Austin, Texas Chapter
The Association for all Military Officers
Companion Bulletin -October 2005
We opened the new season with excellent presentations by Charlotte Reburn and Ladd Spears, two outstanding students who attended the last Youth Leadership Conference at Texas Military Institute. COL McVeigh presented Charlotte Rebum with an Outstanding Student plaque. Observing both students' composure and insight, our future will be in good hands. No one has come forward to take the Speaker Program in tow. If you have a program suggestion, please provide full information to one of the chapter officers. Membership applications were provided to all and please do not put them in the circular file - do your part. Thanks to all who attended the last meeting.
Meeting. 13 Oct. 2005 Menu | Speaker
Brig. Gen. Michael Smith, Office of the Governor, Military Preparedness Commission
Schedule: "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." Hebrews 11-1 Chapter Officers |
| LEGISLATION
* Based on a faulty formula for calculating its budget, VA acknowledged that it was running out of money. The shortfall was anywhere from almost $1 billion to nearly $2 billion. In response, House and Senate negotiators working on the Interior Appropriations bill (HR. 2361) approved an additional $1.5 billion to cover VA through fiscal year 2005. * The Beneficiary Advisory Panel (BAP) will meet on 28 September to discuss the recommendations of the Department of Defense Pharmacy and Therapeutics (P&T) Committee on which drugs should be continued on the first copayment tier ($3.00 for generics) or second copayment tier ($9.00 for brand name) and which should be moved to the third copayment tier ($22.00). Three drug classes will be reviewed: Angiotensin Converting Enzyme Inhibitors (used to treat high blood pressure); Calcium Channel Blockers (used usually as add on therapy for treating high blood pressure and chronic angina); and Alpha Blockers (when used to treat benign prostatic hypertrophy). | Items of Interest * In August, DoD rolled out the new online Deployment Health and Family Readiness Library, a resource providing servicemembers, families, and healthcare providers a quick and easy way to find the deployment health information they value. Found at http://deploymenthealthlibrary.fhp.osd.mil/home.jsp the website allows users to browse numerous topic areas such as family issues, infectious diseases,., healthcare issues, stress, radiation, and exposure prevention. * The states with more than 1 million veterans are: California (2.3), Florida (1.8), Texas (1.7), New York (1.2), Pennsylvania (1.2) and Ohio (1.1). Some 10 million vets, or 40% of the total, are 65 or older. Why Pat Robertson's Statements Help Hugo Chavez Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has a new best friend - evangelist Pat Robertson. With his astonishing call for the left-wing leader's -assassination, Robertson will have surely made Chavez an even more popular anti-yanqui icon in Venezuela, Latin America and around the world. Chavez thrives on threats from the U.S., real or perceived. |
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He has long insisted that his foes are plotting to kill him, and this summer had
armed civilians training with the Venezuelan military to prepare for what he
says is an imminent U.S. invasion. A public effort to whack him, offered from
the right-wing Christian establishment so closely aligned with President Bush,
is just what Chavez needs to keep his approval ratings soaring as high as the
price of the Venezuelan oil. Chavez is no doubt a source of concern for Washington, if only because Venezuela is America's fourth-largest foreign oil supplier. Chavez's erratic and often bellicose anti-U.S. rhetoric as well as his desire to sell less oil to the U.S. and more to ideological allies like China, are hardly comforting as gas nears $3 per gallon. But neither is Chavez's embrace of nations like Iran, and nor is the fact that he's leading a politically potent (and, to the Bush Administration, potentially destabilizing) wave of angry neo-leftism in Latin America. But Chavez holds cards that make remarks like Robertson's all the more incendiary on the Latin American street, where language like "U.S. imperialism" suddenly has currency again. One is the past: Latin Americans have too many vivid and bitter memories of U.S. intervention in their countries-operations that sometimes included brazen assassinations -which is why the Administration got burned by accusations it backed a failed coup against Chavez in 2002 (the White House denies the charge). | Another is democratic legitimacy: Chavez, for all his
authoritarian tendencies, is a democratically elected head of state who last
year won a national recall referendum approved by international observers.
Perhaps an even more important factor is populist backing: leftism is on the
rise again in Latin America for a reason, namely the burgeoning feeling around
the region that a decade of U.S.-backed capitalist reforms has simply widened
an already epic gap between rich and poor-and that the Administration is
indifferent to it. As Chavez uses his multi- billion-dollar oil revenues to
fund the kind of social projects that Venezuela's legions of impoverished
never saw from his predecessors, more people are willing to defend him, as
most Latin leaders did last spring when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
toured South America. As a result, any cold war-style talk about "taking
Chavez out" with "covert operatives," as Robertson suggested,
just confers more Che Guevara cachet on the former army lieutenant colonel
(who himself led a failed coup in 1992). And since Chavez has threatened to
cut off oil exports to the U.S. at the first sign of gringo aggression, it
makes America's important Venezuelan oil supply look all the more volatile.
- Time Magazine |
| PS: "You hit me on one cheek, and I'll try to respond by helping
you" - Hugo Chevez Plans to send 300,000 barrels of gasoline plus
"four or five more " such shipment to help the post-Katrina
efforts, despite the animosityi between the two governments.
Quotes to Ponder * Violence is the first refuge of the incompetent * 1 don't agree with a word you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. | HOW CAN YOU LIVE WITHOUT-- KNOWING THIS?
Many years ago, in Scotland, a new game was invented. It was ruled "Gentlemen Only...Ladies Forbidden"... and thus the word GOLF entered into the English language. Austin Chapter Website Do not forget to visit the chapter website http://www.main.org/mowwaustin/. If you have items to put on the website contact LTC Howard (255-2206). Staff Meeting The next staff meeting will be at the call of the Commander. |