I guess I don’t need to tell anyone we woke up to an interesting development in the Caribbean this morning. Seems the U.S. elected to repossess Chevron’s stolen oil infrastructure from Venezuela. With the exception of two minor U.S. military casualties and a slightly damaged chopper, it was a nonstarter. Kind of like the old Roman colosseum scoreboard- Lions 5, Christians 0. But enough of that. You didn’t come here for a history lesson. Let’ talk about Emanuel.

Emanuel came to me in September 2025. He’s a Viet Nam Crayon Eater (Marines).  All he has is an Obamaphone™. No text. No video. He’d called up a bunch of NOVA lawyers and begged for representation. They all turned him down because, well, he’s already 100% p&t and none of the law dogs saw any money in helping him out. This sadly shows you how ignorant VA attorneys are regarding Special Monthly Compensation. He’s been in a nursing home now on and off, with side trips to VAMC Long Beach and Cedars Sinai ER, for three years. To me, that’s a crime all by itself.

DAV, his VSO, is ignoring him. The last time he contacted the rep in January 2024, they never even returned his call. So much for “free” representation. So he called us in tears and begged Cupcake not to hang up on him until she heard him out. I’m going to share his story here and build off Wes McCauley’s recent post on his website about “clearing out the backlog.”

So, to begin with, chew on this blog and then come back and watch in real time what happens when you have a bunch of sub-75 IQ VA gomers with about 3 weeks of training in litigation try with all their might to promulgate Emanuel’s January 2024 claim for aid and attendance and the ultimate bitchslap- leaving him hanging there waiting for 652 days.

https://unitedforvets.us/spectator/2025-2026?ss_source=sscampaigns&ss_campaign_id=69596ee7b5356f6b9062b191&ss_email_id=69596f222279f0109192dfca&ss_campaign_name=2025%3A+Every+Which+Way+but+Loose%3B+America+250&ss_campaign_sent_date=2026-01-03T19%3A34%3A11Z

Doc-in-a-box coming to a Walmarket near you (courtesy of Wes)

So, here’s the gig. We (Cupcake and me) decided we couldn’t abandon Emanuel.  Since the DAV dipshit wouldn’t call him back, Em got his nurse at the Marlora Nursing home to complete a VAF 21-2680 for a&a. She screwed up and listed a bunch of not service connected (NSC) ailments on his claim. Sure enough, VA denied within one week. Being unsure what to do, he filed a CUE saying they denied without so much as a c&p. For several months, they’d call him or send him letters asking when he wanted the hearing disputing the denial.

Ol’ Emanuel is heavily medicated for pain so you could excuse him if he was a tad confused. When they called him again in July 2024, he thought they were trying to file him for hearing loss and told him he didn’t want that hearing shit-just the a&a please. They took that to mean he didn’t want the formal hearing, cancelled it and put the whole shiteree on pause. That’s about the time I pulled his POA and began trying to unravel this fustercluck.

First off,  the whole thing didn’t sit well with me. They’re not supposed to treat us severely disabled Vets this way. To impress upon VA that I wasn’t going away, I filed him in November for everything that should have been in the hopper- Parkie’s, IHD, Stage 4 Chronic Kidney disease, loss of use of the lower extremities, increase for PTSD, a&a etc. I filled in the Homeless section on the 526 but plastered my name, rank and tail number all over the contact data and figured that would get the ball rolling. Not.

Second off, I held the hearing with a LA Regional Office hearing officer. He insisted he wouldn’t do the hearing if the Vet wasn’t there so I had read him the regulation. I asked if we needed to get clarification from the OAR and he folded immediately. I had to point out that the denial of a&a in the January 2024 rating decision was reviewed in August and they DEFERRED it. So, right off, the claim was not a CUE. CUE begins 366 days after it’s done. It was still pending. VA promptly established an EP 930 claim for this and noted it was about 600-ish days old and conceded it needed to be looked at not as a CUE but as a live claim.

To be safe, since Emanuel had been an inpatient here and there for so long, I needed to get wheels on this pronto. Em was homeless. His landlord, having not seen hide nor hair of him for almost a year, took what few possessions he owned, set them on the curb in front of his apartment covered w/ visqueen and made the eviction complete. Emanuel found out about that several months later. To get this moving, I asked to have him flashed for homeless. They ignored me.

