“I am not the least bit surprised,” Abed Ayoub, legal director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee told Salon. “There has been an increase in employment discrimination complaints. The data just reaffirms what we see. Employment discrimination is a priority issue, and the sad reality is that not all cases of employment discrimination are reported.”

The increase in complaints is particularly jarring when you consider that, after spiking in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, employment discrimination claims by Muslims actually declined significantly. In 2000, the last full year before 9/11, the EEOC received 557 allegations involving Muslims, a number that soared to 1,463 in 2002, the first full year after 9/11. Complaints then declined significantly, plummeting to just 697 in 2004 — only to begin rising again in 2005. The 2009 total is the highest yet.

That same trend is evident in the number of employees who have lodged formal charges of anti-Muslim discrimination against their employers — a step that requires employees to sign an official statement and that compels the EEOC to launch an investigation and, if necessary, to take legal action. There were 803 such cases in 2009, up from 504 in 2004 — and higher than the 720 recorded in 2002.

There is no data available for the number of investigations conducted by the EEOC that resulted in charges being filed against employers, or in settlements. Recently, though, the EEOC did take legal action against meatpacking plants in Colorado and Nebraska, alleging that, among other indignities, Muslim workers had blood and meat parts thrown at them.

An EEOC spokesman, James Ryan, wouldn’t speculate about why the number of complaints is rising. “It’s often difficult to explain why certain types of discrimination go up and down during certain times or circumstances. Sometimes the probable cause is apparent; at other times it’s an educated guess,” he said.

“For example, when the economy gets tight, certain types of discrimination tend to rise. The bottom line is that employment discrimination is unlawful, and the EEOC will continue to combat it, whatever the reasons for it might be.”

Members of the crowd seemed genuinely enthusiastic, but when I talked to them, they uniformly resorted to clichés to explain what the rally was about.

Gerald Chester, a truck driver from Elkhart, Ind., said he came because of Beck. “What he is about is a good thing, restoring honor,” Chester said. “Bringing God back into Americans’ lives is important.” When asked what attendees should do to accomplish this, Chester replied, “That’s a good question.”

Kristine Sullivan said she was “here to take back America. I want it back. I want our country back.” She said the purpose of the rally was to encourage people to vote for “whoever is up there to support the American people.”

Alexander McGhee said he was “afraid of where our country is going.” He said people should “do absolutely everything and anything they can possibly think of that might further the cause of restoring honor to this great nation.”

“I believe in God and I think that Glenn Beck does, too,” was Joe Sheerau’s explanation. He said Beck is “trying to bring back what made this country great” and that he fears “a force in our society and in our culture that is trying to marginalize what made this country great.”

These were Beck’s people. Many whom I talked to mentioned his name without being prompted — but none voluntarily brought up Palin.

The rally was controversial, of course, because it occurred on the same date and in the exact location of Martin Luther King’s 1963 “I have a dream” speech. Beck, who infuriated many last year with his declaration that President Obama is a “racist” with “a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture,” had said the timing was coincidental, but then drew fire for claiming that his rally would “reclaim the civil rights movement.”

At the rally, a Beck-narrated video displayed on the massive screens attempted to co-opt King’s story, calling attention to the supposed similarities between King’s struggle and Beck’s own vision for the future. In her speech, Palin wrapped herself in “the spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.” The audience members I spoke with didn’t mention race at all, just a broad concern about America.

Here are some highlights from my conversations with rally-goers:

“Suicides are skyrocketing, people are being deployed to war with PTSD, people are being denied their healthcare benefits, and the Obama administration is allowing the Department of Defense to punish people who are suffering from PTSD rather than giving them the medical care they deserve,” said Steve Robinson, a retired Army Ranger and longtime veterans advocate who has worked for a number of veterans’ organizations. Robinson closely advised then-Sen. Obama on veterans policy and was prominently featured in a video tribute to Obama made by the campaign that played at the Democrats’ 2008 convention in Denver. “I am confident that he believes in this generation and that he is actually putting into practice what he believes,” Robinson said about Obama, from a huge TV screen at the convention. The Democratic nominee fought for vets, he added, “by stepping out, by speaking up, by legislating, by holding government accountable to take care of this generation when they send them to war.”

