Category Archives: Politics

Politics

Online Chat Service for Vets

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Department of Veterans Affairs establishes online chat service for Vets

Let no one say that our Veterans Administration is not in the vanguard of care and concern for the American Veteran. There are days that these folks are like the Gold Standard for Health Care. Even with the uninitiated maligning our Government, as if they are not US!

VA Department of Veterans Affairs
Office of Public Affairs
Media Relations
Washington, DC 20420
(202) 461-7600
www.va.gov
News Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 31, 2009

VA’s Suicide Prevention Program Adds Chat Service New Service Expands Online Access for Veterans

WASHINGTON – The Suicide Prevention campaign of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is expanding its outreach to all Veterans by piloting an online, one-to-one “chat service” for Veterans who prefer reaching out for assistance using the Internet.

Called “Veterans Chat,” the new service enables Veterans, their families and friends to go online where they can anonymously chat with a trained VA counselor. If a “chatter” is determined to be in a crisis, the counselor can take immediate steps to transfer the person to the VA Suicide Prevention Hotline, where further counseling and referral services are provided and crisis intervention steps can be taken.

“This online feature is intended to reach out to all Veterans who may or may not be enrolled in the VA health care system and provide them with online access to the Suicide Prevention Lifeline,” said Dr. Gerald Cross, VA’s Acting Under Secretary for Health. “It is meant to provide Veterans with an anonymous way to access VA’s suicide prevention services.”

Veterans, family members or friends can access Veterans Chat through the suicide prevention Web site (www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org). There is a Veterans tab on the left-hand side of the website that will take them directly to Veteran resource information. On this page, they can see the Hotline number (1-800-273-TALK), and click on the Veterans Chat tab on the right side of the Web page to enter.

Veterans retain anonymity by entering whatever names they choose once they enter the one-on-one chat. They are then joined by a counselor who is trained to provide information and respond to the requests and concerns of the caller.

If the counselor decides the caller is in a crisis, the counselor will encourage the Veteran to call the Suicide Prevention Hotline, where a trained suicide prevention counselor will determine whether crisis intervention techniques are required.
The pilot program, which has been in operation since July 3, has already had positive results. In one instance, the online counselor determined that a Veteran in the chat required immediate assistance. The counselor convinced the Veteran to provide the counselor with a home telephone number and then remained in the chat room with the Veteran while the hotline staff called the number and talked to the Veteran’s mother. The hotline counselor worked with the Veteran’s mother to convince the Veteran to be admitted to a medical facility for further treatment.

“The chat line is not intended to be a crisis response line,” said Dr. Janet Kemp, VA’s National Suicide Prevention Coordinator at the VA medical center in Canandaigua, N.Y., where VA’s trained counselors staff the chat line 24 hours a day, seven days a week. VA’s suicide prevention hotline is also staffed continuously.

“Chat responders are trained in an intervention method specifically developed for the chat line to assist people with emotional distress and concerns,” Kemp said. “We have procedures they can use to transfer chatters in crisis to the hotline for more immediate assistance.”

Both Veterans Chat and the VA’s Suicide Prevention Hotline have been established under the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, which was established through collaboration between VA and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) of the Department of Health and Human Services.
Since becoming operational in July 2007, VA’s Suicide Prevention Hotline has received more than 150,000 calls, resulting in 4,000 rescues.

Band of Brothers
Band of Brothers
Politics

Duty Time Determines Level of Benefits

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Chapter 33, Post GI Bill education benefits are based on how long the honorably discharged veteran served on active duty after September 10th, 2001. To receive your full benefits you must have served for three years of active duty September 10th, 2001.

If you are going to school now under the Montgomery GI Bill be careful if you are thinking of switching from the old; Chapter 30 to the new Chapter 33, as the switch is irrevocable, and it may actually be less money.

90 consecutive days 40 percent
6 months cumulative 50 percent
12 months cumulative 60 percent
18 months cumulative 70 percent
24 months cumulative 80 percent
30 months cumulative 90 percent
36 months cumulative 100 percent.

The Dependents of a 100% Disabled Veteran also receive benefits for 45 months of education. In many States the tuition is waived for dependents of the disabled. This provision does not exist in Arizona, as a result of unenlightened leadership. This writer intends to lobby to change this status for Arizona veterans.

Any way you look at this, Yogi Bera would still say; “cash it is kinda like money.”

