SPEAKER_02: 0:01

Welcome folks to another episode of Jay Basser's Expos Vet Productions. My name is Jay John Stacy. They call me Jay Basser. Today we have a dueling co-host. We got Mr. Ray Cobb out of the great state of Tennessee. And we have got Mr. Alex Graham out of the big state, the big W. And uh he's uh Alex is an accredited VA non-attory practitioner. If I can get those words out, say that 20 times fast and see if you don't mess it up. And Ray is just like me, he's just an old veteran that helps veterans out with the claims process, and we kind of put you in the right direction as to where to go. We're doing a special day. Today is Friday, December 26th, the day after Christmas. Santa Claus has gone back to reload, he'll be around next year. But we watched him fly over early this morning when he came through Kentucky. He had to stop in West Virginia and get some cold for the bad people, so he had to take a couple hours to get that. It's been a long week. Um you guys listen for a long time for the over the last several years. We've been doing our shows in under different formats. Uh we lost Gerald Cook last Saturday. And uh Gerald was an amazing person. Um he started out in the army back in the 1960s, and 1964 was stationed at Fort Greeley, Alaska. Uh Gerald's one of the few people to survive the largest earthquake ever on American soil up there during the earthquake of 64. So then they said, okay, Mr. Cook, we want you to go out in the field with a bunch of other folks. You can volunteer to do this, and we'll let y'all go camping for a while. So they took them out to a bunch of quantum hunts out on the Gersha River and slapped dab Alaska in the middle of nowhere. Started wearing these funky special clothes, and these planes started flying over and spraying stuff on them. Let me introduce you guys to Project 112. And these guys were exposed to a whole lot more than we're exposed in the Gulf, but the government had it all classified. And uh he fought for years to nickel and diamond to get piece piecemeal started with his ears, and he finally got a pretty good amount of service connection, but uh wasn't nowhere near enough what he's been through. He's been in auction for probably the next 30 years. But I wanted to say, uh, you know, we lost him and uh they're not gonna have a funeral thing right now, they're gonna do a little graveside service. He's been cremated, they're having a little service in the spring when it warms up because him and his wife both will be put uh they got a plot they're gonna put them in. But uh it kind of changed your whole outlook on life when we know if you we're pr pretty much pretty much best friends for a long time. We talk several times a day. And uh, you know, I keep him going with his claim stuff and I put him in the right way, you know. We he talked to Alex and he talked to Dorley and he talked, you know, other folks, and uh he had uh a lot of issues with exposure. And uh you know, we're just gonna miss the old guy. That's kind of sad news, ain't it, Alex?

SPEAKER_03: 3:21

Well, it is. Uh uh it's funny you should mention John Dorle, and I uh uh I I I can't remember whether he sent me an email or or or vice versa, but somehow he he and I got in touch with one another and I talked with him right when I I called him up and he says, Well, it's kind of interesting. This is just about the end of my business. Apparently he's retiring or cleaning up the last of his clients and shutting down his business. And I thought to myself, God, I'm 74. I gotta be at least as old as he is, or vice versa. I would never give up doing this if my life depended on it. I I you'll see my fingers still twitching when they're shoving the lid down on the casket, as far as I'm concerned.

SPEAKER_02: 4:20

He started out probably 45 years ago with Hennepin County, Minnesota. I think's what it was. And he was a county veteran service officer for decades. And then he finally decided to join the dark side. I remember when he did it, and uh, but he's been very fortunate, Alex, in his career. And uh man, I've seen several, several circle six-digit wins. His part alone, you know. So yeah, he's gonna retire, and uh he's gonna do grandbaby and things like that. So yeah, he wants to kind of give it up and take it easy. He's down to show a lot, John. You know, he's pretty good people.

SPEAKER_03: 5:04

Well, pretty good people. I'm going the exact opposite way. It's just I'm so backed up now. I got two attorneys working for me almost full time, and two agents. Now we're we're just talking about uh Jerome Spearman. Uh I trained him. He went through my SMC Special Monthly Compensation Academy and became a Jedi Knight, and he's learned it. So I've got him and another fellow over American Veterans Advocacy over in uh Idaho. And I've got those two guys, they're both agents, and they're both working on my stuff. I think Jerome has another business as a he's a PAC. I don't know whether he's working for somebody else in a medical sense, but I know that he doesn't devote full time to VA stuff yet, but I think the reason being is he's uh hasn't you know 200 clients like me where they're eating him alive. One thing to go out and round up 65, 80 clients and solve all their problems. It's another thing they call you back up and says, Hey, would you do my PCAF C claim? Hey, I all of a sudden I need aid in attendance. And hey, hey my wife's passing away. Can you uh help me do the, you know, pick up the aid in attendance for her? So it's like once you take them out as a client, you it's a full-time lifetime job, so to speak, from stem to start. I mean, I got Ray all plugged in. He's he's at the end of the road there as far as money goes, but and the PCAPC. But I don't know, Ray. Did I ever do your DIP for you and your wife?

