John has been empaneled and testified before a group of college board regents as to what veterans need to be successful, post combat, in school.

Recognizing the importance of addressing the climate change crisis and reducing dependence upon foreign oil and gas, the US Department of Energy (USDOE) has launched an aggressive program aiming to meet 20% of America’s energy needs via wind by 2030. In conjunction with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), the USDOE produced a study assessing the economic and environmental costs and benefits of achieving this goal.
The study can be read in its entirety at 20percentwind.org and concludes more than 500,000 jobs would be supported with an increase of 100,000 jobs in supporting industries and 200,000 more jobs through economic expansion at the local level. Other economic gains are expected annual property tax increases of $1.5B by 2030 and electric price stability.
Deploying wind energy and displacing fossil fuel powered plants will result in 825 million metric tons less carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 2030. Power generation presently accounts for 40% of CO2 emissions in the US. Wind energy, unlike fossil fuel or nuclear generated power does not require water so water consumption will drop also.
The study focuses entirely on centralized wind energy or large wind farms despite growing and successful implementation of distributed renewable energy systems in Europe. Nevertheless, the study reveals that successful deployment of an additional 304GW of wind power to meet the 20% goal is dependent upon massive investment in the transmission grid infrastructure. Consequently, 19,000 miles of new 765-kilovolt (kV) transmission lines, for an estimated price tag of US $60 billion are being proposed to Congress by high powered energy players like T Boone Pickens.
Other challenges to the centralized model include the need to develop larger electric load balancing areas, in tandem with better regional planning to implement generation diversity. According to the study, the US must increase annual wind power installation by 16GW by 2018, within ten years. Obtaining permits from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and other affected agencies in order to build out the transmission infrastructure to support this growth can take up to ten years. This is one reason the European Distributed Energy Partnership (EUDEEP) formed to implement wide scale distributed energy production to avoid many of these barriers and costs.
Significantly, the study acknowledges that a “business-as-usual” approach will not meet these goals. A major national commitment to clean energy, CO2 reductions and independence from foreign resources is required at a grass roots level. From a grass roots level it will also be possible to demonstrate that wide scale distributed energy systems can work in the US not just Europe and elsewhere. Happily, there are several people working on making the South Coast of Oregon a model of energy independence that the rest of the nation can build upon.
Please permit me a little divergence from topic here but I hope that in the inevitable debates to ensue during an election year we can focus on issues and not stoop to exposing verbal gaffes and sartorial faux pas. If you want to criticize Obama, criticize him, a constitutional lawyer, for eviscerating the 4th Amendment with his recent vote on the FISA bill. Or criticize him for his hawkish view on Iran or his votes for emergency defense spending more than five years after the ‘emergency’, not because he said fifty seven states instead of fifty on the campaign trail.
Criticize McCain for not defending the 4th Amendment and not voting on the FISA bill, for voting against an increase in GI benefits and for voting to continuing emergency defense spending five years after the ‘emergency’. Don’t criticize him because he thinks Iraq and Pakistan share a common border, (a really wide border called Iran). The future of this country is worthy of better debate and time is too short to waste on anything less than serious issues.

Thanks to Jim Webb and others and despite opposition by John McCain and the Bush Administration a strong new GI Bill passed yesterday

From an email I received this morning -

A task force appointed by Governor K. is holding Town Halls around the state to determine how existing programs can work together to support returning soldiers.

The Portland meeting included several vets and family members who spoke to the difficulties in accessing support and getting employment. Representatives from the VA and other veteran’s services were present
and heard our testimony that social support for vets and their families must be in place in addition to formal treatment programs. The reps from the VA seemed surprised to hear from OIF veterans that access to treatment was difficult and that negative stigma against vets was evident in hiring practices.

Please try and attend one of these meetings. Here, the closest meeting is in Myrtle Point.

