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American Legion and VA Crats Meet Amid Reports of Coming VA Housecleaning
- If a to-be-named, new head of the VBA is a hard-core veteran’s advocate, it will go a long way toward proving that President Obama and VA Sec Shinseki are serious about reversing the culture of the VA and VBA that has driven veterans to madness in the worst case, and endless frustration in the normal course of bureaucratic works -
By mal
Speaking at the 92nd National Convention of the American Legion this Saturday in Milwaukee, Acting Under Secretary for Benefits (and head of the Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA)), Michael Walcoff, addressed the new Agent Orange presumptives.
But reading reports and listening to the scuttlebutt among veterans’ advocates, it’s difficult to access whether Walcott was apologizing for the expanded Agent Orange presumptives, and hoping Congress and Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) step in and halt the implementation of the benefits.
From the Business Wire:
‘You’ve got Agent Orange. You’ve got presumptions. You’re talking about over $13 billion in the first year,’ said Walcott.
Walcoff said VA anticipates additional 190,000 benefits claims in the first year after the regulations go into effect. For that reason, Walcoff said, the announcement won’t be met with applause from everyone.
‘There will be articles out there written by writers; we’re working with a writer right now who’s very negative about this – very negative about the fact it’s going to cost so much money,’ Walcoffsaid. ‘Very negative about the fact that anybody who was in country in Vietnam qualifies for this. That’s the kind of thinking that’s out there.’
Well, Walcott seems like a nice-enough guy, some advocates say, but word of mouth is that Walcott is one of the anti-benefits guys that packed the VBA with anti-veteran hacks. Walcotts sank his head in the sand and did very little to overhaul VBA when he had chances for more than three decades.
A replacement is expected fairly soon, and if the head of the VBA is a hard-core veteran’s advocate, it will go a long way toward poving that President Obama and VA Sec Shinseki are serious about reversing the culture of the VA and VBA that has literally driven veterans to madness in the worst case, and endless frustration in the normal course of its functioning.
With pending claims for benefits now sitting at over 1.3 million, some advocates are suggesting that a housecleaning looks likely in the near future.
Veterans’ advocate Steve Robinson, a veteran who served in Ranger and Special Operations units, was recently quoted after accessing the Army’s July 29 “Health Promotion, Risk-Reduction and Suicide Prevention Report”:
So, yes, there have been some improvements, some things that I am sure the veterans are appreciative of, but it baffles the mind to think that the Administration believes change will occur if they don’t clean house, and remove the entrenched bureaucrats, and policy wonks, who are gatekeepers to affecting that change. I don’t know why they haven’t moved them out, but they are still there, and they are, in fact, sabotaging Shinseki on several fronts. And there have been some political blunders that have occurred, because some of these entrenched bureaucrats—two and three levels below Shinseki—have made recommendations that filtered their way up to the top. …
The fact is Obama out-performed his other Democratic presidential nominees on veterans at the polls precisely by appealing to and reaching out to hard-core veterans’ advocates, and not “VSO (Veteran Service Organization) housecats,” as one Vietnam veteran and advocate said in a recent interview with Veterans Today.
Said Robinson in an interview with EIR [Executive Intelligence Review]:
[T]he veterans service organizations themselves are political creatures, for the most part. And they have political leanings. And those political leanings are understood within the Beltway; and we know who the VFW is, we know who the American Legion is, and people don’t want to be put into those boxes.
But you can tell by the things that they do and don’t support, where they stand. I think veterans were frustrated with the Bush Administration, and when you looked at the possibility of getting more of the same with John McCain, and potentially his candidacy, veterans, and veteran services organizations, and others, I think, chose Obama.
Paul Sullivan, Executive Director of the veterans advocacy group Veterans for Common Sense, said in testimony before the House Committee on Veterans Affairs, Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations to consider Gulf War illness, that “a cabal of VA staff” is “intentionally delaying research and treatment for our veterans.”
And it’s not just Gulf War illness.
There is beyond a doubt embedded neocons dug it deeply at the VA and VBA like Renee L. Szybala, former VA director of Compensation and Pension Service under the Bush-Cheney administration, who energetically worked to block veterans from being paid benefits.
In one infamous case, Szybala helped engineer the DoJ prosecution of a Wisconsin Vietnam-era veteran whistle-blower whom the regional office of the Milwaukee VA hated because he blew the whistle on their altering his C-file and taking a decade to decide his claim.
The federal charge Szybala engineered was for wire fraud for receiving VA benefits after the veteran (Keith Roberts) saw his friend crushed to death by a c-54 aircraft, and after being advised in 2002 by the late Jim Henning, a Shawano County (Wisconsin) Veteran’s Service Officer, to apply for an earlier retroactive date for his PTSD disability benefits.
The DoD said the two veterans were not friends and one veteran exaggerated his efforts to save his (not) friend, fellow veteran though both men were serving on line duty at the same time as the deadly accident at a Navy base in Italy, a ludicrous prosecution bought by a jury in a small Northern Wisconsin town.
