From the Friends of Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs:
Advocates Concerned About US Soldiers Discharged For Personality Disorder. In a story run by at least 50 news outlets across the country, the AP reports, “At the height of the Iraq war, the Army routinely dismissed hundreds of soldiers for having a personality disorder when they were more likely suffering from the traumatic stresses of war, discharge data suggests.” And, while under “pressure from Congress and the public, the Army later acknowledged the problem and drastically cut the number of soldiers given the designation,” advocates for veterans “say an unknown number of troops still unfairly bear the stigma of a personality disorder, making them ineligible for military health care and other benefits.” After stating Army officials “deny that soldiers were discharged unfairly,” the AP points out that Chuck Luther, one soldier discharged for having a personality disorder, “says the Veterans Administration agreed to reevaluate him and decided that he suffers from post-traumatic stress syndrome coupled by traumatic brain injury.”
Time to Pay the Piper, says Congress, FDIC to death-profiting insurance companies. Bloomberg Newsreports that the chair of the U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee will investigate” death benefit accounts held for families of fallen US soldiers. After noting that Prudential earns profit on the money held back from death benefit recipients in accounts not guaranteed by the FDIC and pays beneficiaries far less interest than they earn, four Cabinet members have joined members of Congress and VA Sec. Eric Shinseki in calling for an examination or overhaul of the way death benefits are paid to the families of fallen soldiers. In a separate story, Bloomberg News says the FDIC is reviewing whether life insurers misled customers about retained death benefits and has urged companies to clearly disclose that the funds are not guaranteed by the US government.
Iraq War Veteran Says it Straight: “New vets are tired of campaign promises and yellow ribbons. We need politicians on Capitol Hill to take immediate action to truly support Iraq and Afghanistan veterans.” Watch this quick video and find out how a few minutes of your day will complete the first phase of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America’s (www.iava.org) Summer Storm: upgrading the New GI Bill.
Opinion: Overlooked cost of the war: veteran’s benefits. Recent research puts the lifetime cost of benefits for our Iraq and Afghanistan veterans at $663 billion. However, when Congress appropriates money for the war, it doesn’t include the cost of providing post-military health care and disability payments to men and women who risk their lives for the U.S.
A reason for optimism in diagnosing, treating TBI. Studies using new brain-imaging technology have shown that blasts produce a more diffuse pattern of damage, and that brain cells stay inflamed longer after a blast-related concussion than a non-blast concussion.
VA One Of First Federal Agencies To Commit All Recovery Funds. The VA committed the last of its $1.8 billion in Recovery Act funds July 31, one of the first federal agencies to achieve that milestone. VA Sec. Eric Shinseki, said in a recent press release that veterans from “across the nation are benefiting from these Recovery Act funds.”
Iraq Vet Worried VA Appointments Hurt His Job Search. 48-year-old Iraq veteran Julio NajeraJr. has been on unemployment benefits for the last year and a half, but is upfront withprospective employers when he tells them about his military experience and that he has eight or nine appointments each monthwith the Portland, Ore. VA Medical Center – he worries that it’s his biggest hurdle. Najeraknows how some other veterans struggle emotionally, physically and financially with readjusting back to civilian life; they can be vulnerable to becoming homeless.
Green Co. CVSO Goes Full-Time. The Green County Veterans Service Office in Monroe, Wis. has a new head of the office, has separated from the county’s emergency management office and will now receive a larger annual statutory grant for the veterans office.
Vet, Wife Praise Fisher House. According to the WLOX-TV Biloxi, Miss., Fisher Houses “can be found at military bases all around the country,” including Keesler Air Force Base. WLOX noted that veteran Yohan Nilsenand his wife “love the place.” In Wisconsin, veterans efforts to locate a Fisher House on or near the Milwaukee VAMC campus have been met with silence from the Wis. Board of Veterans Affairs, the governing body of the Wis. state Dept. of Veterans Affairs.
Court Watches Out For Veterans. In Michigan, a Veterans Court Helps Service Members. Wisconsin also has veterans treatment courts, which were launched with support from the Wis. Dept. of Veterans Affairs. Under new WDVA Sec. Ken Black, that support has disappeared, and Black’s Executive Assistant Jose Leon
In praise of service dogs for veterans with PTSD. Dogs Trained To Detect, Alleviate Stress In Veterans Returning From War. In April, Wis. Dept. of Veterans Affairs Secretary Ken Black unilaterally banned all dogs from Wisconsin’s veterans homes, including service dogs. Despite initially trying to blame other agencies, Black eventually gave in to overwhelming public and legislative pressure for his bad decision and allowed the dogs back in.
