There were two men eating pennies
And three young girls who cried
The west coast is falling
I see rocks in the sky

Labor day is, I suppose, a day to relax from… well… labor, right? My plum tree announced this AM it is ripe for picking. The Gravenstein apple tree two doors down is an OSHA zone. I probably should put up some yellow caution tape. Try going in there and picking any without getting clobbered by 1.5 lb. apples larger than softballs. All you have to do is pull one off and it launches two more from somewhere up near the top-10 feet up. 

The food bank locks the door and pulls down the blinds when they see me pull in with 5 more buckets of apples and Bavarian sausage-sized zucchinis that were hiding under the big leaves. The neighborhood deer are so full they just lie around near the tree all night and burp. They don’t even spook when Pickles goes down to bark at them when we go out at six. That might also explain where my 40+ red pears disappeared to. They were right next to the Gravenstein.

Outside of that, Labor Day plumb snuck up on me this year. August has been a lean month for VA claims. I have a world record 35 claims stacked up that are ripe for a decision. These are claims that impact the clients dramatically. As most of you know, I don’t do tinnitus and flat feet stuff. One of my boys down in Riverside, CAL is living in his car. He’s SMC S and has a PO Box for his address. His true home zip code is dynamic. My link to him is via cell phone only… if it’s charged up.  He’s been fighting since his discharge in 1971… when he got back from the Nam. If you printed his claims file, it would probably run to over 25-30 K pages. He has two paths to R2 or T. He’s 100% for the deadly combo of PTSD with TBI pre-2001. VA knows it and they’ve been giving him the bum’s rush on the a&a since 2004.

One of those 35 Ready For Decision (RFD in VA acronymese) clients has been waiting an incredible 297 days since I filed him on 11/10/2023 for aid and attendance of another. We filed for a hearing back in ’19 and didn’t get a seat before the Judge until Fall 2023.  On 4/10, I finally got his BVA win for  50% back to October 1972 on a §3.156(c) claim. Fort Whacko (349), Texas managed to dodge the bullet and purposefully misconstrued it to be date of claim or January 2016. Can you imagine being the poor GS 14 step 8 Assistant Veterans Service Center Manager (AVSCM) in Waco and watching your potential promotion to VSCM (manager) going up in smoke if you’re foolish enough sign off on that claim? I never added it up but that’s some megaserious folding money. You could probably find a tricked out ’67 GTO gold Goat (convertible) for about less than half that much baksheesh.

Ol’ Yvette used the correct verbiage of “reconsideration” in the decision about elevendyseven times and even threw in the §3.156(c) (1) and (3) cites just in case they handed it off to a newbie GS-8 VSR 90-day wonder. But that overlooks the fact that these claims get sent all the way to VACO in DC and the ol’ Excessive Awards Program (EAP of 2008) is resurrected temporarily to trim up the settlement.  Remember ol’ Leroy MacKlem? What the hey? Chris don’t need all that dough. He’s on TDIU already and gettin’ about $4 K a month. No way we’re giving him 50 to 1972.

So that one’s back at the Board already. And from what I understand, VLJ Yvette White ain’t all happy shits and grins about it. Granted, it’s AOD but they let those sit and fester for a month or two before they get distributed to a judge. I have about 20 up there at any given moment. Our appeal was docketed on July 25th. Most of the ones before it haven’t even been distributed. That sucker was on Judge White’s desk a week later. I can see it’s progress in CASEFLOW. It’s already back with the staff attorney who will be tasked with creating a draft decision for her to sign. I haven’t had this kind of top drawer service since 2014. Cool beans.

We nicknamed these U-turn Appeals or  BVA Chairman Laura Eskinazi’s  “Rocket Dockets” back in 2014. She got busted for doing that but that’s another story.  If they were just simple corrections of AOJ error, they got the 78 RPM treatment and sent off to Assistant (read temporary) Veterans Law Judges given brevet promotions of 90 days to AVLJ status before being demoted back down to staff attorneys. Needless to say, the BVA denial production output in 2014 went waaaaaay up.

VA is more constipated with claims than you can even imagine right now. It’s worse than a shipwrecked sailor on a lonely desert island with 66 cases of extra sharp cheddar cheese. As for the BVA, they’re busy playing ping pong and remanding them back to the VBA to grant or repair. But there ain’t no money to pay for them.

One gripe I have is that by delaying all these inevitable claims, the 20% I get from doing them just continues to rack up bucks until VA gets off their lazy bonus-calloused asses and cuts the paper to freeze it. Don’t get me wrong. I love money just like all of you but I don’t like taking it for doing nothing. And I can pretty much speak for my clients when I say they need it far more than I do… and  months and months ago.

I have a Vet where the ST. Pete’s DROC blew off his kidney cancer claim and ghosted it right out of his decision. So I called up the (800) 827 Dial a Prayer line yesterday (Saturday) to ask the Quo Vadis? question and lo and behold, I got the “take two aspirin and call me Monday” recording. They’ve cut back their hours suddenly. Used to be for the last three years they had operators on duty 0600 (East) to 1800 (West) 7 days a week. That little $2.9 billion budget overrun is cutting pretty deep. The Tampa VAMC nurses went NASDAQ yesterday about being about 250 Registered Nurses short and VA not having any hiring plans in the chute. Ruh-oh, Rorge.

So, that’s Labor Day 2024 style. We have the disciples of the Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) running neck and neck with the Harris Happy, Happy. Joy, Joy Derangement syndrome krewe. Meanwhile, the Red Dawn Conservatives are preparing for Armageddon and a new Civil War. I can’t make this stuff up. Where’s Rodney King when we need him? Remember his quintessential plaint “Can’t we all just get along”.

  Enjoy the weekend, folks. Either inflation and gas will go down or we’re in for one of those Punxsutawney Phil moments… but for another four years instead of six more weeks. Truthfully, I don’t see much difference in the two prevalent parties currently. The good news, if there is any, is DEI seems to be in retreat across the fruited plains. It’s okay to be white again. Time to get my white privilege out of the back of the hall closet and dust it off.