If you have been anywhere at all
on the Internet for the duration
of this current congressional
session, then at some point
and time you have seen the
controversy going on over the
new Veterans Attorney Law
H.R. 4914. There is an
alleged corresponding Amendment
to the Military Construction Act
pending S. 2694, although
I have done searches at least 3
different times at the Senate
website and have not been able
to locate the official language
of the Amendment.

H.R. 4914 has been retrieved,
however, and this Blog is about
what I have come to know about
this statute.

First, the gist of the law itself
is to Amend the USCA which currently
blocks Veterans from hiring licensed
lawyers from representing them
at the lower, VARO and BVA levels
of the Comp & Pen disability
processing. The Bill reverses that
and simply states that Veterans
shall be allowed to "hire" lawyers
upon passage of the new law.

This idea was never legal to begin
with, [to subject medical patients
to a legal proceding while depriving
them any access to licensed lawyers]
but it was rubber-stamped into place
by the VSO's without the general
knowledge of the Veterans constituency
at large. It was snuck in through
the Ole Boy back door thanks to
DAV, VFW, and American Legion being
asleep at the wheel.

The new correction to that
faux-pah has been to simply
reverse the illegal language
and say: "OK, now you can hire
attorney and we will let you do that."
Geez, what a guy -- don't ya think?

On the surface it would seem that
this would be the grand fix to
the problem, but I am here to
testify today that No, it isn't.
The study of these Bill's as
they come whizzing past our computer
screens are not always what they
seem to be, and Congress is NOT
always on the up and up.

The idea of "allowing" Veterans
to HIRE licensed
lawyers for their VA cases has
been around since 2004. It seems
that a woman Senator started the
idea sometime ago apparently to
drum up business for her lawyer
election campaign contributors. A
friend of a friend then made its way
into the House Veterans Affairs
Committee, and What-do-ya-know?
here comes the new Veterans
Lawyer law. So for anyone
at the House or Senate to suggest
that somehow they did this in
a spurt of patriotism and flattery
to our Veterans, is just plain
WRONG !! It isn't true.

I have had many good debates with
my other peers and colleagues who
also advance causes into Washington
as I do, and although I cannot
agree with their first take
reactions to the new Veterans
Attorney Law, I can only say that
yes, I do understand where they
are coming from and if this new
Amendment law was not so very
important to the future of
Veterans cases, then I would not
even quibble about it. I would let
it go and let them reap the horrors and
burdens which deceptively lie
under the surface of this
ill-concieved Bill and just
never mind about the controversy.

I quibble because I see the
red flags at every turn about
what is to come of us in this
arena if this Bill goes through
without any emergency revision.

Although many Advocates do, for
sure, care about the issue of
Veterans getting lawyer-relief
SOON from Congress for Comp &
Pen claims, their ability to
analyze, scrutinize, and predict
unintended outcomes also leaves
something to be desired, and it
is here that I bring this insight
offering to you today to close
the concept gaps once and for
all about the truth of H.R. 4914,
and to speak on what really needs
to happen before our national
constituency can get behind it with a
GREEN LIGHT !!

Here are some things for you
to consider:

1. Poor and low income Veterans
should NOT be forced to pay full
fees to licensed lawyers especially
if they are hospitalized patients.

We are currently under seige by
a full blown national Lawyer
boycott right now. Lawyers do
not accept our Vet cases. We
are the only disabled and medical
patient population in the country
who is wholly locked out of
free, pro bono lawyer services
for our Comp & Pen claims.

It is our position that the
national Legal Aid Society
and the mountains of Lawyer
Bar Associations, are operating
an illegal BOYCOTT against us
and we want this Boycott brought
to a decisive end. H.R. 4914 does
NOT do that.

We are entitled to free lawyers
by reason of our patient statusing
at the time that we file our
Comp & Pen claims, and we want
any new Veterans Attorney Bill
to mandate the lawyers to bring
a full end to their illegal boycott.
They are to accept our cases, they
are to accept and cooperate with
pro bono mandates, and they are
to aid and support the national
Legal Aid Society system and
we want nothing less than this
in the new Lawyer Bill.

2. Veterans whose cases have been
illegally falsified due to the
criminal intentions of VARO's, or
the illiteracy of misreading papers
by VARO's, or the too-many-adjudicators
handling a case VARO's should
NOT be forced to pay full fees
to Lawyers just to bail out
their cases from the misconduct
of VA employees.

