“It is deeply disturbing that one in five veterans under the age of 25 is unemployed. The men and women who fought for our nation in Iraq and Afghanistan have to fight for a job when they return home — and the odds are stacked against them” Harkin said Thursday during a conference call with reporters.

“We have a solemn obligation to do right by the men and women in uniform who put their lives at risk for our nation.”

Government officials estimate that roughly 240,000 veterans who served in the Middle East are currently unemployed. The bill approved by the Senate provides tax breaks of up to $9,600 to businesses that put them to work.

The tax breaks were included in the Obama administration’s American Jobs Act, a $447 billion package that was wholly refused by Republican lawmakers last month. U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley says the initiative dates back to May 2010 and this past January, when he and U.S. Sen. Max Baucus introduced and reintroduced the Veterans Employment Transition Act, or the VETs Jobs bill.

“These men and women are extremely capable,” Grassley said. “They have a lot of skills to offer in the workplace. The legislation that Senator Baucus and I put together clears some bureaucratic hurdles and adds a financial incentive to encourage employers to seek out veterans.”

The legislation reinstates a tax credit that expired at the end of 2010, and makes it easier for veterans and small businesses to use. The credits will range from $2,400 to $9,600 in 2012, depending on the veteran hired. Tax exempt organizations are eligible for the credit.

• $9,600 for veterans with service-connected disabilities unemployed for 6 months or longer in the past year
• $5,600 for veterans unemployed for 6 months or longer in the past year
• $4,800 for service-disabled veterans hired within 1 year of being discharged
• $2,400 for veterans who do not fit any of the above categories and are unemployed for between 4 weeks and 6 months in the past year

Any veteran who has left active duty in the past five years who has discharge paperwork showing 180 days of qualified active duty would be eligible for the credit. This would include those men and women who were activated by their states as members of the National Guard. The bill also helps service members market themselves to prospective employers by requiring the military to educate service members about how the credit works.

The only senator to vote against the Vow to Hire Heroes Act of 2011 was South Carolina Republican Jim DeMint, who indicated the measure gave veterans an unfair advantage.

“I cannot support this tax credit because I do not believe the government should privilege one American over another when it comes to work,” DeMint said on the floor Thursday.

The U.S. House is expected to take up the measure next week, and U.S. Rep. Dave Loebsack is optimistic that the bill will be quickly passed.

“Tomorrow, we set aside time to honor the men and women who have served our great country in uniform. As we pause to pay tribute to them, we must also remember that we have a moral obligation to serve our troops and veterans with the same dedication and honor with which they serve us. Yet our troops are returning home from the battlefield to face the same economic reality that families across our country are facing,” Loebsack said in a Thursday statement.

“The World War II generation returned home and became part of our nation’s economic recovery. Today, as we work to recover from the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, it is up to all of us as a grateful nation to ensure that those who have fought for us overseas do not have to fight for a job here at home. This generation of veterans can and will be part of our economic recovery, but we must give them the opportunity to do so. This bipartisan legislation demonstrates the progress we can make when both sides of the aisle work together.”

Two members of Iowa’s federal delegation are veterans. Harkin served as an active-duty jet pilot in the U.S. Navy from 1962 to 1967. U.S. Rep. Leonard Boswell served 20 years in the U.S. Army, including two one-year tours of duty as a helicopter pilot in Vietnam.

According to a January 2011 report by Jennifer Rizzo of CNN, only 20 percent of the members of Congress have served in the military — 25 from the Senate and 90 from the House. It is the lowest level since World War II.

That message could be made stronger by the fact that more than 20 percent of those surveyed are still unsure who they’ll support in the Jan. 3 presidential contest, the survey found.

The survey of 400 likely Republican caucusgoers by GS Strategy Group shows 64.5 percent are opposed to Social Security cuts, and 67.3 percent to Medicare cuts. Another 86 percent of those surveyed said Social Security benefits are important to their monthly income, and 87 percent said Medicare is essential to seniors’ health care security.

Those surveyed would much prefer withdrawing troops from Iraq and Afghanistan to cutting Medicare (67.3 percent to 9.5 percent) or Social Security (65 percent to 8.8 percent).

Of those surveyed, 76.8 percent identified themselves as conservative and 50.5 percent as very conservative.

“Opposition to these benefit cuts among Republicans across the ideological spectrum confirms what AARP has been hearing from Iowans throughout our campaign to protect Social Security and Medicare: Whether Republican, Democrat, Independent or Tea Party supporter, voters overwhelmingly oppose cuts to these programs,” said AARP Iowa State President Tony Vola.

