http://www.homeloans.va.gov/sah.htm-----Original Message-----From: VA Media RelationsSent: Friday, January 04, 2008 9:06 AMTo: VSubject: VA Improves Housing Benefits for Severely DisabledNew VA Rules for Specially Adapted Housing Grants Program Aids MostSeriously Injured WASHINGTON (January 4, 2008) - A change in the law thatallows certain seriously injured veterans and servicemembers to receivemultiple grants for constructing or modifying homes has resulted in many newgrants, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) announced today. Before the change, eligible veterans and servicemembers could receivespecial adaptive housing grants of $10,000 or $50,000 from VA only once.Now they may use the benefit up to three times, so long as the total grantsstay within specified limits outlined in the law."Veterans seriously disabled during their military service have earned thisbenefit," said Secretary of Veterans Affairs Dr. James B. Peake."This change ensures that every eligible veteran and servicemember has thechance to use the maximum amount afforded to them by our grateful nation."In order to ensure all previous recipients are aware of this opportunity, VAhas mailed more than 16,000 letters to eligible veterans, reaching out tothose who used only a portion of their grant or who decided not to use thegrant even after initially qualifying. The response over the past year has been dramatic, with more than 4,600applications received thus far. Of these, approximately 3,900 veterans havebeen determined eligible under the new law, and more than 200grants already awarded. VA has averaged about 1,000 adaptive housing grant applications per yearduring the past 10 years. Since the program began in 1948, it has providedmore than $650 million in grants to about 34,000 seriously disabledveterans. To ensure veterans' and servicemembers' needs are met and grant money isspent properly, VA works closely throughout the entire process withcontractors and architects to design, construct and modify homes that meetthe individuals' housing accessibility needs.Eligible for the benefit are those with specific service-connecteddisabilities entitling them to VA compensation for a "permanent and totaldisability." They may receive a grant to construct an adapted home or tomodify an existing one to meet their special needs. VA has three types of adapted housing grants available. The SpeciallyAdapted Housing grant (SAH), currently limited to $50,000, is generally usedto create a wheelchair-accessible home for those who may require suchassistance for activities of daily living. VA's Home Loan Guaranty program and the Native American Direct Loan programmay also be used with the SAH benefit to purchase an adaptive home. The Special Housing Adaptations (SHA) grant, currently limited to $10,000,is generally used to assist veterans with mobility throughout their homesdue to blindness in both eyes, or the anatomical loss or loss of use of bothhands or extremities below the elbow.A third type established by the new law, the Temporary Residence Adaptation(TRA) grant, is available to eligible veterans and seriously injured activeduty servicemembers who are temporarily living or intend to temporarily livein a home owned by a family member. While the SAH and SHA grants require ownership and title to a house, increating TRA Congress recognized the need to allow veterans and active dutymembers who may not yet own homes to have access to the adaptive housinggrant program.Under TRA, veterans and servicemembers eligible under the SAH program wouldbe permitted to use up to $14,000, and those eligible under the SHA programwould be allowed to use up to $2,000 of the maximum grant amounts. Eachgrant would count as one of the three grants allowed under the new program. "The goal of all three grant programs is to provide a barrier-free livingenvironment that offers the country's most severely injured veterans orservicemembers a level of independent living," added Peake.Other VA adaptive housing benefits are currently available throughVocational Rehabilitation and Employment Service's "Independent Living"program, the Insurance Service's Veterans Mortgage Life Insurance program,and the Veterans Health Administration's Home Improvement and StructuralAlterations grant. For more information about grants and other adaptive housing programs,contact a local VA regional office at 1-800-827-1000 or local veteranservice organization. Additional program information and grant applications(VAF-26-4555) can be found at http://www.homeloans.va.gov/sah.htm.
Sphere: Related ContentFriday, January 4, 2008
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
Call to Action on VA funding
http://www.vawatchdog.org/08/nf08/nfJAN08/nf010308-10.htm
CALL TO ACTION: ASK THE PRESIDENT TO RELEASE VA
FUNDING -- The White House is holding $3.7 billion in "emergency"
veterans' funding that must be released by January 18.
OK, Brother and Sister veterans...it's time to shake some change out of the President's pockets!
If you hold him down, I'll get his wallet ... :-)
Seriously...the President is hold $3.7 billion in VA funding. It is designated as "emergency" funding and can only be released to the VA if he says so. More on that here... http://www.vawatchdog.org/07/nf07/nfDEC07/nf121807-1.htm
We need to get to work.
