Eideard

New Republican legislation in the House and Senate would force the U.S. government to reroute huge amounts of money to China and other creditors in the event that Congress fails to raise its debt ceiling…

If passed, Pat Toomey’s (R-PA) plan would require the government to cut large checks to foreign countries, and major financial institutions, before paying off its obligations to Social Security beneficiaries and other citizens owed money by the Treasury…

That’s where Toomey’s idea supposedly comes in. And yet, according to the Treasury Department, his plan wouldn’t actually avoid a default, or its catastrophic consequences.

“[T]his idea is unworkable,” said Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin in a statement. “It would not actually prevent default, since it would seek to protect only principal and interest payments, and not other legal obligations of the U.S., from non-payment. Adopting a policy that payments to investors should take precedence over other U.S. legal obligations would merely be default by another name, since the world would recognize it as a failure by the U.S. to stand behind its commitments.”

The full impact of an actual default is unclear, but Treasury, and independent experts have warned that it would among other consequences, cause an enormous loss of wealth among U.S. citizens. Under the circumstances, one would think that the government’s top priority would be ensuring that citizens owed money by the Treasury would take precedence over, say, foreign governments. But that wouldn’t be the case if Toomey and some House Republicans, including Republican Study Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH), get their way.

The Administration thinks such a policy would be tone deaf. “Such a policy would also be unacceptable to American servicemen and women, retirees, and all other Americans, who would rightly reject the notion that their payment has been deemed a lower priority by their government,” Wolin added…

“I think it is a dreadful idea,” Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND) told National Journal. “Basically what they are saying is, pay China first. Are we going to forget about the American public and the things that they need? Somehow they are secondary? And paying the Chinese and the Japanese is the first priority of this country..?

You have to be wearing blinders made of boiler plate to ignore how committed the Republican Party is to Big Oil and Big Money. Still, blatant butt-kissing like this is so contemptible. Couple it with Republican willingness to crap on the needs of ordinary citizens — rejecting any priority for social security or medicare payments, funding for veterans administration hospitals — puts their display of ethical corruption down lower than a snake’s belly.

Cripes. Rattlers in my neck of the prairie would be offended by being compared to Republicans.

The Iraq and Afghanistan wars have likely cost the United States $4 trillion, and have sent damaging “ripple effects” across the American economy, according to researchers at Brown University.

While President Obama recently put the price tag for the wars at $1 trillion, researchers at the nonpartisan Watson Institute for International Studies says they will cost up to four times as much.

“While most people think the Pentagon war appropriations are equivalent to the wars’ budgetary costs, the true numbers are twice that, and the full economic cost of the wars much larger yet,” the researchers wrote.

“Conservatively estimated, the war bills already paid and obligated to be paid are $3.2 trillion in constant dollars,” they found. “A more reasonable estimate puts the number at nearly $4 trillion.”

The “human and economic costs,” however, will stretch for decades, with “some costs not peaking until mid-century,” the report concludes, pointing to the care of war veterans. “Many of the wars’ costs are invisible to Americans, buried in a variety of budgets, and so have not been counted or assessed.”

While top Pentagon officials downplay the role the wars’ costs and the size of the annual Defense Department budget have had in the nation’s economic downturn, the researchers see a connection.

“The ripple effects on the U.S. economy have also been significant, including job loss and interest rate increases,” the Brown scholars found, “and those effects have been underappreciated.”

Veterans appreciate the cost of course. And they will live for many years with that cost engraved in their minds and on their bodies. Congress and the rest of our political establishment would rather focus on causing pain – rather than its alleviation or avoidance.

Oh, and BTW. Fiscally “responsible” liars in Congress who all voted to authorize this crap and whine today about the need to diminish the federal deficit – this circlejerk of death and destruction is equal to almost 30% of the whole deficit. No negotiations, No questions about debt ceiling.

There’s no reason to believe we have any more interest than usual to delve into questions of philosophy, sociology, science and politics, this weekend. But, I have several articles we’ve found worth examining, reflecting upon in our family circle – that I thought I’d post on the blog.

The term “military covenant” was introduced in Britain in 2000 and is used by political leaders and the media in discussing the informal pact that exists between those who volunteered to serve in the British military and the nation. Its purpose is to ensure that those who served will be treated with respect and receive the benefits they’ve earned.

As defined by the Ministry of Defense: “Soldiers are bound by service. The nature of service is inherently unequal: soldiers may have to give more than they receive. Ultimately, they may be called upon to make personal sacrifices — including death — in the service of the nation.