Businessman Herman Cain led all GOP presidential candidates in the survey, with support at 25 percent. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney had 21.5 percent support, and U.S. Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) had 8.3 percent.

But more than 22.8 percent of those surveyed were still undecided, suggesting the race for the Republican nomination is still wide open, at least in the Hawkeye State.

The margin of error for the survey, conducted Oct. 17 and 18, is 4.9 percent.

“I was absolutely horrified to learn that the remains of American troops were literally thrown into a landfill by Dover Air Force Base personnel,” Udall said in a prepared statement. “There is no conceivable justification for our fallen to be treated in a manner that is totally devoid of the dignity or respect that they deserved. I am equally appalled that those responsible were quietly shuffled into new assignments and that the investigation was not made public.

“Hundreds of Colorado troops who were killed in action from 2003 to 2008 passed through Dover on their final journey home, and their loved ones cannot be left to wonder if the remains of their husbands, wives, sons, and daughters were discarded in such a callous manner. My deepest sympathy goes out to all of them.

“The Secretary of Defense has taken exactly the right action by reopening this investigation. The personnel who were involved in this decision should be fired and/or prosecuted immediately.”

CNBC Monday reported on recordings made by an Earthworks activist at a Houston oil and gas industry confab last week. The tapes reveal that companies use psyops techniques and even former military personnel to break the “insurgency” of community activism opposing domestic drilling.

“We have several former psyops folks that work for us at Range because they’re very comfortable in dealing with localized issues and local governments,” Range Resources communications director Matt Pitzarella said on tape. “Really, all they do is spend most of their time helping folks develop local ordinances and things like that. But very much having that understanding of psyops in the Army and in the Middle East has applied very helpfully here for us in Pennsylvania.”

In another session, Matt Carmichael, manager of external affairs for Anadarko Petroleum, made similar recommendations.

“Download the U.S. Army-slash-Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Manual, because we are dealing with an insurgency,” Carmichael said. “There’s a lot of good lessons in there and coming from a military background, I found the insight in that extremely remarkable.”

What are psyops techniques and troopers and how does the military use them? Think strongman Manuel Noriega in Panama being blasted incessantly by Van Halen and Howard Stern until he finally surrendered to U.S. troops in 1990. Or leaflet drops over villages in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In Colorado, the U.S. Army’s airborne 324th Psychological Operations Company is based out of the Buckley Air National Guard base in Aurora. The unit regularly conducts winter warfare training in the mountains near Vail – clearly for future deployment to the mountains of Afghanistan.

In 2003, a psyops trooper heading into Camp Hale – a former 10th Mountain Division and CIA training ground between Vail and Leadville – told the website Real Vail that psyops are all about marketing (with a gun): “We provide information, that’s basically what we are, In a layman’s sense, we do marketing. We try to sell democracy and the concept of how it works.”

In that same article, a professor who studies psyops techniques had this to say: “It’s all bullshit,” said Donald Goldstein, a professor of public and international affairs at the University of Pittsburgh. “Warfare has changed to the point that instead of just killing people, you have to understand them first.”

The link between modern warfare and domestic energy production seems particularly topical given the Republican push for more drilling on federal lands and in American suburbia to improve security abroad.

GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain recently said he’s a “Koch brothers’ brother from another mother,” referring to Koch Industries’ David and Charles Koch – the energy and chemical industry giants pumping millions into conservative candidates and the tea party movement. In Beaver Creek, Colo., this summer, Charles Koch said the campaign to unseat President Barack Obama and his pro-environment policies would be “the mother of all wars.”

The Department of Defense, in the wake of the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, has indicated that it will allow chaplains and same-sex couples to use facilities on a “sexual orientation-neutral basis,” something Republican members of the U.S. House oppose.

The letter was authored by Republican Rep. Todd Akin of Missouri and was signed by 86 members of the House.

“The Defense of Marriage Act was passed by a bipartisan vote in Congress and signed into law by President Clinton,” Akin said in a statement.

“Unfortunately, this current administration is now directing the Department of Defense to ignore this law and perform gay marriages on military bases. I think this is wrong, which is why I offered an amendment to the House-passed defense bill making it clear that DOMA applies to the DOD. This letter calls for the Senate to add a similar amendment to their version of the bill. The Department of Defense should not be allowed to simply ignore laws they do not like.”

The House members complain that guidance by the Department of Defense General Counsel would make resources available to all members of the military. The general counsel guidance said that the “use of DoD real property and facilities for private functions, including religious and other ceremonies, should be made on a sexual orientation neutral basis.”

