Today, registration opened for the Sears Heroes At Home gift cards. Now, every customer of Sears will be asked to donate money at the register throughout the holiday season, and those donations will be pooled, and distributed equally between the 20,000 Active Duty servicemembers (or really, their wives using their information to sign up, in most cases) who were quick enough at getting the application through the totally bogged down server for the entire couple minutes it stays open.
As you can probably tell, I'm not a huge fan of this. I'm not saying there don't exist military families who need money. There do. I have a friend right now who just left her husband, who is Active Duty, for extremely justified reasons, and needs this sort of thing. I hope she gets it. Hell, I hope everyone who is in a difficult situation, not brought on by their own stupidity, gets it. Even so, I find the mad dash for money absolutely disgusting. You would not believe the way people are flipping out about this thing if they can't get their application in, or if they are denied, or if the gift cards aren't as much as they were expecting. For every person who's actually thankful for it and actually needed it, there are about a hundred of the other kind.
More than any of that, though, I see a couple significant flaws with this program. First of all, they're soliciting donations, mostly from civilians, to go into this thing. The average civilian household income in 2011 was $48,000. The average military household income, when factoring in cash value of benefits, was close to $100,000. Granted, the pay chart doesn't show that, but outside of base pay, there is housing allowance, food allowance, free medical, and ten thousand safety nets straight out of any socialist country's playbook. (Yeah, I went there.) That stuff isn't free, and while about 1/2 of that "income" never hits the soldier's bank account, it's received in other ways, ways that people on the outside don't have. That $48,000 that the average household pulled in? Yeah, that's all they get. So basically, what we have here is people donating money to a class of society that is far better off than they probably are. It's kind of like the tax code, except that people mostly don't even realize what's going on.
The other thing I see as incredibly flawed about this program is that National Guard and Reserve families are excluded. All that stuff Active Duty families have, Guard and Reserve families do not. When we fell on hard times, do you think the Army Reserve could do much to help us? No, they couldn't. We pretty much lost everything, and they didn't have to care about any of that as long as Thak turns up to drill on the first weekend of every month, and does his instructor workshop in the summer. It's not that they're wrong for that. I mean, it's really not their lane to worry about their soldiers' day to day lives outside the unit. The fact is, though, there are thousands of Guard and Reserve families who are struggling hard in the civilian economy, unable to go Active Duty and get the benefits of full time status, and still subject to deployment, Army regulation, and all the other stuff that comes with wearing a uniform, however infrequently. I know Reserve families who have been homeless for part of this year. I know countless ones who have lost their homes when their civilian jobs had downsizing. Yet, things like this support only Active Duty, who are actually guaranteed a steady income, which is actually higher than that of most Americans.
So you still want to support the troops, and you're not sure how since the Heroes at Home thing is a crock? Here are a few ideas for you:
-Talk to a local National Guard unit about donating toys or food for their unit Christmas party, or even giving some gift cards for the commander or chaplain to pass out to needy families for Christmas. I specifically mentioned Guard here because these are the people who help you when there's a natural disaster or something, so if you really want to give back to someone who has done a lot for you, the National Guard should be your first priority.
-A Reserve unit would also be a great place to do the things I already mentioned above. Reserve soldiers do basically the same thing as National Guard soldiers except that they're not at the Governor's discretion, so they aren't the ones being called up for local things. They still deploy and do homeland security missions, and that sort of thing, though, like Active Duty troops.
-Get with a program like Soldiers' Angels and send a care package to a single soldier who will be deployed for the holidays.
-Donate to Fisher House. This is invaluable. Fisher House residences allow families of wounded soldiers to stay with them while they're receiving treatment at military hospitals. I know that if Thak got hurt overseas, I'd do anything in the world to be with him, as would any wife for her husband, but having a Fisher House to stay at really makes a difference financially and logistically. I know how much of a difference Fisher House has made for so many of my friends over the years.
There are infinite ways to support our troops and veterans for the holidays. I think I speak for most Americans when I say it's important to donate our hard earned dollars (or our even more precious time and effort) where it will truly be appreciated and make the most difference. Hopefully, I have given a few good ideas as a jumping off point for wiser holiday giving.
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