Latest news with #VeteransAffairsDepartment
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
VA hosting Memorial Day events at 130+ national cemeteries
May 20 (UPI) -- More than 130 national cemeteries will conduct Memorial Day events hosting a total of about 100,000 attendees across the nation, the Veterans Affairs Department announced Tuesday. "Every day throughout the year, VA plays a vital role in remembering and honoring the brave servicemembers who gave their lives in defense of the freedoms America holds dear," VA Secretary Doug Collins said in a news release. "This Memorial Day weekend, we invite Americans to visit VA cemeteries and join us in reflecting upon the important legacies of these fallen heroes." Each of the VA's 156 national cemeteries and 35 soldiers' lots will be open from Friday through Monday. Many of the ceremonies will be streamed live and have videos and photographs shared on the National Cemetery Administration's Facebook and X social media pages. The VA also has posted a complete list of National Cemetery Memorial Day events and visiting hours to enable locals to visit the ones that are nearest to them. The VA also invites the general public to visit the VA's Veterans Legacy Memorial website to read submissions that include biographies, tributes, photos, documents and other relevant information. Online visitors also can make submissions to the website. More than 10 million veterans are interred at national cemeteries, VA grant-funded cemeteries, Department of Defense-managed cemeteries and private cemeteries. Interred veterans are eligible to receive a VA gravesite marker and other benefits.
UPI
21-05-2025
- General
- UPI
VA hosting Memorial Day events at 130+ national cemeteries
1 of 3 | A volunteer removes American flags from the graves at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery in St. Louis on May 28, 2024, after scouts placed an American flag on each of the 247,000 graves at Jefferson Barracks ahead of last year's Memorial Day event. File Photo by Bill Greenblatt/UPI | License Photo May 20 (UPI) -- More than 130 national cemeteries will conduct Memorial Day events hosting a total of about 100,000 attendees across the nation, the Veterans Affairs Department announced Tuesday. "Every day throughout the year, VA plays a vital role in remembering and honoring the brave servicemembers who gave their lives in defense of the freedoms America holds dear," VA Secretary Doug Collins said in a news release. "This Memorial Day weekend, we invite Americans to visit VA cemeteries and join us in reflecting upon the important legacies of these fallen heroes." Each of the VA's 156 national cemeteries and 35 soldiers' lots will be open from Friday through Monday. Many of the ceremonies will be streamed live and have videos and photographs shared on the National Cemetery Administration's Facebook and X social media pages. The VA also has posted a complete list of National Cemetery Memorial Day events and visiting hours to enable locals to visit the ones that are nearest to them. The VA also invites the general public to visit the VA's Veterans Legacy Memorial website to read submissions that include biographies, tributes, photos, documents and other relevant information. Online visitors also can make submissions to the website. More than 10 million veterans are interred at national cemeteries, VA grant-funded cemeteries, Department of Defense-managed cemeteries and private cemeteries. Interred veterans are eligible to receive a VA gravesite marker and other benefits.
San Francisco Chronicle
19-05-2025
- Politics
- San Francisco Chronicle
Letters: National cemeteries are hallowed ground. They face a threat to their survival
The National Cemetery Administration manages 156 cemeteries with more than 4 million graves. It has more than 1,000 employees assisted by tens of thousands of hours of volunteer service each year. Burials are conducted by these volunteers in full dress uniforms. I have two relatives from the World War II generation buried at Arlington National Cemetery, and last year, a close friend of 70 years was laid to rest at the National Cemetery in Dixon. Like many Vietnam veterans, my friend had battled cancer from exposure to Agent Orange. After his service, he used the G.I. Bill to earn a doctorate in astrophysics and taught at a university for three decades. I encourage everyone to visit one of these sacred places and walk among the white marble headstones. Each tells a story — name, rank, service, sometimes a religious symbol or a few words of farewell. They reflect a deeply human chapter of our nation's history. My friend's headstone reads ' sic itur astra,' Latin for 'reach for the stars.' The National Cemetery Administration and the Veterans Affairs Department face deep funding cuts. We owe it to all our veterans to ensure they receive the respect, care and dignity they have earned. Eric Peterson, Santa Rosa Don't raise dam Regarding 'California's largest reservoir could see controversial dam enlargement under Trump' (California, May 12): It's incumbent to recognize that the area near Shasta Dam was brutally stolen from the indigenous Winnemem Wintu beginning in the 1850s. This area's elected white representatives are not satisfied with the ethnic/cultural genocide that's already taken place; rather, their goal is total eradication of a crucial piece of California history, all to profit the nut agribusiness hundreds of miles away. Supporting this trade-off