GETTING INSIDE THE WIRE AT VA

Posted on June 5, 2022 by asknod

Winning a VA claim is not impossible. Obviously, it isn’t easy but then there are a lot of things in life that require finesse. After 30 years of throwing darts at VA’s dartboard, I’ve watched them change over time. Old, tried and true recipes for success seem to fall flat and fail. You can never expect anything to remain static forever. Fortunately, there a few of us who just keep plugging away at it and come up with a new repair order. Shoot. Look who you’re dealing with. Government can’t fart their way out of a wet paper bag… or even light one for that matter. Let’s look at the latest techniques that do bear fruit.

I’d like to present what I do as a workaround for this phenomenon. First, we’re in the new AMA (or AMIA) mode now rather than Legacy. Granted, there are still Legacy claims/appeals out there but let’s focus on what most of you will be involved in. I’m going to use a client as an example. Most of you know I cut my teeth on Hepatitis C claims. They were simple and straight forward. You filed. You lost. You came to me. I refiled and took it up to the BVA after obtaining an IMO and you won. If you were severely ill, it was almost a guaranteed 100% schedular and P&T. That was Legacy. Apparently, we were too successful and the financial well began to suck air.

Next, with the advent of the AMA, we found a new brick wall. Even if you had an IMO, VA would still deny by going out and getting another c&p exam to deny you. This forced you to go to the BVA to win. Again, a minor change but one we could negotiate with a slight change of technique. Yeah. I know Medrano forbid this repetitious behaviour of shopping for a good denial IMO. Tell that to the local poobahs.

Then one day, the BVA got fed up with the gomers at the Fort Fumbles across our fruity plains denying virtually everything illegally and shoveling it all up to the BVA. The BVA bozos began shoveling it right back down to the Regional Offices and telling them to quit pawning off their job on the BVA. All that resulted in was a re-denial and another trip to the BVA to try to win it.

So you won. But it wasn’t that simple.  On remand, your local yokels granted your Hep C claim and awarded you 0%. Why? Because you went through the treatment and were cured. You no longer had Hep C so you got SC for it but no VA wampum. The repair order, as usual, was simple. Read §4.114 DC 7354 (Hep c) carefully. VA pukes didn’t…

“With serologic evidence of hepatitis C infection and the following signs and symptoms due to hepatitis C infection:”

I began having to point this out in legal briefs to the BVA. Sure. My client is “healed” but has a lot of residuals. The VLJs concurred with me and sent it back to be rated based on the residuals because 99.9% of us who had Hep C for a gazillion years were mega sick with residuals-not the underlying cured disease. Besides, the regulation says residuals- not proof of continuing disease.

The next wave of stupidity came after a new push. A client is taking lactulose to control his portal hypertension and ascites. He’s also taking propranolol to control his esophageal varices. To get around paying for this, VA demands that you have bleeding varices. Regular old varices, regardless of how many, that are not bleeding are not ratable. I promptly quote Jones v. Shinseki, 26  Vet.App. 56, 63 (2012) and point out that DC 7354 makes no provisions for medication-attenuated symptomatology. Nowhere does it say “rate on residuals after medication”. VA raters look at you with that inimitable 1000-yard stare and say “Who’s Jones?” The end result of this chicanery is you can be 100% on paper for cirrhosis post-hep C and be lucky to get 30% even though the hepatic encephalopathy is so complete you can’t remember your birthday. If you still drive, you pull up to stop signs and wait interminably for them to turn green. Ditto the ascites. It’s controlled by the lactulose to some degree so you won’t be getting any of what’s behind door #2 and Denis the Menace’ cookie jar.

Better yet, try a dumpster dive into your VA VistA records-the ones you dutifully collect from ROI to send in to prove your disability. DC 7312 calls it “erosive gastritis”. Everyone in real medicine calls it GERD. You’re eating omeprazole like candy corn to control it. VA denies a 100% rating because you don’t have erosive gastritis refractive to treatment. Or how about varices refractive to treatment. Or ascites. VA calls ascites ‘trace free fluid in the abdominal cavity’. Six of one or half a dozen of the other everywhere else in the medical universe… except VA. I suppose if you filed for GERD, they’d just turn that argument on its ear and say “Dude, you have erosive gastritis. That’s not the same as GERD. Denied.”

So, it’s back to the IMO factory to get someone to say erosive gastritis = GERD and the trace fluid is ascites. It’s still going to be another trip to the BVA for them to wave their magic wand. These are just a few of the simple tricks VA resorts to in order to defeat you with. But, you can get off this merry-go-round if you’re smart.

Here’s the latest and fastest pathway to SC I can offer. It works right now but that’s not to say they can’t give the rug a tug and jerk it out from underneath you in the future. Start with filing it. VA made that harder, too. If you have filed and lost within a year, you will have to use the new VAF 995 Supplemental. If you filed more than a year ago and lost, you’ll be forced to use a VAF 21-526. At the dawn of time, you only filed one (1) VA claim on a 526. After that you could use a 4138, toilet paper or Standard Form 8.5×11 (white). The operable metric was that it had to be legible. In 2015, that all changed. The NOD 958 came out and no more toilet paper was permitted. No more 4138s as a claim for increase. AMA went even further. Now, it’s a crap shoot. Use a 526 after more than a year and they’re just as liable as not to say “Sorry. Wrong form. Please check your accompanying VA 20-0998 and pick the correct form.  I send in both and it really messes with their heads.

With the advent of the AMA, more forms came out as discussed above. If you do not check off the little box in Block #16 on a 995 that says you’re aware of the §5103 info, everything comes to a screeching halt. They’ll send you a new one (after a month) and ask for it to be signed by you or your sword bearer at VFW. Shoot, even if you do check the box, the odds of getting one of those §5103 requests in next month’s mail are way better than winning the lotto. I see them pop up in VBMS and send in the acknowledgement  lickety spit the same day. Apparently that causes confusion because they postdate them and look into the future a month out for your response-not the same day. Bingo. Thirty day delay minimum. You’d think you could outwit them by just filling out a stock §5103 and sending it in with the 995 or the 526. No way, GI.

How about you get a client’s POA and file a 526 for his ___________. Wrong. You-even though you are now legally driving Fred’s claim boat and have his POA- are forbidden to file the first 526 without his signature. Yep. 30 day delay kicks in for them to send it back and ask Fred for his Fred Handcock in block 33a. I get around that by just having my clients sign one and I put it in the file. If you sign below in block 37A-even though the  client signed it, you go to 526 jail for a month because only the client is allowed to sign it. I usually have to look up the chowderhead employee and send him an email saying the client signed it so no harm-no foul.  You see where I’m going with this? Each form has a punji pit that gains VA another 30-60 days to frustrate your filing. It does nothing to impede your effective date. It merely guarantees delays for any baksheesh you’re due. I could go on and on about these asinine little quirks. VA should coin a new word for this. How about asiten or asitwenty.

