Construction issues cause delays for Lake Nona VA Medical Center

Construction issues cause delays for VA Medical Center
Facility slated to open in late 2013
ORLANDO, Fla.

WESH news

Construction delays and design changes have veterans in central Florida waiting on a much-anticipated new Orlando Veterans Administration Medical Center. The VA has promised more scrutiny of the hospital's contractor, but the contractor said it's the VA's design changes that are delaying completion of the project.

Supporters of the project say it is greatly needed because of the growing veteran population in central Florida. When completed, the 300-bed facility and support services will provide care for nearly 500,000 vets who live in central Florida.

The microscope was on contractor Brasfield and Gorrie on Monday.

A U.S. House Subcommittee on Veterans’ Affairs talked to representatives of Brasfield and Gorrie about the future of the new Orlando VA Medical Center in Medical City near Lake Nona. The 65-acre campus was set to open in October, but it could be the end of 2013 before construction is completed.

"They are either going to terminate us, or they're going to work with us," said Jim Gorrie, president and CEO of Brasfield and Gorrie. "You can't just continue down the path we're going."

If construction is completed by the end of 2013, it will be early 2014 before patients needing dialysis or clinic services are seen. Surgeries and overnight stays will be much later, officials said.
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TNT Major Crime was against veterans with PTSD

TNT Major Crime was against veterans with PTSD
by Chaplain Kathie
Wounded Times Blog
August 14, 2012

'Major Crimes' focus could be a major mistake on USA had the right title but not the right mistake.

 The criminals on this opener were, you guessed it, veterans with PTSD!

Reloaded "criminals" this time were from different branches of service and the team had to figure out where they all came together. First it was a gun range, then a game and finally they figured out that they must have all met in treatment. Yes, treatment. The only "thug" to survive was a veteran plus the son of a veteran, coming from a long line of other veterans. The veteran cop/Dad said his son was "doing better" and Provenza started to think "better than what" so he asked the Dad about his son. That's when they figured out the son was not only the mastermind but got the rest of the group killed and when one of them survived, he pulled the trigger on the survivor.

Why is it that James Duff couldn't think of a better way to introduce this spin off? Did he figure he could just take the easy way out and pull some obscure news reports about some veterans with PTSD going bad? He sure didn't put much thought into what it was really like for veterans coming home from endless tours of duty with Combat PTSD more likely to kill themselves than harm anyone else. He didn't think about the fact that while over 2 million have served in the two wars over the last 11 years, there are very few veterans committing "major crimes" against anyone.


In the Closer there were three innocent Army Rangers gunned down coming out of a club.

THE CLOSER “War Zone” Review It started with Brenda going up against the US Army, the FBI, and Pope in order to try to solve the murders of three soldiers just returned from Afghanistan. It turned out to be a case of mistaken identity between twin brothers. How does one brother join the army while the other ends up in a gang? I guess they both “joined up” in their own way, albeit in very different organizations.

This was good because it showed respect and care for the service members but most shows have to tie veterans to crimes they commit, not crimes committed against them.

I loved the Closer, just as I love Criminal Minds. The problem is when they decide to make veterans with PTSD the topic of their shows and end up feeding into the image of a crazed veteran committing crimes and blowing people away.

If you read Wounded Times with any regularity, you know that few commit crimes and if you watch the TV shows with a veteran as the topic, you know how reprehensible it is to know a writer decided they needed a criminal and right away thought of a veteran using PTSD as an excuse. They know about veterans about as much as I know how to fix my car.

Let's put it this way. My check engine light came on and it ended up costing me $90 for diagnostics just because I didn't close the gas cap tight enough!

Orlando 2012 Independence Expo

2012 Independence Expo

August 24, 2012
2:30pm-3:30pm
Veterans and Employment
The men and women who have served in our country’s Armed Forces have been taught to be prepared for any situation. However, the task of finding employment post-active duty can be at times both taunting and overwhelming. During this workshop session, veterans will learn about the importance of Vocational Rehabilitation, the various employment service opportunities in the Central Florida area and where to apply for them, plus the Workers Opportunity Tax Credit.

Presenter: Annie Artis, Disabled Veteran’s Outreach Program Representative (DVOP); Workforce Central Florida; Ms. Artis is also a Veteran who served in the United States Army where she was mobilized during the Persian Gulf War

United Spinal Association is looking for volunteers to assist at our upcoming Independence Expo – Orlando

Friday, August 24th & Saturday, August 25th
Marriott World Center
World Center Drive, Orlando, FL 32821

Debt threatens security clearance for troops

How big debt is threatening security clearances for thousands of troops
By Bill Briggs
NBC News contributor

Nearly 36,000 active-military members who hold security clearances have recently sought urgent financial advice or aid because heavy debts and delinquent bills threatened to void their classified status, according to a nonprofit that helps troops and veterans solve money problems.

