It's Drafty

The New York Daily News reports:
"VA boss likes draft - till White House blows it off
BY LISA COLANGELO in New York and RICHARD SISK in Washington
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson gave qualified support yesterday to renewing the draft - a suggestion that rattled the White House.

"I think that our society would benefit from that, yes, sir," Nicholson said of replacing the all-volunteer force with a tough draft purged of the deferments that allowed many to avoid service in Vietnam.

"I think if we bring back the draft, there should be no loopholes for anybody who happens to be drafted," he said. "If it's a random system, it ought to be an honestly random system."

Nicholson's remarks came a day after President Bush said he was seeking new recruits to expand the Army and Marine Corps, and the secretary was quickly reined in by the White House. . ."

Vets Losers In GOP Congress

Bob Geiger has done some number crunching at HuffPo involving bills rejected by the GOP Congress (also a very interesting analysis on national security issues):

". . .Here's some examples of Democratic legislation that was killed by the Senate GOP majority in 2006:

• Senator Daniel Akaka (D-HI) proposed S.Amdt. 3007 to "increase Veterans medical services funding by $1.5 billion in FY 2007 to be paid for by closing corporate tax loopholes." It was voted down 46-54 with every Republican but Lincoln Chafee (R-RI) voting against it.

• S.Amdt. 3141, was proposed by Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) to provide for Veterans benefits that steadily increased over time to account for both inflation and the large number of troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Stabenow's bill was rejected 46-54 -- probably because she stipulated that it be "paid for by restoring the pre-2001 top rate for income over $1 million, closing corporate tax loopholes and delaying tax cuts for the wealthy."

• John Kerry (D-MA) who has consistently been a Veterans advocate, proposed S.Amdt. 3143, to keep medical-care fees and co-pays from going up on military retirees, only to see it shot down by the Republicans.

• Two measures by Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) -- S. Amdt. 4999 and S.Amdt. 3054 -- were proposed to provide additional funding to increase inspections at America's shipping ports and to improve the security of cargo containers destined for the United States. Both were killed on party line votes that saw only Jim Talent (R-MO) cross the aisle to vote with Democrats on one of the bills.

• Chuck Schumer (D-NY) introduced S.Amdt. 4587, to boost transit security funding in major cities by $300 million and saw it rejected by the Republican majority.

• America's firefighters had a friend in Chris Dodd (D-CT) who proposed S.Amdt. 4641 in July "..to fund urgent priorities for our Nation's firefighters, law enforcement personnel, emergency medical personnel," but saw it go down on the Senate floor because he proposed paying for it "by reducing the tax breaks for individuals with annual incomes in excess of $1,000,000" -- obviously the kiss of death in a GOP-controlled Congress.

• Byron Dorgan (D-ND) proposed S.Amdt. 4292, to thoroughly weed out fraud and war profiteering among big Republican donors like Halliburton and had it defeated 44-52, with only one Republican -- Lincoln Chafee again -- siding with Democrats, troops and American taxpayers.

And it goes on and on from there... We know how hard the Republicans have fought against an increase in the minimum wage, but they also came out hard against another effort by Ted Kennedy (D-MA) to increase college Pell grants and job training programs. In addition, the GOP saw to it that a measure by Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), to foster greater American fuel efficiency via "... foreign oil replacement with biofuels and alternative fuels and advanced/hybrid vehicle use" was rejected 46-54. . ."

Are Safer Yet?

From Crooks and Liars:
"Cutting and Running at DHS

By: Nicole Belle on Saturday, December 16th, 2006 at 1:36 PM - PST

AlterNet:

With all the Bush Administration bluster about border security, you'd think that keeping track of the comings and goings of non-citizens might be a high priority. But given that FEMA — which is supposed to be taking care of our own citizens — can't even develop a computer program to track whether Katrina victims are getting housing assistance, should it be surprising that the Department of Homeland Security has squandered over a billion dollars on the U.S. VISIT program, and then decided to scrap a major part of it?

But that's par for the course for DHS, which bleeds over $10 billion to government contractors a year, when a lot of them just take the money and run. That is, they start the project, and then they throw up their hands and say it can't be done. Screw the public, which is footing the bill without a money-back guarantee. Even if the project is a "top priority", as DHS claims U.S. VISIT is.

DHS has decided that it's just too complicated and expensive to develop the technology to track who's leaving the country (and, in the case of people overstaying their visas, who's not). Now I'm no anti-immigration nut and am certainly not a fan of the biometric technology, like the facial, fingerprint or iris recognition techology that was under consideration for the U.S. VISIT program. But this story really isn't about border security. It's about corruption and our broken government. Read on…

International Herald Tribune has more on the VISIT program. On a related note, DHS will start requiring passports for all travel outside the US starting in 2007, touting the new e-passports for tracking and security purposes. One problem: they're easily cloned. Is there nothing about "homeland security" at which they aren't completely inept? Feel safer, folks? "