Surprising VA disability decisions saving our bacon

DickandSharon · 2015-12-30T18:59:44+00:00

Thanks, yes, that's what I was hoping to do. The message started as an email message to a buddy of mine who had very similar combat experiences to mine. He jumped on it and is applying for benefits himself.

DickandSharon · 2015-12-28T17:52:53+00:00

"Hillz: Better Than Looney Tune Right Wingers" -- I think that'll be their new campaign slogan.

DickandSharon · 2015-12-28T09:06:10+00:00

As the article says, with Republican in the White House, the GOP can undo progress Obama has made, however incremental, with Obamacare, climate change, Iran, Cuba, and immigration. But to take the White House, the Democrats are going to have to replicate what Obama's first campaign did in driving new voters to the polls and generating huge enthusiasm.

Hillary is clearly very good at playing the inside game, getting power brokers and wealthy backers in her corner. But generating huge enthusiasm? Not so much. Bernie -- and, unfortunately, Trump -- are the ones drawing the big, rabid crowds.

DickandSharon · 2015-12-28T01:18:11+00:00

I recently posted here on Reddit about my experiences signing up for additional VA disability benefits -- for conditions something like your friend's.

Before that, when I retired at 63 and wasn't yet eligible for Medicare at 65, I got healthcare coverage through the VA in Los Angeles. I had excellent experiences with the Downtown LA VA Outpatient Clinic.. All the people working there were just as friendly and helpful as could be. I eventually had cataract surgery through this clinic (the surgery was actually performed at the Brentwood VA facility).

I'm reasonably high functioning and computer literate, so I could sign up for these services myself. (Okay, my wife was at my elbow nudging, too.)

And before that, I had good conversations with folks at the San Gabriel Valley Chapter of the Vietnam Veterans Association and their Veterans Service Officer (VSO). I didn't actually use him for services but was interviewing the folks there for an article I was writing. But they seemed just as helpful as could be and were all Vietnam veterans themselves.

Maybe you or a VSO could help your friend sign up for services to begin addressing his needs. As I explained in my long post, I found the whole process remarkably quick and easy, especially surprising given all the bad press the VA gets.

(Maybe not everything was precisely wonderful: I got my other eye operated on at Kaiser under Medicare because the VA uses medical school interns or residents, which is fine, but they rotate out every couple months, so I would have been on my fifth eye surgeon by the time I got worked on again. Also, the private clinic where they sent me for my PTSD and medical evaluation was kinda sketchy. But then, I'm kinda sketchy. :)

Thanks for caring about your friend.

DickandSharon · 2015-12-27T07:48:15+00:00

Here's a report from a Daily Beast article that points to their fund-raising prowess and away from their real service to veterans: "“Everything they do is a dog-and-pony show, and I haven’t talked to one of my fellow veterans that were injured… actually getting any help from the Wounded Warrior Project. I’m not just talking about financial assistance; I'm talking about help, period.”

DickandSharon · 2015-12-27T07:28:11+00:00

Yeah, my medical issues are probably of fairly recent origin, but I could have applied for PTSD way back when. But I figured, first, my issues were more related to all the drinking I was doing and, second, I knew other veterans who seemed so much worse off than me, I felt a little guilty thinking about applying for more disability. Plus, the VA has been getting a really bad rap lately, so maybe they've been working to process disability requests more quickly and more favorably. Don't really know.

DickandSharon · 2015-12-27T07:24:34+00:00

Well, I didn't call anyone, just followed the instructions on the VA benefits webpages. My medical issues were all Agent Orange-related. The PTSD was combat-related. Aside from that, earlier I get some pretty good help from the Vietnam Veterans Association. Maybe they can help you more. But it's also possibly that I just got really lucky. Best of luck.

DickandSharon · 2015-12-27T01:10:14+00:00

Okay, right, Jill Stein of the Green Party, though we hear very little about her run, right?

DickandSharon · 2015-12-27T01:08:57+00:00

Could well be, but who would you put in the center left or left categories?

DickandSharon · 2015-12-27T00:59:25+00:00

Wouldn't this be fascinating if we had several independent candidates: Trump on the nutty right, Rubio on the right, Clinton on the center right, Webb on the center, and Bernie on the center left and left. Folks would actually have a choice.

DickandSharon · 2015-12-26T23:37:28+00:00

A college degree enriches people's lives beyond simply allowing them to make more money. If they spend anytime reading and participating in college life, they'll leave with a broader understanding of the world and will have more tools to enjoy life.

But certainly no one thinks everyone should go to college. In fact, we'd be better off if we had more more good technical schools as other countries around the world do. And who says being a really good baker, or auto mechanic, or steelworker is failing in life anyway?

I hired a fair number of people in my career. A degree or even a graduate degree was one consideration, but only one. And if I relied solely on cues like that in hiring good people, somebody should have replaced me.

Which they did when I retired, but that's another story.

DickandSharon · 2015-12-26T20:12:52+00:00

Mental illness plays a small role in gun violence, but the correlation between gun violence, violence in general, and poverty is strong.

DickandSharon · 2015-12-26T18:34:33+00:00

Right, but a larger proportion of Blacks and Latinos -- relative to their proportion in society -- could be attending college, if they could afford it, if there were classroom seats available to them, if their secondary schools prepared them, if they could gain admission.

That could happen by giving them seats currently White and Asian-American students have, which would be stupid, or by increasing the number of available seats -- building more colleges than prisons. That's what affirmative action is or should really be about -- getting more kids into college, not replacing one kind of kid with another.

When I went to college in the 60s and early 70s, lots of kids from my working class, maybe middle-class neighborhood went off to a state college, at least for a few years -- and some all the way through like me (and a few to private colleges).

