John Stacy: 0:00

Fine. Welcome folks to another episode of the Expose that Productions broadcast on this beautiful sunshiny, very hot Thursday, the 14th day of August 2025. My name is John Stacy. They call me Jay Basher. I am the proprietor of the Expose that Productions page that we do. Proprietor of the Exposed Vest Productions page that we do, we do which it shows every week to explain VA benefits and claims to everybody who wants to listen. You know, I'm glad people do listen and subscribe. Today we've got a special guest. We've got the one and only Mr Alex Graham. Mr Graham is an accredited non-practitioner.

Alex Graham: 0:45

Non-attorney practitioner.

John Stacy: 0:46

Non-attorney practitioner with the Office of the General Counsel. That means Alex can process your appeal and take it all away to court if necessary, but fortunately he doesn't have to go there all the time. He's that good, Alex. How are you doing today?

Alex Graham: 1:02

Well, I'm alive, john. I certainly can't complain. I never thought I'd be here this far down the road at 74, coming up on 75. That's fun, because now I get all my stuff advanced on the docket at the Board of Veterans Appeals. For myself, I'm going to file for ischemic heart disease. I just got that diagnosis about a week ago.

John Stacy: 1:29

I told you it's coming.

Alex Graham: 1:34

And you know, just for shits and grins, if you pardon the expression, this stupidity. On my stomach, this 12-inch by 12-inch piece of cadaver skin that they put me back together with in 2010, starting to break down, I developed a dry spot, a big, huge scab right in the middle that just keeps on weeping. I've been to the wound clinic and they've monkeyed with it and put silver iodide every damn thing you can think of on it. And they'll say, well, there's monkeyed with it and put silver iodide every damn thing you can think of on it. And they said, well, there's something wrong with that. I said, well, it's cadaver skin. They said, well, okay, I'm getting ready to scrub that down and debride it. Now I got to put some lidocaine on there to numb it out. I said you guys don't get it. This is cadaver skin. You put cigarettes out on my belly. I can't feel it. I'd like to get that.

John Stacy: 2:37

Get that sucker connected buddy.

Alex Graham: 2:40

I got six ventral hernias now just popping out. I can't stop them because they put a wound pump on the stupid thing. If you read the instructions for alloderm it says do not use a wound pump, it may cause ventral hernias. I'm living proof that you don't want to do that, but VA did it. I think that's malpractice.

John Stacy: 3:02

It is.

Alex Graham: 3:04

I suppose if they turn me down I could always go the other way and just get that Crohn's disease associated with secondary to hepatitis C and win it that way. Anyway, I do it. I'll still get advanced on the docket here shortly.

John Stacy: 3:21

Well we'll see what, come April Fool's Day. Come April Fool's Day, you will.

Alex Graham: 3:31

That's right. Seven months from now, approximately, yeah.

John Stacy: 3:37

You look and sound a lot better than you did last show. I mean, you sounded a little weak last time. I guess you just got out of the hospital.

Alex Graham: 3:44

I acid reflex. I got coming up in out of the hospital. I acid reflex, I got coming up in my throat, burn my vocal cords Hard to doctor anyway. So I got two choices. I guess I could start doing Omeprazole and end up screwing up the rest of my interior, or just go with the scratchy voice.

John Stacy: 4:10

Yeah, too much of meprazole is bad for you.

Alex Graham: 4:13

That's what I hear.

John Stacy: 4:15

Excuse me, you go ahead, man. Sometimes you have to take it.

Alex Graham: 4:23

I don't know if you read my latest blog, but I sure Kicked ass and took names up at the Court here just the other day.

John Stacy: 4:30

I saw that it's going to take a while to get over that. Did you ever get your shoe back yet when you shoved it up To the rectum?

Alex Graham: 4:38

Well, I jokingly Call SMCP, as as in Papa. I call that the poor man's R1, because you can't really get there unless you. I mean, it's the perfect storm of disabilities to get there. But if you get a guy that's filed for everything underneath the sun since 1969, eight pages of code sheet of all the different things he's hooked up, for sure there's about two pages of zeros, but then there's a ton of tens 20s, 30s and 40s and 70s, so I started adding them up. They turned me down for aid and attendance for chronic lymphocytic leukemia for this old boy. He's in a wheelchair with a combination of Parkinson's and diabetes, so it has a double whammy on your lower extremities. For walking, Not only can you not feel your feet, they're shaking like a leaf on a tree.

John Stacy: 5:46

Yes, they do.

Alex Graham: 5:48

The VA's attitude is well, we can't pair them in here. You've got to choose whether you want to get ready for the diabetes peripheral neuropathy or do you want to get ready for the Parkinson's. They don't think you can do both of them, but you can. But they fenced me out and I just decided well, hell, what they got, that Newberry versus McDonough decision. The way to go about this is start adding it up. If you got 100% rating already for his Parkinson's with residuals that's his SMCL Then he's got the 100% for the lymphocytic leukemia. So that jumps him from L to M. 3.35 B3 no, that would be F4, 3.35 F4. So then he's got 70% for PTSD. That bounces him to M and a half. Then I said well, that sleep apnea, that's N, the headaches make it N and a half, and throw in some diabetes with some peripheral neuropathy and you're at N and a half.

