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As if local veterans enduring endless waits for government benefits don't have enough to worry about, now there's this: Officials are investigating whether documents were inappropriately shredded at the Department of Veterans Affairs center in Philadelphia, which processes benefits claims from the Lehigh Valley. If a veteran's paperwork is shredded instead of added to a claim file, that could result in disability or pension benefits' being denied or delayed. The Philadelphia office and nine others were inspected without warning last month by the VA inspector general's office. The checks occurred because the inspector general discovered a claims center in Los...

After two years of investigations, the inspector general for Veterans Affairs has found that 40 VA facilities around the country are guilty of deliberately falsifying reports on wait times for clients. To date, only 4 low level VA staffers have been fired despite the fact that supervisors ordered the falsifications of records in almost all instances.

Veterans earned their VA health care when they signed the dotted line to serve our country. So when American Legion Commander Dale Barnett saw that a commission that is top-heavy with private hospital executives was trying to dismantle it, he had to be blunt. “I don’t understand how commissions paid by the federal government are able to break ranks, create an unapproved report and try to advance self-serving agendas while operating as congressional appointees,” Barnett said. He's talking about the congressionally-mandated Commission on Care, an entity dominated by private hospital executives and Koch Brothers-affiliated "policy experts." The commission's charge under...

Two Senate Republicans are seeking to understand the Veterans Affairs office practice of reporting veterans to the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check system. Currently a veterans assigned a fiduciary trustee to act on their behalf is automatically declared “mentally defective” and is reported to NICS, the database Federal Firearms Licensees use to determine whether a prospective buyer is eligible to buy guns. As of December 2015, the VA has reported 260,381 individuals to the FBI, effectively making them prohibited firearms possessors under the law. U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, an Iowa lawmaker who is currently the Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman, finds this...

Army Sergeant Major Jesse Acosta has received notification from the VA that his benefits for a caregiver are ending in 90 days, at the end of May. The letter he received from the VA states “he is no longer appropriate for the Program of Comprehensive Assistance for Family Caregivers.” They say they are pleased to inform him of this. According to the VA, even though Acosta, blinded by a mortar attack in Iraq, is still blind, they are excited (with an exclamation point to prove it) to let him know they have determined he’s “graduated,” and no longer needs a...

“Those recommendations are being made and the president will have an opportunity to make some decisions here in the coming weeks,” Dunford said about plans to send in more American troops to help recapture the Iraqi city of Mosul from the Islamic State. “I brought it to the Secretary. The Secretary will engage with the President,” Dunford said, referring to Defense Secretary Ashton Carter. The number of troops deployed in Iraq is already much higher than the American people were led to expect, as the public learned after ISIS fired on a Marine artillery position near Mosul two weeks ago,...

A Bible and Bible verse have been removed from a POW/MIA display inside an Akron, Ohio Veteran's Administration clinic after a complaint from atheist Mikey Weinstein. For decades, these items have long been a part of a "Missing Man Table" commonly displayed at military functions and installations all across the nation. Weinstein said he intervened at the request of nearly a dozen, mostly Christian, military veterans who said they were offended by the Bible display. As usual, Weinstein failed to provide proof that these people actually exist...

There’s a VA facility near my home and I pass by it about three times each week on the long runs I use to keep my body from stagnating as I grow older and achier. Seeing our American flag waving from a tall pole near the entrance to the veterans’ complex always puts a little bounce in my step. So I’m chugging by it last week wearing a sweat-stained PT shirt emblazoned with a replica of the Vietnam Service ribbon when a guy limping toward the entrance and leaning on a cane spots me. He smiles, waves and points to...

Two Senate Republicans are trying to find out why 260,000 vets have been stripped of their gun rights. The Veterans Affairs office has made it a practice to report veterans to the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check system. If veterans need help doing paper work, they lose their rights. It’s clearly a violation of the Second Amendment. Any veteran who is assigned a fiduciary trustee to act on their behalf is automatically declared “mentally defective” and is reported to NICS, the database Federal Firearms Licensees use to determine whether a prospective buyer is eligible to buy guns.

Provides efficient, streamlined process in support of the MyVA Initiative of Medical Disability Examinations for Veterans WASHINGTON – The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) today announced the award of twelve major contracts that will enhance its ability to deliver timely disability benefits claims decisions to the nation’s Veterans in line with the MyVA initiative. The contracts make up a $6.8 billion enterprise-wide Medical Disability Examination Program under Public Law 104-275, and represent a major step forward in improving the disability examination experience for Veterans. A unique feature of this multi-contract award will see the consolidation of the contracts under a...

