Friday, November 1, 2013

No Judge in Maine's Veterans Court, really, no judge

Maine Veterans' Court Ready to Go - But no Judge
Maine Public Broadcasting Network
Reported By: Tom Porter
11/01/2013

It's been about 18 months now since the state Legislature passed a law allowing special courts to be set up specifically to help veterans. In return for pleading guilty, veterans in the court system are put in touch with treatment programs, peer mentors and other services to help them get their lives back on track. So far, the only Veterans Court set up is in Kennebec County. The special court is ready to go, but as Tom Porter reports, there's one big glitch.

The program was set up in Kennebec County, in part to meet the needs of younger vets, many of them suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD, after serving in Iraq or Afghanistan. A year-and-half after lawmakers OK'd veterans' courts, the Kennebec County program is still the only one in the state.

"We're really hoping to be able to do a Veterans Court in our area," says Sgt. Victoria Langelier, a programs director at the Androscoggin County jail in Auburn. Most of the pieces are in place for Androscoggin County to have its own vets court, she says - but one key ingredient is missing: They can't find a judge.

Langelier says the position is a demanding one, and it's unfunded.

"From what I understand it's all pro bono - it's not a paid spot," she says. "And it is quite a lengthy procedure to get the veterans in and out of the court, make sure that everything is going the way it should be, to make sure they're following up in all of their support systems that they're getting through Togus and through their counselors."

Since Veterans Courts were established in May 2012, Langelier says 129 vets have passed through the Androscoggin County Jail system. Only two of them were able to be referred to the specialty Veterans Court in Kennebec County.
read more here

HBO Documentary Sheds Light On The Hidden Cost Of War

Heartbreaking HBO Documentary Sheds Light On The Hidden Cost Of War
Business Insider Australia
PAUL SZOLDRA
IN AN HOUR

Since 2001, more veterans have committed suicide than have died in combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs.

That’s just one of many heartbreaking statistics found in “Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1,” a new HBO documentary which profiles the people working behind the scenes to help veterans and active-duty military members in their darkest hours.

The New York-based Crisis Hotline call center receives more than 22,000 calls each month, and the short film highlights some of the responders taking the calls.

Calls can be minutes or hours and can sometimes lead to dire circumstances — with supervisors calling local police to visit veterans on the line that have guns right by their side. The responders use phrases like “No one can replace you,” “Your children need you,” and “Your family loves you” — sometimes being the last person that a veteran may talk to before taking their own life.
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Marine Veteran Still Giving Back to Community after Devastating Burglary

Marine Veteran Still Giving Back to Community after Devastating Burglary
FOX 40 News
by Sonseeahray Tonsall
Reporter
October 31, 2013

She fundraises to help poor children in Ceres have laptops for school and caters appreciation luncheons for city employees. But now the lady known as “Millie-Mom” needs help recovering from the second major theft she’s suffered in three years.

“I’m prepping my stuff now so that I’ll have it all done,” said Millie Fisher as she buzzed around her kitchen Thursday night.

Fisher’s planning to be up until 1 a.m. working on dozens of tamales she intends to give away as presents.

As per usual, this Ceres community advocate is focused on how to brighten someone else’s day and trying not to think about who recently tried to wreck hers.

“My back door was standing open, and the most shocking thing to me – and it still is as I remember it – is that every item on every surface was thrown on the ground,” she said.

Fisher cherishes the few pictures she has left because the thieves ruined family photos that were 80 years old.

Her stereo was stolen right along with her kitchen recipe book.

Also gone?

The retired Marine sergeant’s blue dress uniform from her service back during the Vietnam war.

“I was sick to my stomach for a week,” Fisher said about making the devastating discovery.

After the Marines, Fisher spent 25 years as a 911 dispatcher in Ceres.
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Marine says helping wounded solider was an "opportunity"

Marines help build home for disabled soldier
Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune
Story by Cpl. Donovan Lee
October 31, 2013
“We heard about the opportunity to volunteer and help a veteran renovate his house,” said Lance Cpl. Cameron Payne, a combat correspondent with Headquarters and Headquarters Squadron aboard Marine Corps Air Station New River. “As a Marine, it is our responsibility to take care of our fellow wounded service members.”

CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C. - More than a dozen Marines from Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune and Marine Corps Air Station New River volunteered their time to help a service member in need through United Way of Onslow County’s initiative, Volunteer Onslow, Oct. 21 through Oct. 24.

Dereck Coble, a former Army infantryman was hit by an improvised explosive device during a deployment in Afghanistan and suffered a serious concussion. When he returned home, he was diagnosed with cancer.