Alex Graham: 7:00

He's lost to use a Winky, so that's a K. And there you have it. You're at SMCcn and one half plus k. You can't go any higher in p. So that's called the maximum rate. So if you reach the maximum rate of p or o, then or or p. I should excuse me if you get the maximum rate on P, it is an O for all intents and purposes. But if it's an O and you got A to tennis for the Parkinson's, then you bounce up to R1, even though you only have one L all by itself.

John Stacy: 7:40

You have to A to tennis, or what you have to aid the tenants, or what.

Alex Graham: 7:43

Well, I've always taught, when you're going the other route, that you need two L's, or an L and an M. If you had blindness or lost use of hands, you still need L for aiding the tenants, for something else that gives you the O, and one of them is aiding the tenants. That kicks you to R1. Trust me, even if you don't understand the mathematics, that's how it works. I do it for a living so I know. But there is this alternate route. But before, in order to get to SMCN, you'd have to have both your legs amputated, flush with your torso, and be blind. In order to try to accomplish this maneuver, that would get you to N, you need the extra half kicker to get in there and you need the K. So that was a pretty heavy load to accomplish for most veterans. They don't have laws to use their arms or legs flush with that body where you can't even hook on a prosthesis.

John Stacy: 8:56

At the shoulder level.

Alex Graham: 8:56

yeah, I can't even imagine living like that man. I'd want to suck on a lead lollipop before I had to live like that. But I never, ever had a desire to commit suicide. Well, I did.

Alex Graham: 9:08

When I came back from NAM I was pretty depressed and everybody was telling me to piss off and die. Vfw told me I couldn't join because I wasn't a combat veteran, I hadn't served at a time of war. I said where the hell did they park that 58,494 people? Where did they die? If they didn't die in a war, where did we lose them at? They said that wasn't a war. So I didn't get to join them. And hell. I tried to join a telephone company as a lineman, because that's all I was trained for, among other things. And they told me well, they'd talk to me maybe in six months. But there wasn't a whole lot of openings just yet, especially if you're from Vietnam or Vietnam vet. So I got pretty depressed but fortunately I managed to stay alive, find something else to do with my time, went down to a place called Vermite Powder Company and started manufacturing explosives. I like explosives, john.

John Stacy: 10:16

You're biased, aren't you they?

Alex Graham: 10:19

ought to make a fragrance called Oda Gunpowder or something like that, oda WD-40. Both of those would smell pretty good, if you ask me, of course. Then again, if you could figure out a way to bottle up dog puppy breath, you could sell a lot of that too.

John Stacy: 10:40

You could, you definitely can.

Alex Graham: 10:42

Don't you ever have a litter of puppies? Have them all licking on you and everything. God, I love that smell. I think that's it. That sounds good. That's delightful. You can see me on the screen here, so it's good. I just thought I'm going to share with you.

Alex Graham: 11:00

My dad passed away in 2008. My stepbrother finally mailed me his medals. I'm going to put them in a new frame, clean them up a little bit. I don't know if you guys could see that there's a silver star there. He was flying across Legion of Merit 28 air medals. My dad was an animal man. He was a gorilla in the air. I think he was shooting down a 109, and he didn't get his finger off the trigger quick enough. And there was another 109 or a 190 right behind that one and a little bit to the left Before he could get his finger up off the trigger quick enough. And there was another 109 or a 190 right behind that one and a little bit to the left before he could get his finger up off the trigger. His bullets from his wing gun walked into the 190. He got both of them with one burst. They gave him a silver star for that one. He took out five in one month he got a total of 16 and a half aircraft.

John Stacy: 12:04

That's a lot of kills.

Alex Graham: 12:06

Yeah, it is See, he got stuck training the Tuskegee Airmen down in Alabama and he didn't want to keep doing that.

Alex Graham: 12:18

So he went out into the Gulf of Mexico, knocked down a couple of sailboats make sure they got his tail member and they said well, we're going to fix your wagon, major Graham, we're going to send your ass to Europe and you're going to have to get in combat. My dad's going. God, finally, two and a half years of teaching people gunnery skills, I get to get out of here and go fight. Nine months, shot down at 16 and a half. Nine months Shot down at 16 and a half Nine months.

John Stacy: 12:48

Just teaching, instructing.

Alex Graham: 12:51

He was a little bit pissed that the war ended so quick. He was having fun. Well, I guess you could say he was having fun. I don't know, he was an ace.

John Stacy: 13:04

I mean, hey, every dick's only got four of them.

Alex Graham: 13:08

Well, there were a lot of aces in World War II. I think Richard Bong was the big one he had 40.

Alex Graham: 13:16

But there were quite a few of them in the 8th Air Force where my dad was. I remember when I was a kid, my dad's senior superior when he got down to Georgia in the 31st Fighter Wing, his superior officer that he was taken over for replacing was a guy named Colonel Zempke, called Hub Zempke. Hell, he had more than that. He had about 18 or 19. It was a lot of competition back then Towards the end of the war. It was kind of like fishing with hand grenades, though, because they changed the rules. They had so many flak emplacements around the German airfields. If you could get in there without getting shot down and blow up an airplane on the ground, they counted it as an aerial kill or the equivalent. I think my dad got a few of them that way, but it was still a. You know, he never got shot down. He was just one lucky son of a gun, never got hit with any fragments Didn't get a Purple Heart.

