I read you loud and clear Perley!

Btw, here's some facts that most people unfamiliar with the history of Puerto Rico...

From Wikipedia:

"Puerto Ricans have participated in many of the military conflicts in which the United States has been involved. For example, they participated in the American Revolution, when volunteers from Puerto Rico, Cuba, and Mexico fought the British in 1779 under the command of General Bernardo de Gálvez (1746–1786), and have continued to participate up to the present-day conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Currently, significant number of Puerto Ricans participate as members and work for the U.S. Armed Services, largely as National Guard members and civilian employees. The size of the overall military-related community in Puerto Rico is estimated to be 100,000 individuals. This includes retired personnel. Fort Buchanan has about 4,000 military and civilian personnel. In addition, approximately 17,000 people are members of the Puerto Rico Army and Air National Guards, or the U.S. Reserve forces. Puerto Rican soldiers have served in every US military conflict from World War I to the current military engagement known by the United States and its allies as the War against Terrorism.

The 65th Infantry Regiment, nicknamed "The Borinqueneers" from the original Taíno name of the island (Borinquen), is a Puerto Rican regiment of the United States Army. The regiments motto is Honor et Fidelitas, Latin for Honor and Fidelity. The 65th Infantry Regiment participated in World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and in what is known in the United States as the War on Terror.

The recorded military history of Puerto Rico encompasses the period from the 16th century, when Spanish conquistadores battled native Tainos in the rebellion of 1511, to the present employment of Puerto Ricans in the United States Armed Forces in the military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Puerto Rico was part of the Spanish Empire for four centuries, when the Puerto Ricans defended themselves against invasions from the British, French, and Dutch. They fought alongside General Bernardo de Gálvez during the American Revolutionary War in the battles of Baton Rouge, Mobile, Pensacola and St. Louis. During the mid-19th century, Puerto Ricans residing in the United States fought in the American Civil War.[1]

The quest for Latin American independence from Spain spread to Puerto Rico, in the short lived revolution known as El Grito de Lares and culminating with the Intentona de Yauco. The island was invaded by the United States during the Spanish-American War. After the war ended, Spain officially ceded the island to the United States under the terms established in the Treaty of Paris of 1898. Puerto Rico became a United States territory and the "Porto Rico Regiment" (Puerto Rico's name was changed to Porto Rico) was established on the island.

Upon the outbreak of World War I, the U.S. Congress approved the Jones-Shafroth Act, which imposed United States citizenship (the Puerto Rican House of Delegates rejected US citizenship) with limitations upon Puerto Ricans and made them eligible for the military draft. As citizens of the United States, Puerto Ricans have participated in every major United States military engagement from World War I onward.

During World War II, Puerto Ricans participated in the Pacific and Atlantic theaters, not only as combatants, but also as commanders. It was during this conflict that Puerto Rican nurses were allowed to participate as members of the WAACs. The members of Puerto Rico's 65th Infantry Regiment distinguished themselves in combat during the Korean War and during the Vietnam War five Puerto Ricans were awarded the Medal of Honor, the highest military honor in the United States. Presently Puerto Ricans continue to serve in the military of the United States."

I met a few Puerto Rican Americans who didn't even know that they were US Citizens also so, they probably didn't know either that any person born in Puerto Rico or in the US for that matter are American Citizens... This is from:   http://www.american-citizenship.org/

"Generally, if you are born in the United States or born to U.S. citizens, you are born a U.S. citizen, unless you are born to a foreign diplomat. You are also considered a U.S. citizen at birth if you were born in Puerto Rico, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Your birth certificate will be your proof of your U.S. citizenship."

The history of Puerto Rico is complex. As the island enters its 113th year as a territory colony of the United States, the interdependencies between the U.S. and Puerto Rico weren’t, and never will be, a simple matter. It is a history of paradoxes and complications regarding political identity and basic human rights of self-government...

