SPEAKER_01: 0:00

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, distinguished guests and veterans and families to the Exposed Vet broadcast on this beautiful day before Thanksgiving, which is November 26, 2025. It's been a very interesting day down here in Basserville. We've had a lot of issues going on. Been running all day, drove about 150 miles. Well, rode half of it, anyways. Today we got a treat for you. We got the one and only. This is the heavyweight champion of the world when it comes to SMC, Mr. Gordon Alex Graham. And Mr. Graham is also known as Astonauts. If you guys have read his blog, you guys know exactly who this man is. Alex, welcome back to the show, buddy. How are you doing?

SPEAKER_00: 0:48

I'm doing good. I signed in. I don't know if it shows on the your folk screen that are watching this, but I signed in as Buckwheat. That was my nickname when I was in Vietnam. Buckwheat. I'm still answered to Buckwheat. If somebody yells that out in the neighbor in a in the crowd, I'll turn around and go, yo.

SPEAKER_01: 1:11

So use one of them little rascals, huh?

SPEAKER_00: 1:14

Uh that's where it came from, but uh I didn't look like buckwheat, obviously, but I did have that big top knot that just would go way back here on my hair uh when you wear it short enough for the military. And uh alfalfa, but alfalfa was taken already, so I got buckwheat.

SPEAKER_01: 1:41

Yeah, that's pretty cool, man. Alfalfa got murdered. Did you know that? No, I didn't know that. That's unfortunate. Yeah, he did. The actor played him got murdered short in.

SPEAKER_00: 1:49

Brought me a lot of good humor. I I I watched that when I was a kid.

SPEAKER_01: 1:54

Yeah, I mean, that's all we had really. I grew up in Eastern Kentucky, and we only had one TV channel. It was either that or nothing. You know, except sometimes we gotta watch the winter and summer because the snow would be on the TV and we could watch the snow.

SPEAKER_00: 2:09

We didn't get a TV until 1959, I think I'm gonna say. And it was black and white, and it turned on except for Friday night and Saturday night, Sunday night doing your homework.

SPEAKER_01: 2:26

Yeah, you had to you were cramming to get it done by Monday.

SPEAKER_00: 2:29

Well, yeah, you know, you got your butt whipped if you didn't do your chores and take care of your homework. I I only I didn't rememorize my father's signature. I could reproduce that and it it reflects a lot in my own signature now. It looks a lot like my dad's, except it's spelling my name, but it was great. Uh I memorized that for signing a report card. That works until somebody asks why they haven't seen one in about eight months.

SPEAKER_01: 3:04

Well, you know dad's listening, don't you?

SPEAKER_00: 3:09

Yeah, you can't put that off forever.

SPEAKER_01: 3:12

I don't give a lot of things, but uh well, how's things going, but I know you guys are super busy. Uh you know, when you you started this, you never realized where you would wind up, you know, with doing this. So I mean it's it's it's been a uh fantastic journey for you, and uh now you're just uh rolling like a freight train, and uh you know, you even got a load of coal on the back and you're hauling it everywhere. Cars full and full of disabled R1, R2 vets, and you take them all over the country.

SPEAKER_00: 3:46

Yeah, I I'm amazed, and it's it's it's uh mushrooms so badly that now I have two attorneys and two VA agents running for me almost full time. And and there's more coming in every day, and some of them live near me or within driving distance of me, John. And I got a guy that jumped out of an airplane, got a streamer, uh, and pulled his reserve chute, uh, and it was like this inflate 1001, 1002, and then hit the ground. He bounced somewhere on the order of 14 feet. Woke up after hitting the ground? Yeah, a thousand feet uh basically a fall, free fall from a thousand feet. Man, he's he's got more wrong with him than he's got right.

SPEAKER_01: 4:46

But uh that's lucky he didn't have a lucky his mom or so whoever whoever he's married to back then didn't have a death claim.

SPEAKER_00: 4:52

His wife just left him, she divorced him. Uh really. It's uh I I don't know, man. That's uh I said that's pretty mean. But when he said when he drug that out, I said, well, that's it. I'll I'll take care of you. I'll I'll do this personally. He was here in the office. Uh well, if you want to turn on the tears and just get out the big fiddle, uh finish on Alex, Alex will take you.

SPEAKER_01: 5:23

But you got sound effects, we need them.

