Keith Ludwig says when it comes to flying his American flag, it’s a matter of principle.
He is now relieved that he can keep it hanging off his balcony. After the story ran on Fox 8, Ludwig was contacted by his apartment complex and told he was allowed to keep the flag.
“I’m a veteran, my grandfather’s a veteran, my dad’s a veteran. We’re a military family,” he said early Friday.
So Ludwig said he was surprised, and angered, when the management of Shoregate Towers told him on Thursday he’d have to remove the flag that flies from his balcony.
Ludwig showed us his lease, and there is a clause on using the exterior of the units that basically prohibits hanging or affixing anything to the balconies. But Ludwig questions why it took management more than two years to raise the issue with him and whether that clause is really meant to apply to an American flag. (Read more from “Veteran Allowed to Keep American Flag After Apartment Tells Him to Take Down” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00kathleenhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngkathleen2015-08-03 02:37:162016-04-11 10:58:13Apartment Complex Reverses Itself, Veteran Allowed to Keep American Flag
Writing for the St. Louis Dispatch, Bill McClellan suggests that America does not owe military honors to veterans who die. Unsurprisingly, the leftist, 2015 Pulitzer Prize-winning paper published McClellan’s offensive opinion piece. Here are few excerpts:
Both the federal government and the state government are broke. So why are we providing military funeral honors for all veterans? It is a nice gesture we can’t afford.
Certainly, men and women killed in combat deserve full military honors. It’s a way for the country to say, “We honor the memory of those who died in our service.” These military honors — and the thought behind them — are intended to provide some solace for the families of the fallen.
But what about the guy who spends a couple of years in the military and then gets on with his life? Bear in mind that most veterans did nothing heroic. They served, and that’s laudable, but it hardly seems necessary to provide them all with military honors after they have died. In fact, it seems generous enough to provide veterans and their spouses with free space and headstones at a national cemetery.
Why not let the veterans organizations provide military honors at the funerals of their members? If a person gets out of the Marine Corps and wants to stay connected, he can join the Marine Corps League. I’m sure the 101st Airborne has an association. In a more general vein, we have the American Legion and the VFW. . .
Dropping these military funeral honors would not be a slap in the face to veterans. If these honors are important to a person, he or she can join a veterans organization.
(Read the leftist opinion piece, “End Military Funeral Honors for Vets: ‘Most Veterans Did Nothing Heroic'” HERE)
00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-07-14 02:27:572015-07-14 02:27:57Liberal Columnist Calls for Ending Military Funeral Honors for Vets: “Most Veterans Did Nothing Heroic”
After being turned away from a clinic in Lawrenceville, Georgia, Dorsey decided to video record his next attempt at a VA clinic in Oakwood, Georgia.
He waited for about five minutes, approached the counter, requested a transfer from the VA clinic in Atlanta. That’s when Dorsey received a response no veteran should hear.
“We’re not accepting any new patients — not this clinic,”
Dorsey then walked out of the clinic, and reminded people of the estimated 22 veterans who commit suicide every day. However, this wasn’t the first time Dorsey had been turned away from a clinic . . .
Unfortunately, the video demonstrates that even after a year of being in effect, facility employees still seem to be mostly unaware of the program’s existence. Secretary McDonald continues to struggle to restore faith in a department riddled with scandals – from veterans facing excessively long wait times to improper care. (Read more from “A Veteran Seeking Help From a VA Office Received a Response No Veteran Should Ever Hear” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-07-06 03:02:592016-04-11 10:59:17A Veteran Seeking Help From a VA Office Received a Response No Veteran Should Ever Hear [+video]
By Kara Pendleton. Morgan Wheeler was getting ready to leave the store parking lot when a wheelchair-bound man crossed her path. Struggling, he waved at her in an apologetic way for delaying her car from backing out.