Below is a call to action from the VFW that explains what to do and how to do it.
Please don't wait...take action now!
VFW call to action here... http://www.vawatchdog.org/08/vsop08/vsop010208-1.htm
Call to action below:
-------------------------
VFW Legislative Alert
Ask the President to Release Veterans Funding
Background:
The large funding bill that Congress sent to the president's desk included a sizeable $2.9 billion increase for veterans health care and benefits. There is an additional $3.7 billion in potential veterans funding - funding that would fully meet the needs laid out by the VFW as part of the Independent Budget. VA will receive this funding, however, only if the president declares it "emergency spending." Without that declaration, VA will not get that additional increase.
Action Needed:
You must contact the president to ask him to release the "emergency" funding for VA.The current increase, while appreciated, is not enough, and VA must have the additional $3.7 billion to fully meet the needs of veterans.The additional $3.7 billion (for a total increase of $6.6 billion) would allow VA to:
• Hire additional claims processors and train staff to reduce the ever-growing disability claims backlog
• Treat the tens of thousands of returning service members who put their lives on the line in Iraq and Afghanistan, providing them with all the health care they need, including full mental health coverage and treatment for traumatic brain injuries and other war-related illnesses and disabilities.
• Care for the hundreds of thousands of sick and disabled veterans from other conflicts, particularly as many of them grow older
• Begin construction and improve maintenance on a number of VA health care facilities, expanding access and ensuring that veterans receive care in clean, safe, and comfortable locations that meet their needs.
How to contact the president:
• Letters:The White House1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NWWashington, DC 20500
• Email: comments@whitehouse.gov
• Phone: 202-456-1111
• Fax: 202-456-2461
Contact Congress, too:
Let your Representative and Senators know that you appreciate their efforts and urge them to ask the President to release the full funding amount. Since your legislators are on break for the holiday, phone numbers for their district offices can be found in your local phone book or you can look for contact info on their WebPages: www.senate.gov and www.house.gov .
------------------------- posted by Larry ScottFounder and EditorVA Watchdog dot Org
Don't forget to read all of today's VA News Flashes (click here)
Click here to make VA Watchdog dot Org your homepage
email Larry
Enduring beliefs about effects of gassing in war: qualitative study
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/abstract/335/7633/1313
BMJ 2007;335:1313-1315 (22 December), doi:10.1136/bmj.39420.533461.25
History
Enduring beliefs about effects of gassing in war: qualitative study
Edgar Jones, professor1, Ian Palmer, professor2, Simon Wessely, professor1
1 Institute of Psychiatry and King’s Centre for Military Health Research, Weston Education Centre, London SE5 9RJ, 2 Medical Assessment Programme, St Thomas’ Hospital, London SE1 7EH
Correspondence to: E Jones edgar.jones@iop.kcl.ac.uk
'//-->
Objectives To discover the content of enduring beliefs held by first world war veterans about their experience of having been gassed.
Design Collection and thematic analysis of written and reported statements from a sample of veterans about gassing.
Subjects 103 veterans with a war pension.
Results Twelve themes were identified, which were related to individual statements. The systemic nature of chemical weapons played a key part in ideas and beliefs about their capacity to cause enduring harm to health. Unlike shrapnel or a bullet that had a defined physical presence, gas had unseen effects within the body, while its capacity to cause damage was apparent from vesicant effects to skin and eyes. The terror inspired by chemical weapons also served to maintain memories of being gassed, while anti-gas measures were themselves disconcerting or a source of discomfort.
Conclusions Chronic symptoms and work difficulties maintained beliefs about the potency of chemical weapons. In the period after the war, gas continued to inspire popular revulsion and was associated with a sense of unfairness.
Rapid Responses:
Read all Rapid Responses
Knowledge of chemical warfare injuries
Jan Schumacher, et al.bmj.com, 29 Dec 2007 [Full text]
Hillary's last minute ad and why I support her
Morning HUBdate: Closing Argument
* If You Watch One Thing Today: Hillary presents her closing argument to Iowans, culminating in a two-minute taped appearance that will air tonight on every 6PM newscast throughout the state. Watch it: http://youtube.com/watch?v=v0hyVSmVVBU
* Also Making News Today: Hillary continues the “Big Challenges, Real Solutions: Time To Pick A President” tour with events in Indianola, Cedar Rapids, Davenport, Ottumwa, and Des Moines.
