Stewart Rocks: The Best Daily Show… Ever
In a bout of pure awesomeness, Jon Stewart let it rip recently against the Department of Veterans Affairs and the unconscionable disability backlog.
Called The Red Tape Diary, this was literally the best bit I’ve seen from Stewart in a while. I’ve already posted about this on Facebook, but I thought doing a quick write up on it made sense given how awesome it was.
Stewart runs clips of Congress you’ve seen here from the House Committee on Veterans Affairs… Only his audio-visual budget is much higher than mine – which is $0.
Check it out here. Just push the arrow below.
Like I said, this is when Jon Stewart is at his best, sticking up for the little guys who are getting screwed by the system.
I recall his coverage of the 9/11 firemen who were denied health insurance coverage after coming down with all kinds of deadly cancers. He hammered the system and Congress eventually did the right thing.
Hopefully media attention like his will light a fire under the rump of President Obama and Secretary Shinseki to take a more serious look at the problem.
I guess when I say more serious, I mean that they should actually figure out how to fix it – as opposed to merely looking serious in front of the cameras.
Let me know what you guys think of The Red Tape Diaries after watching it.
It’s actually a great thing that a lot of the Main Stream Media is now shedding light on *real* numbers rather than the minced words the VA Sec. puts forth and half-truths. These Congressional puppets are no better than the war-profiteers that line their pockets to ensure civilian contractors and private “soldiers of fortune (aka Blackwater)” make all their money but have no problem leaving those that served the good fight in the dust when it comes to treating we Veterans accordingly for fighting their corporate wars! In an ideal world with a President with some gonads, it would be great to see ALL Congressional Reps/Senator’s pay FROZE as well as all medical benefits until doing right by veterans and the disservice of Disability Claim Backlog. They would be scrambling to “fix things” only because it actually affected THEM!
Anytime a VA Secretary or ANY VA Official talks about this backlog, notice how they seem to only talk about as if this has been a REAL problem and issue in last 5 to 10 year with *never* mentioning fact there’s Vietnam Veterans that are still being screwed? That 900,000 figure does not include people waiting on endless appeals and denials or stats of how many Veterans actually die before the VA gets to their C-File?
I for one am really tired of hearing the excuse “it’s the fact we still use paper and we need to input all this data in an electronic system”!!!
I highly recommend ANY Veteran sending electronic correspondence of ANY KIND to the VA Regional office or otherwise to hit CNTRL/A to highlight all and PRINT it out as part of your record keeping in your fight for your benefits! That ALSO includes any electronic correspondence FROM the VA. That’s exactly what I did so I had indisputable evidence of what they said in case told differently later on. The fact I worked at a huge syndicated corporate law firm for 6 years as a civilian as a document clerk and realized how the Plaintiff (we Veterans) having all important documentation of everything is a path to successfully winning your case and your Disability. This ALSO means Veterans need to READ all the US Code/Regulations used to establish service connection. It was a full time job for me while in and out of hospital or generally felling pretty crappy; but I did it and know all you other Vets can benefit HIGHLY by Ben’s Publications on how to win your claim because it’s all same stuff I learned by forums and using internet searches.
Rant over, singing out and put your Congressional Reps/Senator’s offices to work FOR you and if they happen to not be helpful, make it quite clear Veteran’s are a powerful voting force collectively and if they choose to not represent a gov’t for and BY the people, we can vote someone in that WILL!