SPEAKER_00: 7:05

Um no, you looked at it. Uh uh, and you looked and you said the main thing you were looking for was well, we both have been divorced, and you said you had that. You just said something like, Well, this will be easy to do when the time comes. That's kind of the way we left it.

SPEAKER_03: 7:23

So throw throw it right in my email and tell me I'll dive into your file. I think I still have access to it anyway. And I'll dig out the uh and pre uh pre-print the forms and send them to you. All Pam would ever need to do if you decide to go to heaven all of a sudden is to get the death certificate and file it or call call me and I'll do it for her.

SPEAKER_00: 7:51

Well, I appreciate that. Yeah, it's um um you you know you never know when that time with situations that like I have, uh uh you don't even know when you're having a heart attack anymore. You know, you can't feel it, you kind of gotta watch your blood pressure and things like that. If you feel a little tired, you need to maybe even go on to the ER. That's what happened to me last year. And I went in thinking the cold or the flu. And the guy says, No, you're having a heart attack. No, I'm not, I'm not feeling anything. He says, I don't care, you're having a heart attack.

SPEAKER_02: 8:34

Legend up to feel them heart attacks with that diabetes.

SPEAKER_03: 8:37

Well, I know when I went to Minnesota for the last Nova thing, uh, I got dehydrated. I've never been a big water drinker. I packed two canteens everywhere I went in Southeast Asia during the war. It was two, too few, if you ever asked me, when it's 95 degrees outside and 95% of humidity, you're losing it faster than you can put it in you. But uh I got to Minnesota and I guess I hadn't drunk a lot of water, and when I got home, I got one of these things in my heart here. Uh IED monitor, whatever. And uh the next morning after I got back, the phone rings and it's uh my cardiologist, and he said, Your heart thing went off the day before yesterday at 7 p.m. How come it didn't connect with our little box here? And I said, Well, because uh I was in Minnesota and he says, Well, you need to get in here immediately. Your heart was doing 288 beats for 29 seconds. If it had gone about two more seconds, that IED would have whacked you good and slapped you upside the head with 35 K joules. I was like, Oh, okay. Yeah, well, I'll come in and we'll take a check. It's nice to know that it's there to help you, it's like a fire extinguisher, but I didn't see it coming, so I stay hydrated now. But uh we were talking, John, right before we went on the air there. You said, Did you get any interesting Christmas presents? Well, I put a scope on my 270 Weatherby Magnum for the Elk Hunt, but uh Jerome came by here the other day and we talked over about three or four cases I'm helping him develop that I gave him. And uh he opens up his backpack and reaches in there and pulls out a bottle of Johnny Walker blue label, and that's one of my favorites. I I haven't even I know that they cost an arm and a leg at Costco, so I I felt like I must be doing real good. By Jerome, if you bought me that.

SPEAKER_02: 10:55

Yeah, it's expensive stuff, man.

SPEAKER_03: 10:59

Well, there is a whole new horde of new agents and new people coming into this business all the time, and they have new insights on how to win and how to do things. I think that Gerald and you and me and Ray, we're all getting to be kind along in the tooth. There's come a day when these little 25, 35-year-old whippersnappers are gonna develop new ways to win. It constantly changes, you know that. As fast as you master some art form or or figure out what they're doing, they'll change their plans and change it up on you.

SPEAKER_02: 11:43

Based on the success rates, for example, you know, if you got agents or people like like people that had a lot of success and it goes in bunches, you know, you got this issue here, but you want to bunch these issues. Well, all of a sudden everybody starts getting service export. They say, wait a minute, we can't have all this. They start changing the federal register to start uh separating them out or or lowering the criteria or taking 50 to 10s like you did sleep apnea.

SPEAKER_03: 12:11

And things like that. I've watched it change over the last 36 years, and it's it's been very dramatic. Uh yeah, the PTSD uh trying to incorporate uh insomnia, that's what they're gonna do. You know as well as I do, they're not gonna keep handing out those 50s for uh uh wearing the mask for the for obstructive sleep apnea. See the CPAP mask actually is is kind of a dinosaur in this business. You can have an operation that'll fix it for sure. You can put one of those little assured monitors on you and turn it on at night, and it'll give you a little buzz. And when you start to snore, it can hear it and sense it. Uh or you can if you've got one of those uh Alexa in your kitchen or something, pick it up, take it in your dining your bedroom and plug it in. There's a setting on there. If it hears you snoring the night, say, sit up, attention, you're snoring. Elevate your head or roll over on your side. And of course, you know, you sound asleep and you're in your dream, somebody's yelling at you, hey, you're snoring. What? What did I do?

SPEAKER_02: 13:37

But now they got the new uh adjustable bases now for your temper pedict that you lay on there and you start snoring. Let's say, no, it's raising you up in the bed.