“In putting the needs of the Nation, the Army and others before their own, they forgo some of the rights enjoyed by those outside the Armed Forces. So, at the very least, British soldiers should always expect the Nation and their commanders to treat them fairly, to value and respect them as individuals, and to sustain and reward them and their families…”

But what about a military covenant here in the United States? I think an argument can be made that one already exists, although in an unofficial capacity and without a title. Politicians speak at length about the need to take care of veterans, but that argument needs to be made and remade daily, and advocacy groups are forced to poke and prod in order to utilize benefits already earned and remind the public that we’re still fighting two (three?) wars. When British politicians speak about veterans’ issues, they invoke the military covenant, which conveys a stronger message than a lengthy argument as to why a specific veterans’ bill should be passed or an explanation of why it is good business to hire a veteran. The word “covenant” invokes images of a sacred trust, not just a simple contract. It also suggests that everyone is involved, since a covenant requires agreement between multiple parties. Members of the military are required to serve their nation honorably, and in return, the nation and public are required to ensure that those service members and veterans are treated fairly and with respect.

Taking a cue from the British, then, if we were to enact a military covenant, it should also be made into law…With this, if a veteran feels he or she is not receiving fair treatment, then the military covenant can be invoked as a reminder and to act as a benchmark. Initiatives would be examined to see if they are meeting the “spirit” of the military covenant.

Establishing a military covenant in the United States will not solve all problems faced by members of the military and veterans. Nor will it eliminate the civilian-military divide. But I think it would be a net plus in addressing both of these issues, and considering the scale, a serious look at enacting our own military covenant is worthwhile.

A great deal of my life’s involvement with the United States military has been in opposition to the wars they obediently marched off to. Because of one or another active involvement at the time, subsequent [ongoing] dialogue I enjoy with veterans of those and other anti-colonial, anti-imperial wars, I maintain a rapprochement with many who fought for our country. And, of course, being a geek of true geezer age, I’ve had many friends and family who fought in the war against fascism, World War 2 – the last just war in my lifetime.

It’s easy for me to support the covenant Don Gomez writes about – for professional soldiers as well as conscripts. My understanding of history and society recognizes a sense and purpose for the ethic and the law.

It is a 387-acre campus of green fields and low-lying buildings in a prosperous neighborhood, donated to the federal government more than 100 years ago for use as a Pacific Coast home for wounded veterans. But over the last 20 years, as Los Angeles has become inundated with homeless veterans, advocates for the homeless say the campus has become a symbol of a system gone wrong: as veterans sleep on the streets, many of its buildings lie abandoned and one-third of the land has been leased for commercial use.

On Wednesday, advocates for the homeless sued the Department of Veterans Affairs, seeking to compel federal officials to use the campus to care for and house mentally ill veterans.

In the class-action suit, filed on behalf of four mentally distressed homeless veterans, lawyers contend that the department has violated the terms of the agreement in which the property was deeded to the government in 1888. They also contend that the department is required — under a federal statute barring discrimination against the mentally disabled — to provide housing to help mentally ill veterans…

By any measure, the lawsuit — the first of its kind, lawyers said — is a significant escalation in a battle that has simmered here for years, as homeless advocates contended that the Department of Veterans Affairs was bowing to residents of the property’s prosperous Brentwood neighborhood and commercial interests by refusing to rehabilitate abandoned buildings and use them to help veterans.

For the first 100 years of its existence, the campus was used entirely to provide housing and services to veterans; that began changing in the 1960s and ’70s, as some of the buildings were abandoned and the Department of Veterans Affairs leased about one-third of the property for use by, among others, a car rental agency, a laundry for the Marriott hotel chain, a golf course, a dog walk and a baseball stadium for the nearby University of California, Los Angeles. It now has a limited number of geriatric beds for veterans.

“It is a piece of land that has accommodated the interests of powerful people in L.A. for a long time,” said Bobby Shriver, a member of the Santa Monica City Council and one of the people pushing the suit. “Now, we are going to make it accommodate the interests of these veterans.”

RTFA. The lawsuit is overdue. The debt owed America’s veterans is one that politicians often speak of – without doing a damned thing to pay up.

The trauma from hard combat can devastate veterans until old age, even as it influences others to be wiser, gentler and more accepting in their twilight years, a new University of Florida study finds.

The findings are ominous with the exposure of today’s men and women to heavy combat in the ongoing Iraq and Afghanistan wars on terror at a rate that probably exceeds the length of time for U.S. veterans during World War II, said UF sociologist Monika Ardelt.

“The study shows that we really need to take care of our veterans when they arrive home, because if we don’t, they may have problems for the rest of their lives,” she said. “Yet veterans report they are facing long waiting lines at mental health clinics and struggling to get the services they need.”