So, you file and it’s all plugged in. They promptly send you a VAF 21-4142 or 4142a and ask you for permission to get your private med recs from your doctor. But wait. Asiten kicks in. At the top of the form it says don’t use this if you want it done in the 21st century as it may cause up to a one year delay. Best to go get them yourself. Ever since the advent of Obamacare, everyone charges for sending your records to other physicians… or VA. Especially VA. What the hey? They’re government. They have tons of money right? Wrong. VA refuses to pay for copies of the very same records they asked you for permission to fetch. You foolishly think they got them (because they’ll never tell you they didn’t) and you lose. I could go on and on about that one, too. I found out myself the hard way. I discovered it in my claims file twenty years later. My doctors sent VA the $151.09 bill for the records and they sent a reply back- basically a laughing emoji with tears in its eyes… holding up its middle finger.

 

So, you lose. You come to me or an attorney. I file you again with the minimal required. I submit the 995 (w/§5103 checked just for shits and grins) and an IMO. VA of course denies because we all know a Board certified MD with 35 years of medical practice has shit for brains. VA’s nurseynurse NP with a two-year practice at QTC knows a shit ton more about all this. No sweat. You file the 10-182 NOD to the Board and remodel the kitchen for a couple of years while you wait. When you do win-and you will- it begins all over again with the 0% program. You have to refile a  995 and ask for a higher rating. You have to obtain evidence that shows you’re entitled to a higher rating. Your own doctor will have to get involved. Even then it’ll be the incremental game of 10%, then 30% and six years later after a real donneybrook-maybe the 100% or TDIU you should have  gotten this year. Welcome to the new, improved AMA, soldier. You can thank the Big Six VSOs for this new denial technique. They’re the ones who dreamed it up.

The teaching moment is how to outwit these jellyheads as quickly as possible. Remember, they will send your efforts up to a DRO for a quick way to reduce you without reducing the underlying combined rating on the first outing. Next, they come back 4 years and eleven months later and say you’re all better. Bye bye TDIU and the fight begins anew. You don’t even know you got screwed.

One technique I use is to flip the selector lever from semi to rock ‘n roll and start spraying the claims at them to let them know this can, and will, only have one ending- P&T. If they deny you saying you don’t have erosive gastritis, file for it. Get you local physician to state it’s the same as GERD. Get it in writing. Get the shit for brains VA doctor to say “ascites” instead of “trace amounts of free fluid near spleen”.

The best bet is to get your IMO doctor to cover any and all symptomatology in one nexus letter. Everything. Each and every symptom associated with the condition should be tied back to the index disease-not just the index disease. If you’re gonna pay $2 K for the magic paper ($10K if your using Hadit’s go-to guru on IMOs), you might as well get them to write it all in there. The cost is the same regardless if you use quality doctors. Well, it is using my IMO outfit. I hear tell it’s on a sliding scale elsewhere- $1000 for the Hep C dx IMO, $1000 for the GERD dx, $1000 for the ascites, $1000 for the varices, $1000 for the hepatic encephalopathy etc.  In fact, one thing I’ve seen in this business is the folks who offer to look under the hood and throw in the IMO for the DM II, the Prostate cancer and the Parkinson’s while they’re doing this. Of course, that’ll be another $1000 each for those too. But why not the hemorrhoids, the flat feet and the tinnitus while you’re there, right?  Wrong. The fact is, if you have all that shit wrong with you, you only need to win a couple to get to the 100%. Everything else is generally a waste of time (and $) after SMC S so why pay $15 K when you can only benefit from $2 K worth. It reminds me of the car salesman asking if you want all the extras like the electric ass scratcher and the autotune for your FM radio.

It used to be I always went to the BVA with my IMO for my win. Now, with the AMA, it’s better to just throw down with your most excellent IMO at the local Puzzle Palace and let them deny it. Nowadays, they are going to deny it even if Jesus supplied you with a buddy letter. Worse, it takes 2-3 years if you use the “hearing” or “evidence” lane at the BVA for your NOD. You know as well as I do that the pathetic attempt at denial below is unsupported and they don’t even bother to go through the motions of citing to peer-reviewed articles anymore. It’s basically ” There is no correlation between the Veteran’s DM II and his peripheral neuropathy in all four quadrants nor the erectile dysfunction because I said so. These problems all began before he was dx’d with DM II so the etiology is due to a different cause. What that might be, we have no clue but VA didn’t pay us to deny based on that theory…yet”

You can benefit by having your IMO already denied at the local shit show and have  the VLJ grant it above using the direct lane far faster than any other path now. When I say now, I mean since July 2021. About that time, the VA seized up. The BVA is so overwhelmed, they can’t see the windows for the filing cabinets. As for HLRs, I’m trying to have a rational discussion on solutions here- not more obfuscating to delay/deny/derail your claims. All my HLRs end with a new rating decision and an interminable delay that begins with a new 0% chase to refile over…and over… and over. That’s what this is all about. You won but you’ll have to file a supplemental to actually get any $.

In sum- file. Get denied. File IMO and get a cheapo depot denial and proceed to the BVA checkout. Win. Lather, rinse, repeat until desired results are obtained. If they give you shit, start throwing a lot of rocks for everything you can dream up until they cave in and you get the P&T.

If IMOs were Bloody Marys, this is what mine look like.

Posted in HCV Epidemiology, hepatitis, Higher Level of Review (HLR), Tips and Tricks, VA Agents, VBMS, VBMS Tricks, Veterans Law | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 11 Comments

MORE VA LEGAL KNOWLEDGE FOR YOUR LIBRARY

Posted on June 1, 2022 by asknod

I’ve been meaning to put this document out there for the seasoned warrior and the naive novitiate alike. Anytime VA  stamps it controlled unclassified info- for internal use only, it’s time to download a copy for your own perusal. This I have done. I’m surprised they didn’t stamp it NOFORN, too.

I’m sure some breathless jellyhead from Hadit will arrive diiirecly and declare it’s a fake or unsubstantiated Russian disinformation to denigrate certain VA MD/JD IMO authors. They still haven’t even acknowledged the validity of the VA IMO shitlist yet. Yeppers. That VBN disease is spreading. If you don’t like what you members write, strike it down with your Jedi might. I assure you. The provenance on this puppy is good to go. There are some interesting tidbits for all diners-professionals and pro se alike. But alas, no sordid tales of witch doctors casting dem chicken bones and adducing your ills. Besides, we’re unwoke around here. We don’t censor you.