SPEAKER_03: 13:45

Right, but you could do the operation, which will fix you completely uh if you wanted to. Anybody that's still running with a CPAP mask is asking, you know, they don't want to give up the 50% for the CPAP because there's so many different ways you can defeat that. And of course, if you do quit using the CPAP, which your wife would probably love because that goddamn thing sounds like a an air compressor all night long. Keep everybody in the house awake.

SPEAKER_00: 14:19

But you know, my my sleep pad, my new CPAP machine is kind of neat. It's kind of uh, I don't hear it. My wife doesn't hear it. Yeah. Um if my mask gets off a little bit, it kind of starts making a lot of air going through there. But um the one that I have now is one of the newer ones. They'll call me and they'll say, Did you know this happened? Did you know that happened? Or you need to change your mask. It's a little, it's leaking a little bit around the edges. And you know, they can tell me everything that's going on in my sleep. And matter of fact, I was asking uh just a couple of weeks ago, I had to go in and have the machine checked and and and balanced and everything. And the guy was telling me, he said, yeah, he says, You got it pretty bad. I said, Well, how bad do I have it? He said, Well, you quit breathing eighty-seven times an hour. I said, What? Yeah, you quit breathing eighty-seven times an hour. He said, You're quit you quit breathing four to six times even with a machine. I said, Well, okay. He said, Don't don't go anywhere without it. He said, be like the credit card. You know, take it with you everywhere.

SPEAKER_03: 15:32

Well, I know that VA's got those ones that actually transmit back to VA, tell you what's going on, or you have to plug it in and recharge it or something, and it sends all the information to VA, they can tell if you're using it or not.

SPEAKER_00: 15:50

Yeah, they tell you how many hours it was on you.

SPEAKER_03: 15:53

They'll take your 50% away. Well, I mean, that's that's only they can. But uh, as I said, there because of all the different technologies nowadays, there's no reason to suffer with that machine if you wanted to have that operation. I know VA would give you the operation. Somebody like Rennie that losing 50% for obstructive sleep apnea as far as ratings go, not gonna knock it below 100% ever. Technically, once you get, I saw an interesting uh decision by the OGC the other day. Technically, once you attain uh let's just say R1, R2, something like that, they can't take that away from you. It's very, very difficult because they're gonna have to pull you in, they're gonna have to have some doctor change your diagnosis. And not a whole lot of doctors that want to waste their time and energy doing that. I know the BA love to do it, but uh they have a hard time convincing the doctors to sign off on it. And and I that's the way I think it should be. VA is already nefarious enough with the way they deal with this in terms of just making up regulations as they go. That disturbs me tremendously. Like I had this one guy, and I put him in for my second aid in attendance for him. He had it for Parkinson's, and he had this heart problem from the ischemia from uh Agent Orange, ischemic heart disease. I get the letter back six days after I filed it, said, sorry, you're denied. Uh you only get one aid in attendance. There's no you can't get two. You're already there, so it's moot. You don't you don't get another one. And it was in a letter. I said, okay, I can't appeal this to the board from your letter, so would you make that into a rating decision? They refused to aside, okay. I appealed the letter because it's in VBMS. I thought I'm gonna take that as a denial. Uh another thing like that, the VA does, and I won that, of course, I just got it. But another thing that VA does is you can send in a claim like a 995. This really pulls my string. And some idiot from Louisville or or Nashville or hell, some Muskogee gets in there, takes the claim, looks at it, and they go, Well, he's doing a cue claim, uh, trying to get uh M from L because he needs aid in attendance because he's blind, and he's cueing us saying because he's not totally blind, we're gonna drop it from M back to L. And so I filed a cue on that. This idiot Muskogee sees this thing, and she cancels a second aid in attendance due solely to his 100% not PTSD, a general anxiety disorder. I filed him, said, Hey, he's depressed, he's blind. I guess I'd be blind, I'd be hellaciously depressed if I just discovered I couldn't see two feet in front of me. So they gave him 100% for it. And since they did that, I filed him for uh eight and attendance back at 22. They keep they they do what they call PCAN it. P meaning uh end product code EPC, which was VA assigns to your claim. It's a 20 is a brand new one, 40 is an old one, 30 is a remand from the board, so on and so forth. They took his EP040, or excuse me, it's a EP020 on a 526 and she pecan it. She canceled that claim and said that's being covered by the Q claim. Well, no, it wasn't because when we got all done, I lost the Q claim and I figured I would, but I still like to fight these things just to keep my hat in the ring. So I filed a new 526 and I said, excuse me, you canceled this back in October of 22. Uh the gal's name was Lorna Dune or whatever her name was. And you gotta start this one up again. Well, they sent me a letter back and says, Well, please submit your claim on a 526. Or excuse me. Well, they did that first, and then of course I said, Well, wait a minute. I I'm trying to get this. I've already gave you the claim. Oh no, you need to put it on a 995. Excuse me, we were wrong. Finally, I called up the office administrative review, got a hold of some GS-12 wizard, and I said, This is still a pending claim. And he looks at it and he says, Oh, well, you're right. So he sent it back to the idiots in Louisville who can't, or Muskogee, I guess it was, the one who canceled it. And I've been fighting those people every week. I sent him another email. What are you doing? He's got a purple heart. What's going on here? This is supposed to be moving right along. You you used the wrong form, Mr. Graham. Where's the 2680? What 2680? I don't know. The VA has descended into stupidity, either purposefully or financial reasons or something. They have gone into the ostrich with his hidden the ground in a hole, trying to desperately trying to misconstrue everything we do. And this is new. I mean they've been doing it for a long time, but there's no excuse for how stupid it is, especially with special monthly compensation. Nobody knows how to do it. I think I've talked to you about blue in the face about that on your show here. It just disturbs me mightily that they keep making these wrong decisions. And it just delays it for the veteran. It hurts my feelings because I don't need the money. And I have to fight them. And of course, they're going to hold back 20%. My clients are just happy as a clam to they pay me 30% because I always win. But I don't, I just I'm I'm mad at the VA for costing my clients more money in that 20% column. It just I'm you know, I'm not in this for the money. I know I talked with John Dorland about that, and he says, you know, this never was about the money. It's about justice, it's about the veteran. Not about me and the raider and VA who wants to make my life miserable. There's nothing you can do to make my life more miserable than the two years I spent in Southeast Asia. Right.

