Canada: Disabled Veterans Comp Based on Rank Not Wound?

Edmonton military veteran frustrated he has to annually fill out form to say his legs are still missing
Edmonton Journal
Dave Lazzarino
Published on: April 13, 2016

For example, if you have a disability that is deemed to decrease your income by 25 per cent, you get 25 per cent of the income you made in the Armed Forces. As such, people with higher rank end up getting more for their injuries.

Retired Master Cpl. Paul Franklin lost both of his legs from just above knee when a bomb hit the vehicle he was driving during a Canadian Forces tour in Afghanistan in January 2006.

Ten years later, he is getting ready to fill out yet another set of forms to tell the Canadian government that, in fact, his legs are still missing.

“It’s insane,” Franklin said. “My problem with all this is if you have someone who has post-traumatic stress disorder or some sort of brain injury, or you have a combination of the two and they’re on street drugs or alcohol or whatever, the chance of them filling out the forms correctly is minimal at best.”

When a veteran wants to fill out disability and pension forms, it can sometimes involve multiple applications to several bodies, including insurance companies, even for permanent injuries like Franklin’s.
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Fatal Accident Claimed Lives of 2 Army Captains in Germany

2 officers killed in Germany car crash had combat experience
Stars and Stripes
By Jennifer H. Svan
Published: April 13, 2016

KAISERSLAUTERN, Germany — The two soldiers killed in a car crash last week near Landstuhl were young Army officers who had served in combat deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Army has identified the soldiers as Capts. Brandon W. Fuhrman, 30, and Douglas J. Wercinski, 31.

The two were assigned to Headquarters Battery, 10th Army Air and Missile Defense Command, as plans officers, the 10th AAMDC said in a statement.

The soldiers died at the scene of the crash on April 6 on the L363 between Landstuhl and Bann. German police at the time could not determine who was driving the BMW M3, which was found down an embankment in the forest below the road. A woman from Latvia was injured in the crash. One of the men was thrown from the car when it crashed.
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The Rock Wanted Picture With Vietnam Veteran

When The Rock Snapped This Picture With A Vietnam Veteran, He Got Much More Than A Kind Smile
"Every hard core gym around the world has one 'OG' of the gym.
APLUS.com
Jason Pollak
Apr 13, 2016
SPORTS

However, as the real-life Hercules was driving away, he decided he had to go back and ask Henderson for a picture himself.

When The Rock was leaving the gym a few days ago, one special person decided to ask him for a picture.

That man, he said, was 73-year-old Vietnam veteran, John Henderson.

The Rock explains in his Instagram post that as he was getting in his truck, Henderson said, "At some point I'd like to snap a pic with you before you leave our town."

He naturally obliged and said back, "Well how bout we do it right now!?"
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Close VA Is Dumbest Thing I've Ever Heard

Why do we pay politicians a salary plus benefits if they do everything possible to make sure the government doesn't work? Do they really think we're that dumb?

Getting really tired of hearing them complain about the Affordable Care Act not working at the same time they want to send veterans into all that mess. Plus the kicker is, they've have since 1946 to make it work right for all our veterans. You know, the men and women putting their lives on the line at the same time politicians try to kill off the VA.

None of what we see today is new. Look it up! Backlog of claims followed by hearings, followed by more money, followed by more generations suffering because nothing got fixed right in the first place.

The House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs’ historic legacy is captured in the Committee’s hearing rooms in the Cannon House Office Building, Rooms 334 and 340. The Committee has been formerly known by many names including the Committee on Naval Affairs and the Committee on World War Veterans’ Affairs. After the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946, the Committee became formally known as the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs. Even though the Committee’s name has changed over the years, its mission has remained constant – to represent America’s veterans, their families, and survivors.

Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs

From: Encyclopedia of the United States Congress.

One of 16 standing committees in the Senate in the 108th Congress (2003–04), the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee has jurisdiction over matters concerning military veterans. These issues include veterans' benefits and pensions, readjustment of service members to civilian life, military life insurance benefits, veterans' hospitals and medical facilities, vocational rehabilitation and education of veterans, and national cemeteries. The committee has no subcommittees.

The Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee was created by the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1970 and was organized for the first time at the start of the 92nd Congress on January 3, 1971. It was the first standing committee of the Senate to specifically consider legislation of concern to veterans. The committee maintains a low public profile and has a fairly narrow scope of policy to consider. The committee's constituency is made up mainly of veterans and veterans' organizations. Veterans' Affairs has developed close working relationships with veterans' groups and often begins each session of Congress with public hearings to receive each group's legislative agenda for the year.

Veterans' Affairs has had a precarious existence from the very beginning. When the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946 created the modern congressional committee system, the House of Representatives established a Veterans' Affairs Committee, but the Senate did not. Instead, in the Senate legislation pertaining to veterans was referred to several different committees, including the Finance Committee, the Labor and Public Welfare Committee, the Interior Committee, and the Post Office and Civil Service Committee. A number of senators sympathetic to veterans' groups who wanted a Senate standing committee for veterans' issues made several attempts to create one in the years between 1946 and 1970.

During the 1970 legislative reorganization, the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee was finally established. Only six years later, in 1976, a legislative reorganization committee recommended that the committee be abolished. It survived because the Senate Rules Committee did not adopt the recommendation.

When you have politicians pretending it was not their job to make sure they got it right, this is what you end up with.

VA health panel on closure report: ‘Nothing was done in secret’
Military Times
Patricia Kime
April 11, 2016

Members of a blue-ribbon panel studying VA health care defended the group’s work last week, deflecting charges they want to shutter all Veterans Affairs medical facilities in favor of government-paid private care for veterans.

George E. Wahlen Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Salt Lake City, Utah (Photo: VA)

Commission on Care member Darin Selnick and chairwoman Nancy Schlicting said last week that a “strawman" paper drafted by seven commissioners "was created to jot down initial ideas” and did not represent a final report from the congressionally mandated group.

"The scenario presented is one of several that have been proposed. As the term strawman implies, the document was created by a subset of commissioners to describe their personal ideas ... it represents options on a range of possibilities the commissioners are evaluating," Schlichting wrote in a statement on the commission's website.

"We are going to continue to take input, continue to shape [our views] ... No one is going to fully understand our position until we understand our position, and that’s not going to happen until we create the final report. And that comes out in June,” Selnick said.

The 34-page document proposes giving all veterans access to private health services and closing VA health facilities gradually over 20 years, starting with those that are obsolete or underutilized in a process similar to a base realignment and closure.

The report also calls for VA to become “primarily a payer,” much like Medicare, to provide health care for veterans.
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Twelve Year Old Makes Wish, Camp Pendleton Marines Fill It

Marines ‘Make-A-Wish’ come true: 7th ESB grants a terminally ill 12-year old boy’s wish
DVIDS
Story by Sgt. Laura Gauna
April 11, 2016

CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. – Marines are the nation’s 911 responders. They handle some of the harshest and worst situations you can think of, but they are not just tough. The Marines of 7th Engineer Support Battalion proved that they also have a soft side when they made a special boy’s wish of becoming a Marine come true.

Nathan Aldaco, a 12 year-old boy with hypoplastic left heart syndrome, learns about explosive ordnance during a Make-A-Wish event supported by 7th Engineer Support Battalion, 1st Marine Logistics Group, aboard Camp Pendleton, Calif., March 24, 2016. Marines with 7th ESB and Explosive Ordnance Disposal helped to make Nathan’s wish of becoming a Marine come true by demonstrating the capabilities of their EOD robots and detonating TNT, C4, dynamite and blasting caps, while the heavy equipment operators gave him the opportunity to ride the D7 dozer and the excavator, in which he dug a pit, built a berm, and broke several large tree trunks. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Sgt. Laura Gauna/released)

Nathan Aldaco was diagnosed with hypoplastic left heart syndrome at a young age. Since the discovery of this rare congenital heart defect in which the left heart is severely underdeveloped, he has received various surgeries, and has not only learned to survive with this disease but also thrive with the support of his family.

Earlier in the year, Nathan and his family were contacted by the Make-a-Wish Foundation, and given the opportunity for the young boy to give the foundation a list of things he would like to do. Due to the content on that list, the request was forwarded to the Marines of 1st Marine Logistics Group.

Among the items on the list from the young boy’s imagination were simply to watch Marines train, ride in large military vehicles, train with Marines, be a part of a medal ceremony, and have a full camouflage uniform; wishes the leaders of 7th ESB knew they wanted to fulfill.
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