Veterans enjoy a day out fishing
By Adva Saldinger
The Patriot Ledger
Posted Jul 24, 2008 @ 03:12 AM
Last update Jul 24, 2008 @ 03:50 AM
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QUINCY — Bob Cunio did three tours of duty in Iraq as a Marine, was stabbed, wounded by an improvised explosive device and is being treated for post-traumatic stress disorder and substance-abuse problems at the Brockton Veterans Administration hospital.
On Wednesday he put all that aside, kicked back on a lobster boat and cast a line into the waters of Boston Harbor.
“I think it’s a good deal,” he said. “Staying on the grounds is not good. It’s good for you to get out and see that life goes on.”
He was on a boat with several friends who made the most of their first time at the 52nd annual Harvey’s Salt Water Fishing Club Vets’ Day at the Quincy Yacht Club.
“This is really great; I’m excited,” said Allan Visser, an Army veteran who served in the Gulf War and who is also at the Brockton VA hospital. “I’ve met a lot of new friends, and it gives you a lot of hope.”
Twenty lobster boat owners volunteered their boats and time to take the almost 200 veterans out.
“We owe a lot to these guys,” said Dana Riques, an Army veteran living in the Chelsea Soldiers Home who had tried his luck fishing the past four years at the event.
This year Riques had a bit more luck. He managed to hook a skate, which he threw back.
Veterans of all ages went out for several hours, despite cloudy skies, and several managed to catch flounder.
After they were done fishing, and just as it started raining, the veterans sat down to a meal. They sang the “Star-Spangled Banner,” heard from Quincy Mayor Thomas Koch, and won prizes in a raffle.
Paul DaCosta, a Marine Corps veteran who served during peacetime, is at the Brockton VA hospital with a broken leg. “It’s kind of motivating to see all the vets,” he said.
Christopher Davis, who served in Iraq during the Gulf War with the Navy SeaBees, also said he had a great time at the event. He has been in and out of the hospital for treatment of post-traumatic stress since leaving the Navy in 1994.
“It means a lot to me all the vets together going out on the trip,” he said.
Adva Saldinger may be reached at asaldinger@ledger.com.
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what a wonderful thing for these people to do SALUTE
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Veterans enjoy a day out fishing
Injured veterans still wait for help
Injured veterans still wait for help
They were conceived as bureaucracy busters, advocates to help severely injured troops navigate the multi-agency maze of getting health care and benefits.
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Kendrick Brinson/Staff
Physical therapist Barry Dye (left) watches Staff Sgt. Axel Perez work on balance and endurance at the active-duty rehabilitation unit at Charlie Norwood Veterans Affairs Medical Center.
Click photo for optionsBut hiring federal recovery coordinators and assigning them to service members is being held up -- by bureaucracy.
In written answers to questions asked by The Augusta Chronicle, the program's U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs administrators said they have no immediate plans to put a recovery coordinator in Augusta, where Eisenhower Army Medical Center has been taking in the second- or third-most number of war-wounded troops of all military hospitals in the country.
"However, VA and (the Department of Defense) are carefully tracking workload, geographic distribution and complexity of severely injured service members and using this data to determine the number and location of additional FRCs," the VA statement said.
"Should the analysis indicate a high concentration of catastrophically injured service members in the Eisenhower area, VA will consider locating an FRC there in the future."
The active-duty rehabilitation unit at the Charlie Norwood Veterans Affairs Medical Center is currently treating 15 hospitalized patients and seven outpatients who fit the seriously wounded description, spokesman Michael Shaffer said.
The spinal cord injury unit has another three inpatients and two outpatients, he said.
Spokeswoman Jennifer Chipman said she couldn't obtain those figures for Eisenhower because of an ongoing office move, but at least two amputees are being treated there.
The creation of an Interagency Recovery Coordinator corps was one of the main recommendations of a nine-member presidential panel formed in 2007 to find ways of improving services for injured troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.
At the time, The Washington Post had just exposed neglect at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C.
The so-called Dole/Shalala report was given to President Bush a year ago this week.
Laurie Ott, the executive director of the CSRA Wounded Warrior Care Project, says the coordinators program is moving along too sluggishly.
U.S. Rep. Paul Broun is trying to meet with VA officials at his Washington office before next month's recess to try to convince them to put a patient advocate in Augusta, according to his press secretary.
In response to other questions from the newspaper, the VA said it has spent $2.5 million on the program in fiscal year 2008, with nine recovery coordinators currently assigned to 88 patients -- 34 at Walter Reed; 22 at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio; 20 at National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md.; seven at the VA in Providence, R.I.; and five at the Houston VA.
