U.S. Rep.-elect Moulton's sights set on Armed Services panel
Lowell Sun
By Chelsea Feinstein
UPDATED: 11/28/2014
Congressman-elect Seth Moulton said that he's working to earn a spot on the House Armed Services Committee.
"I think we need the perspective of combat veterans on that committee, and we have a bigger defense industry in the 6th (District) than any other district in the state, so it's important for the district," Moulton, a U.S. Marines veteran who served four tours in the Iraq War, told The Sun Tuesday.
Fresh off his weeklong orientation for freshmen congressmen in Washington, D.C., Moulton said Armed Services is his top choice for a committee assignment. While in Washington last week, he wrote a letter explaining what he could offer to the committee and met with people already on the committee.
Those activities came as part of the traditional rite of passage for freshman congressmen, where Moulton and his colleagues networked, attended seminars on ethics and the legislative process, chose offices and began the process of hiring a staff.
"I want to hit the ground running and start serving the people of the 6th District," Moulton said. "Orientation is important for getting me and my team up to speed."
Despite not hearing anything as of Tuesday night from his predecessor, Rep. John Tierney, who had been elected to nine terms before losing to Moulton in the Democratic primary in September, Moulton said the transition process is otherwise on track.
read more here
Saturday, November 29, 2014
'Frozen' princess surprises girl who lost Marine dad
'Frozen' princess surprises girl who lost Marine dad
KUSA, 9news.com
November 28, 2014
KUSA – It was a tough summer for 4-year-old Codi.
Her father, Lt. Col. Anthony Alvarado, died while serving in the Marines.
Shortly thereafter, her family moved from California back to Colorado. One of her greatest wishes that she knew would bring her joy was to meet Princess Anna from Disney's hit movie Frozen.
While at a Colorado Supporting Our Troops event in October, little Codi was surprised by the princess herself, played by local artist Aubrie Hamrick.
Together they sang "Let it go" and "Do you want to build a snowman" – as Codi's face lit up.
read more here
KUSA, 9news.com
November 28, 2014
 |
| Anna and Codi singing (Photo: Colorado Supporting Our Troops) |
Her father, Lt. Col. Anthony Alvarado, died while serving in the Marines.
Shortly thereafter, her family moved from California back to Colorado. One of her greatest wishes that she knew would bring her joy was to meet Princess Anna from Disney's hit movie Frozen.
While at a Colorado Supporting Our Troops event in October, little Codi was surprised by the princess herself, played by local artist Aubrie Hamrick.
Together they sang "Let it go" and "Do you want to build a snowman" – as Codi's face lit up.
read more here
Let It Go with Codi and Aubrie Hamrick as Princess Anna. Codi lost her daddy, a Marine, last June. She just wanted to sing with Princess Anna... Colorado Supporting Our Troops made that happen!
Land of the free but do we deserve to be?
Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
November 29, 2014
We have the best military in the world. No doubt about it. Patriots obtained our freedom and every generation after them retained it. They filled up cemetery plots during combat and afterwards because we didn't care enough about what they needed from us.
We don't take care of them when they are serving or when they come home. We are all enjoying the rights and freedoms they make sure we have but at the end of the day, we need to answer some questions honestly.
Why are soldiers and families on food stamps?
The Army says it will soon notify 550 majors that they must leave the service by next spring as part of a budget-driven downsizing of the service.
As the Army looks to reduce its force to 490,000 by the end of fiscal year 2015 and 450,000 by the end of FY ’17, a military personnel official from Fort Hood said Tuesday that 213 captains within III Corps were recently identified by the Army Officer Separation Board to transition from the service in the coming months. At Fort Hood, 91 captains were affected by the OSB, according to Jay Whitaker, the senior military personnel officer, or G1, with Fort Hood’s Mission Support Element.
Fiscal 2016 sequestration marks ‘breaking point’ Everyone wants the U.S. to lead the way in resolving global conflicts and crises, he said, not necessarily supplying the preponderance of forces, but involvement to some extent. The nagging question is, “Do we want to do that or not?” In fiscal year 2016, Odierno pointed out that the budget will go down $9 billion from what it is now. That would have a “significant degradation” on the force “because I cannot take people out fast enough.”
Why do the wounded get this kind of treatment?
Why are veterans still finding when they turn to the VA for help healing PTSD, it isn't there?