Enjoy.

NWQ Playbook 1 and 2

Posted in Tips and Tricks, VA Agents, vA news, Veterans Law | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

MEMORIAL DAY 2022–I AM A ROCK

Posted on May 28, 2022 by asknod

Remember that song by Simon and Garfunkel? Well, maybe not. I reckon it depends on your age. More about that in a few. As an author/litigator, I wear two hats now. I live to write about my experiences with my clients equally as fervently as I intersperse it writing about experiences I endured fifty years ago. I attempt to capture that in the photographs you send me. I strive to teach others how to ‘read’ the Rosetta Stone of VA law and how to surmount the obstacles that are placed in our path that prevent us from attaining service connection. As a survivor of a ‘conflict’ rather than a war, I’m thankful my psyche was (and still is) strong enough to have come out the other side quasi-intact. One had to develop pretty thick skin to inure oneself to the pain, sorrow and daily loss of friends and those we served with. Hence the analogy of the blog today.

Don’t get me wrong. I have no doubt the sand rancher war(s) in both Afstan and Iraq were grueling. I also suspect the emotional toll on these warriors might be even more damaging than it was to us in our war conflict in Vietnam. Allow me to become maudlin and share what I see as the dichotomy of war then and now. First, we’ve tried this war gig several ways. World Wars I & II more or less incorporated the cohesive unit approach they used in SWA. You all came from New York or Tennessee and trained en masse. You deployed the same way. You came home the same way if you didn’t come home in a box.

Allow me to express the first emotion most all of us felt when we arrived in SEA. Shunned in a word. I’m not sure how the Squids did this. I know they had to paddle over there so maybe it was a cohesive group deployment. Boy howdy it wasn’t that way for most of us in the Army or Air Force. Each service had its emotional drawbacks and I sure don’t mean to imply one group had it worse than others except maybe for Eleven Bravos. If it wasn’t for bad luck, they wouldn’t have any luck at all. Granted, each service assignment had unique features. But the overwhelming thing I encountered in my extended travels and assignments over my two deployments was the aloofness of the many I served with. Penetrating the barrier of friendship and forming a bond with shortimers or others who preceded you was downright daunting. The reason was simple.

Nowadays, a platoon or company deploys as a cohesive unit. Most often, you went through Basic, AIT and advanced training for deployment as a ‘whole’ entity of X troops. We didn’t have that in SEA. We arrived at the replacement depot, got our boots and rifles and were flown into some godawful PSP mudpit or dusty LZ and greeted by fellow soldiers with tombstones in their eyes. You were ‘fresh meat’. You were cherries. You were FNGs. Nobody was interested in what state you came from or looking at the picture of your girlfriend. Folks laughed-but it didn’t involve you. Say hi to a stranger and they’d look at you like you were retarded. Pretty soon you, too, became devoid of emotion. Nothing could amaze you anymore. It was like Call of Duty in 3D on steroids lacking any on/off switch. About then, you actually began to look forward to each morning. Adrenaline mixed with testosterone is an amazing cocktail. Stir in some gunpowder and medals for valor and you have a dedicated soldier.

With the statistical assurance that your chances of contracting lead poisoning  in the next year were astronomical-even compared to South LA-you were shunned or, at best, tolerated until you’d been there long enough to prove you were an asset rather than a liability in a fire fight. Nobody wanted to be your BFF because the emotional pain of befriending a newbie and watching you killed a day, week or month later was distracting. Hence, we all became rocks. We further mutated into emotional islands and fenced everyone out until we felt comfortable enough to relax and let our guard down with a few proven, seasoned warriors. Some never succeeded in making that difficult transition back to normal when we came home. I seem to have some of them for clients, too. Cupcake says that about me-that I can be ‘distant’ or cold when I should be warm and outgoing. Shoot, I don’t think so but I’m sure everyone with a rip snorting good case of Bent Brain Syndrome is convinced they’re the only sane one in an ocean awash in absolute insanity around them. In a restaurant, you’ll find us all at the back in the corner booth. With our backs to a wall. No. Just kidding.

Après autorotation (successful)

 

Memorial Day is the national Olly Olly Income Free for emotions that allows you to let that shield slip for a day or two and recall things best left alone for the other 364 days of the year. Some will encourage you to get Jesus in your heart and tell the dead to bury their dead. That advice is most often proffered by someone who hasn’t ever seen a body dead-let alone someone who ate a 7.62 through and through. There’s nothing harder than trying to forget coating your hands in sulfa powder and tucking what’s left of Fred’s small intestines back in all the while telling him it actually looks better than you’d expected. Light him up a Marlboro and tell him to be patient. The dustoff is only 5 minutes out…but he only lasts three. That, too can be part of your Memorial Day… if you let it.

I’m not big on religion. I was born, baptized and confirmed in the Episcopal Faith. My dogtags said as much. I could have erased that a week after I got to SEA with little or no change in the rest of my tours-or my life. I’m sure I can find a large number of my fellow servicemen I served with who share that sentiment unless they have more intestinal fortitude than I do. At first, I just couldn’t grasp how God could condone this activity. That was before I began calling him Howard. It’s painful beyond words to land at the end of the day and discover you’re not going to be talking to Ben or Tom or Jack ever again. There’s no finality or a shaking of hands and a ‘see ya’ later’ in war. There ought to be. It’s unfair. But then, maybe Memorial day is good for that- an annual Remember Ben, Tom and Jack Day. I like the gung ho groups who always buy a drink and leave it on the table in bars for _______ ‘who can’t be with us.’ Way cool. I salute you. If you want to, you can fun the waitress and say “What? You can’t see him?”

Memorial Day is a temporary reprieve where it’s okay to step away from your friends and family, get wet eyes and sigh. And sigh again. Afterwards, you can carefully close the mental picture album and put it back on the memory shelf. I strongly suggest you try to remember the laughter. That projectile puke when you all got food poisoning from the old c-rats and  your world-class hurl. That 250-yd. shot with your CAR 15 shortie that got the zipperhead with the RPG (but no medal). The yellow bathing suits we all wore at Vung Tau. Remember that laughter. Dry those memories and press them like flowers between the pages of a book. That’s what will keep you tethered to the here and now. Well, that and grandchildren. They’re kinda like Valium™ in some respects.

