Rising Threat: The Islamic State's Militarization of Children http://threatknowledge.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/TKG-Report_ISIS-Children.pdf

Check out the Virginia Department of Veterans Services athttp://www.dvs.virginia.gov to learn about Veterans ID Cards, VA Benefits, Education and Employment Assistance, Tax Exemptions, and more…Virginia Veterans Statistics Compared to the Nation:★ Virginia Has:•The fastest growing veteran population in the Nation.•The greatest number of veterans in the workforce per capita.•The largest percentage of women veterans.•The largest percentage of veterans under the age of 28.•1 in 10 Virginians is a veteran (approx. 800,000).•Added more Veterans to its workforce than all other states put together★ Virginia is First for Veterans: •On November 11, 2015, Virginia became the first state to functionally end veteran homelessness.•Virginia is the first state to convene a summit, inspired by the Governor's A Healthy Virginia plan, with key Veterans Administration (VA), state, and private health provider leaders to accelerate access to health care for veterans.•Virginia is the first state to develop provider agreements between Federally-Qualified Health Centers and the VA (partnerships at 22 sites throughout the state).

Obama Limits 2017 Military Pay RaiseExcerpted from Military Times, by Leo Shane III, August 31, 2016

President Obama confirmed plans to cap the military pay raise at 1.6 percent next year, a move which lawmakers and military advocates have already warned will hurt military families’ personal finances.

Obama invoked his executive powers to set the pay level at 0.5 percent below the expected increase in private sector wages, which would mark the fourth year in a row troops’ pay hikes failed to keep pace with their civilian peers. If it stands, 2017 will mark the seventh consecutive year of military pay hikes below 2 percent.

House Republicans have advocated using temporary war funds to pay for a larger, 2.1 percent pay raise, but Senate leaders have all but rejected that idea. Outside advocates have argued that years of lower-than-expected pay hikes are slowly harming troops’ finances, giving them less purchasing power and a smaller spending safety net.

The new pay raise will go into effect on Jan. 1.

Expanding veterans online shopping could reap rewards for familiesMilitary Times, by: Karen Jowers, September 15, 2016

Two senior enlisted advisers made a passionate pitch for the idea of expanding exchange online shopping privileges to all honorably discharged veterans -- which would be a way to bring in more money for shrinking morale, welfare and recreation programs.

The senior enlisted advisers of the Army and Air Force discussed the idea at the DoD Military Family Readiness Council Sept. 15, but it was unclear whether the full council approved making a recommendation to the secretary of Defense in support of the idea. 

The Veterans Online Shopping Benefit would only apply to online shopping at the exchange websites and wouldn’t apply to shopping in exchange stores on bases. At its Sept. 14 meeting, the family council discussed the idea as one way to raise revenue for MWR programs.

Expanding the benefit to all veterans “would ultimately raise revenue,” said Sergeant Major of the Army Dan Dailey, which would in turn increase the contributions that the exchanges make to morale, welfare and recreation programs for soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and family members. Budget restraints are causing some reductions in funding for MWR programs, he said. The Army recently announced a $105 million reduction in funding for MWR programs across its installations, except for those in overseas and remote locations.

Increasing the number of people who can shop at the exchanges online is projected to bring in several hundred million dollars in additional profit, Dailey said, much of which would go back to bases for MWR programs.  

He noted that DoD has spent years studying the idea. It was proposed more than two years ago by Army and Air Force Exchange Service CEO Tom Shull and has been supported by officials in charge of the Navy and Marine Corps exchange services. On Aug. 9, the DoD Executive Resale Board voted unanimously to recommend the policy change. But it still must go through more wickets in DoD.

The big issue for defense officials has been the Veterans Affairs Department, said Stephanie Barna, principal deputy to the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness. She said DoD officials have been working closely with the VA to reach an agreement in an effort to avoid “stepping on toes.”

The VA operates its Veterans Canteen Service stores in VA medical facilities, and VCS is preparing to launch an online shopping portal.

