Does THIS look to all of you as if
the VA Secretary "is an advocate for
veterans" the way they always say he
is when first coming in to take office????

It's a lie.

What each one of them does is sit back
in their sorry offices and wait around
for death, murder, or headline news
to take place and then "react" to all
the death and murder after it reaches
headline news status.

Just how in the HELL exactly, is THIS
being an "advocate for veterans", I would
love to know???????

The VA must be taken over by a competent,
medical practitioner who has previously
held national federal agency experience,
end of story.

Useless, dumb and lazy "veterans" coming
in from the Dept. of Defense are doing
nothing at all for this system and
are instead, using the same exact
Slacker "playbook" that all the other
ones have used in days past.

It doesn't work, it will never work,
so we need to OPPOSE these assholes
when they come up for Senate confirmation.

Send your Oppositions to www.Senate.gov
and select the Veterans Affairs Committee
and tell them you want somebody with
a BRAIN and a proven HISTORY of turning
troubled agencies around from crisis.

On that note, I give to you todays newest
headlines involving war widows. Like
the VA doesn't know that war widows
by law are supposed to get paid !!!



Dec 13, 4:12 PM EST


AP Newsbreak: War vet widows wrongly denied help

By HOPE YEN
Associated Press Writer


WASHINGTON (AP) -- Widows of war veterans have been wrongfully denied up to millions of dollars in government benefits over the past 12 years due to computer glitches that often resulted in money being seized from the elderly survivors' bank accounts.

The Veterans Affairs Department said Saturday it wasn't fully aware of the problem. It pledged to work quickly to give back the pension and disability checks - ranging from $100 to more than $2,500 - that hundreds of thousands of widows should have received during the month of their spouse's death.

"This problem must be fixed," said VA Secretary James Peake. The department indicated in an "action plan" provided to The Associated Press that up to millions of dollars in back payments could be given to widows sometime after next February, once it can identify them.

To expedite matters, the VA said widows who believe they were wrongfully denied payments can call its help line at 1-800-827-1000.

Congress passed a law in 1996 giving veterans' spouses the right to keep their partners' final month of benefits. It instructed the VA to make changes as needed to comply with the law, which took effect for spouses of veterans who died after Dec. 31, 1996.

But the VA never updated its automated computer systems, which send out checks and notification letters. As a result, widows were either denied the final month of payment or asked to send the checks back. In many cases, if the checks were already deposited or spent, the U.S. Treasury moved to seize the money directly from the widow's account.

Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, who chairs the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, confronted Peake about the problem in a letter last week after receiving a complaint from a widow. In response, Peake instructed the Veterans Benefits Administration to update its systems as quickly as possible to prevent future denials of benefits.

"This flawed practice has caused serious hardship for many widows," Akaka said Saturday. "Now that this problem has been brought to light, I trust that surviving spouses will receive the benefits they are due."

The VA has yet to identify the exact number of widows affected, but acknowledged Saturday it could be "sizable." Akaka's committee estimates that 50,000 widows each year since 1996 could be affected, based on VA numbers indicating more than 100,000 veterans die each year - some of whom may have been single or divorced - while receiving VA benefits.

Out of that 50,000, some widows might have received the payments they were due if they called the VA at the time to inquire about their rights.

The disclosure comes as the VA is scrambling to upgrade government technology systems before new legislation providing for millions of dollars in new GI education benefits takes effect next August. Thousands of veterans currently also endure six-month waits for disability benefits, despite promises by Peake and his predecessor, Jim Nicholson, to reduce delays.

President-elect Barack Obama has pledged to "fix the benefits bureaucracy" at the VA. Last week, he named Retired Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, a former Army chief of staff, to be the next VA secretary.

---

__________________________________________
END of Associated Press Release

You can't issue a check to a dead person. Anyone ever try cashing their spouses check? Can't do it. VA payments are not for couples or families, they are for the veteran or beneficiary only. Even dependency alotments are paid to the veteran, for the veteran to do with as they wish. The widow can neither legally cash the check, nor was it issued to her. The government has no choice but to cancel the check or retract the payment.

The "month of death"check is not an automatic grant, so widows are not by law supposed to get paid. DIC is not automatically issued, nor is the Death Pension. These benefits must be applied for, like any other VA benefit. I strongly suggest some people read the title of the VA 21-534 form. First page, right after part B, "any money the VA owes the veteran but did not pay prior to his/her death (accrued benefits.)"

Furthermore, the CFR states this: "A payment issued to a deceased veteran as compensation or pension for the month in which death occurred shall be treated as payable to that veteran’s surviving spouse, _if_ the surviving spouse is not entitled to death compensation, dependency and indemnity compensation or death pension for that month..."

So really, not all widows are entitled to receive this, just those who aren't qualified for DIC or Death Pension -- thus the need to file a VA 21-534.

I think we can all agree the claims process is overly slow, overly cumbersome, and overly frustrating -- but it's a stretch for the AP to say "Widows were wrongly denied benefits." Of course, how do you explain a beaurocracy to an 85 year old woman who just lost her husband of 54 years and saw a 65% decrease in their income right after paying out $10,000 in burial expenses?

VA makes no payment out of their budget it all comes from DOD and the National treasure. VA is a front man or fall guy for DOD.When DOD need Va to play stupid they do a great job of it. Everybody with in the VA system are getting cheated only smart one read M-21 and the title 38 and quote what they find back at them.