Take, for example, the 1917 Jones Act, an act of Congress that granted U.S. citizenship to all Puerto Ricans born on the island... (Important sidenote: Unknown to many, this is not a Constitutional act, but it would take a Supreme Court act to revoke the right.) The Jones Act, signed by President Woodrow Wilson on March 2, 1917, not only established U.S. citizenship for Puerto Ricans on the island, it also created a new form of government... As the following states (source: Library of Congress):

"The Jones Act separated the Executive, Judicial, and Legislative branches of Puerto Rican government, provided civil rights to the individual, and created a locally elected bicameral legislature. The two houses were a Senate consisting of 19 members and a 39-member House of Representatives. However, the Governor and the President of the United States had the power to veto any law passed by the legislature. Also, the United States Congress had the power to stop any action taken by the legislature in Puerto Rico. The U.S. maintained control over fiscal and economic matters and exercised authority over mail services, immigration, defense and other basic governmental matters.

There are so many contradictions in the act that many people are unaware about and we would like to make some clarifications:

Even though Puerto Ricans have the right to govern themselves, in the end the Governor of Puerto Rico and the U.S. government still have to power to veto and control any legislation on the island. That is a huge concession of power and rights... History has stated that Puerto Ricans did not request for citizenship at the time... In fact, the member of Congress representing the island in 1917, Luis Muñoz Rivera, questioned such imposition in late 1916, basically telling Congress that Puerto Ricans would prefer Puerto Rican citizenship...

The U.S. still has control over several basic government services that in any other form of government, would be under the jurisdiction of a local government... In the end, Puerto Ricans gained U.S. citizenship, but never gained much more, except for the right to freely travel with a U.S. passport and also freely live in any other part of the United States... History also suggests that the United States needed more men for WWI... After Wilson signed the Jones Act and after the U.S. entered World War I in 1917, military conscription was passed in June, 1917... This meant that as U.S. citizens, eligible Puerto Rican males were drafted into the armed forces... Over 2,000 Puerto Ricans were drafted to serve at the very beginning... In the end, it was estimated that 18,000 Puerto Ricans served in World War I... Most of them went to the Panama Canal, but some Puerto Ricans, like musician Rafael Hernández, proudly served on the Western Front... Puerto Ricans who were not eligible were sent to labor camps in the South...

The issue of U.S. citizenship for Puerto Ricans has always been a study in paradoxes... For example, a Puerto Rican-born individual who lives in the United States could vote in U.S. elections, like the ones for President, but that same person could not vote in those elections if living in Puerto Rico... The same goes for federal taxes...
If you are Puerto Rican-born and live in the U.S., you have to file a federal tax return... On the island, though, a Puerto Rican does not have to file a return...

In general, it is safe to say that most Puerto Ricans value the benefits that a U.S. citizenship has bestowed on them... However, Puerto Ricans still fall into a second tier of U.S. citizens, when compared to their fellow American citizens... Issues of civil and human rights (noted by the U.S. crackdown on Puerto Rican Nationalists who never truly had the right to free assembly after tensions arose in the 1940s and 1950s) are still valid concerns...

As the island begins to yet again explore the political direction it wants to take, the question of whether Puerto Ricans would trade in their U.S. citizenship for Puerto Rican citizenship will always be open for debate and dissection... Four generations have passed since the Jones Act became law, and for a certain group of U.S. citizens, full constitutional rights have yet to be achieved...

Respectfully,
Henry

I apologize in advance for the long post, but these things need to be said....

Why does the Obama administration treat our military veterans like human garbage?  Every year on Memorial Day and Veterans Day, Barack Obama, and I use the term very loosely.... "our" other politicians basically "go through the motions" and make these nice little speeches, but the truth about how they feel about our veterans can be seen in how our veterans are treated every single day.  At one point there were well over half a million veterans that had been waiting for at least 125 days to have their benefit claims processed.  Many of them ultimately had their claims sent back or denied just so a government employee somewhere could get a bigger bonus.  Meanwhile, conditions at VA facilities all over the country are absolutely abysmal, and many veterans have to wait more than half a year just to get an appointment at one of those facilities.  Once you start looking into how this country really treats military veterans, it becomes easier to understand why 22 military veterans commit suicide in America every single day.  Our vets have a higher rate of unemployment, a higher rate of poverty, a higher rate of homelessness, a higher rate of depression and a higher rate of divorce then the general population.  It is a crying shame.  One of the ways that any society is judged is by how it treats military veterans, and the truth is that America has failed miserably.  This has been particularly true since Barack Obama has been in the White House.

