Rao bulletin 1 October 2014 html edition this bulletin contains the following articles
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- VAROIC, 5100 Wissahickon Ave, Philadelphia, PA 19144 ******************************** GI Bill Update 182 ► Corinthian Colleges CFPB $500M Lawsuit
- GI Bill Update 183 ► Incentive to Lower Vet State Tuition Rates
- PTSD Update 175 ► Up to 80,000 Vets eligible for Discharge Upgrades
- * Vet s *
- Vet Charity Watch Update 48 ► Suits for Soldiers
- Vet Charity Watch Update 49 ► Indiana Phony Vet Charities
- Operation Grow4Vets ► Denver Cannabis Giveaway
- Operation Grow4Vets Update 01 ► Colorado Springs Cannabis Giveaway
VARO Philadelphia PA ► HVAC Investigative Hearing 3 OCT Philadelphia's Veterans Affairs benefits office, which has been under national scrutiny for months, is scheduled to be the focus of a congressional investigative hearing in New Jersey on 3 OCT. The hearing of the House Committee on Veterans Affairs is set to probe whether administrators at the Germantown office have corrected problems that came to light this summer when whistle-blowers alleged widespread mismanagement there, organizers said. It will also delve into the facility's "management and leadership, claims processing, and employee morale," according to an invitation sent to the head of the VA and the agency's inspector general by Rep. Jon Runyan (R-NJ), chairman of the subcommittee on disability assistance and memorial affairs. The benefits office - which processes claims for parts of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware, and pensions for more than a dozen states - is being investigated by the VA Office of Inspector General on allegations that staff manipulated dates on claims to hide delays. Kristen Ruell, a whistle-blower who has worked at the office for seven years and has previously testified before lawmakers, said she had been invited to speak. Representatives from the VA and Inspector General's Office are also expected to attend, according to a staffer from the House committee. The hearing is open to the public and scheduled for 11 a.m. at Burlington County College's Pemberton Campus, 601 Pemberton-Browns Mills Rd., Pemberton Township. [Source: Philadelphia Inquirer | Tricia L. Nadolny | Sept. 21, 2014 ++] 
VAROIC, 5100 Wissahickon Ave, Philadelphia, PA 19144 ******************************** GI Bill Update 182 ► Corinthian Colleges CFPB $500M Lawsuit Corinthian Colleges is being sued by the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for what it calls a “predatory lending scheme.” The CFPB is seeking more than $500 million for borrowers who used the for-profit education company’s private student loans. The CFPB says that Corint]hian misled students about their job prospects, in some cases paying employers to offer temporary jobs to graduates. The agency also says Corinthian, based in Santa Ana, Calif., charged as much as $75,000 for a bachelor’s degree and pushed students into private loans with interest rates of roughly 15 percent, more than double the rate for a federal loan. The agency says that more than 60 percent of Corinthian students with those loans defaulted within three years Corinthian Colleges schools enrolled 5,873 Post-9/11 GI Bill students in fiscal 2013, totaling $61 million, according to data from the Veterans Affairs and Education departments. That was enough to rank the company as the 21st most popular school system among those beneficiaries. [Source: Associated Press Sept. 16, 2014 ++] ******************************** GI Bill Update 183 ► Incentive to Lower Vet State Tuition Rates A federal law passed earlier this month directing a massive $16.3-billion overhaul of the troubled Department of Veterans Affairs health care system also aims to put pressure on colleges to lower education costs for veterans. The law, called the Veterans' Access to Care through Choice, Accountability, and Transparency Act, bars the VA from paying education assistance to colleges that charge veterans more than in-state tuition rates. Typically, students who reside in the same state as their public schools are given a break on tuition but veterans who moved often during their military careers may face difficulties meeting residency requirements. The change means schools must either extend the lower tuition rates to veterans who use VA assistance or face losing revenue from the Montgomery GI Bill for active-duty forces and the new Post-9/11 GI Bill. Overcharging any one veteran would mean the loss of all VA tuition assistance payments, according to the staff of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) an architect of the VA overhaul law. 