is a clear demonstration of our skewed capitalistic sense of priorities that ignore science as well as morality. As always, we need to envision how we would respond if the situation was reversed. Take the slow lane Regarding 'A Zoox and an e-bike collided in S.F. Here's what it says about robotaxi safety' (Tech, May 13): These accidents were mostly caused by humans and raise an issue that was developing before driverless taxis hit the streets. Motorized bicycles, scooters and even skateboards can now exceed the speed limit on many city streets. Their newfound speed has not changed old habits. Most bicyclists seldom if ever consider red lights, stop signs or pedestrians as anything more than challenges to navigate without slowing down. They ride on pedestrian walkways, bike lanes and automobile traffic lanes. These riders' cousins on scooters and skateboards have followed suit, scoffing at traffic laws and courtesy. Now, however, they can go as fast as the cars and trucks. The state should consider forcing skateboarders and riders of scooters and e-bikes to pass the same types of driving tests as the rest of us. If a skateboarder hits a frail pedestrian, it can be just as deadly as a truck. I drive in traffic amid countless driverless taxis in the city. I worry about them far less than the humans. Patrick W. Andersen, San Francisco Acting inspirational I acted in some plays in high school and was amazed by the level of fluency I found onstage. To this day, whenever I have to give presentations in front of large audiences, I pretend that I am acting in a movie and I am totally fluent. The website of the Stuttering Foundation has a biographical story on actor Bruce Willis that describes how he stuttered for the first 20 years of his life until he enrolled in the drama program in college. Acting and speech therapy led him to fluency and a brilliant career.
Yahoo
07-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump's VA secretary struggles to defend the administration's plan for mass layoffs
It's been a couple of months since Donald Trump's Veterans Affairs Department announced that it's prepared to fire tens of thousands of workers as part of an agency-wide reorganization. Soon after, Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins tried to defend the move, arguing that the federal government 'does not exist to employ people.' It was a wildly unpersuasive defense: No one has ever argued that the federal government exists to employ people. Rather, the point has always been that those who work at agencies such as the VA are there to serve Americans who need assistance, and mass layoffs likely mean fewer services to those who can ill-afford the cuts. The Cabinet secretary added, 'We'll be making major changes, so get used to it.' That didn't help, either: If you're an injured veteran worried about what Republicans have in store for the trimmed-down VA, getting 'used to' fewer services and less care is a life-changing proposition. Two months later, Collins had another opportunity to defend the administration's plans — this time during a congressional hearing. As NBC News reported, it did not go well. In testy exchanges with multiple members of the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs, Secretary Doug Collins said that his agency was looking into potentially cutting another 70,500 nonessential positions in a move that would make the agency more efficient. 'The department's history shows that adding more employees to the system doesn't automatically equal better results,' said Collins, a Navy veteran and former U.S. representative, who was sworn in in February. At face value, that's not necessarily a ridiculous argument, but it leads to an unavoidable follow-up question: What makes Collins and the Trump administration assume that fewer employees doing more work will lead to better results? The secretary went on to say the planned mass firings will focus on those filling 'nonessential roles,' such as interior designers and those who work in diversity, equity and inclusion. But this, too, seems hard to accept at face value: Are we to believe that the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs currently employees tens of thousands of designers and DEI workers? Because that seems unlikely. Collins' woeful appearance on Capitol Hill was more than just another example of a White House Cabinet secretary who appeared unprepared to defend the indefensible. The Washington Post's Dana Milbank attended the hearing and had a great column on this, noting that the secretary and his team have thrown the VA 'into absolute chaos.' The department announced that it was terminating 875 contracts — then announced that it was terminating the terminations. It fired 2,400 workers — then took 1,400 of them back as the dismissals are challenged in court. Across the country, notices have been taped to the doors of VA clinics announcing closures because of staff shortages. The department has ended clinical trials that provided treatments to veterans for cancers, traumatic brain injuries and other illnesses, ProPublica reported on Tuesday. The department even sacked people who worked on the veterans' suicide prevention hotline, only to hire them back. And this is but a fraction of the destruction that's planned: Collins has announced a goal of eliminating 15 percent of VA staff — some 83,000 jobs — without any word about how he intends to go about it. At multiple points during the hearing, Collins tried to argue that veterans need not be overly concerned, because the administration was unlikely to oust front-line health care workers. But he also failed to inspire confidence, struggling to provide basic information that a VA secretary ought to know, while conceding that he's been forced to rehire some of the personnel he fired in haste. Given the degree to which Collins has already destabilized the VA, it seems hard to imagine many veterans feeling comforted by his testimony. It led Milbank to conclude, 'What the Trump administration is doing to Veterans Affairs is, in short, a microcosm of what it has been doing to the overall federal government: sabotage without purpose.' This post updates our related earlier coverage. This article was originally published on