SPEAKER_02: 23:27

We've had a six house. I mean we're pretty it's it's about the principle. You know, it's not about the money, it's about basically getting what you deserve as far as percentages, you know. And if the money is there, the money's there. If not, it's not, right, right. It's not about the money.

SPEAKER_03: 23:49

Oh, I know it isn't about the money for me. I married a rich girl. I inherited a lot from both my mom and my dad. God, Debbie and I love to do charity, especially this time of year. Debbie run down a safe way down here and buy out their whole turkey, load it all up in 16 carts and take it out and take it down to the food bank. We love doing that. God, turkey's cheap. It brings great joy to a lot of people who need some protein.

SPEAKER_02: 24:34

Turkey's pretty cheap, too, it wasn't too bad.

SPEAKER_03: 24:40

Well, I don't know. A couple of my clients have asked me you don't advertise or sanction any charities. I said, Yeah, I kind of got my got my tit in the ringer there with that thing with wounded warriors back in 15. I kind of steered clear of that. Only thing I like to do is contribute to Fisher House and Tunnel to Towers. And last uh, what was it? This is December. It was in uh uh October. One of my clients, I think I mentioned got they got the house from uh Tunnel to Towers over there in Columbia, Tennessee. There's a big Tunnel to Towers place over there. His name's uh Roger Lang. And uh I can't believe it. I I didn't advocate for it, his his wife did, and they got it. And boy, of course, he's one messed up guy. Three IEDs that knocked him out. He he's got the poster child for TBI, it's sad, but uh he certainly earned it. But it's uh Fisher House I love because my wife, uh, when they thought the they're measuring me for the pine box uh when I was in that hospital BA hospital for 14 months, they honestly thought I was down the tubes and they let her stay there for a month and jolly the limits two weeks. And during the second two weeks, my sister flew in for more window and stayed there with her. So I uh Fisher House managed to put I think 95 percent of their money on target. Uh same thing with Tumble the Towers gets about 94. You you want to put that in comparison to some of the other ones. Uh those chuckleheads from the wounded wallet crew were suing me over spilling the beans for the charity navigators saying that they were managing, they were struggling to get 39% of their money on targets. But you know, they had a commercial on the on the every channel every 30 minutes there for a couple five years.

SPEAKER_00: 27:12

They still do.

SPEAKER_03: 27:14

I'm sure they, yeah, they do, but they're not as obnoxious as they were before. They're they all they do is hook people up with VA programs that VA pays for. They don't pay for it. They're just a great, great big human resources department, so to speak. With uh a lot of people drive Cadillacs and have real nice waterfront properties. They all have that. It's it's kind of strange. They all have that waterfront property.

SPEAKER_02: 27:52

Push and wheel charge around with a bunch of R2 vets and paper money.

SPEAKER_03: 27:59

John Dorland might have had some six six figures uh settlements with people. We uh I'm if I get one for that that feller all the back all the way back to uh for the Korean War. Uh he he passed away in 21. If I win that one for his his wife, that goes back to 53. That'll be over, that'll be in seven digits. I'm doing that one pro bono.

SPEAKER_02: 28:28

Well, you might have to change your name to Sonny Bono if you win that one, you put it from the trees and don't go skiing. I might get a ticket punch that says I'm gonna go to heaven if I get that one.