Unintended Consequences for Women Vets are still Real. The creation of health clinics specifically for female veterans at VA hospitals may be having the unintended effect of limiting women’s access to routine medical care. Women may have a harder time than men being seen by their primary care physicians because of a policy that restricts women to being seen only when those physicians rotate through the women’s health clinics.
Anniversary Of Allies’ Victory Over Japan Marked In Europe, Asia. Veterans of World War II marked the 65th anniversary of the Allies’ victory over Japan on Sunday in a solemn ceremony attended by Britain’s Prince Charles and British Prime Minister David Cameron, who were among those who laid wreaths at the Cenotaph war memorial in central London in memory of nearly 30,000 Britons who died in the campaign in Asia, which ended with Japan’s surrender on August 14, 1945. Also on Sunday, according to the AP Asia “paused…to remember Japan’s surrender to the allied forces,” while the left-leaning Japanese prime minister apologized for wreaking suffering on the region and the South Korean president said Tokyo’s remorse was a step in the right direction. The reckoning with history has taken special meaning this year as it comes amid a global effort to realize a world without nuclear weapons, a resolve backed by President Barack Obama. Japan’s conservatives were angered at the apology.
Senate bill for vets’ services includes suicide prevention outreach. Members of both the U.S. House and U.S. Senate have now proposed legislation in hopes of reducing the numbers of suicides among returning veterans. Two initiatives would improve mental health support services for all veterans, as well as provide suicide prevention outreach. In Wisconsin, Wis. Board of Veterans Affairs members killed a proposal to expand outreach staff to reach more Iraq and Afghanistan veterans during biennial budget debates over the Wis. Department of Veterans Affairs two years ago. Those matters have a slim change of resurfacing when the Board debates the next biennial budget at its meetings later this week.
Boring but important. The VA has adopted a standard identifier six weeks ago for all veterans to use in all its systems, including one to build electronic health records that will follow them from enlistment to death. The identifier will apply to the VA’s entire universe of beneficiaries and will support data exchange for a joint project with the Defense Department called the Virtual Lifetime Electronic Record (VLER) for active-duty military personnel and veterans, which President Obama announced in April 2009.
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With his cane, Vietnam vet thwarts would-be robber at Tampa Walgreens
By Shelley Rossetter and Jessica Vander Velde, St. Petersburg, Fla. Times Staff Writers
[Shelley Rossetter | Times]
“A lot of them are my friends,” Clifford Leo Bisek, 69, of Tampa, said of the Walgreens where he often goes to talk or get a paper. Using his cane, he ran off a would-be robber there Wednesday morning.
TAMPA — Clifford Leo Bisek had never raised up his cane in anger.
But on Wednesday morning, the 69-year-old didn’t hesitate.
“I’m a Vietnam veteran,” he said, “and I don’t tolerate garbage.”
He was at the checkout counter at the Walgreens at 2115 E. HillsboroughAve. just before 7 a.m. when a man with a paper bag over his right hand walked in. The man motioned to Bisek to keep quiet, pointed the bag at the clerk and demanded money.
Bisek could not tolerate that.
“A lot of them are my friends there,” he said of the store, which he often visits just to shoot the breeze or pick up a newspaper.
“I took a crack at him and he tried to grab the cane, so I took another crack at him,” he said.
Before the robber could take any money, Bisek chased him out of the store, waving his cane over his head as he ran.
“I missed him by about this much,” he said, holding his fingers an inch apart.
On Wednesday afternoon, he stood outside the Nebraska Avenue motel he has lived in for the past six years, smoking cigarettes and laughing as TV crews seeking interviews with him crowded the parking lot.
“I was just doing what anybody would do,” he said.
Bisek, who has lived in Tampa for about 30 years, spent more than two decades in the military. He did two tours of duty in Vietnam with the Army and later joined the Navy Seabees.
Social workers helped find him a place to live in the motel when he became partially disabled, he said. He blames exposure to Agent Orange during Vietnam.
Tampa police were still looking Wednesday night for the man he chased away. They released video of the foiled robbery and asked the public for help in tracking down the suspect. They describe him as a white or Hispanic man, between 18 and 25 years old, about 5 feet 8 and 150 pounds.
He was last seen wearing blue jeans, dark shoes and a baby blue sleeveless, hooded jacket with a white T-shirt underneath. The jacket had “971” embroidered on the back and a black, vertical stripe on the right side with “WMA” written with white material.
Even though his actions Wednesday morning were pure instinct, Bisek said he wouldn’t think twice about doing it again.
“I don’t back down,” he said as his military dog tags still jangled around his neck
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