SNAKE OIL 101

Tis the Season

2008-12-19T20:38:00.000-08:00

Robert L. Hanafin, Major, U.S. Air Force-Retired
Veterans Today Staff Writer
December 06, 2008

Way back in May 2006, the editor of Veterans Today posted this concern about the growing number of Support Our Troop and Veterans organizations that crawled out of the woodwork to benefit and viewed as a need to well, “Support Our Troops,” given that the vast majority of Americans were (and are) either apathetic or did not really care about something they could not relate to – Our Troops.

Charities' costs sap aid for vets

I did a review of local media surrounding Dayton, Ohio to see what Support Our Troops or Veterans benefits or fund raisers were on-going and surprisingly found very few going into the Christmas Season. That said, I did find links to various How to Support Our Troops This Season links but none for Veterans per se.

What I found was commendable but partisan politically biased. In other words only troops and military families that endorsed an organization's political views (blindly supported President Bush) warranted support - plain and simple. Most advice was being filtered through America Supports You.mil which is the "official" Pentagon sponsored propaganda apparatus that screens troop related charities and fund raising efforts based solely on political ideology. America Supports You.mil is a brain child of former Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld and a carry over to the Bush and Obama’s Secretary of Defense Gates that will most likely continue for part of the Obama administration. It remains to be seen if leaders of America Supports You.mil have as close a relationship including meetings with President Obama as they had with President Bush.

Point is that AmericaSupportsBush.mil IS NOT constitutionally regulated nor monitored by Congress (it is an arm of the Executive Branch), and AmericaSupportsBush.mil IS NOT a watch dog philantropic organizaton or group. In essense who is the Watch Dog over America Supports You.mil when it screens troop and military fund raisers????

Anyway, I posted this comment and concern on our local media network and a Letter to the Editor of several Dayton, Ohio area newspapers. "Being a veteran who served during both Vietnam and the Gulf War, and having a child who served in Bosnia and Iraq, I'm all for these various efforts to Support Our Troops that have climbed out of the woodwork since 911 and escalated since 2003. However, I also have some concern about the potential for scam artists and charlatans that either pocket more than goes to their stated Support Our Troops Mission or just as bad pay out more in administrative costs and overhead (advertisement and recruitment) than goes to our veterans and troops. That said, those of us in the Veteran and Military Family community have heard the many nightmare stories of Fake Veterans who claim military service but have none, or have served but elaborate their combat experience. Great efforts go to exposing Fake Vets; books have been written on how to expose fake veterans, websites are dedicated to exposing fake veterans, should not the same extent of effort go to exposing potential scams or incompetent management of Support Our Troop fund raising. I suggest that umbrella organizations like America Supports You.mil post guidance and advice on how donators can avoid being scammed or ensured they are donating to an organization or group that the bulk of funds raised goes to our troops and veterans. America Supports You.mil as an OFFICIAL Pentagon sponsored organization is not a fund raising watch dog organization. Are there watch dog organizations that monitor the growth of Support Our Troops efforts, including the Pentagon's America Supports You.mil to ensure unscrupulous scam artists are not taking advantage of America's patriotic spirit to sincerely Support Our Troops?"

2008-12-18T00:47:00.000-08:00

Read the entire report by Robert L. Hanafin
Major, U.S. Air Force-Retired
All Americans Support Out Troops.seriously
HERE: AmericaSupportsYou.mil Survives Investigation by the Pentagon
December 16, 2008

Given the nature of the allegations, and as a Retired Military Officer, I caution readers to not donate anything this Holiday Season to America Support You.mil nor any organization that displays the America Support You.mil logo until this Pentagon propaganda arm, subsidized by tax payer dollars, and manned by DOD personnel on the public payroll becomes totally a volunteer, private operation, separate from government control and tax payer dollars. I further ask anyone reading this to contact your member of Congress and two Senators (regardless of political party) and ask that they pressure for a Congressional Investigation into why tax payer dollars [Defense Budget Funding] was or has to be used to promote a propaganda campaign?

Lastly, I strongly suggest that those readers who voted for or supported the Obama campaign contact Obama’s Change Website and strongly recommend that the in-coming President-elect order his Secretary of Defense left over from the Bush administration to dismantle America Support You.mil and let it be an independent free lance troop support organization like any other Support Our Troops organization. Why?

Because no Veterans or Support Our Troops group or organization should have official ties to the U.S. government or access to the public treasury or defense budget funds, more so it should not and cannot be a clearing house for other related troop support efforts due to America Support You.mil creation by and ties to both Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and outgoing (soon to be former) President George W. Bush, plus those who have left senior management positions at the Pentagon who had their dirty hands in the pie.