“This clear and deliberate violation of established U.S. law sets a dangerous precedent,” the letter states. “[The Defense of Marriage Act] makes it clear that for purposes of the federal government, marriage is defined as between one man and one woman. The use of federal property or federal employees to perform anything but opposite-sex ceremonies is a clear contravention of the law.”

The letter comes as same-sex couples in the military filed suit to overturn DOMA on Thursday in order to secure military benefits denied to them by the federal government.

“Having opposed the original Iraq war authorization in 2002, I am pleased with today’s announcement that U.S. troops will withdraw fully from Iraq by the end of the year,” Democratic Rep. Diana DeGette said in a prepared statement.

Sen. Mark Udall

“Our engagement in Iraq has been a testament to the unflappable courage of our men and women in uniform, but it has also proven costly — claiming far too many lives and misdirecting critical military and financial resources from where they were most needed.”

Total withdrawal came as a result of a breakdown in negotiations with the Iraqi government that would have left a training force in place in exchange for immunity from prosecution for U.S. troops.

“I remain concerned about the security situation in Iraq and believe that keeping a limited number of U.S. troops in place to continue training and assistance would have helped sustain U.S. and Iraqi progress in stemming violence,” Democratic Sen. Mark Udall said in a release. “As a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, I will continue to monitor the situation closely.”

Udall, then a member of the House, also voted against funding the initial war effort, although he later voted to appropriate funds as the campaign continued for nearly a decade, costing 4,400 American lives and more than $1 trillion.

“I voted against the Iraq war, and I still believe that it ultimately harmed what should have been our military’s top priority – our mission in Afghanistan,” Udall said. “However, once our forces were committed in Iraq, abandoning that country would have risked the security of the entire region.”

Leaving troops in Iraq without immunity does not make sense, Udall added.

“It is ultimately unacceptable to expect our troops to provide that assistance without immunity from prosecution in Iraqi courts, which has become a sticking point between U.S. and Iraqi negotiators,” he said. “Our troops have fought and died to establish a functioning democratic government in Iraq, and now we must respect the wishes of Iraq’s leaders.”

Senator Michael Bennet issued this statement:

“Our troops have performed bravely and effectively in Iraq and accomplished everything that was asked of them, securing communities and creating the space for democratic change to begin to take root. Our gratitude for their selfless service, and the sacrifice of their families, cannot be overstated. I welcome the President’s announcement that – after nine long years, $1 trillion and 1 million service members deployed – he will keep his promise to withdraw all U.S. forces from Iraq by the end of the year.

“Today is an occasion to again honor the service of those we have lost and recommit ourselves to our obligation to provide returning troops with the health care and support they have earned after a decade of war.

“This announcement represents another significant milestone for the country and U.S. forces, including the killing of Osama bin Laden. However, serious threats against the United States remain, and we must continue to work to ensure we have the best-trained and best-equipped military in the world.”

No Republican members of the Colorado congressional delegation had issued a statement as of Friday afternoon.

President Obama said Qaddafi’s death marked the “end of a long and painful chapter.”

Senator Mark Udall released this statement:

“Qaddafi was a cruel ruler who terrorized his citizens and refused to listen to their demands that he step down. The Libyan people bravely stood up against their oppressor, but as long as Qaddafi was alive and on the run they weren’t free to chart their own future.

“There are many questions to be answered today and in the coming weeks and months about what the future holds for Libya. But with Qaddafi gone, the interim Libyan government has the opportunity to build a new democratic nation.

“U.S. leadership helped bring about regime change, and I commend President Obama for bringing together an international coalition to aid the Libyan people. Our role in the near future must continue to be one of support and guidance as a new Libya works to rebuild, provide for its people and hold its first credible elections.”

“I didn’t meet Gessler,” Smith told the Colorado Independent on his way back from the office. “I met two people from the Elections Division. They were polite and professional but they didn’t let on about Gessler’s plans. Actually, one of them seemed more interested in sharpshooting our petition.”

Smith said that, of the 9,000 signatures he delivered, 3,400 were signatures from veterans. He said the petition contained the full names, addresses and, where appropriate, veteran status. The Elections Division staffer, however, suggested that wasn’t enough.

“He wanted to know how we had informed our members, what we told them this was about. He also asked for email addresses and phone numbers for each [signatory]. I feel like that would be intrusive, not very polite to ask for that personal information,” Smith said.

