Investigation reveals need for training, administrative changes at North Florida VA facilities
Action News Jax
by: Samantha Manning
Mar 4, 2016
JACKSONVILLE, Fla.
Veterans Affairs said it has made changes after an investigation revealed a need for administrative changes and staff training at some of the facilities in Northeast Florida.
The investigation by the VA Office of the Inspector General did not find any evidence of intentional wrongdoing for the four main facilities serving the greater Jacksonville area.
Training, administrative changes needed at North Florida VA facilities
The VA OIG investigations stem from 2014 complaints regarding patient times.
Petty Officer Chris Taylor served as a Navy Hospital corpsman for 12 years and told Action News Jax he suffers from a traumatic brain injury.
Taylor said he has been waiting for more than a year to see a neurologist at the VA Outpatient Clinic in Jacksonville.
“You call them and they put you on hold and they say you’ll get a letter in the mail, and you just never get anything,” Taylor said.
The investigation reveals the need for an administrative change at the VA Outpatient Clinic in Jacksonville when it comes to recording eyeglass prescriptions.
A report also reveals a lack of training for staff at the VA Medical Center in Gainesville.
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Non-deployed Marine units ill-prepared to go to war
Marine Corps Times
Jeff Schogol
March 3, 2016
“We do not believe that we are going to have full-spectrum aviation readiness until at least 2020 — and that is presuming that the budget continues as is,” Paxton told lawmakers at Thursday’s hearing.
Marines fire the BGM-71 missile during exercise Lava Viper in Hawaii. Top Marine leaders say about half of the Corps' unit lack the resources they need to deploy.
(Photo: Lance Cpl. Harley Thomas/Marine Corps)
Nearly half of non-deployed Marine units do not have all of the personnel, equipment or training they need, said Assistant Commandant Gen. John Paxton.
“I think it’s 46 percent [of units that] have some degree of personnel, training or equipment degradation,” Paxton told reporters on Thursday after testifying before the House Armed Services Readiness Subcommittee.
Commandant Gen. Robert Neller has said he wants 80 percent of Marine units at or near optimum readiness levels, but “we’re not there,” said Paxton, who did not have detailed information about what precisely non-deployed units lack.
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"The greatest casualty is being forgotten"
Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
March 4, 2016
This story has been bugging me all day. A buddy told me there was another story on CBS News about Wounded Warrior Project. This time it is about a major donor calling for action.
"Outraged, the Kanes cancelled this year's benefit tournament and started a petition on Change.org calling for a public audit. Fred also called senior management, and said he thought CEO Steven Nardizzi should be fired."
From Charity Navigator
Wounded Warrior Project "The greatest casualty is being forgotten"
EIN 20-2370934
Name in IRS Master File WOUNDED WARRIOR PROJECT INC
NTEE Code P60
NTEE Classification Emergency Assistance (Food, Clothing, Cash)
NTEE Type Human Services - Multipurpose and Other
Classification Charitable Organization
Did you catch that? Being forgotten? Seriously? Seems that there is a group of Marines that were totally forgotten about in all this. Nadrizzi keeps talking about being "Our logo is pretty sacred to us. It represents everything we believe in as an organization," that is laughable as well since we know the names of the Marines in the photograph taken by Laura Rauch in Iraq while working for AP. Staff Sgt. Matthew LeVart is carrying Cpl. Barry Lange on March 21, 2003 of India Company 3rd Marines. (Click the link and see the picture for yourself in case you missed it plus all the other fabulous images she captured.)
Not the first time they sued a charity but the last time it made the news was when they sued Keystone Wounded Warriors May 12, 2015.
"We need to be protective when folks design logos, use names, and act in a way that might confuse the public, that might lead them to believe (another charity) is the Wounded Warrior Project when they are not," Nardizzi said.
By the way, this is where Nardizzi said he treats it like a business.
Seems that is exactly what all these folks did but while we noticed, it seems the rest of the seniors donating to them were oblivious to all the other generations of veterans they won't even talk to.
(From the CBS report below.)
"I feel like I am representing all these people who have donated over the years, all these seniors over 65 sending $19 month, all these people on fixed incomes. If no one is going to talk about this right now and it has to be me, then it has to be me," Fred Kane said.
Bet you caught that too. I have such smart readers. Yep, the very folks donating the bulk of the funding for this group are not even on the to-do-list. Safe bet you're wishing all the other corporations funding them, especially around Veterans Day, had even bothered to notice that fact.
