They go back to a Public University first, private university, trade school, or they go directly into the workforce. Whether military. Com has reports on the flybynight for profit universities picking up veterans there has money been stories about them not finding jobs. Host ward carroll . Guest i cannot speak to the first issue. I have my own opinion about what pedigree does in terms of your ability to find a job. If you can get into harvard or private schools, that probably situates you for an advantage when it comes time to find a job. Those transitioning are no different than High Schoolers that are looking to have an advantage once they start looking for a job. In terms of the for Profit School issues. Been sussingom has out the bad actors. Of new g. I. Bill puts a lot to be usedthe pool by veterans to pursue a traditional education at a a look institution and you will go to college, or perhaps to an online forProfit School. What we have seen more and more is there were some forProfit Schools that were headed toward predatory. No service after the sale and the dropout rate was huge. If they did manage to get their degree and went to find a job, there was no appreciation by the employee or about the degree. That was not a good thing for the vet. There were some congressional committees that went to try to figure out what went on. We sat down and said what we knew. We share matthews concern that there are some institutions not doing a service for the veterans. You only have so many g. I. Bill dollars. Host darius is up from maryland, a veteran. Thank you for calling in. Caller good morning. I am and afghanistan veteran. In 2011. Loyed i was still classified as a crew chief. I believe my skills are very talented. I have a stake clearance. I am akai clique inclined i am mechanically inclined. I still cannot get a job. I could not find any real form of work, other than working at a mcdonalds or some small place that did not pay much. Comet there was unfair to home and have all this experience, all this knowledge, and not to capitalize on. In world war ii, these veterans came home these guys built the country. They put these people to work because they were good men and women. That is what these veterans are today. Not traumatized and braindead. We are hard workers and we want to work. Host the white house put out a chart after that employment report came out last week showing postseptember 11 2001 veterans Unemployment Rate. Veterans, muchce lower there. Ward carroll guest thanks to your service. Chiefs. Pect for crew i guess i would ask, where do you live and have you tried to find employment with the airlines . Is he off the line . I do not know the exact circumstance of his situation. A crew chief has certain skills that would be very germane to the airline industry. I know the airlines have hiring initiatives to bring veterans aboard. Ceos of airlines are military aviation veterans. I think it is a matter of leaving your comfort zone in terms of where you live, in some cases. I am not saying that is something people need to get over. With his profile, i would have to believe that there is employment out there that is right. I am not trying to dismiss his frustration. I know it is a challenge. I think there is a job for him that he doesnt know about. Host joseph from new york. You are on with ward carroll of military. Com. Caller host good morning and hy veterans day. Thank you very much. I have a question. I retired in 1994. War,ved in vietnam, gulf and bosnia. About this job situation. Every caller that called is right. When i cap out the first time, i was very confused. I tried to get a job and they hated us. I was a crew chief also. Out, i couldnt find a job. I went back into the military. I worked in oklahoma for six years. The thing is, i have other experience and linguistic skills. I speak five different languages. When i got out, retired a third time, i tried to get a job in a postal office. They would not hire me. I had an 80 disability. Not care if do youre disabled or if you are a vet. You want everything handed to you. No, we did not. I just wanted a job. I had to go through a federal court. I won my course. I got everything. I am retired and i collect my pension. It is unfair for the people to look at the veteran as bad guys. That is how they look at us. Nuts. Ys, crazy, i get treated now for ptsd. I got skin cancer that i received in the gulf war. They think it is agent orange. It is stress. Is nation of this country letting smart, young people and they are willing to work. Yes, they might have some problems. Host i will let you comment on joseph. Guest he is bringing a lot of experience in a lot of different areas. He was talking about vietnam. Andved in washington, d. C. , i saw the riots and half the city on fire. I would have to say the atmosphere he was saying he got out in 1994. Ishink the public endeavoring to get it. There are hiring initiatives that could potentially solve a problem like those that joseph faced when he got out in 1994. He talks about his linguistic skills. Is joseph willing to live in the greater d. C. Metro area instead of where he is living now . This is part of what you are seeing. It is what you would call bommer omer guilt. I think things are better. From ward carroll military. Com. The world war ii memorial on the mall in washington, d. C. Veteranslking about issues all morning. Just before the start of the weekend, Eric Shin Sankey said he was slowing down a program aimed at the disability claims waiting to be processed. Joining us to talk about Mental Health and other issues facing veterans is Tom Tarantino, a former army captain and current chief. Announcement last weekend a good sign for veterans waiting for their benefits claims to be processed . Guest it was an expected announcement. The backlog has been reduced by about 1 3, which is outstanding news. There is some light at the end of the tunnel. We have about 400,000 claims still in the