SPEAKER_00: 5:27

Expands my capability because what I've had this, had my website in 2008, and it's getting to be uh a name name, I guess. I don't know. I don't think I'm famous, I'm not a parade kind of guy. I don't I don't want to be cast as a statue and put in a park. They might tip me over or pee on me. The birds will shit all over me. One of my clients who became a close friend of mine lives down in California, and that's not his fault. He's just got orange trees down there, about 50 of them, and he just doesn't feel like leaving them. I don't blame him. He he sends them to me. But anyway, he sent me a link to something. He says, Oh my god, they're getting ready to take all of our benefits away. Oh no, CBO crap and link, and it's some guy, slippery looking dude, he says, calls himself the Civ Div. I I don't know what that's I think it's spelled C I V Div. I'm not sure what it stands for, but that's irrelevant. And the guy starts reciting this big thing about some guys giving testimony in Congress and uh how we're getting ready to lose all our benefits, and the guy was just branting and raving about how veterans uh they know how to milk the system and so on and so forth. That wrinkled me because if you look at what it costs to live in America and what America pays its veterans in remunerations, uh it's pitiful. It's it's uh if you even came up with like a 10% disability that somebody says, yeah, it's$155 now. Well, when it when I started out, I think it was about 17 or 19. So I wanted to grow, but it it's still not even enough to make your cable bill per month. It it's scary.

SPEAKER_01: 7:45

I mean, that would give you some insight. I did some numbers the other day. You know, this build is supposed to be based off the national manufacturing economy and that banks and for 100%, not not the SMCs, just for standard 100, right? That should be based off the national economy, but the problem is the manufacturing average is like 5600. That's the average, it's$5,600 a month. That's what some guys basically make. It could be higher, it could be lower, but that's the average.

SPEAKER_00: 8:20

Well, in my 30 plus years, it's 89, 09, 19, 66 years of playing VA poker jungle. I've heard everything there is to hear. I've heard every scare story that get ready to take away TDIU, get ready to take away tinnitus, they're getting ready to take away this, and get ready to take away that. With almost uh few exceptions uh in the changes in the diagnostic code, which have been pointedly against us over the years. No, heck no. It's called disease shrink, it's not as bad as it really feels. You know, that's uh inflation, 100% rating now, that's 60. I I heard a lot about them uh pulling obstructive sleep apnea and the CPAP machine and all that, pulling that into a PTSD rating under insomnia. Um I you know, insomnia is a depressive disorder. So it makes sense to do that. Would it be financially uh beneficial to you, the veteran? Probably not. It might drive your if you don't have a PTSD rating, you're gonna get one for about 30 percent. So you're gonna get a haircut out of this getting rid of O obstructive sleep apnea. But it's there's a reason for it, John. And I started hearing about this when guys start coming home from the first 2001 to 2004 in Iraq.

SPEAKER_01: 10:17

We did the first Gulf War.

SPEAKER_00: 10:19

Hey, everybody file for OSA, you're gonna get 50, they're gonna give you a mask and blah blah blah. It was in the tinnitus, and boom, that'll be 55, and you get a 60 rating and a$1,200 paycheck right out of the out of the gate. And everybody was lining up down there, and they needed to drive through the window down there to Los Angeles.

SPEAKER_01: 10:44

Oh, I remember those days, you know. I mean, that was back, it was hot and heavy. Every time you turned around, it's sleep at me, sleep at me, sleep at me, you know.

