FL VFW Commander responds
Mr Wolf from Blackfive emailed me this letter which he received from Pete Nicholsen, the Florida State Commander of the VFW, that Nicholsen sent to the Executive Director of the VFW’s Political Action Committee, Salvatore Capprichio;
On behalf of the Department of Florida, I am writing to object to the manner in which the Veterans of Foreign Wars Political Action Committee made its endorsements for the United States Congress. This year’s process is both arbitrary and capricious and devoid of Department input. Consequently, I am asking each member of the Department of Florida to disregard the list of endorsements as published in this month’s VFW Magazine and vote their own conscience since we had no input into this year’s endorsement process.
Apparently, the Committee has abandoned the previous years’ process of “advise and consent” whereby it provided a list of proposed endorsees to the Departments for comment, concurrence, additions and deletions. The Department of Florida certainly understands that the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the VFWPAC are necessarily separate entities, however, the PAC exists because of the support it derives from all Departments, Districts, Posts, Comrades and Sisters. Consequently, the Departments acting on behalf of its Districts, Posts and members should have an opportunity to voice its opinion on which Floridian candidates should or should not receive the endorsement of the VFW-PAC.
It is abundantly clear that the PAC has skewed this year’s endorsements towards incumbents. By weighting selections toward the sitting members of Congress, you are encouraging complacency and taking discourse out of the electoral process. Our position is that a process that only evaluates the voting record of sitting members inherently disadvantages those candidates who challenge incumbents. The extant process negates any previous public or private sector experience of a non-incumbent candidate.
I am concerned that the selection process adopted by the PAC will have both lasting and negative consequences on our ability to recruit and retain members in the Department of Florida. It is evident from the tone of the received emails that the VFW-PAC and by association the Veterans of Foreign Wars is not sewing the interests of some members and potential members. This regional firestorm could have been avoided if the PAC board and staff remembered the old adage that all politics are local.
I know what Capprichio’s response will be; the PAC sent out questionnaires to all of the candidates, some didn’t respond, blah, blah, the PAC can’t make determinations based solely on whether a candidate was a veteran or a member of the VFW, blah, blah, we’re doing the best we can with we’ve got.
Then it’s time to update your procedures, Sal. When you support candidates like Klein, whose only legislation that helped veterans was to fund a study into guide dogs, over someone like West, your shit is loose.
When you find yourself supporting Barbara Boxer, who publicly berated a general for calling her “ma’am” instead of “Senator” because she worked really hard for the title, your shit is loose.
When you find yourself supporting Jim McDermott who stood on the roof of Saddam’s palace and declared that Hussein was more credible than our own president, your shit is loose.
When you find yourself supporting Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi who spent two years trying to defund our troops while our forces were engaged in a war…and still can’t get a defense budget passed because of the pork they loaded into it, your shit is loose. And Harry Reid boasts of your endorsement on his website.
When you rest your credibility on your 2.1 million members, knowing that the vast majority of those members disagree with you, your shit is loose.
There’s no partisanship involved – you caught shit for not supporting Tammy Duckworth over her non-military opponent in 2006. The partisan side of me says “Good for you!”, but the fairness side of me says “Your shit is loose”.
Some didn’t respond? Horseshit. John Calo was NH state VFW president in 2008 when he gave his input to support Jeb Bradley over Carol Shea-Porter. The VFW PAC supported Che-Pelosi anyway, and despite so many of us going damn near ballistic over it, they never changed it.
And FL? Good on ya. I felt the sting from that bitchslap you put on the PAC all the way up here.
Finally, the moonbat Che has signs everywhere claiming VFW endorsement with “VFW PAC” in tiny letters at the bottom of the signs. Then again, I’ve seen at least 5-10 signs of hers this morning on the way to work with signs someone put next to hers saying, “Fire Pelosi–take back New Hampshire.”
VFW PAC stirred up a serious shitstorm on this one and they’re gonna look like fools either way. It’s just a question of which makes them look less worse–pulling endorsements or staying the course.
They supported JIM McDERMOTT????? You’ve got to be shitting me.
Obviously, there’s a subversion plot here. Some liberals decided that if they could get into the VFW, they could turn it to their purposes, just the same way they’ve done with every institution I can think of. When they encounter principled resistence, they respond by taking it over from the inside.
I will have to speak my mind to this VFWPAC.
Sounds like nobody is at the wheel so some professional drivers jumped in. Take back the PAC!
I’ve tried calling them TWICE today. Either they don’t work on Fridays or they’re tired of getting blasted from members. (I KNOW that my State VFW HQ only works half a day on Fridays.)As I’ve said elsewhere, not always is a military veteran the penultimate, (e.g.: Jimmy Carter), but dammit folks, when they support an anti-military, anti-veteran person over an actual war veteran that just MIGHT have our country’s best interest at heart, there is something drastically wrong!!
Think it is about time to launch one hell of a full scale investigation into these a$$hat$…..
What say you?
The call to withdraw Combat Veterans from the voting membership of the VFW must stop. If it is heeded, the organization will indeed turn into a partisan organization following the heed of its remaining membership. In such a case, the posts would dry up and die on the vine, while the National leadership would be free to do as they like, knowing their elections would be contested only by those more partisan than themselves.
Is that the result the opponents of this list of idiotic endorsements want?
Ok here is my plan. Representation at the State and National conventions is based on membership numbers of a Post. We get everyone to all join the same Post…say mine..VFW Post 350 in Takoma Park Md.
We have such numbers that at the next State and National Meetings we can thow a monkey wrench into the normal predetermined election process and have more than one candidate for office . We get rid of the officials who do not represent Veterans and clear the ways for a return to the original purposes of the VFW.
We do away with the PAC and return to issues not candidates.
IF we can marshall a block of 100-250 veterans we could do it. There is nothing that says you cannot belong to a Post somewhere else than your local Post.
Bigjohn
My father, a WW@ Navy veteran who served on both the USS Lexington and the USS Ticonderoga and was present from the beginning of the war to the end, never had any use for the VFW. He belonged to the American Legion instead. I do to for many of the same reasons. I just don’t trust or respect them. This is one reason why. Too many stupid fucks in charge and in key positions of authority. And they don’t care about their people. Musta been REMF’s.