You Won’t Believe Who Romney’s Related To

Ancestry.com ^ | 10/16/2012

[svcw]

My grandfather (and his brothers) served in WW1, my Dad (and his brothers) served in WW11, my uncle served in Korea, my brother (and our cousins) served in Nam - just going from grandfather to Romney’s sons they did not serve.
It’s not an accusation, it is a fact.

[x]

It’s not an accusation, it is a fact.

Yet apparently you think it's important enough to repeat over and over again, getting it wrong sometimes in the process.

Romney's uncle served in WWII. His father's cousins served in WWI and WWII. A lot depends on when someone was born and what their health was like during the war years.

Romney's father did important work in war production during WWII, making a contribution that way. I don't know if he tried to serve or not, or what relevance it would have to how we vote next month.

For the more recent generations, the family's not so different from other well-off American families. How many politicians went to Vietnam? How many have relatives fighting in Iraq or Afghanistan now?

If Mitt were running against a veteran, all this might be relevant, but he isn't, so it it isn't.

[svcw]

You keep posting me about it, so I respond.

Here is your answer:
“U.S. military service disproportionately attracts enlisted personnel and officers who do not come from disadvantaged backgrounds. Previous Heritage Foundation research demonstrated that the quality of enlisted troops has increased since the start of the Iraq war. This report demonstrates that the same is true of the officer corps.
Members of the all-volunteer military are significantly more likely to come from high-income neighborhoods than from low-income neighborhoods. Only 11 percent of enlisted recruits in 2007 came from the poorest one-fifth (quintile) of neighborhoods, while 25 percent came from the wealthiest quintile. These trends are even more pronounced in the Army Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) program, in which 40 percent of enrollees come from the wealthiest neighborhoods-a number that has increased substantially over the past four years.
American soldiers are more educated than their peers. A little more than 1 percent of enlisted personnel lack a high school degree, compared to 21 percent of men 18-24 years old, and 95 percent of officer accessions have at least a bachelor’s degree.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, minorities are not overrepresented in military service. Enlisted troops are somewhat more likely to be white or black than their non-military peers. Whites are proportionately represented in the officer corps, and blacks are overrepresented, but their rate of overrepresentation has declined each year from 2004 to 2007. New recruits are also disproportionately likely to come from the South, which is in line with the history of Southern military tradition.”

*During the draft all men were eligible to be drafted, not all were. Some people got deferments, some enlisted, people of all economic status were drafted, enlisted and received deferments. It is an argument that originated from the left, only the poor were drafted and enlisted.