Multiply an Eleven Bravo by 365 days with three off for good behaviour and you are guaranteed to have the perfect storm mentioned above. How you’ve been viewing that glass (half full or half empty) may be the testimonial as to how you made it this far. But then, if we didn’t have wars, we wouldn’t need Memorial Days. Somebody might oughta explain how this works to the guys down in DC who inherited them Star Spangled eyes. Eventually, they’ll be coming for your grandchildren some day unless we change.

If you didn’t already have religion or lost it in the past, Memorial Day may give you a reason to get religion all over again. Or… maybe not if you’ve ever watched cannon balls fly. Witnessing man’s capability to inflict brutality to his fellow man will pretty much vaporize any thoughts of religion in the same sentence faster than you can say Jack Robinson. Well, excluding ‘Holy shit, Batman’ or ‘Sweet Jesus, did you see that secondary cook off?’

Happy Memorial Day to my readership.  I reckon that’s all I have to say about that.

The Few. The Proud. The Remembered.

Posted in Memorial Day | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

EXPOSED VET RADIO SHOW–5/26/2022

Posted on May 25, 2022 by asknod

Brother John flashed the one and only Bat signal in the sky heralding the desire of John and Jerrel (personal pronouns us, them, they)  for my appearance on Exposed Vet to discuss Speshull Monthly Compensation. I look forward to this show as it’s a constant learning experience. Not so much the regulations but the way VA raters attempt to thank you for your service out of one side of their mouths while shutting the proverbial SMC door in your face.

I expect the one thing that really pulls my string is that these ‘technicians’ presume to think they know how to adjudicate SMC. Considering I find errors in every last one, I must disagree. It’s primarily one of the biggest reasons I can’t take on many new clients. I spend all my waking hours trying to repair  the incorrect ratings from my existing ones. But that’s not why I called you here.

SMC, in famed NOVA attorney Robert Chisholm’s immortal words, is the ‘art of the possible’. Very little precedence has been established with respect to this higher level of compensation for a reason. VA tends to grant early on- after a suitable pitched battle of course- because the last thing they want is all this SMC R1-R2-T hooey out in the light of day. VSOs have been adamant over the decades  denying it even exists. Ask one of them. Really. Go down to your local AmVets and ask Mikey the rep about getting SMC S after you’re already at 100% P&T. They’ll look at you like you’re asking them to join the Flat Earth Society as a life member. And they’ll deny its existence in the next breath.

I’m not kidding you when I say that by using VA’s current regulations and well-constructed nexus letter, I could get more than 50% of you a SMC L for aid and attendance. Shoot. I didn’t write the regulations. I just found a way to exploit the way they are written. It isn’t FM. It’s just how you approach it.

I’d like to start with the basics- when do I qualify? What do I need? How should I prepare? All these questions exist nowhere in How-to VA playbooks. I think I know why. Nobody knows how to do this. That’s certainly not to demean attorneys or my fellow agents. It certainly isn’t meant  as idle bragging either. It’s predicated  on how many referrals I get from big name attorney outfits. Considering how lucrative a win it is doing this (SMC R1,2 etc.), I can’t conceive of a law group pissing it away to some local yokel in rural Gig Harbor Washington. I have no explanation for why I continue to win. Perseverance? The squeaky wheel syndrome? Whatever the cause, I’m on a SMC roll.

The 81mm surprise package.

Right. Tune in tomorrow night at 1900 East side and 1600 on the left Coast. Get your brewski and chips ahead of time. Mute your mic so we don’t have to listen to the dog bark or the crunch of the Fritos™. I look forward to teaching my brothers and sisters how to break the VA’s compensation bank. If you have a question, feel free to raise your hand by pressing one (1) (nung)(un) and asking it. We’ll get the Four Deuce canon cockers to pop flares on the LZ.

Here’s the map coordinates and heading. Hope to see you all there.

Via computer it’s

https://www.blogtalkradio.com/jbasser/12103571/connect/340c8691006f191c5964fefad92aada2ac6d0a95

or if you’re computer challenged, it’s

(515) 605-9764

I’m sorry for the delayed posting of this notification. I gave birth to a sizable kidney stone yesterday at 1701 hrs. I was in labor for 17 hours from 0030 Hrs that morning. It felt like a 20 cm. dilation for the entire period. I have the ultimate respect for what a ‘birth person’ goes through now. And no, we haven’t chosen a name for it yet. We’re planning a virtual baptism over the septic tank next week as I inadvertently flushed it. Hell, to give you an idea of the size, I heard  it hit the porcelain and I didn’t even have my hearing aids in. How ’bout them apples. Thank God it wasn’t twins, huh?

Posted in SMC, Tips and Tricks, VA Agents, Veterans Law | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

FORT FUMBLE SEATTLE–1983 CUE JUST WAITING TO BE FOUND

Posted on May 23, 2022 by asknod

Greetings to all you CUE nuts. For those of you obsessed with trying to revise your antique denials, here’s a good example of one that just jumps up and bites you on the nose. It did entail doing a 2-minute dumpster dive into the VBMS file but not to worry. VBMS is polite. They arrange it chronologically rather than the CD version you request that resembles a game of 52-card pickup. I offer this example because it’s been sitting in my files for several years. As I was focusing on getting my client SC for his hep c, I didn’t go back to the dawn of his claims existence. Hep C wasn’t ‘invented’ until 1989, so it’s unlikely I’d find anything back in 1969 on the subject.

Anyway, Wayne was here at LZ Grambo going over a filing for 2ndys to his Hep C with me and was discussing a hip/knee filing that was denied in 1983. He said the ‘VA technicians’ couldn’t find his records- meaning his STRs (or SMRs) from service back then so they denied. He reopened it in 2007 with a lot of buddy letters and a ton of doctors’ records showing the interim history from the 1983 denial and finally won. He might  as well not have wasted the energy. This time ( the 2007 filing), they found the STRs and the NPRC sent them in to the local puzzle palace. In the leadup to the rating, an astute RVSR named Melisa spotted the STRs and noted in a VAF 21-6789 Deferred Rating Decision that if 1) the QTC clinician handed out a positive nexus to service based on the new service department records, that 2) the Waynester was in for a shit ton of retrobucks -30% back to 5/1983.

Sure enough, the QTC puke came back with a positive connection and the  rating decision granting SC stated that he was being awarded an effective date all the way back to his original claim. The problem, as always, is the semantics in VAspeak. To them, his original claim was 2/27/07. Then they inexplicably changed it to May of 2003. Then they CUE’d themselves a year later and gave him another 10% for DeLuca knee pain- but with effective date of 9/2007. Go figure. That took him to 30% and covered the wifesan. Since he was not well-versed in §3.156(c) law, he didn’t ‘see’ the error.

