VETS VOICE-This past Sunday it was raining but the Old Veterans Guard still gathered outside the locked front gates of the Los Angeles National Veterans Home to protest the most immoral and biggest land-fraud scandal in American history perpetrated at the painful expense of tens of thousands of war-injured and impoverished Veterans who are forced to live homeless and hungry on the dangerous streets of Los Angeles because Veterans Administration bureaucrats, corrupt politicians and wealthy special interest groups have conspired to illegally use Veterans land for non-Veteran use.
An Inside Job-While disabled homeless Veterans here in Los Angeles struggle to survive outside the largest VA in the nation, on the inside of these sacred grounds, the VA and Veterans Park Conservancy (VPC), a wealthy and powerful neighboring homeowner group, have been working non-stop to build an open-air “Hollywood Canteen Amphitheater,” albeit illegally.
Mega-millionaire Jerry Oppenheimer is the chairman of the Hollywood Canteen Foundation as well as a board member of VPC. He was instrumental in generating the major donation to fund development of this totally unnecessary and illegal project.
As a matter of priority, an open-air theater on VA property ranks about 8,970th on a list of importance for Veterans’ needs. There’s already the transportable open-air Shakespeare Annual Summer Theater held on VA property (photo above) and it’s open to the general public, just as the illegal Hollywood amphitheater would be open to the public.
This Shakespeare event is held at the VA “Japanese Meditation Garden” between Brentwood School’s private and illegal athletic complex and the VA golf course which is open to the public, and it is directly across from MacArthur Field which is used exclusively and illegally for a private kid’s soccer organization.
Thus, there is absolutely no need for another amphitheater on VA property – in fact, they can convert the illegal UCLA baseball diamond into a huge amphitheater, if there was such a necessity for Veterans.
There are two large enclosed theaters on VA property – the Wadsworth and Brentwood Theaters -- operated by another non-Veteran entity and the theaters are used for public entertainment, plays, musicals, etc.
While the VA has been hell-bent on violating every Federal law imaginable to aid and abet in the illegal building of the Hollywood open-air amphitheater, the VA refuses to legally build a kitchen for the $265 million, 396-room Cal-Vet Home that remains half-empty and Los Angeles disgracefully remains our nation’s capital for homeless Veterans.
Comedy vs. Tragedy-At center stage on the inside of the largest VA in the nation, the bureaucrats, U.S. attorneys and politicians continue to make a mockery and play a joke on disabled homeless Veterans living in the “open air” outside the VA by defending wealthy and powerful illegal occupants on the inside so they can stage even more laughter and joy at the tragic expense of war-injured and impoverished Veterans.
This past Sunday while the Old Veterans Guard protested this tragedy outside the lock front gates to the “National Veterans Home,” a short distance away a homeless Veteran built his own makeshift shelter to protect himself from the cold rain.
Shakespeare wrote: “All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances …”
It’s time for the curtain to come down and all the illegal players on the inside must exit so that all the disabled homeless Veterans on the outside can finally enter.
God Bless America and the Veterans Revolution!
(Robert Rosebrock is Director of The Veterans Revolution, Captain of the Old Veterans Guard, and Director of We the Veterans.)
-cw
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CityWatch
Vol 12 Issue 98
Pub: Dec 5, 2014
