No nation treats returning veterans better than than the United States.
A recent Warrior-Family Symposium just in time for Veterans Day concluded: After 11 years of war and tens of thousands of injured service members, veterans’ families and caregivers aren’t getting the help they need.
Panelists pointed to sincere statements by all involved that achieving goals over a five-year span is not acceptable. Military Officer Association of America attended, listened and is urging action: “... cut through interagency bureaucracies and achieve quick results.” MOAA has developed this eight point plan:
• Assume a wartime-urgency mentality focused on near term results.
• Do whatever it takes to implement a joint DoD/VA electric health record within two years.
• Develop a scoreboard to measure results and hold leaders accountable for near-term success.
• Use civilian providers to ease delays in accessing VA mental/behavioral health providers.
• Consolidate all veterans employment programs under the VA.
• Expand — not cut — military and VA family-caregiver programs and recovery coordinator positions.
• Pursue fast-track legislation authorizing service animals for veterans with severe psychological and physical challenges.
• Develop materials to better prepare care-givers for physical, emotional and other challenges they and their wounded, ill or injured veterans will face.
While we all know that all communities, especially ours, serve veterans as volunteers, these leaders, many retired commanders are aware that things move slowly even in the most well intentioned arms of government,but those who need help need it now, and if you wish to learn more watch a video at www.moaa.org/wfs.
Then contact Representative Jeff Miller (R-Fla.), chair of the House Committee on Veterans Affairs who states veterans face a mental health care crisis “right now.”
Thomas F. Conlon
Cumberland
Editorials
It’s time to consider pulling together all veterans’ programs
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Here it comes!
Maryland motorists are going to dread the arrival of July 1 over the next few years. It’s because that is the date the state’s gasoline tax increases will kick in.
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150th birthday
West Virginians will be in a celebratory mood Thursday when the state’s sesquicentennial is marked in scores of events across the Mountain State.
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Freedom isn’t exactly what he thinks it is
In the June 2 Times-News, R. Steele Selby (“Just how free are we?) defines freedom as “the capacity to do whatever he or she wants to do” and asserts that this definition is “most likely nearly universal.”
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What Maryland calls the Fair Share Act isn’t fair at all
The Fair Share Act was passed in 2009. This law allowed for service fees to be part of the collective bargaining process.
The law does not mandate that service fees be negotiated, it simply provides that they can be. -
It’s not new
America’s governments have always afforded us what’s called “a double-edged sword” — one that cuts both ways — when it comes to the contrasting ideas of openness and security.
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This summer:
You can do your kids a favor this summer by getting them involved in reading.
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Western Md. Veterans continues its mission
My name is Dan Brashear, I am the founder and director of Western Maryland Veterans.
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Maybe the cyclists and casino workers should be armed
Again, unfortunately I have to remind Don Carns Jr. of Beans Cove, Pa., on his latest repeatedly inaccurate letter published June 10 in the Cumberland Times-News (“Township is nothing like either Pittsburgh or Philadelphia”).
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Let’s all kick in $1 to help save Frostburg’s Palace Theatre
As a former resident, I have many fond memories of the Palace Theatre (“Theater wall crumbles: Palace exterior collapses, unfit for entry: officials,” June 6 Times-News, Page 1A).
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Close call
Thanks to a routine inspection, what could well have been a major disaster has been averted at Westmar Middle School’s football field.
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