J Basser: 0:03

Welcome, folks, to another episode of the Exposed Red Productions on this beautiful 10th day of April 2025. Today we have Mr Ray Cobb. He's our co-host down in the great state of Tennessee Dodging thunderstorms right now, but I think he's doing okay. How you doing, ray?

Ray Cobb: 0:26

I'm doing great. How are we doing?

J Basser: 0:29

Oh, we're hanging like a hair in a biscuit. Today we've got a treat for you guys. We got the Fresh Off the Nova Conference in the big city of Minneapolis, St Paul. He just got back. He's got a little bit of jet lag going on.

Alex Graham: 0:49

He's been back throwing fighting with the va last few days. We got the mr alex. Graham alex, how are you doing? I'm doing real good, but I think you're pulling the leg of your, your listeners there. I don't have no jet lag. That's only a two hour time difference. Now jet lag is when you leave from san francisco and you you get off the airplane at Thompson Newton in Vietnam. That's a little bit of jet lag. You're a whole day ahead of where you left.

J Basser: 1:10

That's pretty sad. When they put you on an airplane and send you to the damn place you can't even spell no. But I'm glad to see you back and made it in one piece and you're all educated and ready to go. And we've had some discussions this week. You've had some issues and you've been doing some serious butt-shooting with some folks at the VA. I'm proud of you.

Alex Graham: 1:37

Well you know my wife tells me I've got Tourette's Syndrome. I open my mouth up and you never know what the hell is going to come out.

J Basser: 1:49

Well, my wife says that too, but they've come out with a new term. Now we have no filter.

Alex Graham: 1:54

Oh, well, I know that Men get boxes out and they can only have one box out at a time. Apparently, they have to put the lid back on, put that box back on the shelf and get box number two out. That's one way to explain. Women can get multiple boxes out at the same time and address all of them simultaneously. That is until I notice, until the pancakes start burning. But we're not allowed to talk about that.

J Basser: 2:30

Well, you know, everybody needs to read that book. And I tell you, if you're married, and married a long time, you need to read that book, find out what it's all about. You know, read the book, but no.

Alex Graham: 2:44

With the carrot feeding of wife.

J Basser: 2:47

Yeah that kind of worked.

Alex Graham: 2:49

Go ahead.

J Basser: 2:50

How'd the conference go? Did you get some good input information? Anything going on with the OCG?

Alex Graham: 2:58

What we did get, I think, is that a group of us who have never actually met in the flesh that did the SMC class training that I was teaching. We got to meet in person some of these guys and gals and compare notes. And something Wes McCauley and I both noticed is that by all, by all appearances, it appears as though the va considers that the smc ladder ends at l or maybe m, but mostly at l, because you cannot have two l's in their mind like two aiden attend is obviously. That to them is pyramiding. And it became a little bit more obvious here recently where I got two A's and A's about about a month ago now, about the middle of March, and it came down from the BVA and they all sat there and scratched their heads and they said, well, this is impossible. This judge is telling us to give Mr Johnny Venn here two aid and attendances. But we can't do that. The machine won't let us. It tells us it's wrong. So they had to go talk to their poobahs and the head honchos and everybody had cluck, cluck like a bunch of hens and finally somebody says, well, let's just go along with the judge even though we know he's wrong.

Alex Graham: 4:33

That's the consensus in BBMs in the notes section, is they had to manually rewrite the SMC calculator in longhand. Almost Well, I typed it up real nice and neat, but it's not in the automatically generated format. You can tell somebody had to create it from scratch and that's impossible. Well, we know it's not impossible because of Brenniser versus Shinseki, but outside of that they've got their head, their little blinders, on with that M21. And it's like the Oracle at Delphi, the golden statue. Everybody was worshiping out there until Moses, you know 86. It's a computer. It's not a 86. It's a computer. It's not a Bible, it's not written. It changes 135 times a year. So how could you rely on it?

J Basser: 5:40

They should be able to rely on it. Alex, I'm sure that they hire and they have people in their employment these data scientists that know how to write code and things like that. They can go in that damn system and they can take it and they can look at it and they can figure out a code to make it work. The computer will accept that. So why they're not doing that is beyond me. If they can't do it, they need to get somebody that can.

Alex Graham: 6:05

Did you ever listen to? Maybe they don't want you to do it or they don't. There might be something nefarious going on here. Go ahead, ray. You know what I was thinking, and I think ray might second. This thought is those guys from doge or doge, the musk, the musk. They come in there and say wait a minute, we can fix this in about five seconds with a little bit of that AI shit.

J Basser: 6:29

Yes, they can.

Alex Graham: 6:31

No, you're not allowed in here. You don't have clearance. Top secret crypto can't come in.

Ray Cobb: 6:39

I know a couple that do Well you know it's kind of crazy, but I think you're right. I think, okay, let's look at it this way. I was working yesterday on my web page and and the guy that was helping me and teaching me how to do all this stuff and set it up, when he found out how old I was, he says you're one of the oldest guys I've ever known that wants to try to do a web page. And I thought, well, no, you know what's wrong with that? Nothing's wrong with it. It's just that we have a harder time understanding all this new stuff. But if we got guys that are, you know, up in the mid-50s and early 60s sitting there making these decisions and they don't want any help, they don't want any of this changing in their computer system they've been doing for the last 10 years, they go to a buck at it. They're just going to say it doesn't work and drop it at that.

