Monthly Archives: May 2010

A team of exceptional athletes, many of whom are wounded Iraq and Afghanistan veterans representing all military branches, will depart from the Golden Gate Bridge on Saturday, May 22 for World T.E.A.M. Sports’ inaugural bike trek across America called Sea to Shining Sea. The goal of Sea to Shining Sea is to honor the courage of our service men and women, recognize the strength of the American spirit and challenge perceptions of how we view athletes. The ride will conclude in Virginia Beach on July 24.

By Simon Johnson In today’s Financial Times, Peter Boone and I have an op-ed with proposals for reforming how the eurozone operates.  The current arrangements...

Like any good novelist, Orwell tells a story and he makes it real. For that sheltered portion of humankind who have had the fortune of growing up without the threat of being arrested and tortured for daring to disagree with their inept leaders, the book provides a vicarious experience without which we are left vulnerable to a disease we know nothing about. But while the creation of a literary world can teach us many things, it cannot provide a way out. For that we need accurate knowledge.

No. 374-10 -------------------------------- CONTRACTS: ARMY                 Mission Essential Personnel, Columbus, Ohio, was awarded on May 7 a $679,000,000 indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity with cost-plus-award fee contract.  This contract action seeks...

Each day I receive emails from Veterans looking for opportunities that make cents. We are always keeping a look out for ways to help empower our Veterans. To me, it's great responsibility to make sure that we bring our readers the very best opportunities that can really produce so I am always skeptical yet mindful not to lose sight of real opportunities that make cents.

Shell shock, battle fatigue, operational exhaustion, and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder are all reiterations of the same condition which has been scientifically recognized since World War I. The issue itself may not be new, but we are only now realizing the extent of its influence. A recent explosion of such cases has many worried that not enough resources exist to help the returning heroes.

In this centennial year of her death, nurses around the world recognize Florence nightingale as the founder of modern nursing and as a visionary who emphasized that nursing practice should be measured by outcomes through evidence-based practice and that nurses should be “educated,” not “trained.”

Regional stories on veterans' health, education and other benefits and issues today from Camden, New Jersey, Louisville, Kentucky, Sacramento, California, Anchorage, Alaska, Kittery, Maine, Salt Lake City, Utah, Steamboat Springs, Colorado, Gilmer, Texas, Roanoke, Virginia, and Urbana, Illinois.

NARCO NEXUS MAY BE MANAGING TERROR WAR By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor First we are told opium and heroin are financing world terrorism, then General...

Does the appearance in Times Square of a Muslim Evil Doer credibly reinforce the need for the U.S. to lead a Global War on Terrorism? Or was the Fizzler a “patsy”—a pawn—deployed to freshen up a stale storyline and revive a flagging geopolitical narrative?

VCS Responds to AP: PTSD is Real, PTSD Fraud is Not Written by VCS - Republished on VT by permission from Veterans for Common Sense....

Warring against waste, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Saturday he is ordering a top-to-bottom paring of the military bureaucracy in search of at least $10 billion in annual savings needed to prevent an erosion of U.S. combat power. He took aim at what he called a bloated bureaucracy, wasteful business practices and too many generals and admirals, and outlined an ambitious plan for reform that's almost certain to stir opposition in the corridors of Congress and Pentagon.

The energy company BP has said that its efforts to contain an oil spill from a broken well deep in the Gulf of Mexico using a 100-tonne steel-and-concrete box have not succeeded so far. Ice-like crystals encrusted the walls of the box on Saturday, forcing crews to repeal their attempts to stop the leak, BP said.

* By Dennis Yohnka The Daily Journal * While Memorial Day and Veterans Day show no signs of being forgotten, VE Day (Victory in Europe)...

Regional stories on veterans' health, education and other benefits and issues today from Amarillo, Texas, Cincinnati, Ohio, Hagerstown, Maryland, Rockford, Illinois, Durant, Oklahoma, Lakeland, Florida, Panama City, Florida, Dayton, Ohio, Kankakee, Illinois, and Lebanon, Oregon.

