Tag Archives: Veterans Affairs

Veterans Benefits

Veteran Veritas Has Doubts

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I am no Pappa Hemingway, but I think in the terse and laconic way he used his verbs. I have also fought in a war with no glory as did Ernest. What aligns me with him is the lack of potency in the written word, as searing and penetrating as Hemingway was, to alter the behavior of a bellicose nation.  War is a verb on steroids. Survival has no syntax, just symptoms and infinite costs.

The ravages of war and the psychic damage it brings have never in history been so paraded if front of polite society at is has in the last ten years of non-declared wars of assimilation.

T.S. Elliot put it aptly, “how much reality can humankind handle?”

The killings of the homeless men in Orange County by an Iraq combat veteran, were clearly the act of an aberrant man with a parallel life. It matters not that we was a Marine, sailor, soldier or Airman. He is yet another, “Canary,”  in the tunnel of the aftermath of wars. Particularly, wars that ask for 4 and 5 tours of duty.  No soldiers since the Crusades have served in as many campaigns. Why does this just slide by in the middle of the night while we have the “Four Non Horseman,” on stage debating about subjects that are mostly a distraction from the one budgetary item that is breaking the bank in the exact same way that the Russians went broke fighting in Afghanistan?

Why is there not more due diligence background checks on these young warriors prior to their enlistment? The paradoxes are abound. If  the Orange County Marine, Ocampo, was to have  applied for a disability claim based on PTSD, prior to his killing rampage,  it would have likely been denied because of a pre-existing  personality disorder condition. Yet we send them to war and make that very condition worsen to the point of cracking. The Catch-22 of all this would stun even Joseph Heller, the author.

Master Card does more homework than the Department of Defense.  But we need numbers in the volunteer fighting force. Big numbers, were we to ever get entrapped into fighting on multiple fronts. Where will we find the future combatants?  The Four Horseman of the GOP race suggest using illegal immigrants who are in search of citizenship. Is this the way of a proud sovereign nation that has spent the last 10 years demonizing undocumented workers who built 75% of the homes in the southwest?

Now they are good for cannon fodder because we are going to run out of volunteers who can pass background checks? Por mi Dios, what have we become?

Some 50,000 men and women will be returning to our neighborhoods in the next 6 months. 70% are healthy, holy, happy, proud and balanced veterans of war. Some 30% will be lacking the equanimity and oars to get them ashore in an economy that cannot take care of its existing work force.  They are also entering the radio talk show America that is rife with angry polemic that nearly mimics the very cacophony from the streets of Iraq and Afghanistan. To us these endless paid for diatribes are freedom of speech. To the returning veteran they are  called, “triggers.”

Who cares? Who in the neighborhood actually cares? Care with feet, not care with rhetoric?

The TucsonCitizen.com has provided a forum here for dialogue, outreach, and advice from fellow veterans. Most all the time it has remained in the category of helpful and guided toward betterment of the veterans condition.

But honestly, when you look at the statistics about our readers, as we get on a monthly basis,  the community cares the most about, sports, Mexicans and guns, in that order.

The lip service given to, “Support the Troops,” is a sentiment that seems quite ephemeral.  Meaningful for raising money for non-profits, but has little to do with the activity of daily living of most Americans. I have never in my life witnessed such a disconnect from soldiers and war.

Sure they are in the news and make for wonderful advertisements that touch our heartstrings, but who in the village is preparing for Johnnie and Joan when they coming marching home?

Two years ago there were a series of forums at Himmel Library, staffed by combat veterans, that focused on preparing the families of veterans who were transitioning. All of the presenters  were published authors and all had struggled with the demons of war. What happened to these community forums? Has war so jaded us all that we are just flat worn out?  Did T.S Elliot nail it by asking how much reality can humankind handle?

So where is my doubt?  I doubt the efficacy and value of maintaining a blog, as an unpaid volunteer, that remains in the  pantry of most Americans.

My gloom is not all pervasive. Veteran Veritas has for many a season been ranked in the top 25 of readers. We have have garnered many new followers and veterans from all over the United States , Great Britain, Scotland and Ireland.

My doubt  stems from wondering if the publisher and owner of the Tucson Citizen, Gannett, cares. They provide absolutely no feedback to the contributors here. Curiously they are the owners of Military Times and USA Today, both of whom rely heavily on military readership.  I was so naive as to think they might have sent us a Christmas card or something. A subscription to USA Today would be nice. Especially since they never leave enough in retail outlets.