Alex Graham: 14:27

What did he want to do? Well, he was my inspiration always. He ran into some political flack in 1972 and ended up getting sent to Diyarbacore, Turkey, 6th Air Force, which was a nowhere job. So he retired real quick, moved over to McDonnell Douglas, started working on the F-15, created that little masterpiece.

John Stacy: 15:00

That's not bad, that's a good point.

Alex Graham: 15:02

Well, he was instrumental. Sandy McDon McDonald was my godfather at my christening. He was quite the whole McDonald family. We were real close. But my dad was really instrumental in building the F4, strapping two engines on it and getting something that had more thrust-to weight ratio than a one to one. It was like what, 1.5 to one, where you stand the thing like a rocket and go straight up with it. But uh, he helped develop that. And then magnum air comes along and says well, how many bombs can it carry? My dad's going no, no, no, it has machine, it has machine guns and it uses rockets. It doesn't hold bombs. It holds extra fuel and drop tanks but it doesn't hold bombs. Well, they made it a bomber.

John Stacy: 15:56

When it first came out though when it first came out they didn't have that many. It didn't even have machine guns, all it had was missiles because it had become missile-reliant. Then they had to go back and add that pod on it. Didn't really have machine guns, all it had was missiles because they'd become missile reliant. Then you had to go back and add that pod on it, right?

Alex Graham: 16:10

My dad's the one that inaugurated that pod, strapping a G minigun into that center line pod and used it like a machine gun. He started using that in 1966 because they were using those AIM-54 side blinders. They were sparrows and they were using those AIM-54 sidewinders. They were sparrows and they were radar-guided. The sidewinders are heat-guided and they're a little bit more realistic and reliable. But those AIM-54s they'd squirt off the thing and the MIG turns a hard right and the thing just keeps going straight like where'd it go? Where'd it go? Lost? It Missed it by that much so all the fighter pilots hated those goddamn rockets and with no machine gun you don't have anything else to fall back on. In close combat the Migs had guns that pissed my dad off.

John Stacy: 17:02

Mm-hmm, dog fighting was a forgotten art back then. You know, after World War II in Korea dog fighting became a wasted art and they got really reliable in their missiles and that hurt.

Alex Graham: 17:17

Dog fighting was an art. It was a close-in art. It was kind of like a knife fight in a dark alley. You better learn how to do it real quick or you're going to be on the ground walking if your parachute worked.

John Stacy: 17:31

If you're lucky. If not, you'd be ground up sawdust.

Alex Graham: 17:37

Anyway, going back to SMC, we never had the pathway where you could start building all these little bits and pieces the way they do in SMCP now. And there's a good old boy named James Percivali. I don't know if you've had him on your show. He and his wife, terry Percivali, lived down in I can't remember the name in Texas, the town, but he's accredited, he's a member of NOVA.

Alex Graham: 18:10

He's the one that pushed Barry into the limelight. It was his. He worked with the guy, I think he was a VSO, but he had all these difficulties and he got started pushing towards this thing where he said you know, why can't you have two bumps like F-4 under 350, f-4, and F-3? Why couldn't you have multiple bumps under F-3, 50% or more, but less than 100? 50% or more but less than 100. And they took that all the way to the Federal Circuit and they won, even after they lost to the CAVC. He opened up to me what is most possibly the biggest gain for veterans in the last 50 years, certainly since the Court of Veterans Appeals came into being A lot of Q claims.

Alex Graham: 19:08

But you know one of my favorites up at the court, mike Allen. He's the one that swore me in. Real nice guy In fact. He was at the last regional NOVA conference last fall up in St Paul and gave a speech and during the cocktail party I walked over to him afterwards. I said your honor said yeah, I don't know if you remember me. You swore me back in 18 in DC. He says oh hell, yeah, I remember you. You go by, alex, right? I said God, how could this guy have that kind of a memory? But he did. He remembered me.

Alex Graham: 19:56

He says yeah, I see you're kicking ass and taking names down below. I said, yes, sir, I am. I've had my ups and downs, but on SMC it just seems like I've got the gift of the healing, where you just touch somebody and heal them, like one of the tent revivals or something. I can't believe I could win as many SMCs as I have, which is all of them to date. I didn't take one up to the board.

Alex Graham: 20:30

They had this old boy who lives down in Texas, midland. He was in attendance for a whole bunch of stuff and then I filed him for loss of use of the lower extremities due to diabetes and then came back and I said, well, you know, you guys forgot to give him his berry bumps here. You know, you should have bounced him from L to M back in 2018. And they went in and they cued themselves or tried to and started to, and then they stopped, but they took away his loss of use of his lower extremities. That got him and he turned it into aid and attendance for Parkinson's and I said, well, wait a minute. No, no, he had loss of use.

