CAVC–BUILDING THE PERFECT PUNJI PIT

Posted on July 19, 2026 by asknod

I’m probably going to upset some cadre of Veterans over at VBN who are still life members of the SMC Flat Earth Society. By that I mean those who cling to the Combat Craig mentality of “Don’t poke the SMC Bear” or your VA comp check will undergo a massive reduction. Their standard bearer “Cruiser”, an alleged VA rater of 30 years, is one of their original adepts who professes, among other things, that you cannot possibly attain two (2) aid and attendance ratings due to pyramiding under §4,14. This is disturbing for multiple reasons- the biggest one being that I’ve published almost one hundred BVA decision examples I’ve won contradicting just that. But that’s not why I called you here. Oh hell no. This is waaay better.

Today I’m going to discuss VA punji pits. How I build them. How you draw the raters into them. How you can end up with a high SMC at the end and more. Building one is no easy task unless you’ve studied and mastered the art of SMC. Obviously, this wasn’t one of Cruiser’s strong suits during his extended employ at the VBA. With the misinformation he constantly espouses, I suspect he was little more than a janitor at a VARO. Sounds like Stolen Valor but who would ever want to brag about VA employment? The initials (DVA) make it sound like a social disease. But I digress.

A punji pit in Viet Nam, by it’s very nature, was an unsuspecting trap that you fell into because you had a stupid, inexperienced point man or a gung ho 90-day wonder that ordered you to run pell mell through the jungle in pursuit of a sure win against the gooks. A punji pit is a passive attack- one that’s set up and requires no further supervision or monitoring. The more modern version in the Sand Pit -era was the IED.

In the Air Force, we didn’t have punji pits per se. Our favorite upcountry (over the fence) version was the variation of the CBU 24 which held 665 individual mini-hand grenades. The dinks called them “bom-bees” after the word bomb. A certain percentage of them were the BLU 26 B delayed-fuse version. We’d troll along leisurely like rubbernecking tourists for ground fire at 79 knots down Route 7 until some over-eager Pathet Lao newbies couldn’t resist taking a pot shot at us with their AKMs.

We’d promptly call in to Hillsboro (7th ABCCC), our orbiting AC 130 command post for some loitering Sandys out of NKP and sit back to wait for their arrival. My pilot Chuck would light them up with a marker rocket or two and we’d clear in the Sandys hot while we stood off to the side and watched.

The next phase was to fly back over for a Bomb Damage Assessment (BDA) to determine if we needed to lather, rinse and repeat. Once that was completed, and we determined the Sandys had done their job, we’d dismiss them and sashay over several valleys and wait for 35 minutes. We’d return to watch as the 45-minute point arrived. The time delayed CBU 26Bs would begin going off about then catching many of the gooks out in the open collecting the bodies, the wounded and their weapons.

Just for shits and grins, if any of the Sandys had liquid sunshine (napalm) on their hardpoints that they hadn’t promised to someone else, and they weren’t otherwise occupied, we’d call them back in for a second pass to light up the survivors out there in the open hunkering down trying to dodge all the flying bombee shrapnel. I can’t begin to tell you how effective this was and how it destroyed their morale. War is hell. Nape is flat-ass something else to behold.

Enough of war, let’s talk about building VBA punji pits. I think most Vets are aware that VA raters have low IQs. If not, then they are paid to purposefully misconstrue what it is we are asking for when we file. Six of one. Half a dozen of the other, right? Heads I win. Tails you lose? In the instant case I’m going to illustrate, we have my client Bob for whom I’ve been building SMC since 2018. It began with Parkinson’s and loss of use of his lower extremities.

Bob gradually lost the safe use of ambulating without falling down. He suffered the comorbidity of both the Parkie’s as well as DM II with peripheral neuropathy of all four extremities-but mostly in his legs. At the same time, his heart began to misbehave as a lot of ours do when you have a diet heavy on herbicide topping. You and I (and most civilian doctors call that CAD- Coronary Artery Disease. Not to be outdone, the VA insists on confusing Vets and calls it Ischemic Heart Disease or IHD. Personally, I think that’s done purposefully to confuse entitled Vets. Face it. We’re not doctors.

Our doctors (civilian ones) attribute this (IHD) to one-too-many missions over McDonald’s if they are unaware we vacationed in sunny Southeast Asia for a year. In 2018, or thereabouts, I filed Bob for the loss of use of his legs/feet and a wonderful gal from QTC agreed saying it was too dangerous for Bob to walk around unassisted. The VA raters were forced to obey the c&p examiner’s findings and handed him a SMC L under §3.350(b)(1). Or so I thought.

Redact Narrative 1-18-2019

At the same time, the heart thing was still on the table and VA could see where I was heading- another L for aid and attendance under §3.350(b)(3). They dug in and fought us hard to prevent it. I ended up winning the 100% IHD at the BVA in 2022 or 2023 and Waco was forced to suck it up and give him the 100% for it. But before I filed for the a&a, I decided to go for the full-step bump up to SMC M based on §3.350(f)(3) times 2. Since I figured the Raters down in Whacko (Waco) were going to continue fighting, I decided to get the M while I was building his entitlement to R1 by having two Ls- or in this case- an L and an M. What the hey? I enjoy torturing these cheese dicks. It’s like playing poker with a three-year old.

As expected, VA told me to go suck an egg on the SMC M. So, just for shits and grins, I filed a HLR saying they need to go back to SMC school and take a refresher course. Right off, after the Informal Conference, they asked for a new c&p on his legs. I emailed the rater and said no way, José. Red Card. This ain’t on the menu. This is an administrative adjudication. He’s had the loss of use for over 5 years and it’s quasi-protected. They’d need to call a CUE and formally take it away as a clear and unmistakable error.

The rater emailed me back and said -not true, Alex. We can take it away as long as we do not reduce his rating in any way, shape or form. They were partially right. §3.2601(j) does say that. And boy howdy, that’s exactly what they did. They converted the loss of use into an aid and attendance but gave him the M I’d asked for. But they did reduce him and didn’t even realize it. Keep reading.

When you get an L for loss of use of the lower extremities, it comes with the ancillary entitlements of Specially Adapted Housing (SAH) and an automobile. Sure, you have to file for them but that’s just a formality. VA always makes it a chore and a bore for anything like that. Think clothing allowances or Barry Bumps. Here. in Bob’s case, they didn’t ask for the home remodel bucks back or attempt to repo his new car. Oh hell no. They were too busy gloating on how they’d showed him (and me) who writes the checks.

I took it up to the BVA and spilled the beans on the SAH and the car and the VLJ didn’t even bat an eye. VLJ Lynn Yasui (pictured below didn’t even mention it either. She said an L is an L and allowed as how she didn’t see what all the bitching was about. Bob got his M and he still had the same paycheck as he did before I started throwing rocks at Waco RO’s picture windows. Thank you for your service Bob. Now be a good boy and piss off.

Redact BVA denial of LOU 5.2.2025

So I called up my good buddy Wes and asked if he’d like to sashay on up to the Court and see what they had to say about it. The Office of General Counsel (OGC) is tasked with defending the Secretary’s decisions- if they so choose. Here, they doubled down and said they’d defend this to the grave because it was legally hunky dory to do the switcheroo. No harm. No foul. Can you imagine the chutzpah of these idiots? They were so full of themselves being infallible, they just figured they had this in the bag. Judge Yasui told them so.

Wesley wrote a beautiful brief and went them one better. He pointed out the fact that when they send you out for a c&p, they always claim they give the c&p clinicians the whole claims file. It even says so on the DBQs. The clinician endorse the box that says he used the VA efolder to make his decision. If you or I submitted an Independent Medical Opinion without the doctor stating he’d reviewed the whole file, VA would deny and say their doctor’s opinion is more probative than ours because he had the whole claims file. So- all these years you Vets have been hornswoggled into believing that FNP chowderhead nurse read it all… but s/he didn’t. It was, and still is, all a well-constructed lie used to deny hundreds of thousands of Veterans for decades. Let that sink in, gentlemen.

Worse, for VA, you can go into VBMS and the Vet’s folder and pull up all his VAF 21-2507 requests for physical examination (in-person) and it lists all the documents the QTC dude is given to look at. This the proof you need to show that the record, as it was known, was not before the examiner. See also §§4.2, 4.6 and 4.10; 20.1403-i.e., the whole recorded history of the claim…

I have some Vets whose claims files runs into the thousands of .pdfs- some containing thousands of pages each- some not. CAPRI records from VAMCs can have 20 years worth of medical notes. On average, VA provides a maximum of 15-20 items for the clinician to review. From that, some new-hire with a GED gets to give it a haircut and remove anything he thinks is not probative. We’re talking a high school graduate with zero medical training who gets to 86 anything he wants to before the nurse even sets eyes on you. But the one thing guaranteed to be left in there will be his POA- the VAF 21 22a. What in Sam Hill does that have to do with the Vet’s exposure to _____________? Well, it tells the clinician we’re one of those money-hungry litigators just trying to screw the VA (and the Vet) out of their compensation money.

At some point this month, after the Rule 33 conference when they said “see ya in court, bro”, the OGC weenies realized Wes’ arguments about these efolder claims files shenanigans were going to be exposed for all to see. Tuesday last, they arrived on his doorstep waving the white flag saying perhaps we spoke too soon, Wes. How about we all sit down and take a gander at this all over again and maybe we can settle this like civilized folks. This is the OGC’s method of chieu hoi.

So that’s where we are right now. On the 28th of this month, and not a day sooner, the OGC weenies are going to propose a mutual agreement we can all live with. Being a VA pessimist of long standing, I’m betting they do the Rodney King “Can’t we all just get along?” shtick and say “Okay, how ’bout we give you back your loss of use and you can keep the M for the IHD. No harm. No foul. You get your EAJA fees Wes, Mr. Bob gets his loss of use back and we promise not to take back the $100K worth of SAH goodies and the Subaru with 12 K on the odometer. Deal?”

Well, not exactly as they say down at Alamo Rent-a-Car™. There’s the intractable problem of a res judicata finding of fact and a conclusion of law. I speak of the finding of fact that the Bobmeister now (currently) has an SMC rating for aid and attendance. He was granted this by operation of law and it wasn’t CUE. They stated it in 12-point font and Lynn Yasui, Esq. confirmed it in a tribunal at the BVA. So it follows that even if you were to give him back his loss of use of the feet, he now has two (2) SMC Ls and both were legally awarded and confirmed as being a conclusion of law. Down in Texas, they’d say that ol’ boy plumb lassoed hisself.

Technically, I didn’t dig the punji pit myself. Waco dug this one all by themselves and now have fallen into it with absolutely no help from me. Even worse, from their perspective, is the future problem that hundreds of thousands of Veterans’ rating decisions were denied based on the false premise that VA swore on a stack of M 21 manuals that their examiners had read the Whole claims file when, at best, they may have read less than 10% of it. As Astro the talking dog was fond of saying to George Jetson, “Ruh-oh, Rorge.”

I’ll give you an update shortly on the 29th as to how the OGC proposes to crawl out of their punji pit and whitewash this puppy. This oughtta be a magnificent word salad the likes of which would make even Kammy envious. I can’t make this shit up. Nobody would believe me anyway.

