Thread: Obama Regime Punish Vets: Closes Regional Veterans Affairs Offices, Delays Benefits

Obama Regime Continues To Use Shutdown To Punish Vets: Closes Regional Veterans Affairs Offices, Delays Benefits

Posted on 8 October, 2013 by Amy


via weasel zippers

Regional offices run by the Department of Veterans Affairs closed Tuesday as furloughs began for 7,000 employees of the agency’s Benefits Administration.
“All public access to VBA regional offices and facilities will be suspended … due to a lack of funds,” Veterans Affairs Department spokeswoman Victoria Dillon said in a statement provided to The Hill.
The government shutdown, in its eighth day, has caused agencies to send government workers home who are deemed “non-essential.”
FEMA, for example, called some of its furloughed employees back to work to track Tropical Storm Karen, but they were then re-furloughed Monday.
No one will be answering phones at regional veterans offices, which veterans call to check on the status of their disability benefits.
Consequently, many veterans’ benefits will be delayed. VA’s ability to reduce the claims backlog, Dillon says, is hampered without claims processors who work overtime. Overtime was eliminated when the shutdown began.

http://gopthedailydose.com/2013/10/0...lays-benefits/

Obama Regime Continues To Use Shutdown To Punish Vets: Closes Regional Veterans Affairs Offices, Delays Benefits…



F*cking disgrace.

Via The Hill:

Regional offices run by the Department of Veterans Affairs closed Tuesday as furloughs began for 7,000 employees of the agency’s Benefits Administration.

“All public access to VBA regional offices and facilities will be suspended … due to a lack of funds,” Veterans Affairs Department spokeswoman Victoria Dillon said in a statement provided to The Hill.

The government shutdown, in its eighth day, has caused agencies to send government workers home who are deemed “non-essential.”

FEMA, for example, called some of its furloughed employees back to work to track Tropical Storm Karen, but they were then re-furloughed Monday.

No one will be answering phones at regional veterans offices, which veterans call to check on the status of their disability benefits.

Consequently, many veterans’ benefits will be delayed. VA’s ability to reduce the claims backlog, Dillon says, is hampered without claims processors who work overtime. Overtime was eliminated when the shutdown began.

Also see: Disgusting: Pentagon Refusing To Pay “Death Benefit” To Relatives Of Military Killed In Action, Blames Shutdown


http://weaselzippers.us/2013/10/08/o...lays-benefits/

Pentagon freezes death benefits for families of fallen soldiers

By GOPUSA Staff October 9, 2013 6:55 am

WASHINGTON- Members of Congress expressed outrage Tuesday that families of fallen U.S. military personnel are being denied death benefits while Democrats and Republicans grope for a way to end the partial government shutdown. The GOP-led House readied a quick fix.The Pentagon typically pays out $100,000 within three days of a soldier's death. But it says the shutdown means there is no authority now to pay the money.
House Speaker John Boehner blasted the Obama administration Tuesday for withholding the payments. He said Congress gave the Defense Department broad authority to continue paying bills such as the death payments in a law passed just before the government shut down on Oct. 1.
"Frankly, I think it's disgraceful that they're withholding these benefits," Boehner, R-Ohio, told reporters.
He said the House would address the problem Wednesday, and he called on President Barack Obama to sign the bill into law. Senate Democrats have been hesitant to pass piecemeal legislation, insisting the entire government be reopened.

In the Senate, members of both parties lamented the impasse.
Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said the lack of compensation for the families of five soldiers killed in Afghanistan over the weekend was "appalling."
"Shouldn't we be ashamed?" said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.
"Your government has let you down in a time of your need," echoed fellow Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, describing what his message to the families would be. Graham blamed Democrats, Republicans and Obama for the situation.
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http://www.gopusa.com/news/2013/10/0.../?subscriber=1

Obama is not shutting down all of his schools that train community organizers. The funding for those should be stopped. No death benefits for military families while his brown shirts are being funded.
Coming Next, an Obama-Corps for America’s Youth

By BRUCE CHAPMAN on 6.25.13 @ 6:08AM
The elitists meeting in Aspen are concocting their latest effort at social engineering.


Universal national service for Americans 18-28 is the goal of the most prestigious gathering of the Establishment so far this year, an invitation-only “Summit” presently taking place at the Aspen Institute in Colorado (June 24-25). Two hundred of the shiniest names in philanthropy, government, business, and media — including a sprinkling of Republican notables — will be there to make a year of national service “a common expectation…for all young people.”
In the midst of rising public distrust of government and, especially, distrust of the Obama Administration, Administration backers and their allies are launching yet another plan for major expansion of government and Washington’s control over people’s lives.