SPEAKER_00: 10:53

Well, yeah, guys were advising everybody, they had message boards telling them to do it. And I now if you have the disease, I'm all in. File for it. But I know that they're from working with DAV and some of these other places, you walk in and you go, Yeah, I've got this thing with my ears ringing. I never did have any hearing protection. Oh, tonight this hearing loss. Oh, yeah, and you have hemorrhoids too. And I thought, Well, not so much. No, actually, no, we really use some good toilet paper in my house. Well, you might get hemorrhoids in the future. Let's start now, and then next thing you know, he's got 20 claims stacked up there, and you haven't even changed toilet paper yet. So it the there's something wrong with the system that would push DAV or any other of the 146 different flavors of veteran service organizations into doing these kinds of things. Nothing wrong, it's what it is, but I do know this, and it's not a very well-known fact, and a lot of people deny it, but it's the truth, is when uh DAV or VFW or Americ Air Force Sergeants Association, American Red Wounded Warrior, Wallet Crew, whoever it is who is a VSO, signs you up, they got. Now, this is in 2008, it's$250 for that POA. You submit that to the Veterans Administration and they reimbursed you. And that helped pay for the Lexus and the uh speedboat for the American Legion National Commander. Now it's a Gulf Stream 5 jet out there at the airport in Nashville for him. I I think that's all wrong. But you know, we don't need to go back to who sued me in 19 2015. How about people? Uh I I exposed them. And the good news is one of my clients found out about it. I couldn't advertise it so much, but it was obvious. Uh he caught up with them all in uh Colorado Springs at the Broadmoor Hotel and started, got his camera out and started taking pictures of all the shenanigans, and he knew the people in the entertainment field that were in there and uh all the waiters, and it turned out they blew about five million on Dom Perignola's champagne. And he exposed all that to CBS, and I don't know if he got paid for it or not. I don't care, but those two fellas that sued me found themselves out unemployed. I thought that was the best fifteen thousand dollars I ever spent getting sued, having to pay for attorney fees and court filings and all that crap at the U.S. District Court. So I've been around the block a little bit. Uh I I know how to play this game. But one thing I do know, John, going back to the subject, I I don't know who that fellow was that has his little YouTube channel. He's up right up there with uh Rest in Peace Combat Louie. But is in the business of giving you a haircut, it starts the moment you file a claim. You win, and you got your zero, and you've got five years ahead of you before you get that thing anywhere close to where it's supposed to be. And you're gonna spend a lot of money on gasoline driving back and forth to your doctors trying to get letters from them to attest to the fact that you are disabled. It's not gonna change. It's a system, it's a poker game. You gotta learn how to play it, and you gotta understand that these guys that they're there's like three card three-card Moddy dealers, you know. What's there? Which which which P is the underneath which walnut? Which one's the ace? You could think that you're gonna go to one of those CMP examiners from VES or or QTC and get a fair shake. You're wrong. It's not gonna happen. You're gonna get a fair shake, maybe one out of ten. You're gonna get a quasi-fair shake out of three of them. And the other seven are people that think you're a you know, a slip-on-the-floor club member from Safeways. I I get that. I just caught one trying to orange woggle me here about three, four weeks ago from the Philippines, and uh that was ugly. I mean, it was and and and finally at the very end, I I find the name of the guy he used, and I Google him and just got discovery he's a claim shark. So this guy had a 30% rating, John, all the way through until 2021. And somebody says, you know, you need a claim shark in your future. Yeah, well, that's not that big a payment to cough up. And he went from 30% in 2021, hadn't filed a claim since 2005. All of a sudden he went whoosh all the way up to 100, and then S, and then he got his L. And then they got and he got his teeth kicked in for that T, going for SMCT. All of a sudden he had uh TBI that nobody knew about for the last 40 years. And they came to meet me. He says, Yeah, I want you to take me to T. And I went, Oh, okay, no problem. So, well, what kind of combat medals you got? Well, not very many, none. Well, where'd you retire at? Or how'd you get out of the service? How many years? Well, I was in for four years in the air force, so you must reach D4, E5. He says, Well, no, actually, I retired as an E2. Oh. Huh? NJPs. Well, he was overweight and he got demoted because he refused to comply. And he got bumped from three down to two when he should have gone to four. And then he just never ever he had a bad knee and he kept getting deferments, and his pulley score on his lowers was about three, and he never could get in compliance to get his rank back, let alone advanced to where he belonged. But man, that I I don't think I could take the financial hit just because I I couldn't keep my mouth shut. But that's beside the point.

SPEAKER_01: 18:22

Exactly. I know.

SPEAKER_00: 18:24

I I've I've I spotted the guy that put a buddy letter in there for him, and I Googled his name, and it comes right back. This guy named, well, I'm not gonna mention his name on the air, but claims to be a navy guy, and and he deals with a lot of people in the Philippines, and and he gets them. He gets apparently he's successful in what he does. But obviously, it's you're in the Philippines, you can buy a Nexus letter. Literally, it's pretty cheap, and you tell the doctor how to write it. In fact, you can write it and hand it to the doctor and have him just sign it for you. 350 bucks minute. That's a six months worth of vegetables and chicken and pig. But uh, they're forced to take those independent medical opinions as truth, unless they can prove that they poke a hole in it. And and that's what the problem is is how do you poke a hole in a guy who's technically a doctor and been a doctor in school, but it's so corrupt, the system is so corrupt that you can buy somebody for that purpose. I'll give you an example. This guy decided he's gonna keep himself a headache log of how often he had a headache and how long the headache lasted for a whole year, 365 days. Well, he did. He ran from January 1. He petered out about November 15th or something, but it was good enough to see it. But he had a headache every day, except, oh, he had to go to the VAMC in Manila because he had to talk to his psychologist about his PTSD. So he didn't have a headache that day. And then he had a headache every other day after that. And then all of a sudden he's got a C and P exam for his TBI. He didn't have a headache that day. It was the coincidence was just too good to be true. So he'd go through this whole headache log, and each day he hadn't to be someplace and show up, he didn't have a headache. And so then I started cross-referencing what happened if there was any any date with a headache where he was someplace. And sure enough, here's a uh went to see a psychologist at the vanilla VA medical center. 10 o'clock in the morning, arrived, and you know, and how they do this as well as anybody does. So patient arrived ambulatory. And then it says by himself, unattended. And we talked about this, this, and this, and this, and so on and so forth. I can't disbulge that information. But I want people to know, I want veterans to know, that if they're gonna use the VA system, it's just like cops. They have everything down. The man's hair was parted on the right, so well dressed, and no apparent distress. They write a lot of things about you before they even stick that thermometer in your mouth.

SPEAKER_01: 21:51

Or take it.

