VA healthcare will not be endangered by national system, says President Obama

WASHINGTON, DC, August 4, 2009 – President Barack Obama, meeting privately with the leader of nation’s largest veterans service organization this morning, pledged to keep the medical care system administered by the Department of Veterans Affairs essentially as is – quelling fears that VA healthcare would be absorbed into a national health care system.

“(I) got his very strong assurance the VA as our veterans know it will continue to exist,” said National Commander David K. Rehbein. “It will not be diluted or folded into some sort of national system and that the folks who go to the VA…that will be considered their insurance, so any insurance requirements (will be met) simply by being enrolled in the VA.”

Another topic discussed during the one-on-one meeting in the Oval Office was Medicare reimbursement to the VA, a proposal long championed by The American Legion. This proposed practice would require Medicare to pay for care provided at VA medical facilities to Medicare beneficiaries – that is, eligible veterans over the age of 65 with non-service related injuries, illnesses and conditions. Currently, Medicare is precluded by statute from doing this.

“Medicare reimbursement to VA would be a boon to veterans in that it would encourage them to take advantage of what we consider the best care anywhere,” said the Commander. It would also generate much-needed revenue for the VA.”

In fact, The Medicare VA Reimbursement Act of 2009 (H.R. 3365), which is now being considered in Congress, resulted from a discussion Rehbein had with House Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Bob Filner (D-CA) at the Legion’s DC headquarters just three weeks ago. “I am pleased that Chairman Filner visited with us and then took prompt action,” Rehbein said.

President Obama and Commander Rehbein also discussed the positive effects that the enhanced educational benefits contained within the newly enacted and American Legion-pioneered Post 9/11 GI Bill will have on the veterans community and the nation as a whole.

The vexing problem of a dramatically growing backlog of VA benefits claims was also considered by the two. Rehbein said he feels the President “fully appreciates” its gravity and will do what he can to aid in its solution.

Commander Rehbein, obviously pleased with the meeting’s outcome, characterized the 25-minute White House chat as “very friendly…conversational in style” in which “issues were discussed rather than positions being presented.”

With a current membership of 2.6 million wartime veterans, The American Legion was founded in 1919 on the four pillars of a strong national security, veterans affairs, Americanism, and the mentoring of youth. Legionnaires work for the betterment of their communities through more than 14,000 posts across the nation.

Facebook and its evil ad machine...

Facebook is now able to use your name and photos in auto-generated ads to people on your friends list. You can opt out by following these steps: Log in to Facebook, and then go to Settings>Privacy Settings>News Feed and Wall>Facebook Ads (tab near top of page)>Set “Appearance in Facebook Ads” to “NO ONE”> click “Save Changes.” Voila, you’ve now opted out.

Military and veterans health care should not be part of any national health care bill, says The American Legion

WASHINGTON (July 22, 2009) – The national commander of the nation’s largest veterans service organization has reacted to tonight’s urgent call by President Barack Obama for national health care reform.
“While The American Legion appreciates the complexity of the healthcare reform challenge facing the President and Congress,” said David K. Rehbein, “on behalf of our nation's 26-million veterans and the nearly two million personnel now on active duty in more than 130 countries, we urge Congress to ensure that veterans’ and military health care not be part of any national health care bill. They should be exempt in the legislation.”

Rehbein added, “Our nation must maintain its long standing tradition that veterans’ and military health care systems will remain independent and focused on our most deserving citizens.

“The American Legion has a proud tradition of securing and preserving the earned benefits of America’s veterans,” Rehbein said. “Ensuring timely access to quality healthcare for today’s military and veterans is of paramount concern. These are the citizens who have borne our battles in previous wars as they still are in Iraq and Afghanistan. They have earned our care the hard way. We, as a nation, have an obligation to ensure that their healthcare is not compromised,” he concluded.

With a current membership of 2.5 million wartime veterans, The American Legion was founded in 1919 on the four pillars of a strong national security, veterans affairs, Americanism, and the mentoring of youth. Legionnaires work for the betterment of their communities through more than 14,000 posts across the nation.
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Media contacts: Craig Roberts, (202) 263-2982, Cell (202) 406-0887 or Joe March, (317) 630-1253; Cell (317) 748-1926. A high resolution photo of Nat. Cmdr. Rehbein is available at www.legion.org.

