We are on the cusp of even more destructive insanity, irrationality and grossly misguided decisions by our military leadership. The woke dopes at the Pentagon are about to foolishly cut the funding and contractor support to the fifty-one-year-old volunteer driven Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve (ESGR). Such defunding will be to the overwhelming detriment of the U.S. military reserve service members, their families, and their employers who tirelessly work free of charge to actively support our military and our national defense.
The mismanaged, non-mission focused, woke senior leadership of our military is planning to eminently reduce the already pitifully small budget of ESGR (FY 2022, $10,046,000 and FY 2023, $9,356.000) irreparably damaging and possibly ending the mission of ESGR by virtually eliminating the exceedingly small full-time staff of Volunteer Support Technicians (administrators) for each of the 54 State and Territorial Committees of ESGR. This action would essentially destroy the capability of ESGR to perform and accomplish their important mission for our national defense.
ESGR, begun have than fifty years ago, in 1972, to facilitate the vital effort for re-integration of reserve service members returning from Vietnam back into our economy, their jobs and our communities has been extraordinarily successful providing tens of millions of dollars in all-volunteer, free services of the primary effort by the Department of Defense to support our 850,000 reserve service members of all military branches, their families and their civilian employers.
ESGR also provides trained and expert assistance to service members in understanding their rights and obligations of the 1994 Uniform Services Employment and Re-employment Act that protects service members and their families from unwarranted and disastrous discrimination and complications between their military service and their employers. That necessity for our national defense is currently being accomplished by the noble efforts of more than 3,500 unpaid volunteers.
ESGR is the ONLY organization providing these specific essential services to the service members of all branches of our military.
These dedicated volunteers, civilians as well as many veterans of military service of all seven branches of our military reserve, numbering approximately 3,100 contributed 187,652 volunteer hours in 2022. They devote years, some decades and many thousands of hours of service to accomplish the critical mission of ESGR.
Just in the past year (2022), and in ever increasing incremental annual numbers, ESGR has provided:
1. $ 6,004,864 in documented volunteer hours ($32.00 per hour as monetized volunteer time in 2022).
2. Solved or mitigated 1,127 USERRA cases assigned to ESGR Ombudsmen of issues and miss-understandings of USERRA by employers and service members facilitating continued, lawful employment of reserve service members returning from military duty to their jobs.
3. Presented, often in person, 6,871 Patriot Awards from nominations by the reserve component service member or their spouse, to appreciative employers for their exceptional support of their employee service members and our national defense.
ESGR state committees lean heavily on their volunteers to facilitate, write, produce and disseminate countless extraordinarily valuable favorable stories and media reports of the positive work of employers throughout our nation who actively support their employee service members. These positive and inspiring stories are unique to the Department of Defense in that they reach a largely civilian audience.
Our senior military leaders greatly appreciate the over 234,000 of their reserve component members briefed annually by trained and certified ESGR volunteers.
Instead of properly and adequately supporting the essential efforts of ESGR with a modest and adequate budget, are wasting money on non-essential, woke, irrelevant actions both destructive and distracting from the primary military mission: To fight and win our wars or to deter such wars by maintaining a fully capable and ready military.
For just a few examples: The Department of Defense (DoD), is spending billions on absolutely dumb programs such as developing and fielding green combat vehicles to (supposedly) be recharged on plug in stations on battlefields; using drag queens to recruit service members, paying for sexual transition drugs, surgeries including hair removal, facial surgery, breast augmentation and other absurdities DoD foolishly spends valuable defense funds on counseling for service members with sexual disorientation issues; on curriculum creation and training time for our military units and our military service school cadets in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion as well as Critical Race Theory, specified and directed pronoun use, relaxed grooming and compensating physical training standards for female soldiers and men who think they are women.
Add to this the entirely unnecessary misguided quest to rename nine military posts and remove any vestige of any reference to Confederate military leaders as well as the history of those posts at a cost well in excess of $62 million.
Compounding all this Department of Defense idiocy is the direct order from DoD to the national leadership of ESGR as well as the State and Territorial Committee (State and Territories) chairpersons that they are forbidden by their oaths of office to voice any opinion or opposition to these potentially disastrous fiscal plans. That directive by DoD is in direct violation of, not only their sworn oaths, but of their constitutional Rights!
Perhaps that is exactly the intent of the Department of Defense and our misguided, unfocused, woke military leadership?
If you would like to join in the effort to correct this misguided action by our Department of Defense, please write:
National ESGR Chairman Ron Bogle
Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve
4800 Mark Center Drive, Suite 05E22
Alexandria, VA 22350-1200
OR
OSD.ESGR-PA@mail.mil
Bill Wenger has served for eight years as the Area Chairman for one of the largest and most active areas in all of the Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve in all 54 U.S. states and territories of the five counties of the Greater Los Angeles Area. Bill is a retired commercial real estate executive, college professor, and U.S. Army Infantry Airborne Ranger Colonel. He voluntarily served four combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan after initial military retirement. He served 42 years commissioned service. He earned five Master’s Degrees and has taught National Strategic Planning, the Operational Level of Warfare, business and U.S. History. His latest book is on Amazon: The Key to American Independence: Quantifying Foreign Assistance to the American Revolution.
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