* Momentum in IA: In a sign of growing enthusiasm for Hillary, one of our Iowa field staffers came across a sign with this message when they went knocking on doors: “WE WILL SUPPORT HILLARY. OUR DECISION IS NOT OPEN FOR JUSTIFICATION OR REVIEW. SEE YOU AT CAUCUS.”
* Recapping Yesterday: Hillary rallied crowds of Iowans and won over previously undecided caucus-goers, with a press report calling it “one of her best performances in weeks”… President Clinton told Iowans how Hillary has been changing people’s lives for years… And door knockers will hit the house of every Iowan who has declared strong support for Hillary …Visit www.hillaryhub.com for more.
* Strength in NH: A new poll by 7NEWS/Suffolk University shows Hillary leading the Democratic field by 14 pts in the NH primary. The same poll had her up 7 just three weeks ago…. A separate poll sponsored by UNH has Hillary gaining strength, increasing her support by 6 points since their last poll two weeks ago… Gen. Wes Clark and his wife stumped for Hilary in downtown Laconia, praising Hillary’s readiness to lead, knowledge, and warmth….And Hillary encouraged ABC and WMUR-TV to allow her fellow candidates who have participated in previous debates to participate in this weekend's.
* Endorsement Watch: US Rep. Donald Payne (D-NJ) -- the first African-American to represent New Jersey in the House of Representatives and a past Chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus – becomes the 77th member of Congress to endorse Hillary.
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Contributions to Hillary Clinton for President
are not deductible for federal income tax purposes.
----------------------------------
Paid for by Hillary Clinton for
President
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I am a disabled Army veteran, who served from the Vietnam Era in the active Army as an Infantryman, I left the Army in 1982 after 9 years as a Staff Sergeant/E6. I then joined the Georgia National Guard in 1988 as I missed the Army and the camaraderie of the soldiers and also to try and finish my 20 years for the retirement benefits. I was activated for Desert Storm and served in Khasab AFB Oman during the first Gulf War.
Hillary has supported research to find out what is the root of the illness or cluster of symptoms known as Gulf War Syndrome or Illness, GWS or GWI. While her husband was President they apologized for the human experimenst this nation conducted from nuclear experiments to the Tuskeegee Syphlis experiments, also the Army experiments I was used in at Edgewood Arsenal in 1974.
Here is a newspaper article where I met President Clinton on December 17, 2007 and it has a picture where he is signing a book titled Chemical Warfare: Secrets Almost Forgotten, written by a Doctor James Ketchum one of the Edgewood scientists/doctors/researchers.
http://activepaper.olivesoftware.com/Repository/ml.asp?Ref=U1RULzIwMDcvMTIvMTgjQXIwMDEwMw==&Mode=HTML&Locale=english-skin-custom
Here is a link to the book reviews: http://www.erowid.org/library/review/review.php?p=226
Here is a link to the apology from President Bill Clinton from You tube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTiONdJJRcw
Here is a link to an 8 minute story about the mind control experiments the C.I.A. and the Army were involved in from 1952 thru 1975 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSOOK3tocTk&feature=related
Senator Clinton has pressed the Veterans Administration to help the ill Gulf War veterans for more than a decade now, and as our President she would be able to demand better accountability for the veterans and their families. There are more than 100,000 veterans that have some sort of medical disability from the first Gulf War and the government i.e. DOD and the VA have not been proactive in helping them. She would do more than any other Presidential candidate for these men, women and their families.
Veterans and their families should be voting for Hillary for the Democratic nomination and for her as the next President of the United States, veterans need to start voting with their wallets, and how it affects their families, she has proven herself on their behalf and she has earned their votes.
C.I.A. & Bush Administration Guilty of Obstruction? 911 Commission thinks so
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/02/opinion/02kean.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Stonewalled by the C.I.A.
By THOMAS H. KEAN and LEE H. HAMILTON
Published: January 2, 2008
Washington
MORE than five years ago, Congress and President Bush created the 9/11 commission. The goal was to provide the American people with the fullest possible account of the “facts and circumstances relating to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001” — and to offer recommendations to prevent future attacks. Soon after its creation, the president’s chief of staff directed all executive branch agencies to cooperate with the commission.
The commission’s mandate was sweeping and it explicitly included the intelligence agencies. But the recent revelations that the C.I.A. destroyed videotaped interrogations of Qaeda operatives leads us to conclude that the agency failed to respond to our lawful requests for information about the 9/11 plot. Those who knew about those videotapes — and did not tell us about them — obstructed our investigation.