At any rate, this online confessional of sorts for men and women of war, marches on with a desire to one day turn swords into plowshares and promulgate some sense of peace around the world, and offer some contentment inside  the collective ranks of veterans who want to share their stories and struggles. The feedback I get from them is the only fuel that invigorates.  Emails from Seattle to Tampa are what keep me tuned in. New pals who are veterans of the Army Special Forces in Great Britain are pretty buffed.

In the context of our Marine Corps motto and oath, “First to fight for right and freedom and to keep our honor clean…” I do not wane. A good Marine is always a peacekeeper first  and will do what it takes to vanquish the evil forces on our planet. I wished it were different.

But I say again, my doubt is about the neutered, jaded, weary public that is rapidly acquiescing to corporate America and a war machine that has compromised its conscience and allowed itself to be more interested in Penn State pedophiles then men and women at war.

Our Editor Mark Evans has been great and always helpful. I expected more help  from Gannett.

I will just lower my expectations and read the Sports page first, so as to be a regular American.

Veterans Benefits

Veteran Veritas Gone Boatin'

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I will be on vacation in Ventura and Santa Cruz, California until September 3rd, 2011.  Thank you for all of your support in the past year.

While, this column is not the Tucson Citizen’s Blue Chip Blog, it has been read consistently and by way of feedback has achieved its original mission, which is advocacy for veterans and the creation of an open dialogue regarding all matters that impact the life of veterans, their families, and our nation.  I have learned as much from the readers as I have offered. That is the clear and present beauty of blogging. Sort of like sitting in a coffee shop mulling over current events.

On a humorous note, one time last Fall, Veteran Veritas had as many readers as the sports blogs. It was Veterans Day and Marine Corps birthday,which helped a bunch.  I was elated. Then my son called and mentioned the reason may have been that the U of A lost that week!

See you in September.  Mike

Veterans Benefits

Has War Become A Second Class Citizen?

