Lawyer Mama

The White House Twitter Town Hall

Two weeks ago, I had the opportunity to attend President Obama's first Twitter Town Hall at the White House. And yes, I got to shake the President's hand.  More on that later....

Because I was there representing Blue Star Families, I paid close attention to the tweets regarding the military, defense spending, and veterans.

President Obama indicated that he wanted to cut defense spending gradually, making the right cuts. He said:

We can’t simply lop off 25 percent off the defense budget overnight. We have to think about all the obligations we have to our current troops who are in the field and making sure they're properly equipped and safe.

In some cases we've got outdated equipment; that needs to be replaced. And so I'm committed to reducing the defense budget. As commander in chief, one of the things that we have to do is make sure that we do it in a thoughtful way that's guided by our security and our strategic needs.  And I think we can accomplish that....

Throughout the tweets regarding defense spending, the President made it clear that veterans must remain a priority, “We’ve got to make sure that we are meeting our commitments for those veterans who are coming home.” He pointed out that we haven't fully realized the costs of all of our veterans coming home and that that the cost of caring for veterans of the recent wars won't peak for another 30 years.

One tweet asked, “Can you give companies a tax break if they hire an honorable discharged veteran?” President Obama said that the higher unemployment rate for our veterans - highly trained soldiers - makes no sense.

This is something that I’ve been talking a lot about internally.  We’ve got all these young people coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan; have made incredible sacrifices; have taken on incredible responsibilities.  You see some 23-year-old who's leading a platoon in hugely dangerous circumstances, making decisions, operating complex technologies.  These are folks who can perform.  But, unfortunately, what we’re seeing is that a lot of these young veterans have a higher unemployment rate than people who didn’t serve.  And that makes no sense.

So what we’d like to do is potentially combine a tax credit for a company that hires veterans with a campaign to have private companies step up and do the right thing and hire more veterans. And one of the things that we’ve done is internally in the federal government we have made a huge emphasis on ramping up our outreach to veterans and the hiring of veterans, and this has been a top priority of mine.  The notion that these guys who are sacrificing for our freedom and our security end up coming home and not being able to find a job I think is unacceptable.

You can read the entire Twitter Town Hall transcript here and watch the video here.

I was fortunate enough to be sitting right on the end of an aisle with my friend, Monique, from the Military Officers Association of America.  We made a pact to try and get photos of one another shaking the Presiden't hand as he came down the aisle.

Well, we both got to shake his hand, but all we got was one extremely blurry iPhone photo of part of Monique's head. So you'll just have to take my word for it!

I know that most of you know this, but I'd like to remind everyone that Blue Star Families is a nonpartisan nonprofit. We don't support or endorse candidates or a political party, not just because of IRS rules, but because the issues military families face are not partisan. While I don't make any judgments or pronouncements on White House policy in this blog post, I do from time to time on this blog. Everything I say on LawyerMama.com reflects my personal views and has absolutely nothing to do with the views of BSF.

“We can’t simply lop off 25 percent off the defense budget overnight,” he said. “We have to think about all the obligations we have to our current troops who are in the field and making sure they're properly equipped and safe.”

“In some cases we've got outdated equipment; that needs to be replaced. And so I'm committed to reducing the defense budget,” Obama said. “As commander in chief, one of the things that we have to do is make sure that we do it in a thoughtful way that's guided by our security and our strategic needs.  And I think we can accomplish that.”

Project Turtle: Los Angeles

I travel a lot. It seems to be happening more and more frequently and the boys don't like it.  But they do get excited when I send them photos of what I'm doing on my trusty iPhone.  In return, they tell me good night via video every evening.

This isn't a unique problem, but I wanted some way to keep my boys connected to me and to all of their relatives across the country.  That's where Project Turtle came in.  I bought four identical turtles.  One stays at home with the boys in Chesapeake, one travels with me, they've given one to Uncle B for his upcoming deployment to Afghanistan, and we're going to send the last one to their cousins in Montana.  The whole idea is for everyone to share photos of what they're doing and where they go with Turtle.

