Daytona Beach Budget Inn Express Denies Veteran Room Over PTSD Service Dog

Veteran denied motel room in Daytona Beach because he had service dog
WFTV News
June 25, 2014

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — A Daytona Beach motel owner who refused to welcome a vacationing veteran and his service dog is now facing a possible misdemeanor charge.

Former Army Sgt. Robert Price has a service dog named Walker. Price suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and a brain injury after facing bomb attacks for years in the Middle East.

When he went to check in at the Budget Inn Express on Tuesday, he told the desk clerk as a courtesy that he had a service dog and the woman immediately told him that dogs weren’t welcome.

Price said it took time to accept the idea of having a service dog, but now he and Walker are inseparable. He said when they were denied a room at the Budget Inn Express, he started recording the confrontation with his cellphone.

"Because I have a service dog, I can't have a room?" he asked.

"Service dog or whatever. Dog is dog," said motel owner Bina Patel.

Price wasn’t alone on Tuesday as police officers escorted him to the La Quinta, where they not only welcomed him but gave him a very generous discount on his room.
read more here

Veterans with PTSD not getting what they need to heal

Invisible Scars : National PTSD Awareness Month Shines Spotlight on Devastating Psychological Disorder PTSD and Veterans
Carrington Education

“The first thing people ask when you get back is ‘Did you kill somebody? How many people did you kill?’” one Vietnam veteran told me. “They just don’t understand how inappropriate that question is. We did what we had to do. You want to know what PTSD is like? You can’t know what it means to sit, 40 years later, in front of a television set reliving the same 40 seconds, over and over and over. You can’t know. You don’t want to know. We don’t look any different on the outside. But on the inside…”

Every Monday evening in Nampa, Idaho, a group of twenty veterans gather to share stories and support. The men range in age from grizzled Vietnam warriors to young soldiers who have just returned from Afghanistan. On the night they invited me to visit, their leader and Warrior Pointe founder, Reed Pacheco, entered the room with a cell phone to his ear, brainstorming intervention strategies for a veteran who had threatened suicide.

Pacheco, a U.S. Army veteran of Desert Storm and Somalia pre 9/11, envisioned Warrior Pointe as a “safe zone” where former soldiers could come together to talk about the issues that continue to haunt them, including Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). “The VA (Veterans Administration) just isn’t there for us,” he said, as heads around the table nodded emphatically.

Tom Bosch, a Carrington College Massage Therapist Program graduate who served two tours with the U.S. Army in Iraq and suffered a traumatic brain injury in an IED attack, noted that “we have a small pharmacy around this table. The VA can give you lots of things for physical pain. But they can’t cure the mental pain.”

“The seventy-seven day siege of Khe Sanh hammered, pierced and drilled fear into the innards of our brains, the spot where fear resides beside the animal will to survive. We are forever alert, on guard, ready to laager, then attack. This is my PTSD,” said my friend Ken Rodgers, Marine, author, and documentary filmmaker when we were discussing the harrowing Vietnam War experiences that led him to write and produce Bravo: Common Men, Uncommon Valor. While Rodgers has been able to manage his condition, it’s something that he lives with every day.
read more here

Michigan changes PTSD to PTSI, but why?

Do they really think this will help? It won't. History proved that with all the labels placed on PTSD. History has also proven that titles do not replace wisdom and common sense. How did they think it would help when they have not done the one thing that really does help remove the stigma?

NAME CHANGE: It's Now Post-Traumatic Stress Injury
WILX 10 News
June 25, 2014

You've probably heard of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, but it's now called Post-Traumatic Stress Injury in Michigan.

Michigan is the first state to adopt a resolution changing the name of the condition affecting thousands, including members of the military.
read more here

The one thing that gets the stigma out of the way is true education.

The people with no understanding of why some get hit by PTSD and others don't, get attention. The same people putting their trust in a program to treat servicemen and women developed as a research project for children. The same people refusing to examine medications used to replace therapy. The same folks ignoring the Army study from 2006 stating redeployments would increase the risk of PTSD. The same folks with the loudest voices are heard over the voices of reason.

Changing the title does not change anything when what works is ignored and what has failed is still being pushed.

Double Amputee Afghanistan Veteran Earns Pat Tillman Award

Josh Sweeney earns Tillman Award
Associated Press
June 25, 2014

Joshua Sweeney
Dennis Grombkowski/Getty Images
Sgt. Josh Sweeney (center) will receive the inaugural Pat Tillman Award for Service at the ESPY Awards on July 16.

PORTLAND, Ore. -- When retired Marine Sgt. Josh Sweeney recounts his inspirational journey following an explosion that took both his legs in Afghanistan, he leaves out an important detail: His gold-medal winning goal.