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It never ceases to amaze myself and my combat veteran pals, how we as a nation have become so adept at marginalizing and distancing ourselves from war during mid-term elections. It is as if there are parallel nations.  The machinations of the Tea Party are serving as a marvelous distraction from the real reason we have such deficit spending…. it is called war folks.
Please note that I have no commentary on the necessity of the use of our Armed Forces. I simply want to drive home the point that speaking of budget deficits and blaming political parties is like sending a pregnant woman to weight watchers.  Lets start to get real after this election. Lets get as real as war, and stop all campaigning and use the the money to solve some intractable problems, like re-tooling for a global economy and designing an economic model that is not dictated by the greed of Wall Street. That would be the “real” way to support the troops. Give them something to come home to other than a nation overpaid lobbyists and professional whiners.  The soldiers want a democracy not an auction. MB
Mr. Wood is one of the best journalists out there lending real perspective sans the spins.
Chief Military Correspondent
In its coming session, Congress will decide whether to pay for another year of military operations in Afghanistan — with likely casualties of a thousand or more American battle dead — or cut war funding to force President Obama to start withdrawing troops.
Congress will decide how much treatment soldiers will get for blast injury and whether they deserve a pay raise. It will decide how many protective armored trucks the troops will get, and the quality of their body armor. It will repeal “Don’t ask, don’t tell” or let the courts decide. It will judge how much compensation and other benefits a double-amputee veteran will receive. It will have to reconcile all this spending with its campaign promises to cut government and the deficit.
If there’s a major terror attack on the United States, the president may order retaliation or other actions. But Congress will decide whether to sustain military operations if they are ordered against, say, Iran, or inside Pakistan.
afghanistan warAs the nation goes about selecting its next Congress, are voters and the candidates (and their annoying campaign ads) pretty much ignoring all these issues?
Did the little piggy cry wee wee wee all the way home?
In the midst of hot conflicts engaging more than 150,000 deployed military personnel and simmering military crises in Yemen, Somalia and elsewhere, nearly everybody’s giving war a big yawn.
Those yellow-ribbon car magnets boasting of support for the troops have faded. Fewer soldiers and Marines trudging home through airports get thanked for their service these days, and when they do get thanked, the troops say it’s just an awkward encounter they’d prefer to avoid.
Even the Code Pink protesters who used to disrupt war hearings on Capitol Hill have turned elsewhere, most recently to the Gulf oil spill.
One reason is that most of the public hasn’t had a personal stake in the war. Less than 1 percent of Americans agree to active-duty service and far fewer than that have actually seen combat.
No major war in American history has been fought with a smaller percentage of Americans in uniform. And less than a dozen members of Congress, at last count, had children serving in the military.
“For most Americans the wars remain an abstraction,” Defense Secretary Robert Gates mused recently. He said war has become “a distant and unpleasant series of news items that does not affect them personally,” and he added with a touch of bitterness that military service is seen as “something for other people to do.”
Ordinarily, though, at least some Americans get passionate about war and register their emotions on Election Day. In 1916 a strong antiwar movement, together with the suffragettes, isolationists and others, forced President Wilson to campaign on the slogan, “He Kept Us Out of War.”
Wilson won, but his victory may have laid the foundations for today’s massive cynicism about elections: Within 90 days of his re-election as an antiwar president, Wilson asked Congress for a declaration of war, and the United States leapt into the jaws of World War I. Of the 4.7 million Americans who served, 53,000 were killed in battle and 200,000 came home wounded (not counting those with post-traumatic stress syndrome, or as they dismissed it then, “shell shock.”)
Midterm elections generally turn more on domestic issues than on war. One exception was 1954. With Republicans in power, the country, weary of the Korean war which ended a year earlier, voted in the Democrats who seized both the House and Senate and held on for decades, relinquishing the House only in 1994. During the most heated antiwar passions of the Vietnam conflict, Republicans gained in the midterms of 1966 and Democrats did so in 1970, but the war ground on with little congressional interference. (Even the conventional wisdom that Congress eventually cut off funding for the war, abandoning the South Vietnamese to its enemies, has been exposed as a myth.)
This year, issues of war have been “swamped” by voter concerns about jobs, debt and health care, observed Richard Kohn, professor of history, peace, war and defense at the University of North Carolina. And those are domestic issues in which Congress has a more obvious role anyway, he added.
Where war makes itself felt in this midterm is “in the dog that didn’t bark,” Kohn said. President Obama’s West Point speech last December essentially plotted a withdrawal from both Iraq and Afghanistan, with a temporary “surge” of forces in Afghanistan and a date to begin the withdrawal of troops.
“That satisfied both the right, that said you’ve got to prosecute the war — and the base of his party, which wants to withdraw,” Kohn said.
True enough: conservative columnist Fred Barnes, who can rarely find even a mild epithet for Democrats, sent Obama a “love bomb” in the Weekly Standard after the West Point speech, and even Sarah Palin endorsed the president’s decision to send more troops to Afghanistan. Liberals were slightly disappointed but supportive.
So thoroughly did Obama’s Afghanistan war strategy preempt protest that the GOP’s Pledge to America, which attacks the administration from every conceivable angle, fails to mention either Iraq or Afghanistan.
Finally, of course, most Americans seem to have given up on Afghanistan. Why get passionate about it if the war is a lost cause?
However invisible the war is for now, it may explode once the campaign is over and the winners begin to take their seats. Awaiting House members and senators is the $700 billion Pentagon budget bill, which may come up as early as the lame duck session in November (three new senators will be seated immediately because they are filling vacancies in Illinois, Delaware and West Virginia).
That will be the first test of the determination of many candidates actually to cut the federal budget, eliminate waste and reduce the budget deficit, as they have promised. But even among the budget-cutters there is disagreement: On one end of that spectrum is Rand Paul, GOP Senate candidate from Kentucky, a libertarian skeptic of foreign involvement who believes the great threat is on the U.S. borders. On the other: Sen. John McCain and other traditional Republicans who support a strong U.S. presence in the world and consistently vote to appropriate the money to support it.
Later next year Congress likely will grapple with potential troop reductions in both Iraq and Afghanistan. All American military personnel in Iraq are due to be withdrawn at the end of 2011, unless a joint U.S.-Iraq agreement is modified — a step Congress surely would want to review. In Afghanistan, Obama is likely to begin withdrawing some troops in July.
In both cases the decision belongs to the White House, but Congress could interfere, for instance, by tampering with the flow of money.
Either way, there’s no indication in this election year that the new Congress will take such an activist role, said John Isaacs, executive director of the Council for a Livable World, a liberal think tank in Washington.
“The mood on military issues is ambivalence,” he said. “I don’t think the public cares.”
Filed Under: Afghanistan, Iraq
Veterans Benefits

Today Is the Deadline For Back Pay For Stop-Loss Payments

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Last fall the Congress ordered the Retroactive Stop Loss Special Pay program for eligible veterans and service members to receive up to $3500 of back pay. Only 38% of all those eligible have applied. October 21st is the deadline.

