Reductions proposed to the GI Bill

WASHINGTON -- When Azar Boehm left the Army last year, he still felt a responsibility to serve. So he joined the New York National Guard and began studying political science at Columbia University, thanks to his generous GI Bill benefits.
"I never saw that money as a giveaway," said the 24-year-old junior, who received nearly $30,000 in tuition and fees this school year. "I saw it as an investment in the future of the country."
With graduation about 15 months away, Boehm admits he should be thinking about how to turn that investment into a career path. But instead he's worried about finding $10,000 to finish his degree, since changes to the post-9/11 GI Bill rushed through Congress late last year will trim thousands off of his benefit.
"It's extremely upsetting and sad," said Boehm, who served in Afghanistan in 2009. "My whole plan in choosing a school was making sure I didn't have any debts, not having any financial burden on me after graduation. But that's what I'm looking at."

In an effort to simplify the tuition formula for veterans headed to college, lawmakers in December approved a measure to pay a flat rate of $17,500 per year for tuition and fees at all colleges except public schools in veterans' home states, which are covered in full.
For most student vets, the changes mean a sizable boost in the money they receive. But for a smaller group -- students like Boehm -- the change will mean a painful cut in funding they thought would be available to pay for classes next year.
Veterans groups who had supported the legislation in December are scrambling to find a fix before August, when the new provisions go into effect. Without one, thousands of student veterans could be forced to choose between taking out unanticipated student loans or taking more drastic action.
"We've heard from a lot of people who are considering transferring or dropping out of school altogether rather than take out big loans," said John McClellan, an organizer with Military Veterans of Columbia University. "They thought they had the promise of funding in place, but now it's gone."
When lawmakers passed the post-9/11 GI Bill benefits three years ago, the plan was designed to allow the new wave of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans to attend college without incurring tens of thousands of dollars in debt.
Veterans were guaranteed a full four years of tuition, with a maximum benefit equaling the cost of the most expensive public school in a veteran's home state. But the changes also brought significant inequities.
Students qualified for tuition at those colleges based on the most expensive public schools in their home state. For private universities, or public schools in other states, their tuition payments were capped based on those same home state rates.
Last semester, veterans from Texas -- which boasts the most expensive rates in the country -- could receive more than $47,000 in tuition for other schools, while veterans from neighboring Arkansas -- one of the least expensive -- would receive only about $7,000.
Last year, more than 126,000 veterans took classes at private colleges with GI Bill funding, many attending the same schools but receiving those vastly different payouts.
To solve that problem, veterans groups began pushing for a simpler tuition formula: a single flat rate for any school outside the home state public colleges. Tim Embree, legislative associate with the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, said his group pushed for a $25,000 cap, likely enough to cover all but a few expensive cases.
But the Senate knocked that figure down to $17,500.
The result is that students from 11 states will lose money next semester, some more than $10,000 for the fall alone. On the other hand, student veterans in 39 other states and the District of Columbia will get thousands more for college tuition, allowing them to afford some schools they had never considered in the past.
Students attending public universities in their home states will not be affected by the change.
The legislation also included more money for distance learners and online classes, and expanded the number of National Guardsmen eligible for the education benefits. Lawmakers also changed a provision in the living stipend to only pay students rent money for months during their semester, which trimmed an additional $1,000 to $2,000 from their annual benefit.
When the bill passed amid a flurry of last-minute legislation in December, the result left many students midway through their college careers with potentially thousands of dollars in unexpected debt.
"It's ridiculous to deter students from going to a good private school, but that's what these changes do," said Derek Blumke, co-founder of Student Veterans of America.
Boehm said he seriously considered going to a cheaper public school instead of Columbia University because he wanted to remain free of debt, but when the money worked out, the Ivy League school was an easy choice.
Now, he'll reluctantly take out loans to complete his degree. He said he doesn't regret the decision, but the change puts him in a darker financial place.
In an angry speech just before the bill's passage, former Rep. Steve Buyer, R-Ind., then the ranking member of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, warned the changes would create more problems than it solved, and that lawmakers hadn't taken time to properly research the measure.
"These enhancements are being done at the expense of some veterans to the benefit of other veterans," he said. "If you went out and surveyed the average student veteran, I believe they would oppose improving their own benefit at the expense of one of their comrades."