Ok, so WWP says they are donating money for "emergency assistance" but we've all heard from OEF and OIF veterans being told they do not give money. So what's up with that?
In all the other reports, it seems reporters have skipped the biggest thing we're all talking about at our events. All the money, in the millions, they have been giving to colleges for "research" when donors intended the money to go to the veterans needing the help they always talk about on TV with those commercials.
So what happens now is anyone's guess. Do they replace the CEO and then the Board of Directors, yet do it only to shut everyone up or do they do a complete overhaul of the whole thing?
The other thing is, if we figured all this out back in 2012 then why did it take 4 years for anything to happen while veterans were waiting for the help, to be "honored and empowered to aid and assist each other" when that is the funniest bit of all? WWP wants money so they can help each other?
We're with these groups of veterans all the time and they do fine aiding and assisting each other without a dime from anyone. They do it since they risked their lives for each other in the first place. Guess that's what happens when you do it for the right reasons instead treating veterans like a project or a business.
Top Wounded Warrior donor calls for CEO's resignation
CBS NEWS
By CHIP REID, JENNIFER JANISCH
March 3, 2016
Earlier this year, a CBS News investigation found the Wounded Warrior Project spends far less of its donations on veterans compared to others. And if we were surprised, so were some major donors.
Wounded Warrior Project now on Charity Navigator's watch list
With two sons serving in Iraq, raising money for Wounded Warrior Project was more than a cause for Fred and Dianne Kane. It was a calling.
Since 2009, the Kane's charity Tee-off for a Cause raised $325,000 for WWP through golf tournaments in the Carolinas. WWP even honored Fred Kane with an award for being a VIP donor.
But allegations that only a little over half of donations went to help wounded vets came as a blow.
"Hearing that there was this waste of money, donor dollars that should have been going to servicemen and women that were injured, and that it was spent on their having a good time -- it's a real disappointment," Dianne Kane told CBS News.
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‘I’m alive:’ Homeless Vietnam vet, 70, saved in Rock Hill
The Herald
by Andrew Dys
March 3, 2016
Danny Henry was homeless and living under a tarp in a wooded area in Rock Hill until veterans affairs workers helped him Thursday.
Former President Bill Clinton spoke a week earlier about 200 yards from where Henry shivered.
ROCK HILL
Danny Henry did not die Thursday.
That made it a good day.
“I’m alive,” Henry said, his left cheek a purple spiderweb of bruises from a late night stroll to relieve himself in the woods, where branches raked his 70-year-old face.
His bathroom is in the woods because Henry lives in the woods.
The morning sun slanted in but could not brush back the cold of 31 degrees. “Livin’, one more day.”
He woke up from his bed of old blankets and a tarp underneath bushes and trees a block from downtown Rock Hill where presidential candidates had come in hordes for months before the February primaries talking about fixing America and taking care of veterans. The candidates and their limousines and buses and security guards and Secret Service rolled right down the block from Interstate 77 past where Henry lay.
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Sick Navy vets hunt for decades-old records to prove they should get Agent Orange benefits
The Virginian-Pilot
By Mike Hixenbaugh
Charles Ornstein
Terry Parris Jr.
ProPublica
1 hr ago
“It's hell,” said Ed Marciniak, of Pensacola, Fla., who served aboard the Norfolk-based USS Jamestown during the war. “The Navy should be going to the VA and telling them, ‘This is how people got aboard the ship, this is where they got off, this is how they operated.’ Instead, they put that burden on old, sick, dying veterans, or worse – their widows.”
During the Vietnam War, hundreds of U.S. Navy ships crossed into Vietnam's rivers or sent crew members ashore, possibly exposing their sailors to the toxic herbicide Agent Orange. But more than 40 years after the war’s end, the U.S. government doesn't have a full accounting of which ships traveled where, adding hurdles and delays for sick Navy veterans seeking compensation.
The Navy could find out where each of its ships operated during the war, but it hasn’t. The U.S. Department of Veteran’s Affairs says it won’t either, instead choosing to research ship locations on a case-by-case basis, an extra step that veterans say can add months – even years – to an already cumbersome claims process. Bills that would have forced the Navy to create a comprehensive list have failed in Congress.
Some 2.6 million Vietnam veterans are thought to have been exposed to – and possibly harmed by – Agent Orange, which the U.S. military used to defoliate dense forests, making it easier to spot enemy troops. But vets are only eligible for VA compensation if they went on land – earning a status called “boots on the ground” – or if their ships entered Vietnam’s rivers, however briefly.
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