ABC News
25-04-2025
- Business
- ABC News
Increasing Australia's defence budget requires answering tough questions
We have a sometimes mystifying relationship with ideas about honouring those who serve our country, and with ideas about how we defend it. Past governments have been happy to spend half a billion dollars renovating the Australian War Memorial while so underfunding the Veterans Affairs Department that it couldn't properly look after veterans in a timely way, as documented by a royal commission. In the long, benign sleep in which we have been happy to think we didn't have to think much about defence, because #ANZUS, there have been the odd stirrings from slumber amongst the aficionados about what the right defence posture might look like. For example, should we look to the "Defence of Australia" — a policy stance which focused on our physical north — or did we have to think on a broader scale and commit to being part of a bigger unit racing around the South China Sea (for example) or being part of a global force for good. Both sides of politics signed up to AUKUS with very little debate, despite the many critics who questioned whether an even closer defence alliance with the United States was a good idea. ( AAP: Darren England ) Along came AUKUS Most recently, in 2021, along came AUKUS with its appeal of new ties, and new technology, with allies old and new. Both sides of politics signed up to it with very little debate, despite the many critics who questioned whether an even closer defence alliance with the United States was a good idea and also worried about an over-heavy investment in just one form of technology: nuclear submarines. Now we are in an election campaign where the opposition's biggest immediate financial commitment is to an escalation in our national defence spending. Photo shows two male politicians wearing suits Peter Dutton has pledged to better prepare Australia for future geo-strategic threats by spending an additional $21 billion between now and 2030. The Coalition wants us to spend 2.5 per cent of GDP within five years and 3 per cent of GDP on defence within 10 years, compared to about 2 per cent now, which Labor says it will lift to 2.3 per cent over the next 10 years. What's a good number? Well, strategic analyst Marcus Hellyer says, 3 per cent "has become the new industry standard for countries that are serious about preserving their security and also countries that are interested in demonstrating that they're not just freeloaders on the US". "A few years ago, the kind of industry standard was 2 per cent and so the NATO countries, for example, were aiming to get to 2 per cent," Hellyer says. "However, since then, we've seen war in Ukraine. We've seen a very wobbly US in terms of its international commitments, and also a US that is kind of running out of patience with freeloaders, and is demanding that its friends and partners. "It's telling the Europeans, it's telling its Asian allies that they need to get to 3 per cent. That is now the new benchmark." Why not increase defence spending? So, both sides think given everything going on in the world, we need to increase defence spending. And look, seriously, pick any number you like: 2.3 per cent; 2.4 per cent; 3 per cent or go the whole hog and follow Australia's richest person, Gina Rinehart and say it should actually be 5 per cent. Why not? Well, we don't have the money is why not. The conversation about increasing defence spending is taking place in the general la-la land in which discussions about the role of governments and spending takes place these days. Photo shows a male politician wearing a suit speaking at lectern in front of party members The opposition leader is being cautious with his language as he doesn't want to turn off Chinese-Australian voters, as the Coalition did last election. That is, if we want to dramatically increase defence spending, we need a major structural change in our budget. More taxes to be blunt. There also needs to be an updated, coherent and clear-eyed bipartisan view about what our defence strategy is trying to achieve. And, if we are going to spend so much money, what are we actually planning to spend it on? Already AUKUS is absorbing the increase in defence spending that the current government has announced during its term of office — to the detriment of other defence procurement and priorities. A navy without ships Hellyer, long one of our most respected defence analysts, particularly when it comes to the defence budget, says that the national defence strategy released by the Albanese government last year included "a lot of new money over the 10 years: $50 billion is the number they stated". (Even that commitment doesn't involve