I received quite a bit of responses from my original message regarding “another Veterans Corps”…

Thank you all for caring.

From many of the responses, there are valid arguments made for and against this new “Veterans Corps”.

On the one hand, this new initiative, if properly supported by existing VSOs, can help launch an awareness program to returning veterans and introduce them to the traditions of “veterans serving veterans”. This will help increase awareness for VSOs like The American Legion amongst younger veterans and get them involved. And with some mentoring from older veterans, we can expect these young veterans who get involved in the “Veterans Corps” eventually volunteer their time with the VSOs and continue to make an impact. As one legionnaire wrote “If the new Veterans Corps is to strengthen and enable organizations to build capacity for their own missions to assist fellow veterans, then there is a chance this new initiative will actually accomplish something.”

On the other hand, if improperly executed, this program risks wasting taxpayer money and further disenfranchise veterans who are already doing everything they can.

Your collective wisdom has enlightened me in the fact that given this initiative, we can either be counter-productive and argue who can provide the best assistance to our veterans, or we can see this opportunity and work together to help mentor a generation of returning veterans the importance of peer-support and volunteer services to strengthen their communities.

And keeping true to the grassroots, I urge you to find out more about this Veterans Corps and ask your American Legion representatives, and your congressional representatives, to ensure VSOs critical role in developing the “Veterans Corps”.

another Veterans Corps???

Congress is trying to establish a new “Veterans Corps” under the established programs of AmeriCorps. (http://hamptonroads.com/2009/03/worthy-AmeriCorps-program-benefit-veterans) The provisions introduced to both the House and Senate asked that the taxpayers to put more money into a bureaucracy and establish a program from the ground up to do the job that so many Veterans Service Organizations are already doing. From what I can tell, this new initiative will give AmeriCorps the funding it needs to establish transition assistance volunteers to help veterans.
Now correct me if I’m wrong, but I’ve always thought the point of VSOs, like The American Legion, are chartered by Congress to organize volunteer efforts, manage donations, and bypassing the government bureaucracy, and putting the efforts and initiatives at the hands of veterans who understand how to help another veteran. Maintaining true grassroots and empowering fellow veterans to serve their peers not only ensure the quality but also the bond that ties a veteran to his/her community. Why do we want to waste more taxpayer’s money to build something that is already there???
So why is the Obama administration looking in another direction on helping our veterans??? Can it be simply that Obama, or Congress, didn’t really think this through? Are they just jumping into the bandwagon to simply do something for the sake of doing something???
If it were up to me, I’d say instead of building another veterans’ service organization under AmeriCorps, Congress and Obama should look at what all of the VSOs are doing, and help build partnership across the board and help facilitate peer support to reduce the redundancy and maximize support to those returning veterans that need the help…
I think this is a case where politics and the appearance of doing something needs to take a backseat. Acting with reason and operating with the best interests of our veterans and servicemembers should be our first responsibility. Congress can really make a difference by coming to the VSOs and ask for an alliance or some sort to establish this “Veterans Corps”… but that’s just my opinion…

Web Accessibility

When an architect designs a structure, accessibility to persons with physical impairments is always a consideration. Any public building must comply to the laws related to providing access to the physically impaired. Yet, when a Web designer creates a new site, Web accessibility is often not a consideration. In the U.S., the exceptions are Federal Government sites, which must comply with Section 508 guidelines, and some state sites.

I believe that it is imperative that every Web page designer treat Web accessibility with the same level of diligence as does an architect who designs a public building. For any Web site within The American Legion Family, Web accessibility is important for the following reasons:

• As us older veterans age, we suffer a natural loss in visual accuity. To many, small fonts are no longer readable, and the ability to detect fine differences in contrasts declines.
• There are many veterans who suffer some form of color blindness. While their color blindness may have limited the type of duty performed in the service, it did not prevent them from Serving Our Country.
• Service related injuries may have resulted in visual or auditory impairments.