Now, Robinson says he can’t get his e-mails returned. “There is a deafness in the White House,” Robinson said. “Let’s forget about the idea that you might want to do the right thing and keep your campaign promises. It is politically stupid.”

A White House spokeswoman emphasized that Obama has scored some significant victories on veterans policy, including increasing funding for veterans’ healthcare and easing access to some crucial benefits. Obama held a brief personal meeting at the White House on July 29 with representatives of nine veterans service organizations in an effort to reiterate the White House commitment to veterans’ issues — or patch things up a bit, depending on whom you ask. The White House Aug. 3 published a list of accomplishments on this front. (The Democratic National Committee pledged to arrange an on-the-record interview on this topic, but failed to produce one by press time.)

The White House, however, seems to bungle basic constituency relations, at least when it comes to veterans, keeping relatively influential advocates at arm’s length, ignoring advocates with decades of experience, and neglecting the advice of advocates with ground-level knowledge about what is happening to troops.

Paul Rieckhoff, executive director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, did not campaign for Obama in 2008. Rieckhoff, who was named one of “America’s Best and Brightest of 2004″ by Esquire and played a critical role pushing for passage of the new GI Bill that was signed into law in July 2008, says that the White House and officials at the Department of Veterans Affairs also have too often ignored his organization and now seriously risk alienating members of the largest Iraq and Afghanistan veterans group. He described current relations between the White House and IAVA as chilly.

“We have seen a huge communication breakdown between the administration and the veterans service organizations, especially at the V.A.” Rieckhoff said officials from his organization have yet to be invited to talk policy at the V.A. with Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki during the Obama administration. “Our members find that totally unacceptable,” Rieckhoff said. “Veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan are facing unprecedented challenges, including record-breaking suicide rates, staggering unemployment, and unacceptable delays in the disability claims process,” he said. “Veterans are tired of waiting. We need action now.”

Paul Bucha, a Medal of Honor recipient featured along with Robinson in the 2008 convention film endorsing Obama, defended the White House’s record on veterans work. He did admit, however, that he had repeatedly heard these same kinds of complaints.

“The bitterness and disappointment is real and sincere,” Bucha said in a telephone interview.

The complaints mainly have to do with communication and personnel. The first White House point man on wounded warrior issues, Matt Flavin, has moved on to a post at the Pentagon. Advocates grumble about his replacement, Darienne Page, who also works as a receptionist in the West Wing, as lacking in horsepower. Veterans advocates complain of unreturned phone calls and e-mails that disappear into a White House void.

Improving veterans’ healthcare, a key issue, requires action at the Department of Defense, which oversees troops as they immediately return from combat, and at the Department of Veterans Affairs, which takes care of service members after they are discharged. Veterans complain that key posts at the Pentagon and the Department of Veterans Affairs have been filled with old Washington hands left over from the Bush administration or restored from the Clinton era, rather than new, aggressive agents of change needed to attack the sprawling, complex challenges facing veterans nearly a decade into two wars.

Some were disappointed by the hiring of people like V.A. Deputy Secretary W. Scott Gould, a former IBM executive and Treasury Department official in the Clinton administration. Gould is perfectly qualified, vets say, but unlikely to shake things up much. One increasingly frustrated veterans advocate with decades of experience working the issues in Washington summed up Obama’s overall hiring in the field this way: “They went corporate.”

In other cases, veterans have watched in frustration as the White House seemingly dragged its feet filling vital posts to serve veterans’ needs. Veterans were flabbergasted, for example, as the White House failed until February 2010 to get Dr. Clifford Stanley sworn in as the undersecretary for personnel and readiness at the Pentagon. That is the top job at the Defense Department directly in charge of soldiers’ healthcare while the service members are still in the military. The jury is still out on Stanley, since he’s only been in the job for six months.

