(Note: This article was originally published in the December 7, 2011 edition of the Herald)

“There’s no better defense than an aggressive defense.”

“Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.”

These immortal utterances by a 20^th Century football coach and an 18^th Century lexicographer may seem like strange sources of political wisdom, but there’s no better way to explain what the Obama administration has been doing to win votes lately.

The Democratic Party is in such a state of panic it has to wrap itself in the flag. So, just in time for Veteran’s Day, the Senate passed legislation that includes tax breaks for businesses that hire veterans. Specifically, each able-bodied veteran will be worth $5,600; and each disabled veteran, $9,600.

According to National Public Radio’s Scott Horsley, this will create jobs for the 240,000 veterans soon returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan. “If you can oversee millions of dollars of assets in Iraq,” Obama confidently declared during his visit to a Virginia military base in October, “you can help a business balance its books here at home.” Thus, the budget-balancer in chief took credit for both helping private enterprise and creating jobs for veterans.

First Lady Michelle Obama has also gotten in on this act by announcing that the private sector is committed “to hire 100,000 veterans and military spouses over the next couple of years.” FLOTUS’s arithmetic may be a little rusty, though. Here’s how the November 21^st Wall Street Journal’s described that private sector commitment: “Earlier this year, JPMorgn Chase & Co. and about 15 other U.S. companies … said they plan to hire 100,000 transitioning service members and military veterans by 2020.”

Let’s see now—that’s nine years away, not just “a couple of years.”

True to form, the Huffington Post broadcasts that South Carolina Republican Jim DeMint was the only senator to vote against this veteran hiring measure. “Despite the overwhelming evidence that these tax credits do not stimulate hiring for targeted groups,” DeMint argued, “the Obama administration continues to push Congress to pass another tax credit, … hoping they can trick Republicans into further complicating the tax code.” So much for Herman Cain’s “9-9-9” or any other flat tax solution.

What’s missing in this moronic “gotcha game” is any real and practical help for our returning warriors, wounded or whole. As Rosalind Helderman writes in the Washington Post, “Unemployment among veterans who left active duty in 2009 or later … [now] stands at 12.1 percent—more than 3 percentage points above the jobless rate for civilians.” This is nothing less than a national disgrace!

Even more troubling, though, a recent survey by Monster Worldwide Inc. reveals that “only about half of veterans felt they were prepared to assimilate into civilian life.” It is this low self-esteem issue that creates the greatest barrier to the successful re-entry of our veterans into the civilian workforce. Many veterans have trouble translating the skills they acquired in the military to civilian jobs, not only because job titles differ but also because the social and cultural etiquette is different.

Question: What is the federal government doing about this? If you visit the “veteran’s affairs” pages on the U.S. Department of Labor’s web site, you’ll find precious little. Most of the topic headings deal with contractor-subcontractor regulatory compliance and the site links dead-end in more bureaucratic gobbledygook.

We’re all going to have to do a lot more than tie a yellow ribbon around the old Oak tree!

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