So that our Web sites serve all veterans, we need to do the following:

• Design our sites using relative units, such as ems or percentages. The use of pixels as a measurement should be left to non-scalable elements, such as graphics.
• The user should be able to control the default font size and default font from their browser. If scaled with relative measurements, a Web page should adjust according to the default font. For most browser's the default font size is 16 pixels, and the default font should be sans-serif. Serif fonts are just to hard to read by anyone with a visual impairment.
• All images must use the alt tag, with a meaning full description of the image. If alt is not sufficient, use the longdesc tag.
• Links should use the rel tag to describe the link, when the bounded text does not provide an adequate description.
• Data tables must use headings and the heading need to include the scope tag to define the structure of the table to a screen reader.
• Tables should not be used to provide structure for the Web page. This is a habit from the days when there was no other option. Today, we need to use other tags and style sheets to define the structure of a page.
• A Web page must make navigational sense when the style sheet is not present. Screen readers read just the page, without the style sheet.

The above highlight the major considerations in designing a site to be accessible to the visually impaired. Giving control to the browser, allows the user to scale the font to the size that they can see. By using relative sizing, the page scales according to the font size.

Screen readers are used by the legally blind, and those with other severe visual impairments. A person who uses a screen reader may not even have a graphical terminal. The most common output of the screen reader is audio, while there is a smaller population that use braille devices. To understand the challenges these users face, just listen to a reader as it reads your Web page.

There are a number of on line tools for testing a Web Page. The Accessibility Guidelines page at mtlegion.org lists the tests I use in creating Web pages. If you want a quick test of your site, just change the default font size to 20 and see what happens to your site. Graphics do present an issue, so reducing the default size to less than 16 can render most sites unreadable.

Have I completed all the work on mtlegion.org to make it fully Web accessibile? The answer is no, but I keep working on it. My goal is to create a site that is accessible by every veteran that can use a computer to access the Internet.

How to start a good social network for veterans:

I hear a lot of ambitious people wanting to start a social network these days to “provide transitional service and connect the veteran community”. While I admire their initiative and desire to help, often they lack the knowledge of what social networking really is and don’t know how to really tap the potential of social networking and employ the power of social media and new media.

One example:

I recently received a call from CPT “Socialnetwork Champion” to discuss his social network for the Marines. I asked a few questions about his desires, and this is the facts I collected:

• They have a brief market analysis and have determined that their targeted audience should be Marines and Veterans age between 18 and 35.
• They want to provide transitional services to these veterans.
• They have lined up one headhunting company to provide this employment service.
• They want to provide a matching feature to connect Marines with potential mentors and employers.
• They want to provide a vehicle of communication for active duty Marines and veterans.

I think what they have so far is great, but here are some problems:

• Their market research is incomplete and failed to capture the growing market share in Baby Boomer generation that encompasses the Vietnam generation veterans.
• If they do not target the older generation then how are they to provide the matching service for young veterans? Just peer-peer will not get them the experience and institutional knowledge our older veterans have with regards to the VA and other processes necessary to ensure a successful transition.
• Their identified goal of providing transitional services is too general. There are just too many issues for any one person to tackle. Transition means anything from PTSD support, to financial services, to family life mentoring, to job placement, to social reintegration. If a social network does not identify and target a function to provide a service, users may be distracted and do not recognize the things that makes your social network unique. The point here is that social networking is like any other competitive market, where you have to offer something new and useful in the product you are trying to deliver to ensure users return. Social networks are nothing if you don’t have users and no one is coming back for a unique service and/or function.

If you are thinking about using a social network to connect and provide a service to our veterans, here are some of the things to think about to ensure your success:

• You need to identify your targeted audience. Be as precise as you can and cast your net as wide as you can. What you may need to do is to segment your audience types and by demographic. Once you have that, then do your market analysis to determine just what the needs are in each segmented section and determine the services and function you can provide to that section.
• Then you have to carefully determine the risk and return on your investment on each of the sections of your segmented audience group. If you are providing a peer-peer support service to women veterans, then you need to determine what competitive edge you have, is there a existing social network providing the exact thing? Also keep in mind that the functions you decide must meet a need and has to depend on your Voice of Customer analysis. So you may want to do a small online survey to see just how many people may be interested in getting online peer support for VA home loan process (or whatever else you have identified). What you don’t want to end up with is a high price function, connecting Marines with golf courses that provide discount to veterans, that only serves a small population and is not demanded by users on the social network environment.
• Also you need to design a functional process that your social network will adopt and practice. You must always identify key input variables and output variables of that functional process so you can improve on this process int eh future depending on user input.
• You must identify all open-sourced social networks and see if any of them can provide what you wish to accomplish before you decide to spend a few million dollars on tech cost. A lot of times software companies will sell you on things that they know won’t work because they know the exact same function is being performed by Facebook or Boomj. But they will sell you the software solution anyhow just to make money off you. So do as much as you can open-source, and host only critical information on paid technology. I recommend that database functionalities are a must pay service since that allows you to collect user data for your own segmentation and targeted marketing.
• And lastly, know your users and keep up on your users. Drive your users to your site. Your social network is nothing without users so don’t focus too much on the technology and forget your users…

