Obama Screws our Soldiers - Again

Ed Lasky

Investors Business Daily reports in "Obama to Soldiers Overseas: No Voting for You":

Military: The administration thanks the troops for their service by failing to comply with a law requiring that it help soldiers deployed overseas cast ballots in their home states.

The administration has taken various states to court to block voter ID laws on the grounds it will disenfranchise voters. But it has no qualms about the disenfranchisement of military voters overseas through its failure to comply with and enforce the Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment (MOVE) Act, passed by Congress in 2009 and signed into law by President Barack Obama.

The law acknowledges the difficulties caused by time and distance for deployed soldiers in exercising the right to vote they put their lives on the line to protect. One of the key provisions required each military branch to create an installation voting assistance office (IVAO) for every military base outside an immediate combat zone.

Last week, however, the Pentagon's inspector general reported that attempts to locate and contact IVAO offices at overseas military installations failed about half the time.

"Results were clear. Our attempts to contact IVAOs failed about 50% of the time," the inspector general reported. "We concluded the Services had not established all the IVAOs as intended by the MOVE Act because, among other issues, the funding was not available."

The estimated cost of establishing functioning IVAOs at all overseas military bases not in combat zones is estimated at between $15 million and $20 million a year. We wasted $530 million on Solyndra but can't afford a relative pittance to ensure our soldiers are not disenfranchised.

Soldiers, who risk their lives, are prevented from exercising their right to vote because Barack Obama knows they will support Republicans. Meanwhile, back in America, Barack Obama and Eric Holder stir up racial animosity with fictitious claims that Republicans are racists and want to impose Jim Crow laws in order to prevent minorities from voting. Large majorities of Americans agree with the need for Voter ID laws to ensure the integrity of the vote.

But when was the last time Barack Obama cared about integrity?

The Inspectors General have once again reported that behind the scenes Barack Obama is failing to fulfill his responsibilities as President and Commander-in-Chief. This is his modus operandi, of course. There is a litany of his deliberate failures that have been found by Inspectors Generals that have somehow escaped the attention of most of the media.

For example:

There's an inspector general's report that the number of green jobs generated by Obama's green schemes has been a figment of his and his campaign-spinners' imagination; that the drilling moratorium in the Gulf that has been subject to much scandal (the experts behind the report that was used to justify the ban denied that they had called for such a halt) was engineered at the last minute at the behest of Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar; one IG has found that the Obama team and GM have been conspiring to create a rosy image (cooking the books) behind the purported success of the auto bailout, according to the IG reviewing the bailout; and the inspector general monitoring the tens of billions of taxpayer dollars wasted on green energy programs found that the money was directed to projects linked to big Obama and Democrat donors - the inspector general said that they were steered to friends and family. Solyndra is just one example.

This desire to escape scrutiny of his actions is also shown by the manifold ways he has broken his promise to run a "transparent" administration by his and the media's assault on Darrell Issa, the Republican Congressman who heads up Government Oversight and Government Reform Committee, whose dogged pursuit of the truth had led to an almost unprecedented media attack against him (see "Liberal Operatives have launched an anti-Issa Crusade). Obama only likes to grade himself. And, he likes to surround himself with sycophants who will boost his ego (as if it needed boosts).

But the media could care less about our soldiers. Very few journalists have ever served in the military. Furthermore, these facts would tarnish the image and hurt the reelection prospects of Barack Obama.

Screw the soldiers-there is an election at stake!

Ed Lasky

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/09/obama_screws_our_soldiers_-_again.html

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.