Low Cost Legal Ads

legalads@flsentry.com

RATE CARD

Click for Pompano Beach, Florida Forecast
DrudgeReport
Offbeat News
AP Audio
editor@flsentry.com

Click Here for
current reader

LEGAL NOTICES
Who can publish your legal ads?
Click here for a Memo of Law
outlining the Sentry's qualifications
ONLINE FORMS
Click on legal ad form you need and fill out form OnLine
NOTICE TO CREDITORS
NOTICE OF
ADMINISTRATION
NOTICE OF DISSOLUTION OF MARRIAGE
FICTITIOUS NAME
NOTICE
NOTICE OF
PUBLIC SALE
PDF FORMS
Fictitious name
Notice of Administration
Notice to Creditors
Dissolution
of Marriage
Notice of Public Sale
Classified Ads
PLEASE download PDF form and fax to (954) 532-2002


Current Issue
Page 1
Page 2
Page 3
Page 4
Page 5
Page 6
Broward County
Real Estate
If you are not currently usingAdobe Acrobat, you can download the PDF (Portable Document File) software from the Adobe  site, Free!.
Once installed the reader works as part of your browser and also as a stand-alone program, so you can read any PDF document no matter your computer, Mac or PC

Pompano Waterfront
Home
For Sale

  Volume XIV Number 19 x x x (954) 532-2000xx xxxxxx xxxxMay 10, 2008

Bent Out of Shape
by JP Bender

I am incensed

Usually I try to limit my reporting to Florida issues with special emphasis on the Broward County area, and for those of you who usually read my columns, you should not be offended with my tone – but for those of you unfamiliar with my diatribes, this time you might want to read other stories elsewhere in this paper.
A friend once told me that I might not always be right but I am never in doubt. I responded that I am nothing if not certain and confident. Others have said I am pugnacious, contrary and a curmudgeon. Now that I have set the tone – it’s time to get to the meat of this week’s column.
I am a veteran. I served my country in the early 1960s in Southeast Asia. My years in the military are my business and my service to my country was both honorable and experiential. I was glad to have been of service – I was young and idealistic – but I’m not going back. I did my time and I will have memories and nightmares for the rest of my life.
Millions of men and women have served this country honorably with considerable distinction – only to return to have to find their own way in a society that really doesn’t give a damn what happens to them. As veterans, we fight our demons, our fears and our senses of hopelessness – alone. We prefer not to talk about our experiences with our marriage partner, relatives, friends or associates.

But I will tell you that freedom is not free. The price is high. Veterans were willing to pay that price and sacrifice for those who they love – and for strangers too – so all can enjoy the lifestyle that we all have been told we deserve. This is a tradition started by our forefathers, many of whom also paid the ultimate price.
Back in the old days (before Vietnam), returning veterans were celebrated, and treated with dignity and respect. It was deserved. Our grateful country gave veterans the GI Bill of Rights and many of us took advantage of the programs. Inevitably, some just dropped out and did their own thing. A mind is a very difficult organ to understand.
I do not speak of those of us who served in Southeast Asia, because while it was a shameful treatment we received, it is irrelevant to this week’s message.
I believe as a nation, we should be ashamed of our government and the layers of bureaucracy who cover-up and lie to us – and then just shrug their shoulders as if nothing ever happened. Our government demands honesty and honor from us, but then gives us in return only lip service, and all too often dismisses us as so much useless garbage.
I also believe as a nation, we should immediately address the issue of the shocking numbers of suicides of our veterans.
It has been recently learned that top officials at the Veterans Administration have tried to conceal information from the public, about the sudden increase of attempted suicides among veterans that were treated or sought help at VA hospitals around the country, a previously undisclosed internal VA email indicates.
The email was disclosed in a federal trial at a courthouse in Northern California, where two veterans advocacy groups filed a class-action lawsuit against the VA alleging that a systematic breakdown at the VA has led to an epidemic of suicides among war veterans. The two veterans advocacy groups were Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans United for Truth.
These groups claim the VA has turned away veterans who have sought help for posttraumatic stress disorder [PTSD] and were suicidal. Some of the veterans, the lawsuit claims, later took their own lives.