Politics, Veteran Legislative Update, Veterans Global

The Forgotten Veterans Project

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The Forgotten Veterans Project

BACKGROUND

For two generations our government has used the bravery and sacrifice of the Navajo and Hopi Code talkers in WWII as a recruiting tool to entice young member of the Navajo and Hopi to enlist in the military. Today a large percentage of Navajo and Hopi men and women are veterans or active military.

Despite the fidelity and service of these veterans, our country has failed to live up to its duty to care for those men and women who won and have maintained the nations freedom. Across the Navajo and Hopi Nations, there remains a disproportionately lower level of VA Services and Benefits. Most notably, there is no VA Hospital or Community Basic Outpatient Clinic (CBOC) on either Nation, forcing veterans to travel up to six hours in order to receive proper VA medical treatment.

Leo Chischilly, Director, Navajo Department of Veterans Affairs states that 12,837 veterans are currently registered. Many newly separated veterans are not registered, however. In July 2008 they submitted a report with the number of veterans in the Navajo Nation but the VA rejected the numbers, stating they needed to be revisited.

Earlier this year, March 2, 2009, Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley an Prescott VA Hospital officials signed an agreement with the goal of the Navajo and Hopi Nation being building a VA (CBOC) clinic in Chinle. The clinic is proposed to provide many of the specialized services that veterans currently must travel hundreds of miles in order to receive. Although this is a positive step, according to a Navajo Nation Department of Veterans Affairs staffer, this agreement took 30 years to accomplish. Why does it take so many decades for our Government to even begin to meet its obligations to these veterans?

The next step is an even higher hurdle. In order to open the clinic, Congress must appropriate funding for it and recruit staffers with an awareness of cultural differences needed to be fostered and understood.

POINTS OF ACTION

1) In an attempt to raise awareness among all Arizonans, collect pledges of support for the VA Clinic (CBOC) in Chinle, AZ. Ask community members to contact their Members of Congress, in a effort to gain support for funding of the clinic and proper staffing. Ask community members to volunteer to help us to raise public awareness.

2) In an attempt to raise awareness among all Arizonans, collect and pass on health-care related stories of Navajo and Hopi veterans. These anecdotes will showcase the lack of services and long travel times involved. These anecdotes, with accompanying videos and pictures, will drive New Media opportunities to garner support and encourage volunteer sign-ups.

3) Working together with the Democratic Native American Caucus, the Arizona Democratic Veterans Caucus will present to the Arizona Democratic State Party Meeting in October 2009, a resolution asking for support of the immediate funding and proper staffing of a CBOC in Chinle Arizona.

4) The Veterans Caucus will do a follow-up phone bank to remind individuals who signed pledge sheets to call, write or email their Congressional delegation in support of immediate funding and proper staffing of a CBOC in Chinle, Arizona.

Attached to this email is a pledge sheet for each of you to get three names. Ronald Canady of Tucson has mailed me a sheet of Veterans he signed in his area. Bill Gertz, of Mesa, has turned five sheets. Ben Love has emailed me that he has 40 signatures. Please feel free to use the attachment to print out as many sheets as you need. In printing the document make sure the disclaimer at the bottom of the sheet is legible.

Please mail all completed sheets to the Arizona Democratic Party Headquarters, 2910 N. Central Ave, Phoenix, AZ 85012, ATTN: Veterans Caucus, or scan and email the documents to me at this email address. If either one to those two options is not possible please make sure all signed pledge sheet are turned in at the Arizona Democratic Party Meeting scheduled for October.

We believe that this is a fight worth fighting and it is an issue that we can win.

I would like to thank all of you for your support and participation.

Thank you

Bob Stelling

Chairman: the Arizona Democratic Veterans Caucus

Paid for by the Arizona Democratic Veterans Caucus | 2910 N. Central Ave | Phoenix, AZ 85012

Not authorized by any Candidate or Candidate Committee

Health, Politics, Veteran Pals, Veterans Global, Veterans' Spouses, Partners & Families

Some Not So Rosy News

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Veteran Suicides on the Increase
Veteran Suicides on the Increase
It has been reported by the Department of Defense that 33 Marines have killed themselves in 2009. We have seen an increase in suicides over the past three years, and we have four months remaining. The outreach and prevention programs have never worked so hard to isolate the problems, with videos, briefings on the signs and symptoms and confidential counseling. With all this the trend has actually worsened. All suicides have been male and 27 of them were between the ages of 18-24. There is no evidence that ones Military occupational status is the contributing factor. 18 Marines were reported to have attempted suicide in July. At this pace it would be about 165 attempts for the year, the most since the invasion in 2003. Rest assured this perplexing phenomena is being addressed on a daily basis.