PS. If you want to see Bob’s travails in Viet Nam, here’s a great story complete with a bunch of pictures that Bob took. I wrote this back in January 2015. Cupcake and I had the pleasure of meeting Bob in ’16 on our way to San Antonio for a NOVA conference.

LZ CORK–BOB LOCKETT’S LP AT THE BOTTOM OF THE LZ.

Posted in Agent Orange, Aid and Attendance, CAVC ruling, CAVC/COVA Decision, CUE, SMC, Special Monthly Compensation, Tips and Tricks, VA Agents, VA special monthly compensation, Veterans Law | Tagged asknod.org, CAvC/COvA Decisions, Disabled Veteran, DIY vA Claims, Help with vA Claims, Helping Veterans, How to get SMC Loss of Use, How to get VA SMC, Service Connection, SMC, SMC Barry Bumps, VA claims, VA SMC Claims, VA SMC Parkinsons, Veterans Benefits, Veterans claims help, Veterans Humor, Vietnam Veterans Claims Help. | 1 Comment

7/04/2026–BREAKING AMERICA’S PROMISE…ONE DISEASE AT A TIME

Posted on July 4, 2026 by asknod

Yeah. That title tells you right off this sucks. I thought long and hard about writing about the Birth of our Great Nation. Each beginning introduction inevitably led into a discussion about where we have been more so than where we could be heading in our potentially Glorious Future. Obviously, that entails discussions about Republics versus Democracies. Since we don’t do politics here, we are free to wander off the reservation and take a gander at what’s afoot in our world- the world of Disabled Veterans. Let’s let others argue the pros and cons of capitalism versus socialism. We have our plates full of future haircuts coming to a Regional Office near you. Actually, it’s been happening since the War of 1812 but most of us haven’t been around long enough to appreciate the depth nor breadth of the monetary shrinkage we have suffered.

If you wanted a brief overview, you could go back to 1945 and begin with the predecessor of the VA Schedule for Rating Disabilities. Today, in the world of government acronyms, that’s VASRD or Part IV (4). The changes were inevitable. A good example was Hepatitis C. In 1989, it got its own name. But it wasn’t until 2001- a full 12 years later- that VA opted to create the DC 7354 code for it. It’s strictures notably ignored the fact that it was a 100% guaranteed terminal illness. It didn’t wax and wane. VA’s next give would be to reduce the percentage for that and begin a new diagnostic code for cirrhosis of the liver- DC 7312.

So, the recent announcement that VA was going to 86 tinnitus’ and OSA’s almost automatic 10% (persistent) and 50% (CPAP use) respectively was almost a given. The military was too cheap to issue ear plugs that actually worked. Besides, how could you, as an 11B20, wear ear protection and walk point in I Corps in Vietnam if it suppressed your ability to discern danger and timely respond to it? In the same vein, because they made you work 20 hours a day in the sand box, snoring and low blood oxygen levels were an expected side effect.

If you were of the cannon cocker persuasion at LZ Cork in ’69, how did you pull the lanyard whilst putting a finger in each ear to muffle the 285 db explosion 14 feet in front of you? The short answer was you couldn’t. But that did help prevent VA from paying you for tinnitus until 1976 when they changed the rules right after a ~~war-~~er- conflict- as the VSOs characterized it.

That’s right. The only way you got that 10% was due to an organic brain injury- that’s 1964speak for TBI under DC 8045. Check it out. Page 6737 of the FR DC 6260 Tinnitus (see diagnostic codes 8045 and 8046.) That means if you got 10% for tinnitus, you had a TBI. That’s still true but VA doesn’t mention that very much. If they did, most all Veterans might be re-examining how they came to have it. (Page 7650 DC 8045 Purely subjective complaints).

1964 VASRD-Ratings

I think perhaps the one thing that jumps out at intelligent Veterans is that the major VSO organizations all kowtow to this injustice. In fact, the American Legion just put out a mission statement facetiously named the Taking Care of American’s Veterans Act that they’re perfectly okay with doing away with tinnitus or OSA on a compensable level. They tell their constituency that they must “compromise”. That takes balls.

But this isn’t the first time. Remember back in 2010 when the Wounded Warrior Project convinced President Obama to carve out a special SMC -T- equal to the highest rate (R2) solely for post-2001 Veterans suffering from TBI. Oddly, we didn’t hear the word “compromise” on the Veterans’ Benefits Act of 2010 (Public Law 111-275). Fortunately, the next president opted to make it available to all Veterans of all time to qualify for this SMC.

Let’s not hear about all this sacrifice and compromise. DAV and VFW were all in on this increase in Vets’ SMC benefits. Strangely, we didn’t hear that there was going to be a bit of quid pro quo and a reduction in benefits for, say, lung cancer or patellofemoral knee problems. Shit. There are three different ratings just for the knee. Who’d notice if they did away with one? Now, almost to a man, they are invested in the barbershop business of giving us a haircut all under the banner of “compromise”. For what? Our government’s insane fascination with testing out all their new toys in faraway lands like Iraq and Afghanistan that created all the disabled Vets? Vietnam? Grenada ?

I looked up sacrifice in Meriam Webster’s famous VA dictionary. I also looked up compromise just for shits and grins. Under the former, there was a picture of the latest American Legion U.S. Marine Corps National Adjutant Rodney K. Rolland. Mr. Rolland has sacrificed his whole career to help AmLeg. Mr. Rolland is also doing pretty good on his paycheck.

The National Adjutant of the American Legion serves as the chief executive officer of the organization. According to ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer, compensation for this top leadership position is roughly between $300,000 and $366,000 per year, which includes a base salary, bonuses, and non-taxable benefits.

At AmLeg, I guess the watchwords of compromise and sacrifice are synonymous with one another. Y’all gotta sacrifice so Mr. Rolland can afford caviar and a Corvette. Five bucks says Mr. Rolland is rated for tinnitus at 10%. But that’s okay. He’s safe. This new haircut rule is only effective on all future military members who might qualify for it. That way you know you, the current disabled Vets, aren’t going to get screwed – well, unless you file for OSA next year after it passes.

This whole phenomenon is merrily being copied out of the Congressional model of spending money. It’s called pay-go. In the VA world, apparently if you want to allocate money to pay for Veteran care in the community rather than make everybody drive 100 miles at 41.5¢ per mile (toll bridges excluded) for sketchy medical care, then you have to discontinue paying for tinnitus and OSA. In the instant case, we are asked to compromise on this minor point in order to make the future more secure for incoming Veterans. So what does that forbode for America’s future Veterans? I’d guess the Draft will be coming back.

The only thing that doesn’t pencil into this formula is the ever-increasing budget they pass for the VA each year and the increasing decrease in services. Who ever heard of having to wait 4 months for a CT scan to see if you have a brain glioblastoma? And then another 3 months to schedule an operation? This is third world Canada-style medicine. Yet we’ve been asked to compromise and sacrifice on this even though your Congressman can vote with his feet and go to any doctor no matter what it costs.

But let’s examine that sacrifice shit some more. Google AI whispers me all kinds of things. How ’bout them hard workers over at DAV? Seems they do good work for Veterans. But they’re all in on this haircut shit, too. According to DAV’s most recent IRS Form 990 tax filings, National Adjutant Barry A. Jesinoski received a base compensation of about $313,000, with additional bonuses, incentives, and retirement benefits bringing his total annual compensation to $572,075. With that kind of folding money, I reckon ol’ Barry wouldn’t miss that 10% paycheck for tinnitus ($180.42/month). Now Rolland, the crayon eater guy over at AmLeg might feel it at $350 K-ish but you gotta figure that’s why they call it sacrifice.

How about the VFW warriors’ sword bearer? If I were Dan West, I’d be pitching a royal bitch. The salary of VFW’s Adjutant General is approximately $225,558 per year. That ol’ boy is flat out getting screwed out of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of sacrifice but it’s apparently enough of a living wage to get him on board with some of that compassion shit for today’s disabled Vets to continue with working there.

So let’s look at a disabled Vet Vet in our world of VA compensation. Statistically, the majority of America’s carry a 50% rating for PTSD or the equivalent, a bum knee or ankle at 10% and-yep- tinnitus at 10%. VA math says 60%. That’s $1,566.02 per month. 50 + 10 in VA math equals 55. An additional 10% for tinnitus won’t jump him to 70 so we could say it looks like it would be an inconsequential loss financially. But would it in all cases?

Let’s look at the guy who has 10% his ankle, 10% for the knee and 10% for the tinnitus. Take away the tinnitus and he drops from 30% down to 20%. It also makes him ineligible for spouse and dependents allowance. That’s the difference between $617.47 (plus any wall crawlers) and $356.66 and no dependency dollars whatsoever. So does that seem like an equitable trade for that high-priced representation from their Service organization.

In today’s world, everyone begs us to conserve, turn the thermostat down and shut up about the cost of gas and food. Well, certainly everyone who has a cush megabucks job at a VSO. Delving deeper, those same guys who are knocking off six-figure salaries are only paying their service representatives- the very same ones you are provided free of charge to do your claim- one tenth of that. Average Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) Service Consultant yearly pay in Washington State is approximately $35,360, which is 56% below the national average. Average Disabled American Veterans Veteran Service Officer yearly pay in the United States is approximately $40,771, which is 29% below the national average.

About now, you’re thinking to yourself why in Sam Hill should I have to cough up that annual dues payment to cover the cost of that Corvette for my National Commander to arrive in style at the National Convention in Hotlanta? They’re such tightwads, they won’t even pay the guys that are supposed to help me (fulltime) a living wage all the while pulling down 90% more. What’s wrong with this picture? VSOs across our Fabled Fruited Plains are hoping you won’t notice their level of sacrifice…or lack thereof.

But now I’m skating mighty close to stepping on someone’s inflated ego of how important he/she/they/ them is. Disabled Veterans obviously are the inevitable financial casualty of any future reductions in benefits. That’s a given. It just seems somewhat cruel for them fellers making so much they can’t figure out where to invest it to tell the Veterans who they pretend to represent before Congress to suck it up.

I remember reading recently about how all these VSO generals complain loudly that we Agents and Attorneys are making a killing off of Veterans by charging them for our services. Granted, they also complain about the Claims Sharks but look at their success rates. Using a VSO is almost guaranteed to be a loss for a decade until you ask AI how to win it. Using the claims sharks, you stand to lose 60% of your winnings. Using an experienced VA Agent or attorney will make it happen sooner and cheaper with a far higher rate of success. So why the VSO animosity towards us? I’ll get back to you when I find out.

Meanwhile, Happy 4th of July and the 250th celebration of same. Just remember, the only reason we’re celebrating today is because your fellow Veteran forebears kicked Cornwallis’ ass down at Yorktown on October 19, 1781. If they hadn’t done that, we’d still be having tea and crumpets at 4 and discussing what the Queen was going to wear to the Trooping the Colour.

P.S. Several loyal members of DAV, PVA and VFW have contacted me and disagree with my assessment that their organizations are in favor of “compromising” with VA and relinquishing compensable payments to Veterans for tinnitus and OSA-i.e., sacrificing some benefits to preserve all others in the future.