Loved those CAR 15 shorties.

Being quasi-inquisitive, I said hold the phone and gazed into my VBMS crystal ball. Sure as shit, there’s the finding of fact in 1983 times two of no STRs. They didn’t even trot out the old Friday the 13th of July 1973 BBQ of Veterans’ records as the excuse. Granted, that would have fallen flat as a cheese soufflé in a whorehouse because he got out in 1969. But then, I’ve had a few like the one where the Vet served from 79-83 and them back-to-the-future Delorean gomers snuck in and stuck his records into the sixth floor fire. I hate that when that happens. When you query the technicians at the NPRC, they get a bit brusque and tell you they are not up on how that time travel thing works.

Likewise, the 2007-era records say they found the STRs but no one bothered to scan them in until around 2013. Nevertheless, the PIES VAF 21-3101 says in no uncertain terms that they transshipped it all to the Seattle claims experts. Dr. Judas at the local QTC  promptly said roger on the 1968 fall from 20 feet up and the full leg cast up to the hip. Bingo- 20% (and 30% a year later on the belated CUE). It was all there-well, all there except for the May 1983 rating for 30%.

So, being a VA ambulance chaser worthy of my name, I’m filing it today. I’ve done a few §3.156(c) claims in my day but never have I seen them give me the ammo to shoot them in the foot so completely. Here’s a copy of the filing. I’d give a Benjamin Franklin just to see the look on their faces when Janesville forwards this one to them.

redacted

The VA folks in Seattle have gotten to know me on a first name basis over the last 15 years. In the last six, some of the DROs have even become a little terse with me and implied I’m an ignorant slut. I prefer to think of myself as a knowledgeable slut. My clients certainly do not agree. They’re all satisfied campers and TDIU’d/SMC’d.

The fact is VA law is like fishing with hand grenades. You literally can’t miss. They screw up virtually everything they touch. Granted, not all of it will rise to the level of CUE that you can guarantee a win with but enough does such that it makes VBMS dumpster diving lucrative enough to pursue when things quiet down and you’re bored. Last week, one of my R1 Vet’s files was lying open and it dawned on me that back when he was granted A&A  in 2017, he also had a spare 100%. Yeppers. They should have granted him the §3.350(f)(4) bump from L to M but nooooooooooooooo-they just had to lowball him. It’s not much but everyone can use a couple $14 K for some wine and women money.  On second thought, he’ll probably need it for gas all too soon. It was $5.39 for regular when I filled up Cupcake’s new Expedition this AM. New because I shot the old one twice in the engine block to prevent its departure from a crime scene. It was declared DOA shortly thereafter.

The fact is, VA uses a “SMC Calculator” that is supposed to automatically infer all the possible SMCs you can get  by analyzing your rating sheet. The problem is their SMC technician inputting the data. Somewhere, a village is missing it’s idiot. CUE. It’s what’s for dinner!

Posted in CUE, VA Agents, VA Motions for Reconsideration, VBMS Tricks | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

HAPPY HOUR WITH HORS D’OEUVRES…RIGHT?

Posted on May 11, 2022 by asknod

So I got the raised planters built and the garden area rototilled for the corn. Time for a scotchski it was. Yessssssss. And right there on the counter was the le chip du jour. Cupcake’s  on a gluten-free (read fun-free) healthy tilt so everything is something other than wheat. Rice, almond flour, pecan flour, ad nauseum literally. I’d allow the almond flour crackers are remotely edible as I’m sure papyrus is too if you’re starving. What the hey. Buddy my parrot will eat them. He’s a wise 54- yr. old bird. He was born after Tet ’68 in the fall during monsoon. I trust his instinct. He won’t eat one of them store-bought peeled carrots. Turns out if you hold the bag up to your nose reeeeeal close, you too can smell the reek of Clorox™. Zesty. Brightens your teeth, too. We already went down that road with herbicides and look what it got us.

So, I’m armed and dangerous and coming into the kitchen and the chips bag is on the counter. New flavor. Rice. Well, new rice flavored cracker because I don’t recognize the bag. Bleh.

Hey. No flies on me, right? Occam’s Razor. Obviously that must be the go-to Happy Hour chip. No one in their right mind would think otherwise. They’re open so you know they aren’t past their born-on date and sketchy. Rice. It’s what’s for pre-dinner. So I have the JW Black nestled in the ice and and turn on the evening news and that cracker sure is short on salt… and dang near any other seasoning you’d expect. I took another cracker out and seconded that emotion.  The label doesn’t say ‘Danger Will Robinson. May taste like dog shit. So I take a closer gander…

What the hey? These are, hands down, absolutely not even close to Rice Crispy Treats. How could you get away with selling these to folks? I’m guessing even Pickles might not think they were up to her mediocre standards. Well, shut the front door.

Yeah. I know. Cupcake says I never read the instructions but I think this was deliberate sabotage. It’s my considered opinion that they were purchased with the full knowledge that someone would innocently put some out on a tray with some delicious aged, sliced, extra sharp white cheddar fully well expecting a eco-unfriendly rice cracker that was at least edible. But nooooooooooooo. She had to buy the dog treat brand most closely resembling the gluten-free shit.

I can’t wait until April Fool’s Day 2023. Vengeance shall be mine sayeth the nod.

Posted in Humor | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

5/7/75–ONE OF THOSE INFAMY DAYS

Posted on May 9, 2022 by asknod

Looking back on the recent “reallocation of available assets” at Kabul Airpatch last fall, those of my generation merely nod their heads in confirmation and concur there never really have been any true Mensa Generals since World War 2. They’re not permitted to think outside the box anymore. Everything is built on the OSHA premise that it takes a village to change a lightbulb. It has to be widely shared on Social Media and the number of views/likes has to be ensconced into the Clouds for eternity. 

The vision planted in our brains on 5/7/75 was the Huey hucking contests offshore at Dixie Station. Afghanistan’s ignoble retreat, however, will leave us with that indelible image  of C-17s shedding civilians from their landing gear on climb out. That’s some brutal shit for the unwary progressive viewer. Wars always seems to be such an antiseptic, faraway thing until the day the footage gets graphic. Dan Rather and others brought this into our living rooms along about 1967 and war coverage has never been the same since. And keep in mind that was a sanitized version in those days. Reality was often far different but you the American public never saw this. Life magazine didn’t even publish the really ugly stuff.

We nicknamed them Glad Bags reasoning that a body would be glad to be going home. That may sound macabre but gallows humor abounded back then. It warded off  depression… temporarily.