Alex Graham: 21:18

You can't just change it. You can't say, oh sorry, you don't have loss of use, but it's no fault, no harm, because here's aid and attendance and they're both the same thing. Your paycheck stays the same. Nothing happened here. Move along. Well, something did happen. Now, all of a sudden, his legs work. They gave him a car. John, how are you going to take the car away? He doesn't have loss of use anymore of his lower extremities. You can't get a car for it.

John Stacy: 21:48

Well, that's against the rules anyway, because they're supposed to maximize the benefit to the veteran.

Alex Graham: 21:54

Well, of course they are. I filed him for PTSD. This guy's got a purple heart, a CIB. His best friend got blown in half and he picked him up to carry him up the hill to safety. He should have got a Silver Star for that. Halfway up the hill he realizes he's hauling a half a human being. God, I tell you I'd tear my ass in half. Mentally I don't think that I could do that. I've seen a lot of guts. I've stuffed guts back into guys' bellies and lit them Marlboro and stuck it in their mouths and said calm down, that dust off. We'll be here in five minutes. And they died in three. But you gave them some sustenance, you gave them a cigarette, you did something to take their mind off it dying. But man, I don't know if I could pick up a half a human being and carry him still be talking to him. I'm not. I've seen some weird ass shit in vietnam and that the indy sailor did the same thing.

John Stacy: 22:56

They're floating in the water and the one guy would swim over to another guy. Hey, buddy, you okay and pat him on the back and he'd turn over. Half his body be gone.

Alex Graham: 23:03

Yeah, yeah, I imagine that happened quite a bit in World War II. I can't remember what the name of that one ship was, indiana or something.

John Stacy: 23:14

Indianapolis.

Alex Graham: 23:15

Indianapolis? Yeah, Wouldn't they have lost about three thousand?

John Stacy: 23:21

Eight hundred men. Eight hundred some men hit the water and only a hundred some were rescued. Yeah.

Alex Graham: 23:27

Can you imagine sitting there swimming in a tight group of people watching guys getting jerked underwater every 30 minutes? I don't know. Here's a lot of guys. I have a lot of respect for one of my close, close friends, bruce Bruce McCartney, down in Georgia. He did four tours as a dust-off pilot in Vietnam Not a pilot, excuse me, as a medic and ran that penetrator down and pulled guys out, brought them back up. He got Purple Heart, bronze Stars, combat Vs up one wall and down the other. He did that for four years and I have the most respect in the world for him. I did it for two years. I was trying to sign up for a third because it's a disease. Once you get into it you got to stay in it. I don't know how to describe it, but Bruce did it for four years, from 68 to 72. And yeah, he's rated 100% ptsd and I can understand why, but he's still. He's still everything up here and there's a lot of guys you would. You would, you'd wonder how they made it as far in life as they did. But you know, there's just a testimonial to what veterans are capable of or what they can handle mentally.

Alex Graham: 24:58

I'm not degrading or downplaying what happened in Iraq and Afghanistan. I'm sure it was every bit as messy in terms of combat. I don't have that experience. I do have experience of Southeast Asia. I wouldn't wish that on anybody. I don't understand how it is you go to a BMW bar or something and they're all sitting around and, oh, I sure wish I could have gotten into combat in Vietnam. They stuck me in Germany. Oh my God, who would ever wish to be in combat? That's an insane desire. I don't think anybody's that crazy.

John Stacy: 25:44

No, pretty much.

Alex Graham: 25:47

What gives me?

John Stacy: 25:47

Oh, excuse me, I'm sorry, what do you mean?

Alex Graham: 25:49

Oh, excuse me, I'm sorry. What?

John Stacy: 25:51

We all have our own bit of post-traumatic stress disorder. We're all crazy to a certain extent. Of course, everybody's issues are different as far as what they go through in order to deserve this kind of stuff.

Alex Graham: 26:03

But still, you know, my wife says I have PTSD.

John Stacy: 26:11

I can't see it on me. Well, if you can't see it, you can't file a claim for it, right?

Alex Graham: 26:16

I never wanted to file for it because I thought it would make me appear weaker as a human being, but that was 50 years ago. I got kicked out of the service when I came back Not for PTSD, because they hadn't invented it yet, john.

John Stacy: 26:35

They said I had, you were shell-shocked.

Alex Graham: 26:37

Well, man, I don't know what I had, but they said I had antisocial personality with passive-aggressive tendencies.

John Stacy: 26:46

Yeah, back in the day, I've actually changed it.

Alex Graham: 26:51

But those are personality disorders, so you don't get paid for them.

John Stacy: 26:55

I've changed a few of those decisions in the past with a couple of friends of mine. One guy was on USS Mars and he was a body collector.

Alex Graham: 27:06

Boy, I'll tell you what that graves and registration job I've done you, what that graves and registration job I've done. Two guys for that job, got them both Got. One of them was a World War II vet. One of my very first clients. Got him his 100% for that right before he died at 95. Then I got another guy that was a grazer in registration in Afghanistan running around with a refrigerated meat wagon scooping up, throwing it in the back, you know. So we'll take it all back to the shop and we'll figure out whose feet belong to who. That's pretty gross Sorting.