The Veterans Health Administration, in a stunning admission, announced top officials at the Veterans Health Administration have confirmed that the agencies own statistics show that an average of 126 veterans per week – 6,552 veterans per year – commit suicide. That was in the internal email.
Brig. Gen. Michael J. Kussman, the Undersecretary for Health at the VA, sent the email, dated Dec. 15, 2007. Kussman had inquired about the accuracy of a news report published that month claiming the suicide rate among veterans was 18 per day. The e-mail was recently part of a discovery issue in the class action trial. The email was cited as evidence that the VA has failed to properly treat veterans who suffer from post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and suicidal tendencies.
The plaintiffs claim that the VA, which has a backlog of 600,000 benefits claims to sort through, is unprepared to deal with cases of [PTSD] among veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, and has turned away veterans who have sought help for depression at VA hospitals. Some of those veterans later committed suicide, according to the lawsuit.
The groups want a federal judge to issue a preliminary injunction to force the VA to immediately treat veterans who show signs of PTSD and are at risk for suicide.
The February email was sent shortly after the VA gave CBS News data that showed only a total of 790 attempted suicides in 2007 among veterans treated by the VA. In an email sent to the network, after Katz’ email was disclosed in court, he denied a “cover-up” and said he did not disclose the true figures of attempted suicides because he was unsure if it was accurate.
United States Senator Daniel Akaka of Hawaii and Patty Murray of Washington state said Dr. Ira Katz, the VA’s mental health director, should immediately resign in the wake of evidence showing he withheld crucial information about veterans’ suicides and attempted suicides.
“Dr. Katz’ irresponsible actions have been a disservice to our veterans, and it is time for him to go,” said Murray, a member of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee. “The No. 1 priority of the VA should be caring for our veterans, not covering up the truth.”

The Feb. 13, 2008, email, was sent to Ira Katz, the VA’s mental health director, by Ev Chasen, the agency’s chief communications director. Chasen had sought guidance from Katz about interview queries from CBS News, which reported extensively on veterans’ suicides last year.
“Is the fact that we’re stopping [suicides] good news, or is the sheer number bad news? And is this more than we’ve ever seen before? It might be something we drop into a general release about our suicide prevention efforts, which (as you know far better than I) prominently include training employees to recognize the warning signs of suicide,” Chasen wrote Katz in an email with the subject line “Not for CBS News Interview Request.”
Katz’s response is startling. He said the VA has identified nearly 1,000 suicide attempts per month among war veterans treated by the VA. His response to Chasen indicates that he did not want the VA to immediately release any statistical data confirming that number, but rather suggested that the agency quietly slip the information into a news release.
“Shh!” Katz wrote in his response to Chasen. “Our suicide prevention coordinators are identifying about 1,000 suicide attempts per month among the veterans we see in our medical facilities. Is this something we should (carefully) address ourselves in some sort of release before someone stumbles on it?”
In the December email Katz sent to Kussman, he noted that roughly 126 veterans of all wars commit suicide per week. He added that data the agency obtained from the Center for Disease Control showed that 20 percent of the suicides in the country are identified as war veterans. The “VA’s own data demonstrate 4-5 suicides per day among those who receive care from us,” Katz’ email said.
Perhaps underscoring just how underprepared the VA was for the number of PTSD cases to emerge from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, documents released to support the plaintiffs’ allegations show that prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq the VA believed it would likely see a maximum of 8,000 cases of veterans showing signs of PTSD.

The RAND Corporation has released a study that said about 300,000 U.S. troops sent into combat in Iraq and Afghanistan are suffering from major depression or PTSD, and 320,000 received traumatic brain injuries. Since October 2001, about 1.6 million U.S. troops have deployed to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many soldiers have completed more than two tours of duty, meaning they are exposed to prolonged periods of combat-related stress or traumatic events.
“There is a major health crisis facing those men and women who have served our nation in Iraq and Afghanistan,” said Terri Tanielian, a researcher at RAND who worked on the study. “Unless they receive appropriate and effective care for these mental health conditions, there will be long-term consequences for them and for the nation. Unfortunately, we found there are many barriers preventing them from getting the high-quality treatment they need.”
Those are statistics Paul Sullivan, the executive director of Veterans for Common Sense, have been warning lawmakers about for several years. “The scope of PTSD in the long term is enormous, and must be taken seriously. When all of our 1.6 million service members eventually return home from Iraq and Afghanistan, based on the current rate of 20 percent, VA may face up 320,000 total new veterans diagnosed with PTSD,” Sullivan told a congressional committee in July 2007. If America fails to act now and overhaul the broken DOD and VA disability systems, there may be a social catastrophe among many of our returning Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans. That is why VCS reluctantly filed suit against VA in Federal Court . . . Time is running out.”
“I am shocked and appalled,” said Frank Adamchak, 65, a resident of Pompano Beach. Adamchak, 65, served six years in the Air Force and another 35 years in law enforcement. “Our military has it completely wrong. In civilian life, if a police officer discharges a firearm, he is automatically given three days off for psychological help, whether he hit or missed the target. The military has a lot of young and impressionable men, exposed to violence for the first time. I cannot understand why our combat veterans are not at least screened for psychological problems when they return home, and, if they need it, given adequate treatment without having to wait months or years.”