The old Selective Service System — the draft—broke down in the early 1970s and was replaced by the all-volunteer military, which overall has been a great success. Even forty some years ago the proponents of national service wanted to replace the old Selective Service (a kind of lottery in the end) with a draft for everyone, male and female, used for a variety of purposes besides the military. Now, according to Aspen’s official Summit description, it appears that backers are willing to settle for something less, but still vast: a new “National Service System that will offer at least one million full-time civilian national service opportunities…on par with the more than one million Americans who serve on active duty in our Armed Forces.”

Compulsion is not very popular in peacetime, so the obligation to “volunteer,” according to Aspen leader Gen. Stanley McChrystal (Ret.), only will be “socially mandatory,” the way many high schools and colleges these days require performance of “service” in order to graduate.

I put the word “volunteer” in quotes here because “mandatory” service, however it is constructed, is only considered voluntary by Orwellians. Real voluntary service is a touchstone of our culture, but this is something else and almost contradictory, a kind of social engineering by the federal government. One distinction is the incentive of money. The new corps — some greatly expanded combination of existing government agencies — will be “modestly paid.” As a reward for a year’s service, participants would receive something over $12,500 (the AmeriCorps rate today for 11 months) and $5,000, one understands, to help reduce college loans.

The taxpayers, who have so little else to do with their money anymore, will foot the bill. To the salaries and scholarship rewards you can add training costs, certain housing, food, and transportation expenses, insurance and government overhead. There will be many jobs for new bureaucrats to operate the program. You are looking at $30,000 per “volunteer,” at least — or a new program of $30 billion (30k X 1million). That’s only for starters.

But that is what the Summit’s sponsors and participants –such as JPMorgan Chase, Target stores, Bank of America, State Farm Insurance, Burson-Marsteller public relations, the Case Foundation, Bruce Reed (Vice President Biden’s Chief of Staff), other Obama Administration officials, Chelsea Clinton, Barbara Bush (GWB’s daughter), Maria Shriver, Arianna Huffington, the CEOs of PBS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, such media stars as Michael Gerson and E. J. Dionne of the Washington Post, former-advisor-to-everyone David Gergen, and a high end assortment of editors, college presidents, progressive theologians, and trade association and think tank nabobs — apparently want the public to sign up for.

The Summit was called not so much to consider and weigh such a scheme as to mobilize in support of it. If there were any critics of universal national service invited to Aspen, the invitation list doesn’t show them.

With seemingly endless liberal foundation support, proponents never have to give up. Some of the same people, such as former Sen. Harris Wofford of Pennsylvania, are still at it after all this time.

Over the years, just as the scheme has shrunk in nominal ambition the justifications also have changed. Whereas universal national service once was proposed as an alternative to a military draft, in 2002 at the Brookings Institution it was suggested as a way to provide “homeland security” post-9/11. One can expect opportunistic advertisements out of Aspen for national service as a means to solve today’s youth unemployment problem and the burden of student loans, not to mention whatever-ails-you.

This is the typical liberal cop-out. If foundations and big corporations wanted to promote volunteering, they already could donate more of their own resources. Instead they want to leverage their money to lobby the government to fund an arena of formerly private and truly voluntary activity. Of course, it always has been the intention of statists to get the central government to tell young people what to do with their lives.

I have been an opponent of universal national service for nearly a half century. Some of my earliest allies were Milton Friedman, Martin Anderson, Donald Rumsfeld and Bob Bartley. We all saw that to the extent universal national service is idealistic it is misconceived. From an economic standpoint, it is a wasteful tax on time. Socially speaking, it is a disguised welfare program. Politically it is a way to supply workers for government-favored organizations.

It is, finally, a way to defer adulthood even further.

Does anyone think you can further grow the government’s role in “service” without shrinking the independent, Tocquevillian sector? Do you think you can discourage the growing attacks on intellectual and political diversity in America by having the government pick favored activities and then subsidize them with mandatory volunteers?