Sweeney played on the U.S. Paralympic sled hockey team that beat the Russians 1-0 earlier this year in Sochi. He shot the game's lone goal in the second period at Shayba Arena, giving the Unites States its second straight gold medal in the event.

Chided about omitting the detail, Sweeney laughed.

"I still feel pretty lucky to be able to have done that," he said. "I try not to take too much credit for it."

He also doesn't mention that he's been honored with a Purple Heart for his service in the Marines.

Sweeney will receive the inaugural Pat Tillman Award for Service at the 2014 ESPY Awards on July 16. The award is being presented in conjunction with the Pat Tillman Foundation, which invests in military veterans and their spouses through educational scholarships.

Pat Tillman died in action in Afghanistan in 2004 after leaving the NFL's Arizona Cardinals to enlist in the U.S. Army with his brother Kevin.
read more here

Press giving Congress CYA

Republicans think the press is "liberal" and Democrats think FOX runs the flow of news. The younger generation gets most of their news from Facebook and Jon Stewart. Veterans think it is all a bunch of hogwash! It really baffles them when people get paid for being either lazy or stupid. As of today, they don't have a clue which one it is but for them, it isn't about politics. It is about politicians.

The New York Times has this headline: Senior Veterans Affairs Officials to Step Down They didn't seem bothered by the fact they also reported on another VA official forced to step down.

In 2007 The New York Times headline was V.A. Chief to Step Down, Citing Return to Private Life yet no where in the report did they manage to cover what his time in office meant to veterans.

This is from Associated Press

His resignation comes amid intense political and public scrutiny of the Pentagon and VA after reports of shoddy outpatient care of injured troops and veterans at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and elsewhere.

It also ends a beleaguered two-year tenure in which Nicholson repeatedly fought off calls for his resignation over the VA's unexpected $1.3 billion shortfall in 2005 that put healthcare at risk; last summer's theft of 26.5 million veterans' personal data in what was the government's largest security breach; and, more recently, the award of $3.8 million in bonuses to senior officials who were responsible for the agency's budget problems.

Walter Reed is a Pentagon-run facility, but charges of poor treatment relating to poor coordination quickly extended to the VA's vast network of 1,400 hospitals and clinics. The VA also has a backlog of disability payments to injured veterans, with overwhelming delays of 177 days that Nicholson has called unacceptable.

"Secretary Nicholson's resignation should be welcome news for all veterans," said Paul Rieckhoff, executive director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. "The VA under Secretary Nicholson has been woefully unprepared for the influx of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, consistently underestimating the number of new veterans who would seek care, and failing to spend the money Congress allotted to treat mental health issues."

His departure comes at a critical time. Nicholson most recently headed a presidential task force charged with making immediate improvements to healthcare in which he pledged to take "personal responsibility."

Both Congress and a presidential commission chaired by Bob Dole, former Republican senator from Kansas, and Donna Shalala, former Health and Human Services secretary, are planning to push sweeping changes in how care is administered.

It ended with this

"The fact is, veterans have been right to be disappointed in Jim Nicholson's leadership at VA," said Senator Barack Obama, an Illinois Democrat, a member of the Veterans Affairs Committee, and a 2008 presidential candidate. "It is clear that Secretary Nicholson is leaving the VA worse off than he found it.

Given all that reporters "cover" the last thing we should allow is for them to be doing a massive CYA for members of congress. We've been down his road far too many times already.

Frankly veterans deserved a lot more. Now it seems as if every politician is pulling the "I had nothing to do with it" Sgt. Schultz excuse and the press just gives them more publicity.

Vet with cancer headline #2, sex offender arrested, again

Vet With Prostate Cancer Arrested

PANAMA CITY-- A local homeless veteran is behind bars tonight after police dig a little deeper into his past. Panama City Police arrested David Smith this weekend for failure to register as a sex offender. Officials say Smith failed to report an address change, and also failed to have an updated Florida ID. If his name sounds familiar, it's because last week, several local media outlets ran stories about Smith being denied cancer treatment at the local V.A.

Suicide at Arlington National Cemetery was 92 year old Air Force veteran

UPDATE from Army Times

Arlington tragedy: Deceased colonel remembered as loving, generous and proud of service
Army Times
Stephen Losey
Jun. 25, 2014

Col. Robert Stanton Terrill stands next to a portrait of himself and his wife, Helen.
(Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania)

Retired Air Force Col. Robert Stanton Terrill was married to his wife, Helen, for 65 years before she passed away after a long illness in 2009. Helen was laid to rest in Section 64 of Arlington National Cemetery.

The morning of June 20, the 92-year-old Terrill left his home in Falls Church, Virginia, went to the section where his wife was buried, and apparently shot himself.

Terrill’s apparent public suicide — believed to be the first such incident in the cemetery’s history — shocked those who knew him. Neighbors and acquaintances remember Terrill as a loving and generous man who was proud of his military service. The Army’s Criminal Investigation Command is still investigating Terrill’s death and has not officially confirmed that he committed suicide, but officials say they do not suspect foul play.