Here are 25 signs that military veterans are being treated like absolute trash under the Obama administration…

1. The average claim for veteran benefits takes more than half a year to be processed.
2. The Department of Veterans Affairs has a backlog of more than half a million overdue claims for benefits that are at least 125 days old.
3. In 2009, the number of veterans that had been waiting for more than a year to have their benefits approved was 11,000.  Today, that number has soared to 245,000.
4. Thousands upon thousands of military veterans that are waiting for their claims to be processed are dealing with absolutely horrible injuries…

Of those who have sought VA care:
• More than 1,600 of them lost a limb; many others lost fingers or toes.
• At least 156 are blind, and thousands of others have impaired vision.
• More than 177,000 have hearing loss, and more than 350,000 report tinnitus — noise or ringing in the ears.
• Thousands are disfigured, as many as 200 of them so badly that they may need face transplants. One-quarter of battlefield injuries requiring evacuation included wounds to the face or jaw, one study found.

5. At one VA hospital in Wisconsin, one military veteran with a broken jaw that was seeking treatment still had not had his jaw fixed after a month and a half.
6. Today, it takes military vets an average of seven months to get an appointment at a VA facility.
7. Many VA facilities are in absolutely horrific condition.  A while back, ABC News conducted an investigation of conditions at VA facilities across the United States.  What ABC News discovered was absolutely shocking.  The following are just a few of the things that they found during the course of their investigation…

*Bathrooms filthy with what appeared to be human excrement
*Dirty linens from some patients mixed in with clean supplies
*Examining tables that had dried blood and medications still on them
*Equipment used to sterilize surgical instruments that had broken down
*Some patients were forced to beg for food and water
*Veterans that were neglected so badly that they developed horrific bedsores and dangerous infections

8. As has been written about previously, applying for veteran benefits is extremely complicated, and VA employees are actually paid bonuses for denying claims…

The truth is that we have made it extremely difficult for our military veterans to claim the benefits that we have promised them.  Vets have to fill out an absurdly complicated 23 page application and if they make even one small mistake their applications can be stonewalled for years.  The U.S. Veterans Administration actually has a policy under which they pay large bonuses to employees that meet certain application processing goals.  This explains why approximately 70% of the claims submitted to the Veterans Administration are refused or sent back to be redone.  In fact, using the Freedom of Information Act, one local NBC station was able to learn that $250,000 was paid in bonuses to VA employees who work inside the Poff Federal Building in Roanoke, Virginia in just one year alone.

9. Large numbers of military veterans that legitimately should be getting benefits are having their claims denied by the federal government.  Just check out the following example from a Veterans Today article…
In one case, we found a veteran with 40 percent of his brain removed found to be healthy and employable.  He was also missing his right arm.  The physician who examined him over looked the arm and failed to note the cognitive degeneration the traumatic brain injury had caused.
10. Last year, more than 85,000 military veterans were treated for sexual abuse that they suffered while serving in the military.  40 percent of them were men.
11. According to a recent Defense Department survey, approximately 14,000 men in the U.S. military were sexually assaulted by other men during 2012.
12. According to the Washington Post, there is an epidemic of sexual assaults being committed by military recruiters.  The Pentagon is pledging to do something about the problem…

“The secretary has made it clear that we will spare no effort to rid our military of sexual abuse,” said George Little, the Pentagon press secretary. “The fact that there have been problems of sexual abuse during the recruiting process is simply intolerable.”

13. The number of active members of the U.S. military that are killing themselves now exceeds the number that are dying on the battlefield.
14. Since the beginning of the Iraq War, twice as many members of the Texas National Guard have killed themselves as have been killed in combat.
15. According to one recent study, 22 military veterans kill themselves in the United States every single day.
16. At this point, combat veterans account for about 20 percent of all suicides in the United States.
17. The unemployment rate for military veterans is significantly higher than for the population as a whole.  This is especially true for younger veterans.
18. On any given night, approximately 200,000 military veterans are homeless in the United States.
19. All over America, monuments that honor military veterans are crumbling and falling apart.  For much more on this, please see this article.
20. Under the Obama administration, many military veterans have had to pay to have their medals shipped to them.  For example, one soldier actually had to pay a 21 dollar shipping fee to get his Purple Heart.  The following is from the Huffington Post…

War comes with an incalculable human cost. And apparently a shipping fee of about $21.
Retired Sgt. Major Rob Dickerson says that’s the price he was forced to pay when his Purple Heart — the medal issued to soldiers wounded in action — arrived at his door, C.O.D.
Instead of being awarded the military honor in a formal ceremony, the vet with 29 years in the service was handed his award, and a shipping invoice, by a FedEx deliveryman outside his Sioux Falls, S.D., home.

