“The Vets We Reject And Ignore”: Leave No Fallen Comrade Behind Applies At Home And To All Veterans, Regardless Of “Bad Paper”
Today, we honor the nation’s 22 million veterans, including more than 2.5 million who served in Iraq, Afghanistan and other fronts in the war against Al Qaeda. But we are turning our backs on hundreds of thousands of veterans who were discharged “under conditions other than honorable” and so do not qualify as veterans under federal law.
Their discharges, which include overly broad categories encompassing everything from administrative discharges for minor misconduct to dishonorable discharges following a court-martial, nevertheless make them ineligible for the health care, employment, housing and education benefits offered by the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Because of the “bad paper” they carry in the form of their discharge certificates, many of these veterans struggle upon leaving the military. And when they falter, the burden for supporting them falls heavily on their local communities because federal agencies cannot, by law, help them.
No federal agency publishes the numbers of bad paper discharges. But historical studies suggest that at least several hundred thousand veterans fall into this category. Approximately 260,000 of the 8.7 million Vietnam-era veterans were pushed out of the service with bad paper. More recently, according to documents separately obtained by the Colorado Springs Gazette, the Army discharged 76,165 soldiers between 2006 and 2012 with bad paper. Of these recent Army discharges, only one in seven were kicked out following a criminal conviction for a serious offense. The rest were discharged for smaller breaches of military discipline like missing duty or abusing alcohol or drugs. For many of them, their misconduct was likely related to the stresses of war.
Instead of showing compassion for these troops who were carrying the invisible wounds of war, their commanders kicked them out. These troops’ getting pushed out under such circumstances would be enough of a blow, but these commanders compounded the injury by giving them bad paper, instead of merely administratively separating them from the service.
While assessing the needs of veterans in the Western United States, my research team met with community leaders and nonprofit agency staff members in seven cities with the largest populations of veterans, and interviewed others in outlying cities and rural areas as well. Across these communities, veterans with bad paper were believed to be significantly overrepresented in the at-risk veterans populations. All too frequently these veterans become part of the nation’s chronically homeless or incarcerated populations.
When they end up in distress or on the streets, their communities must bear this burden alone.
We have a moral obligation to those who serve, especially those who serve us in combat. At times, the military must discharge those who can’t perform or conform. However, commanders should exercise far greater discretion and compassion in trimming the ranks. Bad discharges indelibly mark veterans as damaged goods and cost society a great deal too.
Congress should also allow the V.A. to more broadly provide mental health care, homelessness support and other forms of crisis intervention to veterans with bad paper. The V.A. has case-by-case authority to do so now, but that does not help veterans with bad paper who have acute needs. A more compassionate policy would not diminish the military’s ability to maintain discipline, nor would it cheapen the valor of those who have served honorably.
The military has a process to fix bad paper, but that process takes too much time, and veterans often need legal help to prevail in an incredibly bureaucratic and difficult process.
The story of John Shepherd Jr., who earned a Bronze Star for valor in Vietnam but was kicked out after disobeying an order to return to combat after developing severe post-traumatic stress disorder, shows how difficult these cases can be. Mr. Shepherd went without V.A. support for 40 years until a team of students and lawyers at Yale Law School helped him correct his record this month.
Excellent programs exist to help veterans in such cases, but they deserve more resources. Small investments in pro bono legal services can help unlock a lifetime of access to the V.A. and help the neediest veterans with bad paper move on with their lives.
Finally, the veterans community should do more to lift up those veterans who have been discharged with bad paper, particularly in those cases where combat experience lies at the heart of the bad discharge. The American military ethos calls on all of us to leave no fallen comrade behind. That applies at home, too, and to all veterans, regardless of whether they carry bad paper.
By: Phillip Carter, Op-Ed Contributor, Opinion Pages, The New York Times, November 10, 2013
“Far-Reaching Consequences”: Obamacare, Mental Illness, And Guns
After years of delays, the Obama administration has released final regs aimed at implementing 2008 legislation requiring “parity” in insurance coverage of mental illness, as Jackie Calmes and Robert Pear of the New York Times report today:
The rules, which will apply to almost all forms of insurance, will have far-reaching consequences for many Americans. In the White House, the regulations are also seen as critical to President Obama’s program for curbing gun violence by addressing an issue on which there is bipartisan agreement: Making treatment more available to those with mental illness could reduce killings, including mass murders.
Remember gun violence?