J Basser: 7:38

The more we get, the more set in our ways we get. It's hard. Anything new comes on. We don't want nothing new. We want to keep the same status quo. It's hard. Anything new comes on. We don't want nothing new. We want to keep saying the status quo.

Alex Graham: 7:49

I'll tell you what. With AI, there is no such thing as status quo or the word static. It's changing so fast. It's like going from dial phones to touchstone and beyond in 30 minutes instead of 30 years.

J Basser: 8:05

Well, these guys take it and they write the code out. And when they get the code written, they've got special codes they put in there. And I want to tell you something, guys, it's kind of crazy, because they'll put a code in and it'll start doing something, but it'll go through the whole system and start learning and it teaches itself. It's called a learning code. It does that and it can be enormous as to what happens, you know, because it's all math anyway.

Alex Graham: 8:32

Think about this, john. Historically, va jammed their heels in the dirt. They're the last agency to transpose and go from paper to electronic. They fought tooth and nail to keep that paper and when they did finally transition over, they screwed it all up. They used their own IT people. They never got anything perfect. With VBMS about 16 or 17, they had to bring Microsoft company in. I remember that, yeah, yeah to fix it. So if you had more than 200 people on it nationwide, the whole thing crashed. I remember that it crashed.

J Basser: 9:19

Yeah, it crashed like a helicopter in Hudson Bay.

Alex Graham: 9:33

It was like dial-up. It was bad but when they got it fixed it didn't take them six years to get it right. Uh, it's like this thing with uh cerner ehr electronic health records they deploy it. They kill 40 vets because they forgot to call them and tell them to come in for a CT with contrast to check out that stage four cancer. Next time they get in touch with him they go. You'll have to go visit him down at Glenwood Cemetery. Son.

J Basser: 9:59

Hey, remember Stretch.

Alex Graham: 10:02

Well, listen, va has never been a chicken dinner winner in the IT game and for some reason they know that. But they didn't know it until recently. When they switched over into AMA they changed a lot of regulations. They had to modify them because they were different from legacy and every one of these conferences I go to, everybody says better, erase that. On 14.632 or 6.29 or 3.303D, you got to change that. That's wrong, but we just overthrew that at the federal circuit. The VA wrote those rules afterwards. They're supposed to be the specialists.

Alex Graham: 10:52

It disturbs me greatly to see error in code in 38 CFR. Or well, it can't be in 38 USC because Congress has spoken. But when you translate from USC to CFR it's got to be perfect. But Loper well, chevron deference made it all out of shape. But with Loper right now it brings it back into focus, where a judge can look at this thing and say this is how I interpret it. Not the secretary or the OGC say well, this is what we meant to say, this is what the secretary really was talking about. So we're going to go with our interpretation. Screw you, loper Bright takes that away from the OGC and puts it back into the CAVC's bailiwick or perhaps even the veterans law judges at the BVA.

Alex Graham: 11:51

Well, it's an earth-moving change in our legislation. How that's going to play out, I think all hinges greatly on how adept you are at arguing at the court. You've got to have that silver tongue like Ken Carpenter or Zach Stoltz or Amy Odom, and God forbid, you get a mediocre attorney driving the boat and that thing crashes and burns. We're all going to get stuck with it. We want the best and the brightest. That's what I love about Nova. There are people that ask questions. They don't just accept what people talk to them about. That's where I think I make a big difference in this thing is nobody taught me how to be an attorney. Nobody taught me whether I could do something or I can't do it. So I think it's pretty neat. I just go do something and wait for them to tell me I can't. That's where I'm at in this business. It's wide open. I don't think that there is any boundaries.

J Basser: 13:07

Personally, Well, when they overturn Chevron, you know each one of these issues that are overturned, you know they're going to have to be argued in court and it's going to take the course to get them straightened out. And I don't think me, you or Ray will see the results on all the end product in our lifetimes, Because they're moving at a snail, trying to drag a 200-pound weight behind it.

Alex Graham: 13:33

Well look at the inroads we've made, let's say, since I came into the picture in big time in 2008. You did the BVA search for 3.350 to look at old cases that mentioned special monthly compensation. There are about 13 a year Now I do 13 a month.

Alex Graham: 14:02

Well, that's why we call you the guru well, I'll tell you what wesley is making me look like a fool. He's using all the ai and the searching and annotated records where they just shovel them in one end it spits out you give, put the keywords in you're looking for and it spits it all out. You can do 30 bets a day where I could do three. But I love paper. I'm 74. I get to lean back a little bit, take life a little slower.