The VA said it has hired more than 3,000 mental healthcare professionals over the past two years to deal with the increasing number of PTSD cases, but the problems persist and are increasing.
VA says vets not ‘entitled’ to healthcare
Richard Lepley, a Justice Department attorney, said the VA runs a “world-class health care system.”
But Gordon Erspamer, the lead attorney representing the two veterans groups, said the VA has arbitrarily denied coverage to thousands of vets; that it takes nearly a year to decide whether it will provide coverage to veterans suffering from PTSD, and takes as long as four years for the VA to address veterans’ appeals cases.
“Seeking help from the Department of Veterans’ Affairs . . . involves a two-track system,” says a copy of the plaintiff’s trial brief filed in federal court last week. “A veteran will go to the Veterans’ Health Administration for diagnosis and medical care; and a veteran goes to the Veterans’ Benefits Administration to apply for service-connection and disability compensation . . .
“VA is failing these veterans as they move along both of these parallel tracks. They are not receiving the health care to which they are entitled (and where they do receive it, it is unreasonably delayed), and they are not able to get timely compensation for their disabilities, which means that they have no safety net. These two problems combine to create a perfect storm for PTSD veterans: they receive no treatment, so their symptoms get worse; and they receive no compensation, so they cannot go elsewhere for treatment. The failings of these two separate but interrelated systems are what this action seeks to address.”
Justice Department attorneys had argued in court papers filed last month that Iraq and Afghanistan veterans were not “entitled” to the five-years of free healthcare upon their return from combat as mandated by Congress in the “Dignity for Wounded Warriors Act.” Rather, the VA argued, medical treatment for the war veterans was discretionary based on the level of funding available in the VA’s budget.

But during a court hearing last month before U.S. District Court Judge Samuel Conti, Dr. Gerald Cross, the Principal Deputy Under Secretary for Health, Veterans Health Administration, said that veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan were not only entitled to free healthcare, but also he said “there is no co-pay.”
Soldier’s suicide warnings ignored
Chris Scheuerman, a retired Special Forces Master Sergeant, testified before a Congressional committee last month that there is an urgent need for mental health reform in the military.
Scheuerman said his son, Pfc. Jason Scheuerman, went to see an Army psychologist because he had been suicidal.
The Army psychologist wrote up a report saying Jason Scheuerman “was capable of (faking) mental illness in order to manipulate his command,” according to documents the soldiers father turned over to Congress.
“Jason desperately needed a second opinion after his encounter with the Army psychologist,” Chris Scheuerman testified in mid-March before the Armed Services Committee’s Military Personnel Subcommittee.
“The Army did offer him that option, but at his own expense. How is a PFC (private first class) in the middle of Iraq supposed to get to a civilian mental health care provider at his own expense?” he said. “I believe soldiers should be afforded the opportunity to a second opinion via teleconference with a civilian mental health care provider of their own choice.”
Jason Scheuerman shot himself with a rifle on July 30, 2005. The 20-year-old’s suicide note was nailed to the closet in his barracks. It said, “Maybe now I can get some peace.”
Dr. Arthur Blank, a renowned expert on PTSD who has worked closely with the VA, testified during the federal court hearing in San Francisco last month that multiple deployments are largely responsible for an increase in veterans suicides. “I think it’s because of multiple deployments, which means one is exposed to trauma over and over again,” Blank testified.
I ask all Americans, not just veterans and their families, to remember this problem on Memorial Day, May 26th and ask – no, demand – that members of Congress investigate and solve this horrendous problem. It would also be nice to remember this problem on Veterans Day, but that will not occur until November 11, six months away, and we can’t wait that long. If our losses remain at the currant rate, we will lose another 3,000 of my comrades in arms to suicide. This has to stop – now. This should be a priority.

I am incensed.

Click here for all City Hall Salaries
Click here for alphabetical listing of City Hall Salaries
Click Here for Base Pay versus 2007 Gross Salaries

Hits

Best Buy Coupons

Lake Level
The DAILY PULP
Newspaper BLOG




Restaurant
Complaints
Click Here TO CHECK OUT YOUR FAVORITE EATERIES



JP Bender
Official City Historian

Bud Garner on Pompano Beach
Click here
Listen to
your favorite station!
WWNC 570 Asheville, NC
Philadelphia, PA
Miami, FL

Denver, CO
WJNO
West Palm Beach

Newspaper Blog
Click Here for 
THE DAILY PULP



ELECTIONS

Copyright 2008 Amendment One News, Inc. - All rights Reserved

 The entire contents of The Sentry, Inc. FLSentry.com are Copyrighted by Amendment One News, Inc. No portion may be reproduced in whole or in part by any means including electronic retrieval systems without the expressed written consent of the Publisher.