Bills would help low-income vets on VA pensions
By Rick Maze - Staff writer
Posted : Friday Jul 9, 2010 12:24:20 EDT
A Navy veteran whose VA pension was canceled because he received an insurance settlement after he and his service dog were hit by a truck is the poster child for legislation to change eligibility rules regarding pensions for low-income veterans.
Kerry Scriber of West Palm Beach, Fla., said in an interview that he and his dog were injured and his VA-provided wheelchair damaged when he was struck while crossing the street in March 2008. Scriber, a former petty officer second class who served from 1974 to 1979, said the dog received minor injuries and quickly recovered, but he suffered broken bones in his face and pelvis. The wheelchair he needed to get around because of his muscular dystrophy was destroyed.
Scriber said he received two checks from the driver’s insurance company, one covering the cost of the wheelchair and a second for $10,000 that covered pain and suffering and miscellaneous expenses.
He turned over the check for the wheelchair to the Veterans Affairs Department, which provided him with another chair. He also reported receiving the $10,000 settlement, as he was required to do as a recipient of a pension provided to low-income veterans. Although his disability is not connected to his military service, he was receiving the pension because he is totally disabled and his income was less than $11,000 a year.
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Bills would help low income vets on VA pensions
Friday, July 9, 2010
Fort Lee jump site inspected following death of Pvt. Anthony R. Milo
Fort Lee jump site inspected following death
The Associated Press
Posted : Friday Jul 9, 2010 10:42:42 EDT
PETERSBURG, Va. — A team of Army investigators is inspecting a parachute jump training site at Fort Lee where a 24-year-old private was killed during a practice jump.
Pvt. Anthony R. Milo died in March when the Colorado native became tangled in power lines after jumping from a Black Hawk helicopter.
The Petersburg-area base suspended training at the drop zone after the death and shifted its activities to Fort Pickett.
Fort Lee officials and a team from Fort Benning, Ga., are evaluating the site.
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2010/07/ap_lee_parachute_death_070910/
The Associated Press
Posted : Friday Jul 9, 2010 10:42:42 EDT
PETERSBURG, Va. — A team of Army investigators is inspecting a parachute jump training site at Fort Lee where a 24-year-old private was killed during a practice jump.
Pvt. Anthony R. Milo died in March when the Colorado native became tangled in power lines after jumping from a Black Hawk helicopter.
The Petersburg-area base suspended training at the drop zone after the death and shifted its activities to Fort Pickett.
Fort Lee officials and a team from Fort Benning, Ga., are evaluating the site.
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2010/07/ap_lee_parachute_death_070910/
Call Congress Today - Our Veterans Need Treatment
You've read the reports on burn pits on this blog since they were first reported. You know how serious this is. You've read about Gulf War veterans suffering and waiting for help. If you didn't care about these issues, didn't care about our veterans, you wouldn't be reading this blog. Since you care so much, please do what you can to help by making the calls to help our veterans.
Call Congress Today - Our Veterans Need Treatment !
Issue: Call Congress and voice your support for full funding for the Gulf War illness research program of the Department of Defense. The military program is called the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program, or CDMRP. Veterans for Common Sense urges funding at the full $25 million level.
Background: Earlier this year, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) recognized the chronic multisymptom illness suffered by 250,000 Gulf War veterans due are to toxic exposures during Desert Shield and Desert Storm. The Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illness (RAC) reached the same scientific conclusion in 2008. The IOM and RAC support research programs to develop treatments and hopefully preventions for both our veterans and our troops deployed overseas now.
Why is this important? Many of these toxic exposures exist today. By calling both the Washington and local offices of the senior Democratic and Republican members of the Appropriations Subcommittee deciding CPMR funding, you let them know that this illness is a huge problem suffered by real people who served our country.
You've heard of the Iraq War Burn Pits? We can't let another generation of veterans wait a decade for medical care. Tell Congress to do the right thing for our veterans so we can have medical treatments for toxic exposures.
Who do I call? Please call two important Congressmen who will decide if Gulf War, Afghanistan War, and Iraq War veterans get the research and treatment they urgently need.
1. Chairman Norm Dicks, Washington, DC 202-225-5916; Tacoma, WA 253-593-6536.
2. Congressman Bill Young, ranking member, Washington 202-225-5961; St. Petersburg, FL 727-893-3191.
Thank you for calling today !