SPEAKER_00: 21:54

Well, yeah. And veterans don't realize that. And of course, they don't certainly don't realize it when the doctor or the nurse comes in and sits down to talk to you, and uh, I don't believe we've met. Um I'm Jim Wendell. Uh uh on the staff uh uh ARPRN and I handle all the intake here. Uh the psychologist is busy today, but uh I'll be sitting in for him. And now I've got your record here. By the way, how you doing? Got a great day out in the sunshine. How you doing? Well, and you make the foolish mistake of saying something stupid, like, well, you know, hey, I'm feeling pretty good today. Uh, you know, I've got a lot to live for. My daughters are uh they're healthy and cars running good, you know. And he's Jim Weddle's writing down, patient has arrived and claims there's absolutely nothing wrong with him. He's right in his reign, doesn't even know why he's here today. You probably discuss a few things with him that are bugging, yeah. And he sights him down. Well, yeah, the guy has some some little minor complaints, but basically, I think he's better. I think we could reduce him from 50 to 30 percent for a CTF. Oh, we we got a report that says, you know, you got better. I didn't get better. God, I kicked a hole in the wall the other day, and we got I fixed the the door to the bedroom. I slammed it so hard the locks that broke out of it, but I got that fixed. What's he talking about? I didn't get better. But you did.

SPEAKER_01: 23:45

You're you're under the microscope as soon as you get out of the car. Yeah, you know, I mean I've seen guys get busted for filing claims or having bad backs. You know, they get out of their car and they walk into the VA with a cane and they're just all broken down going in there. They have their exam, then they get done with their exam, they go back down to one of the elevators and they're going back after the car. Unfortunately, the windows right there, and they're watching the guy walk. He throws the cane in, hops in the car, and takes off.

SPEAKER_00: 24:15

Well, yeah, and it's all on video because that's what the VAOIG does, but they only catch approximately three to five percent of them. Now, I don't believe there's that large contingent. I mean, I work in this business, and I've only hit four, maybe five, that were out and out card carrying fakes, uh, or they tried to lie to me. And and you know, Wesley, uh uh, you've had him on. Wesley and I see pretty much the same group of people. Um, I I told him to set up a website like mine. You know, you want to bring in, you want to inform the whole world that you are a Jedi knight or a Jedi master, I think in Wes's, on how to do SMC. And it attracts, as I said, a group of people that would normally see me or CCK or Wes or some of the people that I've trained, or some of the ones that work for me that I've mentioned on my website. But occasionally somebody come to him and he can he can smell that that three-day old fish aroma from a mile away. Things just don't add up. He's a real good Sherlock Holmes on that. And he'll he'll call me up or or or or send me an email and beware of Bartholomew P. Bottoms, man. He's a he's a big, I can smell it a mile away. Uh he needs SCT. Um, but he he's got a a rating decision for SMCL that's less than two weeks old. And he claims he's been doing this all by all by himself without any help, but he can't get to the next level. And you're going, wait a minute, in two weeks, how could you make it from L to T? Obviously, there's a vast vat of knowledge on Reddit and Combat Louie and everywhere else in the claim shark world is that getting to SFCT is no, it's no kinkwalk. And you can be certifiable, and and they're not just gonna take it, they're gonna pull you in in person and inspect you and detect you like old the was that that that movie Alice's Restaurant or what's it or loader. They're gonna inspect you and detect you and hopefully reject you. But in this business, uh, for$11,277.66 a month, married without children, there's gonna be a little bit of hanky panky there. And uh I didn't anticipate that when I started into this business. There's just far too many folks that that I knew of who pushed it.

SPEAKER_01: 27:28

There's a lot of people, yeah. There's a lot of folks like that, and I've come across a bunch of them.

SPEAKER_00: 27:33

I don't think there's contingent.

SPEAKER_01: 27:39

You ask them, you know, what's your current rating disability? What's your percentage? That's what you ask them. That's your first first question.

SPEAKER_00: 27:48

My first question is you do you rate it for anything that's gonna kill you? You know, if you're dying, I'm buying.

SPEAKER_01: 27:56

Well, I mean, hey, you got heart disease, you got lung disease. Hate saying, you got diabetes, that's the big three right there.

SPEAKER_00: 28:03

I give virgins that come to me and they say, Bob, you help Bob out. And he told me to call you. And I said, Well, you didn't know that? Yeah, god, yeah, I did a year there. Got malaria, and I was just a hot mess. So, what are you rating for? And he said, What does that mean? I said, Well, how much is the VA paying you right now? And he said, Well, they ain't paying me nothing. I said, You mean you never filed? He goes, for what? They're that naive, John. And then you go up to you. He said, You had Parkinson's. He says, Yeah, it's getting bad. I might have to turn in my driver's license. And I thought to myself, geez, you don't have diabetes, do you? Yeah, or how do you know? And it's just like an open book. And I it it's I'm not shopping for work, trust me. I got more than enough work to last me six lifetimes. I can't I'd grab my camera and turn it around and show you what's up here on above my head is they're called sticky notes. There's about 200 sticky notes on this cabinet over the top, and each one of them has a veteran's name. And whether it's at the C A B C or the B VA or Four Fumble and Waco, uh that's the only way I can keep track of them. My wife comes in and sticks three more of them on about every other day. That's why we got others that that's why I did those schools to train all those folks. But it's getting more and more, it's scary now to me. It's beginning to get scary because VA hired, as you know, about 35, 50 new uh veterans law judges to get rid of the backlog. I don't think that was enough, but that's what we got. So there's probably uh I think the last time I heard there's 146 of them active. Cutting paper.