Alex Graham: 14:42

I don't want to lead the parade, I want to be in the parade, but I'm not necessarily a leader. I observe I should get the senior professorship seat. Not that I know a lot, but I just see things and it doesn't seem right and I say how come they're doing it that way and I don't see the law that supports it. And when you put your thumb down on it and you start pushing all of a sudden, well, there is no rule that says you can't do that, it's just that's the way we've always done it. Well, shit, that's been. That's a recipe for busting it wide open in my book. You think, man?

J Basser: 15:24

I mean that's pretty cool him doingusting it wide open in my book. You think, man, I mean that's pretty cool him doing that, because I mean you look at this AI stuff he's using. You know and you're doing your research on, you know your briefs and things like that that you've got to turn into the court and all of a sudden you know you're talking court care. All you've got to do is mention court cases and AI goes in and digs out what you need and comes in and puts it in your brief. That's like having a secretary and a repair.

Alex Graham: 15:47

Yeah, there's probably a lot of secretaries got laid off.

J Basser: 15:55

Well, that's sad. No, I'm serious. He used it in mine. It's pretty cool.

Alex Graham: 16:00

I have a group it's called Killer Sites and I teach it. I offer it to my guys that took the classes for SMC. It's just little phrases that came out in big name cases but they weren't necessarily the most important part of the case. But it's a little phrase that supports what you're trying to do and you just throw it in there and some of them are real, real rib jabbers and whatever it is. It seems to work for me. I don't know.

Alex Graham: 16:36

Like I said, I don't like to write a brief the way I would for the court. I like to write it for a judge who, a little bit less formal. But you invoke all that sympathy for your client. I'm sure your mothers and your grandmothers all told you that honey attracts bees and vinegar, don't? I read a lot of court briefs, appellant's briefs. I see attorneys use the phrases the court must find that my client is correct in this assumption according to this regulation. I don't do that. I never, ever tell a judge what he's got to do To me. That's the quickest recipe to get a bitch laugh. I can think of you learn how to duck.

J Basser: 17:24

You've created a monster. You're going to learn how to duck. You've created a monster.

Alex Graham: 17:29

Well, you know I use some interesting phrases like but this is not the end of the matter, or the appellant benefits from the simplicity of his argument, which most of them do, but you have to use a whole bunch of legalese to reach that point. Mostly, I don't tell the judge that the VA examiner at the C&P exam must be raised by wolves or be using his belly for a portal. He's got his head up the wrong place. I don't do that. I don't demean them. I used to. I don't mind calling out somebody that gets way off left base, but I'm not adverse to doing it politely. I guess that's the difference. Like I said, I know law dogs, attorneys who go to law school, and what they teach them is like a pit bull mentality in some respects, but that's wrong to me.

J Basser: 18:41

Well, I look at it this way I look at my demeanor and the more they deny me demeanor I get well, you know, you're right, alex.

Ray Cobb: 18:52

I can remember being many, many years ago, being young. I remember my grandfather says well, you'll get more bees with honey than anything else. You'll get more bees with honey than anything else, unless it's wood bees. Well, yeah, carpet bees, those carpet bees, carpet bees, yeah, yeah, I mean I try to do. James Cripps, a friend of all of us. He tells me that I'm too laid back sometimes, but I get my point across. I just do it a little more tactfully than he does. He may be he's just as correct, if not more so but I kind of like making them feel a little sorry for me, or let them think that I may not be quite as smart as they are, make them think they're smarter than me, and I keep going round and round until they give me the answer, or whatever it is that I'm wanting to accomplish.

Alex Graham: 19:56

I like to get them to say something as well. It's obvious that your client needs aid and attendance. We're not debating that. It's obvious that your client needs aid and attendance, we're not debating that. It's just he doesn't have 100% rating. Well, I want to get that off paper. I want to immortalize that, because that's against the law.

Alex Graham: 20:15

It's one of the most common mistakes. They just think, for some reason and the M-21 states states it, and this is where they get all these misconceptions it says uh, in order to, you know, get aid and attendance, a person must have a 100 schedule or rating or something very near to it. Meaning like 70 for ptsd might not get it. But if you took 70 and then another 30% for COPD or another 60 for ischemic heart disease and put the two of them together and come up with 90, that might be enough. But then again, they don't like to take two separate disabilities and put them together to cause aid and attendance. They'll say we'll take diabetes and all the peripheral neuropathy on all four extremities, we'll call that pretty close to it. Or Parkinson's with 30s and 20s and 10s and 0s and 10s and 20s, and they all add up to 90.

Alex Graham: 21:16

And they're okay. We can give you aid and attendance, but it's wrong. You don't have to have 100% rating, except for SMCS. And I enunciate that and I love to see it, that the judge takes it and he says Mr Graham is entirely correct. You only need 100 to get to SMCS, or 100 plus 60, whichever way you want to look at it.

J Basser: 21:43

You can have 100.

Alex Graham: 21:45

But it has to be for a single disease process. You can't do the GDIU split 40 and some more for 70. It has to be one unique process. That's the only place, the only place that you'll find that in 1114. That's the only place, the only place that you'll find that in 1114. And I don't know how they managed to torture that meaning out of it that you had to have the 100. But I love to get them to say that and get it on paper, get it right into the rating decision, because I can take that up to the board. And the only thing holding me back is if they ain't over 75, they're going to spend 16 months waiting for their money every time guaranteed win. Or if you're advanced on a docket, you'll get your money in three months, but I guarantee you'll get your money.