Marine veteran remembers Parris Island senior drill instructor who was awarded the Navy Cross with the 1st Battalion, 9th Marines (the “Walking Dead”) in...

Walter J. Hickel, twice Alaska's governor and an Interior secretary fired by President Richard Nixon after objecting to the treatment of Vietnam War protesters, died Friday. He was 90. Hickel died of natural causes at Horizon House, an assisted living facility in Anchorage, according to longtime Hickel assistant Malcolm Roberts. Hickel was dismissed from his Interior post in late 1970, several months after he wrote Nixon a letter critical of the president's handling of student protests following the National Guard shootings at Kent State and the U.S. invasion of Cambodia.

Sixty-five years after the May 8, 1945, liberation of the Ebensee concentration camp in Austria, the images remain fresh in Heslop's mind. Even if they were not, they have been secured, for posterity, in his photographs.

Regional stories on veterans' health, education and other benefits and issues today from Demopolis, Alabama, Palo Alto, California, Cape Cod, Massachusetts, Bristol, Tennessee, Pleasanton, California, Fort Campbell, Kentucky, Columbus, Ohio, Vinton, Iowa, Cape Coral, Florida, and Saginaw, Michigan.

The folks at Veterans for Common Sense (VCS) are at odds with reporters at the Associated Press on what frankly should have been an...

No. 367-10 ----------------------------------------- CONTRACTS: ARMY                  AM General, LLC, South Bend, Ind., was awarded on May 5 a $54,264,735 firm-fixed-price contract to add 500 Humvees to contract....

Diversey invites Military Veterans to a welcoming yet challenging environment in which you can achieve your full potential. By Randy Miller Diversey is leading the world...

Diversey invites Military Veterans to a welcoming yet challenging environment in which you can achieve your full potential. By Randy Miller Diversey is leading the world...

VA has shown that health information technology provides improved quality of health care and substantial cost savings, according to a study in the public health journal Health Affairs. The use of technology lowered costs while producing improvements in quality, safety and patient satisfaction. The study covered a 10-year period between 1997 and 2007 and found that VA’s health IT investment during the period was $4 billion, while savings were more than $7 billion.

Regional stories on veterans' health, education and other benefits and issues today from

It was the vacation of a lifetime for Arthur and Jean Duperrault and their three kids, a week of fun in the sun on a chartered yacht in the Bahamas. But it was a voyage only one of them would survive, the others killed by the boat’s captain in a bloody spree. Terry Jo Duperrault was the middle child, an 11-year-old girl sandwiched between older brother Brian, 14, and her little sister, Rene, 7. She was also the survivor.

Yikes. Markets Plunge, Then Stage a Rebound By CHRISTINE HAUSER For a short time Thursday afternoon, Wall Street returned to the tumultuous days of 2008. In a...

No. 363-10 -----------------------------------------------  CONTRACTS: NAVY                 United Technologies Corp., Pratt & Whitney Military Engines, East Hartford, Conn., is being awarded an advance acquisition contract with an estimated...

A new GAO report found the Taliban remain a resilient fighting force and suggested many factors remain in place that will allow the Taliban to survive U.S. efforts to eradicate them, McClatchy reports. The GAO, citing an official from U.S Central Command, said the Taliban are proving resilient as a result of several factors, including "the porous nature of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region, the ineffective nature of governance and services in various parts of Afghanistan, assistance from militant groups out of Pakistan and Afghanistan, and continued financial support in the form of narcotics trafficking revenue and funds from outside of the region."

Cleanup workers may be at risk from the health effects of exposure to toxins from crude oil which include benzene, a known carcinogen. (SALEM, OR)...

Last Thursday, BP began putting more than 100,000 gallons of chemicals into the Gulf of Mexico to disperse some of the hundreds of thousands -- if not millions -- of gallons of petroleum its undersea volcano of oil has gushed so far. Chemically dispersing oil spills "solves the political problem of visible oil but not the environmental problem," Robert Brulle, a 20-year Coast Guard veteran and an affiliate professor of public health at Drexel University, told me. These dispersants "do not actually reduce the total amount of oil entering the environment," as a 2005 National Academy of Sciences report on the subject put it.