But in the end, he was one of only three lawmakers in the House to vote against the measure, against 409 representatives approving it.
Both SVA and IAVA -- along with a number of other veterans groups -- supported the legislation last year. Blumke and Embree said they still believe the bill helps more veterans than it hurts, but both groups are pushing lawmakers to insert a grandfather clause in the legislation before August.
"We need to get action on this," Blumke said.
Capitol Hill staffers acknowledge the problem but question whether lawmakers will have time to address it in coming months.
Budget cuts in the current fiscal year and looming budget fights for fiscal 2012 have dominated conversation in Congress, and any additional cost for the grandfather clause will likely have to be offset with spending cuts somewhere else.
No legislation has been introduced in either chamber to deal with the problem. Even though the changes don't go into effect until August, most students need to finalize their plans for the fall semester in the next two months.
Nicholas Lozano, a former Marine Corps reservist, is a sophomore at Columbia who doesn't know if he'll be able to stay there for another two years, due to the tuition changes.
"I'm looking at $35,000 in debt at least with the changes," he said. "I was expecting to have to take out a few loans near the end to cover expenses, but nothing like this."
Lozano had already been using money saved from his Iraq deployment two years ago to pay for unpaid expenses for school. That money won't last much longer if the new tuition rates go into effect.
"I don't see myself leaving school, but I don't know how I'm going to afford this," he said.

©  This article is provided courtesy of Stars and Stripes, which got its start as a newspaper for Union troops during the Civil War, and has been published continuously since 1942 in Europe and 1945 in the Pacific. Stripes reporters have been in the field with American soldiers, sailors and airmen in World War II, Korea, the Cold War, Vietnam, the Gulf War, Bosnia and Kosovo, and are now on assignment in the Middle East.

Stars and Stripes has one of the widest distribution ranges of any newspaper in the world. Between the Pacific and European editions, Stars and Stripes services over 50 countries where there are bases, posts, service members, ships, or embassies.

THIS IS WHAT IS WRONG WITH OUR COUNTRY. AT LEAST ON ONE OF THE THINGS

I think the vast differences in compensation between victims of the September 11 casualty and those who die serving our country in Uniform are profound. No
one is really talking about it either, because you just don't criticize anything having to do with September 11. Well, I can't let the numbers pass by because it says
something really disturbing about the entitlement mentality of this country. If you lost a family member in the September 11 attack, you're going to get an average of $1,185,000. The range is a minimum guarantee of $250,000, all the way up to $4.7
million..
If you are a surviving family member of an American soldier killed in action,
the first check you get is a $6,000 direct death benefit, half of which is taxable.
Next, you get $1,750 for burial costs. If you are the surviving spouse, you get
$833 a month until you remarry. And there's a payment of $211 per month for
each child under 18. When the child hits 18, those payments come to a
screeching halt.
Keep in mind that some of the people who are getting an average of $1.185
million up to $4.7 million are complaining that it's not enough. Their deaths were tragic, but for most, they were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Soldiers put themselves in harms way FOR ALL OF US, and they and their families know the dangers.. (Actually, soldiers are put in harms way by politicians
and commanding officers.)
We also learned over the weekend that some of the victims from the Oklahoma
City bombing have started an organization asking for the same deal that the September 11 families are getting. In addition to that, some of the families of those bombed in the embassies are now asking for compensation as well.
You see where this is going, don't you? Folks, this is part and parcel of over
50 years of entitlement politics in this country. It's just really sad.
Every time a pay raise comes up for the military, they usually receive next to
nothing of a raise. Now the green machine is in combat in the Middle East while their families have to survive on food stamps and live in low-rent housing.
Make sense?
However, our own US Congress voted themselves a raise. Many of you don't know
that they only have to be in Congress one time to receive a pension that is more than $15,000 per month. And most are now equal to being millionaires plus. They do not receive Social Security on retirement because they didn't have to pay into the system. If some of the military people stay in for 20 years and get out as an
E-7, they may receive a pension of $1,000 per month, and the very people who
placed them in harm's way receives a pension of $15,000 per month.
I would like to see our elected officials pick up a weapon and join ranks before they start cutting out benefits and lowering pay for our sons and daughters who are now
fighting.
"When do we finally do something about this?"

