Category: Veterans

by Brad Racino / inewsource / June 17, 2020

Following an inewsource report that the VA San Diego Healthcare System has stopped paying for a drug treatment that helps suicidal veterans, a panel of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs has begun investigating the decision.

El Cajon veteran AJ Williams, featured this month in the inewsource investigation, was interviewed Monday by a staff member from the House Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee. A representative from San Diego Congressman Scott Peters’ office also participated.

Williams is one of several veterans pulled from ketamine treatments at a private clinic and ordered back to the VA to be treated with a controversial nasal spray President Donald Trump has touted as “incredible.”

By Nicole Ueno / November 11, 2019

As state lawmakers rush to increase housing density in California, demographers estimate that our population will continue to increase by 300,000 to 400,000 people annually.

Essential infrastructure like roads, bridges, water pipelines and dams are already in disrepair, and increased strains from additional projected use are causing concern over the long-term sustainability of resident population growth.

A recent report from the League of California Cities states that “Numerous studies suggest that not only is the state unprepared for future growth, its current condition does not adequately support today’s population. Quite simply, California’s infrastructure is crumbling.”

By Jim Miller

As America’s endless wars grind on, largely out of view, we have become good at bombastic displays of patriotism at ballgames and other public venues, but underneath our ritualized nods to the service of our veterans the unseen psychic toll suffered by those who fight our wars remains mostly invisible.

In fact, in the age of the all-volunteer military, most of us don’t really need to think that much about it.

Still the suffering is deep and pervasive, like it or not. Many of us don’t know that one out of ten homeless people on the street is a veteran (with some estimates putting it much higher). Thus, despite our official love of veterans, as a society we are clearly quite comfortable treating them like disposable people. Think about that the next time you see somebody sleeping in a storefront doorway: perhaps that person risked their life for your country.

By Judi Curry

When my husband Bob was alive, he was a member of the local Veterans for Peace Organization (as well as a docent for the Star of India). He has been gone a little over ten years and as a memorial to him I made a donation to the VFP to purchase sleeping bags for those that are less fortunate than I am in that I have a warm bed, heat, and three meals a day.

Whatever the reason may be that there are so many homeless in San Diego, the fact is that the numbers are mind-boggling.

by Jill Castellano & Brad Racino / inewsource / October 1, 2019

Congress will conduct a hearing to investigate a powerful healthcare office in the Department of Veterans Affairs following inewsource stories that exposed the office’s shoddy review of a dangerous San Diego liver study. A new inewsource analysis shows the agency under scrutiny — the VA’s Office of the Medical Inspector — has a long history of performing poor investigations into veterans’ medical care.

by Brad Racino & Jill Castellano / inewsource / May 30, 2019

Two prominent doctors associated with the University of California San Diego and the local VA used blood and stool samples taken from sick veterans to bolster a paper published this month in an academic research journal.

The specimens were not supposed to be used, according to the project’s lead researcher, because they were part of a study that unethically collected biological samples from living subjects without their consent, which investigators called “serious noncompliance.”

Are we helping those most in need?

By David Patterson

Kudos to the Alpha Project and Chelsea Investments for their success getting homeless Veterans into apartments as outlined by Gary Warth, UT San Diego, March 31 2019, “Homeless Vets have New home”.

Great work done by all, but now it’s time to prioritize to get an even more vulnerable population off the streets, women and children.

It may sound unbelievable that we have women and children on the streets but it’s true and frequently we at Veterans For Peace encounter these people while handing out sleeping bags.

Over a month’s time I have encountered dozens of unaccompanied women, 2 different women each with 4 young children including toddlers and a young teen aged couple, cold filthy and according to the female, pregnant. This goes on week after week, month after month with little change in my view. It’s time that we changed our priorities.

by Brad Racino & Jill Castellano / inewsource / February 26, 2019

An internal report from the San Diego VA obtained by inewsource reveals liver samples were taken from sick veterans without their permission for a study that provided no benefit to the patients. It’s the latest development in an ongoing inewsource investigation into a flawed human research study at the La Jolla facility.

The October report found “serious noncompliance occurred” when extra pieces of liver were removed from at least nine veterans. The patients weren’t told those samples would be taken or that it could increase the risk of bleeding.

I know that this restaurant is not in our Ocean Beach / Point Loma area. However, I think that a shout-out should go to them for what they did. What do you think?

My husband – before he passed on – was a member of Veteran’s for Peace. I have kept semi-active in the organization and I think they do some wonderful things.

Today I received this message from Kate Beckwith – a retired Veteran – that hands out sleeping bags with so many others. I think this might be appropriate to repost because it talks about a restaurant – one that should be given plaudits for what they did.

A feel good story about an amazing restaurant…

As my international students and I ate a “turkeyless” dinner on Thanksgiving, I was reminded of the years my family had to wait for my husband to arrive home because he, and other members of Veterans for Peace, were busy distributing sleeping bags, water, and sometimes candy to the homeless living on the streets.

As my students and I discussed the meaning of Thanksgiving, they asked why the vets’ group distributed sleeping bags, how they got them, and who financed them. The students see people sleeping on the streets every day, since their ESL school is downtown. Miki said there are very few homeless in Japan; Lea said that she has not seen any homeless in Switzerland.

By Gilbert Field / Veterans for Peace

Local veterans, friends and supporters from the San Diego Veterans For Peace are in their third year of a five year educational outreach encouraging the public to stay home and not attend the annual Miramar Air Show.

Veterans believe that the Miramar Air Show glorifies war with an exciting show of speed, power and noise. It celebrates the skills and machinery that exist to kill, maim and destroy. The show is very dangerous …. 10% of all Blue Angel pilots have been killed in shows or accidents.