SPEAKER_03: 28:41

You can go into I am I live a rich life rich in experiences. Some of the vets that come to me, I couldn't win a claim to save their bacon. I swear. Uh one one guy spent oh 15 years trying to prove he was on an aircraft carrier inside that 12-mile limit. And well, in Vietnam in general, and finally they came out with that Procopio decision, and I guess it was what, 2021, somewhere in there. And uh he gone down there and beat the beat on the door at American Legion, VFW, and all the usual VSO suspects, and they all told him can't get there from here. His wife came to me in tears. You know, I'm a sucker. I'm dead in the water. So I did I did a dumpster dive on that thing, and sure enough, November 26, 1971. The only day the Ticonderoga got inside that 12-mile limit, he was on board, and nobody looked at that. They kept looking at the constellation, and he he was on both of them, but constellation was back wandered things everywhere out of the war in other waters, but he had served in Vietnam, but not during his period, and that's why he kept losing. Everybody just looked at one aircraft carrier in one example and never looked at the Ticonderoga. It's not a Soviet science, it just isn't to do this job. It bugs me that some people uh I have a veteran that's in a nursing home right now, and he's at 100%, and he's been fighting for aid and attendance now for I don't know, five years at least. And he goes to some of these Nova attorneys that I belong to Nova, and they don't want to take him on because he's already 100%. They have no conception of aid in attendance and special monthly compensation. Well, I we just don't see where we can make any money off trying to represent you. So, you know, maybe you have to try someplace else. Have you called the American Legion yet?

SPEAKER_00: 31:22

Come on, don't be serious. Well, Alex, I I I'm sure you're familiar with it, but most Americans are post. Their post uh service officer is the same county service officer and is trained by the state, and they are trained only on what not how to win a case, but they're trained on what forms to fill out. They have no idea on what needs to be with that form or on that form. And and I'm you know, I'm amazed, and I've had the state commander ask me, well, well, how can it be different? I said, Well, you gotta pay for our county service, I mean our service officers in the post to go to school or to get some type of training, and do not let them be associated with the county or the state because they you know they follow the M21. And every time I talk with our county service office, who I see also is our post service officer, uh that's all he does is quote the M21. I asked him if he ever looked at the uh the actual codes, you know, and in book three or book four, he says, well no, he says this has everything I need to know. Uh well they're told that they're right to believe it.

SPEAKER_03: 33:04

Ray, the the M21-1 manual rewrite has been uh change it changes on average 135 times a year, and they still have not put in the Barry versus McDonough in, even though that occurred in September of last year, October, November, December. So 15 months ago, that decision came down, and then any court of law in the land that would be incorporated instantly into the regulations and announced, and everybody would rip that page out of the M21 and put the new page in. Well, because it's an electronic device, the manual doesn't exist on paper. If it didn't, I can't even get like a 16-foot-tall book. You try to open it up and it'd tip over or hurt somebody. But they haven't incorporated that change in. And every claim I can drag five or ten of my best friends in here, you've had a couple of them on your shelves, certainly. They'll tell you the same thing I could tell you is I'll file somebody for those what we call the berry bumps to bump you from L to L and a half to M to M and a half, and and so on. I'll file them for it, and they'll come back and they'll say, I it's actually it could be one, two, or three or four different things they might say. The most frequent one is you don't qualify for L and a half because you don't have loss of use of your lower extremities up to the knee. In fact, you don't have loss of use of your lower extremities at all. So we can't figure out why you're claiming L and one half. And the reason you don't get M is because it's not your legs aren't, one of your legs isn't screwed up above the knee, but you don't have loss of use, so that's moot anyway, and they'll decimate you all the way up to your N that you're asking for on the bury bumps and saying, and you do not have any amputations that are right against the trunk of your body, so therefore you don't qualify for M, but then again, you don't have any loss of use anyway. So this is all a moot question. Thank you for your service. Y'all come back now. Well they'll take two months to accomplish that, and nothing has been accomplished. Nobody sent you out for another uh uh C and P for aid an attendance to find out you don't even need to. It's an administrative correction rather than go take a C and P and discover that yeah, you are entitled to the half-step bump because you have 50% for headaches on top of your aid and attendance. They don't know, they can't do burying because they haven't been trained. Even if they were trained, they don't look at the regulation, they type it in to the keyboard, and the screen pops up and says no, and that tells you all the reasons why it isn't no, and you copy and you paste it into a decision. And thank you for your service respectfully, Mr. VA. It's a 90% of what BA's doing right now is being done with AI, and that's disturbing the pants off of all of us. The more they rely on that AI crap, the more mistakes they make, and it's a vicious loop. Gosh, AI, it's so wonderful, it gets everything done faster, and we can set lay off these raiders because we don't need them anymore because the computer's doing it for us. And veterans don't complain, they walk away, they give up. I know I did. Hey, I'm the poster child from that from 89 to 98, and then from 99 to 2007. But worse, worse, if you walk away, V8 chalks that up as a win because you didn't file a notice as a disagreement. So you're essentially telling them it what they did wrong is right. And that's why VA comes up with these skewed statistics who they have a 98% accuracy rating. Well, not I'd be out of a job in a New York second if they had a 98% accuracy. I wouldn't even have wasted my time getting accredited.