We read the end result far too often. The result of the military refusing to adapt programs that actually work instead of kicking thousands of them out with bad paper discharges every year. Instead of trying to convince the public these soldiers were "damaged" before they enlisted so we aren't supposed to care or hold any of the leaders accountable for any of it. They are unable to accept responsibility for their own mental health testing failing if that actually is the reason as much as they refuse to accept responsibility for their own programs being inadequate for the non-deployed yet they tell redeployed they were trained to be resilient.
Then the VA itself lacks properly trained psychologists and psychiatrists to treat those able to overcome the stigma the military filled them with. Lacking the help they need adds to the stress they are already under but the top off is when members of the press twist words to make it seem as if veterans turning to the VA are only looking for money. Nice little trick being played on millions of veterans with PTSD.
The question we need to start answering is, do we deserve to have the best military in the world? Do we deserve the men and women stepping up to retain our freedom or not? Seems like everyone says stuff like "I know my rights" and scream about freedom of speech and religion but then never seem to understand where those rights come from. Our troops serving today and veterans who served yesterday made sure your rights were defended so you could use the right to ignore them or fight for them.
Do we deserve them or not? When do we start acting like it? When do we take the time to fight for them?
Kathie Costos
November 29, 2014
We have the best military in the world. No doubt about it. Patriots obtained our freedom and every generation after them retained it. They filled up cemetery plots during combat and afterwards because we didn't care enough about what they needed from us.
We don't take care of them when they are serving or when they come home. We are all enjoying the rights and freedoms they make sure we have but at the end of the day, we need to answer some questions honestly.
Why are soldiers and families on food stamps?
About five percent more shoppers used food stamps at commissaries in 2013 than used them in 2012. But the increase is actually a sign that use is leveling off instead of quickly increasing as it had been before. Between 2011 and 2012 it went up 13 percent. And back between 2008 and 2009 it went up 70 percent, according to figures from DeCA.
I’m conflicted about this. On the one hand, surely we should be paying our military members enough that food stamps are out of the question. On the other hand, is the need for food stamps really as high as it seems?
The story originally broke last fall here and finally made its way to CNN over Presidents Day weekend.
The food stamp increase doesn’t track with the rate of use of the Woman and Infant Children (WIC) subsidy. Army Times reported in October that those numbers were trending steadily downward. About 6 percent fewer military families used WIC at the commissary in 2013 than in 2012.
“On occasion, customers with food-stamp EBT cards found themselves in the wrong line, and we’d have to direct them to use one of the registers with an EBT terminal,” said Gary Hensley, director of the commissary at Fort Benning, Ga., in an announcement from the Defense Commissary Agency. The Fort Benning commissary rang up more than $1.1 million in purchases in the food stamp redemption program in 2007, tops among commissaries.Why are they getting layoff notices in Afghanistan?
The study believes our newest veterans have financial hardships that make accessing sufficient food more difficult compared to the average citizen.
“We found that 27 percent of veterans who served in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan don’t have consistent access to sufficient food,” said University of Minnesota researcher Rachel Widome, Ph.D.,. “That’s drastically higher than the prevalence of food insecurity in the U.S., which is 14.5 percent.”
Research was conducted with the Minneapolis Department of Veterans Affairs, and surveyed 922 veteran records.
The Army says it will soon notify 550 majors that they must leave the service by next spring as part of a budget-driven downsizing of the service.
As the Army looks to reduce its force to 490,000 by the end of fiscal year 2015 and 450,000 by the end of FY ’17, a military personnel official from Fort Hood said Tuesday that 213 captains within III Corps were recently identified by the Army Officer Separation Board to transition from the service in the coming months. At Fort Hood, 91 captains were affected by the OSB, according to Jay Whitaker, the senior military personnel officer, or G1, with Fort Hood’s Mission Support Element.
Fiscal 2016 sequestration marks ‘breaking point’ Everyone wants the U.S. to lead the way in resolving global conflicts and crises, he said, not necessarily supplying the preponderance of forces, but involvement to some extent. The nagging question is, “Do we want to do that or not?” In fiscal year 2016, Odierno pointed out that the budget will go down $9 billion from what it is now. That would have a “significant degradation” on the force “because I cannot take people out fast enough.”
Why do the wounded get this kind of treatment?
The memo encourages "dispositions/discharges as soon as possible." Hospital spokesperson Sandy Dean explained this direction, saying, "We are are encouraging health care providers to be more efficient when handling their paperwork instead of writing discharge orders later in the day ... no patient has been or will be discharged before it is medically appropriate."The news of veterans getting the shaft at the VA seemed like such a shock yet if you remember, since they didn't remind you, none of it was new. Congress gave us decades of promises to fix what the VA got wrong and support what they got right. Here's a few more stories the national press forgot about.