Legitimate Vet claims are being
denied by the day by reason
of the case falsifications and
identity theft attempts made
by the VARO employee's themselves.
The layers upon layers of
rewriting a Veterans very service
record and identity is one of
the biggest perpetrations of
torture that is put upon older
Veterans cases today. This new
Bill does not fix this crisis.

The relentless abuse of the
so-called ".....new and material
evidence rule...." which
blocks and keeps out the Veterans
Army Hospital Records evidence which
proves beyond a shadow of a
doubt that the Veteran is a true
service-connected case, is at
no time remedied or accountable
to Justice anywhere in the VA
system. Law enforcement is completely
suspended at the VA, and there is
no "judicial misconduct" statute
for Veterans to file under at
the VARO or BVA levels. In short,
the Veteran is held "liable" for not
only his or her own mistakes in a
VA case, but is also held liable
for all mistakes, misconduct, and
malpractice which is made by VA
employees in the processing
of a case. We want this fixed
and addressed in the final language
of H.R. 4914 before any of us
will get behind it.

Why should any sick Veteran have
to pay full lawyer fees, upwards of
thousands upon thousands of
dollars, to a case that was
bungled or deliberately falsified
for some 20 years at the hands
of low I.Q. idiots working for VARO??
The Veteran has already paid
a high enough price with his
or her lifetime in poverty
and deprivation --- let's give
every single nickel and cent
that is owed to the Veteran
and not to some lawyer who
is already wealthy and driving
a Lexis.

3. The VA absolutely cannot
be held in comparison to the
Social Security system with lawyer
fees coming out of Veterans
after they receive their lump
sum awards. The 2 agencies are
not set up the same, and the
VA is a full blown ADVERSARIAL
court litigation process whereas
the Social Security is NOT !!

The Social Security Administration
benefits system is not an "adversarial stacked deck" the way that
the VA is and Know-Nothings who
don't know how to evaluate
a legal structure and analyze
the flow of what's wrong at
the VA will incredibly fail on
their arguments when trying to
do this misapplied kind of
comparison between the VA and
Social Security.

Let me just say, for those of
you who don't know, those lawyers
who work on the OPPOSITION side
FOR the VA in Veterans claims,
i.e. the Office of General Counsel,
also and eventually becomes
promoted and appointed to sit
as judges either at the Board
of Veterans Appeals or the Court
of Veterans Appeals.

Yes, that's right --- it's one
big continuous circle of the
same people over and over again
just wearing a new hat today
from what they were wearing
yesterday. If you don't keep
your eye on this, and how it
applies to H.R. 4914, then you
will be flirting with certain
DOOM!! if this Bill goes
through without any revisions to it.
The people who are adjudicating
the Veterans cases, do have a
vested interested in hiding, and
concealing the truth about
any case because all they are
doing there is playing musical
chairs.

The system is RIGGED and not
in your Vet-favor. The VSO's are
partly the blame in this for
rubber-stamping everything
into place without rationally
scrutinizing the 1980's
development of the Court
of Veterans Appeals and to
screen for any unintended
consequences which may have
ensued [which now forms the
chamber of horrors that
we are all now seeing inside
this VA system]. This is
why we no longer blindly
approve every single law
that Congress puts in our
faces now. We have left the
VSO's behind for the bungling
circus's that they are.

Anybody who tries to peddle
the idea that there is some
kind of "likeness" between
the VA Comp & Pen system
and the Social Security disability
is your cue to run for the
hills because that person
for sure does NOT know what
they are talking about.
Talk about yer red flags!!


When you enter the VA legal
arena for Comp & Pen claims,
you are entering an adversarial
scenario that is equal to
a District Attorney's proceding
in criminal law, where they
can say anything they want,
falsify any evidence that they
want, hide any papers that they
want, and then frame YOU the
victim as the blame in the end.
There is no comparison whatsoever
between the Social Security
law scheme and the VA Comp & Pen.
Advocates who try to make
this a likeness, literally don't
know what they are talking about.

4. Only middle to high income
Veterans should be subjected
to the full "hiring" mandates
for lawyer fees by H.R. 4914. Without
this express limitation, we want no
part of it and will not endorse
the Bill.

If you are a NEW Vet case only
a few months or years out from
your discharge, and your papers are
lined up like ducks in a row, and there
are no gray areas requiring
elaborate interpretations on
your medicals, then you can
survive paying full lawyer
fees for your Comp & Pen case
because the labor hours which
are racked up to push it through
the VA system will NOT be all
that staggering. New cases into
the Vet system can survive paying
full lawyer fees or a lump sum
percentage from their backpay.