SPEAKER_00: 38:08

Did any of you see the last two or three days when um the secretary stated that he was going to stop C and P exams? Did any of y'all see that interview and that clip? Yeah, I've I I got it and watched it, and I don't remember, I don't know if I can get it back or not. But um he what he said made sense. He said, we're sending out for CMP exams when they're not even supposed to be required. He said, we're gonna do away with the CMP. He said, they're useless.

SPEAKER_02: 38:52

Oh yeah, yeah, they got yeah, they got busted for that by the by by the IG because they were sending out uh bets for like, for example, you file for an increase and they mix it up, they send them out for a uh uh uh causation or a nexus type CMP. And with an increase, all you have to do is get a level of severity. But they were going to all different things like that. It was yeah, it kind of rhymes with the word lust for truck. Well, yeah, and uh that's one thing that probably called a snafu.

SPEAKER_03: 39:31

That's one thing they're doing, but the the biggest denier that nobody sees, even though it's it's it's right in your face, you can't miss it. Now, because I've learned over the years, I don't mind teaching this technique to others. When you file for aid and attendance, you know exactly what happens if you if you had filed for SMCS, but let's just go. With the way it normally works. You got your 100 all of a sudden. They finally conceded after 15 years. Hey, we're going to give you that 100% for whatever it is. And they look at all your other ratings and they automatically go, oh, look, 100 plus 60% or more. Here's your SMCS. They don't make the determination that you might need eight attendance. It's just a mechanical complication. 100 plus 60. There's your F. That's one. And it's inferred, it's intuitive, so to speak. They'll never ever go after go off the reservation to give you that. L. That's just not going to happen.

SPEAKER_02: 40:49

For your agents and rips that there, if you see the word ancillary, that's what he's talking about. Ancillary benefits are benefits that can be predetermined without having to be filed for.

SPEAKER_03: 40:59

Well, that's the whole principle of SMC. The whole thing is an ancillary entitlement. It's just it's the BA likes to look at it as though it's a you need 100% to initiate the process, be it S L, you know, R1. And it's not necessarily that, that's not true. But they keep quoting that. That's still written in cast in stone in the BB, in the M21. But they will they will fight you tooth and nail for to keep you out of L if you have TBI. I've I've got a guy, I finally won him. He he's he's been a hot mess since he got out in 16. And he got airlifted to Germany from Afghanistan after one of his little uh IED exercises that left him unconscious for about 20 minutes. And they're they're trying to downgrade it and say, Well, you never really had a TBI. Well, if you lose consciousness for 20 minutes and three other guys in the MRAP all got screwed up and they're all rated you and you're not, this should be a no-brainer. It's in the record. They'll deny that it exists. So if you have TBI, they're gonna fence you out of L for as long as they can because they know that's a downhill slide all the way to T. And that's what this guy's going through. And it's just you know what's going on. And he comes to me after five years, and he said, What's the magic word? What's the password? What's the handshake? How do you do it? Well, all I do is go through his records, pull out all the information, and all the doctors that said, man, this guy shouldn't have a driver's license. And and if he doesn't have a wife, he needs to be put into a hospital immediately. And they'll ignore that. That's what bugs me. They'll ignore it down below. It's like if I sign off on this and give him SMCT, I'll never get another promotion. My career with EA is gone if I sign off on that T. They'll come up with every reason in the world not to give you the L that would allow you to get to the T. Take it up to the board, you win it instantly. You know, it's not difficult, but nobody knows how to do SMC at all at the regional level. It's like the they talk about the third rail of all the third rail. That that's a a nowheres bill. Well, hell is that?

SPEAKER_00: 44:10

Well, that I had a gentleman last week, I think. I had a gentleman last week that called me. And his primary care doctor here at the Alvin C or when he went in to apply for standard aid attendance, he says, we don't give you standard aimed attendance without putting you in a nursing home. We don't give you standard aid attendance without putting you in a nursing home. He called me and said, What's this? I said, I have no idea. I've never heard that. So I had to look up and I said, Now there's the seven things that of daily activities. You have to have X amount. What is it, two or three? You go down there and you for everyone that you have, you write out exactly what your wife has to do for you each and every time that's done. I said, the purpose of standard aid attendance is to help your wife so that she doesn't have to work as much, maybe, so that they don't have to put you in a nursing home. I said, that's the purpose of it. In other words, without your caregiver or someone at the house helping you, you would have to be in the nursing home. I said, that guy's got it backwards. But anyway, his doctor wouldn't wouldn't fill out the for standard aimed equipment. I mean standard aimed uh and assistants.

