Labels: elites, endless war, super-rich, Veterans, Veterans Administration
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posted by profmarcus at
6/15/2012
Dozens of anti-war veterans tossed their medals onto a Chicago street Sunday near where NATO began its two-day summit, calling them “representations of hate,” “lies” and “cheap tokens,” and with some making emotional pleas for forgiveness from the people of Iraq and Afghanistan.
With many dressed in military fatigues, they had filed through the streets in formation, chanting "N-A-T-O, NATO has got to go," and “No NATO, no war, we don't work for you no more,” leading about 2,000 protesters on a 2.5-mile march.
After “retiring” an American flag they carried through the streets and giving it to a woman whose soldier son committed suicide, they began hurtling their war service medals into the air -- a rare form of protest that was last done on a large scale by 900 Vietnam veterans in 1971.
Labels: Chicago, NATO Summit, Veterans, Veterans Administration, Vietnam, war protestors
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
5/21/2012
CREW and VoteVets release email telling VA staff to “refrain from giving a diagnosis of PTSD straight out”
CREW and VoteVets.org released an e-mail obtained from a Veterans Affairs (VA) employee directing VA staff to refrain from diagnosing soldiers and veterans with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
On March 20, 2008 a VA hospital’s PTSD program coordinator sent the e-mail below to a number of VA employees, including psychologists, social workers, and a psychiatrist stating that due to an increased number of “compensation seeking veterans,” the staff should “refrain from giving a diagnosis of PTSD straight out” and they should “R/O [rule out] PTSD” and consider a diagnosis of “Adjustment Disorder” instead:
This week, CREW sent a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the VA asking for all records pertaining to any guidance given regarding the diagnosis of PTSD. The FOIA request can be found here.
Melanie Sloan, executive director of CREW, said today:It is outrageous that the VA is calling on its employees to deliberately misdiagnose returning veterans in an effort to cut costs. Those who have risked their lives serving our country deserve far better. First and foremost, they have a right to expect that they receive diagnoses and treatment based on their symptoms and not on the VA’s budget. The VA should immediately reverse this and any other similar directives.
Jon Soltz, an Iraq War Veteran and Chairman of VoteVets.org, added:This is an issue I take personally. I know of many people who received a diagnosis of ‘Adjustment Disorder,’ who strongly felt they had PTSD, many of whom confirmed that suspicion with an independent diagnosis. Many veterans believe that the government just doesn’t want to pay out the disability that comes along with a PTSD diagnosis, and this revelation will not allay their concerns. It is crucial that we quickly get to the bottom of this, and ensure that misdiagnosing veterans is not part of some cost-cutting policy.
Last month, the RAND Corporation released a report that found that approximately 300,000 U.S. troops are suffering from major depression or post traumatic stress from serving in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and only about half have sought treatment.
Labels: CREW, PTSD, Veterans Administration, Vietnam, VoteVets
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
5/16/2008
Labels: Blackwater, corruption, Dick Cheney, Halliburton, KBR, Lockheed, Robert Gates, U.S. troops, Veterans, Veterans Administration
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
12/21/2007
The glass doors slid apart with a quiet swoosh. Three men walked in, one after the other and lined up behind the log-in desk. They backed away briefly in unison as another man who had just finished maneuvered his electric cart away from the counter with practiced, back-and-forth bursts of motion.
When it came his turn, the third man set down the briefcase containing his laptop computer and files and handed his card to the desk clerk.
After scanning the card, the clerk squinted at his computer screen. "8 o'clock, blood work in the lab. 1 o'clock, Green Team on the 4th floor."
"I was supposed to see the pharmacist at..."
"That was cancelled," the clerk interrupted.
"Yeah, it was cancelled and then it was re-scheduled," the man said, reaching for his appointment sheet.
"Yeah, it was cancelled and then it was cancelled again," the clerk said, dismissively shaking his head.
"Nobody told me," the man muttered, taking his card back from the clerk, slipping it in his shirtfront pocket and turning to walk down the hall to the blood draw area.
"Tonight, President Bush holds his first prime time televised news conference in nearly a year," the television newscaster intoned as the man found a seat in the waiting area.
"I didn't sleep worth shit last night," complained the scrawny man in the brown, knit stocking cap as he leaned over to another man sitting in a wheelchair in front of him who was concentrating on flipping up the footrest with his foot. "How did you sleep?"
"I woke up about 4," the equally scrawny man in the wheelchair said. "I'm really tired of their bullshit here, you know?" he continued. "I'm just not going to cooperate with 'em any more, you know what I mean?"
The first man nodded. "I told my doc, 'This must be as good as it gets 'cause it don't get no better.' Screw it."