“I don’t think any of us had any idea,” said Janice Gaynor, who lived on the same street as the Terrills for more than four decades. “He didn’t complain or anything.”
read more here

Arlington Suicide Victim Was 92-Year-old AF Vet
Military.com
by Brendan McGarry
Jun 24, 2014

Terrill shot himself around 10 a.m. June 20 near the Columbarium Courts in Section 64 of the cemetery. His wife, Helen Terrill, was buried in the same section in 2009, according to news reports and the cemetery's online gravesite database.

The man who killed himself last week at Arlington National Cemetery was a 92-year-old Air Force veteran whose wife was reportedly buried there.

The victim was identified as Robert Terrill, 92, of Falls Church, Virginia, who retired from the service as a colonel, according to a press release from the cemetery. Only cursory information about his service history was immediately available.

He received his military commission in 1946 and eventually became a command pilot, with more than 8,000 total flight hours, though retirement records don’t indicate whether he flew in combat or the type of aircraft he piloted, according to Michael Dickerson, a spokesman for the Air Force Personnel Center at Randolph Air Force Base, Texas, located outside San Antonio. He was promoted to colonel in 1959 and retired from a job at the Pentagon in 1968, Dickerson said.
read more here

Army reports suicide at Arlington National Cemetery

Wounded Times-Wounded Minds, Veterans and PTSD Awareness

This morning I came across a group out of California calling themselves "Operation Wounded Minds" and I thought I read it wrong. I didn't. If you were among the thousands watching my video "Wounded Minds" I wanted to clear this up.

Operation Wounded Minds, have no connection to me, my work or to my video going back to 2006.

At the time, there was not much being done to help the troops learn what Vietnam veterans knew.

Wounded Minds was on YouTube for years along with others.

I received many emails on this video but the one that explains how hard the troops were searching for information, was the one I received from someone in the Navy.

I saw your PTSD presentation online and want to share it with our Sailors returning from Iraq/Afghanistan.

Thanks for providing this much needed information,
Ralph

Again, I have no idea who these people are and have nothing to do with them

Fresno VA is stop on PTSD awareness tour (video)
The Fresno Bee
BY BARBARA ANDERSON
June 24, 2014

"There's nothing really forcing accountability," said Operation Wounded Minds co-founder Dwayne Jones.

"This needs to be mandatory reporting."

Operation Wounded Minds is working with the research firm EMC to develop technology for collecting data on veteran suicides, Jones said. It has sent letters to California senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein and will send a letter to Gov. Jerry Brown to ask that reporting be mandatory, he said. read more here

Family needs help finding missing Iraq veteran

Renewed search for missing young veteran

By MYFOXATLANTA STAFF
Jun 24, 2014 5:35 PM EDT

KENNESAW, Ga. - It has been nearly three months since an Iraq Veteran from Kennesaw disappeared without a trace. 26 year old Chase Massner was last seen in March at the QT on Bells Ferry Road. His family says he was never the same after serving in Iraq, but it is unlike him to disappear for so long.

Massner's mother-in-law has organized a search for Saturday at Shiloh Hills Baptist Church hoping it brings them a sense of closure.
go here and help find Chase Massner

Senator Coburn wants to pretend he just got to Washington

Senator Coburn is just too funny for words. He has up a video of a phone and a message from the VA saying their office hours are over. OK. The point was what? He showed a woman leaving the office as if that was supposed to mean anything?
I left this comment.

Really odd since Senator Coburn didn't seem to mention how long he has been in the Senate and the job of the Senate along with the House is to insure that the VA had been taking care of veterans. CSPAN still has all the hearings up on their site. He also didn't mention how none of these problems are new since they have been documented for decades and topics of many hearings our elected politicians have held. The House Veterans Affairs Committee was first seated in 1946. Almost 70 years later,,,,,well, here we are. The veterans community has very different discussions than the rest of the population and this dear friends is what we talk about. Nothing new to see and that is the worst part of all.

Senator Tom Coburn forgets he was part of the problem. He should have put up the Hogan's Heroes video on Sgt. Schultz saying "I know nothing. I was not here. I did not even get up this morning."
Isn't that what our elected officials were supposed to be taking care of all these years? My God! Where do these people get the nerve to look veterans in the eye and pretend they are shocked by all of this? Veterans call their offices all the time and complain. It is something they have known all along.

This is the headline over on the Washington Examiner.

New Tom Coburn report describes Veterans Affairs Department wracked by incompetence, corruption, coverups

I'll admit I didn't finishing reading this since it started out with this;

Underworked doctors, crooked contracting officers, criminals, perverts and cheats are all part of the broken culture that rewards failure and punishes honest employees at the Department of Veterans Affairs, according to a report released Tuesday by Sen. Tom Coburn.