Other posts went unfilled, and some promised jobs seem to have evaporated. Robinson, the retired Army Ranger, produced an e-mail chain showing Obama campaign officials Carlos Monje and Phil Carter aggressively seeking his input on veterans’ issues prior to the election. Later, e-mails from White House officials suggest they wanted Robinson at the Pentagon working in Stanley’s office, as a special assistant to the undersecretary. The e-mails appear to string Robinson along for over a year, from May 2009 until late this summer, then just stop.

Robinson worked with the Obama administration on several legislative fronts, including a successful push to guarantee five years of free healthcare to veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. He never got much of an explanation, he says, as to why the White House first wanted him to work at the Pentagon and then did not. A White House personnel official only told Robinson the White House was afraid Robinson would “shoot from the hip” at the Pentagon and suggested the White House did not want to ruffle too many feathers at the Department of Defense. Robinson continues his advocacy work from the outside.

Concerns about the handling of veterans’ issues and the veterans’ constituency seem relatively widespread. E-mail traffic among numerous former members of Veterans for Obama — shown to Salon confidentially to provide a view of the scope of the irritation — portray frustration about the White House and Pentagon’s ignoring former members of Veterans for Obama and freezing them out of key policy positions in government. The e-mails also include speculation that the bumbling of relations by the White House might bite back at Obama in 2012.

Medal of Honor recipient Paul Bucha agreed that the administration has filled some vital spots at the Pentagon with politically safe appointees, rather than more aggressive agents of change. “There are things they could be doing better,” he said. “There are not a lot of military types around the White House people.” Bucha suggested that even a 15-minute speech by Obama to Vietnam Veterans of America — no president has ever addressed this group — might be a good start.

Bucha emphasized, though, that the White House is swamped with two wars, an ailing economy, and the BP oil spill, to name just a few of the crises on the White House steps. “The bucket is so full of problems that none of us get all the attention we want,” Bucha said. He added that the Obama campaign was the first in his memory to make a serious effort to court the veteran vote and hit perfect pitch on veterans’ issues during the campaign. There is an inevitable letdown for some people from the reality of governing, “now that access is not as open as it was during the campaign,” said Bucha.

Meanwhile, the crises among veterans continue to get worse. “If you are not concerned, you aren’t paying attention,” said Rieckhoff, from IAVA. “Congress is making progress, but without presidential leadership, veterans’ issues will be sidelined.” 

The Army launched this stand-alone financial investigation in June as the yearlong Arlington scandal exposed by Salon rapidly became more public. Salon reported that many at Arlington had tried to blow the whistle on questionable spending to computerize burial records, under the supervision of deputy superintendent Thurman Higginbotham, with contracts going to some of the same people more than once, even after they failed to produce a product. After spending somewhere between $5 million and $20 million, Salon reported, the cemetery’s years-long effort to computerize its records wasn’t completed.

Last week, Higginbotham invoked the 5th Amendment when he was asked about the contracts during a congressional hearing.

Army contracting specialists reviewed cemetery contracts and spending on everything from landscaping work to cellphone bills over the past five years. The resulting July 27 “Procurement Management Review of Arlington National Cemetery” report documents a dizzying blizzard of disappearing money, missing or incomplete contracting paperwork and fishy-looking spending on all sorts of things.

In one section of the report, investigators examined between $400,000 and $800,000 of spending per year on various purchases at Arlington. The probe found numerous examples of “no evidence of delivery and/or acceptance of services and supplies” in return. The report documents the purchase of cameras, refrigerators, computer equipment, software and car parts, as well as cellphone charges and payments for car repairs. For those expenditures, investigators found “limited or no supporting documentation or validation of the location of the items.” The report called signatures on some purchase orders at the cemetery “questionable,” noting that, “signatures purported to be signed by the same person appeared to be totally different.”