“You can lose that security clearance if you have credit or debt issues,” said John E. Pickens III, executive director of VeteransPlus. “If you lose that clearance, you can become un-promotable or you can be taken from your assignment. And, ultimately, you can even receive a bad-conduct discharge.

“If you’re going to be entrusted with national security,” he added, “the military figures you’ve got to at least be able to pay your bills on time.”

Approximately half of America's 2.4 million active duty, National Guard and reserve troops hold some level of security clearance, said Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. James Gregory. Most of those 1.19 million service members possess the second-highest security rating - "secret" - while the next largest portion hold a higher status: TS/SCI, (Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information), he added. The sensitive nature of certain military jobs typically dictate the security classifications.
read more here

Mentally ill at Chesapeake jail face space problem

With this happening and special courts for veterans starting up all over the country has anyone looked into how many combat veterans were already sitting in jail instead of being helped to heal from what combat did to them?

Mentally ill at Chesapeake jail face space problem
By Veronica Gonzalez
The Virginian-Pilot
© August 13, 2012
CHESAPEAKE

Holding nearly 300 inmates with mental health problems presents a daily challenge at the already-overcrowded Chesapeake Correctional Center.

Of that group, about 50 belong in a mental health facility, jail officials say.

The most pressing challenge for this population comes down to space - or lack thereof.

With declining resources to treat the mentally ill and a shift away from institutionalization, the correctional center here - like many Virginia jails - has become a mental health facility by default. And that trend shows no signs of subsiding.

Calls in Chesapeake involving mentally ill subjects have remained steady the past 2-1/2 years. There were 866 in 2010; 853 in 2011; and 535 in the first half of this year.

"Are deputies mental health professionals? Absolutely not," said Col. Jim O'Sullivan, the undersheriff. "We do our best to get these individuals balanced and better acclimated."

But in a facility that consistently hovers at more than twice its capacity, there aren't enough cells to house those with mental health problems.
read more here

Each state has been cutting back on mental healthcare funding leaving many veterans with no help at all, especially when they cannot get help from the VA. How many did we fail by sending them to jail instead of sending them for help?

11th anniversary of complete, utter shame

11th anniversary of complete, utter shame
by Chaplain Kathie
Wounded Times Blog
August 13, 2012

We are heading into the 11th anniversary of complete, utter shame and most Americans don't even know it.

It wasn't September 11th when every defense this nation had failed in 2001. Americans came together in a way they had not united since the last time this nation was attacked in Pearl Harbor.

Our shame began on this day.

Oct 7, 2001 President Bush announces military action in Afghanistan
On this day in 2001, less than a month after al-Qaida terrorists flew commercial jets into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, President George W. Bush announces that American troops are on the offensive in Afghanistan. The goal of Operation Enduring Freedom, as the mission was dubbed, was to stamp out Afghanistan's Islamic fundamentalist Taliban regime, which had aided and abetted al-Qaida and its leader, Osama bin Laden, a Saudi national who lived in the Afghan hills and urged his followers to kill Americans.

This is the result.

For the Week December 29, 2003- January 2, 2004; Scorecard Rating Cases Pending: 351,431, Total Appeals Requiring Adjudicative action 130,791, Percent Pending over 180 Days 24.2%.

With troops in two wars no one planned for the wounded.

"The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, is directly proportional to how they perceive the veterans of earlier wars were treated and appreciated" -- George Washington

In 1776 the Continental Congress sought to encourage enlistments and curtail desertions with the nation’s first pension law. It granted half pay for life in cases of loss of limb or other serious disability. But because the Continental Congress did not have the authority or the money to make pension payments, the actual payments were left to the individual states.

This obligation was carried out in varying degrees by different states. At most, only 3,000 Revolutionary War veterans ever drew any pension. Later, grants of public land were made to those who served to the end of the war.

In 1789, with the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, the first Congress assumed the burden of paying veterans benefits. The first federal pension legislation was passed in 1789. It continued the pension law passed by the Continental Congress.

By 1808 all veterans programs were administered by the Bureau of Pensions under the Secretary of War. Subsequent laws included veterans and dependents of the War of 1812, and extended benefits to dependents and survivors.