I would tend to agree with them on paper and hereby do so. What I will never concede is the collusion between all VSO organizations and VA’s hierarchy. The Big Six’s decision to support a carve out for a special rating for post-911 TBI Veterans in 2010 shows their perfidy in their respect for the inherent holiness of Veterans’ benefits. I stand behind my assessment that VSOs at the National level are no more than greedy entrepreneurs who viciously defend their turf with no regard for Veterans whatsoever.

Perhaps worse is the constant deprecations hurled at us VA representatives (Attorneys an Agents) claiming we are greedy, money-hungry litigators who take advantage of Veterans and milk their claims out for years. What they fail to mention is that every one of them, with the exception of PVA, utilize our services once they have destroyed the Veterans’ claims and ask us to pull their bacon out of the fire. Witness DAV uses CCK. AmLeg uses Bergmann and Moore etc. etc.

And that’s all I’m going to say about that…

Posted in 4th of July, All about Veterans, VA Agents, VA Attorneys, VSOs | Tagged Agent Orange, askNOD.com, Disabled Veteran, DIY vA Claims, Gulf War Claims Help, Gulf War Vets Help, Help with vA Claims, Helping Veterans, How to get VA SMC, Service Connection, SMC, VA claims, VA SMC Claims, VA SMC R1, Veterans Benefits, Veterans claims help, Veterans Humor, Vietnam Veterans Claims Help. | 1 Comment

UP ON CRIPPLE CREEK

Posted on June 27, 2026 by asknod

Great song by the Band in ’69 just before I left for the Jungle. The song’s lyrics resonate with what we do for Veterans. If you get a chance, listen to the song. It has some really good Jew’s Harp work in it- something you just don’t hear anymore.

In this case, my mission was for a surviving spouse of a one-legged dying Vet. Imagine leaving the US to work for Saudi Aramco in the sandbox and being gone for 12 years. You miss out on all the news about the new presumptives for AO. Unfortunately, Steve had also struck out about 5 times trying to get service connection for it before he left so he was of a mind that he was never going to prevail. That tends to happen when you use free VSO help. It’s really not their fault. Nobody will teach them law. Go figure. You’re given a job as a carpenter but they don’t give you a hammer, nails or a saw.

His wife, however, was not one to give up that easily. She came to me- or I guess I should say I came to her. They’d sold their car to make rent that month. Steve had one leg amputated waaaay above the knee for bone cancer- a disability that VA had said was not incurred in service because… well he’d never served in Viet Nam. If he’d lived long enough I’d planned to lasso that one and get it secondary to Agent Orange. But first I had to get them into greener financial pastures.

He had been diagnosed with prostate cancer and in order to get the oil job with the Sand Ranchers, he had to report pronto or lose the opportunity. Being a pragmatist, he opted to just have them cut the whole shiteree out thereby avoiding six months of puking in the piss pot from antineoplastic treatment (chemo) or 28 missions under the x ray machine to fry his pecker with radiation. He told me before he passed away that it was the absolute shits to find adult diapers over there. His kids had to send them to him from stateside.

Waterpump area- Udorn RTAFB 1970

His wife went with him to sandland and finally convinced him to throw in the towel when they had to take the leg. I reckon it was a rough life as a refinery mechanical engineer even if he was making killer bucks. Amputating the leg would have been the straw that broke the camel’s back. And it did.

They were burning through their life savings at an alarming rate and decided to downsize to a small mobile home near me but even that was too much without something more to cover expenses. I love a challenge so I started digging in the Blue Water files and found he’d been on a flattop (CVA 65 Enterprise) up at Yankee station on the one and only day it crossed inside the 12-mile limit while he was aboard- November 25, 1971. But that’s all it takes to join the Nehmer Class, right? Who ever said them Immunization records weren’t good for winning claims?

redact 4138 filed 12.07.2024

In sort of short order, I got him a quick 60% for the incontinence from the prostate enucleation. VA wasn’t so generous on the PTSD or the Ischemic Heart Disease. And while I was busy fixing that and filing for TDIU, Steve passed away. His wife,- let’s call her Daisy Mae- fell apart at the seams. She didn’t have a pot to piss in and soon wouldn’t have a window to throw it out of. Steve’s SSA wasn’t going to even patch the hole in her finances and worse, she couldn’t find the folder with all the marital information, Steve’s previous divorces (4) or anything else we were going to need to get her DIC.

Seems they’d left all that in a storage area in eastern Washington, ran out of dough and the owners sold the contents at auction like they do in Storage Wars. Worse, the Death Certificate said he died of heart problems I was still working on and Lewy Body dementia (LBD). I’ve had some lousy poker hands in my day but this was worse than a pair of twos in a 5-card stud game. I wasn’t going to be able to bluff my way out of it.

60 Mike Mike HE airmail

But here’s where that steel trap I call my brain comes in handy. About 6 years ago, my VA mentor, Law Bob Squarepants (Bob Walsh) had sent me an article showing the correlation between LBD and Parkinson’s disease. Last Monday, a social worker helping her sent me proof of her divorce prior to her marriage to Steve- the exact link we needed to show her marriage was unencumbered. Hooo doggies. I was finally cooking with Sterno, bubba.

I got the magic paper Thursday morning and got to make that phone call we VA reps absolutely live for in this business. Daisy Mae is not going to be living in some Section 8 shithole and eating cat food for the rest of her life. She’s going to have a decent existence- maybe not a luxurious penthouse suite in Beverly Hills, but who would want to live in LA nowadays anyway?

redact DIC RD 6.25.26

redact CS 6.25.26

Lots of folks think we make wheelbarrows of money doing VA claims- that we’re somehow so rich we sport diamond rings, drive Mercedes Benz’ and have color TVs. To be truthful, you must be thinking about all them claims sharks. This didn’t even cost Daisy Mae the postage to mail me back the POA. I sent her a prepaid mailer. That’s the way it should be.

For the record, I freely admit I do have a color TV and drive a 2001 Ford F 150 with 208, 560 miles on it. It leaks oil and ain’t long for this world. When you put it in drive, you have to wait a few for it to get enough tranny fluid to kick in. Cupcake got the diamond ring back in ’87 and said she’s good to go with the one she has. Truth be told, an aged bottle of single malt scotch and a medium rare elk steak with spuds and I’m happy as a pig in poop. Pickles absolutely loves the old Ford and sees no reason to upgrade it anyway. Hell, if you think I’m funnin’ you, check this out. Dogs never lie.

And that’s the way it is- Saturday afternoon, June 27, 2026. It just doesn’t get any better than this.

Posted in DIC, Pickles, VA Agents | Tagged asknod.org, DIC, DIC Claims for widows., Disabled Veteran, DIY vA Claims, Help with vA Claims, Helping Veterans, Service Connection, VA claims, Veterans Benefits, Veterans claims help, Veterans Humor, Vietnam Veterans Claims Help. | 8 Comments

THE COMING VA DILEMMA

Posted on June 14, 2026 by asknod

I know the title above sounds like doom and gloom but I’m going to take you on a journey to the inevitable future-both of VA’s proposed Compensation haircuts as well as America’s too. Much of what I’m going to say here is going to elicit anger and a feeling I do not share the angst of my fellow Veterans in their battle for benefits. Remember, I’m not speaking my mind about how I feel but what I suspect- and have already been witness to- over the last 37 years of playing VA poker. It’s as inevitable as the the sun coming up tomorrow. Veterans have a better chance of inventing a DeLorean with a 1 gigwatt flux capacitor and a nuclear “kicker” to get it started as they do attempting to alter or stave off the future erosion of Veterans Compensation benefits.

Before I go Back to the Future, I want to illustrate what the past looked like- the past I remember. In 1970, you could smoke yourself into a rip snorting case of lung cancer and it would be service connected. All them Marb Reds, Kools and Winstons were 13¢ a pack at the BX when I got to Udorn in May 1970. They went up to 15¢ a pack just before I went TDY to the country that rhymed with Mouse. All them 15 year old Chesterfield Kings and Lucky Strikes in c rations were free but they didn’t have filters.

Likewise, in 1970, you could hit the Class VI store and load up on booze each month if you were over 21. If you had a Mormon Buddy who didn’t smoke or drink, you could hornswoggle him out of his ration card and double that. I was only 19 when I arrived but no one ever bothered to X out our liquor ration cards. Johnnie Walker Red was $9 a fifth. Johnnie Black was $12. You could take them off base and sell them for $35 and $50 respectively. The only problem was you were stuck with Thai Baht- not greenbacks. But that’s another story involving the Swiss Embassy in Bangkok..

Moving into 1990, VA decided to pull the plug on compensation for alcoholism and drug abuse. See 38 CFR 3.301. VA does, however, have a sense of humor. They outlawed it on Halloween Morning in 1990. Gives trick or treat a whole new meaning.

In keeping with that sentiment, in 1998 VA decided if you had a five-pack a day habit and you came down with a rip snorting good case of lung cancer, it was no longer service connected. Mind you, the Class VI store and BX/PX didn’t quit selling cheap booze and smokes. They didn’t. They just said if you came down with cancer or cirrhosis, it was on your dime.

I could go on and on citing other benefits haircuts over the years too numerous to mention. The fact is, VA’s compensation history is replete with gradual shrinkage-both percentage wise as well as what is, and what isn’t service connected. As an example. I attach here the 1969 Part IV (4) VA Schedule of Rating Disabilities (VASRD) that was in effect when I held up my right hand.

1969 VASRD

When doing VA claims for §3.156(c) claims, it’s imperative you (VA representatives) seek the right VASRD to cite to when they promulgate your RD (rating decision) using 2026 criteria. A 30% rating back to 1972 is all fine and dandy but if you use the 1969 schedule, that could very well be 50%. When they add up the intervening retro to the 2024 §3.156(c) win, that could mean tens of thousands more just waiting to be granted. Don’t leave anything on the table.

I’ve discussed above what used to be then and what it is now as my introduction to the what if? But I’m going to add in a new wrinkle. Back in 1970, you could be a cannon cocker at Fire Base Betty or a Pig Packer in a LRRP outfit up in the Central Highlands in I Corps and sticking used Marb filters in your ears for “hearing protection”. Of course, you could have just been using your index fingers if you didn’t smoke. The Pig haulers lost out. You can’t load and feed a 60 and plug up your ears at the same time with your fingers. When you got out, you filed for hearing loss. Nobody doing the c&p hearing tests bothered to ask you if you had that weird bodacious ring that made it difficult to hear the TV. Funny thing is VA knew all about Tinnitus and had a Diagnostic Code for it (6260) but plumb forgot to even tell Vets about it.

Gradually, since Vietnam, service members’ experiences have changed. A big one was a group of men (and women) would join and go through Basic, AIT and deploy as a cohesive unit. No more Repo Depots like Bien Hoa in the 60s-70s. Ground pounders, Squids, Crayon Eaters and Air Force Personnel tend to talk in their spare time- especially if they’ve known each other and bunked together for a few years. They trade addresses and now cell phone numbers and stay in touch. Most of the guys I flew with had high value whole life insurance policies for good reason. In the almost three months I lasted up there, we had an average of a 40% casualty rate.