The formula for these payments is $500 for every month they were retained on active duty after 9/11 for national security reasons.

89,836 members of the Armed Forces were were forced to stay on active duty. 55,ooo have have filed claims and $212 million has been paid out.  There are no conditions attached to these claims other than the extended duty. If you know of someone who experienced this, and has not filed yet, please tell them to do so by midnight tonight with their respective military branches.

Veterans Benefits

Congress Flunks on Veteran Advocacy

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Dear Mike,

Did your representatives make the grade?

IAVA Action Fund just released its 2010 Congressional Report Card – and we want you to be the first to check it out. This critical tool shows who in Congress took action for new veterans and who was full of hot air.

The grades are not good. The Report Card shows just how little Congress accomplished for Iraq and Afghanistan vets this year. Out of 535 legislators, only 20 legislators earned an A+, and more than a third of Congress earned Ds and Fs.

Check here to see if your Senators and Representative made the D List or the Dean’s List.

Congress showed promise for vets in the first half of this session, but by the second half, everything went downhill.

They failed to achieve real reform in our three most critical areas: improving the outdated VA disability claims process, upgrading the Post-9/11 GI Bill and helping vets find jobs in a tough economy.

As we head into the midterm elections, Americans must hold Congress accountable for their voting record. Vets can’t wait for the gridlock to clear in Washington. IAVA Action Fund is keeping our nation’s lawmakers honest, and ensuring that Iraq and Afghanistan veterans remain a priority on Capitol Hill. This is what the Report Card is all about.

Veterans Benefits

Veterans Benefits Improve/ Marine Times

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Veterans bill improves benefits, protections

By Rick Maze – Staff writer
Posted : Friday Oct 15, 2010 13:27:03 EDT

An omnibus veterans benefits bill signed into law on Wednesday holds the promise of big changes for disabled veterans and their families, according to the two committee chairmen responsible for passing the compromise bill.

One example is an expansion of employment and re-employment legal protections and more financial protections for deployed and mobilized service members, including the opportunity for service members to sue people or businesses who violate the Servicemembers’ Civil Relief Act.

The bill, the Veterans’ Benefits Act of 2010, was passed by Congress before lawmakers took an election break and was signed by President Obama on Wednesday.

“Veterans across the country will see their benefits improve,” said Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, chairman of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, highlighting programs to increase automotive grants for disabled veterans, provide childcare services for homeless veterans and expand life insurance for disabled veterans.

“Many of these provisions were pending for some time, and I am pleased that they have now become law,” said Akaka, referring to the fact that the bill took two years to pass as lawmakers grappled with what programs to include and what to leave out.

Rep. Bob Filner, D-Calif., the House Veterans’ Affairs committee chairman, said the bill “will make a big difference in the lives” of many veterans. He mentioned improvements in employment help, more research into health issues facing Gulf War veterans and expansion of financial and legal protections of deployed troops as key items.

Until now, violations of the legal or financial protections under the Servicemembers’ Civil Relief Act did not include penalties. Now, violators would face fines of up to $55,000 for a first offense and up to $110,000 for subsequent violations, and individuals whose rights are violated also may sue for civil damages and attorney fees.

Additionally, the law expands termination rights for residential and motor vehicle leases and for telephone service contracts.

On auto and residential leases, the new law requires unpaid balances to be pro-rated from the effective date of termination, rather than being charged through the end of the next billing period. And when residential leases are canceled because of mobilization or deployment, early termination fees may not be charged.

On telephone contracts, the law allows termination of a cell phone or telephone exchange service any time a military member receives notice of orders to relocate for 90 days or longer to a location not served by the current contract.

Additionally, family-plan cell phone contracts could be terminated if anyone on the plan is a service member who deploys or moves out of the service area. When phone service is terminated, a phone company would have to keep it available for up to three years for reuse by a service member, but getting the old number would require re-subscribing to the phone service within 90 days of returning.

Veteran Legislative Update, Veterans Benefits

VA Health Care Compared To Non-VA Settings

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A Synthesis of the Evidence Comparing Care in VA vs. Non-VA Settings

The quality of VA care has long been a subject of debate, even after its health care system transformation starting in the mid-90s. Although there have been some exceptions, the media has often portrayed VA health care in a less than optimal light. Regardless, VA has established itself as an innovative health care system, as evidenced in the early adoption of an advanced electronic medical record and its recent efforts to create patient-centered primary care teams.