SPEAKER_01: 30:15

Say again. There's some that shouldn't be, but there's you know, there's some more.

SPEAKER_00: 30:20

But there are the ignorance level, I thought on special monthly compensation. I honestly believe that that was a an affliction down below due to the M21. They've just started to catch on and start doing uh bury readings, what we call that, you know, the buried bumps as we call them. They designated the Seattle V-Rock as being the only people who are trained to do buried bumps. And keeping a record of it right now, and I think their their accuracy rate right out of the box is 17%. What we see, and that's what Wes sees. Uh I gotta have another one of my agent uh guys that helps me out. I don't know, Hans Hans Wolf. I don't know if you've had him on yet. He's up in Idaho. Uh I'm not sure where, but Idaho isn't that big that he couldn't find this guy. Uh he's an EMT as well as being uh uh a VA agent, and he's hoping that he'll get enough business to carry the water and get out of the EMT business and ambulances. But uh uh we're all seeing the same group that like comes to Wesley and says, Oh no, you don't want to take this guy, he's a fake. And then he shows up knocking on my door, and I'm no, no, I'm not you, Boba. I got the email on that one. Sure enough, they'll show up over at Hans's front door, too. So we do have a kind of a network to protect ourselves from that. But the thing that's scary when you get to the board, we always thought that those people, and they almost invariably did, 99.999% of SMC rating decisions were correct. With the addition of the berry bumps, they've delegated a group of, and I see the same name, so there's two gals and a guy, and they're the only people that know how to do berry bumps. You imagine how many berry bumps there are going around the United States right now? It's one or less. Understand SMC, they're opening up their VBMS every morning, scrolling along. They go, God, I did Alcaraz last last year. I'm gonna go back and look in his file. Holy mackerel, I kind of got him from L up to N and a half plus K six months or or two and a half years before I got him as R1. I'm gonna file him for that. We're burdening the system with that. And if you got a berry bump case coming down from the BVA, it's taking three months to get it done. That's scary. And you if you have a guy that's got an L, I got two of these. Wesley just got one too. He's got an L for in attendance, and all of a sudden he's got loss of use of his lower extremities. Boom, there's another L. And the judge goes, You're entitled to SMCO. And that's what the god dang Raiders will give him. Oh, they won't give him the kicker that takes him up to R1. They won't do it because they don't know how. But the judge should have just said, Yeah, because you got SMCO and you got the L for your aid in attendance, you're welcome to R1. Have a life. And nobody's doing it right. I have a guy that comes up, and the judge says, No, you don't get SMCL for loss of use of lower extremities. You get an SMCK for that foot, and you get an SMCK for that foot. 2K's, Your Honor. Yeah, well, so what's the problem here? Well, 2Ks make an L. No, they don't. I had to I had to take that to the court and they caved in at the R33. I don't know how this one got through the board, but here we'll fix that for you. It there's so much ignorance on that. On top of the ignorance, now we have the ignorance of 50 new judges, and not a one of them know how to do it. There used to be 10 good judges at the board, and they were the ones that did all the SMCs. Now I've got 50 people, and you don't know what's gonna come out of there. It's like a popcorn with no lid. It's shit's going everywhere. Nobody's you it's burdening the living crap out of the board or the court. We want to get them to court, but you want to get that man his money as quick as possible. You don't want to hold him up and say, Bob, just hold off and live in poverty. Stay underneath the overpass, and we'll get you a new tent. We want to take this up to the court, and in a year, we're gonna get us a panel decision, and this is never gonna happen to anybody else again. But in the meantime, you got to eat hot pockets cold. Those guys can't do it that way. That's why I rushed through these things. You get them right to the money right now. You get it done. If if they need an earlier effective date, that's all well and fine. But don't hold out on the poor guy and make him suffer while you make a case that'll solve all events problems.

SPEAKER_01: 36:25

Get them something, get them something to you to keep going because of a livelihood. You can catch you, you can go back and and and catch up later. Get him something to live on first.

SPEAKER_02: 36:34

Well, yeah, you got it.

SPEAKER_01: 36:35

Anyway, stop the bleeding.