Which leads me to… A lot of my Vets I’ve represented have Buddy letters from their fellow servicemen that attest to long hours being awake leading to insomnia, extensive acoustical trauma due to gunfire and explosions causing hearing issues and (wait for it) snoring which provoked OSA. Virtually all of these folks were service connected for hearing loss at 0%, Tinnitus at 10%, OSA at 50% with use of a CPAP and maybe 30-50% for PTSD. And virtually all of these folks got these rating not with a doctor’s diagnosis but via the Buddy letters and their STRs.

Granted, VA can’t find their ass with a Methane Detector on any given day but they don’t have to now. They have Artificial Intelligence (AI) detectors. They can run the claims history of all of us and come to the conclusion that about 98% of us are getting 10% for ear ringitis. They know a lot of the Iraqistan Vets are getting 50% for their CPAP use. Think back. Remember when the VA put that gizmo on your CPAP that you had to plug in with a USB cable to download to your computer that let them know how much you were using the mask? Ronnie Reagan called that “Trust. But Verify.” They popped a bunch of Vets and dragged them in for a new c&p exam to explain why they had insomnia and 50% but no longer needed the CPAP. Lots of Vets dropped from 50 to 10% over that one alone.

About 6 or 7 years ago, VA began grumbling about the huge amounts of Compensation they were handing out and began to discuss yet another new haircut to benefits. Eliminating TDIU was also discussed but the Big Six (DAV/VFW/AmVets/ WWP/VVA/AmLeg) put the kibosh on that in a hurry. Getting rid of, or reducing, benefits for ear ring or OSA was part of that discussion but it fell by the wayside. Newsflash. It’s back and on page 63 of the Richard Starr Act.

Congress has a new technique- one I tend to agree with Considering the National Debt is approaching $40 Trillion, we have a pay/go system in place. If you want to increase VA benefits for one disability, you have to get out the garden shears and trim another area to pay for it. This is why they’ve 86’d all the trans folks. Face it. Gender Dysphoria is a psychiatric disability. Read your DSM 5. You can’t enlist if you have a known psychiatric condition anymore than you could enlist if you were blind or deaf. I sure don’t have any gripe with trans folks but I can sure see why that will never fly.

As for the pay/go dilemma, an example is Congress’ decision to increase SMC benefits for the higher levels of SMC R1 and R2/T. They threw in a DIC increase as well. Who got the haircut to pay for all this? Why, you guys who take out VA Mortgage loans is who. This brings to mind George Orwell’s Animal Farm. Some pigs are more equal than other pigs. I guess we didn’t have TBI back in the ‘Nam. They called it Organic Brain Syndrome. They tried to tell us that the two were different until 2015- then caved in and gave it to the WW II/Korea and V Vets. That’s bullshit in my book.

We saw this phenomenon back in 2010 when the WWP jammed SMC T up Congress’ butt strictly for Vets who had served after 9/11/2001. Fortunately, that happened before pay/go or another cohort of Vets would have discovered they were paying for it. But pay/go is now the law of the land. Outside of COLA increase every January nowadays, I doubt we are going to see much more in the way of Congressional largesse.

But let’s get back to AI. I reckon a lot of you have heard of hare-brained schemes to create a $500-$750 per-month check for folks who are unemployed or “paycheck-challenged”. The qualifier is poverty. You could be blowing your welfare checks on cool tattoos and Micky D’s meals but now there’s a movement to just give away free money with no strings attached. What the hey? You can go out and blow it on Coke if you want. Without sounding racist, a few African American Californians are now proposing a $5 million reparations check for their ancestors being slaves. I hear stock in Ancestry.com is going to go through the roof if it passes. I wouldn’t be surprised if Kiwi™ begins selling shit tons of brown shoe polish, too.

I won’t go into my feelings on it but there has been much talk about how AI is going to make everyone unemployed in 30 years. What then? How do you receive your daily bread if you don’t have any income? What are we going to do with all that spare time if we don’t go to work? Take up Macramé? The Ukraine Army just deployed robots with Ma Deuce .50 cals attached onto the battlefield. What purpose is a war if you don’t decimate the enemy and force them to surrender? Each side could just manufacture and deploy more robots but never achieve a decisive military victory.

I’m not going to say I have the answer to any of the questions I’ve raised. I’m just pointing out why you (Veterans) are beginning to notice VA changes that are going to eventually affect you both financially as well as inevitably impacting your health. In about 1998 when the military did away with jetguns due to the hepatitis C (HCV) epidemic, VA began surreptitiously testing Veterans in their system for the disease. If you came down with it, you died. But VA didn’t bother to volunteer the fact that you had it. Most of us found out by getting a copy of our VA medical records.

Granted, there wasn’t a true cure for it. Interferon cured about 37% even though they claimed a 85% cure rate. That figures. According to them, if you believe it, the accuracy rate on VA claims is 98%, too. Be that as it may, nowadays, with AI, they can run through your records and spot precursors for Agent Orange presumptives, burn pit diseases etc. But again, will they tell you or pretend ignorance and keep mum as they did with the HCV test info?

I suspect AI is going to be both a curse and a blessing. As for Veterans, I suspect the former. AI will be able to diagnose a disease or condition far more accurately than any doctor from a laundry list of possibilities. In the civilian arena, you’d expect your treating physician to recommend a test or two to rule out a possible cancer or disease. Will that be true in the VHA? I fear it will not. I worry that the hierarchy will enact directives that prevent a VA physician from acting on his or her hunches. With AI now at their fingertips, A VA treating physician may take it upon himself to order life-impacting tests and simply be overruled.

It doesn’t require an historian to remind us that one day in 2010, VA Secretary Shinseki- a fellow Veteran like you and me- forbid VA doctors from writing nexus letters for Veterans to help them get service connected for their illnesses. So much for a Veteran friendly process. The Hippocratic Oath is explicit in my mind- First, do no harm. Does enforced silence with the full knowledge gleaned from AI that a disease is terminal if left untreated fall into the category of harm? I submit it does.

I know it’s a week early but Happy Nongestational Parents Day to all of you XY folks in New York. I reckon the term will be embraced in Illinois and California soon as well.

Posted in Agent Orange, Artificial Intelligence in claims, §3.156(c) claims, C&P exams, IMOs/IMEs, Independent Medical Opinions, VA Agents, Veterans Law | Tagged asknod.org, Disabled Veteran, DIY vA Claims, Help with vA Claims, Helping Veterans, How to get VA SMC, How to win SMC T, Service Connection, SMC Barry Bumps, SMC for aid and attendance, VA claims, VA SMC Claims, VA SMC Heart Disease, VA SMC R1, Veterans Benefits, Veterans claims help, Veterans Humor, Vietnam Veterans Claims Help. | 3 Comments

AOJ LA- FIELD OF DREAMS

Posted on May 31, 2026 by asknod

We live in interesting times. As most know, I’ve been making life miserable for countless VA Secretaries over the last several decades. I’ve come to expect a certain amount of pushback and recalcitrance to grant my clients’ rightfully earned benefits. I always prevail eventually but here below, witness the LA Regional Office’s decision to quit torturing my client and just chieu hoi without a long extended appeal back to the Board to sweep up the broken glass. Boy howdy when this happens, I tend to move my wallet to a front pocket and start looking over my shoulder for the inevitable other shoe to drop.

The Fed Circus, back on May 16, 2024, came down with the decision that §3.350(f)(3) could be awarded more than once. In fact, there was no limit to how many times except that you obviously could not exceed the maximum SMC entitlement of O.

I had always subscribed to this interpretation- and always lost -when trying to attain multiple awards in addition to full-step increases under §3.350(f)(4). While the Barry decision pointedly declined to specifically address (f)(4), it did point out something we can all take heart in. It stated that 38 USC §1114 and its counterpart 38 CFR §3.350 have remained virtually unchanged since their promulgation in 1946. That’s a subtle way for the Court to say that if the regulation is still the same, then something stinks down at the corner of Delay Street and Deny Avenue NW.

That’s an important consideration to just throw out there if you are hoping for retroactive awards under Barry. Think about it. Barry didn’t change the statute or regulation. They merely clarified what the original meaning was-that Congress knew how to remunerate us and didn’t step on its collective tongue when they wrote §1114(p).

Many litigators think the only way to go back and “fix” all these old injustices is to file a CUE claim to reclaim their retro pay for their clients. There is much precedence on the subject of retroactivity as it applies to CUE. Many say it is a fool’s errand. Many sit and dawdle on the sidelines waiting for a definitive answer. Many doesn’t include me. I don’t practice law. I perform it.

When you claim a CUE has occurred, you have to prove one of two things. Did they screw up and misread the regulations then in force? Or did they possibly make the decision based on an incomplete record? After either one of these errors singly has been proven to exist based on the “reasonable minds can only concur” model, the next salient question is “Did it manifestly change the outcome or was it harmless error?

Some of my compadres in the lawdog profession think that the legal standard is more along the lines of “did they misconstrue the meaning of the existing regulation and thus err?” But that’s not the legal standard of review. §20.1403 states ” Generally, either the correct facts, as they were known at the time, were not before the Board, or the statutory and regulatory provisions extant at the time were incorrectly applied.

Quite simply, to me, if §3.350(f)(3) says

” In addition to the statutory rates payable under 38 U.S.C. 1114 (l) through (n) and the intermediate or next higher rate provisions outlined above, additional single permanent disability or combinations of permanent disabilities independently ratable at 50 percent or more will afford entitlement to the next higher intermediate rate or if already entitled to an intermediate rate to the next higher statutory rate under 38 U.S.C. 1114, but not above the (o) rate. “

(and it does), then that, to, me, constitutes “regulatory provisions at the time that were incorrectly applied. I fail to see the words “my bad” or “we misunderstood such that we screwed hundreds of thousands of Veterans since ’46”.

Screenshot

Veterans of all ages will readily concede that when VA screws up, they rarely overpay you thousands of dollars. The reverse is more often true. That’s why many of us have to make the pilgrimage to DC several times to obtain what is legally ours. I don’t remember how many CUEs I’ve won but more often than not, the decision after appeal is “Yep. We screwed up. Here’s your brand new shiny 0% rating for _________. Now, if you want a compensable rating going back to 1972 for your Johnnie Vet, you’re gonna have to saddle up and start over, bubba.”

Where Barry bumps are concerned, you folks on SMC have no idea how many of you got the poopy end of the punji stick. Think how many of you had 100% ratings in the form of TDIUs and additional 60% or more ratings for conditions totally separate for other things back before 2008. Are they saying “Yep, but you can’t file a CUE on that because it was sort of a difference of opinion as to whether to give it to you. ” Uh-uh, it doesn’t work that way. If the regulation said 100% + 60 = SMC S, then you were due that extra $300 Corvette payment in 1956.

In order to avoid the CUE fight, I file for the Barry bumps after the BVA grants the a&a. Encarnacion v. McDonough says we have to file to fix a “ministerial grant of the BVA” after their decision and we have to do that by asking the very idiots who screwed us. That would be the local Fort Fumble- not the Board. We can’t just hang a u turn and go back to the Board and say “Dude, they forgot to Barry bump me at Fort Whacko down in Texas.”