I really wanted to take Turtle to the White House Twitter Town Hall for his inaugural trip, but I forgot him.  Bad Mommy!  So Turtle had his first real break out on my trip to LA last week for Blue Star Families.  I really wish I'd had the presence of mind to ask one of the royals for a photo with Turtle, but I was floored to even have the chance to speak with them about military families.  So, the turtle had to settle for a picture up on the podium where the Duke of Cambridge spoke in front of 30x60 foot American and UK flags.

Without further ado, I give you Project Turtle: Los Angeles:

On the balcony of the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza. I tweeted a similar picture I took on my cell phone and the hotel retweeted me. Love it when they're paying attention!

At the Santa Monica Pier:

At the Hiring Our Heroes set up at Sony Pictures:

  I'm not sure if the boys were impressed with the turtle on the podium where the Duke would be speaking. But they loved the giant flags!

Checking out Operation Honor Cards at Sony Pictures:

I'm not sure what's next for Project Turtle, but I'll keep you posted!

 

My Brush With Royalty

I'm always telling people I have the best job in the world.  This weekend definitely proved it.

You see, Blue Star Families had a wonderful opportunity to team with ServiceNation: Mission Serve and the USO for a special service project in conjunction with the "Hiring Our Heroes" employment fair on July 10, 2011. The hiring fair was organized by ServiceNation and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and was held at Sony Picture Studios in Los Angeles.  Along with the hiring fair and service event, came two very special guests.  The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge - aka Will and Kate - attended the hiring fair and participated in the service project.

For the service project, we packed 1,000 care packages for military children with parents about to be deployed.  But we had to add the special Blue Star Families twist!  Enter, Operation Honor Cards.  Throughout the hiring fair, Blue Star Families volunteers worked to collect pledges of community service in honor of our military families, service members and veterans, along with notes of thanks.  We displayed these cards on an Honor Wall during the event (see top photo) and placed some of them into the care packages.  All together, we collected pledges of more than 2,000 hours of community service in honor of military families!  I'm so excited that the families receiving those care packages will see that someone took the time to say more than just thank you, but also to take action. From the Blue Star Families 2010 Military Family Lifestyle Survey, we know that military families volunteer at very high rates.  So what better way to honor a military family than by taking the time to give back to the community?

During his speech, the Duke said, "This is the last event on our tour of North America, but to my mind, it is one of the seriously most important. This is because it is about men and women who - of their own freewill - choose to put their life on the line for their Country."  I couldn't agree more.  It meant a great deal that the Royal couple chose to use their popularity to shine a spotlight on military families, service members, and veterans. You see, we take for granted the popular support our military families receive in the U.S.  During the event, I spoke with a member of the Army in the UK who said that, while in uniform, he is frequently approached in the US and thanked for his service.  But he indicated that it's a rare occurrence in his home country.  In the UK, until recently it simply wasn't safe for service members to wear their uniforms in public, what with IRA bombings and the like.  But when the military isn't necessarily visible, I think it can be easy to forget that service members are still there, doing a dangerous job.

During the care package event, I had the chance to speak with both the Duke and Duchess.  They were disarmingly warm and engaging and asked many questions about military families and the children who will receive the packages.  The Duchess mentioned that she would love to implement service projects for military families, like this one, back in the UK.  She indicated she just hadn't had time yet.  I joked that we would give her a few months seeing as how she just got married!  But in all seriousness, I'm sure that she will do it.  I'm expecting great things from this Royal couple and I can't wait to see what they do next.

Click here for a photo of me talking to the Duchess. Yes, she's very tall.  And very skinny.  And also very sweet.  To read more about the experience, you can check out People Magazine.

Top photo by me.  The next three photos by by Ian Wagreich, courtesy of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and ServiceNation: Mission Serve. Photos below by me.

You can see the rest of my photos below:

Created with flickr slideshow from softsea.