Coble wanted to relocate to Jacksonville but could not work, therefore couldn’t find a home at the time.

Coble said the home he lives in now was given to him by the bank and was retrofitted for handicap accessibility.
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People took pictures of homeless man dead on the street for a day

Houston Homeless Man Lay Dead For A Day As Passersby Took Pictures Of Him, Did Nothing To Help
Posted: 11/01/2013

A homeless man in Houston was left dead on the sidewalk for close to a day as pedestrians walked by, doing nothing to help. Some even took photos of his lifeless body with their cellphones.

"If they just had used their cell phone to make a call instead of a picture, perhaps this man could still be alive today," Sgt. Brian Harris of the Houston Police Department, told KHOU. "I would like to say our city is better than that, I know our city is better than that."

Police said the man, who was discovered dead by a deputy constable on Tuesday, likely died of natural causes. His identity has not been determined.
read more here

Is this what we've come to?

New Research on PTSD dumb idea

This is how we ended up with the bullshit program called Comprehensive Soldier Fitness. It was a research project and was not even tested before it was delivered to the troops. Once the suicides went up afterwards, they just pushed the program harder.
“We do have a new study starting up for post-traumatic stress disorder many of whom the veterans will be treated at the C.W. Bill Young Building on campus,” Kip said.

The goal of academia is to apply the research as quickly as possible according to Interim Vice President of USF Health Dr. Donna Petersen.
There has been over 40 years of research done on PTSD but these folks don't want to bother with a tiny detail like that. What has already been proven to work, they avoid. What has been proven to fail, they repeat.

Read more for yourself. Yes, I am fed up too.
Researchers Work to Prevent Past Neglect of Veterans
Health News Florida
By BOBBIE O'BRIEN
November 1, 2013

An estimated 2.3 million men and women have served during the nation’s last 12 years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq. And as they transition out of the military, the veterans will need care for immediate and long-term conditions like post-traumatic stress and traumatic brain injury.

And many from health care professionals to retired military are concerned that the neglect of past veterans is not repeated with this new generation.

Troops in World War II came home in 1945 and went right back to work and college. There was no re-integration, no recognition of post-traumatic stress. So many WWII vets had to find their own ways to cope with the trauma of war.
read more here

For a start looking back at what happened after WWII is that everyone went if they were healthy. My husband's Dad and three uncles did. One of them was killed. Another was a Merchant Marine. His ship was sunk and they ended up in the ocean. He ended up with PTSD. He was given a choice. He could go into an institution or go live on a farm with other veterans a couple took in to give them a peaceful place to live with other veterans just like them. It was called shell shock back then and yes, they were trying to treat it. They also did have a lot of support from each other.

As for PTSD and newer generations, Vietnam veterans led the way on that and they made sure things got done. Either by the government or by the public.

In 1984 Point Man International Ministries started to address PTSD in the veterans as well as addressing what the families needed to stay together.

Live report on LAX shooting


TSA Agent Killed, 2 Injured in LAX Shooting

TSA officials told NBC4 the shooting occurred at a security checkpoint

By Jonathan LloydNyree Arabian and Jason Kandel
|  Friday, Nov 1, 2013 

Congress trying to CYA fix on Veterans funding

This is a great thing to do because as the article points out, veterans and their families are tired of being used in political games. Those games include everything else veterans care about.

Taking care of the VA is good but what about Social Security? What about Medicare and Medicaid? What about taking care of the roads we all travel on and bridges? How about police and fire departments across the nation? What about the FDA making sure food, water and medications are safe? What about the food stamp programs that put food on the tables of far too many veterans as well as active duty families need?

"An estimated 900,000 U.S. military veterans will lose some or all of their Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits on Friday."
How about fixing everything instead of playing some kind of game to make sure everything veterans fought for and still care about work? As for work, have members of congress done anything to make sure there are jobs for all of us? We kept hearing about jobs from politicians but one second they say "government doesn't create jobs" and the next they want to blame the other politicians for not making any. Which is it folks?
VA opposes shutdown protection only for itself
By Rick Maze
Staff writer
October 30, 2013

A politically popular proposal to protect all veterans programs from harm during future government shutdowns is meeting opposition from an unexpected source: the Veterans Affairs Department.

But VA’s opposition might not matter.

The House Veterans’ Affairs Committee passed bipartisan legislation in August to create a two-year discretionary budget for veterans programs to prevent disruption if Congress does not pass a VA budget by the Oct. 1 start of the fiscal year.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont Independent who heads the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, said Wednesday that his committee will pass similar but even more expansive legislation in November that would protect not just discretionary spending for things like benefits processing, information technology and cemetery programs but would also provides advance funding for benefits, paid with what is known as mandatory funding.