Alex Graham: 22:33

Judges are not stupid for the most part. I mean there are a few there who go without saying. I don't like to burn all my bridges behind me at the board. I know they all read my blog because I met three veterans law judges that I know quite well at the conferences Jim Marsh, james Ridgeway and Brad Hennings. They're all former judges and I've had all three of them or sat in front of them or had them cut paper on. All of my guys as I've gone up there.

Alex Graham: 23:12

And here's a real funny story, jim Ridgeway's dad was a general James Ridgeway. He, the younger son my age, never went into the service. I did, he didn't, but his dad was a tactical air command. Same time my dad was up at Langley Air Force Base in Hampton, virginia. They were having a cocktail party one night and my job was always to run around with the tray and deliver the drinks and take the orders and I could make you know, two bucks an hour doing that. My dad would pay me to do that and I personally know General Ridgway.

Alex Graham: 23:55

James Ridgway's father drank scotch neat, occasionally with club soda, but mostly neat and I told James that this this last trip. I said, yeah, I served your dad cocktails back in 1964. He said shut the front door, it's a, it's a small world. But uh, jim marsh even remembered me. That made me feel good. I argued one. He did a travel board hearing. I think it was in Oakland and I brought a guy in there for hepatitis C, brought my jet gun and Judge Marsh, if he'd like to roll up his sleeve, I'd show him how the jet gun worked. He declined, so I shot a banana with it so I could show him how it worked.

J Basser: 24:43

What happened when they looked at you and said you work for Asnod. I am Asnod.

Alex Graham: 24:49

Yeah, I think that was John Hager. He says you work for Asnod. I like John Hager. Yeah, he's a big dude. But you know most of these guys that, like veterans, are veterans. They might have worked in uh judge advocate general's office putting us drunk people enlisted awol guys in jail for a week or something, but you know they met well, it was a job just like anything else, but it's nice to see all these judges and they all tell me oh yeah, shit, we talk with judges that are still at the board. Now we have our own little inward face and face group, Facebook face group or whatever club they say oh, yeah, you read that, yeah, that guy's got some pretty funny shit.

Alex Graham: 25:41

I like to think that I'm teaching future veterans, law judges and the staff attorneys on how the SMC works, because it's been a sea change, even though the regional offices won't change their thoughts on the subject. They feel like they're giving away the farm to give somebody more than a K or an S. They just refuse to do it. And it's supposed to be. It's supposed to be just like I say it is. It's like does this guy, does he need help? Yeah, he does. Let's give him the money. Why does he have to fight six years to get it?

J Basser: 26:23

So what happened to the old adage where if a veteran follows a claim and you have to adjudicate his claim, he has to write a 10 or something like that? You know, if he's got the requirements for it then basically they say that they're supposed to maximize the veterans' benefit when available right.

Alex Graham: 26:43

Yeah, that's what 3.103 says. You've got to give them the most that you can possibly give them, without giving away the farm and cheating to give them the money, and that would be normal. You shouldn't have to fight and beg and get down on all fours and say, please, it shouldn't be. Well, you know you were stupid enough to raise your right hand to begin with, graham, and therefore we're going to give you the benefit of the doubt and we're going to give you the money because you know you earned it. We told you we'd take care of you when you got to this point in your life. We'd take care of you when you got to this point in your life If you needed it.

Alex Graham: 27:22

You shouldn't have to have to jump through hoops, pay $2,000, $3,000, or $10,000 to some doctor in Maryland to get an IMO. That's it. You're screwed up. I mean you should be able to go to a C&P exam. They should look at you and say, dude, you're screwed up. It should be. Why is it so difficult? Why does a Veterans Administration C&P clinician look at you and say this guy could run the Boston Marathon? I don't see a problem here. He's wearing ankle foot orthotics, he's got Canadian crutches and he falls down as he comes through the door and the examiner's looking at him like quit faking it, get up here.

J Basser: 28:13

I don't get it.

J Basser: 28:15

Yeah, that's one thing I got to look at because I mean they're using these companies to do the C&P exams and you know, I've had several of them over the past couple of years and I've only had one or over the past couple of years, and I've only had one or two examiners that actually knew what they were doing, you know, and I'm sure they said they were trained, because you know they got a certificate. They were trained by the VA, you know. And then knowing some people that know these C&P exams and you know like clockwork, like you know, like Bethany for example, you know how they're supposed to do things. It's a little bit different how they actually do it and you know, and they're contracted out, and so I think it's kind of a sometimes you get lucky, other times I don't know what's going on. But I mean there's some people that should have had a positive opinion but they received a negative opinion over something stupid. So it's just, I mean, to me it's not fair. I think they should start doing CMPs back in the VA again.

