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O’Reilly Hides from Homeless Veterans |
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Bill O’Reilly, the bombastic, belligerent bully of Fox News, apparently doesn’t have the backbone to meet with a group of folks he claimed really don’t exist—homeless veterans.
Last week, we told you about O’Reilly’s delusional claims that homeless veterans don’t exist, even though Bush administration figures show that on any given night, there are about 200,000 former service men and women who are homeless. Given the facts, O’Reilly eventually grudgingly admitted there might be some homeless vets, but it wasn’t really much of a problem.
Yesterday in New York City, a group of homeless vets tried to meet with O’Reilly. They wanted to present a petition signed by 17,000 people demanding an apology and an acknowledgment that homelessness is a serious problem among veterans who served our country.
The veterans marched to the Fox News offices where O’Reilly shoots his show. O’Reilly didn’t show up. Instead, a Fox flunky appeared, offering to deliver the petition, because after all, they didn’t have an appointment with his Foxship.
Veteran Gregory Rollins told reporters he would like to ask O’Reilly:
What you got to hide? We’re right here. We brought it to you.
If O’Reilly really believes there’s not much of a homelessness problems for veterans, Nestor Cabrera said:
Mr. Bill O’Reilly, I would like to escort you to the shelter. I would like to escort you to the VA hospital, to the streets. I would like to know where you get your data from….What did we fight for? I love my country. Don’t treat us like this!
Click here to see MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann’s report on the veterans’ action. Click here to see video of the veterans from the folks at Brave New Films.
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david polzin menominee michigan who in the hell dose Bill O’Reilly think he is the scum bag
I find it very interesting that these homeless vets watch TV enough to be aware of O’Reilly’s dumb remarks.
I also find it interesting that inefficient and embarrassingly old-fashioned unionistas have some blog where they spout off liberal nonsense and talk about Olbermann and O’Reilly.
Is this what the unions in America have come to? Petty partisan politics and stupid blogging? Pathetic.
QuickRob:
I find it very interesting that you would take the time to condescend to an “inefficient and embarrassingly old-fashioned unionistas’” level of rationale. I also find it interesting that a “blog where they spout off liberal nonsense and talk about Olbermann and O’Reilly” would capture your attention in the first place, let alone conjure a response. (Thereby confirming that all you’ve claimed to be as factual, as just merely self contradictory) Sorry to have interested you enough to read our “Petty partisan politics and stupid blogging” so much so that it would summon a crucial and clever blogg from a person of such obvious and extensive intellectual development.
Talk about pathetic!?! I suppose you speak so eloquently on that subject because you share such a close kinship with it?
Stop trying to divert attention away from the 200,000 homeless Vets that have bravely served our country providing you and I with the luxury of being pathetic, should we become so inclined. How about focusing your resources toward becoming a part of the solution instead of adding to the problem? Denial and diversion leads to delay. These Vets have waited long enough to get some real help. It reminds me of the “Bonus Army” days.
Remember the Bonus Army?
The Bonus Army was an assemblage of about 17,000 World War I veterans, accompanied by their families and other affiliated groups, who demonstrated in Washington, DC, during the spring and summer of 1932. American veterans had been promised by the U.S. government that they would be paid a “bonus” for their service during World War I. They were to receive $1 for every day they had served during that war, or $1.5 for each day they served in combat. When the depression of the 1930s hit, U.S. WWI veterans began a movement to demand that they should not have to wait until 1945 for their bonus. They wanted it to be paid immediately.
They began many protests and lobbying efforts. The Bonus Army massed at the United States Capitol on June 17, 1932 as the U.S. Senate voted on the Patman Bonus Bill, which would have moved forward the date when World War I veterans received a cash bonus. The bill had passed the House of Representatives on June 15 but was blocked in the Senate. After the defeat of the bill, Congress appropriated funds to pay for the marchers’ return home, which some marchers accepted. Some of the veterans stayed and continued to protest.
On July 28, Washington police attacked the veterans. After many people got injured and two veterans died, the protesters assaulted the police with blunt weapons, wounding several of them. After the police retreated, the District of Columbia commissioners informed President Herbert Hoover that they could no longer maintain the peace, whereupon Hoover ordered federal troops to remove the marchers from the general area. Hoover told the military general, Douglas MacArthur, to “Use all humanity consistent with the due execution of this order.” He was ignored.
The marchers were cleared and their camps were destroyed by the 12th Infantry Regiment from Fort Howard, Maryland, and the 3rd Cavalry Regiment under the command of MAJ. George S. Patton from Fort Myer, Virginia, under the overall command of General Douglas MacArthur. The Posse Comitatus Act, prohibiting the U.S. military from being used for general law enforcement purposes in most instances, did not apply to Washington, DC, because it is one of several pieces of federal property under the direct governance of the U.S. Congress (United States Constitution, Article I. Section 8). Dwight D. Eisenhower, as a member of MacArthur’s staff, had strong reservations about the operation. Troops carrying rifles with unsheathed bayonets and tear gas were sent into the Bonus Army’s camps. President Hoover did not want the army to march across the Anacostia River into the protesters’ largest encampment, but Douglas MacArthur felt this was a communist attempt to overthrow the government and thus exceeded his authority.