Student Veterans

There have been a lot of activities recently from the Students Veterans of America regarding how to advance student veterans’ issues and concerns. The SVA leadership sincerely believes that student veterans need to get involved in The American Legion because we have the experience and expertise to offer mentorship to the younger generation of veterans hoping to advocate for their own initiatives. Below you will see a example of a very thoughtful response to a student veteran regarding two issues: 1. The acceptance of military credits by colleges and universities; 2. The truthfulness of our military recruiters.

From the response you will see that our mentor from The American Legion Department of California carefully laying out counter arguments and actionable directions for our young veterans (I have removed their names to protect their privacy):

Dear Ms. (student veteran),

The reason I structured my statements the way that I did was because, in order to structure a resolution-type action within the American Legion, you must be able to clearly address the issue, and then provide an "action" to be forwarded.

I do have sympathy for your situation with recruiters, however, the word you used was "equivalent." Many fields/MOS specialties have "equivalent" counterparts in the civilian world. Some of the Army training I went to was very technical and had highly paid counterparts in the civilian world, but, if I wanted a civilian rating or degree, I had to either pay the fees associated with it, or take the certification testing required to get the "civilian rating." I think the issue of "credit" would be better stated to "encourage the military education/training programs to, as much as is reasonable, coordinate with a college in the area to include the equivalent syllabus materials, so that students graduating from the course, can pay the fees associated with the credit, upon successful completion of the course." (My attendance at CAS3 only resulted in one Masters Level Statistics or Calculus credit through one of the military-friendly Colleges, I don't remember which one. I paid the fees associated with that credit and was given a copy of the college transcript.) I think that is a fair solution, given that the college has not taught the class and are trusting that the military has taught the college's class syllabus. I do not think it fair that any college be required to accept course credit of any other institution, given that the degree that would be received, would be theirs, and their name is on the line. If I could say it another way...it would be like if I created a tool, then took it to Sears, and then demanded that they put it into their inventory as a Craftsman's tool. It is not reasonable to think that they would. It may be a great tool, but it is not a Craftsman. To take that a step back to the military, many of the medical fields require State Certificates in addition to the college training/classes. Many are not "degree producing" certificate programs, such as blood taking etc.

As for "truth is advertising" of the recruiters, I would approach that as a resolution that would be couched in a way that said something like, "As the military is under great change, it is particularly important that recruiters are kept up to date with the latest changes...etc..." As I have sworn in many troops since I moved here, I always ask the person being sworn what they have been promised. I am a firm believer that both parties have the responsibility to be both truthful and transparent in what they are offering and asking. Both are signing documents that should say what is promised. If you think about it, there are very few places of military training that offer "degrees." The service academies would be one example, but even that is a degree from the academy, and not of civilian college.

Your mentioned the GI Bill. There is a new one in place. If you need more personal help with what your benefits are, there should be a county office called "Veteran Service Office" in your area. They are just like the old Personnel Action Centers. They are a wonderful resource for discovering what benefits you are entitled to, as well as finding out about unique programs in your area.

Bottom Line: You will have to decide for yourself which direction you want to go with these issues. If you join a local post, they can help you in the wording of any resolution you might want to have voted on. If it passes your local area it is forwarded up through the channels just like the military does. Some of your general issues with education should probably be left in the political/civilian side of the issue. You will need to get to know your local political representatives.

