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HELLO, OPERATOR...GIVE ME MICHAEL POWELL

From Chuck Muth

You know, between John Kerry and Abu Musab Zarqawi, you’d think folks would have learned by now NOT TO MESS WITH American servicemen and servicewomen...active OR retired. 

It was the retired Swift Boat Veterans for Truth who did in the Kerry campaign as payback for slandering Vietnam veterans as war criminals.  Mary Beth Cahill, Kerry’s campaign (mis)manager, admitted this week to a liberal audience that her biggest mistake was underestimating the Swifties.

This is something Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Michael Powell might want to keep in mind this holiday season.

According to a December 13, 2004, column by Francisco Ivarra - a past commander of the American GI Forum - appearing in the Florida Sun-Sentinel, Powell is “trying to raise the prices for the very pre-paid, inexpensive telephone calling cards that 95 percent of the troops use to communicate with their anguished family members who wait with hope of life reassured with the telephone's ring.”

Ivarra writes that Powell is trying to “rush through a heavily lawyered new federal regulation that will raise the prices for pre-paid calling cards - the telephone service of choice for our troops.”

This is all part of the ongoing and (seemingly) never-ending telecom battle raging on Capitol Hill - where K Street lobbying firms have been providing an unending stream of Gucci boots on the ground.  The problem is, now they’ve sucked American GI’s into the fight.  And the GI’s...active and retired...are fighting back.

Much like how the Swift Boat Veterans quickly organized and got engaged in the presidential campaign, this week a group of retired military officers formed The Concerned Veterans Communication Coalition (CVCC) to fight the proposal to jack up the fees on pre-paid calling cards...cards our soldiers - who are busy kicking al Qaeda’s tail from one end of Iraq to another - use extensively to keep in touch with their wives, moms and daughters back in the states.

For many of these soldiers in the field, pre-paid calling cards are their SOLE lifeline to their families.  Why Chairman Powell would want to make that lifeline more expensive in a time of war is anyone’s guess.

BRUSHFIRE ALERT:  Many of you have written asking me for something good and positive we can do for our troops in the field. Well...THIS certainly fits the bill. 

Although its been my practice lately to create our own in-house petitions on various issues, I’m going to make an exception in this case and urge you all to visit the CVCC’s website to send a message to Chairman Powell NOT to raise the fees on pre-paid calling cards.  I wanna give these vets all the credit and support possible on this one.

Just go to:  http://www.concernedvets.org/

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