Wonder of wonders, about that time a psychologist from Loyal Health c&p calls me up trying to schedule the c&p because he can’t contact him. They’d scheduled 4 c&ps and he was a no-show for them all. The poor guys is so accustomed to the VA crew sending a meat wagon by to take him to the VAMC for regularly scheduled  visits, that he expected the Loyal Health guys were, too. I mean it’s not exactly a state secret that Emanuel is in a nursing home. So it follows that he doesn’t have transportation himself. How, exactly, they expected him to walk or wheelchair 36 miles wasn’t discussed.

So me and this psychologist feller set and talked a spell. We talked about all manner of things regarding my boy. Since I’ve probably read more shrink DBQs that this dude has ever written, I segued into a familiar patois of poor hygiene, persistent hallucinations and delusions, angry outbursts that occasionally required the elephant tranquilizer gun, lottsa pain meds for the blown knees/ankles, suicidal ideation and how he just wished it would all end. We talked about his divorce and estrangement from all his children. I told him I did 2 tours in Viet Nam, I knew what bugf*cky looked like, and ol’ Emanuel was certifiable. Bingo 100%.

Now mind you, all of this was true but depending on how you phrase the psychiatric symptoms, a judging crew of VA-hired psychologists would rate this like Dancing with the Stars- 50%-70%- 30%- 50%- 50%. This Doogie Houser Shrink decided I was credible as the POA and was adding a “wow”, “yesssss” and “oh I expect so” after about everything I cited to. Here’s the kicker. Emanuel had been at 70% since he filed in 1998. DAV had been telling him “don’t poke the Bear or they’ll reduce you” for the last 27 years. Shut the Front Door.

The formal VA hearing on the claim was about December 10 and I conveyed the emergent situation to Mr. K at that time. 600-odd days pending was a wee bit more than your standard 125-day claim time. Nevertheless, it was pure silence. After the December 20 chat with Emanuel’s shrink, the Homeless Flash finally popped up in VBMS but still no action. That Shrink I talked to never did talk to Emanuel. He gave him a 100% sight unseen.

I emailed the hearing officer on the 25th and asked whazzup? Crickets. Big huge, loud, Merry f**king Christmas crickets. Most folks who know me real well could probably predict the next suggestions. Yep. You don’t tug on Superman’s cape. You don’t piss into the wind. You don’t pull the mask off the ol’ Lone Ranger and you don’t wanna mess with me. Here’s how it began. As you can see, I shotgunned this on December 30th to the hearing officer (Mr. K RVSR) who was writing the rating. But I also cc:’d his Coach, the AVSCM, the VSCM, the 344 Regional Officer Director and… Secretary Doug…

Email to Secretary_Redacted

I got this the next morning when I logged in.

email answer_redacted

Right about here you’ll see what Wes and I are talking about and why the appeals numbers have skyrocketed through the roof. The EP 930 fully recognized that the claim for a&a went back to a rating for his kidneys in March 2024. Why, I have no idea. The August 5, 2024, rating deferred it but the actual request for a&a was January 24, 2024. I filed on November 7th and threw the a&a in again because I still had to do the hearing. So which one do you figure they’d choose for a date entitlement arose? See page 8.

RD 12.30.2025_Redacted

A quick look at his code sheet shows he’ll get bumped up to N½ anyway on Barry bumps but they didn’t even do that. This case is just one of many I’m doing right now that illustrates what Wes is discussing in his blog. Did you look closely and read that part where they say “We couldn’t give you the a&a because you didn’t have a single rating at 100% but shucks! Now you do so here’s your a&a bubba. ”

VA is so self-conscious about making errors that they can’t bring themselves to just admit their mistake. They’d rather make up some hokum VA M 21 quote and declare their hands were tied behind their backs right up to November 7th. Unfortunately, this little boner would cost Mr. Emanuel about 24 months times $500 per month worth of retro.  So that’s my Happy New Year Story for 2026. Emanuel thinks I shit ice cream and walk on water. I hate to say it’s just that after 36 years of this nonsense, I’ve seen every trick in the book. This one is older than the rater.

P.S. As FACs, you have no idea how much fun it was to get a “Troops in Contact” (TIC) call for Nape and hear things like…