She could have impatiently waited for him to pass and then been on her way. Instead, she did something that’s inspiring people who read her story:
I walked out of Wal Mart today and got in my car. As I began to pull out, I had to wait for a man in a wheelchair to pass by. As I watched him, I noticed that he was missing his right leg from the knee down and was wearing, what appeared to be, old, government issued, combat boots. He was (from my guess) in his late sixties/early seventies and seemed to be stopping to take a break. He had not realized that I had started my car and was attempting to pull out, so when he saw me, he waved in an apologetic manner and rolled forward three more times and took another break. I backed up my car the inches I had previously pulled forward, put it in park, turned off the engine, and got out. I walked up to him and introduced myself. I asked him if I could assist him with his shopping today, and he, quite grumpily, said that he was doing just fine and was not getting much anyways. Me, being as stubborn as I am, insisted and proceeded to push him and tell him a little about myself. He interrupted me and said that he only needed help to the door, to which I picked up where I had left off before he interrupted me. I told him about Fayetteville, and my horses, and my nephews (I had parked a good ways away from the doors). And when I reached the doors, I continued to push him and talk. We reached the produce area and I asked him to tell me about himself. He reluctantly looked at me and began telling me that he lived in Sod- Lincoln County, and that he just recently lost his wife. I asked him if he was a veteran, to which he replied that he was- but with pain on his face, so I changed the subject and asked if he had made a shopping list. He handed me a list with only four things on it: peanut butter, soup, bread, and bananas. So we began shopping and I continued to talk… hard to believe- I know. Once we had gotten the items he needed, I asked if he needed the essentials: milk, eggs, butter. He told me that he might not make it home, without them going bad. So I questioned how he got to the store. He told me that he did what he was doing in the parking lot until he got to 119 and then hitch hiked with a trucker to the parking lot. So I called a taxi for him and grabbed the essentials plus a few other things and put them in the cart. After placing a gallon of milk in his cart he was crying. People were passing by us, looking sideways at him. I knelt down and asked him what was wrong and he replied, that I “was doing far too much for an old man that I barely knew.” I told him that where I am from, and from the family I was raised in, we help one another, no matter the task and that I had never met a stranger. I also told him that he deserved everything I was doing for him because he fought for my freedom and sacrificed so much. We made it to the check out line and I paid for his groceries, against his request. When we got outside, we waited for the taxi together. He thanked me over and over again and appeared- to me- to have been in a much better mood than when I found him. When the taxi arrived, I helped him load his groceries and wheelchair into the taxi and asked the driver to take him home and help him into his house with his groceries. I gave him the only cash I had on me- $44, also against his will. I told him thank you for his service before closing the door. Tears formed again and he thanked me one last time and said, “God bless you.” I returned to my car, and could not help but cry. This is the world we live in today. How many people passed him and would have continued to pass him while he struggled? How many people are willing to give their money to Vanity Fair to read all about Bruce Jenner and not help a veteran pay for his groceries? Today was a truly humbling experience for me, and I consider myself extremely blessed to have the capability of understanding what is truly important in this world. THAT man was a HERO, and far too many will say otherwise. I am sorry that this post was so long, and if you have read it to this point, I hope you are as humbled as I was. God bless the men and women who have fought for our right to view the wrong people as heroes, and thank God for the people who know better.
Toward the end of her post, the West Virginia woman shares her thoughts on the significance of the experience:
“I returned to my car, and could not help but cry. This is the world we live in today. How many people passed him and would have continued to pass him while he struggled? How many people are willing to give their money to Vanity Fair to read all about Bruce Jenner and not help a veteran pay for his groceries?”
(Read more from “A Disabled Vet Was Struggling Through the Parking Lot When a Woman Stopped and Brought Him to Tears” HERE)
Veterans Face Complications in Getting Medical Care
By Melissa Blasius. From a secret patient waiting list to a piles of prescription pills, KUSA exposes the Veterans Affairs Department’s casualties of care.
This 30-minute news special culminates a year of investigation, including discussions with current and former VA employees and dozens of veterans who rely on the VA for care.
KUSA found:
The former director of the Denver VA hospital knew about an unauthorized patient list in the sleep clinic in 2011. More recently, hospital administrators were aware of other scheduling improprieties involving specialty doctor referrals, according to emails sent to scheduling staff.
Mental health patients say they’ve had to wait months to see a therapist. (Read more from this story HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00kathleenhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngkathleen2015-06-23 03:58:362016-04-11 10:59:44A Disabled Vet Was Struggling Through the Parking Lot When a Woman Stopped and Brought Him to Tears [+video]
An Iraq War veteran says he has no plans to remove the American flag from his front porch after his homeowners association told him it has to come down.