Here is the upcoming schedule
June 30 Myrtle Point
2-4 p.m. Meet with local officials at City Hall Council Chambers
7-9 p.m. Town Hall Meeting Coos County Fairgrounds, 115 5th St., Oaks
Pavilion

July 1 Roseburg
9-11 a.m. Tour Roseburg VA Medical Center
2-4 p.m. Meet with local officials at City Hall Council Chambers
7-9 p.m. Town Hall Meeting Roseburg Armory 111 NW General Avenue

July 10 Eugene
8:30-9:30 a.m. Eugene Vet Net 1626 Willamette Street (Upstairs)
10:30-11:30 a.m. Tour new Springfield Armory
1-1:45 p.m. County Veteran Service Office 151 W Seventh Avenue, Suite
435
2-4 p.m. Meet with local officials at Springfield City Hall Council
Chambers
7-9 p.m. Town Hall Meeting Lane Community College Building 19 Room
250

July 14 Camp Rilea/Warrenton
9-10 a.m. VA Community Based Outpatient Clinic 91400 Rilea Neacoxie
Street Bldg. 7315
10-11:30 a.m. Tour Camp Rilea
2-4 p.m. Meet with local officials at Astoria City Hall Council
Chambers
7-9 p.m. Town Hall Meeting Astoria Event Center 894 Commercial St

July 17 La Grande
9-11 a.m. Community Based Outpatient Clinic
2-4 p.m. Meet with local officials at City Hall Council Chambers
7-8 p.m. Town Hall Meeting La Grande Armory 401 12th Street

July 18 Pendleton
2-4 p.m. Meet with local officials at City Hall Council Chambers
7-9 p.m. Town Hall Meeting Pendleton Armory 2110 NW 56th Drive

July 19 Madras
2-4 p.m. Meet with local officials at City Hall Council Chambers
7-9 p.m. Town Hall Meeting County Commissioner’s Conference Room,
66 ‘D’ St.

July 24 Hood River/The Dalles
9-11 a.m. Tour Veterans Home
2-4 p.m. Meet with local officials at The Dalles City Hall Council
Chambers
7-9 p.m. Town Hall Meeting Hood River Armory 1590 12th Street

July 28 Ashland
9-11 Southern Oregon University Meeting
2-4 p.m. Meet with local officials at City Hall Council Chambers
7-9 Town Hall meeting Ashland Armory 1420 E Main Street

July 29 Klamath Falls
9-11 a.m. Tour Kingsley Field
2-4 p.m. Meet with local officials at City Hall Council Chambers
7-8 p.m. Town Hall Meeting Kingsley Field Room TBD

From the NY Times, a scathing indictment of our commander in chief and his policies toward our military and people at home.

…the commander in chief now resists giving the troops a chance at better futures out of uniform. He does this on the ground that the bill is too generous and may discourage re-enlistment, further weakening the military he has done so much to break.

So lavish with other people’s sacrifices, so reckless in pouring the national treasure into the sandy pit of Iraq, Mr. Bush remains as cheap as ever when it comes to helping people at home.

Thankfully, the new G.I. Bill has strong bipartisan support in Congress. The House passed it by a veto-proof margin this month, and last week the Senate followed suit, approving it as part of a military financing bill for Iraq and Afghanistan.

What a contemptible human being and an embarrassment to the country George W Bush is.

The Washington Post reports that an official urged staff to cut back on PTSD diagnoses.

A psychologist who helps lead the post-traumatic stress disorder program at a medical facility for veterans in Texas told staff members to refrain from diagnosing PTSD because so many veterans were seeking government disability payments for the condition.

“Given that we are having more and more compensation seeking veterans, I’d like to suggest that you refrain from giving a diagnosis of PTSD straight out,” Norma Perez wrote in a March 20 e-mail to mental-health specialists and social workers at the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Olin E. Teague Veterans’ Center in Temple, Tex. Instead, she recommended that they “consider a diagnosis of Adjustment Disorder.”

For some time I have been working on an in depth article about PTSD. Though not a condition limited to combat veterans, anyone can suffer from it, the focus will be on our veterans. This story is very discouraging because we are not ’supporting our troops’. We under fund veterans benefits and John McCain recently balked at a new GI Bill because if the educational benefits were too attractive it might discourage re-enlistment. Spoken like a true REMF (rear echelon mother-f@%ker).

America is not supporting its troops and denying treatment for PTSD is wrong. Many people are not aware but the damage done by PTSD is physiological. You can see PTSD on a brain scan. High levels of stress hormones for an extended period of time cause a shrinkage of the hippocampi crucial to short term memory and spatial navigation. This damage, and the hippocampus is by no means the only thing effected in the brain, is IRREVERSIBLE!

Therapy can help PTSD sufferers learn to reroute their brain functions but it is a long hard slog and without treatment is not likely to occur. If you really support our troops then please educate yourself on this matter and pressure Congress to do the right thing. With veterans committing suicide at the rate of 120 per week and one in four homeless being veterans, their lives depend upon it.