Alex Graham: 27:45

Yeah, sorting. I wouldn't want that job, but I could see where you can develop some PTSD from it. Smc has evolved so much just in the time that I've been working with it. You often wonder what else is going to come down the road. I never saw Barry versus McDonough coming to fruition during my lifetime. I figured it would take another 30 years of monkeying around with it. I also thought that TDIU would never ever be considered a 100% rating where you can use it to get to SMCS 100 plus 60?.

John Stacy: 28:29

I've got one question. I've got one question, alex. What's that? Why in the hell with a capital H, after all these freaking years 1940s, when they wrote that regulation did it take somebody 80 freaking years to take this to the damn court?

Alex Graham: 28:53

Well, that's a damn good question. First of all, you've got to understand. I'd swear 90% of the people who work for VA and I hate to say it, but probably 90% of the people that I call my fellow litigators and friends at NOVA don't know anything about SMC. They know there's something called K if Winky doesn't work and they know there's an S if you somehow manage to cobble together 60% in ratings on top of a 100 that are separate and distinct.

John Stacy: 29:26

Well, kid, I'm going to call you and lock yourself in your bedroom. And they just said.

Alex Graham: 29:32

Well, you know, yeah, I'm sure there's a whole bunch of other letters there L, m, n, o, p, q, r, s, t, u, V and all that shit, but I don't know how to do that. I don't even want to learn it. I'm going to stick with tinnitus and hemorrhoids.

John Stacy: 29:45

They don't listen to that. They've got their own alphabets A9, B9, C9, D9. That's all.

Alex Graham: 29:54

Speaking of the devil, where's Ray? I don't see Ray on your screen there. Where's he hiding? Is he still on vacation?

John Stacy: 30:03

No, ray is actually on assignment. We've got him down there in Winchester Tennessee guys. Hey, you guys are listening to this weekend and you live close to Winchester Tennessee, say down northern Alabama or anywhere in the national area. Get yourself down to Winchester Tennessee. The Traveling Wall is there this weekend and, ray, you're doing a live broadcast tomorrow and Saturday.

Alex Graham: 30:24

That's right. He's got the flag gig, usually about November, doesn't he?

John Stacy: 30:29

Or is that November? He's got the flag gig. Usually about that, doesn't he? Or is that November? He's got the travel wall. This weekend he even got Bill Robinson down there with him. You know who Bill is well.

Alex Graham: 30:42

I have to admire the man that he's still got the stamina to be up and about with his wife pushing him, helping him, him unloading him.

John Stacy: 30:55

She works herself yeah.

Alex Graham: 30:57

Up there with trips in terms of disabilities.

John Stacy: 31:00

We got him a chair this time. We talked him into getting a wheelchair and it makes it a little bit easier. The scooter is a little bit hard to maneuver but the chair is a lot easier because there's no front end on it. So you know he enjoys it. That's pretty good, so he's okay.

Alex Graham: 31:14

Cool, that's cool. As I was saying, smc is so horribly complicated. When I write a legal brief about the whole, a third of it is trying to tell the judge what my client is physically, legally entitled to based on the cacophony of two L's make an O, maximum P makes an O and O plus A in attendance equals R1, all these different things. You have to write it all down and say if on the offbeat chance you get your shit together, judge you grant this correctly, there would also be an opportunity here for you to consider aid and attendance at the R2 level or R1, r2, whatever you know, because of your combination with O plus the A detenents. Now I just got a decision back yesterday or the day before, I think it was yesterday.

Alex Graham: 32:19

This guy's been in a nursing home Vietnam vet like me. He got a below the knee amputation on both legs. They did such a VA medicine, they did such a piss poor job with the amputation Amputation plural that there was a lot of pain on the scarring on the stump. There's a way to do that and if you're good you'd fold those nerves way up inside the leg and then take the flesh and make your post at the bottom.

John Stacy: 32:59

Make your flat.

Alex Graham: 32:59

Get the nerves away from that area if possible, so that there isn't a lot of pain when you're resting all your weight. On top of that prosthesis, they screwed it up and he's been bouncing around in and out of nursing homes because of the bed sores get infected and he can't just jump out of bed and incontinence because of the prostate cancer that's in remission. But they fried the shit out of him with the radiation and he changes his diaper about six times a day, not at night, that's just during the day. Finally, they put a catheter in him and I'm arguing this thing and I'm saying your Honor, he's got coronary artery disease. He needs aid and attendance. Your Honor, he has extreme diabetes of the upper extremities and the loss of use because he can't even button his shirt and he can't hold a spoon to scoop up his peas and his carrots. They fall off because his hand's trembling. But he also needs aid and attendance for this. And so I had three different items that he needed aid and attendance for, or loss of use on top of his loss of use of his lower extremities. So I'm having a hard time arguing this and I got Judge Hager, john Hager. John and me get along like peas and carrots man. I'm not kidding you. I've had him I don't know three times face-to-face and argued in front of him for a hearing appearance and each time, of course, I won. But the man has a tremendous sense of humor. He's engaging. He's a veteran. I think just the fact that he's a veteran is an important piece of why he has such a commiserate with us and is willing to bend over backwards and truly give you the benefit of the doubt. There are not very many judges down there that will do that for you. Now there's a new batch of them coming out Before this. Hager, david White, w-i-g-h-t and Mike Skoutsoumas were all three big ones.