Politics, Veteran Legislative Update, Veterans Benefits

For The Good of the Order

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President Barack Obama and the Secretary of Veterans Affairs met with a group of journalists recently to declare their promises to restore faith in the the VA System. Those declarations were thus;

To reach out to all Veterans and bring them into the system. Enrollment is open again for Priority 8 clients.

The electronic medical records system is to be installed at every facility

More resources dedicated to mental health

Veterans health benefits will not be reduced or impacted in any way by national health care reform. (note this is health care reform, not insurance reform).

Insure that veterans are not denied benefits because links have not yet been made to war-zone burn pits. Evidence is still coming in and no premature decision should be made, like the exposure to the atomic tests in the 1950’s. Agent Orange in Vietnam,( which is now known to have been utilized 2.4 times more often than was reported), or toxins in the 1991 Gulf War.

Boosting the VA funding is going to be a necessity for many years to come as the Iraq and Afghan vets rotate home for maybe the next 10 years. We know this will be the case, and this time around we can plan ahead instead of crimping the VA budget, just to go begging and then have the media shout that we are not taking care of our troops.
The bean counters are struggling with this, as we have never in the history of modern warfare had so many survivors who have lost limbs and mental faculties. As we provide a guardianship for the world this going to pester us for years to come

Politics

PTSD Claims Simplified

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This is one enlightened piece of legislation. In my capacity as a Veteran Service Officer for the Marine Corps League in Marana, I can testify to the anguish a veteran goes through to corroborate their war experiences and to produce a narrative that details their war experiences. It not only exacerbates the very symptoms we are trying to heal. but often leads to self-destructive behavior and a resurgence of rage that impacts family and friends.

Thanks General, you are truly looking out for the veterans of war
VA to publish rule to assist Veterans in filing PTSD claims

VA Department of Veterans Affairs
Office of Public Affairs
Media Relations
Washington, DC 20420
(202) 461-7600
www.va.gov
News Release

Secretary Shinseki Moves to Simplify PTSD Compensation Rules

WASHINGTON – Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric K. Shinseki announced the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is taking steps to assist Veterans seeking compensation for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). “The hidden wounds of war are being addressed vigorously and comprehensively by this administration as we move VA forward in its transformation to the 21st century,” said Secretary Shinseki.

The VA is publishing a proposed regulation today in the Federal Register to make it easier for a Veteran to claim service connection for PTSD by reducing the evidence needed if the stressor claimed by a Veteran is related to fear of hostile military or terrorist activity. Comments on the proposed rule will be accepted over the next 60 days. A final regulation will be published after consideration of all comments received.

Under the new rule, VA would not require corroboration of a stressor related to fear of hostile military or terrorist activity if a VA psychiatrist or psychologist confirms that the stressful experience recalled by a Veteran adequately supports a diagnosis of PTSD and the Veteran’s symptoms are related to the claimed stressor.

Previously, claims adjudicators were required to corroborate that a non-combat Veteran actually experienced a stressor related to hostile military activity. This rule would simplify the development that is required for these cases.
PTSD is a recognized anxiety disorder that can follow seeing or experiencing an event that involves actual or threatened death or serious injury to which a person responds with intense fear, helplessness or horror, and is not uncommon in war.

Feelings of fear, confusion or anger often subside, but if the feelings don’t go away or get worse, a Veteran may have PTSD.

VA is bolstering its mental health capacity to serve combat Veterans, adding thousands of new professionals to its rolls in the last four years. The Department also has established a suicide prevention helpline (1-800-273-TALK) and Web site available for online chat in the evenings at www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org/Veterans.

Politics, Veterans Benefits

A Clearer View of the Vietnam Veteran Warriors

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Confusion reigns when it comes to numbers and the Vietnam War. Following are some numbers that may lend some clarity to the media reports over the years. Many of the statistics cited here are from the VFW archives.

Vietnam Veterans comprise 9.7% of their generation

9,087,000 Military Personnel served on Active Duty during the Vietnam Era. August 5.1964 to April 30 1973. The Draft ended June 30, 1973

2,594,000 served within the borders of Vietnam. Approximately 30% of that number were in direct combat positions. By comparison it now takes about 11 logistical troops to support one in combat.