"I can tell you seven people by name who need an FRC in Augusta," Ms. Ott said.
Asked by The Chronicle whether he's satisfied with the program's progress, retired Sen. Bob Dole, who co-chaired the presidential panel with former Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala, hinted that improvements are on the way.
"I know there are some kinks in the program which are now being addressed at the White House and by VA Deputy Secretary Gordon Mansfield," Mr. Dole wrote in an e-mail. "I have other information that gives me confidence the program will be a great asset to seriously wounded in 90 days."
Reach Johnny Edwards at (706) 823-3225 or johnny.edwards@augustachronicle.com.
post #800
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Putting McCain's performance on the public record
Putting McCain's performance on the public record
By TERRENCE L. LITKA SR.
It is funny to read the misquoting of Sen. Barack Obama, but it is understandable considering the Limbaughesque propaganda being spewed by the conservative side. There are a few things, though, about Sen. John McCain that should be pointed out to those who are blindly jumping on his bandwagon.
While McCain's service to his country in the military and his prisoner of war experience are commendable, his votes against veterans' benefits are deplorable. Not only has he refused to support the 21st Century GI Bill, which the Veterans of Foreign Wars endorsed last June, he has consistently voted against increasing funding for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, which oversees all medical care for veterans:
McCain voted against an amendment providing $20 billion to the VA's medical facilities. He voted against providing $430 million to the VA for outpatient care "and treatment for veterans," one of only 13 senators to do so. He voted against increasing VA funding by $1.5 billion by closing corporate loopholes. He voted against increasing VA funding by $1.8 billion by ending "abusive tax loopholes."
People are already talking that McCain would be best for the defense of this country. Think. Do you honestly believe any president, regardless of political party, would not defend this land? Do you honestly believe that any president, regardless of political party, would buck the Constitution and take away your firearms? Think! Don't be led like sheep by the talk-show entertainers.
As for being a "maverick," McCain voted with the Bush administration 89 percent of the time. Since President Bush took office, McCain has supported Bush's positions 89 percent of the time. McCain's support of Bush's policies reached as high as 95 percent in 2007. Think about this as you pay more than $3 per gallon of milk and more than $4 per gallon for gasoline.
Now, his view on jobs. McCain voted with the Republicans in 2007 to stall a minimum wage increase for working families — before bowing to public pressure and voting to pass the final bill that included tax breaks for businesses. He even voted to completely repeal the minimum wage laws in 45 states and allow the other five states to opt out of any future minimum wage increases above $5.15 an hour. McCain voted against protecting workers' overtime pay from Bush administration rules that threaten the overtime rights of 6 million workers. McCain voted to block the Occupational Safety and Health Administration from issuing, implementing or enforcing standards to protect workers from ergonomic injuries. In 1993, before finally voting for the Family and Medical Leave Act, McCain voted to jeopardize leave for millions of workers by gutting the bill. He voted to suspend the act unless the federal government either certified that compliance would not increase costs for business or provided financial assistance to businesses to cover any costs associated with implementing the law.
McCain voted against extending the expiring Temporary Emergency Unemployment Compensation program for another six months, with an additional 13 weeks of benefits for workers who exhaust their federal benefits while looking for a new job. The amendment also called for unemployment benefits for low-wage workers and workers seeking part-time employment. At the time the program was due to expire, more than 1 million long-term jobless workers were nearing the end of their state benefits.
McCain voted against the 2004 $318 billion highway and transportation bill that would create about 5 million jobs over six years in new highway and transit construction projects, although Bush said he would approve only up to $256 billion in funding. The legislation contained Davis-Bacon prevailing wage protections.
McCain also voted in 2005 against a six-year, $286 billion reauthorization of the federal highway and transit construction program. The infrastructure modernization bill would create 1 million family-supporting jobs, protected by Davis-Bacon prevailing wage standards. McCain voted against an amendment that authorized $1.6 billion in fiscal year 2002 to help states and local school districts repair their most dilapidated public school buildings.