Significant money is at stake: The VA says it has doled out more than $20 billion in benefits to 773,000 vets and their family members under the Post-9/11 GI Bill since it became effective in 2009. The law does not mandate the lower tuition, but instead gives a strong incentive for public colleges to tweak residency requirements and what they charge veterans, congressional staff members said. The approach is similar to how the federal government pushed states to create uniform age limits for alcohol consumption in the 1980s, staff said. The National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984 requires states to prohibit anyone under 21 years old from purchasing or possessing alcohol or face losing federal highway funding, which is key to the construction and upkeep of roads and infrastructure. President Barack Obama signed the bill into law on 7 AUG. For Fry Scholarship changes, the effective date is January 2015. For residency changes, the effective date is July 2015. [Source: MilitaryOneSource.com | Travis J. Tritten | Sept 17, 2014 ++] ******************************** PTSD Update 175 ► Up to 80,000 Vets eligible for Discharge Upgrades As many as 80,000 veterans who suffered from post-traumatic stress and received Other Than Honorable discharges can use evidence of their PTSD to petition service boards to upgrade the bad paper discharge. At stake for individuals is removal of lifelong stigmas that have scarred reputations, limited job prospects and blocked critical veteran benefits. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel this month directed that boards for correction of military records or naval records begin to “fully and carefully consider every petition based on PTSD brought by each veteran.” His 3 SEP memo gives Army, Navy and Air Force secretaries “supplemental guidance” that boards are to use when petitioners seek discharge upgrades claiming that unrecognized Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder caused the misbehavior that led to Other Than Honorable discharge. Many of the veterans who will gain from the new guidance served during the Vietnam War, before the medical community recognized PTSD as a disabling service-connected condition. PTSD only received a medical diagnostic code in 1980, five years after that war officially ended. 
Hagel instructed boards to give “liberal consideration” to any language found in medical records describing one or more symptoms that meet diagnostic criteria for PTSD or related conditions. Liberal consideration also is to be used when veterans’ civilian providers have diagnosed PTSD. And where PTSD “is reasonably determined to have existed at the time of discharge,” it is to be “a mitigating factor” in the misconduct that generated an Other Than Honorable, also then called Undesirable, discharge. Hagel likely is reacting to several recent developments including a federal class action lawsuit filed last March on behalf of Vietnam veterans, which generated a wave of publicity and attracted an influential advocate in Hagel’s former Senate colleague, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT). Blumenthal said last week that many veterans went to war when PTSD “was undiagnosed and untreated” and it “caused many of them, particularly from the Vietnam era, to be given less than honorable discharges.” The Veterans Legal Services Clinic at Yale University Law School filed the class action lawsuit, Monk v. Mabus, with five combat veterans and three veterans’ organizations named as plaintiffs. Their complaint says that as a result of undiagnosed PTSD, these veterans were unable to perform assigned duties and were discharged for misconduct attributable to post-traumatic stress. Yet over the years, the lawsuit contends, the military “has near-categorically refused to correct these wrongful discharges.” One plaintiff, Conley Monk, 66, joined the Marine Corps at age 20. Nine months later he was in Quang Tri Province, South Vietnam, flinching at enemy mortar rounds and sniper fire and, for him, living in a nightmarish habitat of mosquitoes and snakes, so different from what he had known. The day he arrived in Vietnam with the 9th Motor Transport Battalion, 3rd Marine Division, the airport came under a barrage of mortar fire. From July through November 1969, he drove troop trucks and “many times we would be under fire,” he recalled. “Every day I prayed God would bring me back home to the United States.” When his unit redeployed to Okinawa, but return to Vietnam remained a terrifying possibility, Monk said he suffered flashbacks from undiagnosed post-traumatic stress. He used drugs too and was absent without leave. One night on returning to his unit, his sergeant grabbed him and accused him wrongly of theft. They fought. At his non-judicial punishment proceeding, Monk said, “they offered me an undesirable discharge. I wanted to be relieved. I wanted to come home from the military. I accepted it.” But Monk soon learned a ticket home on a bad discharge cost him a lot. While friends attended college on the GI Bill, Monk needed student loans. He wasn’t eligible for a VA guaranteed home loan or VA healthcare or disability compensation, which he sought for a foot condition he blamed on the dampness of Vietnam. The wartime stress also stuck around. “I used to have nightmares of Vietnam,” Monk said. “And whenever I would hear [a vehicle] backfire I would hit the ground, thinking I was under fire. I would wake up in the middle of the night with cold sweats…change my tee shirt and go back to sleep.” Fortunately for Monk his “bad paper” didn’t impact employment. He worked a full career as a substance abuse counselor in New Haven, Conn. But today he has PTSD and Type II diabetes, both compensable conditions if a Navy