By Rush Limbaugh:

A Veteran who understands the enemy we face

President Obama this week once again called Islam "a great religion" which has been "distorted" by a small number of "extremists" to justify committing acts of violence against the West.

But the Qur'an (or Koran) itself, the holy book of Islam, contains over 100 verses calling for violence against Christians and Jews. To give just one example, Sura 9:5 says, "Slay the idolaters wherever you find them."

During a panel discussion sponsored by the Hudson Institute last January, retired Army Lt. Colonel Allen West, who did combat duty in Iraq, responded to a Marine who asked the question, how do you answer people who say that terrorists are following a "warped" version of Islam?

The panel consisted of a number of former military personnel, who fumbled around trying to answer the question. Col. West finally stepped forward answered the question directly and truthfully. Listen to the words of a former military man who understands the nature of the enemy we face:

Notice again Col. West's straightforward assessment: "This is not a perversion. They are doing exactly what this book (i.e., the Qur'an) says."

Col. West, by the way, was elected last week to Congress, to represent Florida's 22nd congressional district. He will be the first African-American Republican congressman to represent Florida since 1870.

If you would like to add your signature to our "thank you" letter to Col. West for speaking frankly about the nature of the enemy we face, you can do so here. Don't forget to give a special "thank you" on this Veteran's Day to every member of the military you encounter.

If you'd like to see the full, unedited video of the exchange, which includes the Marine's question and shows the discomfort felt by every other member of this panel in responding to the question, click here.

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Ethanol Facts

Published: Saturday, February 12, 2011 at 12:18 a.m.
Last Modified: Saturday, February 12, 2011 at 12:18 a.m.
I would like to add some facts to the continuing ethanol discussions.
A gallon of ethanol only contains about 65 percent of the energy of a gallon of gasoline.
It cannot be pumped in pipelines because of its corrosive nature, it must trucked from the distiller and blended at a local facility. Blenders receive a $0.51 per gallon credit from the government.
The wholesale price for ethanol in Florida is $2.174 per gallon, but the 10 percent ethanol in your tank will cost you $3.17 per gallon. You can expect to take about a 3 percent or more hit on your mileage.
E85 pricing is more outrageous. Pricing at a Central Florida station is $3.17 per gallon for regular gasoline (with 10 percent ethanol) and $2.74 per gallon for E85 (85 percent ethanol). To be equivalent on an energy basis it should sell for about $2.31 per gallon. Also, if your car burns E85, expect a large drop in mileage.
Finally, without a subsidy (your tax dollars), no one would ever produce ethanol from corn or other grasses, all of which require substantial amounts of nitrogen for reasonable production. The nitrogen generally is derived from ammonia produced from natural gas. I doubt anyone can really claim that to be renewable. There are not enough arable acres in the U.S. to support corn ethanol without affecting food prices.
JOHN H. SURBER
Chemical Engineer (retired)
Lakeland

Obama and the National Day of Prayer

In 1952 President  Truman established  one  day  a  year  as  a "National Day of Prayer."
In 1988 President Reagan designated the First Thursday in May of each year as  the National Day of Prayer.  
In June 2007(then) Presidential Candidate Barack Obama declared that the USA "Was no longer  a
Christian nation."
Las year President Obama canceled the 21st annual National Day of Prayer ceremony at the White
House under the ruse Of "not wanting to offend anyone"  
  
BUT... on September 25, 2009 from 4 AM until 7 PM, a National Day of Prayer FOR THE MUSLIM RELIGION  was Held on Capitol Hill, Beside the White House. There were over 50,000 Muslims
in  D.C. that day.  