In sharp contrast, however, if
you are an old Veteran case spanning
some 25 years in the system,
paying a lawyer full hourly
and retainer fees can run up
to be thousands of dollars just
for the lawyer to read the
Veterans several boxes of his
or her C-File. When thousands are
racked up in debt and the only
thing that has been done so
far is the reading of the C-File,
you can start to see why this
is NOT such a sweet deal for older
Vet cases who have been trapped
in the system for an eternity.

This is the HUGE difference between
unintended outcomes from various
kinds of Vet cases which are hopelessly
trapped inside of the VA system and
those who are new and just entering it.

We have insisted that the
House absolutely make full
and complete language Amendments
to H.R. 4914, once and for all,
to make these all-important
CLASS distinctions in how the
full lawyer fees will play out
against different kinds of
Vet cases.

AS YOU CAN SEE, THERE REALLY
ARE SOME ISSUES HERE TO SERIOUSLY
CONTEMPLATE BEFORE ANY OF US GIVES
THE FULL GREEN LIGHT TO THIS NEW
VETERANS ATTORNEY BILL H.R. 4914.
And where else will you find the
kind of blunt sorting out on crucial
matters effecting our lives but
here at Vets For Justice ??

You can go to the House website:
http://www.House.gov and click
on the FIND A BILL section of
the Home Page there and load in
the Bill ID number "H.R. 4914"
and the full language of the
new Veterans Lawyer Law will
come up for your inspection.

This is a deceptive, Trojan-Horse
Bill by it's current language
as you will see for yourself, and
there are many of us out here who
are out to force the revisions
which are necessary to make H.R. 4914
a full pro-lawyer Bill that it should
be. It is currently a "pro-lawyer" Bill,
and not a "pro-Veteran" Bill the way
that the Know-Nothings are all
touting it on the Internet.

My group under the Fort McClellan
Veterans have already submitted
a proposed Amendment to the
original Bill which is to
insert other language, once
and for all, to mandate that
the national Legal Aid Society
system reverse it's lockout
of Veterans around the country
and to begin accepting cases
from us for free pro bono
representation by them.

We have also inserted changes
to say that the VA would
pay annual Block Grants to the
national Legal Aid Society system
to federally subsidize the lawyer
fees for low income, poor, and
hospitalized Veterans who receive
representation from the national
Legal Aid Society.

We have studied this matter up
and down the system, and do believe
that the full release of the
national Legal Aid Society system
for Veterans earning an accumulated
yearly income of up to $18,000 per
year IS a significant part of the
permanent solution to Veterans
and we are going to hold our ground
on it to the very end on this
flawed Bill.

We have said to the House that
we will not accept any Veterans
Lawyer Bill which does not specifically
give free relief to the poor,
and some kind of non-payment
relief to Veterans cases who
are deliberately sabotaged by
the VARO employees and are NOT
really denied because the Veteran
has failed to make his or her cases.

We know for sure, that this
population of wrong denials
is large in our community so
Why Oh Why would anyone want
to force a sick and injured
Veteran to pay $40,000 out
of a 30-year backlogged settlement
of $200,000 (which the Veteran
was "tortured" to live a life
without access to,) only to have
it determined in the end that
the FAULT of the whole delay
was the VA employees and their
own bungling ?? There is nothing
lawful or "helpful" to Veterans
with this kind of outcome.

Let the VA pay for those cases
and NOT the Veterans.

This is one of those Bill's
where you all absolutely have
to keep your eye on the BALL
because like a skunk in the
night, it's ready to back up
and spray you with something
less than cologne if you don't
get out of its way.

NO to H.R. 4914 until they
add in these all-important
revisions !!

This is not a valid excuse to
not use licensed lawyers at all.

The distinction is that shady
lawyers are reportable and
accountable to the Bar Associations
which they are licensed under.

The VSO's and ESPECIALLY the
County Offices, are not accountable
to anyone or anything. They can
bungle, malpractice, and sabotage
Vet cases --- and DO ---- until
hell freezes over and nobody
can or does control them.

So your argument is a bit of
a disservice to the effort
which is underway to steer
this Vet system into correction
with highly qualified people
handling the cases, instead
of unqualified types, and
even worse --- OTHER veterans.

On July 19, 2006 the U.S. House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, Subcommittee on Disability Assistance and Memorial Affairs held a hearing titled “Oversight Hearing on the Role of National, State, and County Veterans’ Service Officers in Claims Development. Here is link to the portion of audio recording the house put on the internet http://veterans.house.gov/hearings/schedule109/jul06/7-19-06/7-19-06.wma . There are also hyperlinks to the “prepared testimony” of many of the witnesses that testified at that hearing, just below their names at http://veterans.house.gov/hearings/schedule109/jul06/7-19-06/witness.html .



