The Homeless Vets Myth

Watch the video from John Stossel and read Michael Fumento's analysis of a homeless advocacy group's bogus statistics.

This shocking report got a lot of media attention when it first came out, but you won't hear about it now that it's been demonstrably proven false.

THE homeless-advocacy industry always puts the most sympathetic face on its "clientele." It works desperately to divert attention from alcoholics, drug users, schizophrenics, and fat panhandlers holding signs reading: "Hungry."

And it doesn't talk about unpleasant truths like those reported by ABC's John Stossel - who, after exhaustive efforts, managed to find only one person with a sign reading "Will work for food" who would actually do so.

Instead, advocates focus (with the media's help) on unrepresentative but heart-tugging cases - like veterans.

Eleven years ago, I debunked a "study" claiming a third of all men in homeless shelters were vets - noting it was based entirely on the men's own claims, and that claiming to be a vet is a favorite panhandler ploy.

But comes now a new "study" from the Homeless Research Institute (HRI), the research arm of the National Alliance to End Homelessness. It claims government data show that vets are more than twice as likely to be "homeless" as non-vets - that is, that vets make up 11 percent of the adult US population, but 26 percent of the labeled homeless.

The 29-page report also insists it's a myth that substance abuse and/or mental illness is at the heart of the homelessness problem; rather, it's "lack of affordable housing." And, naturally, it's the job of an expanded government to make that housing affordable.

Read the rest.

This isn't to say there aren't any veterans who maybe homeless. It's just not what has been reported.

Shocking how the media would mislead you, no?

Shocker: Another Bogus CBS Report

Michael Fumento shreds CBS and their most recent "scoop" that vet suicide rates have surged. Amazing the network that gave us Dan Rather and his fradulent documents would stretch the truth in pursuit of a not-so-hidden agenda, isn't it?

THERE'S "startling" and "stunning" news of a "hidden epidemic" of veteran suicides. So claimed CBS News in two reports last week.

Most of the airtime went for heart-rending interviews with wives of vets who had killed themselves. But CBS also provided statistics that it said showed that "veterans were more than twice as likely to commit suicide in 2005 than non-vets."

Problem is, we have absolutely no way of verifying the CBS data nor how the network claims it collected the info. CBS News admits to collecting the data itself, rather than relying on an independent outside party. It also concedes its rate is "much higher" than that in an uncompleted Department of Veterans Affairs study.

So somebody isn't telling the truth. And the evidence is overwhelming that it's CBS.

One hint of an agenda is the two "veterans' activists" CBS interviewed for the segments - hardly disinterested parties. One is also very much an antiwar activist, a fact that CBS failed to disclose. In all, the networks stacked three commentators hyping its claims against one (from the VA) questioning them.

But the most devastating evidence of the network's nefariousness lies in out- side studies, both individually and combined. For example, CBS put special emphasis on vets of the current wars.

Read the rest.

Oh, and if you're inclined to dismiss Fumento as a disinterested observer, think again.

Michael Fumento is a former paratrooper who has been embedded as a reporter three times in Iraq and once in Afghanistan.