“Based on the lack of documentation, justification for the items being purchased, independent receipt and acceptance, and the location of property purchased which should be maintained in the files, most of the purchases reviewed … would be considered questionable or improper,” the report says. When it comes to the Army, which oversees Arlington, the report says the Army failed to “ensure only authorized items were purchased, and receipt and acceptance was documented.”

In addition to the purchase of items, the Army report also looks into millions of dollars paid to contractors for services. Here, too, investigators found widespread lack of proper documentation and common deviation from government contracting procedures designed to ensure fair competition among contractors and preserve taxpayer funds — but that was only when the Army investigators could find the files at all. Investigators were unable to locate more than half the files for 167 Arlington contracts awarded through the Army’s National Capital Region Contracting Center, covering everything from horticulture work to construction.

The investigators also sought to review a separate set of 34 cemetery contracts awarded through an Army Corps of Engineers office in Baltimore. Four of those files were “incomplete” enough that they could not be reviewed, investigators found.

The report is particularly critical of millions the cemetery spent on contractors to computerize Arlington’s antiquated, faulty burial records still managed in a flurry of paper that has resulted in thousands of burial errors at Arlington. Despite payments to contractors who were close to top cemetery officials, Arlington received little to nothing in return, leading to the scandal exposed by Salon over the past year. “The contract files did not contain evidence that the government received deliverables as stated in the contract,” the report said of this modernization effort that was supposed to prevent burial mistakes. Arlington blew somewhere between $5 million and $20 million on this fruitless endeavor. No one is sure of the total amount, or exactly where the money went.

The report highlights the role of cemetery deputy superintendent Thurman Higginbotham, who handpicked the contractors who were supposed to perform that computerization work and managed the contractors to carry it out. “Contract file documentation indicated that the deputy superintendent ANC acted with apparent authority to receive services and provided direction to the contractors,” according to the report. “Receiving reports reviewed at ANC were signed by the deputy superintendent ANC. The contract files did not contain evidence that the government received deliverables as stated in the contract.”

The Army allowed Higginbotham and cemetery superintendent Jack Metzler to retire unscathed last month. The Army has shown no sign of any intent to hold any Army officials accountable for anything that took place at Arlington.

The report was released Tuesday by Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo. McCaskill chairs a Senate subcommittee that is investigating the scandal at Arlington and that held the hearing last week. 

“You did know about it and you did nothing,” she said. Then she turned to Higginbotham: “And you knew about it, Mr. Higginbotham, and you did nothing.”

Metzler went on to blame an inadequate budget — which senators quickly pointed had increased dramatically during Metzler’s tenure — and a busy burial schedule. But again, McCaskill was unsatisfied.

“This is not complicated,” she said. “It’s called keeping track of who you bury, where. That is not a complicated task.”

The subcommittee also examined the apparent waste of millions in taxpayer funds. Higginbotham directed somewhere between $5 million and $20 million to a group of handpicked contractors to modernize burial records at Arlington, but the contractors produced almost nothing in return, and burial records are still tracked on pieces of paper, which go missing. Higginbotham invoked the 5th Amendment when he was asked about the contracts.

Subcommittee ranking member Scott Brown, R-Mass., said it’s astounding that Arlington still tries to track 30 burials a day with a flurry of paper: “Let me get this straight: It is 2010 and you guys…are still dealing in cards? I just can’t get my head around that.”

Officials from the Army, which oversees Arlington, testified that they were mostly kept in the dark about the missing money and burial mishaps. Claudia Tornblom, the Army deputy assistant secretary who oversees the cemetery’s budget, claimed she was aware of burial paperwork “discrepancies,” but did not know that those discrepancies might reflect burial problems in the ground. “Obviously, we did not ask enough questions,” she explained.

Brown said the idea that the country’s most famous cemetery could not keep track of the dead was unimaginable. “It’s almost like learning there is no Santa Claus or Easter Bunny,” he observed.