There could have been absolutely no doubt in the mind of anyone at the C.I.A. — or the White House — of the commission’s interest in any and all information related to Qaeda detainees involved in the 9/11 plot. Yet no one in the administration ever told the commission of the existence of videotapes of detainee interrogations.
When the press reported that, in 2002 and maybe at other times, the C.I.A. had recorded hundreds of hours of interrogations of at least two Qaeda detainees, we went back to check our records. We found that we did ask, repeatedly, for the kind of information that would have been contained in such videotapes.
The commission did not have a mandate to investigate how detainees were treated; our role was to investigate the history and evolution of Al Qaeda and the 9/11 plot. Beginning in June 2003, we requested all reports of intelligence information on these broad topics that had been gleaned from the interrogations of 118 named individuals, including both Abu Zubaydah and Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri, two senior Qaeda operatives, portions of whose interrogations were apparently recorded and then destroyed.
The C.I.A. gave us many reports summarizing information gained in the interrogations. But the reports raised almost as many questions as they answered. Agency officials assured us that, if we posed specific questions, they would do all they could to answer them.
So, in October 2003, we sent another wave of questions to the C.I.A.’s general counsel. One set posed dozens of specific questions about the reports, including those about Abu Zubaydah. A second set, even more important in our view, asked for details about the translation process in the interrogations; the background of the interrogators; the way the interrogators handled inconsistencies in the detainees’ stories; the particular questions that had been asked to elicit reported information; the way interrogators had followed up on certain lines of questioning; the context of the interrogations so we could assess the credibility and demeanor of the detainees when they made the reported statements; and the views or assessments of the interrogators themselves.
The general counsel responded in writing with non-specific replies. The agency did not disclose that any interrogations had ever been recorded or that it had held any further relevant information, in any form. Not satisfied with this response, we decided that we needed to question the detainees directly, including Abu Zubaydah and a few other key captives.
In a lunch meeting on Dec. 23, 2003, George Tenet, the C.I.A. director, told us point blank that we would have no such access. During the meeting, we emphasized to him that the C.I.A. should provide any documents responsive to our requests, even if the commission had not specifically asked for them. Mr. Tenet replied by alluding to several documents he thought would be helpful to us, but neither he, nor anyone else in the meeting, mentioned videotapes.
A meeting on Jan. 21, 2004, with Mr. Tenet, the White House counsel, the secretary of defense and a representative from the Justice Department also resulted in the denial of commission access to the detainees. Once again, videotapes were not mentioned.
As a result of this January meeting, the C.I.A. agreed to pose some of our questions to detainees and report back to us. The commission concluded this was all the administration could give us. But the commission never felt that its earlier questions had been satisfactorily answered. So the public would be aware of our concerns, we highlighted our caveats on page 146 in the commission report.
As a legal matter, it is not up to us to examine the C.I.A.’s failure to disclose the existence of these tapes. That is for others. What we do know is that government officials decided not to inform a lawfully constituted body, created by Congress and the president, to investigate one the greatest tragedies to confront this country. We call that obstruction.
Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton served as chairman and vice chairman, respectively, of the 9/11 commission.
Monday, December 31, 2007
President Bush signs Transparency Bill
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Bush-Freedom-of-Information.html
Bush Signs Government Transparency Bill
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: December 31, 2007
Filed at 7:47 p.m. ET
CRAWFORD, Texas (AP) -- President Bush on Monday signed a bill aimed at giving the public and the media greater access to information about what the government is doing.
The new law toughens the Freedom of Information Act, the first such makeover to the signature public-access law in a decade. It amounts to a congressional pushback against the Bush administration's movement to greater secrecy since the terrorist attacks of 2001.
More Articles in National »
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Call me disbelieving but when does this law take effect? Jan 2009 This has been the most secretive government since WW2 when we were actually in a world war, but Congress was involved in it. FDR did not do it like this administration has. I will believe the administration as soon as the RNC turns over the missing 5 million e mails from Rove and others, the visitor logs to the White House, the President has been proclaiming are Presidential papers, like the American public has no right to who he and his administration are meeting with, who exactly is paying for that house, us, or him? What does the signing statement say? We know there has to be a hey wait a minute that does not apply to me in here somewhere. The last 7 years have taught us that.