When working with the Veterans I represent, I’m always reminded that folks who were trained to fly IBM Selectrics™ often found themselves pressganged into Eleven Bravos. A cook I repped who was stationed at An Khe told me about a couple of times the gooks got inside the wire and ran rampant dang near all night. In October ’68 they mortared the perimeter and did a minor probe for weaknesses. They came back 12 days later in broad daylight and got the POL area- almost 14,000 barrels. He said shit was cooking off in the bomb dump for days. I’ve had Vets tell me of dark nights where they were yelling at each other not to run around so they could figure out which ones were Cowboys and which were the Indians. Sometimes war devolves down into these most basic of tactics.

My service was similar. I thought I had a cut and dried job for a year in country or the neighboring environs only to discover my government had different plans for me. I certainly never considered being fluent in French would increase my risk relative to others’. Project 404 sounded like such an innocuous gig. A little psyops with a side of interesting dining (Monkey Ball soup, raw papaya soumtom), playing dumb and eavesdropping on visiting RLAF officers  who thought they were being ohhhh soooooo clever speaking in-guess what- Français.  It turned out this was our life in reality.

Granted, there were a lot of dialects and languages afoot in Long Tieng. A lot of the AirAm crew chiefs were Filipino and spoke both Spanish and English. There were combat-seasoned Thai Army Troops available for use as fire extinguishers when the Pathet Lao advanced unexpectedly in winter monsoon. There were Hmong troops who spoke only Hmong. I picked up Pidgin Thai eventually as it was the more common of all. Dee dee mao merely turned into Pai lao lao.

The intriguing aspect of Vietnam and Afghanistan revolves around their similarities. I have vivid memories of watching Walter Cronkite that day on the evening news showing us live footage of the ‘tactical advance in a new direction’. Each one of those Huey submarines would be up to a cool $1.6 million nowadays assuming they had updated avionics. Who’d want one is another story. Rotary wing is delayed suicide. It’s never a question of if a chopper will suddenly have a mechanical misadventure at 2500 ASL but when. Orville and Wilber had it right from the beginning. Imitate the birds. It doesn’t hurt as much when you don’t drop like a rock.

We Veterans lament the tremendous loss of military hardware left on the tarmac and in warehouses in Kabul but that doesn’t even begin to hold a candle to what we left scattered across Vietnam-not to mention all the destroyed materiel. 11,846 choppers were shot down or crashed. That’s not even counting the ones that got the heave ho into the South China Sea on 5/7/75. We ‘donated’ tanks, APCs, .50 cal HMGs, M 60s and gazillions of M 16s on top of gazillions of surplus Korea M1/M2s, G3s, Thompsons and the ammo. We left crated Pilatus Porters on the flightline at Tan Son Nhut. We left a fleet of C 123s and C-7s. This absolutely dwarfs any stupidity in Afstan. We spent more on building schoolhouses in this latest war and it didn’t buy us any Taliban camaraderie whatsoever.

To invoke George Santayana’s name yet again would be pointless. Everyone knows his sentiments and they were once again vindicated last fall. The major media would have you fixate on the 13 troops that ate it  trying to supervise the withdrawal at the airpatch. But that would ignore the 2,325 who ate it over the whole deployment or the 3,519 who didn’t make it back vertical from Iraqistan. Why is it we Americans are always the firemen on the world stage? Who dreamed up this game of donating our troops to the jaws of war?

I’m sure Dunkirk would be another spot-on analogy but it wasn’t our war back then…yet. I don’t mean to dwell on the waste in materiel. I speak of the wasted lives. I can never conceive of expending one-let alone 58,434 troops on a losing cause. It’s not that Vietnam wasn’t a worthy cause. It’s the fact that we weren’t allowed to succeed. And most certainly not over the fence in Laos. A phrase carved in stone evokes my sentiments on war- ‘It’s a worthy thing to fight for a man’s freedom; it is another sight finer to fight for another man’s. But what happens when they tie one of your hands behind your back? Who ever heard of  having to request permission to return fire or to deploy nape or WP when your troops are getting overrun?

I reckon you have to draw the line somewhere when trying to play whack-a-mole with communism. The problem is you eventually run out of  compliant youthful men to do it with. Without casting shade on the opposite sex as infantrywomen, one must understand they don’t have restrooms on battlefields. You can’t just raise your hand and say “Yo. Permission to go to the loo, Sir?” It just doesn’t work that way. In the real world, men don’t need tampon dispensers in the men’s restroom. Regardless of the new pregnant man emoji, men cannot give birth or lactate. Men can’t get out of sorts once a month due to estrus. Frankly, combat is distracting enough already without throwing this added distraction into the mix.  No one can argue that women do not provide a valuable augmentation to our military forces but I wish the powers that be would recognize the glaring drawbacks to total integration. And before I get in any deeper on the other 46 genders, I’ll move on.

While I will never throw cold water on brave men (or women) of all nationalities desirous of coming to the aid of the Ukrainians- or any besieged country, I do not think we, as Americans, personally have a dog in this fight. We’ve swept up the broken glass on the European continent twice with the blood of our servicemen. Three times if you count the cold war. France went so far as to 86 NATO and boot our bases out of France. It’s high time Europe shows its backbone and owns their shitshow. This isn’t going to end well any way you look at it. Somebody’s feelings are going to get hurt. We don’t need any more Glad bags arriving at Dover airpatch any time soon. After over 20 years, the mortuary personnel have earned a vacation.

I expect the next hot spot will be Iran or a rematch between the pissed off sand ranchers and Israel but I’m hoping that will happen after my departure. I have grandchildren and corn to grow.  And that’s all I’m gonna say about May 7th, 1975. It reminds me of taking third place at the Bejing Olympics.

And, as a parting reminder, never get between a mama bear and her cubs.

 

Posted in Vietnam War history | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

EXPOSED VET RADIO SHOW THURSDAY

Posted on May 3, 2022 by asknod

This one should be called the ‘Colvin on your collar told a tale on you‘ . This claim/appeal now spans sixty five years and has outlived the Veteran. Still VA tries to squirm out of doing it locally. I get that. This is 4th and long and the Seattle Puzzle Palace ain’t going near it. They’re punting to the BVA.  If you drew the VSR GS-9 short straw and had to write this up, or were the unfortunate Coach it came back to like an errant boomerang, or anyone even remotely associated with this stinker, your chances of rising to the hierarchy of the VBA DROC team would be right up there with ice creme in Hell if you were party to cutting the paper handing out a million +. 