Don’t ever claim CUE. It’s not a “final” decision yet. I say “gimme the money, honey” at Fort Fumble after BVA grants. VA always says “Go suck an egg”. I’m forced to take it to the BVA to get the money. But here’s where it gets interesting. The BVA will always grant the claim for the Barry bumps and advance you to the correct alphabetical letter involved but the Fort Fumbles will always assign the retroactive dates for the Barry bumps. At least they always do that for me.

Think of your BVA Veterans Law Judge like the Roman Emperor down at the Colosseum in 44 B.C.. If he holds up his thumb, you live. If he points it down, you don’t. But he doesn’t come down to the colosseum floor to shake your hand or cut your throat. The Fort Fumbles across our fruited plains have that job. They write the decision and hand out the money.

Now, it could be they (the local yokels) are doing it incorrectly and are supposed to only grant post-2024 bumps… but they don’t. Does that mean they can mount up the posse and come back and jack you for the retro 5 years later? Probably not. It’s their error- not yours. But could it be that the Secretary has now decided to grant retro anyway? After you get your teeth kicked in by the CAFC, could be you don’t much feel like picking another fight with them for a while.

To illustrate this better, I went up to the BVA for two things for my nursing home Vet who’s lived there (the nursing home- not the BVA) for over 3 years. By law, if you go into an institutional home, it’s a given you need a&a. Emanuel kept filing for a&a and they’d send him a QTC notice to report on June ___, 2020 at 1234 Yellow Brick Road in Long Beach. Emanuel has no car and it’s 35 miles away. That’s a nasty trip- even in his electric wheelchair. So he’d call up and say “How do I get there”? QTC would say ‘Not our problem. Call your wife’. Emanuel is divorced. Lather, rinse and repeat 4 or five ~~times~~ years.

When Emanuel came to me in September of ’25, he said no VA attorney or Agent would take his claim on because he was already TDIU and there was no money in it for them! DAV said “What’s SMC?” I got him a raise from 70 to 100 for his PTSD first, then a&a, then a 100% for his heart and finally an 80 for his Stage 3 kidneys. They denied a second a&a for loss of use so I went around them. I filed for a K because he had a dead winky from his DM II. They’d denied that back in 2014. That gave him what we needed to go for N 1/2 + K capabilities and a different pathway to R1 via §3.350(h)(2).

While I was waiting for the K, I asked for an earlier effective date for the IHD. As I mentioned a few weeks ago in an earlier blog, The BVA decided to give him a&a going back 4 years earlier than I asked for. I was waiting for the SMC K to launch the R1. But if I’d filed it as a CUE asking for the Barry bumps, they might have only given them to him commencing after Barry went into effect on May 17, 2024.

Here’s my legal brief, the BVA decision, the Rating Decision and the Code sheet. In addition, I attach the temporary SMC Calculator memo VA is using until they incorporate the Fed. Circus Barry Bump precedence into the M 21. As many of you don’t know, the VAOIG came out with a paper on how the AMA version of the SMC calculator refuses to go above SMC M last year. Funny thing is their old Legacy calculator still works just fine. Quite the coincidence, huh?

Redact BVA 10182 filed 3.24.2026_

Redact Duran win 5.19.26

Redact RD R1 5.28.2026

Redact CS 5.28.2026

Redact SMC R1 Calculator memo

Winning claims at the VA is rapidly becoming an art form. Old techniques are passé. You have to constantly reinvent the wheel to stay ahead of these folks- especially in this new world of AI. The teaching moment, if there is one, is that you should never rush out and start throwing out CUE claims if the decision is less than a year old. I got booted off Hadit.com for telling old Berta that.

But, by the same token, sometimes you can use a regular claim for a higher SMC rating based on a new disability to get a can opener into it ( a final claim older than a year) and get the Barry retro they declare is unattainable before Barry was decided.

In closing, I would like to say thank you to all my readership who send me U- tube links to the ever-increasing numbers of “VA experts” who know so much. I watch and laugh and then pray Veterans are not listening to this tripe. VA has a 26% accuracy rate per the CAVC. Would you really follow the advice of an auto mechanic who had torn down and rebuilt a go-kart engine and is now an avowed expert on 914 Porsches and how to adjust the fuel injection settings? How about a former VA rater? He’s blindly copied and pasted everything his Coach dictated to him straight out of the M 21 for ten years but suddenly he’s self-employed and an independent thinker capable of correctly interpreting Part 3 of 38 CFR and the latest CAVC/CAFC precedence. Better yet, if you subscribe to his newsletter and sign up for his boot camp for a small, one-time fee of $199.99, you can be at Permanent and Total in no time flat. If only it were that easy. I wonder if they refund your money when you strike out.

VA law is getting more complex each passing day. None of us can outthink AI but we can outmaneuvre them. It’s a stacked deck. If you are still using a VSO or attempting all this pro se with the help of all the Combat Kraigs and CivDiv folks out there, you’re in for some rough sledding if it involves SMC. Tinnitus, hemorrhoids and flat feet are 10% Mardi Gras beads on Fat Tuesday night. SMC is far more complicated- like becoming the King and Queen of the float and riding up front in the Krewe cab.

True knowledge of how to fight VA on SMC can’t be had out there in Utube Internet land. I try to illustrate it for free to a certain extent but I can’t supply anything more than generalized advice. Each claim is unique and requires an attack plan tailored to the Veteran’s individual circumstances.

RIP MLB 1961-2026

Posted in Aid and Attendance, Barry Bumps in SMC, BvA Decisions, CUE, How to Qualify for VA SMC, Special Monthly Compensation, VA Agents, Veterans Law | Tagged asknod.org, Disabled Veteran, DIY vA Claims, Help with SMC Claims, Help with vA Claims, Helping Veterans, How to get VA SMC, How to win SMC T, Service Connection, VA claims, VA SMC Back Pay, VA SMC Claims, VA SMC Mr. Potatohead, Veterans Benefits, Veterans claims help, Veterans Humor, Vietnam Veterans Claims Help. | 4 Comments

MEMORIAL DAY 2026- 8 NEW SOULS TO COMMEMORATE

Posted on May 22, 2026 by asknod

Another trip around the Sun and my eighteenth article on the subject of Memorial Day. As the title suggests, I lost another eight clients over the course of 2025. Sadly, one was not currently married (with children) and was a Nehmer-class Vet. As the Agent Orange lawsuit was not a product of the VA, it falls under different rules. If you die of any of the diseases listed in §3.309(e), in the absence of a spouse, your children can be substituted for accrued claims and burial benefits.

Since everybody and their mother is writing about dead Vets this weekend, I’ll go off the reservation and focus on other items that impact us as Veterans. One good thing I hear is the Govt. has decided to increase DIC benefits for surviving spouses. No mention of exactly how much but anything would be welcome and long overdue.

Imagine existing on a 100% rating for about $4 K and $2 K of SSA and suddenly you’re getting $1650 plus only the hubby’s SSA. I’ve developed a program where I have all the data and forms (22a, 534 and 847) already presigned and here, poised to file a DIC claim the moment a Vet passes away. All I need is the Death Certificate to launch.

I dumpster dive the Vet’s claims file while he’s alive and harvest all the marriage and divorce records off old 686s. The reason is simple. Who in Sam Hill has time to start assembling that data in the middle of funeral arrangements and the endless phone calls to rearrange your life? A widow (or widower) has an impossibly heavy load to carry as it is. I offer this gratis to all my clients. It’s almost impossible to accomplish it after the Vet dies. We have about 3 days to grab it following death before we lose access to the VBMS file. With a brand new 22a in hand, I can file it the moment the file is shut down and prepare for the DIC filing. This is Boy Scouts 101- be prepared.

Other exciting news this week is the recent class action decision in North Carolina against Veterans Guardian VA Claim Consulting LLC. It seems there is still a law on the books saying you can’t do this (VA Claims) unless you’re accredited by VA. Just because the Federal Government is remiss in prosecuting these greedy Veterans who are fleecing their fellow Veterans out of tens of millions, that doesn’t mean individual fleeced resident Veterans of North Carolina are not free to fly at it. And Jennifer Ford, Eric Beard and Brian Otters proceeded to fly at them. Read about it here:

Veterans Guardian VA Claim Consulting LLC

Now for bad news. The VA litigation picture for rank and file Vets who file claims right now is bleak. An Agency already renowned for being slower than the Seven-year Itch, has become even slower. Considering they’re claiming to squeeze every Lincoln Penny until Abe hollers ‘Uncle’, VA has now embarked on an unsustainable path to do endless c&p exams and turn the 125-day Standard claim model into a two-year project- and then only complete a small part of it. They’ll defer the rest and schedule the c&p for the mental 4 months out. Three years later following the original 526 or 995, when (and if) they finally do grant, the effective date has morphed into the day last week when the c&p shrink did your psyche review- not November 10, 2023, when you filed the claim for increase. Welcome back to the Hamster wheel.

With the advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI), one would think VA could take your claim and insert it into their magic computers with virtually instant results showing a grant or denial. One would obviously think wrong. C&P subcontracted clinicians are adverse to putting anything down on paper except for that which VA asks for. They are only given documents VA chooses to allow them to see- not the entire claims file. Bingo. There goes a fair and balanced “opinion”.

Perhaps even worse, VA will tell the QTC/VES dudes which DBQ form to use. So it’s not uncommon for them to say “use the DBQ for peripheral neuropathy for Agent Orange that had to manifest within one year of leaving Vietnam. Do not use the DBQ for DM2 neuropathy or other neurological manifestations [which is what the Vet actually suffers].”

But the AI “sees” that a clinician has not put forth an opinion about your_________ so they ask for a clarification. And another one. And another one. Then the insanity begins. “Please provide a medical opinion on if it is at least as likely as not that the Veteran’s TERA exposure to radiation and asbestos caused his peripheral neuropathy with Parkinson’s”. By now, we’re 20 c&p exams into it and no less than 17 clinicians have spoken. But they can’t see each others’ opinions so some begin to try to intuit what VA really wants them to write and say just to get them out of their hair. And worse, all these subcontractors are expected to drop everything and answer these clarification responses… which doesn’t pay as much as the original c&p exam by the way.

So who’s getting filthy rich? Each c&p exam goes for about $750-$1000 bucks a pop. The Nursey Nurse with the shiny new FNP after her name is getting a flat salary of about $40 K per year for a 30-hour work week (so VES/QTC can avoid paying for medical/dental) based on an 0800 to 1630 work day with 1/2 hour for lunch and two 15-minute Marlboro breaks morning and afternoon three days a week.

A very close friend and former LRRP who did 20 years as a LA County Sherriff once said the best way to keep the money from a bank robbery on-site was to “shoot the money”-i,e., the guys packing it. Since we can’t shoot the Presidents of QTC, VES, LHI, LHGS or Habib’s Learing Center and C&P Exams, someone should examine where all this dough goes. I can personally attest, by going to these c&p exams with some of my clients, that the information needed to make a decision can easily be harvested in one 30-minute setting- including using the correct DBQ(s). But in order to do this, the clinician needs the complete claims folder. Oddly, in every VAF 21-2107 exam request, the VA VSR writing it makes sure the clinician gets a copy of my VAF 21 22a Power of Attorney. What could that possibly have to do with whether the Vet has Parkie’s?