With cases of post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental health problems at an all-time high, Dean says civilian caregivers in the hospital's in-patient mental health section are furloughed, reducing beds there from 28 to 22.
Why are veterans still finding when they turn to the VA for help healing PTSD, it isn't there?
Howard County Veterans' Service Officer Ross Waltemath estimated out of the up to 10,000 veterans who live in Kokomo and the surrounding area, which has the highest number of veterans per capita in Indiana, around 2,000 have mental-health disorders.Are they right? Yes but it turns out only 13% of civilian mental health providers understand military culture.
“We've got a lot of vets running around Howard County with real problems,” he said.
But when local veterans seek help for their disorder, they discover it's not easy to find.
Waltemath said there's a two-month wait to see a psychiatrist or mental-health worker at the VA clinics in Indianapolis, Marion or Fort Wayne, where most area veterans end up going for treatment.
He said with the influx of service members coming back with PTSD and other mental illnesses, area VA hospitals aren't equipped to handle the spike in cases.
“The VA health care system is completely overloaded,” he said. “Mental health is one of the areas that's totally overwhelmed all our medical facilities. No clinic is designed or manned anymore to deal with the volumes of people out there.”
Once vets do eventually get in to see a therapist or psychologist, there's a good chance they won't have another appointment for a few months, Waltemath said.
“I've never heard of a VA turn a guy away, but if you have mental-health issues and you get in once every three months, how big of a help is it really to you?” he said.
GOOD HELP IS HARD TO FIND
The problem goes far beyond long waits to get into to see a VA therapist.
One of the biggest issues is the lack of psychiatrists and psychologists who have any military experience or a real understanding of how to properly treat PTSD and traumatic brain injury, said Ken Gardner, an Air Force veteran and clinical therapist at Kokomo Family Psychiatric Center.
He said for most veterans, it's tough to speak to a mental-health worker about their disorder who hasn't served and doesn't understand military culture.
“It's really difficult to relate to a therapist who is fresh out of school and who doesn't understand the experience of the vet,” Gardner said.
Chris Fidler, the local facilitator for the non-profit Vet 2 Vet peer group, said the lack of providers with military experience is one of the biggest obstacles for veterans seeking help.
“People in the military are thrown into something they're not prepared for,” he said. “The military tries to prepare you for it, but who can ever really be prepared to go and kill people and see the horrors that they see? So anybody that tells a combat veteran they understand what they're going through is lying. They haven't been there, and they don't understand.”
Capt. Scott Edwards, a state behavioral health officer and the chief psychologist for the Indiana National Guard, said many mental-health workers at VA clinics not only lack military experience but don't know how to properly treat PTSD.
“The VA providers are supposed to know how to do these treatments, but what I've found is that they aren't very proficient,” he said. “We can't always assume that the VA is offering the appropriate treatment.”
For many vets, the only treatment they get from a VA behavioral health provider is a bag of prescription meds, said veteran's service officer Waltemath.
The situation is even worse for veterans trying to find help at civilian hospitals and behavioral-health centers.
Waltemath said there are hardly any local providers who have any military experience or know how to properly treat PTSD and other mental-health issues related to combat.
“If you have a clinician who can't even spell the word 'deployment,' these vets aren't going to come back to you,” Waltemath said.
read more of this here
A Rand Corp. survey of 522 psychiatrists, psychologists and licensed clinical social workers found that just 13 percent met the study's criteria for "cultural competency," meaning they understood military mores, language and background, and delivered appropriate care for illnesses unique to the military, such as combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder and depression.
We read the end result far too often. The result of the military refusing to adapt programs that actually work instead of kicking thousands of them out with bad paper discharges every year. Instead of trying to convince the public these soldiers were "damaged" before they enlisted so we aren't supposed to care or hold any of the leaders accountable for any of it. They are unable to accept responsibility for their own mental health testing failing if that actually is the reason as much as they refuse to accept responsibility for their own programs being inadequate for the non-deployed yet they tell redeployed they were trained to be resilient.
Then the VA itself lacks properly trained psychologists and psychiatrists to treat those able to overcome the stigma the military filled them with. Lacking the help they need adds to the stress they are already under but the top off is when members of the press twist words to make it seem as if veterans turning to the VA are only looking for money. Nice little trick being played on millions of veterans with PTSD.