"This investigation found the problems at the VA are far deeper than just scheduling. Over the past decade, more than 1,000 veterans may have died as a result of VA’s misconduct and the VA has paid out nearly $1 billion to veterans and their families for its medical malpractice," Coburn said in a statement about the report.

The Oklahoma Republican, himself a physician, did not spare his fellow senators, who he said are often more concerned with the good publicity that comes from a ribbon-cutting ceremony than they are about holding VA accountable.

Not even close!

With over 22,000 post on this site, there are far too many over the last 7 years proving Congress had no intentions of fixing anything. I did a top ten countdown just from 2008 of VA scandals and those were just the ones I could think of were at the top of the list.

Senator Tom Coburn has been in all of this up to his eyeballs.

Here's a blast from the past and took place in 2009.

Senator Tom Coburn blocks bill for veterans On the 11th Hour of the 11th Day of the 11th month, we honor all of America’s veterans. Today, because of you, we’re calling on one Senator to use today to truly honor veterans by ending his hold on a veterans spending bill.

Earlier in the week, I urged you to sign our petition calling on my Senator Tom Coburn to end his hold of S. 1963, "The Caregivers and Veterans Omnibus Health Services Act of 2009." Within hours, over 10,000 of you signed.

Today, we’re turning over 13,000 signatures to the Senator.

The petition was covered by the Military Times newspapers, which you can read here (Coburn blocking bill).

By blocking this bill Sen. Coburn is denying veterans a myriad of benefits and services: Caregiver assistance to our most wounded veterans, who often need assistance to do some of the smallest tasks; Funding for such issues as mental health care for women who suffered military sexual trauma, women’s health care needs and medical services for newborn children; Aid for rural veteran health care issues; Mental health care; and, Programs to help ease the burden of veteran homelessness.

On this veterans day, I’d urge Senator Coburn to think about the thousands and thousands of veterans he’s hurting by playing politics with veterans care. The best thing he can do to honor veterans today is to release his hold on this bill. Because of you, the pressure is on him to do so. Today, we honor all of America’s veterans. Now it’s time for Senator Coburn to join us.
Sincerely,Miranda Norman
Iraq War Veteran
Oklahoma State Captain, VoteVets.org
And Jon, Peter, Brian, Richard, and the entire VoteVets.org team

This is from his own site. Prepare to have a sick feeling in your stomach.

Dr. Coburn Challenges Senators to Make Sacrifices for Veterans Health Care
November 9, 2009
“Our nation’s veterans have made tremendous sacrifices in defense of our freedoms. The least Senators should do is make the easy sacrifice of eliminating a small amount of wasteful spending to improve veterans’ health care. Leadership, after all, is making sacrifices and hard choices. Veterans and every family in America make hard choices every day between competing financial priorities. It’s time for politicians in Washington to do the same,” Dr. Coburn said.......

“The American people and our veterans understand that our spending problem has become a national security problem. We are borrowing massive sums from potential adversaries and are watching the value of the dollar decline because other nation’s doubt our ability and willingness to pay off our $12 trillion debt. If we don’t start making hard choices we may not have a country left to defend,” Dr. Coburn said.

As for veterans dying waiting for care we have this reminder

Oklahoma veterans and active-duty military personnel are killing themselves at twice the rate of civilians, despite increased efforts to address the problem.

The 2011 suicide rate for soldiers was about 44 per 100,000 population, according to an Oklahoma Watch analysis of Oklahoma State Department of Health data. This rate includes active-duty military as well as veterans from the post-9/11 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Gulf War, Vietnam, Korea and World War II. The civilian rate for people over the age of 18 was about 22 per 100,000.

In 2011, 141 of the state’s 684 suicides were veterans, according to state health department records.

The veteran suicide rate in Oklahoma is down from a peak of about 46 in 2008, but researchers said that year had increased suicides due to the Great Recession. The rate dropped to about 39 in 2009 and has since climbed back up.

There is also this from 2012

Senators holding up a vote on a veterans jobs bill came under blistering criticism Thursday afternoon during a phone-in press conference with Senate Veterans Affairs Chairwoman Sen. Patty Murray and Sen. Ben Nelson, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The legislation, which is largely made up of provisions originated by or co-sponsored by GOP Senators, is currently being held up by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who says he will filibuster the bill until a doctor jailed in Pakistan for helping the U.S. locate Osama bin Laden is freed.

But other Republicans have offered different reasons for not letting the bill go to a vote, said Murray. Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., justified not voting on the bill because the House of Representatives would block it, according to Murray.

This could go on and on and on since Coburn has been in the seat long enough to know better. Too bad he is just like the rest of them using the Sgt. Schultz excuse.