Saturday, June 23, 2018

Senate hearing with veterans charity got testy

Alleged altercation at US Senate hearing between VA staffer and MVP founder
WIBW 13 News
By Shawn Wheat
Jun 21, 2018

TOPEKA, Kan. (WIBW) -- 13 NEWS has learned that there was an alleged physical altercation in April of 2017 during a subcommittee meeting in Washington D.C., between an employee of the VA and the founder of the Military Veterans Project.


In a recent e-mail exchange, Military Veteran Project (MVP) founder Melissa Jarboe told Joseph Burks, the Public Affairs Officer for VA Eastern Kansas Health Care System, to cease and desist any communication with her.

“The physical attack, verbal abuse and intimidation you displayed on April 27, 2017 has not been forgotten, rather thoroughly documented via video, audio and written statement to appropriate parties and chain of command,” Jorboe said in the e-mail, obtained by 13 NEWS.

Jarboe declined an on camera interview, but told 13 NEWS, she was called to testify by Senator Jerry Moran, at a hearing on "Preventing Veteran Suicide".

When asked by Senator Moran if there was a partnership between the MVP program and the VA, Jarboe said, “We do not currently have a strong partnership with the Veterans Administration. We are there if they need us. We are not asked to attend any of their boards. We are not a part of their direct community approach or outreaches. But, we will still eagerly assist the Veterans Administration when they are in crisis or in need because that’s what we’re supposed to do as Americans.”
read more here

Because you did cry their tears

Older veterans cried the same tears
Combat PTSD Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
June 23, 2018

Considering this is PTSD Awareness Month, the most important thing has been missing from what you need to be aware of. The results prove that.

The latest suicide report from the Department of Veterans Affairs is missing a lot of information, but within the report it states two very damning facts.

Veterans over the age of 50 are over 58% of the known suicides, and veterans are twice as likely to commit suicide as civilians.

Pretty shocking stuff considering the topic is all over social media and stunts are pulled all over the country on a daily basis to "raise awareness" of the deaths, but few offer hope of healing.

Very hard to take for any advocate, especially when there have been decades of research to prevent veterans from taking their own lives after surviving combat.

"I'd protect you from the sadness in your eyes, give you courage in a world of compromise" so the song goes and how I wish I could change things for you. The sadness in your eyes does not go away because there is a smile on your face. Yet, those same eyes that have seen way too much, end up shining when you heal.

It seems that most people want what is easy, while you did what was hard. They want easy solutions, slogans that make them feel better, but do not accomplish much else, and fast answers, so they do not have to look too hard.

Why do you continue to risk your life now after you risked it for everyone else? Is it your pride? Do you fear being seen as weak? Then you've been getting the wrong message. This is an old video I did and it shows what PTSD is.

And here is another one on grieving.

If you grieve, then you cared and there is nothing weak about that. It took a lot of inner strength to put your life on the line.

Find that same care for your own life now and heal so you can still help others now. When you can, you can take away the sadness in someone eyes of someone else, because you did cry their tears!

Friday, June 22, 2018

She was shot 5 times, but Navy Master Chief stays in!

Shot 5 Times by Afghan Soldier, Navy Master Chief Refused to Quit
Military.com
By Matthew Cox
21 Jun 2018
"Whether that is three years or four years or 10, as long as I can make a difference every day, and I know I am making a difference every day, and I can serve my country in an operational function -- I'm gonna stick around."
Navy Master Chief Raina Hockenberry remembers everything from that day in 2014 when an Afghan soldier shot her five times.
Master Chief Personnel Specialist Raina Hockenberry, from Kalihi, Hawaii, competes in the 50-meter breaststroke swimming competition at the 2018 Department of Defense Warrior Games at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colo. (U.S. Navy photo/ Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Marcus L. Stanley)
She was serving as the senior enlisted leader position for Combined Security Transition Command Afghanistan. Hockenberry was part of a group visiting a basic training facility for Afghan soldiers.

We stopped for our last briefing of the day, and one of the Afghan soldiers just opened fire through a window," she told reporters at the Pentagon Wednesday describing the green-on-blue attack that wounded 13 other military personnel that day. "He just started shooting."

Hockenberry suffered two gunshot wounds to the right leg, shattering her tibia. She was shot once in the groin and twice in the stomach.

While at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, "people tended to assume that I would be medically retired; I can understand why, but I just didn't see it."

Four years later, she won eight gold medals in the recent Warrior Games in Colorado Springs and now serves on the USS Port Royal at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

In four months, she plans to participate in the Invictus Games in Sydney, Australia.
read more here

Fatal motorcycle crash claimed life of sailor

Motorcyclist Killed on I-5 Was Aspiring Navy SEAL
By NBC 7 Staff
Jun 21, 2018

A member of the U.S. Navy was killed when his motorcycle collided with a car on Interstate 5 near the San Diego-Coronado Bridge Friday.
Lt. j.g. mid Mason Calhoun, 24, was an active-duty midshipman who lived in Pacific Beach, according to the San Diego County Medical Examiner's Office.