SPEAKER_00: 36:38

I got another 365 sunrises and sunsets after those big wins for those guys, but I prefer to to win really big. I like uh I uh I've done two 156b claims myself and another one I got one of them to for me back to 94, and for another guy I got it all the way back to 90. I've done some 156C claims, but those those don't pay out until the very end. It doesn't work that way. But when you got a really simple cue where a guy gets blown up in Afghanistan, and it's right there in his medical records, he had a TBI. And when he gets home and he gets out, he goes to the VA and files for TBI, and they go, Well, there's no evidence of it in your records. It's because nobody wants to look. I don't know what the reason is, but he'll spend 10 years trying to get it, and then finally VA will go, Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, we knew that we went and got your records last week. In 1975, I guess it was true in 1989. A VA formed 21-526. The reason it was 526 was on there is that thing was 26 pages long. And they collected and harvested everything there was to know about you at that time, at that snapshot in time, but you had to list all the places where you thought maybe your medical records might be. And nobody looked at that page until they were able to start running these things through uh the AI business and pick up on it, and all of a sudden they're finding they're finding your STA, your STRs, and sticking them into your file of praying, you don't notice it. Because if they do, then you'd have a 156C claim or a good leg up on getting one. But uh what scares me right now is going to the board and getting a stupid rating from the board that you're just planning on it being correct because these guys have a JD after their name. They're supposed to be intelligent. I don't know if that speaks volumes about the staff attorneys underneath them being ignorant and misapplying the law. But I know for a fact anybody who's got a JD that works for the VA has got an inflated idea how smart he is. And it it appears that way because they come out with these crazy ass decisions, and and nobody seems to uh I've seen some of these decisions lately, buddy, and they're uh they suck.

SPEAKER_01: 39:39

I've seen some crazy stuff. Crazy one guy. I've seen one today, a guy was talking that uh said that uh he's a I guess he'll go four bed or whatever. And uh bit Vietnam too, but he uh had hypertension. And it's a presumptive now. They said you do have hypertension. However, you still didn't get it while you were in service. And that the presumption only covers if you were diagnosed while in service. I'm like, what is that?

SPEAKER_00: 40:17

You know. I got a Marine I'm working on here. I just got a call this morning because I've screeched it on from because they think everybody's on East Coast time. Rattled me out of bed. I thought it was a 202 number, which is Washington, D.C., so I figured it was a Department of Veterans Affairs. It was a it was a what do you call it? OAR Office of Administrative Review. I scheduled a hearing with some guys in a nursing home, and they keep sending him these things to show up for CNP exams, and he's in a wheelchair. I filed him and I flashed him and I filed him for it. Said, listen, if you guys got to send us out to a CNP exam, you better have the guy show up at the nursing home and do the CNP because he's not in any condition, unless you want to put him in on a gurney in an ambulance. Oh no, no, we understand. So they schedule his thing and he doesn't show up and they mark him canceled, didn't show up. Therefore, they cancel try to kill the claim. And they've been doing to he's been in a nursing home for three years, and that's what they keep doing to him. And finally he calls me. He says, What does it take? I'm stuck on the merry-go-round. If I don't have a car, I can't drive even if I wanted to. So I I I asked for a hearing. They called me up. They said, So uh you're gonna show up in person at uh Los Angeles regional office? I said, No, I'm gonna do it remotely from Seattle. Okay. What about the client? I said, Well, the client ain't gonna be there because he's in the nursing home and he's got a flip phone and doesn't even have a TV screen on it. He says, Shit, they still make flip phones. I don't know, but he's that's what he's got. He can't even text on it or something. Anyway, it's what he has. And uh, we can't schedule a hearing if he ain't gonna be there. And I said, Well, I'll take this all the way to the court and file an extraordinary writ that you're gonna talk to me. You read that regulation, it says normally a hearing won't be scheduled without the client, the veteran. But it says normally it wouldn't be. We've got an abnormal situation here. So he agreed with me today. He says, I'll schedule it. And if you don't show up with the veteran, that's too bad. But I can see where you're gonna have to make some exceptions to the rule. We we are gonna have to make the exceptions to the rule. I said, Well, I might be able to get him on there on a telephone if he's not in there doing dialysis or something. So I it's getting more and more difficult to operate in this AI world. It's getting more operative, it's getting more difficult for Joe, Joe Blow veteran. Johnny Vett, there's a lot of guys my age that have a hard time operating a cell phone, let alone a computer. I didn't learn until 2008 when I got so sick I couldn't build houses anymore. Hell, I could I could build a three-story house and pour the concrete and go all the way to the roof and hang the trusses. Uh I couldn't do that anymore, so my wife told me where the on-off switch was on the computer, told me to get started. I think my son taught me how to copy and paste about three and a half years later. Boy, was I pissed. But I'm telling you, the way the world's turning right now, a lot of veterans are gonna get left behind. And it it's it's unfortunate that we have situations like panic mongers, uh panickins, I think that's how I heard that term on Fox. People that are gonna try to scare the bejesus out of you. The VA has been scaring the bejesus out of us for the last 50 years than I can remember. Nothing's changed. Every time you wake up in the morning, there's shrinkage. Your PTSD rating shrunk from 70 down to 50 because you got better. Your OSA has been combined with PTSD, and you don't even have PTSD. I don't know what's gonna happen with tinnitus, but I don't really care. They'll probably fold it into hearing, but it's not a panic attack. You don't live off these little peanut ratings of 10 and 20 percent. You you file for what's gonna kill you, and there's a lot of things that can kill you, and more and more of them every day with all the chemicals that they create that we get exposed to.