Daniel Toner, who rents a home in the Belmont Park community of Suffolk, Virginia, said he was first told the flag was OK, but then was informed that it had to be approved and Toner would have to wait to put it up.
Toner told WAVY-TV he knew the homeowners association had certain regulations, so he contacted the property manager at Chesapeake Bay Management Inc. before he brought out the flag to make sure everything was above board.
He received an email back saying it was acceptable to fly a flag from his house as long as he followed the guidelines. But not long after, he received another message telling him to take it down.
Property manager Kimberly Katz admitted to speaking too early in the previous email, and said a resolution that would have made it acceptable to fly a flag had not yet been approved. (Read more from “Iraq War Vet Outraged After Being Told He Can’t Fly American Flag at Home” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-06-11 03:05:242016-04-11 11:00:08Iraq War Vet Outraged After Being Told He Can’t Fly American Flag at Home
The Department of Veterans Affairs has been spending at least $6 billion a year in violation of federal contracting rules to pay for medical care and supplies, wasting taxpayer money and putting veterans at risk, according to an internal memo written by the agency’s senior official for procurement.
In a 35-page document addressed to VA Secretary Robert McDonald, the official accuses other agency leaders of “gross mismanagement” and making a “mockery” of federal acquisition laws that require competitive bidding and proper contracts.
Jan R. Frye, deputy assistant secretary for acquisition and logistics, describes a culture of “lawlessness and chaos” at the Veterans Health Administration, the massive health-care system for 8.7 million veterans.
“Doors are swung wide open for fraud, waste and abuse,” he writes in the March memo, which was obtained by The Washington Post. He adds, “I can state without reservation that VA has and continues to waste millions of dollars by paying excessive prices for goods and services due to breaches of Federal laws.”
Frye describes in detail a series of practices that he says run afoul of federal rules, including the widespread use of purchase cards, which are usually meant as a convenience for minor purchases of up to $3,000, to buy billions of dollars worth of medical supplies without contracts. In one example, he says that up to $1.2 billion in prosthetics were bought using purchase cards without contracts during an 18-month period that ended last year. (Read more from “Veterans Affairs Improperly Spent $6 Billion Annually, Senior Official Says” HERE)
Michelle Manhart saw a group of students at Valdosta State University in Georgia yesterday who were walking on the American flag in some sort of protest.
Manhart, an Air Force veteran of 14 years, couldn’t let that stand. She went over and took the flag from the group to properly dispose of it per the United States flag code. University police officers then placed Manhart in handcuffs and returned the flag to the protestors who put the flag back onto the ground and continued to walk on it . . .
Neither the group protesting or the officers decided to press charges against Manhart and after being cuffed and detained she was ultimately allowed to leave.
No one is quite sure what the group was protesting and none talked to local media except one anonymous protestor who talked to The Valdosta Times saying, “The flag is a symbol of our protest. When a slave understands his situation and understands he doesn’t want to be in slavery, he does not respect or revere anything his slavemaster [sic] has put in front of him.” (Read more from “Here’s the Horrible Thing That Happened to a Veteran After She Tried to Stop Protesters From Disrespecting the American Flag [+video]” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-04-20 03:48:272015-04-20 03:48:27Here’s the Horrible Thing That Happened to a Veteran After She Tried to Stop Protesters From Disrespecting the American Flag [+video]
How many of these soldiers could be assisted by forming a bond with their own service dog? Common sense and multiple studies show service animals have a tremendously positive impact on the recovery and happiness of those individuals in need. Service dogs are now even provided for many prisoners, yet soldiers are denied service dogs en masse upon their return.
Labpups.com and Paws4Warriors.org have now teamed up to offer some immediate relief for many of those veterans that have been denied service dogs by the Administration.
Buried deep in the woods, and yet in city limits, Labpups.com has multiple lineages of non-hyper Family Labradors that have been three decades in the making. They also have a ten acre farm, complete with state of the art kennels, horseback riding, three houses consisting of 11 bedrooms, 6 bathrooms, and a full garden.
Veteran Dominic Davila, after being severely injured by an IED under his Humvee, spent years in the hospital, recovering from loss of limb, TBI and other complications caused by the sudden detonation. Dominic knows only too well what his own service dog meant to him during the dark hours of recovery.
Wanting to give a hand up to fellow soldiers, he has founded Paws4Warriors, a non-profit (status applied for) organization located in Charlotte, NC in order to facilitate raising and matching service Labradors with wounded veterans.