The Near Future
“Scores of anti-vet career people at the VA have been getting away with murder for decades. Our president needs to get rid of them, and fast,” said a veteran’s advocate who works at all levels of the VBA claim process.
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Short URL: http://www.veteranstoday.com/?p=46876
Posted by Yanira Farray on Aug 29 2010, With 0 Reads, Filed under Benefits, Vet News, Veteran Service Organizations, Veterans Affairs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
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Hip, hip hooray! This is the change I voted for. My disability claim is over five years old and I know how the past system worked to deny obvious evidence, delay the process, and outman the veteran who only wants a little help.
One thing missing over the years in the VA is honest and real sensitivity for those who have served and suffered in combat. The VA has been so busy trying to please everyone it missed the people who suffered the most for our freedoms. That is those guys and gals who faced down the enemy face to face and lived to feel the memories, sometimes dysfunctionally and alone.
When former VA project manager Paul Sullivan, now Executive Director of the veterans advocacy group Veterans for Common Sense, said in testimoney before the House Committee on Veterans Affairs, Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations that “a cabal of VA staff” is working to deny benefits and treatment, he was not kidding.
This shit at the VA did not happen by accident or in competence.
It’s a project meant to as Bill Ricks writes above, “deny obvious evidence, delay the process, and outman the veteran.”
The scum that does this do it for careers mostly, and ideology for some of the thinktanks (AEI), with allies in the press like AP writer, Allen Breed. See http://www.veteranstoday.com/2010/05/28/veterans-aren%e2%80%99t-lying-about-ptsd/
Not just house cleaning but Demanding that the Country Finally ‘Sacrifice’, those that don’t serve and those vets that walk in lockstep with them for those paltry amount of taxes they Don’t Want To Pay but never raise a voice above a whisper at ever increasing defense budgets, even when the corruption is exposed!!!
That’s always been the problem as to the VA since Korea, that and political hacks appointed to head then hiring same in their administrations, send them off but don’t fund the results and try and not only ignored but denie the Veterans physical and mental illnesses as a result and showing up later after discharge!
Since the 110th Congress we finally had Congressional Hearings and Investigations which should have been done in the previous congresses as they waged two more occupations of choice and their supporters refused to force ‘sacrifice’. Since Shinseki’s come in they’ve been Finally upgrading the IT needs as to record keeping and much more and doing that which Also wasn’t done as the Drums of Wars beat and were implemented into invasions and rubber stamped no bid contracts. Then he got some help, and so did Vets, as the economy that was destroyed by the previous needed something to at least stabilize it as No Private Capital, reagonomics, was being invested, still isn’t, no ‘trickle down’ not even a drip: VA Obligates Last of its Recovery Act Funds to Help Veterans
August 5, 2010 $1.8 Billion Investment Improves Care and Services for Veterans
http://www1.va.gov/opa/pressrel/pressrelease.cfm?id=1934 and this is just a snip as it’s in a press release, and only the VA.. Making a Country that doesn’t do ‘sacrifice’ actually Sacrifice!
All Vietnam Veterans, went to war because our President, and legislators had us believe that our country was in danger; We lined up, as our fathers, and their fathers before them to defend the land which we love so dearly, so paying the ultimate sacrifice. Now, here we are many years later, arguing as to whether the country we sacrificed so much for, is willing to admit that spraying chemicals over every living thing to help aide the war effort was in the best interest of the people selling the chemicals, or the Boots on the Ground, who have, and will always suffer the effects that were known even then to exist. Today, Secretary of State Clinton, among many others want the U.S. to pay benefits to Vietnam for the damages inflicted on land. and civilians for the collateral damages caused by spraying, but China Beach R&R Center is now a Resort Area. I think somewhere in the vastness of time our Political Machine needs to reaccess their priorities, and take care of the veterans who have suffered so long, in quiet despair. It’s time for our country to take some responsibility for those of us who put ourselves in harms way, and have ask very little in return; And when we did ask, were denied benefits or staled until it didn’t matter, anymore.
God Bless America, Land of the Free, and Home of the Brave. Voting Veteran
“a cabal of VA staff” is working to deny benefits and treatment, he was not kidding.
This shit at the VA did not happen by accident or in competence.
It’s a project meant to as Bill Ricks writes above, “deny obvious evidence, delay the process, and outman the veteran.”
ABSOLUTELY !!
I have been interested in this for 35 years! If you read veterans stories of denied benefits it becomes clear this like you said fixthefuture is not by accident.
It is by purpose. The idea this is with purpose should make real veteran advocates blood boil.
In government thinking they know from experience when they sent MacArthur into the Veteran bonus army camps in the 30′s and killed vets and even scores of vets babies —- government can deny any benefits they want without consequence. Look it up on Wikipedia. Sad story.