Almost 1,000 conferences held by VA in two and a half years

According to the National Center for Veterans Analysis and Statistics April release there were 317,629 VA paid employees, 152 hospitals, 812 community outreach centers, and 300 veteran centers. There are 3.42 million veterans receiving VA compensation with 338,658 rated 100% disabled as of March 31, 2012.

There are 22,234,000 veterans in this country and according to recent reports less than half of the veterans needing help for PTSD go to the VA for help and then we have the backlog of claims. With these numbers in mind, consider the following and understand what a huge waste of money this was.

VA HELD NEARLY 1,000 CONFERENCES DURING THE PAST TWO AND A HALF YEARS
By Bob Brewin
Nextgov

The Veterans Affairs Department held 948 conferences -- about one per day -- attended by 50 or more employees between January 2009 and June 2012, according to a contract notice posted Friday on the Federal Business Opportunities website seeking outside help analyzing the department’s conference planning and spending practices after VA Secretary Eric Shinseki ordered a comprehensive review.

In an Aug. 16 letter to Shinseki, Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, pointed out that W. Todd Grams, the department’s chief financial officer, disclosed at a Nov. 15, 2011, hearing that VA’s conference spending totaled “a little more than $100 million” in fiscal 2011 and $92 million in 2009.

The House Veterans Affairs Committee disclosed Friday that VA spent $5.3 million on two conferences in Orlando, Fla., attended by 1,800 human resources employees in the summer of 2011. This is roughly seven times the $820,000 the General Services Administration spent on a Las Vegas conference for 300 employees in 2010.

Expense breakouts for one of those VA two conferences showed the department spent $296,165 on an audiovisual center for employee use, $184,800 for morning and evening refreshments, $90,747 for coffee break refreshments, and $862 for a karaoke night.
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But it isn't new. In 2009, Obama's first year in office, the spending was done while the government was still working off of President Bush's budget prepared a year before he left office. All of the veterans still taking their own lives and with all these conferences, few answers have been discovered.

I went to a few conferences in Orlando and most of the time we were lucky to get coffee.

Former Marine fired for tattoo quoting General Mattis

Former Marine fired for tattoo quoting Mattis
By Bethany Crudele
Staff writer
Posted : Monday Aug 27, 2012
A former Marine says his ink got him canned from his civilian railroad job.

What was so offensive that his superiors could not stand for it? A quote from one of the Marine Corps’ most revered generals.

Union Pacific Railroad fired conductor Carl Newman of Kansas City, Mo., in 2010 because his tattoo violated the company’s “Violence in the Workplace” policy, according to a complaint filed in federal court Aug. 9.

The words were spoken by Gen. James Mattis, now head of U.S. Central Command, when he led Marines in Iraq in 2003.

Mattis, then a tough-talking major general known as “the Warrior Monk,” commanded 1st Marine Division during the invasion. According to Washington Post reporter Thomas E. Ricks’ book “Fiasco,” Mattis sent his tanks and artillery home after the successful invasion. He met with Iraqi tribal leaders and said, “I come in peace. I didn’t bring artillery. But I am pleading with you, with tears in my eyes: If you f--- with me, I’ll kill you all.”

Newman, who served on active duty from 1997 to 2001, had Mattis’ statement tattooed on his arm before joining Union Pacific. The complaint states that a fellow employee photographed his arm. According to the complaint, Union Pacific Railroad’s policy is not to discipline people for offensive tattoos unless they are directed to cover the ink and fail to comply, and Newman was never asked to cover up his tattoo.

But the complaint also makes the case that the railroad company used the tattoo as an excuse to fire him in retaliation for whistle-blowing phone calls to the company’s safety hotline about hazards along the tracks. According to a report by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Newman called the hotline hundreds of times.
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Nose spray after death, bombs and bullets? Ya sure that'll work!

So much for military intelligence. There goes any hope I had for Col. Castro finally getting it.