The question we need to start answering is, do we deserve to have the best military in the world? Do we deserve the men and women stepping up to retain our freedom or not? Seems like everyone says stuff like "I know my rights" and scream about freedom of speech and religion but then never seem to understand where those rights come from. Our troops serving today and veterans who served yesterday made sure your rights were defended so you could use the right to ignore them or fight for them.
Do we deserve them or not? When do we start acting like it? When do we take the time to fight for them?
Thieves stole from veteran, community gives her much more
Navy Veteran Robbed Gets Help With Thanksgiving Dinner
News 10 Central Ohio
November 27, 2014
COLUMBUS, Ohio - Inside a Hilliard home, a Thanksgiving meal is taking form for a guest these cooks have never met.
"When we saw Jeanette's story we wanted to reach out and help and try to give her a better thanksgiving that's she's had so far," said Mallory Hammond of Pinup Patriots.
She's talking about Jeanette Waldon-- A Navy Veteran robbed on Veteran's Day. Waldon was waiting at this COTA bus stop in Clintonville. She told police two men robbed her of her purse and a gift card she hoped to use to pay for a thanksgiving meal.
"Watching Channel 10 it was just devastating that someone could do that to somebody we wanted to make sure that this will not stand and that she is not alone and that the community will stand behind her," says Hammond.
Hammond's group dresses like the pinups of 1940's and makes appearances at veteran's groups and makes care packages for active military.
"This is the first time we've taken a thanksgiving dinner to a veteran," she says.
read more here
News 10 Central Ohio
November 27, 2014
COLUMBUS, Ohio - Inside a Hilliard home, a Thanksgiving meal is taking form for a guest these cooks have never met.
"When we saw Jeanette's story we wanted to reach out and help and try to give her a better thanksgiving that's she's had so far," said Mallory Hammond of Pinup Patriots.
She's talking about Jeanette Waldon-- A Navy Veteran robbed on Veteran's Day. Waldon was waiting at this COTA bus stop in Clintonville. She told police two men robbed her of her purse and a gift card she hoped to use to pay for a thanksgiving meal.
"Watching Channel 10 it was just devastating that someone could do that to somebody we wanted to make sure that this will not stand and that she is not alone and that the community will stand behind her," says Hammond.
Hammond's group dresses like the pinups of 1940's and makes appearances at veteran's groups and makes care packages for active military.
"This is the first time we've taken a thanksgiving dinner to a veteran," she says.
read more here
Houston Citizens Join Forces to Get Korean War Veteran Home
When you read about younger families being helped by Congress because they are caring for their disabled veterans, remember this story. That help does not include older veterans and their families.
Local 2 viewers help disabled Korean War veteran get home for Thanksgiving
Click2 Houston
Author: Bill Spencer
Investigative Reporter
Published On: Nov 27 2014
HOUSTON
The Korean War -- it's been called America's forgotten war, but for 75-year-old Robert Taylor it's impossible to forget. As an Army foot soldier, Taylor suffered a near fatal head injury when he got into a brutal fight for survival with a soldier from the other side, getting his head smashed in with the butt of a rifle, an injury that has caused Taylor painful seizures his entire life.
Now, five decades later, after suffering a massive stroke last November, Robert and his wife, Linda, have been trapped in Houston for more than a year, unable to return to their home and family in Bristol, Tennessee -- all because they couldn't afford a $10,000 medical transport in an ambulance to get Robert back home.
"It sounds like an old cliché, but it's been like hell for us here," Linda said. "I have no help here to care for my husband and all our family is back home in Bristol."
With nowhere else to turn, Linda Taylor called Local 2 News for help to get her husband back home.
That's when Local 2's Bill Spencer went to work trying to find an ambulance service willing to help this brave veteran. It took more than a month and too many phone calls to count, but Spencer finally found the folks at Abingdon Ambulance Service in Abingdon, Virginia.
Through an incredible act of generosity, they agreed to transport Robert Taylor all the way from Houston back to Bristol -- an 18-hour ride with three trained paramedics by his side the entire time -- and absolutely free.
"We can be a blessing to this family, we have the ability, we have the resources, and it's the right thing to do for any veteran who has served this country," said Keith Martin, of Abingdon Ambulance Service.
In addition to the medical transport, a special GoFundMe account was set up to raise money for the Taylors.
After Local 2 News called loyal viewers to donate, you did just that. In fact, through those donations Local 2 raised more than $14,000 in a matter of weeks for the Taylor family.
read more here
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