In issuing the regulations, senior officials said, the administration will have acted on all 23 executive actions that the president and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. announced early this year to reduce gun crimes after the Newtown, Conn., school massacre. In planning those actions, the administration anticipated that gun control legislation would fail in Congress as pressure from the gun lobby proved longer-lasting than the national trauma over the killings of first graders and their caretakers last Dec. 14.
But there’s another big piece of the puzzle that is necessary to make sure mental health benefits are available to the people most at risk of committing acts of violence: the Affordable Care Act. As Harold Pollack explained in a major article in the March/April 2013 issue of the Washington Monthly, the ACA’s Medicaid expansion alone is a really big deal for people with mental illness and/or addictions who are prone to violence:
Why do so many people at risk—many of them young low-income men—fail to receive appropriate mental health services? The most important single reason is this: most are categorically ineligible for Medicaid. These men are not custodial parents. They are not veterans. They have not (yet) been diagnosed with federally recognized disabilities. Many get into trouble because they have serious drug or alcohol disorders. Since 1996, substance use disorders are no longer qualifying conditions for federal disability programs….
This will begin to change in 2014. That’s when the ACA will start providing subsidies that will eventually reach thirty-three million Americans without health insurance. An estimated sixteen million will eventually be covered by expanded Medicaid to low-income Americans with incomes below 138 percent of the federal poverty line. That number will include the hundreds of thousands of mentally ill men cycling in and out of places like Chicago’s Cook County Jail and sleeping on grates in cities from Washington, D.C., to Seattle. For the first time, nearly all of these individuals (undocumented immigrants are the big exception) will gain access to regular health care. Moreover, if the law is properly implemented, these same individuals will gain access to mental health services that can reduce their propensity to commit violent acts.
So if you want some very good news about the impact of Obamacare, and some very bad consequences if it fails to be fully implemented, there you are.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, November 8, 2013
“An Obvious Problem”: Chris Christie Needs Republicans To Have A Terrible 2014
I wouldn’t say that New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is the presumptive frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016—though, like Ross Douthat, I’m not sure who could beat him—but it is true that he is the official candidate of the GOP establishment. And, with a reelection coalition of Republicans, Democrats, young people, Latinos, and African Americans, Christie stands as the only potential presidential nominee that can claim a credible path to victory.
It doesn’t come as a surprise, then, to learn that his rivals are already throwing shade in his direction. NBC News has a good round-up of the Republican presidential contenders who have opened fire on the New Jersey governor:
Even after the disaster of the shutdown and Ken Cuccinelli’s loss in the Virginia gubernatorial race, the operating assumption of right-wing Republicans is that success will come when conservatives take a doctrinaire approach to their ideology. The available evidence makes clear that this isn’t true—Ted Cruz, for instance, won his election, but he underperformed Romney—but this doesn’t matter to either the GOP base or lawmakers like Cruz.
This poses an obvious problem for Christie. Insofar that his message of electability has any chance of resonating with Republican primary voters, it will be because they have given up the quest for purity, and are desperate to win, which means that, for Christie, the best thing that could happen is for Republicans to have a terrible 2014. If the GOP continues down its path of extremism, and loses its shot at capturing the Senate as a result, Christie has perfect ground for making his pitch.
Unfortunately for him, the more likely outcome is that Republicans do pretty well. The combination of a sluggish economy and voter discontent will hurt incumbents, which threatens the Democratic majority in the Senate and precludes the party from making real gains in the House. And a GOP base that does well—or even okay—in next year’s midterms is one that doesn’t have much interest in Christie’s message.
By: Jamelle Bouie, The Daily Beast, November 7, 2014
“Another Banker Scam”: Can Wall Street Buy Redemption?
Goldman Sachs churns out enormous profits from its high-rolling, casino investment schemes, while also churning out fat paychecks for its top executives. They literally sack up the gold, even as their speculative gambles have wreaked havoc on our real economy.
But, finally recognizing that their public approval rating has sunk lower than mad cow disease, Goldman’s banking barons now want you to know that they feel your pain and are eager to “give back” to the people. So — ta-da! — they’ve transformed themselves into philanthropists, having goosed up the bank’s foundation in order to flash their “charitable side.” Goldman’s chief of staff noted that “people said we weren’t doing enough” to address the gross inequities created by Wall Streeters, so they’ve turned their foundation into the fourth-largest corporate charity in America. In an orchestrated show that the New York Times dubbed “reputation redemption,” the bank’s charitable arm doled out $241 million last year, including grants to women in developing nations and small-business projects here in the U.S.
