Auburn's Mayor Lewis Stands Up For Veterans At National Mayor's Conference

The U. S. Conference of Mayors is a really liberal group. I suspect dues are paid based on the population of the city and the big guys get to make the major decisions in staff hiring because they own the place. It takes a small town mayor to ignite the masses in this group at its recent conference.

OpEdNews.com reports that at the Conference of Mayors a resolution to Congress was proposed. It demanded the troops be brought home now and that the saved money go to social services, infrastructure, and such.

"BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the U.S. Conference of Mayors calls on the U.S. Congress to bring these war dollars home to meet vital human needs, promote job creation, rebuild our infrastructure, aid municipal and state governments, and develop a new economy based upon renewable, sustainable energy."

OpEdNews reports that the "resolution could have passed in a batch of resolutions without debate, but Mayor Pete Lewis of Auburn, WA, asked that it be pulled, resulting in a debate and vote individually on this resolution.

11:16 a.m. Pete Lewis speaks first. "I live in a military state." [Meaning we have several bases in WA....PR) "Making political statements in this forum about the war I do not believe is proper." He equates this with bashing Vietnam veterans, even as he is also claiming to recognize the need for the redirection of the funding," writes OpEdNews.

11:38 Mayor Villaraigosa of Los Angeles, CA, reads the text of an amendment that was offered in committee that apparently failed in committee. What he read "supported" troops and also urged that withdrawal be done in a manner not to "destabilize."

And then debate opened up big time. Back and forth. But the small town mayors won!

While the call for withdraw stayed in the resolution there were two "whereas" sentences added. OpEdNews, which seemed peeved at the outcome, reports that they "roughly" read:

"Whereas every member of USCM and the Americans they rep support our brave men and women in uniform and their families." And,

"Whereas the drawdown of troops should be done in a measured way that does not destabilize the region and can accelerate the transfer of regional authority to local authorities,"...

I emailed Mayor Pete Lewis and told him what a great job I thought he did.

He responded:

Viet Nam Vet - never again will we allow another generation of veterans to be abused or forgotten.

Not on my watch.