Military hopes antidepressant nasal spray will prevent suicides
By Rebecca Ruizbr
NBC News

The military is seeing unprecedented mental illness and suicide in its ranks, and is funding research to treat depression and prevent the most tragic of outcomes.

In July, a report released by the military found that mental health disorders in active-duty troops increased 65 percent since 2000. Of the more than 900,000 diagnoses, about 85 percent included cases of adjustment disorders, depression, alcohol abuse and anxiety. This month, the Army reported 38 suspected suicides among active-duty and reserve soldiers in July, the highest monthly number of suicides since record-keeping began a few years ago.

Col. Carl Castro, director of the Military Operational Medicine Research Program, told NBC News that the military is "leaving no stone unturned" in its hunt to find evidence-based treatments for depression and suicide. Included in its multimillion dollar research portfolio is a grant to evaluate whether a nasal spray using a fast-acting hormone could alleviate symptoms of both depression and suicidal behavior.
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Military suicides ends up with $3 million to develop a nasal spray

Back in 2007 I posted this other attempt.

MIT IDs mechanism behind fear
Work could lead to first drug for post-traumatic stress disorder
Deborah Halber, News Office Correspondent
July 15, 2007

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--Researchers from MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory have uncovered a molecular mechanism that governs the formation of fears stemming from traumatic events. The work could lead to the first drug to treat the millions of adults who suffer each year from persistent, debilitating fears - including hundreds of soldiers returning from conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The team reports their results in the July 15 advance online publication of Nature Neuroscience.

A study conducted by the Army in 2004 found that one in eight soldiers returning from Iraq reported symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). According to the National Center for PTSD in the United States, around eight percent of the population will have PTSD symptoms at some point in their lives. Some 5.2 million adults have PTSD during a given year, the center reports.

Li-Huei Tsai, Picower Professor of Neuroscience in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, and colleagues show that inhibiting a kinase (kinases are enzymes that change proteins) called Cdk5 facilitates the extinction of fear learned in a particular context. Conversely, the learned fear persisted when the kinase's activity was increased in the hippocampus, the brain's center for storing memories.

Cdk5, paired with the protein p35, helps new brain cells, or neurons, form and migrate to their correct positions during early brain development. In the current work, the MIT researchers looked at how Cdk5 affects the ability to form and eliminate fear-related memories.

"Remarkably, inhibiting Cdk5 facilitated extinction of learned fear in mice. This data points to a promising therapeutic avenue to treat emotional disorders and raises hope for patients suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder or phobia," Tsai said.

Emotional disorders such as post-traumatic stress and panic attacks stem from the inability of the brain to stop experiencing the fear associated with a specific incident or series of incidents. For some people, upsetting memories of traumatic events do not go away on their own, or may even get worse over time, severely affecting their lives.

(The link must have gone dead long ago.)


The other day I posted about the new research being done on removing a memory. I said that it would not really help PTSD because of all that went with PTSD and how memories, good and bad, make us what we are. Removing one memory at a time, especially with combat, would require a hundred memories to be "erased" from the mind.

After reading this, I have renewed hope that there is finally hope in finding a cure for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. However, I do see a problem. Keep in mind that I'm no expert. I trust the research done by the experts and the scientists who have been researching this for over thirty years. I may be confused on what I just read but this is my take on it. If you understood it differently, help me out here because I'm looking for any glimmer of hope I can find. I'm tired of men and women suffering and dying because of PTSD.

This frightens me "eliminate fear-related memories" because what if this were used in a bad way instead of a way of healing PTSD? Erasing a memory is bad enough but to eliminate fear can be a very dangerous thing. If you touch a hot stove, you are burnt and you are afraid to repeat the same mistake again. If the fearful memory is erased or eliminated, what is there to stop you from doing something dangerous if you have no memory of fear?

