I have hesitated for a few weeks
now as to whether or not to start
this chat category as the information
we have been getting has been
inconsistent and all over the place
to really lock in a radar-read
on what exactly is going on.

For this kickoff chat, I'll say
that Senator Daniel Akaka has
some good qualities about him,
and I don't doubt that in one
way or another, deep down he
is interested in the entire arena
of Veterans issues.

He is a completely different personality
from the other Committee players, and
I will recap those for you now as
a reminder, and to get you into
mental-vision shape so that you
can follow the powers at hand
at both of these Vet Committees
in Congress.

Both the House and Senate Veterans
Affairs Committees each have
Chairman in the ranking majority
political party --- for now, those
are Democrats. Senator Daniel Akaka
is from Hawaii and he is the Chairman
of the Senate Veterans Committee.
Congressman Bob Filner is from
California and he is the Chairman
of the House Veterans Committee.
Then each committee also has a
Minority Leader, in this case
Republican.

On the Senate side under Chairman
Akaka, that is Senator Richard Burr.
On the House side, that is
Congressman Steve Buyer, who also
happens to be the former Chairman
when the Republicans were the
majority party.

Senator Akaka is his own man with
his own personality. He is in all
ways a good guy and he always
attends his roster of public
hearings which come up on calander.

After that I take the gloves off
because it is here where I have
to start kicking in as the Activist
warrior to get these chat entries
done.

Senator Akaka has come into this
2008 legislative session like a
tornado on Veterans issues. Almost
every day my email box is peppered
with the here, there, and everywhere
of Daniel Akaka. Not all of it is
bad, some of it we do like and I'll
always say so in the other Post
categories here at VFJ's Forum.

But there reaches a point where
some people become so overly zealous
in the pursuit of headlines and
releases and how they look in the
press, that all of this random
energy without direction eventually
becomes their own undoing.

We are teetering at the crossroads
of Akaka undoing himself as the
elected guy who cares for Veterans.

The legislation and resolutions
that have been firing out of
Akaka's official circles have
at times, been without priority,
without focus, without rationalization,
and without even a measureable
outcome that would actually benefit
Veterans in any kind of a way.

Take for example all of the effort
he put into getting a funding
limit expanded and raised to higher
dollar amounts for home mortgages
for Veterans, when the existing
limit was fixed a little over
$400,000 at nearly half a million
dollars. It's all fine well and good
that this got raised in synchronization
with all other home mortgage market
thresholds in the face of the
national housing crisis caused
by fraud cases and incompetent lenders.

But we DO have a VA backlog crisis
going on at the very same moment
holding well over half a million
Veterans unnecessarily in poverty
that they do NOT deserve nor is it
of their own making. So it becomes
a rational question of priorities
here whether Akaka was just pandering
to the smallest of our population
who can actually AFFORD to pay
a half million dollar mortgage on
a house for the simple sake of
appealing to his own future campaign
contributors.

How many Veterans do YOU know, exactly,
who can go out today and plunk
down for a half million dollar mortgage
on a house, with or without government
assistance ??? Ya see, this is a red
flag and it's out of whack with all
the rest that is going on in our
population.

With all the touting and gloating and
Hoo-Hah over the Dole-Shalala Commission
which was assigned to cure and fix
the ills of the Walter Reed Army
Hospital, that may now also be
showing itself as an all out failure
in the name of pushing political
parties in our faces. As duly shown
by the video crisis of barracks
conditions at Fort Bragg, we seem
to be one step forward, and two
steps backward.

Dole-Shalala FAILED to set a national
policy whereby military building
conditions, across the board, would
face immediate closure or be placed
out of service and closed off if
they were to deteriorate to an
unacceptable condition. And this
ball-dropping of sorts at Dole-Shalala,
is symbolic of a much larger problem
that we are clubbed over the heads
with as Vet Activists at both of
the Committees.

These Committees, regardless of
who runs them, time and time again
without missing a beat, are really
caught up in legislating Veterans
or issues on a one-at-a-time basis.
By that I mean, instead of imposing
broad and sweeping standards on
military and VA buildings and setting
up the legal test of what would
force a closing or temporary out of
service condition either for a
hospital or a barracks building,
they chose to just and only focus
on the ONE building of Walter Reed.
Then after that, let's all stand
around and wait for the next disaster
to hit us over the heads and we
can all run for cover when that
earthquake hits!!

This is a mindset of DUMB that really
has to stop inside of our Vet arena.

Managing the VA backlog by tweeking
and manipulating ONE single Vet
case at a time, is no solution at
all. It has to be a sweeping emergency
intervention policy which scoops
up everybody who is caught up in it,
and provides one, fair, equitable
solution to everybody who has
been wronged by the ensuing crap
of the VA.

One building at a time, one Vet
case at a time, one disease category
at a time, --- can you start to see
the trend here?? We cannot seem
to get them to jump off this train
of one-at-a-time and to start
legislating systemmically for the
whole and the entire population.

Get it ??

Senator Daniel Akaka is walking
down an icey slope on this one
and if he doesn't make a change
of course soon, then we can all
expect to see a few more years
of Do-Nothing, and Failed-Results,
and More-Of-The-Same nonsense
to nowhere that we have all been
caught up in up until now.

With hundreds upon thousands of
Edgewood and Fort McClellan Veterans
not yet notified about their service
in a contamination zone, I am not
really sure that Fillipino Veterans
from World War II who do not live
in this country, are absolutely the
most valid priority population to
be hitting our federal VA agency
budgets. There is good reason to
question the sanity of some of the
things we are seeing out of Akaka's
office right at the very same time
when we KNOW what he DOES have
on his desk.

To that end, this is the introductory
chat entry to kick off the tear-down
of Akaka and the sorting out of what
it is, exactly he is really trying to
do to us.