Vets can help in economic development, says state official
According to retired Marine Corps Col, Rocky J. Chavez, who is the undersecretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, hiring veterans is a sure-fire way not only to help returning military personnel have livelihoods, but also to aid in national economy. Monterey Herald has the details:
He cited Dan Senor and Saul Singer’s book “Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle,” as a guide for the future.
“Israel is one of the smallest countries,” Chavez said, “but it’s No. 4 among countries traded on the stock exchange, after the United States, China and the European Union.”
A key to Israel’s success, he said, has been a requirement that all of its citizens — men and women — serve in the nation’s military.
They emerge at age 20 to 22 to go to universities or into business having “learned in the military to be accountable, responsible, to work as a team.” Veterans are highly prized as students, employees and business leaders.
Singapore may lead in higher education and Finland in the number of new inventions per capita, Chavez said, but Israel’s success is founded on “a positive entrepreneurial attitude.
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Stress disorder increases chances of dementia for senior veterans
According to US researchers, senior veterans who have experienced post-traumatic stress disorder have greatly higher chances of getting dementia than other veterans. The Vancouver Sun has the details:
The findings, presented at an Alzheimer’s Association meeting in Vienna, are the first to link PTSD — a debilitating anxiety disorder that can be caused by wartime trauma — with dementia.
“The million-dollar question is why,” Dr. Ronald Petersen of the Alzheimer’s Association and an Alzheimer’s researcher at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, said in a telephone interview.
Some studies have found PTSD was linked with diminished brain volume in the hippocampus, a part of the brain involved in memory and stress response.
Alzheimer’s is the most common form of dementia, which is marked by a loss of memory and other cognitive, or thinking, abilities, including the ability to speak, identify objects or think abstractly.
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Texas senator promises to concentrate on homes for veterans
Senator Leticia Van de Putte , the head of a major Senate committee, recently made an announcement that she will take advantage of an immediate hearing to go over the operation of veterans homes run by the General Land Office. According to her, she will investigate why the management is not performing with an eye for quality care. Dallas News reports:
“This one lands a little close to my heart,” said Van de Putte, D-San Antonio. “We can do a much, much better job.”
The Land Office has said any problems were promptly fixed. And Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson, a Republican seeking re-election, said before Van de Putte’s announcement that he’d “appreciate any increased scrutiny of the care provided to my fellow veterans.”
Patterson, a Marine who served in the Vietnam War, was a state senator in 1997 who wrote the law creating the veterans home program.
A division of the Land Office hires private companies to run seven nursing homes for veterans and their spouses. Of the seven, those in Amarillo and Big Spring, in West Texas, received the second-lowest-possible grades this year from the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
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