The VA visited my bank account today.

by 13 Stoploss

The VA visited my bank account today. They treated me very well (thank you LA/OC BAH).

I had originally planned to do a post today about how I've calmed down since last week. It would be my "grieving process" post, and I say grieving because I was scared shitless about how to pay bills when the money ran out. Yeah, well, when I got home from school today, Mrs. 13 ran up to me and hugged me and kissed me and told me I got laid. Paid. Paid. Money's in the bank. Got paid.

Sure enough, there it was.

So, back to the 5 steps of grieving.

1. Denial and Isolation: "Oh no the VA dih-unttt!"

2. Anger: "I want to punch the VA in the fucking throat!"

3. Bargaining: ...

4. Depression: "Well, there goes Christmas..."

5. Acceptance

I came to acceptance last night. I realized and understood just how seriously fucked the whole situation had become. Seriously, the VA had to hire to an outside private company to unfuck their shit. I realized there was nothing else I could do. It was out of my hands, and I could only simply wait and wait and wait. The government was good for it, right?

So, with my newfound acceptance, I had planned to start doing some research. I wanted to find out how this whole fiasco had started. I wanted to know who was responsible. Everyone knows who Shinseki and Duckworth are, but I don't think they're the ones responsible for the inherited mess. But again, I don't know. In my journalism class, we've been learning how to tap into certain internet tools for research. I decided I was going to use some of these to see what I could dig up.

So, even though I got paid, I still plan to do this. Just because I got paid does not mean that the overall situation itself is still not royally fucked. As a Sergeant in the Army, if I had been responsible for a fire mission that resulted in the death of American soldiers instead of the baddies, I'd be in deep shit. I'd probably lose my rank, or my position, or who knows what. In baseball, when a team underperforms, the manager is given some leeway to make adjustments. After a while, if nothing changes, then the manager is canned. In extreme cases, the general manager gets the boot. But you don't hear or read about this in the Army or VA. Well, except for the Walter Reed fiasco not too long ago. But even still, with the Post-9/11 GI Bill issue, the VA is barely treading water. I'm not saying that any single one person is responsible because I don't know.

But I want to know. That's pretty important right? Who is responsible for screwing over 200,000 student veterans who have honorably served their country?

When an issue arises, you find out what that issue is. If it is correctable, you make the necessary changes. The VA is working overtime. They made an immediate $3000 available to veterans. They just hired an outside company to oversee their affairs. These are the changes, and results need to happen. Progress needs to be made.

If progress is not made, then...?

Unanswered questions that need answering:

1) Who oversaw the implementation of education benefits starting on 1 May 2009?

2) If an emergency check can be sent to me within 7 days with a few simple details from an online application, why couldn't Ch.33 be the same?

3) What's up with the redundant mailings? (one, two)

4) Will next semester/quarter--after XMAS--be better than it was this semester/quarter? (THEY BETTER BE)