What Stolen Valor costs
I commend Combat CAsh for his post earlier and agree that the case, at least from a veteran standpoint has never been put into words so well here. But what sticks in my craw about the Stolen Valor thing is that the government won’t even go after the criminals who are costing us money while they go about the business of slashing legitimate veterans benefits. For one example, something I’ve written about before is the benefits that the DVA is paying to bogus POWs which is so easily remedied from The Strategy Page;
There are only 661 officially recognized U.S. POWs from the Vietnam period. About 500 of those are alive, but when questioned, VA found that they were paying disability payments to nearly a thousand “Vietnam POWs.” It got worse after the 1991 Gulf War. There were 21 officially recognized POWs during that conflict, but the VA found it was paying disability to 286 Gulf War POWs. For years, the VA claimed that they checked out the records before recognizing all these phony POW vets. Apparently there were not a lot of people at the VA who knew how to count.
Once recognized as a POW by the VA, you have several financial benefits (like not having to make copayments for medical services). Thus the fake POWs are also guilty of stealing money from the government. Veterans groups believe the VA resisted dealing with this obvious fraud because of unwillingness to deal with the resulting bad publicity.
Our man in Congress who has investigated his own State estimates that each phony POW costs the state and federal government $36,000/year in benefits.
As I’ve said in the past, the Department of Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office maintains an online datebase of every veteran who has ever been recognized by them as a POW, and the easiest thing in the world is for the Department of Veterans Affairs to do is check their list of the people they’re paying benefits to the very complete list that DoD has compiled, but the DVA won’t do it. I’ve even volunteered to do it for them, to no results.
We all know that Joseph Cryer, the Chippendale SEAL, (links here, here and here) is a phony and he’s collecting $2000/month for his totally phony mission into Libya in 1986. I’ve contacted the DVA OIG no less than three times on him, and still there’s no action and he continues to collect his benefit – which will never be recovered, even if he strips 24-hours-a-day up there in Ocean City.
So tell me that the government’s blind eye doesn’t hurt veterans and makes us all look like lying leeches.
Category: Phony soldiers, Veterans' Affairs Department
We’re getting to the point in drawing down from Iraq and Afghanistan where more and more vets (albeit only about 10 percent of VA caseload at this point) are competing for fewer and fewer resources.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/budget/fy2012/assets/hist.pdf
Consider this: In FY 1993, the VA budget (under “Veterans Benefits and Services) was $35.642 Billion. In FY 2001, it was $44.974 Billion, including two years of actual dollar reductions (1996 and 2001) for an increase of 2.95 percent per year. In FY 2009, it was $95.429 Billion, an increase of 9.9 percent per year over eight years.
But remember, Bush was cutting vets off at the knees and abandoning them, or so we’re told.
To be fair, Vet Benefits and Services is up to $125 Billion in FY2012–but AFTER a reduction from $141B last year.
Think that doesn’t hurt? We’re now getting into the bow wave of Vietnam veterans retiring–few if any of these folks are on the low side of 60, with most in their late-60’s/early-70’s, and the medical bills for them are increasing rapidly.
Yet we have guys like Sealy McFuckstick, who the feds STILL can’t be bothered to round up and charge with fraud, scarfing up resources that could and SHOULD be going to legit vets.
Gee, can ya tell I’m a little pissed?
There IT is!
I did enjoy(?) the post by Combat CAsh. Probably should have been done in all caps?
BUT… There is simply NO excuse for this travesty!
Attaboy Jonn, now you’ve (once again) defined the problem, point me at a solution?
Zero–I’ll jump into this one again. When bad behavior goes unpunished, it begets further bad behavior. If some of these poseurs got dickstomped a few times in a very painful and public manner, it might cause lesser fucktards to reconsider their bad behavior.
YMMV.
NHSparky #3: I agree the problem is systemic. I don’t get out much so the individual stomping won’t work. The NSO’s appear practically silent on this issue, maybe justifiably so in context. Still I don’t recollect any of them investing much???
I’m thinking we need a GoE type event although in an election year I dunno?
BTW: email me please ponsdorf(at)gmail.com.
Write them again, and send a copy to your congresscritter. Tell them that given they have blown you off repeatedly, that a copy of all other correspondence will also be going to the congresscritter. Indicate that you will be attempting to show a pattern of intentional misconduct in that that particular VA rep and their office have been informed of a crime and chose not to do anything about the crime in question, making them accomplices to a felony. They will then promptly get off their asses and do something about this to save their own asses. Congrints scare bureaucrats something fierce.
@3 NHSparky, in an abstract way maybe it’s the VA employees that might need a good dickstomp. As a government employee, if something were brought to my attention and I didn’t act, I’d be in the Director’s office explaining why.
^^^That. How are they not getting smoked in place?
IMO, the problem is that you’re threatening the metric by which VA managers get “graded”.
I’m pretty sure VA managers are evaluated on the basis of efficient use of resources. That translates into how many “vets” they provide service within available budget. Getting rid of frauds would reduce that number.
So as I see it, there is a built-in bias towards accepting people who claim to be “vets” at face value as it increases the number of persons eligible to receive service, and thus helps justify the VA’s existence. (Whether the VA claims process actually works as designed or well is a different issue.) Checking eligibility in detail would also add to claim approval time, and the VA gets heat for that already. In contrast, there’s little or no incentive to identify and remove frauds. In fact, there’s some incentive not to, as this would reduce the number of “vets” receiving service.
Just my thoughts. I don’t work for the VA.
USMC Steve: I think you’re onto something, fella. How about it, Jonn?