Calhoun was on his way to turn in paperwork as part of the application process to be a US Navy SEAL, his mother told a Virginia television station.
read more here

Puppies saved by soldiers in Afghanistan on Animal Planet

Animal Planet’s ‘Dodo Heroes’ Highlights US Soldiers Reuniting With Their Afghanistan Dogs (Exclusive Video)
The Wrap
Tony Maglio
June 22, 2018

Animal Planet’s “Dodo Heroes” highlights those who go to great lengths to save, protect, and rehabilitate animals — and this Saturday’s subject Pen Farthing takes that “heroes” part of the show title to a whole new level.
The man, who as a Royal Marine used to spend his days saving humans in war-torn Afghanistan, now spends them saving dogs (and cats, and donkeys, and now a horse) there. But Farthing is still saving soldiers in a way, as his mission through his charity Nowzad — named after his own pooch from the war zone — is to reunite American military personnel with their unofficially adopted local four (and sometimes three)-legged friends.

The lengths that Farthing and his organization go through to export these forgotten street dogs from Afghanistan to their specific soldier in the United States is remarkable — as is the cost.

read more here and watch great video

Thursday, June 21, 2018

US Navy is bombing Ocala?

US Navy drops live bombs in Ocala National Forest
WFTV 9 News
By: Elyna Niles-Carnes
Updated: Jun 21, 2018

OCALA, Fla. - Residents in southern Marion, northern Lake or west Volusia counties should not be alarmed if they hear loud booms near their neighborhoods.
The US Navy began bomb training exercises this week at the Pine Castle Range Complex in the Ocala National Forest, officials said in a news release.
read more here

VA Suicide report shows need for change!

UPDATE: The report on suicides from the VA is useless!

VA backs off suicide study that indicated thousands of unreported military deaths
Military Times
By: Leo Shane III
19 hours ago


WASHINGTON — Veterans Affairs officials are walking back a new suicide study which appeared to show thousands of unreported military deaths in recent years, saying differences among classifications of service members led to confusion in the statistics.


At issue is an update last week to VA’s annual National Suicide Data Report, a massive collaboration between the department, defense researchers and census analysts which has founds that roughly 20 veterans a day take their own lives. That figure has held steady from 2008 to 2015, the latest year data is available.

But for the first time, this year’s update to the report breaks down those figures into veterans receiving VA health care (about six individuals a day), veterans not using the department’s health services (11 a day), and a group including active-duty troops, guardsmen and reservists (four a day).

That calculation would put the official Defense Department suicide total among troops at close to 1,400 for 2015, about 900 higher than what military officials had previously reported.
read more here

VA Suicide report screams need for change
Combat PTSD Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
June 21, 2018

It looks like the more people talk about "raising awareness" on veterans committing suicide, the more they lose hope. The more people talk about "PTSD Awareness" the less veterans end up hearing.

It is time to stop talking about them and start learning how to actually help them!




VA Releases National Suicide Data Report
Analysis Part of VA’s Comprehensive Examination of More Than 55 Million Death Records

WASHINGTON — Today the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) released findings from its most recent analysis of Veteran suicide data for all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

This report yields several important insights:
Suicide rates increased for both Veterans and non-Veterans, underscoring the fact that suicide is a national public health concern that affects people everywhere.
The average number of Veterans who died by suicide each day remained unchanged at 20.
The suicide rate increased faster among Veterans who had not recently used Veterans Health Administration health care than among those who had.
Here is a link to the report itself.

The report covers up to 2015.

Out of 20 million veterans the VA has about 9 million in their system.


The report shows that veterans over the age of 50 are still over half of the known suicides, 58.1% down from 65%.

The number of living veterans dropped 15.2% between 2005 and 2015.

The report also includes something that is stunning. The numbers include active duty, National Guard and Reservists.

While the DOD releases quarterly reports on suicides, with an average of 500 a year, this leaves many of us wondering exactly how many veterans are in the data the VA released.

Veterans going to the VA are still less likely to commit suicide.

While it does show that the number of known suicides has remained an average of 20 a day, the number of veterans has dropped 15.2% and that jumped out because there is much more the report does not show.

Start with who did not count.

While the VA said the report is from 50 states, Washington DC and Puerto Rico, it turns out that actually that cannot be true.

In 2017, California with the largest veterans population, passed legislation to add military service to the death certificates. Illinois, with over 700,000 veterans, also took a step to began to track veterans. That means, the veterans, not in the VA system, would not have been counted by the VA or the CDC, since the CDC would not know their status as "veterans" and would not be able to include them.

Discharges that were not "honorable" would not be counted as veteran. That number is in the hundreds of thousands.

In some states, National Guard and Reservists are not counted as "veterans" unless they were deployed. 

Veterans who live in other countries, apparently, are not counted. 

Questions remain as to veterans shot by police after a crisis, "suicide by cop" and "murder suicides" along with accidents, drug overdoses and if homeless veterans are counted, since many of them are not in anyone's system. It is hard enough for advocates to figure out how many homeless veterans there are.