A couple of years ago I was pissed off and wrote that these are men and women, not machines who cannot feel. Now I am worried that is exactly where this could lead to. Picture it. A few years down the road another combat operation comes up, or the same ones still going on. You have a hundred thousand GI's in the operation and they have no sense of fear. They could very well be trained to just walk into machine gun fire like something out of the movies blasting people away as the bullets take them down. One GI could be sent ahead in a Humvee trying to set off road side bombs so that others could pass. Think it can't happen? Think again.

Kamikaze - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Seki thereby became the 24th kamikaze pilot to be chosen. .... Poor training tended to make kamikaze pilots easy targets for experienced Allied pilots, ...

They had no fear of dying. They were used as the ultimate weapon.

Today we see the terrorists again with no fear of dying blowing themselves up because they have been brainwashed into thinking they will end up with virgins in heaven and that it is a brave thing they are doing, never understanding those sending them are not willing to be glorified in the same way. These are not the most logical people on the planet but they are the most dangerous. It doesn't matter how many they kill. Their mission is to instill fear by showing they have no fear for their own lives.

So what's the answer? What is the answer when it comes to all of this?  It is not just the military suffering from PTSD but a lot of civilians around the world are. We have over five million right here in this country and even more without a clue what's wrong with them. Removing a memory does not sound as if it would work right and erasing fear sounds even more dangerous.

If there were some kind of requirement that no one given this treatment would be allowed to be in the military, or the police departments or the fire departments then maybe we won't end up with a bunch of people with no fear at all in them and becoming a weapon.

I'm sorry but it's the job of the military to train people to be able to kill. That is what the military is. It's the job of the police departments to train them to kill as well. Not that it is their only job but it is a requirement. With the firemen, they are trained to go into burning buildings. Could you picture what would happen if there was a fireman with no fear walking into a fire without his equipment on? Why put it on if they had no fear? What if the military took this cure and used it as a weapon instead?

Cops getting bad advice on veterans with PTSD

Cops getting bad advice on veterans with PTSD
by Chaplain Kathie
Wounded Times Blog
August 27, 2012

Well, Elspeth Cameron Ritchie at least tried to offer advice in this How Cops Can Best Deal With Vets but it was not really worth reading at all. One point she got right was that if it is a combat veteran with a gun a cop is facing off with they are trained to use them and take the kill shot the same way cops are trained. If they point it, a cop has no way of knowing for sure if it is a veteran, or if they are suffering from combat or anything else other than that second they have to decide to shoot them or not.

It is easy to think about all the cop movies we've seen when the director gets to decide where the bullets go and how many actors pull the trigger but in real life, that doesn't happen and all too often there is really no time to "talk with respect" or say more than "put the weapon down" before that cop has to decide what to do next.

If they are armed with a knife, then a cop could use a taser or shoot their leg if their leg if they are a great shot, or at the hand holding the knife if they're a true marksman but honestly, most cops are trained to aim at the biggest part of the body for two reasons. One, naturally is to stop the assailant, the other is to minimize bullets hitting something or someone else.

If they aim a gun, assume they will shoot at you, so be safe.

I suggest you open up Ritchie's piece in a new window to make this easier to understand. I don't want to complicate things by posting such limited information on what cops really need to know.

1. If you ask them if they are a veteran, you may not always get the real answer. As hard as it is to believe, a lot of combat veterans do not want to share they are veterans because of the attitudes they have faced in the past. You may also end up with a regular civilian saying yes to the "veteran" question assuming you may take it easy on them if you think they are a veteran. Talk to them and try to ask them what's going on first if you have an opportunity to use the training you already had from the police department.

Notice the way they respond to you as much as what they say. If you hear "sir" that's a clue since even under duress, it is an automatic response but again, but not always a clear indication they are a veteran.

How they hold themselves is telling. You can usually spot a Marine right away no matter how long they've been out of the service. Again, you still don't know for sure since they could have been so beaten down by what they came home to, they may look like a very worn down individual. You could also be up against a true criminal so pumped up with his own power, he thinks he deserves respect.