Alex Graham: 35:30

Cherry Crawford I love Cherry. She's got cornrows and a diamond stud in her nose. Man, she's almost one of the highest judges. She's a supervisor. There's 10, 20 different younger veterans law judges. That counsels them on how to run their show and how to do their business. It teaches them by example. But God, she's got a great sense of humor. I had three days running on three different face-to-faces in Seattle back in the old days of Legacy. I won two out of three. The third one was the LZ Court case that I wrote so much about. She wouldn't grant that one, don't know why. I was still in my infancy of knowledge in how to fight VA in 2018. You got another seven years under the bridge now. There's not a whole lot. You can float past me without me taking a gander at it and realizing there's something wrong with it. I mean, after 36 god dang years, I feel like I wrote the Cliff Notes book on this shit.

John Stacy: 36:43

Looks to me like in the future. You're denying so many attendance claims. Now you're going to start boxing them up and getting those back to the BBA.

Alex Graham: 36:52

You're going to see. Well, you've had Wes McCauley on your show. I train Wes, not everything. But he came to me about 2021 and said I can't get a grasp on this aid and attendance and all this SMC shit. Would you please train me and teach me how to do it? And when that happened, about five or six other guys and gals came to me at the same time and said well, if you train him, you got to train us. We want to do it too.

Alex Graham: 37:26

That's what started the first class of the smc shit that I taught. And then all the guys found out about it at nova and they said well, how come you didn't invite us? Well, you know as well as I do, if you, if you have a radio show like this and you're, you got 560 people, little itty bitty tv. You can't teach to 560 people. Some 10 people ask a question. You shoot the whole show through on just answering questions and no teaching. So I kept it down to 10 people per class and I think people appreciated it. But I only taught 30 total three classes of 10.

Alex Graham: 38:09

And Wesley's a classic example. But there's other guys and now we're starting to really pack a lot of aid and attendance claims into VA and going up to the board with them and it's causing a little bit of consternation. I don't mind telling you among the people in the hierarchies, find out about this aid and attendance. God damn, we got 5 000 claims for aid and attendance and in the last 20 years we've had 500. What's going on well? So they know who's doing it and they're starting to get a little stinky about it. You know how hard it is for talking with Ray about how to get into that PCAPC program. Oh yeah.

Alex Graham: 38:57

On the same basis with Jesus.

John Stacy: 39:00

And one foot in.

Alex Graham: 39:02

Yeah, thank you very much, but they're starting to get picky about that and say well, you know, just because you can't prepare a meal, that's not necessarily an activity of daily living, so I don't think that that counts.

Alex Graham: 39:22

It's not listed in 3.352A. It's not listed in 3.352a, but what va forgets and what you can never change, is the way the regulations written. If they revamp that regulation, there'd be a lot of screaming and hollow howling and whatnot when you use the word, such as an inability to accomplish activity, a daily living such as such as we've already determined in it's an example that's a non-exhaustive list of disabilities, like, for instance, when you're dealing with ptsd.

Alex Graham: 40:04

You're not required to have every last one of the things that they say you need to get to 100%. You just need most of them, but not all. That's what such as means basically. So the same thing applies to aid and attendance. Now you're going to see them try to monkey with the aid and attendance and they're starting and saying well, just because you can't do housework, I don't think anybody would expect a veteran with 100% disability to do housework. So that's not considered an activity of daily living. Shut the front door, John. How's a veteran? If he's a single man, how's he supposed to keep his house clean?

John Stacy: 40:48

That's an activity in their living room. Put pads on his dog's seat, let the dog walk around, let him mop the floor. You know, and there's things like that Get a Roomba. Maybe the VLG will give you a Roomba.

Alex Graham: 41:01

You got all that extra money, you got to go out and buy one of them room bars to make you 40.

John Stacy: 41:07

I got the mop version now well, shit that.

Alex Graham: 41:11

I'm sorry. I disagree with that, but that's what's happening now. I've had one judge that would overturned it. But I had a judge say well, just because he needs medication management doesn't mean that he needs aid and attendance. And my argument to that was well, let's see, your Honor, if he can't remember to take his Thorazine or his Sertraline and he gets a little bit antsy and decides to get his 357 Magnum and go down and ride the subway and take care of business, business, get rid of all them people that are beating up on those cute little girls and stealing their purses. Wouldn't you say that that would be an activity of daily living? That somebody has to protect him from himself and others because of failure to eat his medicine? Couldn't see it, but we got it overturned and got it straightened out. That's a finish that we have to deal with in litigation that somebody starts out with a whole new interpretation of what aid and attendance is or what it isn't.

John Stacy: 42:25

That's the judge. If he was a double amputee, okay, if you were a double amputee, would you have to have somebody swing your gavel for you, because you're not going to do it with your teeth? Why not? Because he had a neck problem. He had to retire.

Alex Graham: 42:40

He had an eyeball hook on the ceiling or a rope. Come down there he put that in his teeth. It jerked his teeth back and forth. No.

John Stacy: 42:50

What gets my goat, which is how you say it. What gets my goat is they'll deny the aid and attendance claim for whatever reason. But in the favorable findings, what's the first sentence? You require aid and attendance.