VA is attempting to use AI to reduce their human employee component. Why not? It means less humans with hangovers, colds and chronic kidney disease, morbid obesity, DM 2 (who get medical benefits) equals more output production that is almost guaranteed to be error-free. Right? Too bad it doesn’t work that way. In a more perfect world we could just build AI-driven Veterans Service Centers with Drive-thru lanes. Pull up to the order window and submit your claim from a menu of pull down options. Pull around the corner and pick up the decision. Check to make sure you got what you ordered and off you go on your merry way. A human hand would never touch the claim.

AI is going to demand perfection. We can’t program in benefit of the doubt in this venue. Either you is or you ain’t. How do you put an §1154(b) combat presumption rider in there? Who’s in charge of manually figuring out the Barry Bumps until they update the M 21 to fix it? Duran happened in ’23. It still hasn’t been updated 3 years later. I had to take this one up to the Board to get it fixed. If the AI perfect computer can’t “see” this, what else is it missing? Quite a bit, apparently.

Redact Duran win 5.19.26

In spite of all them long-winded speeches about how the new AMA was gonna smear hog grease all over the wheels of VA justice, it seems they just keep adding a few more miles to the tunnel and telling us it’s a work in progress. Kinda like that train they’ve been trying to build out in California since ’08 from SF to LA. The BVA is still trying to wade through their 2019 “just under 36,000 Legacy claims” that somehow spilled over into 2026. VA is still claiming 98% accuracy. It reminds me of the CNY song. “49 reasons-all in a line, all of them good ones-all of them lies.”

Secretary Collins has to serve two masters. Three, actually. Congress and the inherent purse strings, the President’s continuing favor, and lastly the very Veterans he’s appointed to serve. This puts him in a precarious position of denying them housing at the West LA Campus for almost a decade while letting a prep school, a car rental outfit and a sports team use the VA’s campus. That we had to sue to win that no-brainer speaks volumes about the complexity of VA’s priorities and their allegiance to Veterans. What does it take to make us their North Star?

Perhaps more in our/my legal bailiwick, how can the Secretary spend millions defending the incorrect decisions made by their Agency and Board of Appeals year-in and year-out? Better yet- why? Very rarely do VA’s OGC law dogs “get it” and concede error. We could probably save hundreds of millions if VA formed an ad hoc Ombudsman group of VA employees and Veterans who could mediate these matters like adults over pretzels and an adult beverage to two after work instead of some headstrong VSCM (or BVA Board Chairman) who goes around singing “It’s Doug Collins’ Organization but the VSC(BVA) department is mine.”

I get to see the ugly underside of what goes on at the Fort Fumbles across our fruited plains. Remember, VA honchos like to say “We don’t look at how much a grant is going to generate. Whether you’re entitled to $12.5 K or $125 K retro, we cut the check.” So how come this feller here in Pittsburgh is getting acid indigestion over a little $220 K underpayment 11 months overdue? He’s a GS-11. This is miles above his pay grade and he’s a hot mess.

Either VA is on a diet to conserve money by laying off their workers or they’re now spending it all on an endless procession of nothingburger c&p exams that only create more confusion, more questions… and more exams. Regardless of which, the net effect is beginning to make the claims process a lifetime endeavor for Veterans. No one- not even a Veteran- should be subjected to that. Wasn’t that why we raised our right hand? That, at some time in the future, assuming we didn’t end up only being remembered on Memorial Day, that our dear Alma Mater (VA) would be there for us?

Happy Memorial Day- especially to all you Gold Star Families and others who have lost your loved ones in the defense of our Great Country. Few Nations on Earth can point to 250 years of Heritage and such an enviable record of human rights. Indeed, God has shed His grace on Us.

Posted in Appeals Modernization Act, Artificial Intelligence in claims, Barry Bumps in SMC, C&P exams, Claims sharks, DIC, Legacy Claims, Memorial Day, VA Agents, Veterans Law | Tagged asknod.org, Disabled Veteran, DIY vA Claims, Help with SMC Claims, Help with vA Claims, Helping Veterans, How to get VA SMC, Korean War Vets Help, Memorial Day 2026 with Asknod, Service Connection, VA claims, Veterans Benefits, Veterans claims help, Veterans Humor, Vietnam Veterans Claims Help. | 2 Comments

5/07/75–51 YEARS LATER

Posted on May 10, 2026 by asknod

An interesting phenomenon occurs about this time every year. May 7, 1975 was the last day America’s military recognized its ever-diminishing number of Viet Nam or Viet Nam-era Veterans. Or was diminishing until the passage of the PACT Act reinfused it with tens of thousands of Vets from Thailand, Anderson AFB and certain places in Korea, Laos and Cambodia. The phenomenon is nothing more than a tempest in a teapot. My email fills up with still-disgruntled V Vets complaining about being spit on, ridiculed as baby killers, or deprived of meaningful employment for years after one glance at their DD 214.

After much introspection, I’ve reached acceptance. There’s really nothing that can be done now to rectify the “subdued homecoming” we received as the local fish wrap called it utilizing the lens of historical perspective in 2004.

But first, I’d note I’d just arrived at Travis AFB from Yokota AB Japan non-stop on a C 5 on 20 May 1972 fresh out of the bush. We landed about 0100 and went through customs and then on to wherever we were going. I took the shuttle over to San Francisco International to catch a flight back to DC to see my mom. It had been 2 years and some change since I left.

SFO, at 0230 Hours in Spring of ’72 was pretty quiet. You could hear the Hare Krishna chants and the green tambourines jingling when you arrived. I totally missed out on all the flying spit medals. I was still wearing my camo fatigues and jungle boots with a survival knife peaking out on my hip. My .357 was in my shoulder holster inside my shirt. And yes, I unloaded it per regs before boarding the Klong flight at Udorn 30 hours earlier.

I’d popped a few Desoxyn about 12 hours into it so I was still humming right along. You cannot sleep in an empty C 5. Chances are I wouldn’t have been in a great mood anyway if someone had wanted to harangue me. Pussy cutoff date had been two weeks before so I was already a hot mess. But fortunately for both of us, their modus operandi was a bit more leisurely- a couple of lattés at 10 AM and a toke or two before the arduous, devoted work of civil disobedience called.

So here we are 51 years later using medal math or 51 + 18 if you choose March 29, 1973, if you want to pretend we all went down to the Aerial Port Bldg at Tan Son Nhut, or Phan Rang or Udorn, duffel bag on shoulder, hung over to beat the band, to depart home. The emails are from all those who still say things like “If they drafted me tomorrow at 75, I’d still do it all again.” Right. Pass the Desoxyn first, please.

Let’s analyze this. What would anyone get now from a gigantic “Welcome Home” Parade for serving in Viet Nam? Give me free dinner for two and all you can drink at Applebee’s™ and I could call it good. How about a Starbucks© free coffee for life card? How about 25% off at Cheapo Depot on John Deere® 360° riding mowers? I guess I shouldn’t complain. I’m getting paid at SMC S as it is.

Quite frankly, the only thing that bugged me after I got out was the VFW “Sargent at arms” who told me I couldn’t join because Viet Nam was just a “conflict”- not a genuine war. But seriously, guys. Carrying that “they dissed me” chip on your shoulder for 50 years can give you a serious complex- an inferiority complex. To me, that Viet Nam Vet hat is a cry in the night for a thank you for your service or a ‘sorry we were all assholes back in ’68’.

There’s nothing to be ashamed of now. I know for some it might be a painful subject to discuss even now. We were conditioned to bury that part of our lives and assimilate, get married and procreate. Nobody wanted to hear or talk about that era. In 1980, Cupcake found out I’d served. Several of my friends and I were all meeting up at our local watering hole for Happy Hour one evening and a car backfired close by. I was down to the ground with that .357 out when she got out of her car. In retrospect, I think that’s what might have impaired my chances of talking her into marrying me until 1987.

Since none of us own a DeLorean with a 10 gigahertz flux capacitor on the trunk, we’re stuck here in the present. Why wallow in the past? We should be harassing our congressmen for freebies. Screw the mea culpas and the Pity parades. We should be going to Mecum Car auctions and demanding 50% discounts on them ’67 GTO convertibles with the Hurst four-speeds. That’s the currency we should be talking. As for Starbucks, for me it’s too much work to comb my hair, brush my teeth and apply two squirts of Right Guard just to drive 10 miles for a cup of coffee. Screw it. I’ll make my French press here. Besides, they probably wouldn’t let Pickles come in.

Now, on to today’s teaching moment. You’ve probably heard me talk of the ‘shit or go blind’ technique in VA law- or at least my version. I filed Marion here for his entitlement to R1. The Board granted it but VA shmoozed him and said “Dude. you have a L 1/2 already. The new L is less value. So there’s no retro. Get it?” So I filed a 995 and said send the money to this address. and don’t forget the Barry bump. They seized up and scheduled a c&p exam!. So I sent in a 4138 and said ‘Disregard the Barry bump. Proceed to rating. Do not pass go!” Then I sent in a §5103 saying “That’s all, Folks!” Incipient Blindness and an urge to defecate began immediately.

Friday evening at 1630 quitting time this popped up. I include the June 2025 BVA decision that said “Johnnie Vet, come ooooooon down!” So the BVA gal grants. VA hems and haws over a paltry $220K and finally says “We ain’t granting because the VLJ is full of shit. It’s pyramiding.” But then they get the code sheet right. I can’t make this shit up. We’re off to the Board and another year of waiting. By then, they’ll own him about $260K. Idiot’s delight.

Redact BVA Decision grants a&a

Redact 4.29.26 2nd RD deny SMC R

Redact 4.29.26 CS grants SMC R

Posted in Aid and Attendance, Barry Bumps in SMC, BvA Decisions, How to Qualify for VA SMC, SMC, VA Agents, VA special monthly compensation, Vietnam War history | Tagged askNOD.com, Disabled Veteran, DIY vA Claims, Gulf War Claims Help, Help with SMC Claims, Help with vA Claims, Helping Veterans, Service Connection, SMC, SMC Barry Bumps, VA claims, VA HCV Claims Help, VA SMC Claims, VA SMC R1, Veterans Benefits, Veterans claims help, Veterans Humor, Vietnam Veterans Claims Help. | 7 Comments

VA’S NEW AI–§3.102(a) YOU NOW GET THE DOUBT OF THE BENEFIT

Posted on April 23, 2026 by asknod

No, you’re not reading a new regulation. You’re reading about VA’s new way of interpreting the old one. Pop a cold one and requisition a bowel of some Dot’s™ pretzels. This isn’t going to take a sixpak to explain. It’s a sign of the times. Face it. America, and the world, is now experiencing mega-intelligence gains in leaps and bounds. Well, everyone but Iran that is. But hey. They do possess the world’s largest fleet of submarines now. Computers are reaching Skynet quality. It was inevitable the moment Cro Magnon man figured out how to make fire.

This story is about AI. We can’t escape its reach. The whole game of VA compensation has always been underfunded and overworked. Between the hospitals and the cemeteries, it’s been understaffed, too. I knew that much in 2008 when I finally got a copy of my claims file in glorious color. There were mustard stains on the blue 1994 VA 21-6789 deferred rating sheet. VA raters were working from their desks at lunch just to even hope to keep up back then-without computers. VA has always been on a short budget leash of sorts but there was always money for the Christmas Party and the Karaoke machines. And there were always bonuses for all the hard-working Coaches who orchestrated a month free of any grants.