Hundreds of veterans were injured, several were killed. Two veterans were shot and killed, William Hushka and Eric Carlson. An 11 week old baby was in critical condition resulting from shock from tear gas exposure. Two infants died from tear gas asphyxiation. An 11 year old boy was partially blinded by tear gas. One bystander was shot in the shoulder. One veteran’s ear was severed by a Cavalry saber. One veteran was stabbed in the hip with a bayonet. At least twelve police were injured by the veterans. Over 1,000 men, women, and children were exposed to the tear gas, including police, reporters, residents of Washington D.C., and ambulance drivers. The army burned down the Bonus Army’s tents and shacks, although some reports claim that to spite the government, which had provided much of the shelter in the camp, some veterans torched their own camp dwellings before the troops could set upon the camp.
– Time magazine August 2, 1932
When war came in 1917 William Hushka, 22-year-old Lithuanian, sold his St. Louis butcher shop, gave the proceeds to his wife, joined the Army…last week William Hushka’s Bonus for $528 suddenly became payable in full when a police bullet drilled him dead in the worst public disorder the capital has known in years. –
The visual image of U.S. armed soldiers confronting poor veterans of the recent Great War set the stage for Veteran relief and eventually the Veterans Administration. Reports of U.S. soldiers marching against their peers did not help Hoover’s re-election efforts; neither did his open opposition to the Bonus Bill due to financial concerns. After the inauguration of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933, some of the Bonus Army regrouped in Washington to restate its claims to the new President.
FDR did not want to pay the bonus early, either, but handled the veterans with more skill when they marched on Washington again the next year. He sent his wife Eleanor to chat with the vets and pour coffee with them, and she persuaded many of them to sign up for jobs making a roadway to the Florida Keys, which was to become the Overseas Highway, the southernmost portion of U.S. Route 1. On September 2, the disastrous Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 killed 259 veterans working on the Highway. After seeing more newsreels of veterans giving their lives for a government that had taken them for granted, public sentiment built up so much that Congress could no longer afford to ignore it in an election year (1936). Roosevelt’s veto was overridden, making the bonus a reality.
Perhaps the Bonus Army’s greatest accomplishment was the piece of legislation known as the G. I. Bill of Rights. Passed in 1944, it immensely helped veterans from the Second World War to secure needed assistance from the federal government to help them fit back into civilian life, something the World War I veterans of the Bonus Army had received very little of. The Bonus Army’s activities can also be seen as a template for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963, and popular political demonstrations and activism that took place in the U.S. later in the 20th century.
I suppose all this information was just a bunch of “Petty partisan politics and stupid blogging” used to “spout off liberal nonsense”, too. Call me “embarrassingly old-fashioned” if you like; but, this is “what the unions in America have” always stood for and I‘m quite unapologetic for standing with my fraternal brothers in these and other causes. To you and those like you, I say bring it…give me your best shot…let’s get it on!!!
Hope you didn’t mind me borrowing a few phrases from someone as noble and wise as yourself. On second thought…I really don’t care if you mind or not.
For those independent thinkers out there who are still reading, I would like to suggest this link:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=628728631767818729&q=business+Plot&total=439&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0
for more information about the “Bonus Army” and how the seeds were sown with them that lead to “The Business Plot” to overthrow FDR. Prescott Bush, of the international banking house of Brown Brothers, Harriman and the father of George, Sr. and grandfather of George, Jr., also had a hand in this failed Nazi coup.
For those really hungry for knowledge, click here for a link to an online book entitled “War is a Racket” by Major General Smedley Darlington Butler written 1935:
http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html#c2
This was America’s first introduction to the notion of a Military Industrial Complex, better known today by such names as Haliburton, General Electric, and Blackwater.
Hey Quick Rob: You are kinda slow in a lot of areas. Most of the places one would try to stay out of the weather (shelters, bus stations, airports, cafes have TV. The homeless also are frequent library patrons, making good use of the computers there. As for your comment about unions and liberal politics, trade unions ARE PROGRESSIVE BY NATURE. When we forgot that we wilted. As for blogging, the right wing said the same thing about union news letter is Polish, German, Itialian, etc. etc. We forgot that the purpose of a union is to KEEP improving the workplace for everyone, not just collect dues, hand out free turkeys and beer, and make sure my grandkids can have this same job in the mill (oops mills gone) well my daughter can build Ramblers, or Oldsmobiles, or Maytag. You see where I’m going. We have to call these bastards on everything everywhere or we will be nowhere. As an Army vet and a union vet Quick Rob and his ilk are killing the labor movement and damming my sons to a life as working poor.