NY Times Editorial for the last day of 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/31/opinion/31mon1.html
Published: December 31, 2007
There are too many moments these days when we cannot recognize our country. Sunday was one of them, as we read the account in The Times of how men in some of the most trusted posts in the nation plotted to cover up the torture of prisoners by Central Intelligence Agency interrogators by destroying videotapes of their sickening behavior. It was impossible to see the founding principles of the greatest democracy in the contempt these men and their bosses showed for the Constitution, the rule of law and human decency.
It was not the first time in recent years we’ve felt this horror, this sorrowful sense of estrangement, not nearly. This sort of lawless behavior has become standard practice since Sept. 11, 2001.
The country and much of the world was rightly and profoundly frightened by the single-minded hatred and ingenuity displayed by this new enemy. But there is no excuse for how President Bush and his advisers panicked — how they forgot that it is their responsibility to protect American lives and American ideals, that there really is no safety for Americans or their country when those ideals are sacrificed.
Out of panic and ideology, President Bush squandered America’s position of moral and political leadership, swept aside international institutions and treaties, sullied America’s global image, and trampled on the constitutional pillars that have supported our democracy through the most terrifying and challenging times. These policies have fed the world’s anger and alienation and have not made any of us safer.
In the years since 9/11, we have seen American soldiers abuse, sexually humiliate, torment and murder prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq. A few have been punished, but their leaders have never been called to account. We have seen mercenaries gun down Iraqi civilians with no fear of prosecution. We have seen the president, sworn to defend the Constitution, turn his powers on his own citizens, authorizing the intelligence agencies to spy on Americans, wiretapping phones and intercepting international e-mail messages without a warrant.
We have read accounts of how the government’s top lawyers huddled in secret after the attacks in New York and Washington and plotted ways to circumvent the Geneva Conventions — and both American and international law — to hold anyone the president chose indefinitely without charges or judicial review.
Those same lawyers then twisted other laws beyond recognition to allow Mr. Bush to turn intelligence agents into torturers, to force doctors to abdicate their professional oaths and responsibilities to prepare prisoners for abuse, and then to monitor the torment to make sure it didn’t go just a bit too far and actually kill them.
The White House used the fear of terrorism and the sense of national unity to ram laws through Congress that gave law-enforcement agencies far more power than they truly needed to respond to the threat — and at the same time fulfilled the imperial fantasies of Vice President Dick Cheney and others determined to use the tragedy of 9/11 to arrogate as much power as they could.
Hundreds of men, swept up on the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq, were thrown into a prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, so that the White House could claim they were beyond the reach of American laws. Prisoners are held there with no hope of real justice, only the chance to face a kangaroo court where evidence and the names of their accusers are kept secret, and where they are not permitted to talk about the abuse they have suffered at the hands of American jailers.
In other foreign lands, the C.I.A. set up secret jails where “high-value detainees” were subjected to ever more barbaric acts, including simulated drowning. These crimes were videotaped, so that “experts” could watch them, and then the videotapes were destroyed, after consultation with the White House, in the hope that Americans would never know.
The C.I.A. contracted out its inhumanity to nations with no respect for life or law, sending prisoners — some of them innocents kidnapped on street corners and in airports — to be tortured into making false confessions, or until it was clear they had nothing to say and so were let go without any apology or hope of redress.
These are not the only shocking abuses of President Bush’s two terms in office, made in the name of fighting terrorism. There is much more — so much that the next president will have a full agenda simply discovering all the wrongs that have been done and then righting them.
We can only hope that this time, unlike 2004, American voters will have the wisdom to grant the awesome powers of the presidency to someone who has the integrity, principle and decency to use them honorably. Then when we look in the mirror as a nation, we will see, once again, the reflection of the United States of America.
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My thoughts
31st, 2007 5:38 am
As a disabled Army veteran I fully support the tone and words of this editorial, I am ashamed of what our country has become, in the past 6 years. An incompetent lying Attorney General who thought his priority was to the President and not the law. Who let a twenty something blonde hire "politcally right" lawyers regardless of their competence for the Justice Department. The Army has been turned into a political arm of the President and General Petraues became the "front man" for President Bush's war, to buy President Bush more time. We have a President who is not trusted by a majority of Americans, most of us suspect and feel crimes against humanity and quite possibly crimes that could see him and many other high government officials charged with war crimes. An administration that has no respect for Congress or the people of the United States, they have forgotten who works for who. The American people do not work for George Bush nor Dick Cheney, they work for us, but up until now there is no one with a backbone to hold them accountable, why?
— SSG Mike, Columbia SC
