This just in from Frank the Maple man.

When a “progressive” newspaper like the Washington Post speaks out, or permits others to use their fishwrap,  against the ruling Administration and one of his cabinet hirelings,  you just know the King’s new invisible finery is going to be put to the test.

Rep. D.D. Hunter and Pete Hegseth, his wordsmith, today vocalized for all to hear what many have been nodding their heads and saying privately for weeks. Ever since Allison in Wonderland went up on the Hill and wove her tale of a rabbit hole of claims and a cat with a timepiece to fix it, Congress in both houses has been rather aloof and cool to both generals.

You get to do the “Wolf! Yo! I say Wolf-yonder! Bring the guns!”  on several occasions before the novelty wears off. Chicken Little didn’t get the email and was forced to repeat the blunder fifty years or more later. Doesn’t anyone read George Santayana anymore?

Well, here we are. Someone has discovered that the books have been cooked and things are actually worse than the bean counters said they were. It actually takes way more than 273 days, on average, to get your claim adjudicated. Try 600 days at some of the bigger  VAROs they’ve outfitted with the drive-thru windows for the fully developed claims.  Why they put in bulletproof glass is still unexplained.

In all fairness, let’s be realistic. Would I want that job? Would you? I’m sure we’d be well-intentioned just as Gen. Shinseki most undoubtedly is. I may give him a lot of grief here but his little people are killing him. They’re completely caught up in a culture that died around World War Vietnam. Deny. Deny. If they don’t appeal, there’s more bonuses for us. These untermenschen are the reason we suffer as we do. Instead of a culture  modeled on Greece’s where warriors were considered just below Gods, our Veterans Administration obfuscates, nitpicks and delays settling with Vets until they are between the proverbial rock and hard place. Having a complaisant VSO willing to settle for tinnitus and withdrawing the TBI claim doesn’t help much either. Or the one I heard today about the C&P where the Doctor did a TBI exam but managed to overlook the amputation of one of his limbs. Good to go, bro!

A new paradigm is in the offing. The President is going to discover this hot potato is not going to go down well with the majority of Americans. They vote. When they see their next door neighbor, who was a used car salesman, come back from playing Nasty Guard for a year instead of a weekend missing major bits and pieces, they commiserate with the fellow’s plight.  This is something that “resonates” as they say on CNN. Our supervisors in Southeast Asia were fond of calling this collateral damage regardless of who got clobbered. The newsies have a field day with it. The same phenomenon is now unfolding in public. By the time I reached draft age in 1969, there were starting to be a lot of Vets in wheel chairs missing legs. This is that odd side effect of stepping on mines. But they were visible by then. They became even more commonplace over the years following the war and had finally started to abate as many died or became unable to get out in public.

We now are starting to see a new “bloom” of these battle injuries and many are far worse due to the improvements of medical science. They tug at heartstrings. They evoke sympathy. And they bring the inevitable questions out about why these poor souls are disenfranchised from their promised benefits. Backlogs don’t cut it. Old VA AO claims are not working in the blame game. Horribly damaged Vets making “questionable” PTSD claims can no longer be made the scapegoat. In this day and age of instant communications, Vets can find others similarly situated and focus their frustration. VSOs can no longer keep these Vets in control like mushrooms in the dark. Outfits like the IAVA are beginning to get the ear of the boys up on the hill , too.

Eric the Last will soon be announcing his sudden interest in Fly fishing and more time with Mrs. S in a less stressful environment. This will in no way be mistaken as an abdication but rather a long planned career move. Allison in Wonderland likewise will sense the impending Kristallnacht. She will soon have an epiphany and take GE up on the board membership she’s been hoping for over a year. That and a side of Professor over at the AF Academy for a while will fill her lifelong dreams of giving something back to the country and women who choose to serve.

I wish them well. They are caught up in a maelstrom not of their making but nevertheless unraveling on their shift. We call this one of those “defecation contacting the rotary wing” moments and there are no chairs left at the end of this musical score to sit down in and say “Not it!” Were they to stay another year or two, they would be there to proclaim a light at the end of the tunnel. Unfortunately they find themselves similarly situated like many who have begun with high hopes at the VA. The problem hasn’t changed. The old boy network is so suffused throughout the system with a superiority complex that no one knows what a box is- let alone how to  think outside of it.

We now have the task of teaching these aborigines how to use Iphones. The way to accomplish this is to remodel the personnel. The staid thinking has to go. If it requires a Presidential directive to permit flushing the backlog out with a universal grant and audit the results over the next several years, so be it. The important thing is to keep the ball rolling. Trying to switch over into a lower gear to get up the hill is best done before you hit the slope. Failing that, strap on a JATO bottle. The object is the summit.  Failure is not an option here. Inaction isn’t either.

Attempting to create a new, parallel production system side by side with an existing one without doubling the personnel is a fool’s errand. Anyone with a background in production can tell you that. Thinking it is going to keep up with the existing method or surpass it is a pipedream.  IT guys are a dime a dozen in this economy. They can be had for pennies on the dollar. We could have given them a hard set of parameters to encompass, a realistic timeline and the assets to accomplish this. Instead we are blessed with VA’s  finest myopic, IT in-house gurus changing parameters faster than they can be typed up. Look at the DoD med records computer fiasco. VA could have made their new computers compatible with DoD’s if they had wanted to. This has now become one of those bar games where you see who blinks first.

Happy Trails to you is warming up in the background. It’s as inevitable as an ingrown toenail from tight cowboy boots. The enigma is who has the cojones to lasso this mess? Whoever gets the job is mostly going to preside over an inevitable status quo process if they simply take the reins from Eric. That’s why this is the perfect time to clean house and make some long overdue changes. The nice thing about a Kristallnacht is you only have  to sweep up the glass once instead of this drip, drip, drip of slow water torture Vets currently endure. Without a major overhaul, the VA is destined for mediocrity for years to come. Will the President squander this watershed moment?

BOLDLY GOING NOWHERE

WITH VETERANS CLAIMS