This is an especially maladroit proposal for our cash-strapped times. But think about the White House involvement and the power of the foundations, businesses, and individuals that are advocating the Aspen plan — and their tenacity. You have to be impressed. Such nice people. Wouldn’t it be grand if they put their weight behind totally private initiatives for service?

http://spectator.org/archives/2013/0...bama-corps-for

Aw, cute: Obama’s civilian army (FEMACorps) just graduated it’s first class

Friday, Oct 19, 2012 at 1:35 PM CDT


Remember when Barack Obama asked for a civilian defence force as strong and well funded as the U.S. military? Well, here’s Obama’s first graduating class of FEMACorps workers. The kid in the video sums up pretty well how disturbing this is when he says ‘we don’t really know what our job is’ while adding that he’ll go wherever the government sends him. Nothing like a little brownshirt army to have at your beckon call.
“You remember, how long was it, how long ago was it that I said that AmeriCorps is going to be working with the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA and it’s not going to be a good thing? Remember they mocked me for that?” Glenn asked Stu on radio this morning.
The prediction was prompted by Obama saying, “We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well funded.”
While Glenn may have been mocked at the time, a new report shows he may not have been wrong after all.
CBS Reported:

231 young adults made history Saturday by graduating as the first class of FEMA Corps at the Center for Disaster Preparedness in Anniston, Al.
Recent high school graduate and Missouri native Austin McBee made the jump from Eagle Scouts to FEMA Corps.
“We are the first class ever to have this kind of a partnership and we’re looking really forward to working with FEMA and seeing what we can do to help survivors,” he said.
As a new unit of AmeriCorps, FEMA Corps grads will spend 10 months helping the nation respond and recover from disasters.
Many of the graduates will head to the Gulf Coast to assist with recent hurricane recovery.

“They’re wearing AmeriCorps Department of Homeland Security uniforms. This is a FEMA Department of Homeland Security program. Let me tell you something. Since when do we need a new division of people going out and helping on a hurricane? That’s what we do. They are taking our job away. That’s our job. That’s our job as churches and communities. That’s our job. FEMA is always the last one there. When we had the tornadoes, Mercury One was one of the first groups on the scene. Churches are always the first on the scene. And when FEMA finally got to the tornadoes last season, when they finally got there, if you remember right it was two days later and they started telling people, you can’t clean this up. You don’t have a permit. You can’t clean this up. Remember? What do we need these people for? Why are we spending money on this? This is the first class wearing the Department of Homeland Security uniform. Not good, gang. Not good. Really not good.”
“My favorite line in that is, we don’t ‑‑ we don’t really know what our job description is but we’re willing to help out.”
http://www.glennbeck.com/2012/10/19/...s-first-class/

GOVERNMENT

MEET THE GROUP THAT JUST STEPPED UP TO DO WHAT THE GOV’T IS REFUSING TO DO FOR FALLEN SOLDIERS

Oct. 9, 2013 9:30am Liz Klimas

After families of fallen U.S. military personnel were denied benefits due to the government shutdown, the Fisher House Foundation has stepped forward to help cover travel and funeral costs to help families receive the remains of their loved ones who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country.

This undated photo provided by the U.S. Army shows Army Pfc. Cody J. Patterson. Patterson, 24, of Philomath, Ore., assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment, at Fort Benning, Ga., was one of four people killed Sunday, Oct. 5, 2013 by an improvised explosive device in Afghanistan. (AP/US Army)

The Fisher House has been providing housing and travel assistance to military families since 199o, so this offer “is nothing new to us,” Cindy Campbell, vice president of public affairs for the nonprofit organization, told TheBlaze Wednesday morning.
“What is new is the Fisher House stepping in to bridge the gap between when they get reimbursements from the government,” Campbell said.
The Pentagon typically pays out $100,000 within three days of a soldier’s death. But it says the shutdown means there is no authority now to pay the money.
“After losing a loved one in service to our nation, these families should not have to endure more pain as the result of political squabbling,” Ken Fisher, CEO of Fisher House Foundation, said in a statement Tuesday. “For the last 20 years, Fisher House has been there to support our military families in their time of greatest need. We are now stepping up to honor the sacrifices that have been made, and to repay a debt that is truly unpayable.”
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) called it shameful that the shutdown is “falling on the backs of our military families who have already given so much for this great country.”

“However, during these times of dysfunction and gridlock rampant in Washington, it shows the strength of family organizations and the American people that they are are willing to step up and continue to move this great country forward,” Manchin said in a statement.

“…these families should not have to endure more pain as the result of political squabbling.”

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Campbell told TheBlaze Fisher House informed the Department of Defense of their offer, asking that it let families know of the assistance available to them. She said the nonprofit will be speaking with families, personalizing their assistance based on what they need.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Tuesday called the lack of compensation for the families of several soldiers killed in Afghanistan this weekend “appalling.” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told these families that “your government has let you down in a time of your need.”
This report from WTMJ-TV shares the details about a Milwaukee family of a fallen Marine denied benefits:
Congress plans to vote on a measure Wednesday to finance death benefits to families of fallen U.S. troops.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013...eath-benefits/