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Alan Simpson’s scorn for people who use federal money goes beyond… well, everyone, in the form of Social Security. He also doesn’t like it when Vietnam-era soldiers breathed Agent Orange and put their greedy little hands out to cough into them because they had respiratory trouble the rest of their lives.
The system that automatically awards disability benefits to some veterans because of concerns about Agent Orange seems contrary to efforts to control federal spending, the Republican co-chairman of President Barack Obama’s deficit commission said Tuesday.
Former Wyoming Sen. Alan Simpson’s comments came a day after The Associated Press reported that diabetes has become the most frequently compensated ailment among Vietnam veterans, even though decades of research has failed to find more than a possible link between the defoliant Agent Orange and diabetes.
“The irony (is) that the veterans who saved this country are now, in a way, not helping us to save the country in this fiscal mess,” said Simpson, an Army veteran who was once chairman of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee.
Yes, that is ironic!
Now, the specific issue is more a scientific one, about cause and effect. But it’s interesting that Simpson brings this up now, precisely as victims of Agent Orange end a 40-year wait for compensation from the government for a variety of ailments. Far from just handing out cash, the government made these soldiers wait 40 years to know if they would be fairly treated for the poison that their own country rained down on them in Vietnam.
If the country didn’t use a toxic herbicide to defoliate the jungle in a war without necessity that was based on lies, maybe we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Maybe if Simpson’s father, Milward, didn’t vote for the Gulf of Tonkin resolution and actively worked to oppose the rush to war, nobody would have been exposed. Maybe if Simpson and the ruling class weren’t so damned bloodthirsty, we wouldn’t have choices like this to make. Maybe if our health care system was in line with every other country on Earth, giving Agent Orange sufferers the care they need, regardless of the cause and effect, wouldn’t be such a burden.
In other words, Simpson’s problem is not with wasteful spending, it’s with the entire system he spent a life perpeutating.
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Dump him like a bad habit!
I’m sure the MOTUs would like us to scream chImpeachment! about this point. No, we need to remain focused on the big, big picture.
We do know that Simpson et al not only believe in the “Free Market Clapper,” but they believe in the “Clap On, Clap Off” Civil Service, “Clap On, Clap Off” Enlisteds/National Guard and the most important of all, the “Clap On, Clap Off” Citizenry.
These people have lost their legitimacy– if not their minds (including Warren Buffet; Soros was never the citizen’s friend).
Still no word from Simpson against the massive trillions in tax entitlements to the Ubers, Big Pharma, Banks and Ag, Corps and tax loopholes. What a farce, cut benefits for the middle, but not for Simpson’s constitutes. This is not deficit reduction this is war on the middle class.
Of course it’s not deficit reduction. The fact they’re going after Social Security shows that. Social Security has never added to the deficit, and will never add to the deficit, as it is forbidden by law to add to the deficit. The law requires benefit cuts when the amount taken in plus the amount built up in the trust isn’t enough to pay full benefits.
Assholes.
All of ‘em.
Assholes.
Agent Orange is a defoliant herbicide mixture used during the Vietnam War to destroy forests in Vietnam. The United States sprayed 20 million gallons of Agent Orange over forests in Vietnam, and as a result, members of the armed forces were exposed to it. Agent Orange, so-called from the orange color of its storage drums, is a 50:50 mixture of the butyl esters of 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T. It is probable that damage to humans would be due to the highly toxic impurity 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin, often simply called dioxin, present in Agent Orange.
The U.S. Supreme Court on March 2, 2009 declined to hear any appeal of the federal appellate court rulings against the Vietnam veterans in the Issacson and Stephenson test cases. The Supreme Court justices offered no comment on their action.
The two test cases had been dismissed by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York based on their ruling that the chemical companies are shielded from lawsuits brought by U.S. military veterans or their relatives because the law protects government contractors in certain circumstances. From the Second Circuit opinion that was handed down in February 2008, which gave rise to this unsuccessful Supreme Court appeal: “The court concluded that the ‘uniquely federal interest’ of ‘getting the government’s work done’ requires that, under some circumstances, independent contractors be protected from tort liability associated with their performance of government procurement contracts.”
Agent Orange has been linked to cancers and other diseases in several epidemiological studies. The Agent Orange cancers and diseases include prostate cancer, respiratory cancers, (lung, trachea/bronchus, larynx), soft-tissue sarcoma, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, Hodgkin disease, chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), and multiple myeloma.
Alan Simpson was/is a Reagan Republican I believe. He has a lot in common with President Zero in that regard.