The farm will provide temporary shelter for many veterans, allowing them to stay and participate in the training of their own Labradors, while volunteering to clean kennels and participate in activities such as horseback riding, gardening, or just talking around the fire pit.
While Labpups.com will donate everything possible to this ambitious program, including their lineages, training, and some land, Paws4Warriors has a need for immediate funding for handicap access ramps, buying out the mortgage, supplies for Labradors and veterans, and a host of other items. They have started an Indiegogo campaign, to commence on April 6th at 2:30 pm Eastern time, and are attempting to raise enough funds to take the over the entire farm within the next 40 days. They need your help.
Paws4Warriors can’t spill the beans yet on the first approved recipient, but that in itself will be another amazing story.
Chad Fleming, a veteran who served in the 75th Ranger Regiment, says the VA took an X-ray of his artificial leg to prove he was actually an amputee. Though they could have referenced his extensive medical history or just used their eyes, he said, they wasted precious resources taking an X-ray of a leg that “doesn’t exist.”
“[The doctor] actually laughed,” Fleming said. “And I told him, I said, ‘You wonder why the country is in such a deficit? It’s because you’re wasting money taking X-rays of a leg that doesn’t exist.’ It’s like, ‘Dude I’m not a starfish. It isn’t going to grow back.’”
Fleming was one of a group of veterans Glenn Beck invited to his farm, where he gave the men some beer and asked them to discuss the events of the day.
“Lone Survivor” author Marcus Luttrell was also there, and he too had few kind words to say about the VA.
“The last time I was in there to set up for a surgery, I was sitting in the waiting room … watching television. And a special came on the news about a guy who got AIDS from re-used medical equipment in the VA,” Luttrell said. “It was the same procedure I was fixing to get. I’m gone. Deuces. I walked out, man.” (Read more from “Veteran Says the VA Did Something Absurd to His Artificial Leg to Prove He Was Actually an Amputee” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-04-01 23:57:312015-04-01 23:57:31Veteran Says the VA Did Something Absurd to His Artificial Leg to Prove He Was Actually an Amputee
By Pete Kasperowicz. A key veterans group on Wednesday demanded that Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert McDonald apologize for insulting a member of Congress who just happens to be a 22-year Marine Corps veteran.
McDonald got the attention of Concerned Veterans for America during the day when he got angry at a series of questions from Rep. Mike Coffman (R-Colo.). Coffman was asking about the VA’s failed hospital construction project in his home state, when McDonald stunned the room by trying to shift the blame to Coffman.
“You’ve been here longer than I have,” McDonald said. “If there’s a problem in Denver, I think you own it more than I do.”
McDonald then seemed to imply that Coffman wasn’t qualified to question the VA’s activities, by saying, “I’ve run a large company, sir. What have you done?”
Pete Hegseth, the CEO of Concerned Veterans for America, said McDonald was “disrespectful” of Coffman, who is the only member of Congress to serve in both Iraq wars, and demanded an apology. (Read more about the Veteran group demanding an apology HERE)
By Bryant Jordan. President Obama signed the Clay Hunt Suicide Prevention for American Veterans Act Thursday that will provide $22 million to help boost programs that look to reduce the veteran suicide rate that has climbed to 22 veterans each day.
The suicide prevention legislation is named for a former Marine who died by suicide in 2011 after losing his battle with mental health issues related to his service in Afghanistan. Hunt was 28.
In remarks before signing the bill at the White House, Obama said Hunt did everything he could to fight against the post-traumatic stress symptoms that plagued him.
He sought help from the VA, got involved in helping other veterans, and even volunteered with a relief organization assisting people in Haiti. He also made a public service announcement encouraging other veterans with mental health issues to get help, Obama said.
But the right combination of help, therapy and medication was not found for Hunt in time, Obama said. (Read more from this story HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-02-13 01:20:242016-04-11 11:02:29Veterans Group Demands Apology From VA Secretary Who Asked Iraq War Veteran, ‘What Have You Done?’
Writing for the St. Louis Dispatch, Bill McClellan suggests that America does not owe military honors to veterans who die. Unsurprisingly, the leftist, 2015 Pulitzer Prize-winning paper published McClellan’s offensive opinion piece. Here are few excerpts:
