Extreme left thinking infiltrates veteran groups — to the detriment of vets

TheHill.com

Most people assume veterans’ organizations reflect their membership — principled, traditional, and right-of-center. After all, veterans should put country before party and veteran welfare before partisan interests. While that once may have been true, it no longer appears to be.

Instead, many prominent veteran service organizations (VSOs), military service organizations (MSOs) and veteran advocacy groups, most headquartered in Washington, either have outsourced their higher education agendas to the extreme left or have been infiltrated by Democratic strategists — and may not even know it. Either way, when it comes to the GI Bill and veterans’ educational choice, the truth is staring us in the face: Many veteran groups now primarily support a leftist, anti-choice higher education agenda.

Consider this:

America’s largest veterans’ organization, the American Legion, quietly changed its position from being skeptical of anti-veteran educational choice policies in higher education to now carrying the partisan banner of the left. I suppose this is not a big surprise. After all, in a recent media profile, one member of the American Legion described it as once having led on issues but now riding the coattails of others.

The flip-flop may be an extension of the Legion’s anti-President Trump staff. Many veterans’ groups lose credibility because of their lack of balance and ridiculous claim of being nonpartisan. If that were true, they would actively listen to all veterans, instead of backing partisan views. But they stay in their Washington headquarters and, lately, have been taking their marching orders from Democratic sources.

Carrie Wofford, a self-described Democratic strategist and one of the lead staffers behind a partisan Senate Committee report that violated “a long history of bipartisanship and collaboration,” founded Veterans Education Success (VES) in 2013. Predictably, the report condemned the taxpaying sector involved in career, technical and trade education — labeled as “for-profit colleges” by the left and their friends in the liberal media. Clear-thinking Republicans described the effort as nakedly partisan, one conducted in a way that “undermined the credibility” of its findings. This report, however, became a launching pad for a crusade against the taxpaying education sector that now exists under the banner of VES.

One glance at the VES leadership reveals the group’s leftist ideology. Three out of five board members have previous Democratic affiliations. Another unsuccessfully ran for elected office in California as, you guessed it, a Democrat…. (continue reading)