[antimedia] antimedia: When I read about stuff....

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Posted by antimedia:
When I read about stuff....
http://www.antimedia.us/posts/1156220331.shtml


   ....like [1]this, I get really angry and want to change all 535
   members of Congress.

     American soldiers in Iraq have suffered severe brain injuries in
     proportions unknown in previous wars. Congressional appropriators
     and Pentagon officials typically say all the right things about
     ensuring the best treatment possible. But then they produce defense
     appropriations legislation that halves funding for the Defense and
     Veterans Brain Injury Center, a joint Pentagon-Veterans Affairs
     program headquartered at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, from $14
     million to $7 million. This is unacceptable. Pentagon officials and
     congressional appropriators have missed a colossal opportunity to
     do the right thing.
     The center, founded in 1992, treats battlefield-wounded veterans
     who sustained traumatic brain injuries, suffered largely in
     improvised-explosive device blasts. As we've recounted in this
     space previously, brain-injured service members sometimes get
     shuffled from hospital to hospital because their injuries --
     including and especially traumatic brain injury -- are often beyond
     the ken of doctors and therapists accustomed to treating World War
     II and Vietnam veterans.
     "Honestly, they would have loved to fund it, but there were just so
     many priorities," a Senate Appropriations Committee staffer told
     USA Today, which broke the story last week. (Emphasis mine.)

   You think about that last statement. Congress plugged $500 million
   worth of "earmarks" (pork!) [2]into a recent bill. The [3]"Bridge to
   Nowhere" (an earmark in an earlier bill) was over $332 million
   dollars.
   Yet Congress can't find $7 million for brain-damaged veterans injured
   defending our country! The whole damn country should be up in arms
   over this. Congress' priorities could not be more tragically
   misplaced!
   We should sack the whole lot of them and start over.

References

   1. http://washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20060816-090452-6720r.htm
   2. http://www.antimedia.us/posts/1155686141.shtml
   3. http://www.heritage.org/Research/Budget/wm889.cfm