Alex Graham: 29:10

Well, anytime you try to run a guy through a gauntlet of six independent medical opinions, all from one family nurse practitioner, no doctors in sight in the office anywhere. Those people are supposed to be supervised by a doctor by rights. And you see these people and it says FNP, family nurse practitioner and it might have MBA after it means they took another six months.

J Basser: 29:45

And get a measure in business administration.

Alex Graham: 29:47

Yeah, and you get another attar boy and I was their medal on their chest. But the thing that distresses me is sometimes they'll go into questions like, for instance, on a Parkinson's exam, and start talking about your neurological cognitive deficits. This is an area, technically, that can only be touched on by a psychiatrist or a purely PTSD-ish kind of item, and they touch on psychiatric issues. Again, that's a psychologist, Bailey Wick. Where does an FNP or even a PAC fit into that? They don't. It's against the law.

Alex Graham: 30:36

And the more you bitch about it, the more they say well, yeah, but these people have gone to class and they've been trained. It's like, yeah, they went to Alex's SMC class, they know all about SMC and how to do it. Well, I think that you know, going to become a psychologist or a psychiatrist or whatever it is, that is a much higher calling in eight, 10 years rather than a two-year degree in something. So I think they've cheapened the process. That's one of the reasons why I use MedNIC. They don't monkey around man. They've got guys that are 65 years old and they've got a string of letters after their name, about two or three lines across F-A-C-C, M-D-G, B-R-A. I'm sure they all mean something, but apparently they mean more to the judges than they mean to me, but it works.

J Basser: 31:36

Well, the credentials, actually, you know, the pedigree is what it's all about. Well, the credential is actually, you know.

Alex Graham: 31:42

I mean, you know, the pedigree is what it's all about. Well, the shit list really exposed the difference between real and false. It shined a light. I hope you know. I hope it didn't put anybody out of business.

Alex Graham: 31:54

But if they're doing something that nefarious and just selling an IMO not performing a real medical process, it just achievements the whole deal. It means nothing for somebody to say something. The credentials are gone, meaningless. That's what you see with these claim sharks. They all have their own in-house under the same address, where you go in there and you meet, you sign the contract and they just take you sideways into another room. A guy sits with you for 25 minutes, cranks up 15 ideas of how he can make some money and get you 100%. You win and boom, you pay a ton of money six months or whatever they can get you.

Alex Graham: 32:45

Well, and it hurts because they're not accredited. We have to go to school, we know what's legal and what isn't, and they want to get into the game and they're trying to induce senators and congressmen to go along with this and say, oh, come on, can't we all just get along? Let's just change the rules so all of us can be in this business together. We don't need any classes or any training. Well, that's going to really screw things up. In my book, Veterans are not going to get a fair shake. The VA is going to look at a suspect IMO that a guy has paid good money for it's useless, and they can see that At least the system right now is above board the way NOVA is operating it. We've got some tight laws. You don't want to step on your necktie in this business and lose your accreditation. Was that a?

J Basser: 33:51

doorbell. No, that's ours.

Alex Graham: 33:53

Go ahead, we get people coming in okay well, anyway, that's my story and I'm going to stick with it. I like Nova, I don't mind paying the going to stick with it. I like Nova, I don't mind paying the money to go to these conventions. I get to meet Ken Carpenter, bob Hedge with him, robert Chisholm, amy Odom All these brand-name people are right there and they're more than willing to talk to you. They don't have their nose way up in the cloud because they're important.

J Basser: 34:22

They're my kind of people.

Alex Graham: 34:38

That's what it takes. So anyway, that's one of the things we found that we achieve a lot more as a group by sharing all of our knowledge. It's not like somebody comes up with a cheap parlor trick or a new hat trick and doesn't share it with his fellow litigators. That's what makes NOVA so valuable, fellow litigators. That's what makes NOVA so valuable. We're not competing with the guy that got hit in the intersection, the pedestrian in the crosswalk. We're not all knocking each other down trying to say here's my business card, hire me.

J Basser: 35:14

There's not enough of us.

J Basser: 35:16

This reminds me of old Dana DeVito what's that movie with? He would sneak into the hospital and sign up the patients while they're in the bed with their broken legs. We had some information I don't know how accurate it is. We were talking about these claim sharks itself. Somebody said that one of the reasons they came into existence was because there was a lot of mistakes made with a lot of veterans claims made by I'm not going to name any organizations, but it's not agents and, uh, these people made a lot of mistakes and things like that. These veterans got screwed up a lot of money and kind of got straightened out within several years. So a couple of these guys realized what was going on when they kind of jumped in and started doing this.

Alex Graham: 36:08

Well, there was a gal who worked for VA. She was a TRO. I won't mention any names, nothing could be gained from it, but they had an outfit that they were running out of the Cayman Islands and they had a storefront in Florida and they were getting quite a few people, mostly Hispanic, puerto Rican, latinos, if you will. And it's not that it's just they felt underrepresented in the business Not that they were or they weren't, but perhaps it was a language barrier. But these people defeated that for the most part and they set the whole process up for what actually is now a Claim Sharks model. And there's a new one opening up just about every day or every month you see a new one. But you know a lot of them don't know what they're doing, which is disturbing. They just want to get into business because they think there's a lot of easy money in it.

