Excerpt from The Hill: (click for entire article)
Delays in disability benefit payments are "an insult" to military veterans, the chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee said Wednesday. Committee Chairman Bob Filner (D-Calif.) urged the federal government to cut through red tape in deploying benefits.
"People have died before they've gotten their benefits or they've lost their houses because they didn't have a check coming in," Filner said during an interview on Federal News Radio. "What I would like to do is just cut through all [the] red tape." The chairman said that the government's slowness to respond to claims from disabled veterans is "an insult."
Filner called on the Department of Veterans Affairs to process claims as quickly as the IRS handles tax returns, guaranteeing a three-week turnaround in benefits payments. "Why don't we do the same thing with our veterans?" Filner asked. "We send out a check as soon as we get their application, and audit it whenever we ... as much time as we have to take. But at least recognize that the soldiers that deserve compensation, we ought to get it to them quickly."
Patti's Comments: So what do you guys out there think???
Excerpt from The Wall Street Journal: (click for entire article)
It's hard to overstate the crisis facing charitable giving today. So let me just say it as plainly as I can: Much of current philanthropic giving, by foundations and individuals, neither meets the needs of our charitable organizations nor addresses some of our most urgent public needs.
Foundation practices today are too bureaucratic, inflexible and cautious, and too focused on short-term objectives. Too often, the process and procedures of grant making are more tailored to the needs of foundations and their trustees than to the requirements of nonprofits.
At the same time, our depressed economy is exacerbating this crisis—and making it all the more crucial that we address it. A severe reduction in available public and private funds has put many important nonprofit groups, especially at the local level, in grave danger. Cutbacks in their budgets and programs are depriving their clients of essential health and social services.
A number of nonprofit associations and foundations have called on the government to provide more funds and loans to struggling nonprofit organizations. Such aid would no doubt help, but the primary responsibility for maintaining the strength of the nonprofit community should rest with philanthropic institutions and individual donors.
What can foundations and others do to make a difference for the nonprofits and the people they are designed to help?
Excerpt from NPR: (click for entire article)
Many children with autism not only struggle with social skills and communication, they also have great difficulty with handwriting, according to a new study in the journal Neurology.
Researchers compared 14 typical children with 14 diagnosed with mild autism — and found that the children with autism had much more difficulty forming letters.
"It was really striking," says Amy Bastian, a neuroscientist who directs the Motion Analysis Laboratory at Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore.
Patti's Comments: I just do not get it…
Excerpt from NPR: (click for entire article)
The Senate wants to provide $4 billion to help homecare providers for 6,800 disabled veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan. Leaders hoped the measure would sail through on the eve of Veterans Day by unanimous consent, but they got one no vote: Republican Tom Coburn. He says there is no budgeted money for the bill and that other programs should be cut to pay for it, and he isn't backing down.
Patti's Comments: Our veterans deserve much better than this…
Excerpt from The New York Times: (click for entire article)
Gen. Eric Shinseki was famously shunned by the Bush administration for daring to state the true costs of occupying Iraq. As President Obama’s secretary of veterans affairs, he is, thankfully, no less candid about the grinding problems veterans face at home. They lead the nation in depression, suicide, substance abuse and homelessness, according to data that Mr. Shineski is delivering in salvos in his current role.
About one-third of all adult homeless men are veterans, and an average night finds an estimated 131,000 of them from five decades bedding down on streets and in charity sanctuaries. About 3 in 100 of them are back from Iraq and Afghanistan. The problem of homelessness for Vietnam veterans is, shamefully, well known. But the men and women in this growing cohort took just 18 months to find rock bottom, compared with the five years-plus of the previous generation’s veterans.
General Shinseki has promised to galvanize the Department of Veterans Affairs to lead a national drive to end veteran homelessness in the next five years. Is that anywhere near possible? “Unless I put an ambitious target on the table, I don’t know how we’ll start,” the secretary told a forum of wounded veterans.
Patti's Comments: Love this blog and everything in this post… Happy Veterans Day all!
Excerpt from Time Goes By: (click for entire post)
Several items of interest to elders today, and let's start with the holiday – it is Veterans' Day, the time we set aside to honor the men and women who put their lives at risk in combat for the rest of us. Given the frightful nature of what they do, one day doesn't seem enough and there are some people in Bangor, Maine, who have been making every day Veterans Day since the Iraq War began.
Excerpt from SoMdNews.com: (click for entire article)
More than 200 concerned people from Southern Maryland filled a town hall meeting at St. John Vianney Family Life Center in Prince Frederick last Thursday night to increase awareness about the impact of funding cuts in programs for the developmentally disabled.
"We are here to help build a larger recognition of the issues," said Harriet Yaffe, executive director of The Arc of Southern Maryland, one of the agencies responsible for organizing the meeting. "We need to share personal stories and share data about this funding crisis. People have to understand that it affects a lot of people, not just in Calvert County, but all around the state," she emphasized as the crowd took seats.
Patti's Comments: This is important, but it is more important for the Senate to include the Choice Act!!!
Excerpt from McKnight's: (click for entire article)
The president and CEO of the American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging feels confident that the CLASS Act will make it into a final healthcare reform bill. "I felt like all along it was going to wind up in health reform," Larry Minnix told McKnight's Monday. He spoke during the association's annual conference in Chicago. "It's just the right thing to do."
The CLASS Act was part of the major healthcare reform legislation that the House passed Saturday. The bill now faces an even tougher test in the Senate where several moderate Democrats are opposed to the CLASS Act because of the cost involved, and other aspects of the legislation.
The act would create a consumer-funded national long-term care and disability insurance trust. Workers would pay into the trust and be eligible to receive cash after a vesting period of five years. The cash benefit they receive would be tied to their level of disability. Minnix called it "one of the big transformational items in the healthcare reform bill."
Excerpt from Syracuse.com: (click for entire article)
The Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans with Disabilities will expand to a sixth university, the University of Connecticut’s School of Business, enabling the program to increase annual enrollment from 125 to 150 veterans, said Mike Haynie, executive director of the program and assistant professor of entrepreneurship at SU’s Whitman School of Management.
Already participating in the program are SU’s Whitman School of Management, Mays Business School at Texas A&M, UCLA Anderson School of Management, Florida State University’s College of Business and the Krannert School of Management at Purdue University.
The program also will offer small-business training to the spouses and other family members of severely wounded service members, starting with about 25 spouses this summer, Haynie said. The Ernst & Young accounting firm is donating $50,000 to help include family members.
Haynie said the spouses of seriously wounded service members often become the economic head of their families. But they also must take on the role of main caregiver, along with their other parental responsibilities, often making it difficult for them to hold down a job working for someone else, he said.