The 60-year study…compared 50 World War II veterans with high combat exposure with 110 veterans without any combat experiences. Results showed that heavy combat exposure at a young age had a detrimental effect on physical health and psychological well-being for about half of the men well into their 80s, she said. The findings were published in the latest issue of the journal Research in Human Development…

The study found that about half of the veterans who experienced a high level of combat showed signs of stress-related growth at mid-life, leading to greater wisdom and well-being in old age than among veterans who witnessed no combat, she said…

Veterans in the high combat group who experienced stress-related growth or reached “generativity” reported significantly less anxiety and depression than other veterans who did not attain this stage of development, either in the high or low combat group, the study found.

In addition, veterans with high combat exposure who experienced this type of growth were less likely than those who did not attain it to abuse alcohol in their early 50s, while the difference in alcohol consumption in the no combat group between veterans who reached “generativity” and those who did not was statistically insignificant, Ardelt said. Among veterans who failed to reach “generativity,” those exposed to heavy combat tended to drink significantly larger amounts of alcohol in midlife than veterans with no combat experience, she said…

Even though effects from heavy combat could be long lasting, these Ivy League-educated World War II veterans studied were probably much better off than today’s veterans, Ardelt said. Their educational background may have let them serve in better positions than the average soldier, she said.

“Because this was a very privileged sample, I would be even more concerned about the people who are coming home now, who are not necessarily privileged and joined the army for economic reasons,” she said.

I won’t comment about the overall merits of the study except to say I witnessed close-up the turmoil and resolution of turmoil affecting the lives of WW2 vets. Some aspects of PTSD stayed with my closest friend all his life. I recall him leaping from a dead sound sleep ready to kill the first person in front of him – because an idiot in the neighborhood set off an aerial bomb celebrating the 4th of July – and my buddy thought he was back at the liberation of Buchenwald. Where he had been terribly wounded by a German hand grenade.

On the other hand, back from the war, he walked out of hospital after 14 months ready for a lifetime of political struggle against war and war profiteers. He was an activist till the day he died.

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs failed to inform 6 million soldiers and their families of an agreement enabling Prudential Financial Inc. to withhold lump-sum payments of life insurance benefits for survivors of fallen service members, according to records made public through a Freedom of Information request.

The amendment to Prudential’s contract is the first document to show how VA officials sanctioned a payment practice that has spurred investigations by lawmakers and regulators. Since 1999, Prudential has used so-called retained-asset accounts, which allow the company to withhold lump-sum payments due to survivors and earn investment income on the money for itself.

The Sept. 1, 2009, amendment to Prudential’s contract with the VA ratified another unpublicized deal that had been struck between the insurer and the government 10 years earlier — one that was never put into writing, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its November issue…

For a decade, until the contract was formally changed, Prudential wasn’t fulfilling its obligations to survivors of fallen service members, says Brendan Bridgeland, an insurance lawyer who runs the non-profit Center for Insurance Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

“It’s very clear they violated the original terms of the contract,” says Bridgeland, who is retained by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners to represent consumers.

“Every veteran I’ve spoken with is appalled at the brazen war profiteering by Prudential,” says Paul Sullivan, who served in the 1991 Gulf War as an Army cavalry scout and is now executive director of Veterans for Common Sense…

That the VA allowed Prudential to issue retained-asset accounts for 10 years while the contract required lump-sum payouts is “more evidence that the VA was asleep at the wheel for a decade,” says Sullivan, who was a project manager and analyst at the VA from 2000 to 2006.

“When grieving families check the box that they want a lump sum, they should get it. We remain disappointed and irate at the VA’s failure to provide advocacy for veterans,” he says.

RTFA for the details. It’s long and there are a lot of details.

It stinks on ice!

George Wincapaw thought he was getting some strange requests from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

The 63-year-old Vietnam War veteran had had several heart attacks since leaving the Navy, submitting enough paperwork on them to amass a two-volume file at the Veterans Benefits Administration office. But in response to his most recent claim, submitted earlier this year, the office was requesting copies of medical records Wincapaw had already submitted.

Curious, he traveled from his home in Oconomowoc to the VA regional offices in Milwaukee to look at his medical file. What he found shocked him.

He wasn’t providing duplicates. Dozens of his medical records were missing.

Then the public contact representative with whom he was reviewing his file broke the news: An employee had been fired from the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Wincapaw’s representative agency, for destroying veterans’ records.

An official with the state VFW, which handles thousands of such cases a year, told Public Investigator the employee had shredded nearly all its veterans files – no one knows how many – after making a unilateral decision to go “paperless…”

Steve Lawrence, speaking for the group, admitted that Lee Guerrero, who represented veterans on their claims, was fired in August 2009 for shredding all of their claimant files in the VFW service office.

He did not keep electronic copies of the documents, either…

“He just thought going paperless meant getting rid of the files  . . . It cost him his job as soon as we found out about it,” Lawrence said.

RTFA. Explains other stuff you may find interesting as well.