Alex Graham: 37:18

One thing that struck me is I had a guy come to me and beg me to take his claim. He already had aid and attendance, he was aiming for SMCT and I got his. I was all set to pull the plug, or, you know, plug him in and take this power of attorney, and all of a sudden somebody else told me something. He says well, that sounds like the name of the guy that's just set up a website for that Stolen Valor stuff. It's called Blue Cord Patriots. And I said, oh no, that couldn't be. I Googled it and here comes this beautiful website up about 11 Bravo, 10s and the blue four. And here's the names of the three guys that are running it, and one of they're all three vets, of course veterans and one's the name of the guy that's coming to me for tea.

Alex Graham: 38:17

And I thought that well, that's kind of strange, and so I emailed it back. I says, well, that's kind of strange. So I emailed him back. I said, well, what's the game here? You've got your own game plan here, your own business, but you're asking me to do your claim for you. He says, well, I don't know how to do T. Oh, I say, so I'm going to get you T and you're going to use my template to start helping other guys get T. No, I'm not going to do that. I don't know necessarily that you're entitled to SMCT and from the way you're describing it, you just want to learn my technique. I dropped him like a hot potato. He ran to a couple of different other people at Nova and they had all been forewarned. As forearms, you can Google blue-collar patriots to find out. They're still in business. I don't know. Maybe they are, maybe they pancaked right after that. But it's an art form.

Alex Graham: 39:13

It took me five years to learn how to do an SMC claim and to understand the mechanics of it. An SMC claim and to understand the mechanics of it and it's taken me even that longer perhaps, to understand that that how that 3.156 C works, where I dig that perfect punji pit and I stick them little bamboo spears in there with tender loving care, put the banana leaves on top of it, spread the leaves over the top of that and hide that pit, and they'll just sit there and tell that VA guy to come at me. Come on, hit me with your best shot, walk him right into that pit.

J Basser: 39:51

You missed a step, Alex. You forgot you had to take a paintbrush and paint snake venom on each one of them well, I'll tell you my whole approach to va claims, as you know, is my combat experience.

Alex Graham: 40:11

I think, like, I think, like. I want three to one air superior, air superiority, three to one, uh, tactical advantage in terms of personnel and superior firepower, and plenty of it. I plan it that way. I don't ever go in there with gee. I hope I can win, or gee, I hope I can blow enough smoke up that judge's rear end to give me the benefit of the doubt. I go in there with a solid game plan. I've gotten to the point where I don't need a truth meter to tell when I've got a client that's pulling my leg or trying to go too far or try to get too much.

J Basser: 40:53

You know, it happens right now.

Ray Cobb: 40:57

Yeah, we have. And you're right, Alex, it doesn't take a. If you know the system, even halfway, it doesn't take a whole lot to figure out what a guy is trying to get something that he doesn't deserve. You know, by the way he makes up his story, by the way he says things. You know. I remember the guy I worked with was talking to him. He asked me what time it was. I told him it was 11.30, 12.30 his time. He says I got to go. I got a tee time at 2 o'clock. That guy didn't have knee problems and lower back problems.

Alex Graham: 41:37

If he's going to go out and play golf two and three days a week, yeah, Well, I had a guy that had gotten a SMCL and he had legitimate well, apparently legitimate criteria. He was pushing me to take him to T and I'm looking at his VVMS file and I see he's getting VR&E training and he wants to go into third-year Farsi language. And I'm thinking to myself this guy is supposed to have major mental complications and he's doing VR&E in college. That doesn't make any sense. How does he get to college? Does his wife take him there? Does she walk him in and plunk him down on the desk? This guy is just disabled. How could he be doing this?

Alex Graham: 42:32

I started digging around a little bit more and then all of a sudden, the VA comes down on him. And this was right. When I first took the power of attorney, the first thing they did is they come in and whacked him back, took away his aid and attendance. It's all of a sudden I'm fighting a restoration of benefits claim instead of trying to get him to T. I'm on the defensive. When I saw that VR and these stuff, I had to call him out on it. I says you know, son, I can't wrap my head around how disabled you are and you're still going to college on this thing. You're going to have to find somebody else to represent you. I can't, in good faith, do that.

J Basser: 43:15

I let him go. Usually, if it's bad enough, under VR&E, they won't let you go to college. They won't give you independent living.

Alex Graham: 43:22

You know what I mean well I expected I never even looked at it. I just saw the vr and e 45 pm things sitting there and I I didn't look at him. I figured he was trying to do the ilp program. I honestly didn't till I dug in there and I saw that thing where they turned him down for third-year Farsi language credits. Wait a minute, I have a hard time remembering French from 50 years ago. My Laotian is a little rusty right now. I'm not ready for that. I don't think I'd try it, even with an SMCS. I don't know. I know there's people that game the system. I think I'm lucky that I haven't attracted them to ask.