spending a lot of money immediately: another sign we are putting off a debate about actually funding all these ambitions.) "But all of that, except for $1 billion, goes on two capabilities: nuclear powered submarines being delivered under AUKUS and the so-called general purpose frigate program, which, essentially aims at making sure the Royal Australian Navy actually has some ships, because our ship building programs have been so slow that the navy's at risk of becoming a navy without any ships," Hellyer says. Read more about the federal election: Want even more? Here's where you can find all our 2025 "So it's a high priority program and an important program, but those two programs absorb all of the new money." The nuclear-powered submarine (SSN) program, he says, is already "distorting the ADF acquisition plan". "So already we are spending more on SSNs, and we're still seven, eight, nine years away from having them," Hellyer says. "But this year, already, we're spending more on SSNs than on the Air Force's entire acquisition budget. "If you want SSNs, but you also want to be growing the rest of the ADF to have the kinds of capabilities we need to have an effective deterrent, so certainly, I think 3 per cent is the sort of goal we should be heading towards." What should we spend the money on? Hellyer, who is head of research at Strategic Analysis Australia and describes himself as an AUKUS "agnostic", says that rather than a shopping list there are "two high-level principles here". The first is there's a lot of risk around AUKUS: that they don't arrive in time, or we don't get them at all. He asks: what other capabilities do we need? What do we need to hedge those risks? The second high level principle is: "are we happy to be dependent on the US, and where do we want to have self-reliance? What do we want to be able to do ourselves using Australian industry and Australian supply chains?" The lesson of Ukraine, he says, is that while we might never be completely self-reliant in fighter planes or nuclear powered submarines, we can deal with making "those smaller, so called consumables of war, in ammunition, in missiles, in drones". The Coalition's huge new spending policy was lacking a lot of details about what it intended to spend money on, though defence spokesperson Andrew Hastie did emphasise that, beyond procurement, we need to spend more on sustainment (keeping things working) and on personnel. Loading Opposition Leader Peter Dutton said this week a Coalition government would spend the extra money on "drone capability, guided weapons — which we invested into, that this government has pulled money out of — munitions and our capability across most platforms, including frigates, and our cyber defences". (Hellyer says that while it was true the current government had cut back spending on some programs, the Morrison government's wishlist was "just too big for the amount of money that they wanted to spend".) Photo shows a young male politician speaking in front of a blue background Senior opposition figure Andrew Hastie has warned Australia's long-standing military alliance with the United States faces uncertainty. Which brings us back to the glaring question in all this big talk on defence: where's the money coming from? This was where we got some of the most unsatisfactory answers. Hastie said it would come from "growing the economy". In the short term, the only source of funding that Dutton mentioned was repealing Labor's $17 billion tax cuts. Polls pointing to the Coalition possibly receiving its lowest ever primary vote next week makes the question of what it is proposing for defence, and the poor quality of its announcement, seem a little hypothetical. But it is still important because it has helped frame the discussion about where defence policy should go, even if Dutton loses next Saturday. As Hellyer makes clear, there are holes, too, in Labor's spending plans. There are also holes in Labor's defence spending plans. ( ABC News: David Sciasci ) Culture wars undermine credibility Defence, national security and law and order are supposed to be Dutton's political strong suits and they have all been out for a gallop this second last week of the election campaign. None of them landed with, shall we say, great aplomb. And the credibility cost of the sort of culture wars that Dutton has run as opposition leader were all too evident on Anzac Day when Australians saw Dutton decry the despicable disruption of the Dawn Service in Melbourne by a group led by neo-Nazis heckling through the Welcome to Country. Many Australians may have remembered that it was Dutton and his Coalition who, earlier this year, attacked funding for Welcome to Country ceremonies, which Dutton's waste-reduction spokesperson James Stevens said had become a "multimillion-dollar industry". Australians also know that the man who would be prime minister walked out on the Apology to the Stolen Generations in 2008 and said he wouldn't be standing in front of the Indigenous flag at media events as prime minister. "I've said before that Welcome to Country is an important part of official ceremonies, and it should be respected," he said on Friday morning when he condemned the incident. "I don't agree in our democracy that people can't accept the views of others." If only some of our leaders could consistently accept the views of others, instead of trying to weaponise them. Laura Tingle is 7.30's political editor. Having trouble seeing this form? Try