Why shucks. Folks would be surreptitiously  pointing over at you down in the lunch room for years saying ‘See Sherista over there. She’s the one that wrote thet RD on that Korean dude that died last year. I’d hate to be her. I heard she’s trying to transfer to VR&E she’s so bummed out.’

So they pawned off the Texas Necktie party on the VHA neurologist  (again) and said ‘You’re it.’ The problem is it’s against the law in 48 states to allow the doctor to spout law or the law dogs to spout medical opinions. That thirty pieces of silver gig for stretching the truth went out with printing press.  There’s a chasm between doctors and attorneys/judges that must be observed.  Take a gander at the VA’s 42-page version of a Monty Python  I’m a neurologist and I’m okay. I work pretty hard and opine all day skit. I don’t reckon this is going to impress the VLJ.

redact 42 page VA MO

The only problem with all that ‘weight of medical evidence” is none was provided. I’m the little old lady that pulls up to the drive-in window and yells ‘Where’s the beef?”. The HLR booth bitch looked at the ceiling, disremembered my legal points, whistled past the graveyard and cranked out the RD in 30 minutes. I’d have given my eye teeth to have seen her twisting  and squirming on Zoom. I could have submitted a 4138 from Jesus Christ swearing “What he said, dude.” and it would still have crashed and burned. This thing has resume-killer writ large all over it. The only guy oblivious to all this is that wild and crazy French VA narcissistic neurologist (the undersigned).

Look up Monzingo, there’s a great quote there that reinforces Colvin precedence. Anyway, this is the first time I’ve ever cranked out 22 pages of legal brief. I actually distilled it down from 28 pages. I didn’t want to appear verbose.

redact 10182 4.22.2022

As I pointed out in the brief, this guy found absolutely nothing related to s/p encephalopathy-not so much as a numb lip. VLJ Skaltsounis had this docketed 4 days after it hit his desk. I put “Attention: VLJ MIKE” on the FAX cover sheet. I didn’t even get a chance to ask for AOD but they gave it to us anyway. Remember the old Allison Hickey “Rocket Docket” program back in 2013-14? This one appears to be one.

Thursday’s show will begin at 1900 Hrs on the East coast and thus, because of the phenomenon of global warming, 1600 Hrs out here in God’s promised land. Really. We have no skanky rattlesnakes on this side of the cascades. No black widows, no poisonous nothing except for the Brown Recluse spider and you have to hunt high and low to find one of them. Really. No hurricanes, no tornados-zip. The only problem I see is all those new citizens up here who migrated from down south. Somebody ought to teach them what yield and merge gracefully means.

The call in number is (515) 605-9764

Dial 1 to enter the questions queue.

Or you can join us on line here:

https://www.blogtalkradio.com/jbasser/12095577/connect/a72f0b5b3979b0ddcf737546ddf0e8e4a539be33

Check this one out. I bet that old boy rolled a few socks down. Would have loved to have been the Peter Pilot.

 

Posted in Exposed Veteran Radio Show | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

FROM THE DAVID KORESH MEMORIAL REGIONAL OFFICE

Posted on April 29, 2022 by asknod

Good afternoon unhappy Veteran campers. asknod here (it, they). I, of all fellers, can honestly say “I feel your pain” without having to manufacture crocodile tears like a certain 42nd President once did. I did my 28 years in the hole. We’ve hit an interesting streak of VA jurisprudence that began around say… mid-January of 2021. No political aspersions here. Just an observation. Inexplicably, the VA dice went cold. There were more deferrals for a new c&p. There were more ‘claim changed from complete to open in VBMS’ where yesterday it had said ‘Claim decision complete.’  The number and quality of the denials was, and still is, atrocious. It’s as if Homer’s monkey Mojo has been given GS-14 VA examiner privileges and turned loose with a VA Adobe 9.5 M 21-equipped cut and paste program that spews out ‘not at least as likely as not’ drivel with a direct link to Janesville.

Well, fortunately, asknod doesn’t do tinnitus and pes planus gigs so we rarely encounter a lot of that.  However, we have been getting more than our usual share of those GTFOOH denials that give you the heebyjeebies and make you wonder why you do VA law. I actually had to begin doing HLRs to fix their ratings errors sooner rather than later.

Were it me, in the setting of a big law office (which I do not have), with a JD (which I never got), I’d ask myself why in Sam Hill I wasn’t chasing real, $1.2 million dollar ambulances instead of  rickety old VA meat wagons. Of course, being an actual Veteran answers all those questions as it probably does for those who have a genuine desire to help Veterans. As we all can agree, there ain’t no money in VA law unless you hit a Lotto. There simply aren’t very many of those and if you bite into one, you can guarantee it will be a ten-year time alligator. That’s why I love them. Old CUEs? Show me. A new tranche of §3.156(c) records and a 1970 denial for everything you filed on? Come on over here and set a spell beside me and tell us all about that Bouncing Betty and how VA screwed you. Welcome to the Group W (Waiting) bench, Arlo. What took you so long to get here?  Did you take a side trip through all those Veterans Help Forums and chase down a gazillion rabbit holes?

Having been 86’d from not just one but two of the most well-read Veterans Help sites  (VBN and Hadit), I pride myself not on my litigation successes but on my dogged belief in telling the truth. Truth can be a many-splendored thing. Truth to Vet A can be a complete recital of how s/he won their claims even though no one will ever encounter the same set of circumstances. Truth to Vet B might be the frustration of asking a question and the recriminations for being a FNG and not being up on all the EED and CUE terminology. Worse, no one wants to bring you up to speed and teach you. They just want to tell you their story about how they got here. Who gives a shit? Remember the Veteran? That’s why we’re here. To help the Veteran. This isn’t about us. It’s about finding their repair order. A Veterans Help website is useless if you suppress a point of view-no matter how far-fetched it is. Worse, it’s counterproductive to hand out advice on VA claims when you have no training. Vets are going to depend on that advice and it better be spot on or you could be condemning them to another year or two in the hole. I’d feel like shit if I caused that But then I’d also probably lose my accreditation, too. A well-meaning Veteran probably never considers that aspect.

When I first set out to create a Veterans help site, my immediate urge was to create a Forum like all the others which were all the rage back in 2008. What first hit me was the “Twitter” effect. If your advice or your experience with VA was adversarial, you were not allowed to spew that observation on VBN. It was quickly erased and you were marginalized or thrown out with the baby’s bathwater if you kept it up.

