The Hightower Report

BUSH'S BUREAUCRACY STIFFS WOUNDED VETS

The scandals of George W.'s Iraq attack continue to come home to haunt us.

Not only did he use false pretenses to get Congress to rush into his invasion, not only did he send our men and women into battle without the protective gear they need to save their lives, not only did he grossly understate the depth of opposition our troops would face during the ongoing occupation, not only did he completely miscalculate the number of troops required to pursue his ideologically motivated mission – but now we learn that he rushed America into the hell of war without preparing for the medical needs of thousands of soldiers who are coming home with severe wounds.

A February study by Congress's bipartisan investigative arm found that the Pentagon lacks the ability even to track the wounded, much less assure that each of them gets the full attention they've earned in battle. The report notes that hundreds of those wounded in Iraq have returned home only to be ground up in Pentagon bureaucracy, going months without receiving the medical benefits and pay they earned.

Sgt. 1st Class John Allen of New Jersey, for example, suffered extensive injuries in a helicopter crash and grenade blast, but he says it was only when he got home that his "real troubles began." He had his leave cut short because a commander lost his paperwork; he had to reapply for medical benefits every 90 days, often denied pay and medical treatment. Now wearing an eye patch and walking with a cane, Allen says that this bureaucratic morass causes many of the wounded to give up and "just go home."

This is scandalous. Pentagon officials respond that they were simply unprepared and are now swamped, noting that 15,000 disabled troops came home last year alone. Not only have the chickenhawk Bushites failed these vets, but most shamefully they continue to try to keep the media from even reporting that so many of our people are being wounded in George's war.

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SENATORS STEP ON WORKERS

Time for another Gooberhead Award – presented periodically to those in the news who have their tongues going 100 miles an hour … but forgot to put their brains in gear.

Today, I've got a whole gaggle of Goobers for you – each of them a U.S. senator! These are the 49 Solons who recently voted to kill an increase in America's minimum wage, which has been stuck at $5.15 an hour since 1996. That comes out to about $10,500 a year for full time work! Try making ends meet on that, as millions of Americans now have to do.

It's a moral outrage that in the richest country in the history of the world, people working 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year are rewarded with poverty paychecks. This is why Democratic senators offered an increase to $7.25 an hour. That's about $15,000 a year – hardly the Life of Reilly, but better.

"No," shouted the 49 senators, all Republicans. One of these Gooberheads, Mike Enzi, even tried imposing his right-wing standard of ideological correctness on this issue: "Wages do not cause sales," he intoned. "Sales are needed to provide wages. Wages do not cause revenue. Revenue drives wages." How impressive. How wrong.

First, what does Enzi think people use to make purchases? Wages, of course. Raise wages of working families and – guess what? – sales go up in local businesses. Second, maybe Enzi has been out of touch with the nonideological world, but revenues of corporate employers have been going up for years – so why haven't wages?

These Goobers even tried to use the minimum wage bill as a vehicle to give more tax breaks to their corporate backers, to cut the overtime pay protections of workers, and to ban states from raising the minimum wage for restaurant workers.

To be fair though, the senators aren't entirely against wage increases. For example, they've raised their own pay every year for the last five years.