HE PRAYED WITH THE MUSLIMS! I guess it Doesn't matter if  "Christians" Are  offended  by  this  event - We  obviouslyDon't  count  as "anyone"  Anymore. The direction  this country is headed should strike fear in the heart of every Christian, especially knowing that the Muslim religion believes that if Christians cannot be converted, they should be annihilated. This is not a Rumor - Go  to  the  website To  confirm  this  info: http://www.islamoncapitolhill.com/

Anti-Christian drumbeat loud before Egypt attack

CAIRO (AP) — In the weeks before the New Year's Day suicide bombing of an Egyptian church, al-Qaida-linked websites carried a how-to manual on "destroying the cross," complete with videos on how to build a bomb and the locations of churches to target — including the one that was attacked.
They may have found a receptive audience in Alexandria, where increasingly radicalized Islamic hard-liners have been holding weekly anti-Christian demonstrations, filled with venomous slogans against the minority community.
The blast, which struck Saturday as worshippers were leaving midnight Mass at the Mediterranean city's Saints Church, killed 21 people.
President Hosni Mubarak has accused foreign groups of being behind the attack, which has sparked a wave of angry protests by Christians in Egypt.
But on the ground, investigators are searching in a different direction — scrutinizing homegrown hard-liners, known as Salafis, and the possibility they were inspired by al-Qaida.
Only two or three days before Saturday's bombing, police arrested several Salafis spreading fliers in Alexandria calling for violence against Christians, a security official said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.
According to authorities, the strong belief among investigators is that local extremists who knew the area and the nature of their target were behind the blast. The Egyptian weekly Al-Youm Al-Saba said police were examining photos of the Salafis' weekly protests for suspects.
In the weeks before the attack, al-Qaida militants on the Web spewing calls for "jihad," or holy war, on Egypt's Christians laid out everything anyone would need to carry out a bombing.
One widely circulated posting includes a so-called "Jihadi Encyclopedia for the Destruction of the Cross," with a series of 10 videos describing how to build a bomb.
In the videos, an unidentified militant in a white lab coat and a black mask is shown listing the ingredients to make TNT and mixing up the chemicals in beakers.
The site lists Coptic Christian churches in Egypt, along with phone numbers and addresses — including Alexandria's Saints Church. "Blow up the churches while they are celebrating Christmas or any other time when the churches are packed," it says.
Security officials say they were aware of the online "how-to manual" before the church bombing and are examining any links between it and the material posted on Islamic websites.
One main Salafi group, the Salafi Movement in Alexandria, issued a statement condemning the bombing, saying its preachings "reject such practices."
The ultra-conservative Salafi ideology has been gaining followers throughout Egypt in recent years, preaching a return to the ways of early Muslims. It calls for strict segregation of the sexes and rejection of any religious "innovations," such as permitting boys and girls to attend school together or collecting interest on bank loans.
The movement has spread across class lines, among wealthy businessmen, the middle class and urban poor. Men grow long beards and shave off mustaches, to imitate the Prophet Muhammad. Women wear the black niqab robes and veil, which envelop the entire body and face, showing only the eyes.
In many ways, it resembles the doctrine of al-Qaida, with one major difference — while it advocates jihad against "foreign occupiers" in Iraq or Afghanistan, it rejects holy war inside Egypt, at least for now.
But many observers warn that some members are growing more radicalized and have begun to advocate jihad within the country, providing fertile ground for al-Qaida influence.
They cite the group's unprecedentedly fierce campaign against Egypt's Coptic Christian Church.
It was sparked by the case of two Christian women who reportedly converted to Islam to get divorces from their husbands, since the church bans divorce. The Salafis accuse church officials of forcing the women to renounce Islam and return to Christianity, a claim the church denies.
At weekly protests attended by hundreds outside mosques in Alexandria and Cairo, Salafis have accused the church of holding the women against their will. Vowing vengeance and denouncing Coptic Pope Shenouda III as an "infidel," the protesters accused Copts of trying to "Christianize" Egypt's Muslims and stockpiling weapons in churches and monasteries.
In September, one Salafi cleric, Ahmed Farid, wept as he told worshippers at an Alexandria mosque that Muslims were being "humiliated" by Christians, chiding them for "giving up jihad."
At a Salafi protest in Cairo in October, some raised the flag of al-Qaida in Iraq — a black banner emblazoned with the phrase "there is no god but God and Muhammad is God's prophet."
Two days later, al-Qaida in Iraq attacked a church in Baghdad in a siege that left 68 Christians dead, the worst attack ever against Iraq's Christian minority. The group issued a statement vowing a campaign against Christians unless the two women in Egypt were freed, and several other attacks on the community in Baghdad have followed.
Since then, calls on al-Qaida-linked websites for attacks on Egypt's Christians have grown to a fever pitch.
A statement posted with the videos decries the failure of Muslims to act to free the two women.
"Will we keep on dreaming and dreaming, or is it time to wake up to the echoing boom and the flying torn limbs that will please the faithful and scare the infidels?" the statement reads. "Of course, it is better to act as a group, but that must not be an impediment between you and action. ... Move forward on your own."
The threats raise the question of why security officials did not do more to protect churches. On New Year's, Saints Church had only three or four policemen outside and cars had easy access to the street.
Copts, who make up about 10 percent of Egypt's nearly 80 million people, accuse the government of ignoring threats against them and doing nothing about growing anti-Christian sentiment.
Experts say the government has tacitly allowed the growth of Salafism because it is not anti-government and does not get involved in Egypt's politics, as opposed to the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood, which is the regime's main political rival.
"The Egyptian regime is harvesting the sour fruits for letting this extremist thought to grow and recruit thousands of young Egyptians," said Rifaat Sayyed Ahmed, an expert on Islamic groups.