Here we are in 2026 and the number of line raters is still a finite number proportionally- unequal in comparison to a now-vastly expanded Agency with more bean counters than there are beans to count. A 20-year war with lots of TBI can create that. VA even has Customer Satisfaction Survey offices whose sole endeavor is to survey the shit out of everything and massage the numbers to say things like

90% of VA’s survey participants express

satisfaction with their interaction with VHA

Let’s put that into context. The surveyors went into the post-surgery recovery room at the Seattle VAMC and interviewed some mega-Fentanyled, post-anesthesia Vets who were asked “Are you satisfied with your interactions with VA today?” Nine out of ten (90%) appeared to nod their heads up and down occasionally. Bingo. 90%. Vet #10 hadn’t recovered sufficiently to raise his head to nod one way or the other.

Now let’s apply this to VA’s perennial problem of line raters quitting after about a year or two after realizing they’re going to be rode hard and put away wet for $48 K a year… for 5-6 years before they can cross train into a RQRSRVW quality control dude or apply for that cushy Congressional Interests berth.

VA raters have to produce X number of “actions” per day/week or risk getting put on a performance review. True, raters probably don’t give a shit whether they grant or deny but the decision has to be the correct one. And besides, the claim is always handed to the Coach for a day or two before meaning the VSR writes what Coach says to write. What? You think a VSR gets to do the “grant if you can/deny if you must” dance? No more dart boards and blindfolds in the 21st Century. But, with the advent of the 21st century, and the addition of a new 20-year war and all its brand new disabled Vets, raters are plumb overwhelmed. They burn out. And here comes AI just in time.

Everyone at 810 Deny Ave. NW knew choosing not to add thousands more raters just made the backlog worse…but-but-but if you had a magic 8 ball that could make all those decisions in the blink of an eye and the 8 ball didn’t require a paid family medical plan or a 30-day guaranteed annual vacation, look at all the money you could … Wowser. But you could wipe out the backlog faster than you could say Doug Collins and never have another one. This is like trusting a self-driving car implicitly-even at 80 mph in rush hour traffic.

Welcome to the new Improved VA. Now let’s take a gander at some of this new “machine” expertise versus, well, the VA’s human cohort assisted by the M 21. Was the decision correct? Who cares? Not our problem. Call the Board or OGC. Statistically, VA screws up 74% of anything it gets involved in compensation-wise. If they’re already using AI, that doesn’t say much for its accuracy now does it?

Here’s a client I have up at the Court currently fighting this AI monster. Here’s his code sheet from 2019- it says he was granted loss of use of his bilateral feet. That’s presumed to be correct unless the VA can prove CUE somehow. But the AMA has a new back door called §3.2601. If you file a 996 and do a HLR, the DRO dude says he can mix and match and change your ratings as long as it doesn’t end up being a reduction in pay. §3.2601(j) says, inter alia, ” In addition, the higher-level adjudicator will not revise the outcome in a manner that is less advantageous to the claimant based solely on a difference of opinion.” So, now you know. The AMA has holes in it.

Johnny Vet CRD redacted

Now keep your eye on the rating. Poof. Six years later, no CUE but a new diagnosis says no loss of use- just a&a. This pissed me off so bad I asked Wes to take it up to the Court. I’m worried the VA will put in a judgement and claw back his $98 K for the SAH program and his automobile from the $27 K auto grant. Shucks. They could legally, you know? According to them, he doesn’t have loss of use of the feet now.

new code sheet six years later

Truthfully, I honestly thought this was some clever new gerrymandering technique to fence me out of my impending attack for a second SMC L for a&a for Bob’s heart. It ain’t like VA doesn’t know who asknod is. But recently, they did the exact same thing to another of my Vets. Ross has a valid a&a for a lot of Parkie’s disabilities. But over the last several years the comorbidities of both Parkie’s and DM 2 have destroyed his ability to walk unassisted and use his upper extremities for dressing and shaving. See. Here’s the 2024 proof right here on the code sheet.

a&a CS

Then the seizures hit. I was busy fighting for the seizures when the rating decision came down on a denial of upper and lower extremities. VA is stealthy. They don’t come right out and say “dude, we denied your request for loss of use of uppers and lowers. Thanks for your service”. No way. They say “the rate we’re paying you for your SMC is confirmed and continued”. Check it out.

Ross 10.16.2025 RD

But here’s where the VA gets busted. That rating decision doesn’t have a single tense-related verb out of place. Not even a single dangling participle. It’s like the VA computer just got a Batchelor’s in English Lit 401 recently. So we ran it through our own AI and Claude says 81% chance of AI construction. But that’s not the end of the matter. The code sheet says…wait for it, after 4 years ol’ Mister Lazarus here no longer needs a&a because he was supposed to be getting SMC L for loss of use of the lower extremities all along. But that’s not what the rating decision says in the narrative. Ruh-oh, Rorge (as George Jetson’s dog Astro was wont to say).

CS announces LOULEs 10.16.25 not found in VBMS

The Secretary is crowing from the rooftops that the VA is sailin’ through them 526s and 995s like a pro and issuing decisions faster than a speedin’ 5.56. But what use is AI if all the decisions are wrong? What ever happened to “haste makes waste”? Or perhaps worse. Come on. It begs the question “Is the AI built by the same folks who created the Hal 9000 and the M 21? Is it possible to fabricate a computer system geared up to only say “Heads I win. Tails you lose”?

I’m not trying to cause concern or cast doubt on Emperor Doug’s new AI invisible clothes. Far from it. I’m just concerned that there seems to be a marked difference in how VA adjudicated claims as short a time as two years ago and how they promulgate them now with such blatant errors. An old Latin euphemism comes to mind. Experiencia docet (Experience is the best teacher). If you’ve been doing this over 165 years since the War of Northern Aggression, it stands to reason the process would be flawless by now. AI could only confirm the obvious.

Remember the old lyrics in CSNY’s 49 Bye Byes- “49 reasons all in a line. All of them good ones-all of them lies”? Listen further until you get to “Time will tell us who’s trying to sell us.” It’s my considered opinion, and mine alone, that VA is beginning a whole new method of rating our claims. Hell, they don’t need to change the diagnostic codes or revamp Part 3 to fence us out in the Federal Register any more. They just turn their AI HAL 9000 loose and let it set out on an unguided safari á la Browkowski with unlimited c&ps or just fabricate it out of whole cloth (as usual).

One thing I am seeing is an endless parade of c&p exams far exceeding the amount needed to “clarify” a medical diagnosis. The last one was subtle. The doctor says he has IHD so it’s presumptive herbicide and he has some other heart shit that is related to his hypertension but he’s SC for that too so give the man his 100%. More Likely than less likely. Duh? Agent Orange causes IHD. Next?

C&P No. 13 says SC

Two weeks later along comes a request for a new c&p to clarify if it’s possible that asbestos or radiation could screw up the heart like that -apart from the IHD of course. The good doctor (a different one) says oh hell no. It wasn’t asbestos or radiation and says less likely than more likely. VA grants SC for the IHD at 30% even though he’s pissing 1-3 METS and he’s blowing a 28% on his ejection fraction. Did they say it was radiation or asbestos? No way. They merely said something screwed up his heart and it wasn’t SC or a TERA risk like asbestos or radiation. No mention of the 800 lb. HTN gorilla in the room. But if Agent Orange isn’t a TERA risk, then just exactly what is? Only AI guided by a perverted mindset could create this Mobius Loop. Well, I suppose some Coach at VBAPHI310 relying on his trusty M 21 is capable of it, but truthfully, this was a contrived outcome. VA had no intention of granting Rick a full ride a&a scholarship. He attended about 30 c&ps or ACE reviews. This one below is the AOJ’s way of washing their hands like Pontius Pilate.

C&P No. 14 says no dice

So I let you be the judge of all this. Is VA on a new bender to deny anything and everything they can in a misguided hope of reducing what they’re being forced to pay out? Is this the new metric of just keep asking for one more c&p until you get the desired answer? Ten or fifteen c&ps at $750 a pop is still cheaper than 30 years @ 60%. Something has changed. But what do I know? All I know is the old Benefit of the Doubt I remember from 1989 has become inverted and the duty to assist lies solely with you if you hope to win anything substantial. My suggestion is to find a late-model HAL 9000 with low miles and plug it in. You’re gonna need one if you want to play poker with VA. Well, that and a good VA Agent or Attorney. Don’t leave home without one.

Posted in 100% ratings, Agent Orange, Aid and Attendance, Blue Water Navy, BvA Decisions, C&P exams, How to Qualify for VA SMC, Reductions in rating, SMC, Special Monthly Compensation, Tips and Tricks, VA Agents, VA Attorneys, VA Conspiracies, vA news, VA special monthly compensation, VA statistics, Veterans Law, Vietnam Disease Issues | Tagged Agent Orange, asknod.org, Disabled Veteran, DIY vA Claims, Gulf War Claims Help, Gulf War Vets Help, Help with SMC Claims, Help with vA Claims, Helping Veterans, How to get VA SMC, How to win SMC T, Korean War Vets Help, Service Connection, SMC Barry Bumps, VA claims, Veterans Benefits, Veterans claims help, Veterans Humor, Vietnam Veterans Claims Help. | 3 Comments

SMC–THE NEW REDUCTION GAME

Posted on April 12, 2026 by asknod

Ever since the Fed. Circus determined (in Barry v. Denis the Menace) VA had been funning us and purposefully disremembering how many times you can be awarded half-step “bumps”, we’ve been hitting them up like Mormons on a broken one-armed bandit in West Wendover. The regulation was written originally in 1946 and hasn’t changed remarkably since. The part of this that’s putting a hole in the financial bucket is that it’s retroactive. Retroactive like back to 1946 gentlemen…

If you’re rated at SMC L for aid and attendance, blindness, loss of use of a hand and foot/ both feet or bedridden, and you have any other disabilities that are not related to the aforementioned conditions that add up to 50% or more (using VA math of course), then you’d get that $250 per month kicker for L 1/2. Lather, rinse and repeat for each and every 50% rating separate and distinct from the L.

So just imagine Johnny Vet with the misfortune of having a 60 mikemike gook mortar land right in the middle of a gaggle of guys in a listening post. He’s lucky. He’s still alive… but he has a few more chips and dents than the average Eleven Bravo. He’s getting an L for loss of use of the legs. Actually, he can “walk” after a fashion if his wife holds on to him but his Parkie’s tremors combine with really bad DM 2 neuropathy to make him unstable.

So right after Johnnie gets the brand new 100% rating for Ischemic Heart disease, I put him in for the Barry bumps while I began the fight for a&a for the DM2, kidney failure and peripheral neuropathies. VA denied and I foolishly allowed them to suck me into an HLR to “fix” it quicker than going to the Board. Fix it they did. They ordered up a few c&ps and determined lo and behold, he didn’t actually have loss of use at all. But just to show they were fair and balanced and wanted to make it right, they said it’s a simple fix. Turned out it was a need for a&a all along since back to 2019. The c&p babe just didn’t know how to read the regulation was all.