SPEAKER_03: 45:42

Well, they've got the they put the fear of God in those VA doctors and said, don't ever give them an IMO nexus uh to anything, uh, or you'll lose your job. And I think they've extended that a little bit further because I've had guys uh I try to keep everything in the cattle chute as I'm aiming it, and I'll pre-fill out the 2680 based on the veteran's disability. And one of the things I'll put on there is I'll focus on TBI, TTS2. I won't list headaches, nausea, vertigo, uh COPD, GERD, and bad knees. I don't put all that stuff on there. I focus on the disease that's causing the need for aid in attendance. I don't make it a laundry list of stuff. And that and that's the one of the things I teach in my classes when you're filing for aid in attendance, you better get real critical with quotation marks and say, I need, I'm I'm filing a claim for aid in attendance due solely to my psychiatric depression disorder or whatever it is, or my ischemic heart disease, or my COPD with the interstitial lung disease, rated at 100%, whatever it is, you focus why you want that aid in attendance for that particular disease or injury process. Otherwise, if you know with SMCS, they'll say, okay, yep, you got 100% for this disease, but we're gonna give you aid in attendance also because you need it because of your knees and your headaches and your your this and that and the other thing twice. And then along comes your heart condition 10 years later, and you've already got it used up in the original aid in attendance. It just said a heart condition. It didn't say 100% for a heart disease, you got it for the psychiatric. And so you file for your second aid in attendance, and they're going like, well, no, you already used your heart condition with the first aid in attendance. You can't, that'd be pyramiding to do that twice. I've I've heard every excuse underneath the uh sun about why you can't get to here, get to there from here uh with your ratings. They'll say, well, your headaches, that's that's part and parcel of your uh uh PTSD with TBI. Well, no, it's not. Headaches are under neurological, they're not under PTSD. That's mental. 4.130. Don't ever let them horn swaggle you and say, well, your GERD, your gastroesophageal reflux disease that you're rate is 60% for. Well, that's part of your psychiatric condition. So that would be pyramiding to try to use that to bunk from L to L and a half. They just they come up with some of the wildest and craziest stories. And if you're stupid, don't believe it.

SPEAKER_02: 49:02

Or you know, we're not gonna we're not gonna give you aid attendance, but the favorable findings do show you require aid attendance.

SPEAKER_03: 49:10

Well, I don't know how many of my favorite, you know, it'll be the last thing on the rating decision is about favorable findings in fact. You need aid in attendance, sonny. You take that to the board, the board looks at it 20 months later or something.

SPEAKER_02: 49:25

Then you go to then you do a drove. The drove says the back, he changes the wording on it. You don't need aid in attendance, you just need assistance.

SPEAKER_03: 49:34

Well, I've had them uh, you know, 352A, it says the need for irregular aid in attendance doesn't have to be continuous, it can be you might have uh five good days and then you might have another three weeks of World War III and and and need aid in attendance. But there might be periods of time where you don't need it for whatever reason, it's it's not pressing. You could you might get away with frying a couple eggs and a bacon without burning the kitchen down. So it's it's what they say is it's it's a you need in attendance, but not on a continuous basis. R2 andor T by extension is pretty much in the absence of your wife or a caregiver, you need constant, close monitoring to save your light. I've had them say well you only need uh aid in attendance some of the time, but you don't need it all of the time, so therefore you don't qualify. Thank you for your service, Nick.

SPEAKER_04: 50:48

I'll just I don't know.

SPEAKER_03: 50:51

Where do you get that answer from? How do you say, well, you only need a little bit of aid in attendance, you don't need a lot, so we're not gonna give it to you. You missed it by that much. You're not nursing home, Alex. Exactly right. That's a free qualifier. I've got one up at the at the Court of Veterans Appeals right now by uh a judge, veterans law judge. I know him. I've argued in front of him. He's been there for 15 years. Name's John Crowley, uh C R O W L E Y. Nice guy, generally easy to get along with. He'll sit there and nod his head while you're arguing in front of him. Yep, you're right. I yeah, I see your point entirely. He just came out with one scan guy to take up to the court and says, nope, if you need tea, you have to need uh your wife has to provide medical stuff for you tantamount to R2, and in the absence of that, you don't get tea. Well, we've already gone through that argument. That was Laska. Uh or no, it was Duran, actually, but Lasco as you get here 30% regardless. So uh that Duran was decided in May of last year. Again, that hasn't even made it into the M21 yet, or worse, somehow it the Board of Veterans Appeals didn't get that email and they don't use the M21. They use 3.35 oh. So how did that get there? How could uh how could Judge Crowley, who's been there for a real long time, be ignorant of that codicle uh uh for our uh for T. Why do we have to squander scarce judicial resources trying to correct the record? We know we're right. I mean, well, the guys I know that I taught, they understand how this works. It's disturbing that nobody at VA knows how to interpret their own regulations. That's what scares the friggin' bitch Jesus out of me. Uh and it's getting worse, and it has everything to do with that AI. If you read the newspapers, you'll read about some attorney a little lazy, and he he goes into AI or chat GPT or something, it creates his whole legal brief just with a few little inputs, and it in his legal brief, the the machine, the AI intelligence starts telling him, well, according to uh Ansanjian versus Vernega or somebody uh 1994, uh this is this supports your argument here at the court. And the judge is sitting back there and goes, in a Westlaw? I've never heard of that one. They go into West law for$59 a minute and they go, hmm, that never happened. It doesn't even exist in law. The machine, the AI made it up out of a little plot, and they get busted. Boy, honey, do you ever get fined when you start throwing out false sites? That's why I'm gunshot. I still write every one of my legal briefs the old-fashioned way. I don't, I would never go near that AI. I know what'll happen. It would spit out something and put me in jail. I don't ever know what in the bottom of every one of my legal briefs is the legal brief product is done specifically with no AI. Uh, everything here is written by the representative and it doesn't contain any unicorn legal sites. So the judge knows if he tries to tear my thing apart and run it through his own AI machine, there ain't no, nobody on earth can say, oh well, he he paraplades, he plagiarized this out of somebody else's decision. None of my I'll never get busted for that.

