Eh, conservatives will support any form of welfare they can call a tax break.

Unless it's for poor people. Take a look at their response to the earned income tax credit

To get X you have to be Y.

See: https://youtu.be/rStL7niR7gs
(Or how to rule)

"Welfare for conservatives" bc servicemen tend to be conservatives. At least that's the consensus on the forum.

More asinine assumptions about the military and who is in it. Your opinions are like mushroom farms: In the dark and full of s@#t.

Huh? Brad, do servicemen tend to be conservative or liberal? They have data on the web about it. It's knowable.

@Capt Brad... I clearly wrote in my post :
" I'd say give veterans the best health care you can that is cost effective. So fix the problems in the VA system."
NO mention of politics, Democrats, Republicans Liberals or any political group. When it comes to Defence Force Veterans I am "above politics" They deserve the best support that society can afford. I don't give a flying F*** what the political beliefs of veterans are...ALL ADF veterans who are permanently disabled as a result of their service deserve decent pensions & decent medical services. DON'T you ever dare question my commitment and support for the Australian Defence Forces and those who serve in the ADF. DON'T you ever dare question my belief that the British nation or the USA should similarly treat all their veterans properly, particularly those who are disabled whilst serving those nations.

I was most pleased to see two of the new joint strike fighter aeroplanes at the Avalon Air Show, I look forward to seeing the jsf enter service with the RAAF.

This coming Anzac day, April 25th I will be commemorating the service and sacrifice of all ADF service personnel & veterans. I don't need to list family members. One veteran, no relation, whom I intend to particularly remember, and whose story I will highlight then, is David Pearson MM.. a first Australian (aboriginal) who fought at the battle of Pozieres, where his actions were recognised and honoured by the awarding of the Military Medal. The battle of Pozieres in July and August 1916 was part of the larger Battle of the Somme.
So I don't care what the political beliefs of ADF service personnel & veterans are, they have the right to freedom of political expression, and the right to do so without any sticky beaks interfering in their privacy. If they choose to engage in public political discourse, then they do so without any special treatment or prejudice.
So as I have posted, Capt Brad.. Don't ever dare to question my respect and support for ADF service personnel and veterans.

@CAPT Brad:

Please re-read my comment, quoted below, and answer these two questions:

1) What is the person or group being taken advantage of?

2) What is the person or group taking advantage?

"The VA has a specialized provider component because the injuries and treatments that veterans need are often extremely serious. We "hide" them away from the general public to spare civilians the horrors of the aftermath of war. Our military industrial complex demands it to protect their bottom line."

@MajorMitchel: "NO mention of politics, Democrats, Republicans Liberals or any political group. When it comes to Defence Force Veterans I am "above politics" They deserve the best support that "

I believe that being a member of the defence forces makes you no more or less entitled to health care (though more needing certainly) and this level ofcare should be made available for ALL citizens.

Also @'conservative servicemen' - has anyone else seen the veterans helping defend NoDAPL protesters. The ones who knelled before tribal authorities and apologised for hindreds of years of murder, rape, and oppression by the US federal government?

I'd love to see Trump do that. I'm willing to give him that chance.

@MM that's not "above politics". It shows a specific policy preference and values. You're saying someone who was an accountant for the navy for three years has a higher priority for lifetime health care than any poor kids has for education or health care. That's a political judgment

^ what Ogion said.

My position is thus also a political one. And very different.

The political beliefs of the veterans are irrelevant to the way we treat them, that was my point Orathaic. Plus I expect all major political parties to treat service veterans the same way..decently. Would you suggest that we treat the infantry veteran exposed to toxic chemicals in a theatre of combat better than the aircraft support personnel who didn't serve in a theatre of combat, but serviced the fuel systems of the F1-11 ( wonderfully complex fuel system & jetfuel that had toxic additives ) at domestic air bases ( often without adequate personal protective equipment, and due to physical restrictions as a consequence of the design of the F1-11's fuel systems, there are pipes in such tight spaces that technicians were forced to compromise on personal safety "just to be able to get the job done" ) ? I say both have the same rights to medical services and disability pension even though one did serve in a recognized theatre of convict and the other did not...and that's a real life example where there was a discrimination.
I doubt that your hypothetical Navy accountant would qualify for a lifetime pension..inadequate length of service, and how does an accountant suffer service related injuries that would qualify them for a disability pension ? If the accountant serves twenty five years of more for example, retires with no service related injuries, then they just qualify for a standard service pension in a similar way to civilian workers in the private sector. Don't conflate/confuse ordinary pensions based on length of service, with disability pensions, or pensions/ benefits for Windows and children of service personnel "killed during service"

If I have a "political position" then it is that a nation state looks after it's servicemen and women decently, provides decent public education and health services for all children and adults, reasonable "welfare safety net" for the disadvantaged and elderly, and has a fair and equitable taxation system.