21. In some areas of the country the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has been caught banning the words “God” and “Jesus” during funeral services for veterans.
22. Today, the federal government provides “end of life” literature to veterans that helps them to determine when their lives are “no longer worth living“…

“Your Life, Your Choices” presents end-of-life choices in a way aimed at steering users toward predetermined conclusions, much like a political “push poll.” For example, a worksheet on page 21 lists various scenarios and asks users to then decide whether their own life would be “not worth living.”
The circumstances listed include ones common among the elderly and disabled: living in a nursing home, being in a wheelchair and not being able to “shake the blues.” There is a section which provocatively asks, “Have you ever heard anyone say, ‘If I’m a vegetable, pull the plug’?” There also are guilt-inducing scenarios such as “I can no longer contribute to my family’s well being,” “I am a severe financial burden on my family” and that the vet’s situation “causes severe emotional burden for my family.”When the government can steer vulnerable individuals to conclude for themselves that life is not worth living, who needs a death panel?

23. One study discovered that approximately one-third of all military veterans returning from Afghanistan and Iraq were officially determined to be mentally ill by government officials.
24. All over America, “mental illness” is being used as a reason to take guns away from military veterans.
25. The federal government is increasingly labeling military veterans as “potential domestic terrorists” if they express viewpoints that are critical of the government.  The following is from a recent article by John Whitehead…
Making matters worse, thanks to Operation Vigilant Eagle, a program launched by the Department of Homeland Security in 2009, military veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan are also being characterized as extremists and potential domestic terrorist threats because they may be “disgruntled, disillusioned or suffering from the psychological effects of war.” As a result, these servicemen and women–many of whom are decorated–are finding themselves under surveillance, threatened with incarceration or involuntary commitment, or arrested, all for daring to voice their concerns about the alarming state of our union and the erosion of our freedoms.
An important point to consider, however, is that the government is not merely targeting individuals who are voicing their discontent so much as it is locking up individuals trained in military warfare who are voicing feelings of discontent. Under the guise of mental-health treatment and with the complicity of government psychiatrists and  law-enforcement officials, these veterans are increasingly being portrayed as ticking time bombs in need of intervention.

Are you pissed off yet?

The way that the federal government is treating military veterans is absolutely shameful.

Like the bumper sticker I saw the other day "If you won't stand behind our troops, you're welcome to stand in front of them"

Hey Shawn,

Pretty soon the schlitz - and I'm not referring to the beer, is gonna hit the fan so to speak and history I hope will not repeat itself as it did when the Veterans revolted after both the Civil war and WW1...

And this is why like in Scott's post, the government is looking @ our Veterans as potential domestic terrorists for crying out loud!!!

They unfortunately forget about our own history as a country that the original Patriots who fought to win independence from the British in our revolutionary war were also considered terrorists as well back then... And nowadays,the media as well as the government consider people who follow the status quo and are generally conformists are considered as being "Patriotic." How ironic.

Respectfully,
Henry

I agree wholeheartedly Lawrence.

Respectfully,
Henry

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonus_Army
Remember the Bonus Marchers!
Embarrassingly so, we do not have a stellar history of fulfilling promises to combat veterans.
Doug Mac engineered the invasion with tanks and cavalry.
I read once years ago that George Patton ordered the troops to "fix bayonets"...

I could write a book full of stories about having to fight with the VA to get my Father the care he needed and we still have to keep pushing to keep it going.

It makes me sick to think of the ones that need mental help and can not get it on time or at all.

http://www.katv.com/story/25637023/problems-with-va-reported-in-eastern-oklahoma

jrw159

I just got back home.....God Bless ya Scott and BUMP!!!!!!!!