Dumbest part? Employees who complained about what Guerrero was doing – were told to shut up. They weren’t high enough up the food chain to get anyone to listen to them.

The act of killing is as fundamental to war as oxygen is to fire. Yet it is also the one thing many combat veterans avoid discussing when they return home, whether out of shame, guilt or a deep fear of being misunderstood.

But a new study of Iraq war veterans by researchers in San Francisco suggests that more discussion of killing may help veterans cope with an array of mental health problems stemming from war.

The study, published in The Journal of Traumatic Stress, found that soldiers who reported having killed in combat, or who gave orders that led to killing, were more likely to report the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, alcohol abuse, anger and relationship problems…

Shira Maguen…the principal investigator on the study, said the results suggested that mental health professionals need to incorporate killing more explicitly into their assessments and treatment plans for veterans. That would include finding ways to discuss the impact of killing, in public forums and in private treatment, to reduce the stigma and shame, she argued…

Mental health experts said the new study confirmed findings from research on Vietnam veterans and did not break much new ground. But they said it underscored that treating stress disorder among veterans is often very different from treating it in people who, say, have been raped or have been in car accidents.

“People don’t understand the moral ambiguity of combat and why it is so hard to get over it,” said Rachel Yehuda, a professor of psychiatry at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. “What makes combat veterans ill is not always about being a victim, but, in some instances, feeling very much both a perpetrator and a victim at the same time…”

Some experts said military law had also complicated therapy by having unclear rules about when a soldier’s conversations with a therapist are protected from legal action. The mere threat that those conversations could be used in war crimes prosecutions discourages many troops and veterans from seeking counseling, those experts say.

My closest friend was our home state’s most decorated soldier in WW2.

Something we revisited time and again.

Maybe it was the sound of the wind cutting through the wire. Perhaps he caught a small vibration with his keen eyes. Or it could have been a slight difference in the air’s smell.
Whatever it was, when Sarge noticed that his Marine Corps handler, Fred Dorr, was creeping down the wrong path in the Vietnam jungle, the German shepherd did something he’d never done out in the field: He looked at Dorr and barked, before taking a seat.

“When he sat down, I knew there was a trip wire. I was one step away from it,” remembered Dorr, who with his dog in 1969 was “walking point,” leading the way for a dozen soldiers. Had the hidden explosive device been tripped, “It would have gotten half of us.”

More than 40 years later, the gratitude and love Dorr, 59, feels for the dog he served with is as strong as ever. And it’s for this reason that Dorr, president of the Vietnam Dog Handler Association, drove from his Yoakum, Texas, home to be in Southern California this week.

About 200 Vietnam War dog handlers, who were trained to read and communicate with their canine partners, have gathered for a reunion. And on Saturday they’ll join an expected several thousand others for the 10th anniversary rededication of the War Dog Memorial at the March Air Reserve Base in Riverside…

Washington also took notice. In November 2000, President Clinton signed into law legislation that established a military working dog adoption program. Now the dogs working in Iraq and Afghanistan will have a chance to find comfortable homes when they return from war.

For Dorr, of the Vietnam Dog Handler Association, this has been a blessing. He said leaving his partner Sarge behind, all those decades ago, haunted him…

But he now has Bluma, the war dog he adopted from Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas. The German shepherd, who has hip problems, looks uncannily like Sarge, he said, and having him around is a source of comfort.

“I’m taking care of an old vet,” Dorr said, “and he’s taking care of me.”

RTFA. A tale worth telling and retelling. A reminder that the bond of companionship between human and dog can be a strong as any other. Maybe more worthy.

Post-traumatic stress is estimated to afflict more than 300,000 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, but until now, it’s been labeled a “soft disorder” — one without an objective biological path to diagnosis.

That may have changed this week, after researchers at the University of Minnesota and the Minneapolis VA Medical Center announced they’d found a distinct pattern of brain activity among PTSD sufferers.

The team used magnetoencephalography (MEG), a brain imaging method that measures how the brain processes information.

They scanned the brains of 74 U.S. veterans with PTSD, and 250 civilians without the disorder, and say that by spotting specific brain biomarkers, they managed to accurately diagnose PTSD sufferers with 90 percent accuracy.

The study could be a breakthrough for the military, which has been scrambling to address a surge in post-traumatic symptoms among newly returning vets. Right now, troops are evaluated by mental health experts, but diagnosis is a crapshoot: Symptoms can take years to show up, and they vary from person to person, even among those exposed to the same traumas.

Of course, a study of 74 vets is only a start. Next up, the researchers want to evaluate 500 vets, alongside 500 civilians, to further validate their findings.

It’s a start. I lived and worked with PTSD-afflicted veterans all the way back to WW2 – through a long period when the Veterans Administration wouldn’t even admit it was an ailment.

Overdue.