Recently, investigators at the West Los  Angeles VA Evidence-Based Practice Center conducted a literature review to compare and contrast studies that assess VA and non-VA quality of care for surgical, non-surgical, and other medical conditions. Investigators reviewed 55 articles published after 1990: 17 articles addressed surgical conditions, and 38 addressed medical and other non-surgical conditions. Findings from their report include:

  • Ten comparative studies assessing the use of preventive services, care for acute and chronic medical conditions, and changes in health status, including mortality, showed superior performance–as measured by greater adherence to accepted processes of care, better health outcomes, or improved patient ratings of care–for health care delivered in the VA compared with care delivered outside the VA.
  • Studies of the quality of hospital and nursing home care demonstrate similar risk-adjusted mortality rates in VA facilities compared with non-VA facilities. VA hospitals had somewhat better patient safety outcomes compared with non-VA hospitals.
  • Studies of the quality of mental health care demonstrate that the quality of antidepressant prescribing is slightly better in VA compared to private sector settings.
  • Elderly VA patients were less likely to be prescribed potentially inappropriate medications than elderly patients receiving care through Medicare managed care plans.
  • Stroke patients receiving rehabilitation in VA settings were discharged with better functional outcomes.
  • Of four general surgery studies, three revealed no significant differences in adjusted post-operative morbidity rates, while one found significantly lower rates of post-operative morbidity in the VA setting compared with the private sector.
  • Three of the four studies assessed risk-adjusted mortality rates, and of these, two found no significant difference across settings.
  • Of three solid organ transplant articles, two found no significant differences in patient survival when comparing VA patients with non-VA patients. Additionally, one of these found no significant difference in graft survival between these two groups.

Conclusions:

Overall, the available literature suggests that the care provided in the VA compares favorably to non-VA care systems, albeit with some caveats. Studies that used accepted process of care measures and intermediate outcomes measures, such as control of blood pressure or hemoglobin A1c, for quality measurements almost always found VA performed better than non-VA comparison groups. Studies looking at risk-adjusted outcomes generally have found no differences between VA and non-VA care, with some reports of better outcomes in VA and a few reports of worse outcomes in VA, compared to non-VA care. The studies of processes of care are mostly those about medical conditions, while the studies of outcomes are mostly about surgical conditions and interventional procedures.

Reference: Asch, S, Glassman P, Matula S, Trivedi A, Miake-Lye I and Shekelle P. Comparison of Quality of Care in VA and Non-VA Settings: A Systematic Review. VA-ESP Project # 05-226; 2010.

This report is a product of the HSR&D Evidence-Based Synthesis Program (ESP), which was established to provide timely and accurate syntheses of targeted healthcare topics of particular importance to VA managers and policymakers – and to disseminate these reports throughout VA.

See the full reports online.

Veteran Pals, Veterans Benefits, Veterans Events, Veterans' Spouses, Partners & Families

Sand Jam Now A Reality

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This past Friday, the owners of Hotel Congress met with a collection of veterans to launch Tucson’s first, “Sand Jam” concert in recognition and support of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of War.

The Concert will be held at Club Congress on Sunday, May 30th, 2010 the day prior to Memorial Day. David Slutes of Hotel Congress is the lead promoter of the event and will be selecting a variety of bands to perform that day. All parties involved are open to suggestions for performing acts. The event is scheduled from noon to 8pm.

The newly remodeled patio of the Hotel can accommodate approximately 1500 attendees with room for outdoor performance stages. Maynards and the Cup Cafe will be serving food.

Suppliers and vendors are welcome for this inaugural event.

Tucson has a tremendous history of support for our veterans. I am certain this will be a smash hit and a catalyst for a gathering place for vets to share stories and find community support.

For further details and sponsorship opportunities call Scotty Scotton/ Iraq Veteran. 520-272-7031. email; “carsforvets.webs.com”

Veteran Legislative Update

The Veterans are Coming, the Veterans are Coming!

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Welcome to the new  Citizen Fourth Estate.  We are entering “Operation Information.” Our mission is to provide a space for advocacy and dialogue with all  Arizona veterans.  I am a trained Veterans Service Officer, and  published writer in the arena of  Veterans Affairs.  I served in Marine Corps, with the 7th Marines and Marine Air Wing with two stints in Vietnam.  I am currently a Mentor for returning combat veterans at the Merritt Retreat Center in Payson, Arizona.  I have extensive training in the care and transition to civilian life for returning combat veterans. Please join us in an ongoing dialogue with a Band of Brothers and Sisters.