeting “friend”? Vet, Taxpayer, Voter, even “Fool” would have been more appropriate.

“New Jersey’s hero-sons-and-daughters”! Sorry, but last I looked “New Jersey” was incapable of having children.

And, I wonder who signed up knowing that we’d be spending a decade in AfPak?

Many signed up to defend “New Jersey” and wound up in a sand box or a rock box somewhere. Some several times.

Sorry, but “we” didn’t make a promise to vets. You politicians, wrote a lot of checks and we’re supposed to make good on them.

I have little respect for politicians, who fail to serve in the military, and then are the first to welcome them home.

If “our” two Senators met every “box” at Dover sadly destined for New Jersey, I might find this email more believable.

When I read the Dover “landfill” story in the Washington Post — – http://goo.gl/N58iN – — well, let’s just say that I doubt the seriousness of the Gooferment’s politicians and bureaucrats to “honoring” Vets. Remember the standing joke at VA hospitals, that many vets think “their” VA doc is out to kill them. Promises by the Gooferment to Vets are soon forgotten. Remember the “Bonus Army”?

(Before all the D’s get their shorts in a knot, I’m no fan of the R’s that do the same thing on this day. Talk about “stolen valor”!)

Argh!

And, by the way, it’s “Veterans’ Day”. The missing apostrophe irritates me too. Seems like us vets should at least possess the day.

GBA; with a Bravo Zulu and a prayer to and for all those who are still on station, on patrol, or otherwise on eternal duty.

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