There were 2,200 pensioners by 1816. In that year the growing cost of living and a surplus in the Treasury led Congress to raise allowances for all disabled veterans and to grant half-pay pensions for five years to widows and orphans of soldiers of the War of 1812. This term later was lengthened.

A new principle for veterans benefits, providing pensions on the basis of need, was introduced in the 1818 Service Pension Law. The law provided that every person who had served in the War for Independence and was in need of assistance would receive a fixed pension for life. The rate was $20 a month for officers and $8 a month for enlisted men.

Prior to this legislation, pensions were granted only to disabled veterans.

President Lincoln understood this.

“To care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow, and his orphan,” President Lincoln affirmed the government’s obligation to care for those injured during the war and to provide for the families of those who perished on the battlefield.

Civil War Legacy

When the Civil War broke out in 1861, the nation had about 80,000 war veterans. By the end of the war in 1865, another 1.9 million veterans had been added to the rolls. This included only veterans of Union forces. Confederate soldiers received no federal veterans benefits until 1958, when Congress pardoned Confederate servicemembers and extended benefits to the single remaining survivor.

The General Pension Act of 1862 provided disability payments based on rank and degree of disability, and liberalized benefits for widows, children and dependent relatives. The law covered military service in time of peace as well as during the Civil War.

The act included, for the first time, compensation for diseases such as tuberculosis incurred while in service.

Union veterans also were assigned a special priority in the Homestead Act of 1862, which provided Western land at $1.25 an acre.

The year 1862 also marked the establishment of the National Cemetery System, to provide burial for the many Union dead of the Civil War.

The Consolidation Act in 1873 revised pension legislation, paying on the degree of disability rather than the service rank. The Act also began the aid and attendance program, in which a disabled veteran is paid to hire a nurse or housekeeper.

What ended up happening because the care for the wounded was not planned for was veterans living in shame. Oh, we don't like to talk about that fact in polite society. That would ruin our pride as Americans willing to cheer the few, the brave, the defenders of our freedom we feel so justified in celebrating on July 4th every year. To think of the price paid to acquire it is as distasteful as to be reminded of the fact we have not paid it while veterans suffer.

On one hand we try to do the right thing. President Obama made it easier to obtain disability compensation for Agent Orange and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, but on the other hand, there were not enough claims processors, doctors and nurses working for the VA to take care of the veterans already seeking treatment and compensation. The increased staff was too slow to come and too few to make up for the years when more and more disabled veterans were being created in two wars.

We can talk about the backlog of claims and think it is terrible but that is putting it mildly. When they cannot work after being wounded doing their "jobs" in combat, they cannot pay their bills. That brings shame to them as the phone rings and it is yet one more bill collector they have to listen to when no one is listening to them. Shame when they have to go to their mailbox and fear what they will find waiting for them. Then more shame when they have to tell their children they will have to move out of their homes and under the roof that belongs to someone else.


We do a lot of talking about the stigma of PTSD and we try very hard to get them to understand that PTSD is nothing to be ashamed of, but we fail to notice that we bring shame onto them when they have to wait as long as they do without income to pay their bills.

When you think about how many years we have been "taking care" of the veterans in this country, we'd get it right by now but we are not even close.

Now some politicians want to make all of this worse by cutting the VA budget and others want to turn over the VA to private corporations that will make money off our wounded. When 92% of the population of this nation cannot take care of the 8% willing to defend it, we are all to blame for every single veteran waiting for what George Washington said had to be done.

Audit finds Phoenix VA bungled 47% disability claims

Phoenix benefits mishap vexes veterans
Audit finds claims incorrectly processed in 3 disability areas, noted VA agency backlog
by Ken Alltucker
The Republic
Aug. 12, 2012

The federal agency that handles veterans benefits in Phoenix bungled nearly half the temporary-disability, traumatic-brain-injury and herbicide-exposure claims that were examined during a recent audit.

The Veterans Benefits Administration office in Phoenix mishandled 47 percent of the claims in those three areas, according to a limited audit by the agency's inspector general issued last month.

The mishandled claims frustrate veterans who must wait an average of nearly one year before the Phoenix office decides whether they are eligible for compensation. The Phoenix office has a backlog of more than 22,700 claims, with an average wait of 360 days before the cases are decided.

"While the (inspector general) may have found a high error rate in the intentionally limited selection of claims they reviewed, the overall picture of claims processing at the Phoenix (office) is much more positive," the agency's Phoenix office said in a statement.

The highest error rate -- blamed on a computer glitch that has since been fixed -- came from the agency's handling of "100 percent" temporary-disability claims, with 87 percent of those cases incorrectly processed. The local office did not coordinate timely medical evaluations of those veterans.