Now for health care, like Bush's, McCain's plan undermines existing employer-based health care and pushes workers into the private market to fight big insurance companies on their own. It will reduce benefits, increase costs and leave many with no health care at all. McCain wants to shift the burden from employers to workers. He will make health care premiums part of taxable income, essentially creating a new tax for working families. The modest tax credit McCain wants to give people to cover his new tax would cover less than half the average health premium, leaving workers to pick up the difference. Also, by promoting high-deductible Health Savings Account plans, which provide fewer benefits at higher costs, he will make the high costs of individual insurance even worse. Many states have laws regulating health care quality by requiring basic services to be included in health care coverage. McCain's proposal would circumvent these laws, resulting in lower quality coverage without consumer protections.
So, one must wonder if these facts will be broadcast by the likes of Rush Limbaugh or Laura Ingraham so that we, the voters, are informed before we make our decision. Be sure to register to vote. Stay informed on the issues. Think. Vote.
Terrence L. Litka Sr. lives in Mishawaka.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Mitchell takes on the stigma of vets' mental-health issues
Mitchell takes on the stigma of vets' mental-health issues
by E.J. Montini - Jul. 22, 2008 12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic
Late last year at a congressional hearing in Washington, Rep. Harry Mitchell listened to a couple named Mike and Kim Bowman tell the story of their 23-year-old son, Tim, a soldier who had returned safely from his yearlong deployment in Iraq only to commit suicide at home.
"We already were hearing that suicide among veterans who were between 20 and 24 years old was 2½ times higher than non-veterans," Mitchell told me. "And I remember thinking to myself: 'We can't do this again.' "
The first-term congressman previously had attended a "stand-down" event in Phoenix, at which homeless veterans receive free haircuts, showers and meals, as well as medical check-ups and help with housing or job services.
"A lot of those guys were Vietnam vets," Mitchell said. "After that war we didn't understand PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) as well as we do now. I just didn't want us to neglect another generation of veterans. And the Bowmans said something really important at that hearing, something that stuck with me. They said that we shouldn't wait for veterans to go to the VA, but have the VA go to veterans."
As a subcommittee chairman on the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs, Mitchell, a Democrat, working with Republican colleagues, began asking the VA some tough questions about how much effort it put into reaching veterans at risk of suicide or other mental-health problems connected with post-traumatic stress disorder or traumatic brain injury.
Mitchell already was working on a revised version of the GI Bill, which Congress recently approved.
What he found after questioning VA officials was that the VA had a self-imposed ban on the kind of television advertising that can quickly get the word out concerning mental-health services.
There also was no aggressive program aimed at reaching veterans through the Internet or through cellphone technology.
In the meantime, too many veterans who had survived the war were suffering at home, with some taking their own lives.
Most recently in Arizona, there was the story of Staff Sgt. Travis Twiggs, a Marine who killed himself and his brother, Willard, after a long police chase and who is suspected of trying to commit suicide - Thelma & Louise style - by driving off the edge of the Grand Canyon.
"It has taken some work appealing to the VA bureaucracy, but I believe things are beginning to turn around," Mitchell said.
Not long ago, officials from the VA told Mitchell's committee that it has changed its outreach policy.
A pilot program that involves advertising on everything from buses to billboards is going into effect in Washington, D.C.
The message reads: "It takes the courage and strength of a warrior to ask for help."
It goes on to list the VA's suicide prevention hotline number: 800-273-TALK (8255).
The government also produced a television spot with the same message that features actor Gary Sinise, who was in Forrest Gump and currently stars in CSI: New York.
Not long ago, I wrote about a vet who had thought about killing himself after having returned from a tour in the war zone.
Since then, I've heard from other veterans as well as from friends and loved ones of soldiers who see troubling signs in their returning veterans and aren't quite sure what to do about it.
(They, too, can call the hotline and get help.)
"Hopefully, we can destigmatize this," Mitchell said. "In hearing after hearing, we are told about people who are afraid to report it because it will affect their jobs. We have to get over that. We need to be more on the offensive."
Reach Montini at 602-444-8978 or ed.montini@arizonarepublic .com.
Monday, July 21, 2008
Having the 'Best Military' Is Not Always a Good Thing
Having the 'Best Military' Is Not Always a Good Thing
In the meantime, at home, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates launched a fierce verbal assault on… go ahead, take a guess: the "creeping militarization" of U.S. foreign policy. It seems that too many unappetizing "peacekeeping" tasks, once handled by other departments of the government, are now in the military's lap, which turns out not to be quite as capacious as once imagined. "The Foreign Service is not the Foreign Legion, and the U.S. military should never be mistaken for a Peace Corps with guns" were among his exact words. Of course, this is what happens when your leaders love military power to death, can't imagine dealing with anyone here or abroad unarmed, and expand the Pentagon's job description in every imaginable direction.
Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, as ever more bombs fall, civilians, including a bride and her wedding party, were being regularly wiped out in sizeable numbers by American air power. As the civilian casualty reports came in last week, the U.S. military alternately denied that civilians were dying, issued vague regrets that civilians should have to die, and launched "investigations" that we're guaranteed never to hear about again. And the Afghans? Well, here was an aside in a New York Times account of a Taliban attack on a U.S. base near the Pakistani border in which nine U.S. soldiers were killed and 15 more injured: A former governor of the region where the attack took place said "some local people might have joined the militants since a group of civilians were killed in American airstrikes on July 4 in the same area. 'This made the people angry,' he said. 'It was the same area. The airstrikes happened maybe one kilometer away from the base.'"
As for the Air Force high command, R. Jeffrey Smith of the Washington Post reported: "The Air Force's top leadership sought for three years to spend counterterrorism funds on 'comfort capsules' to be installed on military planes that ferry senior officers and civilian leaders around the world, with at least four top generals involved in design details such as the color of the capsules' carpet and leather chairs, according to internal e-mails and budget documents."
The cost of this program is now estimated at $7.6 million in Global War on Terror money, $68,240 just to change the color of the seats and seat belts from an unpleasant Army brown to a cheerful Air Force blue (while adding seat pockets). Believe me, if you were a general, you would have been involved too. After all, among other features to decide on: a "37-inch flat-screen monitor with stereo speakers, and a full-length mirror" in each two-room capsule. Attention Secretary Gates: Should U.S. Air Force generals be mistaken for interior decorators with Hellfire missiles?
And just in case you didn't think that ordinary Americans back home could do their bit supporting our troops to the nth degree, they now have a wonderful opportunity, thanks to HBO's "Generation Kill" website, where they can "gear up," pick-up that needed Generation Kill women's tank top or men's Tee, and even – no kidding – send a box of "Bandaid brand adhesive bandages" to the soldiers as part of the site's "troop drive." Creeping militarism, who sez? Well, retired Lt. Col. (and TomDispatch regular) William J. Astore, for one. ~ Tom
Noted veterans' advocate Earl Hopper dies
Noted veterans' advocate Earl Hopper dies
by Lily Leung - Jul. 21, 2008 12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic
Earl P. Hopper Sr.'s fight for the rights of troops who were captured or missing in action began when his oldest son, Earl P. Hopper Jr., disappeared in North Vietnam in 1968.
Though his mission began with one person, what fueled it was a band of brothers who had been "knowingly, wantingly" left behind by the U.S. government, said his wife, Patty.
Hopper Sr., a Glendale native and noted advocate for captured and missing troops, died July 11. He was 86.
Services for the retired Army colonel will be 5 to 8 p.m. Friday at the Chapel of Chimes Mortuary, 7924 N. 59th Ave., Glendale.
On numerous occasions, Hopper Sr. served as a leading expert in hearings before congressional committees on behalf of those missing or captured in war.
He was a key figure in two lawsuits in the 1970s that were integral in the reform of the Missing Persons Act.
"He would do anything, work with anyone who would work with him to help resolve this issue and to help make sure these kinds of travesties never happen again," Patty Hopper said.
The couple met through their work with the National League of Families, an organization for family members of captured and missing service troops from the Vietnam War.
She had lost a classmate. He had lost his son.
Hopper Sr., who had a 30-year military career, was elected to the organization's board of directors in 1973 and served until 1984, when he had become its chairman.
He and his wife continued their work with the families of captured and missing troops and became founders of Task Force Omega in 1983.
The research-driven organization has concentrated its effort on the return of the POWs abandoned in Vietnam and Laos after the Vietnam War.
The group regularly researches the lives of captured and missing troops, producing comprehensive biographies.
Hopper Sr. was the youngest of eight children and grew up on a farm in then-rural Glendale.
He had a paper route as a kid, loved pranks and was considered a good athlete at Glendale High School, his wife said.
He enlisted in with the Arizona National Guard in 1940 and served with distinction in World War II with the 101st Airborne Division.
During the Korean War, he worked with military intelligence; he was an adviser to a South Vietnamese Brigade during the Vietnam War.
"He had an extremely finite sense of right and wrong, and he had the most remarkable mind," Patty Hopper said.
Donations in Hopper Sr.'s name may be sent to Task Force Omega, 14043 N. 64th Drive, Glendale.
For more information, call 623-979-5651.
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SALUTE and TAPS for a true American Hero a veteran