“Failure to pay mandatory benefits would be a disaster,” Sanders said. “As we saw this month, in the event of a prolonged shutdown, VA would not have been able to issue disability compensation, pension payments or education benefits. The veterans community is not particularly wealthy. Many of them depend on these benefits to feed themselves and their families, to pay their rent and to make ends meet.”
read more here

Former Veterans Affairs Psychiatrist Pleads Guilty to Medicare Fraud

Former Veterans Affairs Psychiatrist Pleads Guilty to Medicare Fraud
30 October 2013
Written by YNN


Washington, DC - Dr. Mikhail L. Presman, a licensed psychiatrist employed by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), pleaded guilty today to health care fraud for falsely billing Medicare for home medical treatment to Medicare beneficiaries and agreed to forfeit more than $1.2 million in illegal profits.

Acting Assistant Attorney General Mythili Raman of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch of the Eastern District of New York, and Special Agent in Charge Thomas O’Donnell of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (HHS-OIG) made the announcement.

According to court documents, from Jan. 1, 2006, through May 10, 2013, Presman submitted approximately $4 million in Medicare claims for home treatment of Medicare beneficiaries notwithstanding his full-time, salaried position as a psychiatrist at the VA hospital in Brooklyn.

Contrary to his representations, Presman did not provide any treatment to a substantial number of the beneficiaries he claimed to have treated. For example, Presman submitted claims to Medicare for home medical visits at locations within New York City even though he was physically located in China at the time of these purported home visits. Additionally, Presman submitted claims to Medicare for 55 home medical visits to beneficiaries who were hospitalized on the date of the purported visits.
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Real life 'Lone Survivor' Navy SEAL

Real life 'Lone Survivor' and Mark Wahlberg discuss the cost and depiction of war
Marcus Luttrell's story makes for a riveting account but is it an Oscar player?
HitFix
BY KRISTOPHER TAPLEY
THURSDAY, OCT 31, 2013

In June of 2005, during a firefight with Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan that would claim the lives of three of his fellow Navy SEALs, Petty Officer First Class Marcus Luttrell broke his back. He broke his pelvis. He tore out his shoulder, bit his tongue in half and crushed his hand. He sustained facial bone damage, he was shot "through and through" his quads and his calves, his body was riddled with shrapnel from his ankles to his eyes…and he lived to tell the tale.

That tale was captured on the page in his 2007 memoir "Lone Survivor" and it has now been captured on the big screen by director Peter Berg with Mark Wahlberg in the starring role as Luttrell. A riveting depiction of the mission, called Operation Red Wings, the film eschews traditional structure and launches its players into the heart of darkness quickly before tearing through a 33-minute recreation of the firefight itself that recalls such nail-biting sequences as those captured by Steven Spielberg in "Saving Private Ryan" or Ridley Scott in "Black Hawk Down."

At a post-screening Q and A tonight moderated by journalist Tina Brown, Luttrell, of course, received a standing ovation, his loyal golden retriever at his side. He told the audience matter-of-factly, completely unmoved by the Hollywood machine, about his ordeal and the toll it took. "I died up on that mountain," Wahlberg says in voiceover as the film's final moments flicker on the screen, and indeed, it was clear hearing Luttrell speak that he lost a bit of himself that day.

"The hardest part wasn't getting back on the horse, so to speak, and going back into combat," Luttrell, who after recuperating from his Afghanistan tour turned right around and re-deployed for Iraq, said. "That's what we're trained for. I didn't have any mental problems. The only problem I had was when they released me, when I couldn't do the job anymore. I think it was more along the lines of I was just bored. I missed the adrenaline and missed my buddies. That was the hardest hurdle to overcome. But my wife, I'm blessed to have her. She keeps me out of the shadows."

During the mission, Luttrell and four of his comrades (played by Taylor Kitsch, Ben Foster and Emile Hirsch in the film) were discovered during a reconnaissance mission by local Taliban-loyal goat herders. With a compromised mission and a moral conundrum, the decision was made to free the locals and fall back while trying to re-establish communications with their base at Bagram Airfield. And Luttrell has plainly said that if he had the whole thing to do over again, he would have made a different decision.

"He'd much rather have been Leavenworth [prison], with his brothers alive," Wahlberg said during the Q and A. That's in fact part of the moral territory the film is attempting to navigate. "'SEALs kill kids,' that's the CNN headline," Wahlberg's Luttrell pleads in the film. But war changes all the rules.
read more here