board will upgrade his discharge to general or honorable. Hagel’s guidelines have no effect on Bad Conduct or Dishonorable discharges. Advocates for Vietnam vets point to a sharp contrast in their treatment with that of Iraq and Afghanistan vets see today. Under a recent policy change to protect PTSD victims, the services cannot separate a member with bad paper discharge without screening for PTSD and traumatic brain injury. The idea is that members with behavioral issues might be more deserving of mental health care and a medical discharge than a punitive discharge. That wasn’t the mindset during Vietnam and hasn’t been the practice, even recently, of boards for correction of records, writes lawyer Rebecca Izzo in a lengthy analysis of the issue published last spring in Yale Law Journal. Not “every veteran with PTSD and a bad discharge deserves an upgrade,” Izzo wrote. “However, under current practice, the [Army Board for Correction of Military Record] consistently disregards later evidence of PTSD, making it nearly impossible for veterans with bad discharges arising from conduct due to undiagnosed PTSD to get discharge upgrades.” Hagel’s guidance will address that criticism. “We are very excited about the memo,” said Emma Kaufman, a law student and intern at the Yale clinic that filed the class-action lawsuit. “It is the foundation for a good solution [but not] a complete solution.” The lawsuit will remain active until plaintiffs are satisfied with how the services are implementing the guidance, to include effective outreach to impacted veterans on how and why to petition boards for better discharges. The Yale team came up with an 80,000 estimate of Vietnam veterans impacted both by PTSD and having undesirable or OTH discharges. Kaufman said vets who want help petitioning boards can call the legal services clinic at (203) 436-9270 or search for legal services in their communities at Stateside Legal Services’ website http://statesidelegal.org. [Source: Stars & Stripes | Tom Philpott | Sept. 18, 2014 ++] * Vets *   
Vet Charity Watch Update 48 ► Suits for Soldiers The Suits for Soldiers (SFS) website http://www.suitsforsoldiers.org notes that in the short time the organization has been up and running at full capacity (July 2013), they have assisted with over 1200 resumes, and are happy to report that 60 people were hired in last 120 days of 2013. They have also helped dozens of veterans apply to school, obtained VA loans, and connected veterans with legal assistance and mental health assistance. They have also given away over 1,000 pieces of business attire; all of this has been 100% free to all veterans. Suits for Soldiers is here to change the lives of veterans and their family members, making life a little easier, and by giving back to them by showing our gratitude for their sacrifices. SFS’a goal is for it to be a one-stop shop for all veterans to turn to for anything they may need. It will always be 100% volunteer-run, and all services will be 100% free to veterans. They want to be able to touch the lives of the many men and women that have risked their own to protect ours. To obtain funds to accomplish their goal they solicit donations via their website and sell T-Shirts via eBay 
However, it appears that all is not on the up-and-up with their operations. The following letter dtd 16 Sep 2014 has been sent to the Chairman of Suits for Soldiers, Inc. Scott Fader, by the State of Michigan Attorney General Bill Schutte: Dear Mr. Fader: It has come to our attention that Suits for Soldiers, Inc. may be soliciting contributions in Michigan in violation of the Charitable Organizations and Solicitations Act, MCL 400.271 et seq. (COSA). This letter requires your immediate attention.
Suits for Soldiers is hereby ordered to cease and desist any misrepresentations regarding the tax-deductibility of donations to the organization, and to cease and desist all solicitations in Michigan until it is registered with the Attorney General under COSA. Suits for Soldiers must respond to the Attorney General, in writing, by Friday, October 3 to confirm that it has complied with this order. In its written response to the Attorney General, Suits for Soldiers should also respond to allegation 3. Please note that violations of COSA are punishable by civil fines of up to $10,000 or by other relief. MCL 400.290. If you have any questions, please contact me. Very truly yours, Joseph J. JWlm, Auditor Charitable Trust Section (517) 373-1152 [Source: VVA Chapter 494 | Ray Essenmacher | Sept. 2014 ++] ******************************** Vet Charity Watch Update 49 ► Indiana Phony Vet Charities Three groups that claim to be charities for veterans keep the money they raise, Indiana's attorney general claims in court. Indiana sued Sandbox Veterans of America, Catholic Veterans of Indiana, and Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America Inc., in Allen County Court. Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America Inc. is a "sham group" that is not affiliated with the "well-known and respected" Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, the attorney general says. The state also sued the four people who incorporated the groups: Adam Matthew Silvani (Sandbox), Olivia Jean Locke aka Olivia Jean Silvani (Catholic Veterans), Roger Anthony Locke (Catholic Veterans), and Donald Shoppe (Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans), all of Fort Wayne. The defendants have solicited charitable contributions since June 2011, but "the contributions were not given to veterans as represented," the state says in its 19 SEP complaint. In its articles of incorporation, Sandbox Veterans of America claimed that its purpose was "to offer support sessions and provide assistive services to local veterans who have recently served in overseas campaigns ... hotel vouchers for patients at there [sic] local hospitals. To also give shelter to local homeless veterans. To help local veterans in finding jobs and training them further in there [sic] career." The 9-page complaint described the manner in which the defendants raised money. But when the attorney general's office in February this year asked for proof of 501(c)(3) status with the IRS and bank accounts where donations were held, Olivia Locke "informed plaintiff that neither Sandbox Veterans of America nor Catholic Veterans of Indiana Limited had bank accounts where charitable donations were processed or kept," according to the lawsuit. The attorney general calls defendant Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America Inc. "a sham organization that is not affiliated with the IAVA. Defendants Olivia Silvani, Adam Silvani, and Donald Shoppe used IAVA's name to gain recognition without actually donation to IAVA. To make the Indiana organization appear to be affiliated with IAVA, Olivia Locke included IAVA's president and CEO names and New York addresses in her Indiana Secretary of State filing, misrepresenting her organization's affiliation with IAVA," according to the complaint. The state seeks an injunction, penalties for deceptive trade, and costs of investigation. [Source: Courthouse News Service | Chris Randolph | Sept. 26, 2014 ++] ******************************** Operation Grow4Vets ► Denver Cannabis Giveaway Hundreds of military veterans received free marijuana during a special giveaway in Denver designed to show that pot can help ease their pain. Four hundred bags of pot-infused products were given away during the giveaway with veterans receiving more than $200 worth of cannabis products and other attendees who donated $20 receiving over $100 worth of weed-infused products. Members of Operation Grow4Vets said the 20 SEP event aimed to offer veterans an alternative to prescription drugs to help with anxiety, pain and other problems. The organization also says it gave out 400 bags of marijuana-infused products at the Denver Cannabis Giveaway. “We’re really here to help them with their medical conditions,” including post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury, the group’s founder, Roger Martin, himself a veteran, told KDVR-TV ( http://bit.ly/1sfQhGK ). “There’s a wide variety of ailments. Anything that involves pain.” For a video of the event refer to http://denver.cbslocal.com/2014/09/20/hundreds-of-vets-receive-pot-free-of-charge-at-special-event. 
Stephanie Burton, a veteran Army nurse, told KCNC-TV that she struggles with PTSD, and marijuana helps her sleep at night. Afghanistan veteran Brian Nance, 29, said he used marijuana to wean him off morphine after he fell 40 feet into a ravine and broke his back. “I’ve been using cannabis, and it’s been helping me,” Nance said. “If I don’t have to take a pill for four to five hours, for me, that’s a big deal.” But pot critics questioned whether the event was safe. Colorado this year rejected marijuana as a treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder, so the condition is not on the list of ailments for which doctors can recommend medical marijuana. But it is legal in the state to give away pot for free. And Colorado allows any adult over 21 to buy the drug in recreational stores. Bob Doyle of the Colorado Smart Approaches to Marijuana Coalition said organizers of Saturday’s event were reckless to give away a drug that can also cause paranoia and may have other unforeseen side effects. “Obviously things that we would not want somebody with PTSD to be experiencing,” he said. Grow4Vets now says it is launching a new project called Save 1,000 Vets that aims to provide 1,000 veterans with a free lifetime supply of marijuana-infused goods. Operation Grow4Vets website http://www.grow4vets.org states their mission is to help reduce the staggering number of Veterans who die each day from suicide and prescription drug overdose. They provide Veterans with the knowledge and resources necessary to obtain or grow their own marijuana for treatment of their medical conditions. Their vision is to raise awareness by enlisting the public’s aid and support in ensuring that all injured and wounded Veterans receive the respect and dignity of life that they deserve. And, their purpose is to provide Veterans with unique products, programs and services designed to assist them in living with injuries sustained while protecting our freedom. Operation Grow4Vets is a national, nonpartisan organization headquartered in Colorado. A second cannabis giveaway was scheduled for 27 SEP, in Colorado Springs at the Double Tree Hilton, 1775 E. Cheyenne Mountain Blvd, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Vets were required to RSVP by 12 p.m. Sept. 26 to receive free product. [Source: The Associated Press Sept. 21, 2014 ++] ******************************** Operation Grow4Vets Update 01 ► Colorado Springs Cannabis Giveaway Another free cannabis giveaway at a Colorado Springs hotel 27 SEP attracted about a thousand people looking for an alternative medication for their physical and mental pain. Roger Martin, the executive director and co-founder of Operation Grow4Vets, which put on the event, said the group's goal is to bring cannabis to veterans with service-related conditions as an alternative to pain medications. "It isn't going to hurt them as much as the prescription drugs," he said. Martin, an Army veteran, said he struggled with prescription drug use to help with what he called "24-hour" pain and an inability to sleep. "I just need something to take the pain away during the day," he said. 
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