SPEAKER_01: 45:42

You file for the big ones, then you know you can back them up with this well down the road, you can back them up with the smaller ones. So most of those smaller ones will go into bigger ones one of these days, too, you know what I mean? Especially if it's secondary to diabetes or something like that, you know, or neurological issues.

SPEAKER_00: 45:59

Well, you can build a uh out of Parkinson's, you're gonna get 30% anyway, and then you can start doing all those little add-ons, incontinence, and this, that, and the other thing twice, and you can build yourself a 100% combined rating and get to 80 to 10% that way. Sure. But there's guys out there, I've met them, I've run into them, they approach me and they're going like, well, I've got 18, 10 ratings, I only need four more, because if I got 22, 10 ratings, I can get to 100%. Ah, yeah, and as soon as you get to 100%, VA's gonna be there taking out one of those things, and your little tower of 10% is gonna be a little bit short of being 100%. You're not gonna pull the wool over VA's eyes. That's not gonna happen. But in reality, if you have diseases or injuries that are devastating, you're going to get to your TDIU, you're gonna get to your 100. Uh you're never ever gonna make enough money to you know live, kick back and eat steak, you're gonna be eating burgers.

SPEAKER_01: 47:17

That's what SMC is for, for severe, serious disabilities. Well, you know, that's what it's for.

SPEAKER_00: 47:26

Even at the highest level of disability without going into SMC, you're not gonna survive. You can match that up to Social Security, and a lot of these guys worked in in situations where they didn't you know make$500,000 a year, so they're not getting a$3,900 a month Social Security check. We know that. Uh hell, I'll give you an example. I was worked underneath the table as a contractor, took a lot of cash in, went hunger a lot, and didn't contribute to Social Security a whole hell of a lot. I'm about breaking about 1900 now at 74 years old. But when you start stealing that Medicare A and B back, all of a sudden that cuts into it pretty bad. So even if you make that up to 100% VA rating, you're you you're not getting rich by any stretch of the imagination. Uh to go around. I'm glad I learned how to do SMC because it it makes the difference for a lot of folks, and I'm not just talking about SMCS. I'm talking about aid in attendance on up from there. But I love the fact that the the Barry decision came out because there's a lot of guys that can jump from L to M or N, maybe not make the leap all the way to O, but uh get you know, each each half step is$250 if you ever sat down and figured it out. Full step from L to M is$490. So uh that could be a make or break on the cost of gasoline in California.

SPEAKER_01: 49:30

M and a half plus K equals what?

SPEAKER_00: 49:33

S and C O uh N M S M C and Yes, N as an Nick November, plus a half and a K, one K. I met a guy who had three K's yesterday. I might take him out as a client, but you gotta have that N and one half plus K, and that the highest you can get in SMCP as in Papa. And that translates out if you look at 3.350H2, that if you have the highest rate of uh that you can get in SMCP, it converts automatically, just like a shoots and ladders game, takes you to gives you the equivalent of O. O, as we know, is about 5600 or something like that. But if you have a rating of L that started you on this little berry bump trip up to N and a half plus K, if that base L that you're getting is due to Aid in attendance and not loss of use or blindness, if it's due for aid in attendance and that's what you're getting it for, then you automatically jump to R1. And that's very brought forth that possibility by having multiple steps of half step. Uh, I did notice that you're not giving us multiple jumps on full step under uh 3.350 F4. You get one and one only, so you could jump from L to M, but then you only need three half steps to go to N and a half, and you need one K to get you to R1 from there. Uh I don't I I don't think it's it's interesting the way they built these things, for instance. Um, if you're blind under 3.350 B2, and you're blind, you got your little guide dog and all that heavy stuff and your white cane, uh, and you can exist and you fold all your money a certain way so that you know that you're holding a$5 bill as opposed to a$1 bill. I know a lot of tricks because I had a blind friend. But if you need aid in attendance, let's let's say you're 65 years old, they even give you a dog and train him, but you're still scary to lose your vision at 65. You don't adapt to get out and do a bunch of stuff. If you need aid in attendance, then I'll give you another L for aid in attendance with your being blind, they just jump you from L to M. A person is blind and needs aid in attendance. It's a one-step bump, a full-step bump. But there are anomalies like that that are built into SMC, and there's so many different combinations of things that could occur that that there's they can't they can't conceive of all the possible combinations. I keep running into situations. Well, I've lost both legs and one arm, and it's my dominant arm. Uh, I've still got my non-dominant arm. Well, gee, you didn't make it far enough. Do you have a K? Oh, you have a K in your death? There we go, R1 or N and a half or something. You it's a constant bartering system mentally in your head. What does he got? How high can I get him? I always shoot for the top. I want that R1 for my clients, or R2. Uh, I took great pleasure in having Ray get out to get him up there, and as I do with any veteran. Nothing, nothing gives me greater pleasure to pick up that telephone, call some old boy, and say, Hey, do you know your R1 as of right now? VA doesn't know it yet, because I'd come back down with the board, but you'll be getting your money.