Cruz is always talking about himself as if he is above it all, he is the responsible one, he is the grownup and the honorable one. Yet he allows Glenn Beck to declare that Cruz is "anointed for the time" and Cruz says nothing and I don't believe that this has been brought up on television. Beck has totally gone off the cliff in his grandiose promotions of Cruz and his outlandish insults to Trump voters. He has said "all through out the South the Evangelicals are not listening to their God", "no real Christian says I want that guy"...

Lisa Magin, a former VA Medical Supply Technician tried to do the right thing for the veterans at the Buffalo VA Medical Center, but it cost her a good government job, her medical benefits, and her 4-year ordeal with the VA has been a strain on her family.

The Richmond Police Department is trying an innovative approach to reduce violent crime.  Because the policy targets people who are not allowed to own guns, it might have positive effects.  David Kennedy has shown that most murders are committed by a very small group of violent individuals, usually associated with gangs and/or drug trafficking.  Identifying and focusing on those individuals has been shown to drastically reduce the murder rate.  One of the methods used to do this is to encourage people to turn in violent felons who illegally possess firearms.  Richmond Virginia has decided to run with this idea....

WASHINGTON, D.C. (WBTV) - Senator Richard Burr (R-NC) cited a recent On Your Side investigation into problems with the VA Choice Program http://www.wbtv.com/story/31285298/veterans-families-call-wbtv-for-help-delays-at-va-medical-centers?clienttype=generic in testimony before the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs on Tuesday. Burr was testifying before the committee in support of legislation he introduced last week http://www.wbtv.com/story/31429194/burr-tillis-push-to-reform-va-program-highlighted-in-wbtv-investigation?clienttype=generic with a group of Republican senators aimed at making changes to the Choice Program. In his testimony, Burr cited the case of Marine veteran Jim Bancroft who told On Your Side Investigates about his problems receiving treatment by an outside provider through the Choice Program because the program's third-party administrator had...

A division of the Department of Veterans Affairs tasked with fixing up the VA's broken veteran suicide hotline has dropped roughly 1.4 million phone calls from veterans since fiscal year 2015, a VA whistleblower told the Washington Examiner. That high number of abandoned calls is raising questions about whether the VA is doing all it can to fix up the suicide hotline, which has been criticized as the latest part of the VA that is failing veterans. Scott Davis, a whistleblower and program specialist at the VA's Health Eligibility Center in Atlanta, noted that the VA's Health Resource Center is...

Homeless U.S. military veterans stand in line for free services at a "Stand Down" event hosted by the Department of Veterans Affairs on November 3, 2011 in Denver, Colorado. A week ahead of Veterans Day, more than 500 homeless veterans were expected to attend the event, where they received free medical care, winter clothing, employment assistance and were able to see a judge to resolve legal issues. Organizers say the homeless veterans population has surged in recent years with the high national unemployment rate. Stand Down is a military term that means a temporary stop of offensive military action. (Photo...

It looks like Rubio carried the state’s wealthy northern suburbs, and Trump took the rest. (SNIP) Rubio’s strongholds overlapped heavily with those that lifted Barack Obama to his second straight win in the state in his 2012 reelection race.

The long hours and grueling pace of the presidential campaign may be finally catching up with a rapidly aging Bill Clinton. During an appearance in Bluffton, South Carolina on Friday, a former Marine interrupted Clinton’s speech and asked him to address what Hillary was going to do about the VA. “What do you think should be done with the VA?” Clinton said in a raspy voice, turning the question back on him and yielding the floor. “The thing is, we had four lives in Benghazi killed and your wife tried to cover it up,” the Marine responded, eliciting boos and...

I am one of the vets in this story. This is me in this story. I had a CT scan July 2014 and they confirmed the hernia I went to see them for, but they also found a cyst in my liver the size of a jawbreaker and found my spine was fusing between L2 and L3. I requested to see a surgeon for the hernia but they refused. I requested to see a hepatologist for my liver and they refused. I requested to see a spinal surgeon for the fusion and they refused. I only got care when I...

I am one of the veterans who was interviewed for this show tomorrow night