Personally, I don’t have a lot of friends. Why that is doesn’t concern me. My urge, in the short time  I have left around here is to convey knowledge. I don’t have time to argue with some dolt about the semantic nuances of CUE in the setting of a truly final claim. If your claim is over a year old and buried, dang near the only way to fix it is to file a CUE. If it’s less than a year since it died, then it can be resuscitated and you keep the effective date. It might be error but it can be fixed without resorting to the arcane rules of CUE. That’s a biiiiiiiiiiiiig difference semantically and where they put the decimal point after the dollar sign. To get kicked off Hadit, I had to take that indefensible position with their resident CUE guruista. The second time was because I mentioned the unmentionable that certain doctors had skeletons in their closets. I guess it’s time to reconnoiter some new Vets sites to garner more bans.

The beauty of a blog site like this is the teaching moment and then a follow-on comments section where you can ask cogent questions without fear or recriminations. Or, I suppose, if you’re one of those Karens from one of the other sites or a unhappy TWS volunteer, you can come argue the misspelling of serve (sever). Either way, you get to talk uncensored. This ain’t a school board meeting in northern Virginia.  We don’t cut off the microphone unless you become obstreperous or resort to expletives. This is a quasi-family site. Nasty words just detract from an otherwise informative experience.  Guilt trips don’t fly. I already cornered the market on passive aggressive shit.

The last takeaway on the above subject was a comment from Cupcake. She sat down and read a representative sample of both these website forums and was struck by what  appeared to her to be the very low intelligence quotient of the moderators. The ones offering assistance in the intricacies of VA law couldn’t even choose the correct form of there, their or they’re. Thank God it takes eight keystrokes to type out ‘You know’ or we’d have to wade through that too. I don’t profess to be Mensa material but boy howdy do I know VA law. I don’t know it solely from my experiences but by thousands of you who came here with situations no one could imagine in their wildest dreams. It’s simple. VA can’t light a fart with a flame thrower let alone figure out where all that methane gas is coming from. This means your denial is more than likely illegitimate and needs to be fixed. After about 500 cases, the denials all seem to say the same thing. Fixing them just gets easier if they have a skinny play book.

In combat, you don’t want a democratic discourse amongst everyone in your Platoon on how to get your dick out of the dirt or how to flank the enemy and surround them. You want some butter bar with an ounce of situational awareness to order it. Make it so, Numbah One! You want a repair order-not a Kumbaya circle feelgood where everyone who ever suffered explosive diarrhea explains how they managed to successfully change their underwear.

I have the hardest time prying the client’s hands off the steering wheel and explaining why the windshield is far larger than the rear view mirror in the VA context. I don’t much give a rolling donut about how you got here. Seems whatever technique you were using didn’t get airborne or you wouldn’t be talking to me. It’s far easier to fix it than to spend a month reviewing the history. The time for discussing the proper effective date of claim begins when you’ve finally won.

Misty 22 is cleared in hot.

As an example, I  offer a bouquet of my recent battles so far this month. As for those trite VA phrases like “This constitutes a complete grant of all claims pending”, you have to wonder who comes up with that unicorn crap. It’s over when the asknod fat lady sings and not a moment before. It appears in this new VA unicorn world, they’ve been indulging in too much of the Devil’s lettuce. This seems to provoke a lot of denials. A new appeal (NOD 10182) arrives at the BVA every seventeen seconds Monday through Friday (except for national holidays). Think about that. The backlog for an appeal at SSA is a year. At VA, the same wait for a judge is five years. Dang good thing they hired ten more VLJs, huh? Farsightedness at the VA is a much sought out trait in the hierarchy.

Here’s a daisy. Jimbo (not his name) really wanted me to take this on after I got him R1 back in January. Looked like it had some mustard  on it so I did the dumpster dive into the c file evidence and grabbed a good Independent Medical Opinion. Personally, I never had a doubt it wouldn’t be a chicken dinner winner. The question was more a when than an if. File this one under §3.816(b)(1)(i). It’s also one of those cases where a Vet didn’t take his eyes off the rear view mirror. That’s okay. You just have to win the big banana first before you go on safari and hunt down the one that got away.

Redact Parkinsons EED to 2002

Here’s one that I began in 2017. Johnny Vet couldn’t get any traction on his Thailand AO claim. I tore it down and rebuilt it with my cookie recipe and we finally got the booth bitch at the David Koresh Memorial VARO in Whacko Texas to concede he really did get herbicide all over him. It happened while burning the classified mission papers on or near the perimeter fence from their daily 7th ABCCC missions over the Plain of Jars. Funny thing is I was down below him back in that summer of 1970 at about 200 ASL on frequency (118.9) calling in requests to him for air support for troops in contact. In fact, their call sign was well know to us- Cricket.

Johnny died of DM II complications back in April 2020 and I had a new mission to make sure they didn’t shortchange his widow. Well, sure as the sun rises, they did. Screwed him out of SMC S from fall 2016 to his passing in 2020. I couldn’t get the BVA jelly brain to grant what was due so we had to take that one up to the Court. Denis the Menace and the OGC choir folded during the Rule 33 conference and it’s finally back at Whacko Texas for the fat lady’s final act of contrition. I reckon I’ll look into A&A for this widow because she’s getting on in years. It’s only another $286 a month but what the hey? I’d do anything to irritate those pukes in Waco. They’re some kind of speshull stupid in my book. Maybe I ought to buy the DRO a one-year subscription to the The Flat Earth Society Magazine.

Redact SMC S to 2016

Life is good. I tested positive for Corona this morning. What’s amazing is it only felt like a cold all this last week. But then I don’t have IHD, DM II or weigh 458 pounds. I’ll survive. Too bad it isn’t like Chickenpox and you never get it again.

P.S.

Posted in Agent Orange, All about Veterans, BvA Decisions, Nexus Information, R1/R2, SMC, Tips and Tricks, VA Agents, Veterans Law | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

PSA– BEWARE THE VA GREMLINS

Posted on April 21, 2022 by asknod

Holy Mackerel. I guess I don’t have to worry about getting sued by all these scam outfits stealing you Veterans’ money. I reckon I don’t have to go down the list and identify every last one of them either. Below is a link to the Military Times article that came in on the NOVA news feed this AM. We’ve been begging the VA to go after them for years. Apparently, someone just noticed. Amazing, huh? Nothing gets by these folks for long. This one happened in slightly less than 2 years. I’m impressed. 

https://www.militarytimes.com/opinion/commentary/2022/04/19/how-we-can-protect-americas-veterans-from-predatory-benefits-claims-practices/?utm_source=sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mil-ebb

Posted in All about Veterans, Public Service Announcements, VA Agents, Veterans Law | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments