• having parts or aspects that are not equal or equivalent; unequal.

  “the asymmetrical relationship between a landlord and a tenant”

• involving surprise attacks by small, simply armed groups on an opponent armed with modern high-tech weaponry; involving asymmetrical warfare.

  “an asymmetrical response to aggression.

  Jez, wouldn’t it be cool if we could go one step further and upload this concept into the brains of VA personnel and explain it’s terribly adversarial, Veteran un-friendly, and passive aggressive in nature? What I’m talking about is a spinoff of fellow VA Agent Wes McCauley’s recent article  on the subject of VA choosing to misinterpret any and all efforts at communication in a sane format.

  

  Imagine some of these calamities befalling you. You file a supplemental claim as described below to the chowderheads at the VA Puzzle Palace after your new win at the BVA. They managed to give you one tenth of what you deserve but, because of  Encarnacion v. McDonough, 36 Vet. App. 194 (2023), you have to get a new denial at Fort Fumble first before you pitch a bitch about it up at the Board again. Nobody explained that to you. So this costs you about 3 months before someone in DC sends you a letter canceling your 10182 Appeal.  If this seems like a similar  déjà vu of the old “Hamster Wheel”/Delay, Deny, until We Die technique, you’re not imagining things.

  

  So the “game” is you send in the right form (here a 995) and they cancel your claim by saying you used the wrong form. Proceed to GO!. Do not collect $200. Roll the dice again correctly. Submit the 526 form and wait two weeks to find out that, too, was the wrong form and your claim still has not been established. The new letter says you need to submit a 995. Grrrrrrrr. So now VA just gained six weeks of reprieve funning you about which form to use.  They also just screwed you out of two months of compensation in case you didn’t notice, too…

  

  I don’t get mad and I don’t play this game. I have access to the VA Rolodex. I look up the shit-for-brains who did this and straighten his/her ass out. It’s about as useless as screen doors in submarines to do so- but… it builds the foundation of stupidity I need to take it up the ladder and find a warm VA body with an IQ over 100 and the authority to fix it for me now- not in six weeks. Here’s a recent example.

  VA -me emails.

  Let’s look at another scenario. You’re in a nursing home in Anaheim recuperating from _____________ and they schedule you for a c&p 95.3 miles away in San Diego for your A&A claim. You have a VA-issue “Obama” freephone  that does basic voice. No text. No video. You never got the phone call from QTC™ because you were in Physical Therapy at Marlora and they make you turn off all phones during aqua therapy. Of course, your phone isn’t waterproof so it’s unlikely you’d have it in your pocket while swimming. Probably even worse, VA wrote your email address on the C&P Exam request wrong so you’ll never get an email.

  

  VA marks you down as a no-show. You get sicker and now have been in Marlora for over a year. They’ve scheduled you three times for a c&p but you keep failing to show up and you’re so well medicated for pain you thought it was VA calling about a claim for hearing loss- not the hearing you scheduled for CUE on the A&A since September 2023.

  

  It took me an hour of talking to the QTC Booth Bitch to even get her to transfer me to her supervisor. It took me 5 minutes to convince the Supervisor that ol’ Emanuel was not going to rise like Lazarus from his wheelchair and jog down to San Diego for the c&p. Three years wasted to resolve something so simple.

  

  Now imagine this. Ol’ Emanuel above knew there was some kind of hanky panky afoot when he entered the nursing home back in Spring of ’23.  He’d heard rumors of SMC. He and some of his more astute buddies had a laptop or a tablet and they’d found asknod. They knew there was way more to VA comp $ than VA or DAV were letting on to. They were on the hunt for what was in Monty’s Cookie Jar behind Door #3.

  

  Emanuel had filed for a&a on a hunch when he entered Marlora. VA smartly asymmetrically denied him because a)- his nurse had filled out the 2680 but put down a bunch of non-service connected disabilities ; b) he’d used an outdated form; and lastly, c) He failed to show for the c&p he didn’t hear about. They did accept the HLR claim but had denied it on January 20, 2024, faster than you could say Jack Robinson.

  

  Emanuel sure got that denialgram from VA and DAV filed a CUE saying, well, we’re unsure what they said. And then the funniest thing happened. They called him up asking about when he wanted the hearing. Once again, in a Dilaudid Daze, he said he’d never filed a claim for hearing loss. All he wanted VA to do was grant his A&A claim. Here’s the January 2024 denial (number 3).

  No A&A for you, sir.

  The VA “technician” interpreted this as a cancellation of the desire for a hearing and promptly put it in the cold file. A year went by and ol’ Emanuel was like a teapot on the stove coming to a boil. He felt he was such small potatoes that I would never talk to him or accept his POA. Perhaps worse, every VA attorney he’d called said it was a waste of time and to get lost. But he finally called anyway and we cut the representation agreement this Fall. I got a date for the hearing and called QTC to get my boy in the queue for a c&p in the nursing home.

  

  I did what nobody at VA had thought of. I did a forensic chronological dumpster dive on Emanuel’s A&A claim. Turns out he’s been spinnin’ the A&A Wheel of  Fortune for quite some time. That makes it a continuously pursued claim. But of even more import was that this dustup with Emanuel’s claim wasn’t a CUE at all. It was still a pending claim…

  

  Most all of you (VA and even Berta over at Hadit.com included) seem to think that if VA pulls a boner, it’s an automatic CUE. Newsflash. It is not. It’s a mistake. A CUE is something that was decided over a year ago and no AED paddles ever invented are going to bring it back to life. Your only hope is to file that motion to revise based on CUE or find some old Army medical records that have never seen the inside of the NPRC or your claims file. That’s a §3.156(c) claim but it’s story for another day. Or, keep it alive by continuing to fight. Or ask for a hearing…

  

  After Emanual told the VA “expert” that he didn’t want a hearing (claim), said expert promulgated a new rating decision and put that a&a on hold. In VAspeak, that’s called “deferred”. A claim deferred is also called a pending claim. A claim remains pending until there is some evidence it’s been decided. Pending claims have been known to go unnoticed for decades. That’s why I love VBMS. VA screws up and VBMS pours concrete around it to preserve it for posterity-even if it isn’t decided.

  A&A deferred

   I had my delayed hearing for Emanuel’s CUE and the Hearing Officer was adamant that we could only talk about the January 20, 2024,  rating decision that Emanuel and DAV had called a CUE. I’ve met narrow-minded people at VA but I’ve always prided myself on my ability to “draw the picture” for them. Felix kept going back to the 1/2024 decision and asking what the CUE was because we are required to prove it’s a failure to apply the right regulation or that the evidence was not before the adjudicator. Then we have to prove the error manifestly changed the outcome.

  

  I had to take him on a guided safari of §3.105(a) and explain a CUE is a final decision. Dead. Done. Fini. Mort.  Moat Lao. A pending claim, on the other hand, is a “live” claim. The August 5, 2024, rating decision put this puppy on ice until either VA figured it out or Emanuel did. It took me one and one half hours (0900 to 1030 HRS L) to get a concession out of Felix that we couldn’t very well discuss a CUE until we had a final decision to CUE. Then I pointed out all the things Emanuel cannot do including the fact that he’s in (wait for it) a nursing home where they are doing a&a for him.

These tales are just a small sampling of how VA wastes your money and time as a taxpayer- and our time as Veterans or litigators. How about you file a claim for PTSD and you deployed to the Sandbox?  VA is going to pay QTC/VES/LHGS about $615.00 to do a Acceptable Clinical Evidence  (ACE) review on your records (without you there in person) and determine that exposure to Burn Pits did not cause your Bent Brain. Result? Denied. But you filed for it based on your Purple Nurple and the CIB. Tough shit.  If you file a 995 and complain a week later, $10 bucks says they’ll tell you to file it on a 526 a month or six weeks later.

Welcome to the new Appeals Management Act and the “supplemental” PACT Act that purports to clean up the Agent Orange and Burn Pit shit. If this doesn’t convince you to hire an accredited VA representative to help do it, then you must enjoy failure. Even the much-vaunted Claims Sharks Sherpas cannot fathom the depths of this kind of asymmetrical lawfare. I love it. I conducted a-sym warfare for 2 years and it’s the only game in town. Or, as Forest Gump put it- stupid is as stupid does.

As it’s Christmas, or nearly so, I’d like to wish all of my readership the best of the season and hopes for a heapin’ helpin’ of the same next year. We’re still batting a .1000 on SMC claims and Appeals at asknod so all of you waiting take heart. We always win because, well, we’re right and they aren’t. That’s why I compare it to fishing with hand grenades or 40% DuPont Stump dynamite.

P.S. I reckon y’all have heard we’re having a long spell of rain and a lot of flooding. One of my local readers sent this in.