Look for visible clues like short hair cuts but know that always doesn't help since some grow their hair long and some keep it short but then again you also have civilians with different hair style choices. Look for tattoos but not just for a tattoo you need to see what the tattoo is. Most of them have at least one tattoo with a military connection.

If you are in the home, look for clues there like pictures or any kind of military fabric, but there again, that does not always mean they were in the military.

2. Asking about what their MOS was may get you the military code for what it was or something like a cook that may have been in a convoy that was hit by IEDs or even in the Green Zone when it was attacked so that question really won't help you understand their frame of mind either unless the answer is they were in Vietnam, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Iraq, Bosnia, Somalia, Turkey, Africa or any other part of the world including the NAVY!

The rest of this piece is pretty much the same. Not worth reading.

I have taken some of the best Crisis Intervention training there is and not one of them had all the answers but the trainers could only give "probabilities" usually not even coming close to what veterans bring to the situation.

Now for the real advice.

If you don't know who you are dealing with, get someone to talk to family or neighbors. Find out as fast as possible if the situation allows. Take it from there asking the usual questions. "Is he on medication?" "Does he use drugs?" "When did he come home?" and the next thing left out of Richie's piece is that the veteran you could be facing off with is a female!

If you ask her or him if there is a buddy you can call, never assume that is a safe question to ask especially if that veteran feels abandoned by the buddies he served with. Never assume contacting anyone up the military food chain would be good considering he/she could have been dishonorably discharged instead of treated for PTSD or sexually assaulted by the person you just offered to call.

If you ask them about calling a family member, it very well may be a family member that set them off in the first place. Most families do not know what they need to know about PTSD. So what if they want their spouse called so they can kill them first and let the cops take them out afterwards?

There are no easy answers that can be summed up in a couple of paragraphs in TIME since the jobs cops have is hard enough but considering a lot of Guardsman are also cops, firefighters, emergency responders and walking around just like everyone else. All you have to do is understand what PTSD does to a combat veteran before you can even begin to know how to do your job as well and as safely as possible.

The rest of us need to keep in mind that a veteran is more likely to harm themselves than someone else so all of us need to understand that by the time a veteran is facing off with a police officer the peaceful ending is not always a guarantee no matter how hard they try to end it differently. Most of the above advice works well when the the cop is not faced to face with an armed individual under any circumstances.

But what do I know since I don't have a PhD?

Marine Suicides At Near Record

What comes with Combat PTSD? All that is listed below and more. If they have PTSD, there is substance abuse trying to numb themselves from the pain that remains.

They have relationship problems because of the long list of issues they are suffering from on a daily basis. Speaking with first hand knowledge, it is about as hard as it can be for family members.

Everything in this article are reasons why they lose so much hope that suicide seems to be their only answer. We are not closer to saving their lives because failed programs continue and what works has not been put into practice. Families need to be supported and given the tools to help their veterans until the DOD and the VA catch up.

Marine Suicides At Near Record
The Marines suicide prevention program reported 21 deaths and 107 attempted suicides for the year through July.
By Patch Staff
August 26, 2012

Some 21 Marines committed suicide and 107 attempted suicide this year through July, according to a report released by the Marine and Family Programs Suicide Prevention Program.

The information has prompted a second look at the Corps' Never Leave a Marine Behind suicide prevention training for non-commissioned Marines and officers.

While the number of deaths represent little change in the average monthly rate of suicides from last year, the rate of attempted suicides edged up slightly.

According to an article in the North County Times Sunday, typical calls to a hotline at 1-877-476-7734 or online Skype visits to the website at www.dstressline.com ran 10 to 15 minutes.

The Times article stated that callers talked most often about stress with relationships, anxiety, post-traumatic stress, substance abuse and depression.

Marine suicides have been a source of increasing alarm; prevention efforts to avoid the self-inflicted deaths have been stepped up since the Iraq and Afghanistan wars began taking their tolls.
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