Since it’s Veterans Day, lets’ have a post about veterans, shall we?
If military veterans applying for benefits either haven’t gotten a reply from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs or received a different response than expected, it could mean that evidence for their claim file wound up in the shredder.
A nationwide review of the VA’s 57 regional offices has found that 41 had records in their shredder bins that shouldn’t have been there. In all, nearly 500 benefit claims records had been erroneously slated for destruction, including claims for compensation, notices of disagreement with a claim decision, and death certificates.
Since they empty their shredders every week, all those “mistakes” could be from just a couple of days. Imagine it on a grander scale, and that’d probably be closer to the truth of what’s been going on with the VA. Truly very sad.
I’d just like to say a big “thank you” to everyone who has served in the military for serving your country — and by extension me — and doing what you had to do when it had to be done. I’m proud of you all and pray that eventually veterans will cease getting shafted, because every one of them deserves so much more than that.
A fab post, fab. They absolutely do not deserve such treatment, I had no idea about it :O
Most people, unless they are a veteran or have one in the family, have no idea what a total clusterf*ck the VA is and has been for ages. I can’t even say it shocks me anymore, but this bull does explain why so many of the veterans I know have had endless problems getting the benefits they earned and deserved. Who knows how many records didn’t get where they were supposed to and how many people’s lives were screwed up by that.
“Military men are just dumb stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy.” – Henry Kissinger
It’s not just the VA; it’s society speaking through government practice. Just as people lie on surveys about how often they go to church, or how they’re not prejudiced against others, they won’t badmouth veterans publicly, but when no one’s looking they will often mistreat, usually in the same ways black people get abused. It’s most noticeable where bureaucratic types have discretion in deciding issues of fairness. It’s pretty clear to me that it’s all about projection of self-hate and shame. Men are always measuring themselves against other men, just as they are always evaluating every female in the room. It’s basic hard-wired survival instinct operating. If one guy is the boss and makes more than the other guy, but the other guy was a marine, the first guy, with no military service, fears that at any moment his ‘unworthiness’ may be exposed and he’ll be socially emasculated. That’s why it’s harder for veterans to find work, on the one hand, and why so many non-veterans spend a lifetime desperately accumulating power and money. Some of them even invent military service.
An easy proof is to look at how many Fortune 500 companies ever use the word ‘veteran’ in their employment advertising. All I’ve ever heard were Corrections Corporation of America and another I’ve forgotten.
Again, refer to Kissinger’s statement. He was speaking for the power elite, those who won’t serve.
One way society craps on veterans, as you noted, is post service employment. No matter how long someone serves or what they did in the military, when they come home, they find no one wants to acknowledge their years of service as actual employment experience. So someone like my dad, who entered the military a year after high school and was in the Air Force forever, got out (after losing a freaking lung for his country), and then he had a long string of crap jobs.
He wasn’t stupid. He wasn’t unemployable. He wasn’t even particularly disabled. The problem was that all his skills, his entire resume’, was the military, and so as an adult with years of all kinds of work experience, he ended up having to take jobs recent high school graduates were vying for. I’ve been seeing this happening with my friends coming back from Iraq too. Eight years in whichever service, and they find themselves stocking grocery shelves or flipping burgers, when they have skills that do translate to civilian life and civilian careers.
I’ve seen this in my own household as well. My husband was bright enough to maintain the systems we could have blown up the world with throughout the Cold War, and when I met him, shortly after he left the service, the best job he could find was bartending … and he had some college education as well (so did my dad).
I’ve seen the sneers from non-military persons too. I don’t get that attitude at all. I love people who have joined the military. I love that there are people willing to go and do the things that I can’t or won’t. Everyone wants to have the most powerful military on the planet, but they don’t want to have to deal with being around (ex)soldiers. It’s weird.