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Traumatized UK veteran 'let down' by Army

Traumatised Chelmsford veteran 'let down' by Army
Monday, August 13, 2012
Essex Chronicle


AN EX-SOLDIER plagued by flashbacks of war claims the Army has left him high and dry since he left the Force.

Mark Griffiths served a total of 12 years in First Battalion Royal Anglian, including time in Northern Ireland, Afghanistan and Iraq.

But when he was discharged from the Army with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in July, he said he was alienated by his squadron for being "weak" and told he was not going to get a medical pension.

"The Army was my entire life and all I ever wanted to do since I was five-years-old," said Mark, 30, of Pickwick Avenue, Chelmsford.

"After all the years I have given them this is not what you expect to happen. I just get so many flashbacks, violent mood swings, depression – you just cannot sleep. It pretty much takes over your entire life.

"All I hear when I close my eyes is the sound, the loud noises, the screaming. I cannot even explain to you how it sounds."

Mark worked alongside fallen Chelmsford soldier Scott Hardy in Afghanistan. He was just one of his many friends who died in battle.

"Scott was a top bloke, he could talk to anyone and could always make me laugh," he said.

"It was so sad because on our rest and recuperation from Afghanistan he was telling me how he wanted to leave the Army and settle down with his girlfriend and have a family in Chelmsford.

"I found out through an officer casualty report, and it hit me really hard, it was beyond words.

"I have seen so many of my friends die and had to bury them all. There are people in their 80s that will not have been to as many funerals as me."
read more here

8 Marines committed suicide in July

MILITARY: Eight Marine suicides raise year's total to 32
By MARK WALKER

Eight active-duty Marines took their own lives in July, raising the number of troop suicides so far this year to 32 ---- the same number recorded in the Corps in all of 2011.

An additional 12 Marines attempted suicide last month, raising that figure for the year to 113 compared with 163 for all of 2011, according to the latest report from the service's suicide prevention program.

The report doesn't say where the Marine suicides in July took place.

Officials with the suicide prevention program were not available for comment Friday.

The pace of self-inflicted deaths this year is an indication that a variety of outreach and monitoring efforts are not meeting with success.

Bill Rider, a former Marine who counsels current and former Marines through the American Combat Veterans of War organization he founded, said the latest figures are beyond troubling.

"It's horrible," Rider said.
read more here

Collecting donations in Military wear is misleading, vets say

Military wear is misleading, vets say
Aug 11, 2012
Written by
R. Norman Moody
FLORIDA TODAY

Beyond wondering where the donation money goes, by far the biggest complaint lodged against out-of-town organizations’ collecting cash for veterans at local stores is the solicitors’ appearance.

In complaints to FLORIDA TODAY and multiple state agencies, veterans and their advocates say solicitors are dressed to resemble military men and women, when some have never served.

Carolyn Mosely, of Melbourne, filed a formal complaint with the state agency that oversees charities’ fundraising, about the encounter she and her husband had with a collector for Veterans Support Organization outside a local Winn-Dixie. In her letter, Mosely said the young man admitted he was not a veteran, although his dress hinted otherwise.

“He was just dressed like a soldier, and was collecting funds for the organization,” she wrote, adding that she felt it’s “totally misleading, dishonest, and possibly illegal to masquerade as a military person in order to scam the public into donating.”

She went to add, “My husband served 30 years in the USAF, had combat tours in three wars, and I resent anyone impersonating a military man.”
read more here

My husband is with the DAV and I am with the Auxiliary. We go to stores arranged way a head of time for Forget Me Not drives twice a year. It happens all the time. People will come up to the table and tell us they love the DAV and just donated. When we ask them where they were, they said on "such and such street" and gave the money to a man in uniform. When we tell them the DAV does not collect money on the street and we do not put on costumes, they are horrified. They don't like being duped. What they like even less is the fact their money did not go to where they knew it would be put to good use.

The other group keeps changing their name but usually has a sign saying Disabled Veterans Foundation or something like that. People see the words Disabled Veteran and then just assume they are with the DAV.

I strongly suggest that if you are seeing anyone collecting money for veterans on the street or at a store, check to see who they are really with. If you don't know anything about them, get information from them and then look them up to see if they are worthy of your money and trust. If they won't provide you with the information, then go into the store and complain to the manager. Let them know what is going on. Most of the time the store managers just trust them because they have a tax exempt assuming they are on the level.

The above group is yet another problem if they are dressing up like veterans instead of actually being veterans.