Veteran's Day Musings Part II

Veterans get some cool benefits (other than burial benefits) simply by being veterans, did you know ? Disabled veteran-owned businesses are eligible for set-aside procurements if they want to sell to the government. A set-aside, to simplify, is a procurement in which the government can contract with one company without sending it out to the great unwashed for competition. There are some rules, like the contracting officer has to do some basic market research to make sure that the products or services are acceptable quality and the prices are considered competitive. But it's a really great way for small veteran-owned businesses to get some business (translation: money) from the government.

The company I work for is veteran-owned, and a few months back I attended a conference for veteran-owned businesses who want to sell to the government. As you can imagine, most of the businesses were startups and very small businesses, so many of the attendees were owners and senior management personnel, i.e., the veterans themselves. Also, as you could probably imagine, these guys were in wheelchairs, missing arms, walking with canes, and one guy had an eye patch.

At the end of the conference, the shuttle bus from the nearby hotel came to pick up those out-of-towners that were staying in the hotel. Many of them needed assistance in and out of the vehicle. It took the busdriver and me, with assistance from two onlookers, together to get one fellow into the bus. And he was NOT an old decrepit geezer. He was definitely on the sunny side of fifty. I don't know how the driver got him out when they got to the hotel- hopefully they had some sprightly housemen on hand at the hotel.

And I started thinking: veterans get set-aside privileges, they get burial privileges, a lot of them collect a pension when they retire and many of them take advantage of things like the GI Bill. Pretty cool.

We do a lot of great things for those that lay their lives on the line for us. But are we doing enough?