The other thing we do know is that for all the "awareness" that has been going on since the original report put the known number at "22" a day, it got worse. 

Isn't it about time it dawned on everyone that we need to change the conversation? Change the "awareness" from how many someone thinks committed suicide into how they can find hope again? 

UPDATE
There is a great article on how data was collected in the original report from the Washington Post 
The missing context behind the widely cited statistic that there are 22 veteran suicides a day

Among the findings;
They cautioned against the use of the 22-deaths figure more than once in the study: “It is recommended that the estimated number of veterans be interpreted with caution due to the use of data from a sample of states and existing evidence of uncertainty in veteran identifiers on U.S. death certificates.”


To account for uncertainties, researchers gave a range of 18 to 22 veteran suicides a day, which is consistent with previous VA estimates using CDC data. The report does not include some states with the largest veteran population (including California, Texas, Georgia, Arizona and North Carolina), so it is unclear how this would affect the rate.

This was the first time the VA used death certificates from states to study the veteran population beyond those who receive services through the Veterans Health Administration.




Wednesday, June 20, 2018

Kokomo VA Clinic designed to fail?

Sen. Donnelly asks VA to investigate new Kokomo clinic
Kokomo Tribune
By Carson Gerber
June 19, 2018

U.S. Sen. Joe Donnelly is asking Veterans Affairs officials to investigate the new outpatient clinic in Kokomo after local veterans expressed concerns about access to care and problems scheduling appointments.
Donnelly recently sent a letter to VA Northern Indiana Health Care System Director Michael Hershman, whose office runs the Kokomo clinic, asking him to “investigate and address these issues, consistent with U.S. law and agency policy.”

The letter comes after the clinic, which is a first-of-its-kind pilot program established by the VA, came under fire from local veterans during last month’s meeting of the Howard County Military Foundation.

Veterans said the clinic isn’t providing enough services and patients are being discouraged from going there when calling to schedule appointments.

Jimmy Shaw, a guide for UAW Local 685, said during the meeting that veterans in his union have reported the nurse practitioners and clinicians there can’t provide the kinds of services they need.

“We’ve got a lot of irate veterans,” he said. “I’m hearing that the clinic can’t do anything for them once they get in there.”
read more here

Sarges Grill Closed, Employees Not Paid

Veteran-owned restaurant closes; employees say they haven't been paid
KKTV 11 News
By Danielle Kreutter
Jun 19, 2018

FOUNTAIN, Colo. (KKTV) - Dozens of employees are out hundreds of dollars after the restaurant they worked at suddenly closed without notice. This happened at both locations of Sarges' Grill.
The restaurant is veteran-owned and aimed at serving veterans, active duty military members, first responders and law enforcement at their locations in Fountain and Colorado Springs.

Over the weekend, customers hoping to eat at Sarges' were met with locked doors and signs saying the business had closed.

It was a surprise to regulars. Several employees told 11 News they didn't get much notice either.

"I was supposed to get paid Wednesday and [a co-worker] was supposed to get paid Thursday, but nothing," said Michael Yamoaah, a former cook at the restaurant.

Yamoaah and the former kitchen manager, Nathan Mayfield, told 11 News the sudden closure happening so soon before rent and bills are due has left dozens of employees in a bad spot.

"[There's] 30-40 employees at least. He owes us each three weeks' pay. I know for me it's 120 hours, about $1,500. It doesn't seem like a lot but for people like us, we live check to check. I've got bills to pay right now," Mayfield said.
read more here

Tuesday, June 19, 2018

VA Contractor charged with sexually assaulting 4 female patients

Prosecutor: Doc hired by VA sexually assaulted four female patients
San Diego Union Tribune
Carl Prine
June 18, 2018
Manzanera’s arrest came two days before one of his former patients filed a series of lawsuits in state and federal courts against the doctor, the VA and his former employer, QTC Medical Services.

Four female patients from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs were sexually assaulted by an Oceanside physician who was arrested on Wednesday, authorities say.

Out on a $150,000 bond, Dr. Edgar Manzanera is slated to be arraigned on Wednesday afternoon in California Superior Court’s North County Regional Center in Vista on four separate felony counts of sexually penetrating the women with a foreign object.

A physician contracted by VA to review pension disability claims, Manzanera also is accused of violating the state’s professional code for health providers by allegedly making sexual contact with his patients.

“If there are any other potential victims, please contact the San Diego County District Attorney’s Office,” said deputy prosecutor Dan Owens during a telephone interview on Monday.

Manzanera did not return a Union-Tribune message left with a woman at his home on Monday.
read more here

And about QTC Medical
DIAMOND BAR, Calif., Aug. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- QTC Medical Services, Inc. (QTC), a Leidos (NYSE: LDOS) company, was awarded its second prime contract by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to continue to provide medical disability examinations for the Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA). The contract has a one-year base period of performance, four one-year options, and a total contract ceiling of $6.8 billion, if all options are exercised. This second award follows the initial award of VBA's only nationwide contract supporting disability examinations for separating and retiring Department of Defense servicemembers.