Hope this helps,
Sincerely,
(The American Legion Departmetn of California Mentor to Student Veterans)

New Guide Helps Nonprofit Professionals

During the first three weeks of 2009, hundreds of nonprofit professionals participated in a resolutions poll or shared their resolutions for 2009 through Convio's website, online community and industry blogs. The poll answers along with other shared insight was used to create the first ever Nonprofit Resolutions Guide from Convio. The Guide is available for free at www.convio.com/resolve2009

Results of the poll show that constituent empowerment, integrated channels and technology resolutions are top priorities in 2009:

30 percent of participants resolve to empower supporters to help tell their story, reach new people and raise funds,
20 percent want to better integrate traditional and online campaigns, and
19 percent want to better use technology to turn ideas into action.
These results, combined with analysis of feedback from Convio's Connection Café blog (www.connectioncafe.com) and more than one dozen industry bloggers who participated in the online discussion led to development of the Guide to help nonprofits keep their resolutions. Each section of the Guide focuses on key resolutions with insight and tips on how to maintain momentum throughout the year. Readers will also find related success stories from other nonprofit organizations and information pulled from some of the best ideas shared in Convio's online community over the past year.

Download the Guide and Join the Discussion

The Resolutions Guide is available immediately as a free download at www.convio.com/resolve2009

The nonprofit community is invited to continue sharing ideas, insight and obstacles to successfully using technology to drive results and support mission-critical needs, by visiting any of the participating blogs and/or linking their own posts to them:

A View from Judi Sohn - http://www.momathome.com/ - Judi Sohn

Beaconfire Wire - http://beaconfire.com/blog/ - Michael Cervino

Beth's Blog - http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/ - Beth Kanter

Connection Café - http://www.connectioncafe.com - Jordan Viator and Convio blog team

Donor Power Blog - http://www.donorpowerblog.com/donor_power_blog - Jeff Brooks

Everyday Giving - http://everydaygiving.typepad.com/ - Roger Carr

FI Space - http://www.fispace.org/ - David Neff

Mobile Commons - http://mcommons.com/blog/ - Matt Wilson

NTEN Blog - http://www.nten.org/blog - Holly Ross, Nonprofit Technology Exchange Network

Social Actions Blog - www.blog.socialactions.com Tech Soup - www.blog.techsoup.org

Tech Soup - www.blog.techsoup.org - Robert L. Weiner

Robert L. Weiner Blog - www.rlweiner.com/blog - Robert L. Weiner TREW Marketing Spotlight - - Wendy Covey

About Convio
Convio is the leading provider of on-demand constituent relationship management (CRM) software and services that give nonprofit organizations a better way to inspire and mobilize people to support their organization. The company's online marketing suite offers integrated software for fundraising, advocacy, events, email marketing and Web content management, and its CRM system, Convio Common Ground, helps organizations efficiently track and manage all interactions with supporters. All Convio products are delivered through the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model and are backed by a portfolio of best-in-class consulting and support services and a network of partners who provide value-added services and applications focused on the unique needs of nonprofit organizations.

Convio clients include nonprofit organizations, Institutions of Higher Education, Associations and Faith-based organizations around the world such as American Red Cross, American Diabetes Association, American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Humane Society of the United States, Easter Seals, National Multiple Sclerosis Society, Susan G. Komen for the Cure®, Sierra Club, and National Public Radio. For more information, please visit www.convio.com

Placecam

In addition to my duties as Dept Commander, I edit the Smoke Signals, the bi-monthly newsletter of Chief Joseph Post 135. I have started using Placecam to work with my proof reader to make corrections on the paper. It saves a few trips back and forth between our houses. I would highly recommend Departments look in to using Placecam.

Photo Album as a Community Project

Building a photo history for the department is an exciting but daunting project. One way is to have members send you the photos, and then add them to the album. Getting the photos is probably the easiest part. The hard part is getting the story behind the photo. For a whole department, this could be an overwhelming task.

We love to look at photos, and share our photos. Sharing is the key word. It is the basis of such sites as Google's Picasa, or Yahoo's Flickr. What these sites lack is an easy means for creating a community album, and for that community album to be a part of the Department's Web site.

While I had the idea for awhile, I wasn't sure how to implement it. At our son's wedding last December, I floated the idea of creating a domain name for the kids wedding album and providing one place for everyone to share their pictures. Within a week after the wedding, there were almost 1,000 photos in the album. If it works for a wedding, why not a department's history?