But…but… but you say. Right, once they hand you LOU (loss of use), that’s a finding of fact. What we call a conclusion of law. You have to declare a CUE to overturn it. VA didn’t. They just changed it from one L to another L. The problem is they already gave my Johnnie an Auto allowance and a Specially Adapted House based on his… yup… LOU. You don’t get those bennies for aid and attendance. The finding of fact rule in §3.104 also just attached to that shiny new Aid and Attendance rating, too. So now they’ve stepped in it and the two Ls make an O and then a R 1.

So the most obvious way to unravel this paradox after the BVA bolloxed it up and affirmed was to take it to the Court and get a reading on it there. My wingman Wes McCauley of United Veterans Disability wrote a stellar legal brief that noticed about 6 errors in their thinking and end result. This one’s up at the Court if anyone likes to read the docket entries. Go to CAVC 25-5399 Appellant’s brief to get a grasp of the argument. It’s a daisy.

But that’s not the end of the matter as we like to say. I have another Vet with a similar set of circumstances. The VA is beginning to pursue the same identical “disassembly and reassembly” of his entire ratings architecture. In Johnnie Vet #2’s case they began this process with a benign nothing burger. Johnnie #2 just got a second SMC L to go with his first one from back in 2021 for LOU of the foot and hand. This one was for a&a of the upper extremities and other musculoskeletal disease residuals combined.

Obviously, the two Ls make the O and then metamorphose to R1 but the VA brought in one of their Aluminum siding salesmen who mansplained it away thusly. ” Dude, stay with me now, hear? You’re getting L 1/2 for the hand/leg gig from ’21. But, you just got an L for the a&a, right? So… you get paid more for the L 1/2 than you would for the new L so there’s no retro. It’s a push is all. Got it?” Since Johnnie #2 isn’t in the habit of smokin’ the heavy duty stuff like Maui Wowy or munching disco biscuits, this didn’t just sail over his head. He called me. From Mexico where he lives. He said this didn’t sound right and wanted a second opinion.

I filed with a Supplemental to nudge the VA to put down the bong and cut the paper right. I also threw in a herring- a request for a SMC 1/2-step kicker from his L 1/2 (under §3.350(f)(1)(ii)) up to M under §3.350(f)(3). And what should happen? Yep. Just to be sure that Johnnie #2 wasn’t funning the VA and really did have a need for a&a, and just to be sure he still was suffering that nasty LOU of foot and hand, they threw in a request for ol’ Johnnie to saddle up the Electric wheelchair and motor on down to the lokal VES store and present himself for a couple 3 c&p exams.

Now, the same kicker applies here. A ministerial award of a&a to a Veteran does not require a new c&p at your local Fort Fumble to make sure the BVA Veterans Law Judge (VLJ) “got it right”. In fact, it would be illegal- not to mentioned unnecessary. Once you get that award for the LOU, it’s a permanent determination. That’s why they call it “Permanent and Total”.

So, because I’m fond of torturing these chowderheads, I sometimes like to play ’em like a smallmouth bass for a while. Johnnie #2 has already been waiting since June of last year for the R1 to hit and he’s not starving. Besides, it’s accruing bucks like a bad payday loan outside the main gate. So I sent in a letter saying “Pretty Please with a cherry on top. This is purely an administrative rating snafu”. And some feller in Pittsburgh said Roger that. They cut the paper Friday morning the 13th of March granting R 1 and then… it disappeared while I was over at Arlington National burying my mom that afternoon. Poof. Gone with the Wind.

In it’s place was the request for his august presence Wednesday next at VES @ 0900. The request said ‘we want to make sure you get every benefit coming to you. Boy howdy is that a word salad loaded with strychnine. So, to trim it down to just the purely administrative aspect of the a&a, I sent in a withdrawal of the Barry bump which technically would erase any possible rationale (read excuse) for a c&p. But the way the Pittsburgh crew was approaching this had all the hallmarks of the Waco fiasco with Johnnie #1. Step into my den said the spider to the fly…

So, the upshot of all of this is to apply my favorite tried-and-true technique of SOGB (make them shit or go blind). At this point, it’s like watching a bipolar guy who’s just run dry on lithium and begun firing erratically on 5 cylinders. He’s undecided on whether to go NASDAQ or Casper Milquetoast. Or buy a Lamborghini and sail it around the world.

And if that wasn’t enough, I set up an account with VES to get the c&p feed live to my phone. Since Johnnie #2 is a bit spotty on his phone answering, I’m stepping in to help out. After getting approved for all incoming commo, they called to schedule the c&p again. Did I mention they’d been having the Devil’s own time trying to get hold of him? It may have had something to do with me telling his wife in my broken Spanish not to take any calls- he’s bedridden and indisposed.

So this time I had to sadly let the schedular gal down emotionally and explain why the c&p was never going to happen-nor was it needed or required by law. She dutifully transcribed all that into the notes section of VBMS and I can almost see the Coach’s consternation rising daily down in the VSC Mosh Pit. Can he do that? This ain’t in the M 21. DEFCON 1. So what’s the worst that can happen? Are they going to deny the O and R1? If so, how? Are they going to deny the Barry bumps and ignore the withdrawal and camouflage the R1 with an implicit denial? Can’t do that anymore. Hamill v Collins just came back from the Fed. Circus and made the Three Stooges (Toth, Laurer and Jaquith) look pretty stupid. AMA says ‘tell me why I lost and what I need to provide to you to get it’. No more of that Legacy Cogburn v. Shinseki crap.

This phenomenon is not just cropping up in my claims. Wes says he’s seeing this same thing in his practice, too. It’s basically a redux of the old Extraordinary Awards Program (EAP) from back in the olden days (2006-08 era) where a VARO head Poohbah would “refer” a decision back to the VA Central Office (VACO) for a haircut in the back room. If you were due some extensive folding money- in Johnnie #2’s case about $220 K back to 2022- VACO would reinvent a reason why you were only going to get $22 K. In Johnnie #1’s case it was to push him into SMC P to avoid me building the inevitable O to R1 bridge with the coronary artery disease. In Johnnie#2’s case it was going to be a revelation that Johnnie #2, just like Johnnie #1, is getting ready to have one of them Holy Rollers Revival-in-a-Tent moments where the foot is miraculously healed. Bye bye loss of use.

It used to be back in the 80’s and 90’s, we could work with VA raters. Most were Veterans and decent folk. Nowadays, it’s like herding cats. They rely entirely on the M 21 like it’s the Koran and cannot speak mistruth. But what they ignore at their peril is 38 CFR. and there ain’t no rule saying the VA can CUE you and pawn it off as a difference of opinion 7 years later. Perhaps the best thing we have going for us as Veterans is that if the VA decides to CUE you, they have to have just as strong a case as you would against them.

VA is well-known for speaking with forked tongue. Hell, for that matter they’re well-known for speaking in Tongue and pretending it was handed down from Mount Arafat on tablets by some Dude with a long beard. Don’t be fooled. I’m guessing the majority of them overpaid Coaches are graduates of the GEICO Auto Claims Academy. I’ll report back at the end of this latest Long Range Recon Patrol into Indian Country.

Posted in Barry Bumps in SMC, BvA Decisions, CAFC Rulings, CUE, How to Qualify for VA SMC, SMC, SMC School, Special Monthly Compensation, Tips and Tricks, VA special monthly compensation, VBMS Tricks, Veterans Law | Tagged Agent Orange, asknod.org, Disabled Veteran, DIY vA Claims, Gulf War Vets Help, Help with vA Claims, Helping Veterans, How to get VA SMC, Service Connection, SMC, SMC Barry Bumps, sn, VA claims, VA SMC Back Pay, VA SMC Ratings, Veterans Benefits, Veterans claims help, Veterans Humor, Vietnam Veterans Claims Help. | 5 Comments

CONTINUING LEGAL EDUCATION IN SAN DIEGO

Posted on April 11, 2026 by asknod

Every six months, we of the VA legal persuasion (legally accredited), descend on some unwitting city in sufficient numbers to accomplish absolutely nothing financially. Sure, the hotel will be filled to the gills but it probably would be anyway with a VFW convention or the like if we weren’t there. The only noticeable financial difference would be how much Bud Light™ was sold at the hotel watering hole that week versus Tanqueray or Johnny Walker.

Anyway, the choice this spring by our conference committee is a chicken dinner winner. I commend them. The last time we were in San Diego, it was in some out-of-the-way hole in the wall No Tell Motel on the other side of the bridge. If you didn’t arrive in a car or have an Uber app, you weren’t going anywhere for dinner. It would have been perfect for a Chinese-American Women’s Professional Yoga Association getaway as long as you had A Fannie Mae Chocolate Confectioner’s store in the lobby and an endless supply of Dom or Perrier Jouet.

The last time we had a nice place to learn about VA’s transgressions like this was in Orlando. It was a veritable estate with a gated entry and rent-a-cops. Balmy. Adjacent to Disney World and gazillions of killer restaurants. And warm. Unless it’s about 78 outside, I’m cold.

The Manchester Grand Hyatt is like supersizing a regular hotel and planting it alongside a town rich in military history with a bonus of building it on the waterfront or close to. I came down in 2013 to give a speech to the Vietnam Dustoff Association. They’d taken over a Hampton Suites right across from the train tracks. We got woke up about three times a night but we did get a pretty good dose of all the waterfront. Imagine my surprise when I entered the below deck hangers of the Aircraft carrier and looked up to see an old O 1 Birddog hanging overhead. Shucks, they even had a Navy Huey Gunship topside all tricked out with quad pigs. on both sides. Sweet.

I was packing my bathing suit after I saw this and Cupcake informed me that was right out. One look at my gut and they’d probably run screaming for the exits. Besides, my pool noodles wouldn’t fit in the suitcase…

Truth be told, I expect more is accomplished at the evening meet-and greets after a day’s book learning than what’s being taught during the day. The main purpose for all that scotch and gin is to lubricate the brain after harvesting those continuing legal education (CLE) credits needed to keep our accreditation status afloat. Well, that and to renew old friendships over a good dinner.

And, to be fair to all those who hail from the South, I would be remiss if I didn’t concede there are a few Bourbon drinkers among us who have yet to acquire a cultured tongue for the taste of Kingsford charcoal briquets. But there’s hope for them. It’s said one leads by example. I acquired the taste up in Laos because warm beer just didn’t cut it. Occasionally you landed someplace civilized like L 54 (Luang Prabang) where the Air Am hostel had everything- including ice. Granted, the Kaffir limes were those weird ones that took about five to get a ¼ teaspoon of liquid out of but hey- it was war. We suffered in silence.

So it follows Cupcake and I will be out of the office for about five days. If you have any emergencies, who ya gonna call? Right. Ghostbusters. Or VA’s Dial-A-Prayer 800 number. It may be listed as the Prize Redemption line.

Posted in Continuing Legal Education (CLEs), Humor, VA Agents, Veterans Law | Tagged asknod.org, asknod@wordpress.com, Disabled Veteran, DIY vA Claims, Help with SMC Claims, Help with vA Claims, Helping Veterans, How to get SMC Loss of Use, How to win SMC T, Service Connection, SMC, VA claims, Veterans Benefits, Veterans claims help, Veterans Humor, Vietnam Veterans Claims Help. | 2 Comments

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