Veterans For Common Sense
Agent Orange still killing veterans
Shelia over at www.agentorangequiltoftears.com sent this
Sailors suffer illness, disability as VA denies Agent Orange benefits to an entire class of Vietnam veterans.
By Ken Olsen
Sailors suffer illness, disability as VA denies Agent Orange benefits to an entire class of Vietnam veterans.
Robert Ross heard the low-flying plane heading his direction as he stood on the signal bridge of USS Vega on a late-summer day in 1966. Bathed in Southeast Asian sunshine, he was listening to Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons when he looked up just in time to get a face full of spray.
“The officer on deck was panicking,” Ross recalls. “They hollered, ‘Everybody inside! Agent Orange!’ But it was too late.”
Forty-three years later, time is running out for Ross and tens of thousands of other sailors suffering from various cancers, Parkinson’s disease, diabetes and heart conditions caused by Agent Orange exposure during the Vietnam War. For nearly a decade, VA, acting on a Bush administration directive and a punitive court decision, has severed their benefits or denied their claims. Under these new VA rules, so-called “Blue Water” and “Blue Sky” veterans are deemed not to have suffered any ill effects from the millions of gallons of toxic defoliant spread across the jungles during the war, regardless of any contact they may have had with it. The government’s rationale: they did not set foot on land or couldn’t meet VA’s stringent requirements for proof that they were exposed.
read more here
Blue Water Battle
Are veterans being discriminated over PTSD or just because they are veterans?
This would be easy to consider as a factor behind the high rate of unemployment with combat veterans, if there has not been a long history of it. When Vietnam veterans came home, work was hard to come by. Employers hired non-veterans over Vietnam veterans all the time and when they did hire a veteran, they were usually lousy jobs beneath what they would have been hired for without being deployed. PTSD was not even discussed until 1978 and not even acknowledged until the 80's by the VA.
Honestly when we consider the fact there are only 23 million veterans left in this nation and even less combat veterans, the simple fact is, they are an unprotected minority. Few employers even consider veteran's status when hiring. Maybe in the back of the mind of the HR interviewers they could be thinking about PTSD but considering how few in this country even know what PTSD is, that is highly unlikely.
Employers look for education and training but they do not consider how these men and women have been trained to do whatever it takes to get the job done, to think fast on their feet, to be mission focused and know what it is like to work as a team to get the job done. They don't consider they are used to working in unpleasant working conditions, long hours, lousy food and little sleep. While they are usually readily hired for law enforcement and fire departments, few other employers understand how much the veterans can bring to the company along with loyalty.
When it comes to hiring a veteran, employers just don't know what they're missing.
Honestly when we consider the fact there are only 23 million veterans left in this nation and even less combat veterans, the simple fact is, they are an unprotected minority. Few employers even consider veteran's status when hiring. Maybe in the back of the mind of the HR interviewers they could be thinking about PTSD but considering how few in this country even know what PTSD is, that is highly unlikely.
Employers look for education and training but they do not consider how these men and women have been trained to do whatever it takes to get the job done, to think fast on their feet, to be mission focused and know what it is like to work as a team to get the job done. They don't consider they are used to working in unpleasant working conditions, long hours, lousy food and little sleep. While they are usually readily hired for law enforcement and fire departments, few other employers understand how much the veterans can bring to the company along with loyalty.
When it comes to hiring a veteran, employers just don't know what they're missing.
Vets Discriminated Against Over PTSD?
Some Say Employers May Assume Vets Have PTSD
BALTIMORE -- Some Marylanders have said there's invisible discrimination over post traumatic stress disorder that may be keeping veterans -- even those who don't have the illness -- from getting hired.
PTSD is an emotional illness that can follow combat duty or any life-threatening event.
Richard Day calls himself mentally wounded after having lived with PTSD for nearly 30 years.
"I've had a panic attack on a bus, and people are trying to talk to me and I can't relate to them because I feel I am trying to keep myself alive," Day said.
read more here
Vets Discriminated Against Over PTSD
Maine Armed Veteran Shot Dead at VA Hospital
The question not addressed in this report is, why he did it.
Maine Armed Veteran Shot Dead
By: Rob Adams
Staff Writer
Published: Jul 8, 2010
Armed man with a veteran license place is shot dead.
Armed veteran shot dead by police at the entrance of a VA hospital in Maine. Police shot and killed the armed veteran after he refused to drop his weapon. The veteran was armed and opened fire from the woods near the hospital where police fired back and shot the man.