Alex Graham: 43:10

And that's predicated on 3.351 C3. C1c Now, that is the definition and you go read it and it says you need a diagnosis of the need for aid and attendance and that's accomplished on a 2680. So now the latest gig I've gotten here is watch this one. You're going to love this. When you file. There's a thing in the M21, and I know you know I don't subscribe to the M21. I think it's a piece of shit. It changes 135 times a year.

John Stacy: 43:43

Ten times a day.

Alex Graham: 43:45

Because it's wrong. But it says if you submit a claim for aid and attendance on a 526, but you do not submit a 2680, the VA cannot stop the production and say give me a 2680 signed by your doctor, because that violates the duty to assist. They're supposed to help you get there. They can't start demanding an entrance fee to get to aid and attendance. So the blowback from that is you do not need to develop a claim or you don't need to ask them for a 2680. And if you do ask them and they say can you hear this? Let me turn it up for you.

Alex Graham: 44:28

I do not need to give you a 2680. It's up on you to send me out to a C&P and give me a 2680. That's how it's supposed to work. So what do they do? They'll develop everything you put into that 526, but they will not send you out for an aid and attendance exam. So there is no 2680. And when you get to the end of the rating decision, they'll just put a line in there that says your aid and attendance is confirmed and continued at the present rate. No exam. They just rule around you to avoid giving you aid and attendance.

John Stacy: 45:04

They're forgetting the golden rule Aid and attendance is not a claim to be found. It is an ancillary benefit that should be awarded upon the need for it.

Alex Graham: 45:14

Akels and Bradley both enunciated that very, very clearly. It's due and owing. In a moment you can prove you need it. But now that they're not developing, what happens? I go to HLR and I say hey, you didn't give me an aid and attendance CMP. And they go oh yeah, I guess we didn't. Well, duty to assist. Here back in the hopper.

Alex Graham: 45:40

Five months later you get your CMP exam for aid and attendance and then you get denied. So what's the panacea? How do you get your cmp exam for aid and attendance and then you get denied. So what's your? What's the panacea? What's? How do you get out of this goddamn merry-go-round loop? You're on the hamster wheel. You can't get off.

Alex Graham: 45:55

I have to take it up to the board. But most of the guys that I deal with are are advanced on the docket over 75, but they're dying literally. So I take it up the board and what does? The board members looks at me and just cries in his beard and he says you know, and I know that we've got to develop this for a 2680 so that you can bring me something that says he needs aid and attendance in English, not in Greek, not in some foreign language or whatever. I need that before I can grant it, and if it's not there and they refuse to develop it, I'm forced to send it back to make them do that Still another nine months and then when that happens they could deny again. And they do, and then it's back to the board. But at least the next time I go back I'm going to win it. But I might be winning it for the widow because he's dead. It just sucks.

John Stacy: 46:53

Yeah, laying it down.

Alex Graham: 46:59

I'm praying that we're going to see a sea change in adjudications, and I will tell you this I will. I'm impressed with what Doug Collins is doing. He's getting rid of the deadwood. Now I think everybody can scream and say, well, no, we don't have enough nurses and psychiatrists and everything else. They're just deadwood. They're just hanging on one more year to get to 20 and get their golden parachute and their pension. And they show up for work half the time and don't even know what they're doing. They're like this, far away from Alzheimer's or something, but they're clinging to their job and they're not doing it. Or nurses that sit around watching the young and the breastless or something, I don't care. They're supposed to be out there on the floor taking care of veterans in a VA hospital. I know what it feels like. I push that stupid, stupid button, the call button 15, 25 minutes with no answer, not even the squawk box saying I'll be there in a minute, nothing or hide in the union hall, hide in a union environment, because sure they can't go on strike.

Alex Graham: 48:35

They're kind of like cops or firefighters. They can't just. Okay, we took a vote and we're going to go on strike, but you know as well as I do they can slow down shit. They can make it difficult for you to get your claim through this week. I've seen more progress this week on claims and appeals. I got three appeals came back, no four. Now Four appeals came back down. Old widow lady got her bounce from L to M for her husband who died. Another guy got R2 right out of the box from aid and attendance or, excuse me, from SMCS. Another guy yeah, they just refused to grant it.

John Stacy: 49:26

Good.

Alex Graham: 49:29

I want to cue back to 2014 because somebody was too lazy to go looking at some old boy's STR records service treatment records and see that right there in his records it showed that he'd been in three not one, but three concussive events that knocked him unconscious. Every one of them was a roadside bomb IED in Afghanistan. I guess it was what we call a C&P examiner at BES or QTC. I guess it was what we call a C&P examiner at VES or QTC. So I reviewed the record and I don't see any evidence that some bitch ever had TBI. He's a lying sack of shit. And they denied him. And I went through the records same records they had. I see this thing in 2011. Yeah, I've given him a definitive diagnosis of TBI. He's classic. He's got nausea and vertigo, got headaches. He had certain things that were the hallmarks of it, including tinnitus from the first one, and therefore I give him the official DX TBI with PTSD. And that's important. Tbi with PTSD means TBI is a prominent disease process. It ain't PTSD with TBI, the other way around.

John Stacy: 50:55

That means T equals R2, T.