Gessler has argued that sending ballots to inactive voters — registered voters who failed to cast ballots in 2010 — violates state law. The law requires clerks to send ballots to all active voters and Gessler maintains that that language precludes clerks from also sending to inactive voters. He has pointed out that not all counties have mailed to inactive voters this year or in past years and that he intends to make election processes uniform across the state. He has said preventing clerks from mailing inactive ballots will also guard against voter fraud, although the incidence of voter fraud tied to mailed ballots is almost non existent, nor is it in any way a greater threat where inactive voter ballots as opposed to active voter ballots are concerned. Gessler has provided no evidence to suggest anything different.

Denver had already sent out its ballots to inactive voters, including soldiers doing service out of county, when Gessler filed suit to win an injunction. Denver has sent out ballots to inactive voters for the last five years.

Pueblo County Clerk Gilbert Ortiz joined the lawsuit the week before the hearing, pained by the notion that soldiers from Pueblo stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan would be denied a basic democratic right they are fighting to foster overseas. Upon hearing the judge’s ruling against Gessler, he ordered his office to immediately mail out the inactive voter ballots.

Ortiz said his county legal counsel had advised that Gessler’s rule would violate federal law ensuring that clerks mail ballots to all registered-voter service members.

Putting aside the legal arguments, Ortiz told the Independent that the point of mailing the ballots is to help the soldiers out.

“You can just imagine, they have bigger things on their minds. When they have the ballot in their hand, they’ll vote.”

Smith’s organization, VoteVets, has more than 100,000 members. The organization seeks to advance legislation that benefits veterans but also works to make known veterans’ opinions on top issues of the day.

“I live in Denver,” Smith said. “I’ll just say I’m a big fan of democracy. So I was following this story pretty closely anyway. When Clerk Ortiz asked Gessler ‘What about soldiers?’ ‘What about the military?’ That’s when we really got involved.

“I love Colorado. I didn’t want people around the country to see this as the kind of place that is bad on voting.”

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“Pueblo County will honor Secretary Gessler’s order but this is not over,” Ortiz is quoted to say. “Pueblo County is currently weighing [its] legal options, including taking the issue to court. The Secretary of State effectively has denied 64 active military personnel the opportunity to vote.”

Gessler unveiled a new interpretation of state election law last week, when he filed a lawsuit to stop Denver County from mailing ballots to “inactive” voters as it had done for the last five years. An inactive voter in Colorado is a voter who is legally registered but who has failed to cast a vote in the previous general election– in this case the election of 2010.

Pueblo County, like Denver, has routinely mailed ballots to all registered voters. Ortiz was committed to do the same this year and pushed back against Gessler this week. He said counsel had advised that Gessler’s interpretation of election law would force Pueblo– and all the counties of Colorado by extension– to violate the federal Uniform Military and Overseas Voters Act, which requires clerks to mail ballots to all eligible voters in the military.

For that reason Ortiz sent a letter to Gessler asking him to submit in writing by Friday an order to Pueblo County not to send ballots out to soldiers. Gessler sent the order Thursday evening. Ortiz has been debating what course of action to take in the hours since.

“The soldiers won’t technically be disenfranchised. They can fax or email for ballots,” Ortiz told the Colorado Independent. To his way of thinking, however, that’s not good enough. The point of mailing the ballots is to help the soldiers out.

“You can just imagine, they have bigger things on their minds. When they have the ballot in their hand, they’ll vote,” he said.

Research on voting and elections backs up Ortiz’s common sense take. A University of Colorado-Denver study (pdf) prepared this year for the Colorado Secretary of State by the Buechner Institute of Governance, reports that mailing ballots to all registered voters, active and inactive, would increase participation. Mailing only to active voters, on the other hand, could well suppress turnout because registered inactive voters, although predisposed to cast ballots, are busy and distracted or in and out of town. The mailed ballots remind them to participate, and they do.

Surely soldiers are as busy and distracted as any of us, said Ortiz, and probably more so. He points to legislative efforts to ensure soldiers have access to ballots and a relatively easy time casting them.

The Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA) of 1986 and the Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment Act (Move) of 2009 set up timelines and procedures to make sure service members can exercise their right to vote without undue burden. The acts removed notarization requirements, required registration applications and absentee ballots be available online and established a 45-day window for ballots to be mailed and returned, for example.

Ortiz takes his cue as clerk from the priorities guiding such legislative efforts.

“UOCAVA and MOVE make it easier for soldiers to vote,” said Ortiz. “But why not make it even easier? That’s how I see it.”

In the release he said much the same thing but perhaps more artfully.

“It’s only right that Pueblo residents who are serving our country in the military should have the chance to cast their ballot here at home. Military men and women should be given every opportunity to participate in the democracy they’re defending …they may be listed as ‘inactive’ voters in our system but, when they’re on active duty, how can we deny them a ballot?”