The software is Gallery 2, and available at my price - free. Installing the software is easy, configuring all the options takes awhile. After doing the wedding album, it was much easier. If you are doing it the first time, it takes a few days of experimenting to find out how the options work.

It really helps to have a few photos to get started. Once I created the basic structure for albums, the next step is to get more people involved. For example, the Department Historian has an account, the Department Commander has an account. They have their own albums for which they are the owner and for which they are responsibile for adding photos and building their part of the history. The initial photo album is not big, but it is a start.

The next step is to get other officers, program chairmen, and posts involved. This is the part that takes more time. A project takes time and effort to build. It takes promotion, and more promotion. As it builds critical mass, it gets easier. At least, the fantasy is that it gets easier. At this point my job is to promote, administer, mentor, and more promotion.

Community projects like the photo album allow others to be involved in the Web site. It gets more visitors to the site. It becomes a community project, and not an individual project. Only time will tell how this works.

Bill Anderson
Webmaster
American Legion of Montana

Static versus Dynamic Pages

Occasionally, you hear that a Website is static, while a Web Application is dynamic. This distinction refers to how the pages are generated versus the content. Nor, does it refer to the timeliness of the information.

Anyone who works with the Web knows that the content must be current and it must offer something new to have repeat visitors. If a visitor sees an entry whose data has long passed, it is an immediate clue that the information on the site is not current. The side could is static, in one sense of the term, in that it is not timely.

The content of the site can be timely, and it can change, and still use static Web pages. If the content of a page is a fixed document, it is a static page. It does not make any difference whether it is written in HTML, DHTML, XHTML, because the content of the page is static. For many pages, this is the best solution. There are pages whose only change occurs when the information on the page is no longer timely.

A dynamic page is a generated page, using a language such as Perl, PHP, Java, or Ruby on Rails. The content of these pages change depending on the information requested. When delivering dynamic content, you often have a back-end database that provides the content.

On the mtlegion.org Website, dynamic content appears in a number of different Web Applications. I call them Web Applications because the number of PHP pages is small compared to the number of different pages delivered. For example, the Posts page only invokes two scripts. One for district information and one for post information. The district script only invokes the post script or the officer information script. The post script can inoke the officer information script. The entire department roster runs off of three scripts that invoke the same officer information script. When any change is made, it is made to the database, and every script automatically generates the new information. With dynamically generated pages, I can now add links to the chairpersons on the program pages, and not worry about changing those pages if the chairperson changes. Only the database changes.

The membership services section follows the same rules. Every post goes through the same scripts. What is offered as a service is defined in a database. If a post wants a dffierent level of service, it only takes one change to the database, and all generated pages change.

If any contact information changes for a post. It only requires a change to the database, and all pages change.

The visitor never sees the underlying code. It just makes maintenace and integration of the Web pages a lot easier.

Bill Anderson
Webmaster
American Legion of Montana

Forms and More Forms

I just finished adding all the forms required by Posts and Legion Members to out Web site. It was a challenging project, as I have yet to find a source of National forms in PDF or Microsoft Word format. Without the source documents for many forms, I simply had to scan the forms. The PDF files resulting from scanned forms are much larger than those generated from source documents.

Making the forms available on the Web site makes them more quickly available, and reduces the postage cost for sending out forms. However, it is a long way from the ideal solution.

When we talk about using technology, we often forget the more mundane topics. Yet,, for everyday functioning of an organization, forms just as important, if not more so, than social networking. While computers do a great job of generating paper, they can also be used to save trees and reduce costs.

When available, I also made the Microsoft Word version of the form available. Yet, both the Word document and the PDF document can be improved. With both formats, a form can be designed to fill-in fields. For example, PDF has the capability to have fill-in fields. The resulting PDF file can then be send back to the Department without ever have to print and mail the form. Email could replace the FAX, saving paper in the process.

Ideally, every form would be a fill-in the fields type of document, which is electronically submitted. If we get real fancy, we can even complete the form on-line. All this is possible with today's technology. It would be both environmentally friendly and cost effective. In the meantime, it sure would be nice to have the source documents of National forms, and not just printed forms.

Bill Anderson
Webmaster
American Legion of Montana