It doesn't matter who you vote for if you don't hold them accountable

Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
November 3, 2014

It really doesn't matter who, which party, wins the elections tomorrow because from what most of us have seen, it will be more of the same. The same distractions and pretending politicians care about any of us. Frankly, the way we act after they win, we deserve what they do once they get in. We never hold them accountable because we fall into the same trap year after year.

The best way to prove this is the way things turned out for our veterans and the uproar over what the VA was not doing. It made my head explode reading reports as if it never happened before. No one seemed interested in how it got so bad when they were screaming for heads to roll. No one was putting any blame on members of congress, who actually had the responsibility to watch what the VA was doing.

Aaron Glantz wrote about Homeless Vets Play the Waiting Game back in 2007 and spotlighted part of the problem they faced.

Veterans groups maintain that the backlog amounts to official negligence. Since the launch of the Iraq war more than four years ago, the number of people charged with reviewing and approving veterans' disability claims has actually dropped. According to the American Federation of Government Employees, the VA employed 1,392 Veterans Service Representatives in June 2007 compared to 1,516 in January 2003.

But hey, why talk about how long things have been rotten for our veterans when some get to play political games of whining now? Why should we be reminded of how long all of this has been going on? Because we are doomed to repeat all of it until the next election cycle comes around and politicians get to complain about the other side not doing anything.

It isn't just Republicans complaining about Democrats because back in 2007, it was the other way around. This is one massive political coverup with the media leading the charges avoiding truth. First start with the simple fact that since 2010, nothing has come out of the congress. Why? Well Republicans control the House of Representatives trying to do what they want but they also control the Senate.

Sure you may think that since Democrats are the majority of the Senate they do, but they do not hold the supermajority limiting what they can bring up for votes when Republicans refuse to allow anything they don't want. Forget about up or down votes they used to whine about when it was a Republican president in the chair.

To think the majority of voters get what they want is a delusion. Mitch McConnell vowed in 2010 it was their number one job to make Obama a one term president, so that pretty much ensured that whatever voters thought they would get wouldn't happen.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Look up the worst congress ever and you'll find the last 4 years top the charts. None of them earned the votes they want us to give them again. Much like the years spent "addressing veterans issues" made headlines and reporters decided to give up doing investigations or even basic research to figure out what happened before to make it all this bad. The trouble is Congress controls the money spent on the whole shabang including what is done for veterans as well as what they allow to be done to veterans. Nice little game they play especially when you consider most of them were in the same chairs when shit stuck to the wall stinking up the claims coming out of their overused mouths.

Tracking all these reports all these years have left me with very little confidence and as for trust, it has turned into disdain.

I have a unique seat in all of this and remember what happened, when and why, so when you read Wounded Times, especially if you read it from the beginning, you understand the anger.

City Rallies for 300,000 Homeless Vets; VA Funds Only 12,000 Beds came out in 2008 and Obama made a promice to make things right for homeless veterans. But why talk about something that Obama pushed for making right when everyone gets to complain about what he got wrong? After all, when you read the news about two wars being started and less people working for the VA to care for them, it is easy to see a congressional coverup.

Obama made a lot of promises but the one that gets my skin crawling is the promise he made to reduce military suicides within the military and in the veterans community. Both went up but no one was held accountable and there is no indication anyone ever will be.

PTSD is tied to suicides as well as veterans living on the streets. Nothing new here despite the decades of addressing the needs of our veterans by members of congress going all the way back to 1946 when the first Veterans Affairs Committee was seated in the House. Pretty disgusting when you think about how bad it still is.

The American people are suffering from amnesia. Veterans are suffering because no one wants to remember that none of this is new to them. They came home from different wars with the same issues today's veterans have. When you consider we have military families of food stamps, what McConnell promised is equivalent to treason especially when there were two wars being fought with multiple deployments piling on hardship after hardship onto the shoulders of the military folks risking their lives while politicians got to claim they cared.

Years ago I was contacted by Dan Lohaus about his film When I Came Home. I was working for a church and figured it was the best place to let folks know about the crisis veterans were facing, much like Vietnam veterans faced when I visited the New England Shelter for Homeless Veterans years before. I was wrong.

The board had to approve showing the film, so I gave my reasons for wanting to show it then got shocked with all the rants about fake homeless veterans and the view that the real homeless veterans wanted to be that way. In other words, either they used it to get money or chose it to be that way. I wasn't ready for that reaction but the Pastor took control and supported what I was saying. Then, thank God, they were willing to listen especially when it was pointed out that Christ and his followers were also homeless wandering around to spread their message of taking care of those in need with love while depending on the kindness of strangers to take care of their own need for shelter and food.

How could anyone hold onto hope of getting help when they were beaten down too many time? How could any veteran face being sent away from the people they turned to and then find any shred of hope within them to ask one more time, believe they mattered one more time or find reason to believe they were worthy of a helping hand? They couldn't.

The homeless veterans population has been reduced but troubling numbers show a rise again at the same time all the bad stuff they have to deal with has also gone up. We have veterans courts now yet far too many end up incarcerated. We have more treatment facilities for substance abuse yet far too many are given medications for PTSD with terrible side effects so they choose not to take them seeking illegal drugs and alcohol to take the sting out of their minds.

More and more charities pop up all over the country and community after community come together to prove the claim this nation cares for those who risk their lives to retain our freedom, yet far too many never hold the people they elect accountable for anything they end up doing or not doing.

Tuesday the American people have a chance to change the way things are in this country but the trouble is, the change involves the same folks that got us into this mess already. None of them show any indication they plan on doing anything differently. Why don't we vote for patriots instead of politicians this time around? Why not look up the records of the folks wanting to be re-elected and actually know what they've done before before we give them a chance to do it again? How about we vote for facts instead of party?

The rating for members of congress remains at an all time low but how low do they have to go before they get voted out? When do they cross the line so far they end up on the unemployment line? When do we actually use the only power we have to make a difference?

When I was young I wanted to change the world. My Mom sat me down and told me I was fighting too many of them so I was doomed to lose all of fights I took on. Then I found a cause to fight for with everything I had within me. My cause is veterans. I don't care much for politicians but they make the rules and they are in control over the military as well as what happens to our veterans. To tell the truth few have lived up to the speeches they give veterans groups while seeking their support and even less actually earned it.

We can't stop doing our part just because the election is over. We let both parties fall flat on their faces as soon as they got our votes, holding none of them accountable for anything.

Most of us complain about the military reducing the number of military folks yet few remember that it was sequestration that caused it because the Republicans want the budget they wanted and the Democrats didn't, so they came up with something so reprehensible no one would let it happen. It did. They did nothing about it to increase the DOD budget to let these fine folks back to work and prevent deployed soldiers from getting layoff notices. They didn't do anything about military families on food stamps either.

We let members of congress pull a fast one on us. We can't let that happen again especially knowing that the same folks claiming they knew nothing were part of the problem. Do something more than just vote this time or we're going to let veterans suffer for what we fail to do for them.