7484 women served in Vietnam,and 83% were nurses. Less than 15% of those nurses ever married after married after the war.

Peak troop strength was 543.482 on April of 1969

CASUALTIES

Hostile Deaths were 47,252 Non-hostile- 10, 475 Total 58,479

8 nurses died. One was KIA

16 Military Chaplains. 2 were Medal of Honor winners

Married men 17,539. 61% of those killed were under 21. Average KIA was 22.8 including twelve 17 year olds. Highest Death State; West Virginia

Wounded 303.704. 100% Disabled 5283 in 1993. Today, that is close to 50.000. I am one of them.

Amputations or crippling wounds were 300% higher than WWll. Multiple amputations were at a rate of 18.4% compared to 5.7% for WWll. And to think that the WWll vets use to call us whiners.

DRAFTEES VS. VOLUNTEERS

25% or 648,ooo of the total Armed Forces were drafted. 66% were drafted in WWll.
Draftees accounted for 30.4 % of the deaths in the Nam. 17.725. 5977 Reservists were killed.

The United States Marine Corps drafted 42,633 in a rare one time USMC Draft in 1968. It was because Marines were dying at such a high rate.

RACE AND ETHNIC BACKGROUND

Here is where some myths are dispelled about the War being fought by minorities.
88.4% were Caucasian. 10.6% were Black with 1% being Other. There is a curious thing however about the “Other.” In the 60’s there was no category for Hispanic. So we cannot get an accurate read here unless you just logged surnames, but that is not a sure thing either.

86.3% of the men who died were Caucasian. 12.5% were black. 1.2% were Other. It is estimated that 170,000 Hispanics served in combat, and 3070 died or 5.2%

70% of enlisted men killed were of Northwest European descent. 34% of Blacks volunteered for combat duty.

Religious preference of the dead. 64.4% Protestant. 28.9% Catholic. 6.7% other or none.

SOCIO-ECONOMIC STATUS

76% of the men sent to Vietnam were from Lower Middle/Working Class backgrounds. Three fourths had income above the poverty level. 23% had fathers who were professional. managerial or technical. My father was Managerial and a Corpsman in WWll.

79% had a High School degree. Compared to 63% of Korean vets and 45 % of WWll veterans.

Deaths by region; South- 31% West -29.9% Midwest 28.4% Northeast 23.5%

The average age in Vietnam was 19. The average for WWll was 26.

Of those married 38% were divorced upon returning to the States. I was not married but my girlfriend broke up with me 9 weeks after returning home.

The divorce rate for all Veterans is in the 90th percentile.

The Psychiatric casualty rate in Vietnam was 3%. In WWll it was 26%! That rate for Vietnam veterans skyrocketed within 5 years after the war to 35%. Lots of reason for this that maybe commenters will address.

While approximately 58.000 died about 112.000 committed suicide after the war, many of those coming in the mid to late 70’s

Today, approximately 47% of Vietnam veterans have expressed via the VA system to have persistent emotional problems. Drug and alcohol abuse is right at about 50%

66% of Vietnam Veterans say they would serve again. 69% state knowing that War was never declared. 74% doubt that the Gulf of Tonkin incident ever occurred.

The myth that the fighting in Vietnam was not as intense as the WWll is false. The average infantryman in the South Pacific saw an average of 44 days of combat in 4 years. The average soldier/Marine in Vietnam saw about 241 days of combat in one year, as a result of the mobility of the helicopter.

The average lapse time between being wounded to hospitalization was less than an hour. As a result less than 1% of those wounded who survived the first 24 hours, died.. The helicopter provided unprecedented mobility, as it does now. Without the helicopter it would have taken 3 times the number of troops to secure an 800 mile border with Cambodia and Laos. Mistakenly the politicos thought the Geneva Conventions of 1954 and the Geneva Accords of 1962 would secure the border. 84% of Vietnam veterans report never having heard of the Geneva Convention guidelines; (outlining torture), while on active duty. 71% of combatants report witnessing torture accomplished by proxies, like Korean Marines.

Another myth that the Domino Theory was proved false is incorrect. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations; Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand remained free of Communism as a result of our commitment to the area. The Vietnam War was the turning point for the end of Communism. Today we are partnered with Vietnam for the exploration of oil. One of the little known facts is that some of richest oil reserves in the world are off the shores of the South China Sea. Ergo the lifting of the the Trade Embargo that was co-sponsored by Senators McCain and Kerry.
The tourism industry in Vietnam is 200% that of WWll veterans returning to war sites.