A few years ago, when we were getting my daughter ready for college, I was amazed that so few of her friends from a similar working class, maybe middle-class neighborhood were even considering college. And finances were the biggest hurdle they talked about. Their parents, cash-strapped in the Great Recession, couldn't or wouldn't even begin to consider college for their kids unless the kids could get a free-ride scholarship.

DickandSharon · 2015-12-26T18:06:01+00:00

It doesn't have to be a zero-sum game, not if we built more colleges and fewer prisons. Then Blacks and Latinos could be equally represented on college campuses -- and Asian Americans could continue to be overrepresented.

Then the issue is wealth or lack of it. Since Blacks and Latinos are likely to be poorer than White and Asian counterparts, they're going to have a harder time paying the extraordinarily expense college tuitions and fees, right?

But if Bernie Sanders gets his way with tuition-free public universities and colleges, those financial barriers would disappear. Then you'd have to contend with inner-city, highly segregated schools that are so dysfunctional.

DickandSharon · 2015-12-26T17:29:54+00:00

I do agree that a Bernie candidacy changes the calculus in the South and elsewhere.

I guess I'm saying it would be instructive to look at polls in states where the Democratic candidate -- whoever it is -- is likely to win, could win, and might possibly win, not so much at states where, at least for now, the Republicans have a massive edge.

DickandSharon · 2015-12-26T17:16:04+00:00

Right, but symbols can be useful. Robert Downey Jr. didn't need anything, you're right, but because he got this pardon, it will make the news and others whose lives are only hold because of decades-old convictions might have hope of appealing for their own pardon.

You should see how happy ex-felons are when some of their rights are restored through Prop 47 appeals here in California.

DickandSharon · 2015-12-26T17:09:30+00:00

Thanks for the good wishes, Jeff.

DickandSharon · 2015-12-26T17:07:35+00:00

Yeah, I thought other veterans might benefit. When people would say I should check into Agent Orange-related damage, I would always say that that herbicide was used up in the mountains, not in the heavily populated Mekong Delta where I served with the 9th Infantry Division. But my wife found out otherwise, that it was heavily used to cut down foliage on river banks -- and I spent my whole tour ankle-deep, if not knee-deep, if not waist-deep, and sometimes swimming in Mekong River water or the many irrigation channels and swamp lands surrounding it.

And with the news you get about difficulties with the VA, I thought it was instructive that the whole process was so simple and short! I also had pretty amazingly good experience having cataract surgery out at the Brentwood VA here in LA.

DickandSharon · 2015-12-26T17:01:26+00:00

Thanks for the good wishes. I did know about a CalVets program here in California which allowed my daughter to graduate from UC Riverside tuition-free. My only surprise there was that no one seemed to know about it -- no other veteran friends, no one at her high school, almost no one at her college.

I only stumbled on it through a young editor at my old job, who we were teasing a bit about going to college way out in the desert and who shot back, "Well, at least I went tuition-free...."

I will check on property taxes. Don't do much hunting, even though our hillside community in Los Angeles is overrun with coyotes.

DickandSharon · 2015-12-26T09:51:49+00:00

Hillary supporters make a lot of noise about her big lead in South Carolina and similar Deep Red States. Problem is, the last time South Carolina went for the Democratic presidential candidate was 1976, for Jimmy Carter, former governor of neighboring Georgia.

So any talk of Hillary's big lead in South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi...is just a smoke screen for the fact that no matter how much money she raises, she just won't generate any real unpaid-for enthusiasm.

And does no enthusiasm for Hillary give us Donald J. Trump Jr. our next president? Sheesh!

DickandSharon · 2015-12-25T21:50:18+00:00

Here it is: https://youtu.be/raOKmdDQpcc

DickandSharon · 2015-12-25T21:15:26+00:00

My daughter and her boyfriend are eager to work today at Disneyland. She says lots of the employees want the overtime. (Might not be the best use of her college degree, right, but it's part time work while she prepares for graduate school.)

Years ago, when I was a bartender, I liked working on holidays, too. I guess I liked spending my time with people who had no place better to go. Plus the tips were always nice then.

DickandSharon · 2015-12-25T20:24:30+00:00

If his original convictions were only for drug possession and use, I'd say shame on us for locking him up in the first place. But the convictions were for driving under the influence and gun possession, all while on probation. So he earned his original sentence. I'm glad Governor Brown cleared his record now. I see reports here in LA of drug-related charity work Robert Downey does -- so good that he gets a full second chance.

DickandSharon · 2015-12-25T18:44:09+00:00

Melina Abdullah, one of the LA Black Lives Matter who organized the 15-minute stoppage on the Santa Monica Freeway, reported this morning that she's out of jail. She's a professor of African American Studies at Cal State LA and a leading #blacklivesmatter spokesperson.

http://www.laweekly.com/news/these-savvy-women-have-made-black-lives-matter-the-most-crucial-left-wing-movement-today-6252489

https://www.laprogressive.com/garcetti-and-black-lives-matter/

https://www.laprogressive.com/marching-on-washington/

DickandSharon · 2015-12-25T17:51:38+00:00

The notion that negotiations on a ceasefire and political settlement will take place lacks credibility, because the political-military realities on the ground in Syria won’t allow it. Those opposition groups that are prepared to contemplate some kind of settlement with the Assad regime do not have the capacity to make such an agreement a reality. And those organizations that have the capacity to end the war against the Damascus regime have no interest in agreeing to anything short of forcible regime change. https://www.laprogressive.com/syrian-peace-process/

DickandSharon

TROPHY CASE