inventory. They were going to halt the mandatory overtime. We expect it to resume after the holidays in february. We have 400,000 claims. If they want to make their goal, it is going to require overtime and other initiatives that have put into gear that have started this trend downward. Host 400,000 claims that is down from 600,000 claims in march. Talk about the impact of the government shutdown. How did that affect the claims . Guest it slowed it down. We averted a potential disaster. The processors were technically protected. The v. A. Could not accept any new claims but they could continue to work. The reduction went down to a few thousand during those weeks. Normally we were see numbers like 10,000, 11,000 a week. The shutdown hindered their ability to do it. It is not just about the v. A. They get information from all sorts of agencies that were affected. We would have seen them running out of any of the mandatory funds that had been appropriated. They would have had to stop paying benefits and furlough more workers. We could have seen it grind to a halt, which wouldve been potentially disastrous. Host you talk about wait times for veterans. Here is a front page story talking about a different issue but involving wait times. Many veterans face frustrating delays for Mental Health care. The agency failed to schedule a third of appointments within 14 days. Host you did a survey that discussed Mental Health issues with those veterans you survey. What did you find . Guest Mental Health issues are impacted beyond those suffering from Mental Health injuries. 30 of our members said they knew someone who tried to commit suicide. This is an alarming number. The visible wounds go beyond those who were injured. You are looking at 20something percent, and you added major depression and youre looking at 1 3. T Overall Health care does a good job of providing health care. They are my health care provider. They have struggled in keeping up with Mental Health care. They were extremely understaffed. They have filled the 1500 remaining positions they were supposed to, but it depends on whether it is a counselor, psychiatrist. There isnt the full breath of care providers that you need to get coverage that is desired out there. Veterans who are going to the v. A. Are having trouble getting timely care. They are starting to look at Building Partnerships with nonprofits and Health Care Providers locally. But this is a new program and we havent seen the impact of this. With tomare talking tarantino of the iraq and afghanistan veterans of america, talking about disability benefits, Mental Health issues that impact veterans coming back from the battlefield. If you want to talk about this subject, our phone lines are open. Host we will get right to the calls. Farmington, minnesota, on our line for democrats. Good morning. Caller hello. Yeah, i was a vietnam veteran. My younger brother was, too. He died four years ago, cancer. There was a lot of problems with his paperwork when he got out of the marine corps. And he wasnt a very aggressive person. He had a lot of problems with life, marriages, this and that and the other thing. Just a tough life in general, making a living. Too. Enough stuff, as it turns out, really aggressivetype person. Anyway, i finished college and so forth on the g. I. Bill and everything. 4spent, in addition to my years in the navy, the last 20 years the Minnesota National guard. I am a Management Consultant and im reaching the age where im thinking of retiring. But over the years ive hired a lot of employees for companies for management positions, supervisor positions, and so on and so forth. And i always knew that military , those that worked in some kind of purchasing or, you know, receiving, you know, those kind of jobs, they were very good logistics, that kind of thing. Host thanks for the call from minnesota. Darwin brings up the g. I. Bill and the hiring help you received over the way. He received over the way. About theobama talked g. I. Bill and returning veterans. I want to play a little bit now. [video clip] doing everything we can to connect more businesses with highly skilled veterans. More help with job searches, more tools to connect veterans with job openings, chances to run licenses and credentials with civilian jobs, new tax credits for countries that hire Wounded Warriors, cash credits which congress should make permanent. Americas businesses have worked with michelle and joe bidens joining forces campaign to help euros fine jobs in the private sector. They have hired or trained 290,000 a veterans and spouses and of committed to hiring 400,000 more. We are committed to giving todays veterans and their families the same shot at a great education my grandfather got when he came home from world war ii. We are helping them earn their degrees under the post9 11 g. I. Bill. We are setting new standards to protect against his honest reporting and predatory lending practices that target veterans and dishonest reporting and lendingry practices that target veterans. Thanks to these efforts and the efforts of the private sector, we have made progress getting our events back to work, but we have got a lot more work to do. As more than one million of our troops returned to civilian life, we will have to work even harder, because of the skill, dedication, encourage of our troops is unmatched. When they come home, we all benefit from their efforts to build a stronger america and a Brighter Future for our kids. Host we are talking with Tom Tarantino of the iraq and afghanistan veterans of america. Mr. Tarantino, your group conducted a survey of over 400,000 iraq and afghanistan veterans earlier this year and you asked a few questions about the g. I. Bill that the president and the last caller brought up. What did you find in terms of attitudes about the g. I. Bill . Guest the g. I. Bill is an incredible he popular program, and for good reason. I think in the last year or so, the problems