Possibly this is why we call these “Wars of Assimilation” not Declared Wars.

Politics

Student Loans and GI Bill

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While the following information does not directly relate to Veterans, it does in that the new GI Bill, which is not the rigging that the Montgomery GI was, will not leave a veteran with a heap of debt after completing their studies. The previous GI Bill, which needed to be trashed years ago, supplied just enough assistance to send you straight to the bank to subsidize paying the tuition. It was as much a banking gimmick as it was an educational catalyst.

And, one may recall that many of the Universities were engaged in kickbacks for guiding the nubile young students to the local bank. The new GI Bill along with repayment relief should clean up the underground world of educational profiteering.

Some Relief On Student Loans

Repaying a student loan could soon be a little less painful.

Starting this week, anyone with a federal student loan can apply for a new Education Department program, which caps monthly payments based on income and which forgives remaining balances after 25 years. Those agreeing to public service work could have loans forgiven after 10 years.

Eligibility for income-based repayment is determined by a person’s income and loan size. A calculator at http://www.ibrinfo.org can help borrowers determine their eligibility for the plan, which becomes available Wednesday.

The program stems from the College Cost Reduction and Access Act, signed in 2007, which authorized the creation of an income-based repayment plan for some types of loans.

Payments would amount to less than 10 percent of income for most of the estimated 1 million people expected to enroll, experts say. Payments would never exceed 15 percent of any income above about $16,000 a year (or 150 percent of the poverty level). Those who earn less than $16,000 would not have to make any monthly payments.

Alternative Care, Politics, Veteran Legislative Update, Veterans Benefits, Veterans' Spouses, Partners & Families

Survey of Health Care Experiences of Patients/SHEP

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Tucson VA Hospital
Tucson VA Hospital
This survey is also used for our own Veterans Administration Hospital here in Tucson. I thought the results of the survey were worthy of adulation, and a bit of bragging. While all the cities being compared would be of little interest to our readers, our comparison to the National results are noteworthy.

Inpatient Satisfaction: National 62.1% Tucson VA 71.1%

Outpatient Satisfaction: National 55.6% Tucson VA 59.7%

Provider Wait less than 20 minutes: National 78.9% Tucson VA 85.9%

Getting Care quickly when needed: National 78.7% Tucson VA 80.6%

These are SHEP scores from October 2008 to March 2009 provided via Health Care Trends the newsletter for the Southern Arizona Health Care System.

It is no wonder so many winter veteran visitors wait until they come to Tucson for their health care. It appears that not all Government health care is so maligned.

Politics

POW/MIA Issues Are Current Events Too

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VVA applauds recovery of Navy Captain Michael Scott Speicher

VIETNAM VETERANS OF AMERICA

IMMEDIATE RELEASE

VVA Applauds Recovery of Capt. Speicher’s Remains; Urges Redoubling of Efforts in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia

(WASHINGTON, DC) — “All veterans, indeed all Americans, can be relieved that one family’s uncertainty about the fate of their loved one has been finally resolved,” said John Rowan, newly re-elected National President of Vietnam Veterans of America (VVA), referring to the recovery of the remains of Navy Capt. Michael Scott Speicher. Captain Speicher was shot down flying a combat mission in an F/A-18 Hornet on January 17, 1991, during the first Gulf War. His fate until now had been uncertain.

Acting on information provided by civilians in Anbar Province, Iraq, Marines went to a desert location believed to be the crash site of Speicher’s jet. Remains were recovered over several days and were flown to Dover Air Force Base, Delaware, for scientific identification by the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology’s Armed Forces Medical Examiner, which positively identified the remains as Speicher’s on August 1.

“Today, according to the Department of Defense, we still have 1,737 Americans missing and unaccounted for from the Vietnam War,” Rowan said, “and there are thousands of troops from World War II and the Korean War whose remains have never been recovered.

“We should not and cannot shirk our responsibility as a nation to see that all of our troops are returned to freedom back home or to their families for proper burial with military honors. We hold the issue of last-known alive personnel as our highest priority. Our goal is now and always has been to achieve the fullest possible accounting of servicemen missing still in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and the Chinese territorial waters.

— 30 —

Vietnam Veterans of America is the nation’s only congressionally chartered veterans’ service organization dedicated to the needs of Vietnam-era veterans and their families. VVA’s founding principle is “Never again will one generation of veterans abandon another

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