That sum would be impressive, except for a couple of ugly hickies on it. First, the foundation spends an unseemly amount on slick videos and PR efforts to extol Goldman’s new “generosity,” diverting philanthropic funds from altruism to corporate promotion. One Goldman banker, who’s appalled at the self-congratulatory splashiness, said of the charity: “It’s run as if it’s a Broadway show.”
Second, $241 million sounds like a lot — until you see that the financial empire’s income last year topped $34 billion. Do the math, and it turns out these “bankers with a heart of gold” actually allocated less than one percent of Goldman’s income to its widely ballyhooed beneficence.
How pathetic. Even poor people put these multimillionaires to shame, regularly donating 3.2 percent of their meager incomes to charity. Trying to buy redemption on the cheap is just another banker scam, but why aren’t we surprised that they would even view charity as a self-serving hustle? After all, on Wall Street, it’s assumed that anything can be bought and sold — from fraudulent investment packages to congress critters.
It’s no surprise, then, that the wizards of Goldman Sachs assumed they could purchase an image makeover, convincing us gullible rubes that they’re not just a pack of malicious, money-grubbing narcissists, but at heart, are huggable bankers who want nothing more than to serve humanity. Hence, the Goldman Sachs Foundation spreading a few of its millions hither, thither and yon in a flashy show of charity designed to mask the bank’s voracious ethic of greed.
But whom do the Goldman Sachers think they’re fooling? By putting a pittance of their billions into charity, they’re merely updating the old PR shtick attempted a century ago by the billionaire robber baron, John D. Rockefeller, who went around in public passing out dimes to a few children in the vain hope of buffing up his sour public image. But, worse, Goldman’s sly executives are not even donating their own dimes! It’s the shareholders’ money that these bankers are doling out. Worse yet, it’s also our money. By ours, I mean that Goldman’s so-called “gifts” are deducted from the income taxes the bank owes, thus, shorting America’s public treasury of funds that We The People need for schools, roads, parks, clean water and other essentials to advance our society’s common good.
Also, what is “charitable” about funneling $375,000 into one of Bill Clinton’s show-and-tell PR events? This donation by Goldman’s foundation went to Clinton’s Global Initiative conference in September, allowing the banking giant to plaster its brand on the event, including being the “host” of a panel moderated by Chelsea Clinton. Come on, that’s not charity — it’s advertising.
The more Wall Street bankers try to purchase morality, the less they have. We don’t want their false “charity” — we want honest accountability for their destructive greed, and we want a restructured, decentralized and ethical banking system based on fairness and common decency.
By: Jim Hightower, The National Memo, November 7, 2013
“No Hero’s Welcome”: Edward Snowden Can’t Expect To Be Welcomed Back From Russia
Edward Snowden wants the U.S. government to stop treating him like a defector. Then why did he defect?
Snowden, of course, is the former government contractor who released an enormous trove of classified information to news organizations detailing the data- and intelligence-gathering activities of U.S. security agencies. The disclosures were disturbing, and revealed the extent of spying on both U.S. citizens and allies.
Some of it should not be a surprise, considering the expansion of authority a spooked Congress gave to the intelligence community after 9/11. The upside of the disclosures is that it has caused a national discussion on what authority our government should have in monitoring its own citizens.
But Snowden still broke the law, and very deliberately so. He also did not carefully expose just one troubling element of the data-mining activities he knew of, nor did he first try to go to a member of Congress with his concerns. He dumped the classified information wholesale, and then got on a plane for Hong Kong – as sure a sign as any that he knew he had violated the law and would face serious consequences for it.
Snowden is now residing in exile in Russia, and apparently is already getting antsy. Through a German lawyer, Snowden released a letter appealing to the U.S. government to stop treating him like a traitor for what he called his “moral duty to act.” Said the letter:
My government continues to treat dissent as defection, and seeks to criminalize political speech with felony charges that provide no defense. Speaking the truth is not a crime. I am confident that with the support of the international community, the government of the United States will abandon this harmful behavior.
The problem for Snowden is that speaking the truth indeed can be a crime, especially when you sign a document pledging to keep national security secrets and then very deliberately violate that pledge. And Snowden obviously knew what he had done was wrong or at least, if he didn’t think it was morally wrong, illegal. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have high-tailed it to Hong Kong and then to Moscow to escape punishment.
People have gone to prison, sometimes for many years, in defiance of a law or policy they thought was unjust. Snowden has already managed to avoid that fate. It’s asking too much to expect the government whose secrets he illegally revealed to welcome him back as a hero.
By: Susan Milligan, U. S. News and World Report, November 4, 2013
Share This Blog
Unknown Feed- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
mykeystrokes.com 