And I did suggest fixing the VA system. I wonder if Trump is up to the task, or will he see an opportunity to scrap it on ideological grounds, and an opportunity to give his business cronies yet another way to suck on a taxpayer funded teat

Some of this comes down to Australia and the US differences perhaps. Sure, there are solid reasons to have care for those who have general exposure, but then why not also have that for those who do even more dangerous jobs that benefit the nation?

The fact is that of the things on your list, veteran care is really the only one the US actually does well, and the US is going backwards on the ones it does even at a substandard level except the military which always gets more and more lavished upon it even while old people are pushed from overtly into starvation. (Did you know that starvation used to be one of the bigger killers of the elderly before Social Security?))

Trump will privatize the VA if possible and then funnel a lot of money to it to pay private contractors (I.e., his friends and family)

God i hope he privatizes the VA, the democratic beaurocacy has decimated the VA over the last 30 years. Almost anything is better than the status quo

Well Ogion, it was actually pneumonia that was what used to be a common cause of death for the elderly rather than starvation before there was an aged pension in Australia ( andi suspect it would have been the same in Britain and the USA )
The reasons pneumonia was a great killer of poor elderly people was that undernourished ( starving ) elderly people had more compromised immune systems, inadequate access to doctors & medicines, and also less ability to "stay warm in winter" because of their poverty.
So pneumonia death rates in the elderly would spike during winters.. in the "good old days"

Well I invite Capt Brad, who is retired US Navy & a Trump supporter to show us the error of your ways Ogion by explaining the wonderful, practical policy solutions that TrumpGod will deliver in the Veterans Affairs (? Is that what y'all call it ) system.
Cynics might wickedly suggest that Capt Brad is only capable of engaging in politcal warfare against Trump's critics ....Here's a beautiful opportunity for Capt Brad to prove those godless critics if TrumpGod wrong..by providing a succinct elucidation of the wonderful improvements that Trump will make to Veterans services in the USA that will resolve the problems in cost effective, compassionate ways.... I look forward with much anticipation.

Oh typo..critics if TrumpGod..
. Should be ...critics of TrumpGod..

@Mitchell, i think the aircraft technicians should have safer working conditions, especially when at home. Same standards as the rest of the industrial society should expect.

And i don't think healthcare after the fact is enough.

But then i also don't think the US military has traditionally had much to do with protecting people (Americans or otherwise). I am hugely impressed by the veterans who have come together to protect protesters in the NoDAPL protest.

Citing veterans who helped protest the pipeline is just anecdotal evidence. Overall, servicemen tend to be right of center.

@Hauta, i am citing them as the only servicemen i know who have gone out and protected people; i believe they are the exception, and that the US military's orimary purpose it to further 'national interest' - which is mostly the interests of large corporations, not the citizens.

Aside from that, the militrary budget also pays for new technologies, like computers, the internet, satellites, and such, which the private sectir is too short-sighted to invest in. Even though these publically funded projects eventually get turned over to private hands for them to profit from.

Not at all the kind of free market that libertarians cry out for, nor the kind of socialist system which people like me advocate.

If you really want me to weigh in on the VA issue. I believe in scrapping the whole VA medical system and replace it with veterans insurance as is done in Medicare. The VA system in known for its poor level of medical insurance and workers. If you can't get a job in regular practice you either practice in the prison system or the VA. Furthermore veterans are scattered around the country and not near a VA. If they had regular insurance they could see the local providers. And if the veteran had health insurance from another source than the veterans insurance would be secondary. And it could be tiered to income/rank/level of disability. They do the same thing if you use RR service benefits. The government would save money not having to employ VA medical personnel and the facilities that are redundant can be sold or given to local or state governments.

So it's give the profit driven private health insurance companies a big fat taxpayer funded teat to suck on ??? They're interested in making the maximum profit possible as are the private medical services providers.
The question was "How will Trump fix it ?", not how you, Capt Brad would go about it.... Are we to assume that this is another Trump policy vacuum ?

Actually Orathaic, it was a RAAF problem, and then with our Dept. of Veterans Affairs refusing to "look after the chaps affected", until the public were made aware, and the Politicians were lobbied to change that. It may well have occurred with US service personnel as well.