Copyright © 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Navy officer to be relieved of command over lewd video

NORFOLK, Va. - A high-ranking Navy officer who produced and showed raunchy videos to the crew of an aircraft carrier three or four years ago is expected to be relieved of his command of the ship, defense officials said Tuesday.

A senior defense official said the announcement on Capt. Owen Honors of the USS Enterprise was expected Tuesday afternoon. The officials said the Navy has chosen a commander to replace Honors on the nuclear-powered ship that is currently stationed in Norfolk and scheduled to deploy to the Middle East this month.

The officials revealed the plans for Honors only on the grounds of anonymity because no official announcement has yet been made.

No phone listing was immediately available for Honors and he did not respond to e-mails.
The offending video shown in 2007 became public this weekend, proving an embarrassment to the Pentagon.

The videos released by a newspaper in this Navy port city feature Honors using gay slurs, pantomiming masturbation and staging suggestive shower scenes. They were played on the shipwide television system during weekly movie night when Honors was executive officer, or second in command, of the Enterprise. Honors has since become commander of the ship.

Over the weekend, the Navy at first downplayed the videos as "humorous skits," then called them "not acceptable" and said they were under investigation.

The videos' existence was not news to Navy higher-ups. In a statement to the Virginian-Pilot on Friday, the Navy said its leadership had put a stop to videos with "inappropriate content" on the Enterprise about four years ago.
Michael Corgan, a career Navy officer who now teaches at Boston University, said before the news that Honors would be relieved that he was guilty not only of an error in judgment but of failing to recognize a changing Navy culture.
"Standards shift, of course, and trimming your sails is something you have to do if you're going to command people in the Navy," Corgan said. "This guy showed poor judgment."

The military has undergone a cultural shift in recent decades away from the loutish, frat-boy behavior that was exposed by the Tailhook scandal in 1991. It is now working to accommodate gays in its ranks with Congress' repeal of "don't ask, don't tell." Also, the Navy is opening its all-male submarine force to women this year.

Corgan said the repeal of don't ask, don't tell probably had nothing to do with the furor now: "What he did would have been dumb 30, 40 years ago."

Some sailors who served on the Enterprise have taken to Facebook to defend Honors and his video skits for providing a much-needed morale boost during long deployments at sea.

They portrayed Honors as a man who genuinely cared about his sailors and helped them blow off steam with corny and occasionally outrageous videos he concocted every week during six-month tours of duty in the Middle East at the height of the Iraq War. Maintaining morale is typically part of the XO's job.

"He was a caring professional and, yes, he has a sense of humor, but you need that on a boat," said Misty Davis, who served on the Enterprise from 2006 to 2010. The offending video was shown in 2007, and was a compilation of previous videos he had shown, she and others said.

"It's no worse than anything you'd see on Saturday Night Live' or The Family Guy,'" Davis said Monday. "I used to watch all of them. They were freaking hilarious."

Courtesey AZCentral.com