At that hearing the President of the National Association of County Veterans’ Service Office and Congresswomen Berkley (from Nevada) discussed the situation that exists in Nebraska between one County Veterans’ Service Officer and one particular law firm. That discussion is included in the audio recording at http://veterans.house.gov/hearings/schedule109/jul06/7-19-06/7-19-06.wma (about halfway through the recording).



I’ve “cut and paste” (below) the “Witness List” of those that testified yesterday, and below that is an Air Force Times article (from yesterday) titled “Vets’ service organizations weed out seedy lawyers” (reporting on that hearing) http://www.airforcetimes.com/print.php?f=1-292925-1964708.php




WITNESS LIST

HOUSE COMMITTEE ON VETERANS’ AFFAIRS
SUBCOMMITTEE ON DISABILITY ASSISTANCE AND MEMORIAL AFFAIRS

Oversight Hearing on the Role of National, State, and County Veterans’ Service Officers in Claims Development

Wednesday, July 19, 2006, 1:00 p.m.
334 Cannon House Office Building

Panel 1

Col. Warren R. “Rocky” McPherson, USMC (Ret.)
Executive Director
Florida Department of Veterans’ Affairs
(Prepared Testimony | PDF)

Mr. Tim Tetz
Executive Director
Nevada Office of Veterans Services
(PDF)

Ms. Ann Knowles
President
National Association of County
Veterans Service Officers
(Prepared Testimony | PDF)

Mr. Joseph Violante
National Legislative Director
Disabled American Veterans
(Prepared Testimony | PDF)

Mr. Blake Ortner
Associate Legislative Director
Paralyzed Veterans of America
(Prepared Testimony | PDF)

Panel 2

Mr. Jack McCoy
Associate Deputy Under Secretary for Policy and Program Management
Veterans Benefits Administration
(Prepared Testimony | PDF)

Accompanied by

Mr. Steve Simmons
Deputy Director
Compensation and Pension Service

Statements Submitted for the Record

Mr. James Doran
National Service Director
AMVETS
(Prepared Testimony | PDF)

Mr. Dennis Cullinan
Director, National Legislative Service
Veterans of Foreign Wars
(PDF)

Mr. George Basher
Director
State of New York Division of Veterans’ Affairs

http://www.airforcetimes.com/print.php?f=1-292925-1964708.php

July 19, 2006

Vets’ service organizations weed out seedy lawyers

By Gayle S. Putrich
Staff writer, Air Force Times

Veterans’ service organizations need help hunting down and steering veterans away from shady lawyers, said the directors of several of those organizations at a hearing on Capitol Hill on Wednesday.

House lawmakers expressed concern about reports that a county veterans service officer has referred veterans to a local attorney when they needed help getting benefits from the Department of Veteran’s Affairs. The attorney agrees to help the veterans at no charge, said Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., but in cases where a veteran’s claim is successful for at least 20 percent of retroactive benefits, the lawyer then solicits “gifts” as compensation.

“While I believe that veterans who choose to hire an attorney should be able to do so, I believe that this choice should be made openly and honestly, with no pressure to give ‘gifts’ to the attorney or other representative,” said Berkley, the ranking Democrat on the House Veterans’ Affairs subcommittee for disability assistance and memorial affairs.

Though such practices may be isolated regional incidents, representatives from AMVETS, Disabled American Veterans, Paralyzed Veterans of America and other groups said they were completely unacceptable and said they need help keeping veterans safe from dishonest benefits lawyers.

Ann Knowles, president of the National Association of County Veterans Service Officers, said her organization had heard of lawyers asking for gifts or donations after winning a supposedly pro bono case and that they were able to “squash” such activities on a case-by-case basis. But Knowles said the growing trend of harassment of veterans has to be fought on a larger scale.

“We cannot handle this on our own,” Knowles said. “This has to be handled on the national level.”

Under the current appeals system, about 85 percent of veterans choose to be represented by veterans’ service organizations or state veterans’ agency personnel. Veterans are not permitted to hire counsel until they have exhausted their administrative options within VA — a process that can take years.

In the Senate, Republicans Larry Craig of Idaho and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina have a bill in play that would allow veterans to hire their own lawyers at any time to represent them in benefits disputes with the VA. The VA opposes the legislation, saying it would increase costs to veterans without necessarily improving the process