A witness stated that officers fired on a man armed with what looked like a rifle.
He says about eight shots were fired, and the man fell to the ground in the woods.
The victim's name has not been released, but officials say he was not a resident or a member of the VA hospital staff.
read more here
Maine Armed Veteran Shot Dead
Missing in America making sure veterans have military funerals
Non-profit identifies, buries veterans' remains
By Judy Keen, USA TODAY
HIGGINSVILLE, Mo. — Gervis and Mary Adney were finally laid to rest in the Missouri Veterans Cemetery on a cloudless morning. A bagpiper played Amazing Grace, a bugler played taps and a three-shot volley echoed across the hills.
Since Mary Adney's death in 1992 and her husband's in 1989, their cremated remains had been in a funeral home's storage facility, unclaimed. He had served in the Army in World War I. The Missing in America Project, a national non-profit organization that locates, identifies and inters veterans' cremains, researched the dates of her birth and death and helped ensure that both received belated military burials.
In all, 16 veterans and two spouses, including Mary and Gervis, were honored in a single ceremony and interred here. Their cremains had all been in storage, sometimes for decades. A Missouri law proposed by the Missing in America Project and passed last year made it possible for them to be laid to rest. The law eliminated liability for funeral homes that turn over veterans' ashes that have been abandoned for at least a year to veterans' service groups.
"They are home now," said Higginsville cemetery director Jess Rasmussen at the brief service, which was not attended by relatives of any of the 18 deceased. "They're not forgotten anymore on a dusty shelf."
read more here
Non profit identifies buries veterans remains
By Judy Keen, USA TODAY
HIGGINSVILLE, Mo. — Gervis and Mary Adney were finally laid to rest in the Missouri Veterans Cemetery on a cloudless morning. A bagpiper played Amazing Grace, a bugler played taps and a three-shot volley echoed across the hills.
Since Mary Adney's death in 1992 and her husband's in 1989, their cremated remains had been in a funeral home's storage facility, unclaimed. He had served in the Army in World War I. The Missing in America Project, a national non-profit organization that locates, identifies and inters veterans' cremains, researched the dates of her birth and death and helped ensure that both received belated military burials.
In all, 16 veterans and two spouses, including Mary and Gervis, were honored in a single ceremony and interred here. Their cremains had all been in storage, sometimes for decades. A Missouri law proposed by the Missing in America Project and passed last year made it possible for them to be laid to rest. The law eliminated liability for funeral homes that turn over veterans' ashes that have been abandoned for at least a year to veterans' service groups.
"They are home now," said Higginsville cemetery director Jess Rasmussen at the brief service, which was not attended by relatives of any of the 18 deceased. "They're not forgotten anymore on a dusty shelf."
read more here
Non profit identifies buries veterans remains
Service for Marine 'rights a wrong' for family
Service for Marine 'rights a wrong' for family
By Jim McNally
Statesville R&L
Published: July 8, 2010
Next to his family and his country, Tommy Padgett loved the Marine Corps more than anything on earth.
"The Marines were everything to him," said his son, Thomas Padgett.
"And being a Marine," added Thomas' wife Amy, "just meant the world to him. He loved his country and he loved fighting for his country."
Indeed, Padgett pulled three tours of combat duty in Vietnam. And then, long after he retired from the Marine Corps, the former master gunnery sergeant requested to be placed back on active duty status after the terrorist events of Sept. 11, 2001, occurred.
"He was nearly 70 years old then," Thomas recalled. "But he still wanted to serve. They sent him a letter telling him he was too old."
But when Tommy Padgett died of natural causes two years ago in Mississippi, those who knew him best, and knew how profoundly Tommy Padgett's definition of himself was intertwined with the U.S. Marine Corps, were not able to make that fact clear enough to those overseeing his funeral.
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Service for Marine rights a wrong for family
By Jim McNally
Statesville R&L
Published: July 8, 2010
Next to his family and his country, Tommy Padgett loved the Marine Corps more than anything on earth.
"The Marines were everything to him," said his son, Thomas Padgett.
"And being a Marine," added Thomas' wife Amy, "just meant the world to him. He loved his country and he loved fighting for his country."
Indeed, Padgett pulled three tours of combat duty in Vietnam. And then, long after he retired from the Marine Corps, the former master gunnery sergeant requested to be placed back on active duty status after the terrorist events of Sept. 11, 2001, occurred.
"He was nearly 70 years old then," Thomas recalled. "But he still wanted to serve. They sent him a letter telling him he was too old."
But when Tommy Padgett died of natural causes two years ago in Mississippi, those who knew him best, and knew how profoundly Tommy Padgett's definition of himself was intertwined with the U.S. Marine Corps, were not able to make that fact clear enough to those overseeing his funeral.
go here for more
Service for Marine rights a wrong for family
New DNA evidence may exonerate Dad of murdered girl
Marine investigated in Ill. killings: Report
An ex-Marine charged in the brutal rape of a woman in Prince William County has been linked by DNA evidence to the 2005 deaths of two girls in Zion, Ill, the man's sister told the Chicago Tribune.
Jorge "George" Torrez is accused in the Feb. 27 attack on two women in northern Virginia, during which he allegedly raped and beat one of the victims within an inch of her life.
According to Sara Torrez, Jorge Torrez’s DNA has been matched with evidence found on one of the bodies of two girls -- Laura Hobbs, 8, and Krystal Tobias, 9 – who were found beaten and stabbed to death in a park in Zion, a city about 50 miles north of Chicago. Torrez is from Zion.
An Illinois state's attorney quoted by the Tribune would not confirm that Torrez's DNA was found on evidence connected to the killings.
The new evidence could mean exoneration for Laura’s father Jerry Hobbs, who has been held for five years after a confession he says was coerced by police, the Tribune reported.
read more here
Marine investigated in Ill killings
An ex-Marine charged in the brutal rape of a woman in Prince William County has been linked by DNA evidence to the 2005 deaths of two girls in Zion, Ill, the man's sister told the Chicago Tribune.
Jorge "George" Torrez is accused in the Feb. 27 attack on two women in northern Virginia, during which he allegedly raped and beat one of the victims within an inch of her life.
According to Sara Torrez, Jorge Torrez’s DNA has been matched with evidence found on one of the bodies of two girls -- Laura Hobbs, 8, and Krystal Tobias, 9 – who were found beaten and stabbed to death in a park in Zion, a city about 50 miles north of Chicago. Torrez is from Zion.
An Illinois state's attorney quoted by the Tribune would not confirm that Torrez's DNA was found on evidence connected to the killings.
The new evidence could mean exoneration for Laura’s father Jerry Hobbs, who has been held for five years after a confession he says was coerced by police, the Tribune reported.
read more here
Marine investigated in Ill killings
50 troops wounded in Iraq, Afghanistan gather in Concord firehouse
50 troops wounded in Iraq, Afghanistan gather in Concord firehouse
Vincent Barone
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Injured servicemen and women from the Walter Reed Medical Center came to Rescue Co. 5 and Engine 160's fire house today to kickoff this year's weekend stay at Breezy Point, Queens.
One hundred family members, firefighters and police officers came to welcome the troops, some of whom used wheelchairs, others with prosthetic arms or legs.
"All these guys at Rescue 5 and Engine 160 do a great job," said Acting Staten Island Borough Commander Michael Marrone. "We consider it an honor -- to show our appreciation to the troops."
Many of the troops came from all over the country and have never been to New York. At the fire house they were treated to Staten Island pizza and sandwich heroes, but most of all, to their loved ones' support.
After their luncheon at the firehouse, police vehicles and fire trucks escorted the troops on a parade down the Belt Parkway to Rockaway Beach, where they will spend a weekend with citizens of Breezy Point who have opened their homes to the troops.
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Concord firehouse
Vincent Barone
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Injured servicemen and women from the Walter Reed Medical Center came to Rescue Co. 5 and Engine 160's fire house today to kickoff this year's weekend stay at Breezy Point, Queens.
One hundred family members, firefighters and police officers came to welcome the troops, some of whom used wheelchairs, others with prosthetic arms or legs.
"All these guys at Rescue 5 and Engine 160 do a great job," said Acting Staten Island Borough Commander Michael Marrone. "We consider it an honor -- to show our appreciation to the troops."
Many of the troops came from all over the country and have never been to New York. At the fire house they were treated to Staten Island pizza and sandwich heroes, but most of all, to their loved ones' support.
After their luncheon at the firehouse, police vehicles and fire trucks escorted the troops on a parade down the Belt Parkway to Rockaway Beach, where they will spend a weekend with citizens of Breezy Point who have opened their homes to the troops.
go here for more
Concord firehouse
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