If it bleeds it leads, unless you’re a Veteran.

If a young man commits suicide, it’s on the AP newswire in less than five minutes, unless he’s a Veteran.

If a man waits five years for some meaningful recompense for an injury on the job, that is a meaningful story for a Sunday newspaper magazine article, unless he’s a Veteran.

If a man is evicted and loses his home, the local TV station is fond of showing up for some face time, unless he’s a deadbeat Vet looking for a handout.

If a man files a tax return, it is assumed he is filing it legitimately and not fraudulently, unless he’s a Veteran.

If a man is homeless and lives under a bridge, he is considered “economically marginalized”, unless, of course, he’s Veteran. In that case, he more likely than not made a personal decision to pursue this nomadic way of life. Veterans are “earthy”, after all.

I apologize. It isn’t that simple. As I have pointed out more than once, the Veterans Administration has denied (as in nada, no way, dreambucks, wish wampum, do not pass GO) on average, for the last 200 years, compensation to 85% of you. Let’s put that in perspective.

You call GEICO®. After several rings, a live, polite person and you discourse on how your fender is bent. You tell how it happened. You give the name, rank, airspeed and last known heading of vehicle to the adjudicator/adjudicratrix. You meet an estimator/estimatrix and together examine the damage. Several days later (and sometimes less) the adudicator/trix asks a few follow-up  inquiries and then hits Print and says “The check is in the mail”. Total time spent? Over three hours in two days.

You have a problem with your tax return. You call the 800 number and talk to the taxman/woman/tax mistress  and discuss the quandary. He/she answers by the third ring. The Problem is discussed. The Problem is resolved. Information on how to do it is entered (electronically). Forms arrive miraculously. It’s done. The taxman/woman hits print and says “The check’s in the mail, sir.” Time spent? 5 hours over three separate days.

At the VA INsurance COmpany (VAINCO), you cannot simply go into an RO anymore. You may be “economically marginalized” and have body odor issues that might disenfranchise others. Everyone is entitled to their space- well, except you. You’re a Veteran. So you are limited to the Postal service or the new Ebennies site. I neglect the numerous VSOs. I apologize for marginalizing them. Want to call them up and discuss something you don’t understand?  Try it. Please, I insist. Between the hours of 0800 Local to 1630, try calling 1-800-827-1000. Your cel phone battery will go dead before you talk to a warm body. By the end of the day, you will be asked for a callback number for a date sometimes a week in the future. What? A telephone backlog? Try saying that like Tim Allen. Aaauurrgh?

After a suitable period (six months?), you will be informed that VAINCO needs to know if the bumper was bent before you bought the new car. This invisible adjudicator(s) will further ask for proof you indeed own the vehicle. Registrations can be forged and often are. You are required to supply this. Your claim will be held in abeyance until you do. Think cryogenically frozen to 432 degrees below 0 Fahrenheit. Think LOX.

After you respond, you will need a hobby. Eventually, VAINCO will respond to your response with a denial. You file a NOD.

A discussion that your claim for new tires is unsupported by Les Schwab will arrive after nineteen months. You will be required to prove that the claim was for a bent bumper all over again because they lost the paperwork. Meanwhile the claim for the newly broken windshield is construed to be a claim to reopen the claim for  the bent bumper and discarded as a duplicate.

After a year and a half of this, you give up and throw the towel in. You just give up. Piss off. I’m done. Congratulations. Your claim has been resolved to your satisfaction according to VAINCO. Your bumper is still bent. Your windshield is still cracked and you are fit to be tied. 85% of you to be exact. This is the much-vaunted, ecofriendly, environment in which a Veteran may adjudicate his claim free of the strictures of “other, more restrictive” venues-e.g. one that grants the hallowed Benefit of the Doubt.

At VAINCO, your lay testimony is deemed to be credible until they catch you in a lie. Our fellow member Robert discovered they can formulate a mistruth, embellish it, record it as fact and then use your statement refuting it as evidence that your credibility is in tatters. Ah, the miracle of ex parte justice. How sweet the sound.

Now we have reached a crossroads. Americans are waking up seeing what we’ve known and lived for more decades than we wish to remember. Vets are getting the short end of the punji stick-the end with the brown stuff on it. Nothing like a little war or two for 10 years to manufacture a few Vets, huh? Devotees of the present Administration are actually becoming peeved that progress promised is not occurring. Egads. In fact, it’s worsening.

Blame has been (variously) apportioned to: lack of money, lack of trained personnel, too many Veterans filing, too many Veterans filing for multiple (Sacré Bleu) injuries, Mickey Mantle’s mom and undisclosed others. Everyone but the kitchen sink has been indicted.

Now we arrive at what many view as an equitable solution. Gee. Why not just pay the Veteran like the Infernal Revenue folks. If he cheated, we’ll come down on him like a new suit. We know where he/she is. They get a “PAYCHECK” every month. It’s not like they’re hiding in Bolivia. This sentiment does not sit well with Massah up to the big house on Vermont Ave.  Just as an aside, that must be a rub, what with Bernie Sanders being from up that way and all.  Delicious irony, that.

Getting back to the topic, the idea of just letting the claim be processed and taking the pressure off the DROs, RVSRs and VSRs is admirable. Why so much opposition? Why the foot-dragging? Something is horribly amiss. This is like Kim Jung the One blowing an ass gasket. There’s just no defensible reason for it. VA insists that Life, as we know it, will collapse and dirty, unkempt Veterans will be given untold sums of money to drink and carouse in Orlando. No, wait. Those were  the VA Human Resources retreats. I get them confused. Well, you get the drift. Veterans, most, if not all undeserving, will be given access to hundreds of dollars a month to squander on all manner of depravity. Drugs will probably play a big part of this. ETOH consumption across the country will increase. Veterans will start beating their wives. Encounter groups will have to be formed to deal with the influx of more dysfunctional Veterans.

This is no way to run the VA. For centuries this has been a political plum dumping ground for all but the most incompetent Veterans (the most incompetent Veterans having been swiftly relegated to the State Department). Only since the passage of the VJRA in 1988 has it picked up a caché of respectability. That caché can no longer mask the incompetence and  poor mishandling of our affairs. Simply stuffing it with retired, retread generals can no longer give it that respectability any more. Not since Jesse Brown has the VA truly been led by one of us. The rest have been rank imposters with low handicaps earned on our nickel.

Our President has some tall thinking to do. As the author of the article opines, if he can bail out the fat cats on Wall Street and the hurricane victims in New Jersey, what about a few hundreds of thousands of the great unwashed who served their country? Has the political leadership become so jaded that the hallowed meaning of “For he who shall have borne the battle, his widow and his orphan child” can be construed to mean ” You’ll just have to wait until we get around to it because we simply don’t trust you. You’re Veterans and inherently dishonest.”

I, for one, am proud of being one of the 8% unwashed. It’s a rather exclusive club if you can survive the initiation, the membership dues and resist the siren call to be homeless when you get out. Make sure you count your fingers, toes and legs/arms before you sign off on the form. They may accuse you of cutting them off afterward to  horn in on some of that easy money. Especially if you’re a Veteran.

One of the 85% of the great unwashed scheming to get benefits that are undeserved.