Alex Graham: 44:13

Not, most of the guys that come to me are, I mean, messed up. I got this one fellow I'm representing right now and he says say, the rest of the guys that were in my squad want to know if you'll represent them too. I go well, how many more are we talking about? He says well, there were six of us in the MRAP, but the guy in the turret got killed when it blew us off the road. Well, he hit the IEDs IEDs plural. Yeah, there was two of them, man, it messed us up. Good, the other five guys want to join in and I'm honored to do that.

Alex Graham: 44:51

Personally, I've done a couple of different groups. You know I do the Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol guys, I do the Vietnam dust-off pilots and there's another couple of smaller groups of two or three each but they keep referring me out again and again and again. So it's getting to be about the fourth generation now. But I know that these guys are legitimate. They've got ARCOMs with V's on them, purple Hearts and combat action infantrymen badges. So that's kind of their stock and trade and I don't mind representing them because I don't have to be looking over my shoulder and making sure I'm not representing some guy for stolen valor or worse.

J Basser: 45:47

We know Alex is very busy. I mean, he's probably one of the busiest agents in the country and, yes, he can't take every claim but he has a good network. If he looks for information he can actually refer you to somebody that you know that he trusts. You know that can actually help out. So you know it's all. You know it all comes out.

Alex Graham: 46:12

Well, I did hire an attorney, john. I don't know if I mentioned that to you. Her name's Amanda Menear and she's been working for me since November. She's been working for me since November, taking a lot of my overload on when somebody calls and says well, it's just, you're not that disabled. So you know my triage technique only the guys are dying or dead or the spouses are crying on the phone. Those are the ones that get me. So I've turned a lot of them over to Amanda, but there's still so many that I have to hand out even more.

Alex Graham: 46:47

I don't mind being a clearinghouse, and my wife, known to all as Cupcake Debbie, is studying for the test right now herself, and her managing broker, the gal that usually takes over Debbie's real estate business. When we go out on a road trip or go off to conferences, we have to have somebody in command of the real estate company at all times. By law. So that gal her name is Niven. She's also training for the test. So hopefully I'll have two more employees working underneath my POA code, you know, within a year, year and a half. So that's got a great future. I'd love to save more people. I'd love to help more people, but, damn, I'm 74,.

J Basser: 47:41

Joe. Well, Doug just posted the exam dates. This year. There's three more tests. One's going pretty quick.

Alex Graham: 47:53

Well, back when we were doing it, you had two shots a year. If you flunked it you had to wait you know that six months to get to it again, but I think they're more frequent now. I don't know.

J Basser: 48:09

Yeah, they're more frequent and a lot more people are taking it.

Alex Graham: 48:14

That one I took was 97 questions and you had to get 75% correct and I aced the thing, according to the gal that called me up to tell me about it, but I think I've seen it go down as low as 47 questions and one time it was 27. So it's always changing.

Alex Graham: 48:33

There might be, but then again there's a lot more to learn, because I think you 'd still have to learn the legacy system, because there's still a few of those cases still going. I think I'm down to about one or two. One of them's up at the court right now.

J Basser: 48:53

Well, the PACT Act and all the other stuff's come along and all the changes you know and. But pay the truth In order to be an agent. If you have a hard copy of the manual, okay, and you have to update that truth in order to be an agent. If you have a hard copy of the manual, okay, and you have to update that copy. These changes are coming so far and fast and furious that you have to have a full-time secretary. Just implement the changes in it.

Alex Graham: 49:13

The N21 is not printed, it's purely an electronic creation and it changes, as I know, 135 times. At least that was one year I noticed that it had that many changes, but sometimes it has more than that. But look at the precedents up at the court at the federal circuit, like Barry and Alaska Duran and some of these other things. They changed law so drastically that the M M21 not only has a do this, don't do that, but there's a lot of cascading effect into other parts of the M21 that when you change this it compounds it with interest over here someplace else. So it isn't that easy to fix, to just change a little paragraph somewhere what's the rule?

J Basser: 50:07

every equal reaction has an opposite reaction yes, sir, that's exactly right.

Alex Graham: 50:14

You go through VA life as a VA agent. You want to be an irresistible force. You want to be a.

J Basser: 50:23

You want to be an irresistible force. You want to be a good tank with a good flamethrower. You know what I mean.

Alex Graham: 50:33

Well, I had a real attitude about that when I was over there. I carried two hand grenades in my cargo pocket down here Everywhere I went, in addition to a .357 Magnum. I have great faith in hand grenades in my cargo pocket down here Everywhere I went, in addition to a .357 Magnum. I have great faith in hand grenades. But you know, the DuPont Nemours got the contract for the M26s. They were the cheapest bidder. That's why you need two, just in case.

J Basser: 51:00

That's why the Japanese soldiers in New Guinea in World War II, they forgot to take their hand grenades with them and they tried to cross these little lakes to get to the other side. Well, it was one of the biggest mass casualties of the Japanese soldiers.