SPEAKER_02: 55:22

And I don't know if somebody else writes an exact similar one that you have.

SPEAKER_03: 55:31

I I I use common sense. I I've seen attorneys that that will turn away and decline to take a claim from a guy, and they'll come to me and I'll go, well, why didn't he take it? His voice says it can't be one. That's crazy. There's that somebody says, well, multiple sclerosis is not on the H and R list. Well, not on a presumptive basis, but it could be on a direct basis if you get an IML. And I win it. I won two of them that way, in fact, and one on muscular dystrophy. They're not on the list, but you win them. And everybody goes, God, how did you do that? How'd you win that camp le jus claim? That that isn't on the list. That's yeah, but there's more than one way to skin a cat. This this isn't rocket science. It's it's that winner-dive mentality, is all I can tell you. I just don't give up. I I just go around your denial and get there somehow.

SPEAKER_02: 56:41

That direct service connection issue is a real cherrykeeper. Yeah. You quote that role approved a judge, and he takes that as a uh presumptive, you could be screwed.

SPEAKER_03: 56:51

True. Uh I've had many a judge. Uh the worst one was Ursula the Unmerciful Powell. Ursula Powell, you are Powell. I tangled horns with her a few times, but I won my Camp Les June claim with her. Uh, the man had already passed away. It was for a crude plus uh DIC for the widow. Um my God, they stacked up three independent medical opinions against me from VA doctors. I defeated all three of them and brought in my own from Mednik. And Ursula looked at it, she says, Looks pretty good to me, Mr. Graham. And you know, I I got a high bar to get over around here. And I said, Yes, I know that, Your Honor. She says, but yours is the only one that makes sense. The other guys are just barking at the moon. They're getting coming up with all kinds of stuff, like saying that he smoked cigarettes. No, he didn't smoke cigarettes. Well, he was around a lot of petroleum distillates when he worked at the gas station. No, he wasn't. He changed tires, he drove the tow truck, he didn't pump gas at the pump. And everything I went through and I knew decimated everything in their arguments in their IMOs. Well, he was a welder, so maybe he got it from radiation from uh, you know, the using the probe and you know, welding this stuff. And I said, no, he was an iron worker and he was a multi-story iron worker, but he did it, you know, with the bolts. They they weren't welding beams together back in the 60s, they were bolting them. Well, huh? Oh, well, we just figured welding them and they got exposed to ionizing radiation because everybody gets it that way.

SPEAKER_02: 58:45

That way, guys, I hate to say this out of time. Uh Alex, thanks for coming on. We appreciate you. You guys have a remainder of a good, very Merry Christmas and a good new year. Make sure you got plenty of single mouth there, Alex.

SPEAKER_03: 59:02

I do. I I I can hold out here all night long, man. Like I got it, I got it. Ray, thanks for thanks for coming on there. I think I'm gonna hold out until I die.

SPEAKER_01: 59:17

Did you get that little kick up there about the chair kicking event there at the uh hearing?

SPEAKER_03: 59:24

No, pick up on that. I didn't pick up on that one.

SPEAKER_02: 59:29

Yeah, all right. Well, listen, guys, I want to say thank you all for coming on. And uh we'll have uh we'll have a special show about Gerald here in a couple weeks, and uh I want to try to find one of his earlier shows and run it, and we'll do it like that. Uh and we'll figure it out. So, with that, this will be John behalf of the Alex Graham and one, Mr. Raven Cobb will be shutting her down for now. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00: 59:52

Good night, guys.

SPEAKER_03: 59:53

Nice night. Merry Christmas.

SPEAKER_00: 59:56

Merry Christmas.