“At the end of the day, we’re not looking to compete with anybody or take away anybody’s business. We don’t try to tell anybody not to shop at another benefit online," said Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force James Cody. “We’re losing millions of dollars in revenue in the discussion phase.”

The issue of the online shopping benefit seems to be within the council’s purview, said Dr. David Rubin, a council member and director of PolicyLab, a research center at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

“It’s the elephant on the table. It’s revenue for children and youth programs,” he said.

Recommendations from the council headed to the secretary of defense:

A general recommendation to promote the standardization of the exceptional family member programs; and taking action to improve health care services for families with special needs.

Exploring public-private partnerships as a way to improve all manner of services for military families.

Increasing prevention efforts for child abuse and neglect. Continuing support for Military OneSource and especially communicating the services it offers

to the youngest members of the military and families. Expanding the use of tuition assistance for licensing and technical certifications for service

members and families.

The congressionally-mandated DoD Military Family Readiness Council was established in 2008 as a federal advisory council to make recommendations to the Secretary of Defense about policies and programs for military families.

Sept. 11 Legacy: One Endless War Against Many Radical Enemies 15 Years Later: The Sept. 11 Terrorist Attacks

NPR, by Greg Myre , September 6, 2016 (edited for length)

In the quarter-century from the end of the Vietnam War in the 1970s until Sept. 11, 2001, the United States rarely went to war, and when it did, the conflicts were so brief they were measured in days. The Gulf War in 1991 lasted 43 days. Airstrikes in the former Yugoslavia in 1995 went on for 22 days, followed by another round in 1999, that time for 78 days.

But since the Sept. 11 attacks, the United States has been fighting every single day for 15 straight years, the longest unbroken period in American history. The U.S. has carried out airstrikes, sent in ground forces, or both, in seven countries stretching from Pakistan in the east to Libya in the west. None of these conflicts has been resolved, and all signs point to years of strife ahead.

Sept. 11 has reshaped the U.S. in countless ways, but perhaps the most profound has been the transformation from a country where peacetime was the norm into one seemingly locked into a permanent state of war. Yet strangely, the country doesn't feel much like it's at war.

"Like the war on drugs or the war on poverty, the war for the greater Middle East has become a permanent fixture in American life and is accepted as such," writes Andrew Bacevich, a retired Army colonel and professor at Boston University.

America's overwhelming military strength has made victory look deceptively easy. Yet time and again, swift battlefield victories have been followed by frustrating setbacks. The U.S. greatly weakened al-Qaida in several countries, only to see the Islamic State emerge in others. The Taliban were driven from power in Afghanistan, but regrouped as insurgents. Saddam Hussein was ousted in Iraq and Moammar Gadhafi in Libya, yet their dictatorial reigns were replaced by nasty civil wars in both countries.

Nearly 7,000 U.S. military personnel have been killed and more than 50,000 wounded in these assorted conflicts. The financial tab is in the trillions. Many college-age Americans can barely recall a time when the country wasn't at war.

Despite the disappointing results, there's still a broad consensus among U.S. political and military leaders, including the two leading presidential candidates, that the battle against radical Islamist groups must continue — even if they can't say how and when these wars might end.

But critics argue the U.S. has precious little to show for sustained involvement in a region that's going through a period of historic upheaval and, by most every measure, is worse off today than 15 years ago. And the longer the wars last, the less clear U.S. goals become, Rosa Brooks, a Georgetown University law professor who previously worked at the Pentagon, says in her new book, How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything. "It has grown steadily more difficult to define our enemies," writes Brooks. "When you wage war against a nameless, stateless, formless enemy — an enemy with goals as uncertain as its methods — it's hard to see how that war can ever end."

The U.S. has tried multiple approaches that, in general terms, have been large, medium and small. President George W. Bush went large, launching two major ground wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that proved far more costly and complicated than advertised.