Alex Graham: 51:13

Without a shot being fired at them, all these crocodiles started eating them well, we ferried in a group of six special forces group into Ho Chi Minh Trail. One day in August we landed six different little airstrips and they got out at airstrip number four. We still hit five and six just to confuse the enemy, so they wouldn't know where we'd let them off at. And they were carrying cases of hand grenades. And when they got we picked them up about a week later and brought them back in. We were sitting out behind the barracks drinking beer.

Alex Graham: 51:52

After they got back Not the officers of course, but the enlisted guys I said I know you guys aren't supposed to tell us what y'all was doing. I said what were you doing? They said, well, I guess I don't mind telling you this is, we are special effects guys. Open them things up real careful and take them hand grenades out and rotate the prussic acts of fuse where you pull the pin and the bail flips off and the hand grenade goes off. So it kind of screws up their morale because nobody wants to use hand grenades, because they're afraid they're going to blow themselves up with them. So yeah, that was kind of an interesting psychiatric operation to destroy their morale.

Alex Graham: 52:36

And apparently they did it with the 7.62 Browns for the AKs and the SKSs. They load that thing chock full of lead, azite and when that primer hits the end of that round, the whole gun blows up in their face. It gets to the point where they're a little gun-shy about it. Every time they pull the trigger they flinch a little bit, so their aim's off a little gun shy about. Every time they pull the trigger they flinch a little bit, so their aim's off.

J Basser: 53:05

That can remind me of recent activity over in the Middle East, there with pagers, oh well yeah, we might have copied the Mozart, but I never heard of doing anything like that.

Alex Graham: 53:19

But I thought it was intriguing that they spent a lot of time salting down the Ho Chi Minh Trail with munitions that were a little bit suspect.

J Basser: 53:29

Yeah.

Alex Graham: 53:34

War is hell, but combat is something entirely different.

J Basser: 53:39

Nubious. You know, I mean we got some really smart people coming up with this stuff and they actually carry it out. You know it's a gap thing. World War II was the worst war man.

Alex Graham: 53:51

Well, the last thing I was going to tell you all today is I was reading some important articles and I read one and this wasn't by Doug Collins, the new VA secretary. It was somebody else making an observation that the VA was getting ready to get rid of 80,000 employees that were surplus people, hr helping veterans get to a hospital or get better service or more doctors, more psychiatrists. They were just going to get rid of too many people that didn't have a functional purpose and they said, yeah, but they're all veterans. And it turns out of those 80,000 people, only 5,000 of them are veterans, and that changes the whole timber of the conversation. If it was all, 80,000 of them were all veterans, I would be strongly against that. I would think why don't we triage this somehow and keep the most disabled veterans that we can in jobs to keep them occupied? It's a good thing to get disabled people out in public. It helps them mentally, I know that. But I thought the numbers are going to be far higher than 5 000 veterans involved in this that might lose their jobs.

Alex Graham: 55:21

So it disturbs me greatly to read the newspapers or or listen to the news at six o'clock, because sometimes it's a little bit more slanted. I think that fox is slanted, I think that they're all slanted. But I I have to realize that there's a lot of mistruths being populated out there. We have to cut back. We're spending money like drunken sailors and some of these programs are squandering money on. It appalls me, I can't wrap my brain around it. But I think you can cut too much. But I haven't seen too much yet. For everything I've seen there hasn't been enough.

Ray Cobb: 56:10

Well, Alex, when we get a chance, I'll tell you about the VA spending $1,200 to get me a $5 rubber ball.

J Basser: 56:29

Well, he spent about 2.5 million dollars trying to keep me out of my greenhouse, and you got the other finished construction now, so is it ready to go?

Alex Graham: 56:36

yeah, we had a hard time finding anybody who wanted to be a general contractor. We didn't feel like paying them $200 an hour to sit there and watch, so we renewed our old contractor's license. I gave it up in 2012 when I got too ill and my son-in-law started a whole new company. But we just renewed ours just to do the greenhouse, and then we'll let it die out again.

J Basser: 57:03

It's like a winter to me.

Alex Graham: 57:05

Well, it solves the purpose of somebody being the go-to guy. That's what the VA wants one person to talk to, not 16 subcontractors for concrete electrical plumbing.

J Basser: 57:20

I know that's a headache. Well, guys, I hate to say this, but all good things must come to an end. Alex, thanks for the update. We appreciate everything you do and we'll have you back on real soon to have another good shindig. This single moscotch is for you. You probably got horses that are getting ready to eat. Yes, I do, ray. Thank you for coming on. We appreciate you, buddy, I enjoyed it. Guys, we got some changes coming up here. We're going to go back to live broadcast, hopefully here in the next few weeks. We're going to do some trials and errors and see how it works out, with Bethany here starting the next couple of days. Once we get it worked out, we'll still be doing them on Zoom, but there'll be another format. You can broadcast, listen to the live shows, but with that, I want to thank everybody for listening. This is John, on behalf of the Exposed Vet Productions Mr Ray Cobb and John Stacy they call him Jay Basher and Mr Alex Graham. We'll be signing off for now.

Alex Graham: 58:20

Thanks, John.

J Basser: 58:21

See you all later.