they had with processing and wait times have started to go down. We will start you see well start seeing this next year, this winter semester, start seeing and work a lot more smoothly as the computer wrinkles are ironed out. But the point is that the g. I. Bill has been a great success. One million veterans apply for benefits under the g. I. Bill and he will transfer my generation it will transform a generation and it will help this generation readjust. The original g. I. Bill was not called the g. I. Bill. It was called the reinvestment and readjust and act. The idea is that it gives veterans structure to do something when they transfer it to civilian life and provides the needed buffer so that you are not just walking out of a battlefield and into an office. It also allows veterans to make up the gaps in some of their skills. The military spends billions of dollars teaching you an amazing skill set, but it doesnt teach you everything you need for the civilian world. The g. I. Bill is a great benefit to get those few things that you dont need that you didnt get to learn and the military that you might need in your civilian career. Twitter. Uestion from you talked earlier in this segment about bbva and the processing of this ability claims. Guest the answer to that is yes. They have done both. The a has a completely new digital process. Theyre not even excepting paper. You file everything digitally now. The processing system, whereas before you would have wants us are working through a large envelope and then it would go to the next person and they would put it in a box and ship it to another building now it is all digital and you can have multiple processors looking at the same file at once. Theyve increased by several thousand of the amount of claims processors. Forcesnt just a brute and ignorance method. This is a comprehensive adjustment in how they process claims entirely. We are hoping that as they work the bugs out of the new system, we will start seeing start regularly seeing claims get processed faster and hopefully in a few years im cautiously optimistic the backlogs could be a thing of the past. But we have to make sure that the v. A. Has the resources that they need so that they can keep modernizing. This is in a sixmonth initiative and they are done. This is going to be a very long term thing. Host alfred is up next from north carolina, a veteran on our. Ine for democrats thanks for calling us money. Tv down and gour ahead with your question or comment. All right, we will try to get back to alfred. Is in providence, rhode island, also a veteran and an independent. Good morning. Caller good morning. I am 100 disabled for ptsd. I was sexually assaulted. Was, after a lot of work, given the ptsd therapist. I saw her 7 times. On the seventh visit, she told me she would only see me once every three weeks. Instead of once every 2 weeks. I said no. She told me she wouldnt see me anymore. I went to the director of psychiatry in the hospital. He took her side. And now i have no Mental Health at all. The problem the v. A. Has a lot of problems. And we are not getting proper care. Lynn, thanks for the call in this money could Tom Tarantino from iraq and afghanistan veterans of america, our Women Veterans getting the care that they need . Guest not entirely, no. For yournk you service. This is in a couple of huge problem in our community. Sexual assault has been rampant in the department of defense and the military. It has not been rampant in the last 2 years, it has been rampant in the last 40. Everyone needs to start being honest about this, especially in the department of defense. Their response has largely been treating Sexual Assault like it is something that occurred in the last two years and they need to get leadership around it and they can fix it. Not true. It is a pervasive cultural problem, and there are several things were trying to fix. For example, modernizing the electric Justice System. This is senator joe brand senator gillibrands bill. The military has been resistant to this because they have this mental inertia when it comes to change. Our is something that allies across the world have done and it has been successful and it would put that her fidelity in the Justice System theyat victims feel that will get a fair shake, their day in court, and they will report the crime. Mentals of the followon health care, we are seeing extreme problems with men and women suffering from military sexual trauma not being able to get the care they need out of the v. A. This is largely because it is really hard to prove. Until the last few years ago, records of Sexual Assault were routinely destroyed very quickly. Iw they have to be kept for, think, 50 years for this is another bill that were looking oore actd the ruth m that says that if you are in the military and you have diagnosis from Sexual Assault, we will assume it comes from your military service. We do this with agent orange manic poster posttraumatic, stress. Lynn is right. This is a symptom of the v. A. Health care not being where we needed to be. We are seeing other problems, such as opiate prescriptions at ava has risen to several hundred percent. This is where the demand for care is so high that hospitals cant keep up trade if you have a veteran who is coming in in pain, you want to do something. This isnt a nefarious thing. They want to help the veteran not be in pain. But theres not enough Mental Health care providers to treat the need. This is causing huge problems not just for Mental Health but all over the pa system. Host stats on military Sexual Assault. This is a headline from the new york daily news. This is a story from last week. 3553 assault reports in the first three quarters of the last fiscal year, up from 2400 34 in the previous year, according to the defense department. From willow springs, north carolina, on our line for republicans. You are on with Tom Tarantino of iraq and afghanistan veterans of america. Caller