Alex Graham: 51:01

So the judge looked at it and I also enunciated the fact that he had an R-Com with a V on it. Well, you don't get that out of a Kraken Jack's box. That means you've been in combat. He had a combat action badge too. So the judge ruled kind of narrowly. He just said you guys ignored what he said on his 4138. You ignored his combat presumption with the 1154B and therefore the decision to deny TBI in 2015 when he got out of the service was clearly and unmistakably wrong, and it manifestly changed the outcome, because he should have got it. Well, okay, it became a hollow win because he got 10% yesterday, but 10% from 2014,. John, that ain't a chump change.

John Stacy: 52:04

Well, it's not a big change either though. Well, it's not a big change either though 14, 15 grand.

Alex Graham: 52:12

I know I'm looking at it by the time I get it straightened out. They screwed him because that extra 10% added to his 30% for PTSD bumped him up to 40. He immediately started getting 40% where he was getting 30. Now that's not a big change about $156, $200 back then. But because that extra 10% was added in, when he got a bounce to 50 for his PTSD in 2017, that extra 10% actually pushed him up to 60. So then they had to compute what his paycheck would have been with 60 instead of 50 for three or four years, and I got a hold of him about 2020. He's a neighbor over here. I got a hold of him in 2020, and I drove him up from his 50 all the way up to 90. So that 10% had a downstream effect. It kept kicking him higher all the way through it and you got to do a Fenderson rating. You got to recalibrate it all the way through the claim. You can't just add 10 in 2014, and you're done.

John Stacy: 53:27

It has a downstream effect. Effective date of this. Effective date of that Go back, go back, go back 29K.

Alex Graham: 53:34

29K minus my 20%.

John Stacy: 53:37

That's good. A couple of bottles of single malt scotch there, buddy, yeah.

Alex Graham: 53:42

but you know, john, I don't do it for that. My wife buys me some of the finest scotch known to man. Some of it is pretty dynamite. I've seen names I'd never heard of before. I didn't know. The French made scotch back in the 1700s but they tried.

John Stacy: 53:59

You ever drink a Perri Van Winkle, you know what I want to do.

Alex Graham: 54:03

I want to go to Scotland. I want to go on the Scotland tour. You know, Do all the tasting rooms. Instead of wine, we taste a single malt. That'd be fun.

John Stacy: 54:13

I'd rather take your cane with you, because you're going to need the time to get done.

Alex Graham: 54:18

I was thinking about taking a wheelchair or a walker. Here's to good life.

John Stacy: 54:30

No, here's to good life.

Alex Graham: 54:31

no, what about I tell them now go ahead one last thing I was going to say is this Barry Bump business that I was talking about today. Get yourself up to the maximum rate of P or O or something. It's open ended. Get yourself up to the maximum rate of P or O or something. It's open-ended. You can file a queue in 2025 and go back to 1971 without any problem. They weren't reading the regulation correctly from 1946 all the way until last May. So anything that happened in between between you can queue and win because they scourge it. Yeah, how much money is that? I mean, it's an incomparable, incomprehensible amount of veterans that should be remunerated. None of them know about it, not so I love about your show, because I hope you're going to tell them.

John Stacy: 55:29

Listen, I mean all these World War II vets that lost limbs and things like that in World War II and were discharged. They're already in the same schedule and they weren't around back in the day. These guys had other ratings. So the majority of the people who deserve that are dead.

Alex Graham: 55:48

Well, I didn how many people were on SMC, at any rate, even from K, through different things, and I did a FOIA. This was back in 2010 or 11, 12, back when VA would tell you these kind of things, and there were only 3,500 people on R1 and R2 in 2012. I'd like to think that there's a lot more, because I know I've personally added about 150 to that number, not many, not many but.

Alex Graham: 56:24

Wes has probably added that many and some of the other people I've been training are sending me reports back and saying got that old boy R1. Thank you, alex, for teaching me how. So it ain't the money, john, it's the justice. I'm married, a rich girl. Fuck that noise. This is fun. This is like sticking a knife in a bad guy's back. He ain't screwed me for 28 years and I finally got an opportunity to pay him back. Thank you for being on your show today.

John Stacy: 57:02

Buddy, we appreciate you coming on. We'll do this again very soon. Be thinking of something else. Be thinking of something else. Be thinking of something else to talk about Now. You going to the NOPA conference here in the fall conference in DC.

Alex Graham: 57:13

Yeah, I'll be there. I'm going early. I'm going to have a little chitty chat with Cheryl Mason, brand new VA OIG Office of Inspector General Trump got her. Senate just approved her. I want to have a little you know this lady. Beg your pardon.

John Stacy: 57:33

You know this lady.

Alex Graham: 57:35

I've met her at a cocktail party. I don't think she'll remember who I am, but she'll sure as hell know who. Asnod is Not me. Asnod's a household name down there on 810 Vermont Avenue.

John Stacy: 57:51

Well, buddy, I appreciate you coming on the show. Guys, we'll see you again next week. We'll have another guest speaker on and we'll talk about another VA issue affecting today's veterans. With that, this will be John, half hour scram and the Exposed Reproductive. We'll be shutting it down for now.

Alex Graham: 58:09

Thank you.