Copyright

(c) 2010-2024 Jon L Gelman, All Rights Reserved.
Showing posts with label military. Show all posts
Showing posts with label military. Show all posts

Saturday, February 15, 2014

Rescinding the Cuts to Veteran's Pensions Was In the Cards From the Start

Today's post was shared by Mother Jones and comes from www.motherjones.com

December's budget deal between Paul Ryan and Patty Murray included a bit of relief from the 2011 sequestration cuts, with the relief split evenly between domestic and military budgets. That even split was one of the guiding principles of the deal. But part of the military relief was paid for by $7 billion in cuts to veterans' pensions, something that immediately prompted a storm of protest and, eventually, a move to rescind the cuts. Jared Bernstein comments:
True, that’s not huge bucks in the scheme of things. But the violation of this budget principle should not be taken lightly. A key point of the budget machinations that brought us to where we are today is that automatic spending cuts should be split between evenly between defense and non-defense (forget for a moment, that it’s not the discretionary side of the budget that’s responsible for our longer term fiscal challenges anyway). If Congress starts stealing from domestic programs to boost defense, it will unfairly and unwisely exacerbate already unsustainable pressures on domestic spending.
I'd take a slightly different lesson from this: Democrats got snookered. Only a little bit, and they knew they were being played, but they still got snookered. It was obvious from the start that cuts to veterans' benefits would be unpopular and unlikely to stand, but Democrats agreed to them anyway in order to get the budget deal across the finish line. Maybe that was the right thing to do, but it was no...
[Click here to see the rest of this post]

Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Canada court allows disabled veteran class action to continue

Today's post was shared by WCBlog and comes from jurist.org


A judge for the Supreme Court of British Columbia [official website] on Friday declined to dismiss a class action lawsuit filed by disabled members of the Canadian military seeking to invalidate a veteran compensation law that limits payments to disabled veterans. 

Last year disabled veterans joined together to challenge the constitutionality of the 2005 New Veterans Charter (NVC) [government backgrounder], which gave disabled soldiers capped one-time payments in lieu of lifetime monthly payments.

The veterans assert that the NVC's lump-sum payment system fails to adequately provide for disabled veterans returning from the war in Afghanistan. 

The Attorney General of Canada [official website] filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that the plaintiffs failed to make out a winnable claim. Justice Gordon Weatherill, however, denied the motion, emphasizing that the case raises important issues [Canadian Press report] regarding the government's promises to compensate injured service members. 

The court ordered the government to file a response to the plaintiffs' complaint.

Veterans' rights remain a controversial issue around the globe, especially in the US. Earlier this month the US Department of Justice (DOJ) announced [JURIST report] that it will no longer enforce a federal law that denies same-sex spouses veterans...
[Click here to see the rest of this post]