SPEAKER_01: 53:48

And I'm uh call out, but if you want it, call him and he did.

SPEAKER_00: 53:53

Yeah, I I call it people. That's that's the most fun in the world. I don't get to do it enough, and it's getting rarer because all the stupidity at the board. Yeah, what is going on with that? I I'm just it's almost as if the they shut down the mensa club. There's no smart people anymore. And you know, we're all condemned to live with dumb people, and if you you can't get ahead because the guys above you are all too stupid to understand it. Ah well, that's government for you. I heard somebody say something like, why the why I know what it was. Somebody asked somebody else, why in hell is it so expensive for that Obamacare? That ACA thing, I thought that was gonna be the the ticket. Everybody would get care and it would be cheap. How could it be getting more and more and more expensive when somebody else says you think giving that job to the government would make it cheaper? It seems like government gets a hold of anything if the cost of living is going to go up dramatically.

SPEAKER_01: 55:12

What they can get comes back in their pockets.

SPEAKER_00: 55:15

Well, I notice all these charities, all the people that are the president and the vice president, the secretary, and the treasury of all these charities helping poor people, they're all getting paid 150, 175 a year. And I'm thinking to myself, if somebody only donated, they only collected a million dollars in donations, I'd just about wipe that million out before he ever had a dime left to go give to the poor people. That doesn't make any sense. I tell you, there's only two outfits that I've subscribed to, and I help both of them. That's Fisher House and Tunnel the Towers. And uh I won't say that my donating eleven dollars a month. I donate once for me, I donate once for Cupcake, and then ask Nod donates another one. So there's three eleven dollar shots. I got a guy moved in down there in Texas, Columbia, Texas, or Tennessee, I guess it is. Yeah. Got him, he got a he drew the long straw and got into one of them places uh for a tunnel to towers to give him a beautiful house. I was all set to fly back there and shake Frank Stiller's hand, and and I couldn't get a reservation on an airline to save my life. What I was driving four days across the country to do it.

SPEAKER_01: 56:45

But anyway, a pretty good, amazing job with Tumble Towers, man, get set up like that because when his brother the one that got killed in 9-11, he ran through the tunnel, his brother did. So he started that organization in honor of him. So he did a good job. And settled here.

SPEAKER_00: 57:06

When I ended up in the hospital for 14 months, there was a point there where they thought I wasn't gonna make it. Of course, I was too high on drugs to know that I wasn't gonna make it. I thought everything was dandy. But uh yeah, they had me pre-souped up on Delot. But um the Fisher House, they said, yeah, your wife can stay there. Well, I wouldn't have known it happened. I didn't even know about Fisher House, but Debbie they admitted Debbie in to stay there, along with my sister, who flew back from Orlando. And uh my sister Helen had to fly back after oh, I don't know, a week or ten days, but they let Debbie stay there almost a month, and their their normal thing is you get seven days, maybe ten if it's a push. But they were so sure I was gonna die, they just well, you can stay another three or four days until he kicks the bucket. So I'm bitchy if I didn't pull it out.

SPEAKER_01: 58:15

What happens? Well, listen, buddy, we're out of time. Well, we've done putting it on the way. Well, everybody knows have a good Thanksgiving tomorrow and eat what you can, save some for later, and eat again. Take you a good nap, take off Friday, and get ready to hit it running on Monday because we got claims to process and claims to award.

SPEAKER_00: 58:40

Well, I'll be working Friday and Saturday. I work seven days a week now, except for Elk Hunt or deer or whatever.

SPEAKER_01: 58:49

Remember, a good agent's job is never done. Their favorite word is next. They go on to the next one.

SPEAKER_00: 59:00

Nothing gives me greater pleasure than helping veterans. Uh I gotta pay it forward, John.

SPEAKER_01: 59:09

Next time I see you, will and dudge you, will and dodge in a single month, Scotch.

SPEAKER_00: 59:17

I've gotten a couple of good ones from some of my clients. I got one that's$248 for a fifth. Really? Uh-huh. It's called like I can't remember the name. I should have brought it in here, but it's uh it's got some weird ass name. It has a K and an H and a Tuck. I don't even know how to pronounce it. It's a Scottish. Very old, very expensive, and very delicious. Well, I don't know whoever said the man can't live by Scotch alone. I disagree with that.

SPEAKER_01: 59:51

Really? All right. Well, listen, buddy, thanks for coming on. We appreciate you. We'll do this again here for too long. Guys, this is the Been a good good show. I appreciate you watching. Uh, if you got any comments, just send an email to uh exposevet at gmail.com for any comments or any questions for Alex, let me know and I'll forward up to him. And uh with that, this will be John. I'll be shutting her down for now. So long, everybody.

SPEAKER_00: 1:00:18

Thank you, John. Bye bye.

SPEAKER_01: 1:00:19

All right, see you, Alex.