VoteVets thinks that they represent veterans

There’s an article at Stars & Stripes today about mainly two competing Veteran political action groups, Concerned Veterans for America and VoteVets. I don’t think that anyone here would argue that they’re not both partisan, but VoteVets is more connected to Big Liberal money;

VoteVets Chairman Jon Soltz rejected any comparison between Concerned Veterans for America and his organization, which claims 450,000 members and was founded in 2006.

“I’m hesitant to say they’re anywhere equivalent to what we’ve built over eight years,” Soltz said. But VoteVets.org has also taken heat for its campaign advertising, recently drawing public criticism from a prominent Kentucky veteran over an ad assailing Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., for not supporting a bill that would have boosted VA funding by $21 billion. The ad was part of a $600,000 ad campaign against McConnell by VoteVets, which operates both a PAC and a social welfare arm known as VoteVets Action Fund.

McConnell “has been a vocal advocate about the urgent need for reform at the VA and was instrumental in helping ensure Senate passage of the important bipartisan veterans bill that was signed into law last month,” Karl Kaelin, vice chairman of a Kentucky committee of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, said in a statement released by the McConnell campaign.

McConnell’s camp also dismissed VoteVets as a front “funded by environmental activists.” The VoteVets Action Fund has received more than $6 million in grants from a long list of environmental, labor and other progressive groups since 2010, according to the CRP. The group has also made grants to such Democrat-friendly allies as the American Bridge 21st Century Foundation and America Votes, an umbrella group for progressive activists, according to IRS records.

“We’re progressive, period,” Soltz said. “There are a lot of veterans out there who don’t feel veterans organizations represent them.”

Soltz might have started his organization to help liberal veteran candidates running for office, but it became an anti-Bush propaganda machine. In fact, in the last mid-term election, they threw their money at Harry Reid’s campaign – Reid, using VoteVets own definition of the phrase “draft dodger”, was a draft dodger because he stayed away from the draft by going to college and marrying – just like Dick Cheney.

While everyone else was criticizing the VA and Eric Shinseki for the failures of that organization, VoteVets defended Shinseki and targeted those of us who wanted him out – all of VoteVets’ blog writers left VV to work for the VA, by the way, led by VoteVet board member Tammy Duckworth. At least the crew at Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America took their shots at the VA’s incompetent leadership, but not VoteVets.

VoteVets took to paying for environmental ads using combat veterans as puppets to sell unicorn shit-powered cars to the public, ostensibly to save the lives of troops in their wars for oil – wonder where they got that from.

Soltz was right in the first paragraph of the quote from that article – there is no comparison between CVA and VV – VoteVets does absolutely nothing for veterans except Jon Soltz. CVA, on the other hand, focuses all of their assets on fighting for veterans’ and for the troops. I’ll grant that they are conservative in their political leanings, but in the service of veterans. (I’ll disclose here that CVA paid for my trip to the Republican convention two years ago)

Vote Vets is beholden to environmental groups and is wholly-owned by those drooling morons at MoveOn – wherever Soltz can find some cash to keep that organization alive for his own enrichment and aggrandizement.

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