"If I had two legs," the man in the wheelchair said over his shoulder to the man in the hat, "I'd get me a horse and the equipment and head into the woods. Only come out when I needed more meds."
A man in a white lab coat appeared in the doorway with a clipboard and started calling names.
"See that guy?" the man in the wheelchair said in a voice meant to be overheard. "He's one of the assholes."
Hearing his name, the man with the briefcase picked it up and headed across the hall, retrieving the card from his shirt pocket and handing it to the lab technician as he went.
"Wait right here," the technician said as he took the card to a computer and ran it under a scanner.
The man leaned against the door jamb, watching as lab technicians scurried to and fro with stoppered tubes full of thick, dark red liquid.
"Take chair number 4, there on your left," the technician said.
The man walked down between the row of stations, put down his case, settled into the chair and pulled the arm rest across in front of him. As he rolled up his sleeve, he watched as a woman tech drew blood from the man across the row.
"It's hard to find a good one on you," the tech said to the man as she rubbed her thumb around on the inside of his elbow, probing for a good vein.
"I've been pricked so many times I'm not surprised," the man chuckled.
"There's one," she said as she slid the needle quickly and carefully under the skin.
"Good for you," he said.
The technician with the clipboard reappeared, laid it on a table with a clatter and walked over to the man with the briefcase.
"Your full name? Your full social? Ok, good," he said. "You from Colorado?"
"You recognize the first three numbers, I see," the man said. "Yeah, I'm from Colorado. You too?"
"Nah, but I see so many I start to recognize where they're from. Now that this state's grown so much, they've added some numbers and I'm not sure I know about Nevada any more."
"Yeah, I've got a head full of trivia myself," the man said. "Area codes, zip codes."
The technician laughed and nodded vigorously, obviously pleased to meet another collector of odd information.
"I've expanded, though" the man said. "Country codes."
"Wow," the technician exclaimed in unconcealed admiration. "Country codes. Never thought of that." He paused as he wrapped a blue elastic pressure strip around the man's arm and over the small ball of cotton he had placed stragetically over the tiny puncture. "Well, there you go. You have a good day, sir," he said.
"You too," the man said as he lifted his jacket and briefcase off the floor. He looked at his watch. "Hmmm. 8:30," he thought to himself, "and I should probably be back by 12:30. I wonder what time Borders opens. Oh, well. Starbucks has wi-fi and they're right there too."
Labels: Veterans Administration, Veterans Day
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
11/12/2007
We are first among western industrialized nations when it comes to percentage of children living below the poverty line, murders of males between ages fifteen and twenty-four, in the number of handguns in the street used by people of all ages, the percentage of citizens incarcerated, energy consumption per capita, and in the emissions of air pollutants.
And, we are by far number one in the rate of people gunned down each year in street crimes and similar violent incidents. In America today, there are more African-American adult males in jail than in college.
There is an employee/insurance deal in the U.S. that includes unlimited doctor office visits of your choosing; covers all accidents, routine exams, physical therapy, labs and X-rays; and the like; unlimited hospital visits and stays; certain chronic care and rehab; full prescription coverage; and unlimited specialty consultations. For the employee and the entire family. There are no deductibles, no co-pays, and only a $35 monthly fee taken from an annual salary of $158 thou. Thirty-five dollars!
The group awarded this insurance looks forward to a full pension and continued coverage until their deaths. Quite a few, most in fact, were millionaires before they took on their jobs that got them such a perk. Who gets this coverage? It would be nice if it were the underprivileged or the chronically ill and debilitated or our veterans.
But no. For starters, the 535 members of the U.S. Congress, and add to that the few hundred in the upper executive and judicial branches of government. They are also members of a demographic group where seven were arrested for shoplifting, nineteen for writing bad checks, and eighty-four for drunk driving. This bunch also has an overrepresentation of felony indictments, and a few ended up serving time.
Labels: Congress, G8, health care, health insurance, Veterans Administration
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
7/12/2007
More than four years into the war, the government has little information on suicides among Iraq war veterans.
"We don’t keep that data," said Karen Fedele, a VA spokeswoman in Washington. "I’m told that somebody here is going to do an analysis, but there just is nothing right now."
The Defense Department does track suicides, but only among troops in combat operations such as Iraq and Afghanistan and in surrounding areas. Since the war started four years ago, 107 suicides during Iraq operations have been recorded by the Defense Manpower Data Center, which collects data for the Pentagon. That number, however, usually does not include troops who return home from the war zone and then take their lives.
Labels: Iraq, Iraq war veterans, Pentagon, suicides, Veterans Administration, Vietnam
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
5/29/2007
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