"How come it took the forced resignation of Donald Rumsfeld, and two years for anyone to look at the impropriety of this? In fact, the Pentagon is still trying to cover this up by calling it an "administrative" audit instead of a "criminal" investigation or audit."
[]

Kaste questioned what I knew to be fact when Rumsfeld created his propaganda apparatus, there were some at the Pentagon who felt the effort was wrong because it verged on tax-payer-funded propaganda, when in fact the nation was strongly divided over the Iraq War by 2006 and many no longer humbly swallowed the propaganda or never bought it in the first place. The fear back in 2006 was that such a partisan appeal to support the troops could also be seen as a call to support President Bush and his war in Iraq.

When one is forced to pay for the concept of Supporting Bush, Supporting Bush's War, and Supporting Our Troops cannot be separated, by definition that is a propaganda effort to continue selling War despite the American electorate's opposition to it.

What really made Kaste question the sincerity of America Supports You.mil was the length to which Rumsfeld’s organization took to avoid reporters’ questions with either a “No Comment,” or we don’t respond to “political questions” or "Submit a Written Request," at America Supports Bush.mil. By definition America Supports You.mil is a political rallying organization hiding behind our troops using the slogan "support" as a smoke screen. Just the fact that they bar Veterans and Military Family troop support groups with Peace or Against War in their logo means America Supports You.mil is not only Unconstitutional, but should not get any tax payer dollars from taxpayers who belong to Veterans for Peace, Iraq Veterans Against the War, or Military Families Speak Out. See, now we do have both a constitutional question and legal issue. Major Hanafin

Kaste left the journalistic community with a key to breaking the code of silence at the Pentagon. That is if the media seriously wants to investigate fraud, waste, and abuse at DOD. When you're a reporter, it's always hard to know how to react when someone doesn't want to talk to you. It's actually something of an ethical dilemma.

Take this story, about the Pentagon public relations program known as "America Supports You." It's a feel-good campaign, the kind of thing a government agency is usually falling all over itself to talk to reporters about. "Will I go on the record about our program to get people to support the troops? Will I?!"
[]
"dr" Laura Schlessinger "America Sopports You"

A Face in the Crowd

2008-04-30T11:38:00.000-07:00

A Face in the Crowd
1957 epic motion picture directed by Elia Kazan
Vitajex, an innocuous dietary supplement. A frenetic montage of Rhodes's hyperbolic ads for Vitajex is one of the film's most memorable sequences, revealing the gullibility of the American public to a persuasive con-artist. In the tradition of classical tragedy, Rhodes is undone by his thirst for power and by Jeffries who, despite building his stardom, becomes so fed up that she allows him to expose his contempt for his fans on the air.
Real life inspirations

Corruption and injustice are at the heart of a new Controversial Classic

usa today

Griffith's portrayal of Lonesome Rhodes, an Arkansas hayseed who becomes an unscrupulous TV star, was groundbreaking for its look at television as a corrupting influence on the masses.

THE MOVIE CAST:
* Andy Griffith ... Larry 'Lonesome' Rhodes
* Patricia Neal ... Marcia Jeffries
* Anthony Franciosa ... Joey DePalma
* Walter Matthau ... Mel Miller
* Lee Remick ... Betty Lou Fleckum

* Bennett Cerf, Faye Emerson, Betty Furness, Virginia Graham, Earl Wilson, and Walter Winchell in cameo appearances as themselves

The Carter Family

2008-04-29T18:56:00.000-07:00

The Carter Family

has a legendary place in country music. Their songs, and the image of a family band playing wholesome music, have influenced countless of younger musicians who still play their repertoire. This story will explain how the powerful border radio stations of the 1930s and ‘40s, located in Mexico, first helped spread the family’s parlor-style country music to a mass audience. We’ll also hear from Janette Carter, who runs the Carter Fold in southwestern Virginia.
Who could imagine that when Dr.John Romulus Brinkley's dubious Milford, Kansas, medical practice ran into trouble, it would lead to one of the most influential periods in the development of country music?

***

The Carters became known nationwide and enjoyed increased record sales as a result of their border radio years. According to Charles K. Wolfe, "This gave them the largest radio audience they ever had, and soon even the old Bluebird [label] records were selling like wildfire." And in the decades that followed, many country artists credited the Carter Family as their inspiration. The story goes that Waylon Jennings, growing up in Littlefield, Texas, remembered back to being about four years old when his father used to pull the truck up beside the house and run a cable from the battery to the radio so he could listen to the Carter Family on XERA. Johnny Cash, too, remembered hearing the Carter Family (including 10-year-old June, whom he would marry some three decades later) on the border radio broadcasts.

The border stations, wrote Bill C. Malone, "popularized hillbilly music throughout the United States and laid the basis for country music's great popularity in the late '40s and early '50s."

Dr.John Romulus Brinkley, radio history

2008-04-29T16:28:00.000-07:00

Dr. John Romulus Brinkley
RADIO & FAKE DOCTORS et al
The Carter Family
*The World's Most Successful "Quack"