Gessler made a career as a lawyer of defending Republican clients and causes in election and campaign finance cases. He has been a controversial secretary of state since winning office in the “GOP wave election” of 2010. He has said that, in directing majority Democratic Denver and Pueblo county not to mail ballots to inactive voters, he is seeking to guard against fraud and make the state’s election rules uniform. His detractors have said Gessler has displayed a pattern of endorsing radical solutions to problems that don’t really exist, that what he’s really up to is suppressing the vote in advance of the presidential election of 2012.

Ortiz’s letter:

Pueblo Overseas Ballots Rls-1

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In Pueblo as elsewhere in the state, inactive voters are now meant to visit the clerk’s office or a polling place to retrieve ballots. With the election a month away, Gessler’s directive seems likely to effectively disenfranchise the soldiers.

On Wednesday, Ortiz told the Colorado Independent he was pained by the idea of not sending out the ballots. “This is not a comfortable place to be,” he said, adding that not sending the ballots went against all of his priorities as clerk. He said he felt the clock ticking for the inactive-voter soldiers.

Last night, Ortiz told the Pueblo Chieftan that he remained undecided on whether or not to follow Gessler’s order. He said he planned to consult with County Attorney Dan Kogovsek on the matter.

Contacted this morning, Ortiz’s office said he would comment on the Gessler order after a roughly hour-long scheduled conference call, presumably with Kogovsek, on the course of action they plan to chart for Pueblo County.

Colorado election law clash

Gessler last week filed a lawsuit against Denver County over its plan to mail ballots to all registered voters, active and inactive. Denver has mailed ballots to all registered voters for the last five years and has already sent its ballots out this year. A district court is scheduled on October 7th to hear arguments in the case.

In announcing his new interpretation of state election law, Gessler explained that he is seeking to make the rules uniform across counties on whether or not clerks can mail ballots to inactive voters and he said he was concerned to guard against possible registration fraud.

In making his case, Gessler has cited a Colorado statute that directs county clerks to “mail [ballots] to each active registered elector.” That language comes from legislation passed in 2008 that explicitly required Colorado counties to mail ballots to inactive as well as to active voters but that only passed as a temporary measure amid complaints that it established an unfunded mandate. In its absence, Gessler argues, counties cannot send ballots to inactive voters.

Many observers, including two members of Congress who champion voter-rights, see Gessler’s interpretation as a stretch. They see the reading as part of a larger Republican drive in states across the nation built on overblown threats of voter fraud but designed to suppress voter participation in advance of next year’s presidential election.

Election officials and experts say the chances of voter ballots getting into the wrong hands is escalated when they are mailed out, and Gessler spokesman Andrew Cole echoed those concerns Thursday to the Chieftan.

“There were thousands of ballots mailed out to inactive voters in 2010 that were unaccounted for,” he said.

The Secretary of State, however, has yet to offer evidence that any inactive voter ballot has ever been used to commit fraud of any kind.

‘A fashionable political theme’

Detractors have come to look with skepticism on concerns about fraud voiced by Gessler.

Before he was elected Secretary of State last year, Gessler built a law career as a Republican champion of partisan interpretations of campaign finance and election law. In the spring, he championed stiff voter ID legislation by citing examples of voter fraud committed in the state that he said his office had detected.

Before legislative committees in Denver and in Washington, he suggested there could have been as many as 5,000 votes cast in the state by non-citizens in 2010. He later said he was “certain” that 106 people on Colorado’s voter roll of 3.7 million were ‘improperly registered.’

Estelle Rogers, director of advocacy for Project Vote, told the Colorado Independent at the time that the Gessler numbers were shockingly unreliable and that his proposed response to those unreliable numbers went beyond overreaching.

“His 106 people is about 0.0028648648649 percent of total registered voters,” she said. “Obviously such an error rate is to be expected whenever human beings are copying data from one list to another. Before the secretary of state jumps to the conclusion that these are 106 cases of voter fraud, he should have a lot more evidence than mere suspicion. Non-citizen voting is a fashionable political theme these days, but it has no basis in reality. And the right to vote is too important to confuse with sloganeering.”

That’s what Ortiz thinks too. He told the Independent he was pained at the idea of not sending ballots to soldiers in harm’s way. He also said he believed, based on advice from counsel, that not sending ballots to the inactive-voter soldiers violated the federal Uniform Military and Overseas Voters Act, which obligates county clerks to send ballots to all “covered voters,” which the act clearly defines as all eligible voters in the military, making no distinction between active and inactive voter status.

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