* By Jeff Testerman and John Martin, St. Petersburg Times * Tampa, Florida - The story of Cmdr. Howard Bonifacio and the missing officers of...

The President's Cancer Panel on Thursday reported that "the true burden of environmentally induced cancers has been grossly underestimated" and strongly urged action to reduce people's widespread exposure to carcinogens. The panel advised President Obama "to use the power of your office to remove the carcinogens and other toxins from our food, water, and air that needlessly increase health care costs, cripple our nation's productivity, and devastate American lives."

For three years The Nation has been reporting on military doctors' fraudulent use of personality disorder to discharge wounded soldiers [see Kors, "How Specialist Town Lost His Benefits," April 9, 2007]. PD is a severe mental illness that emerges during childhood and is listed in military regulations as a pre-existing condition, not a result of combat. Thus those who are discharged with PD are denied a lifetime of disability benefits, which the military is required to provide to soldiers wounded during service. Soldiers discharged with PD are also denied long-term medical care. And they have to give back a slice of their re-enlistment bonus. That amount is often larger than the soldier's final paycheck. As a result, on the day of their discharge, many injured vets learn that they owe the Army several thousand dollars.

 (MINNEAPOLIS, MN) - John Uldrich, an El Toro Marine veteran, has a 100 percent plus disability rating. But for all intents and purposes, it...

National Nurses Week (May 6-12) reminds us of the important contributions made every day by VA nurses. Talented VA nurses meet Veterans’ needs with compassion and skill in a time of rapid changes in technology, knowledge, and approaches to health care. This year’s Nurses Week theme, Nurses: Caring Today for a Healthier Tomorrow describes the excellence and the mission of more than 77,000 VA nursing staff, across the Veterans Health Administration (VHA).

Regional stories on veterans' health, education and other benefits and issues today from Conroe, Texas, Shreveport, Louisiana, Hillsboro, Illinois, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, Yakima, Washington, Mason City, Iowa, Las Vegas, Nevada, Yakima, Washington, Bristol, Connecticut, and Amarillo, Texas.

During her yearlong tour of duty in Iraq Maj. Elizabeth A. Condon saw all manner of horror and heartbreak, from dead bodies in the street and memorials for fallen friends to “little babies with holes in their backs.” But it was a moment of tenderness, she said, that stuck with her most. It happened when she was helping to care for a young Iraqi woman, whose belly had been left ripped open and infected from an amateur cesarean.

by Peter Gorenstein in TechTicker: Even a cynic can find Washington's hypocrisy shocking at times. The Wall Street Journal reports a House bill that...

The news these days is largely about the financial reform bill on the floor of the Senate. I think you know my opinion about...

No. 360-10 -------------------------------------- CONTRACTS: AIR FORCE                 Raytheon Co., Tucson, Ariz., was awarded a $96,744,354 contract which will provide miniature air launched decoy low rate initial production...

Theodore Roosevelt wanted a war, and almost any war would do. In 1886, when he was a 27-year-old gentleman rancher in the Dakota Territory, he proposed raising "some companies of horse riflemen out here in the event of trouble with Mexico." He wrote his friend Congressman Henry Cabot Lodge: "Will you telegraph me at once if war becomes inevitable?" In 1889, while agitating for military "preparedness," he wrote British diplomat Cecil Spring-Rice: "Frankly, I don't know if I should be sorry to see a bit of a spar with Germany; the burning of New York and a few other seacoast cities would be a good object lesson on the need of an adequate system of coastal defenses." Roosevelt loved hyperbole, but he was apparently serious. He wrote Spring-Rice, "While we would have to take some awful blows at first, I think in the end we would worry the Kaiser a little." A few years later, in 1894, he wrote a family friend, Bob Ferguson, that he longed for "a general national buccaneering expedition to drive the Spanish out of Cuba, the English out of Canada."