President Obama went small, pledging to wrap up American involvement in those two wars. He declared an end to U.S. combat operations in Iraq at the end of 2011, and in Afghanistan at the end of 2014. But with the rise of the Islamic State, U.S. forces are back to Iraq as part of a bombing campaign. Obama's original timetable for a full departure from Afghanistan has been delayed repeatedly. And after seeking to avoid direct involvement in Syria, the president announced a bombing campaign that's now 2 years old.

As Obama's days in office wind down, the approach can now be described as the medium track. The U.S. is waging three wars, though on a much smaller scale than the two he inherited. "It's hard to argue that Obama's policies have been successful if you just look at where we are on the ground," Joby Warrick, a Washington Post reporter and the author of Black Flags: The Rise Of ISIS, told NPR's Morning Edition. "A lot of things that could have gone wrong have gone wrong in the Middle East under his watch."

On a typical day, U.S. war planes strike in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, while relying on a relatively small number of U.S. forces to work with local forces on the ground. The U.S. now has

fewer than 10,000 forces in Afghanistan, a bit more than 5,000 in Iraq and a few hundred in Syria.

This has been politically palatable. Compared to ground wars, the costs and casualties are low. Republicans and some Democrats complain about the specifics, but there's no strong opposition. And Obama and his supporters can point to some progress. In Afghanistan, the country's army does the fighting on the ground and has kept the Taliban at bay, even if the radical Islamist group remains a potent and deadly force in many parts of the country. In Iraq, the Islamic State has been driven out of several cities and is increasingly vulnerable in the shrinking number of places it still controls, such as Mosul. In Syria, ISIS is also on the defensive, though it still holds large swaths of territory in a multi-sided war.

Yet no one is forecasting a near-term resolution to any of these conflicts. This has saddled the U.S. with the burdens of war, yet offers little prospect of a clear success, argues Bacevich, the Boston University professor. "The United States chose neither to contain nor to crush, instead charting a course midway in between. In effect, it chose aggravation," Bacevich writes in his recent book, America's War For The Greater Middle East. The instrument of that aggravation: drones. In a word, this is why the U.S. has gravitated toward this type of limited warfare. The advance of drone technology and Obama's desire for a smaller US footprint have merged into a policy designed to deliver powerful blows at minimal cost in dollars and lives. It's clear why this is an attractive option.

But when NPR recently asked Gen. David Goldfein, the Air Force chief of staff, if Air Force capacity was keeping up with the demands it faced, he said: "Actually, it isn't, in many ways. You know, we have far more mission than we have Air Force today, which is something that we're dealing with." The Air Force now has 1,200 pilots flying unmanned aircraft — its largest single category of pilots — and yet the demands keep growing, Goldfein said. "We have struggled over the last several years to stabilize this [pilot] community because the demand signal has been so great," he said. "In many ways, it's become the oxygen the joint force breathes, right? If you have it, you don't think about it. But if you don't have it, it's all you think about and you want more of it."

While drones are a potent weapon in striking key targets, they have not been decisive in resolving wars. "The U.S. government persists in thinking it can solve complicated political problems through air power, and especially through 'targeted assassinations' in distant lands," Harvard professor Stephen Walt writes in Foreign Policy. He argues drones can be useful in some limited instances, like pushing back the Islamic State in parts of Libya, though not as a comprehensive approach in places like Afghanistan or Syria. "But because both the Pentagon and the CIA are committed to these tools, and because they give presidents a cheap way to 'do something' without putting a lot of boots on the ground, this reflexive response to messy problems in faraway places is becoming another bad habit," Walt argues.

Congress, meanwhile, gave President Bush the right to use military force against those responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks. President Obama is still relying on that 15-year-old measure

for the current wars, though much of the focus is now on the Islamic State, a group that didn't exist in 2001.

As the wars have dragged on, Congress has grown increasingly reluctant to formally take a position. The most glaring example is Syria, which the U.S. has been bombing for two years without Congress weighing in. And that 2001 measure, the Authorization for Use of Military Force, was invoked by the administration just last month to justify airstrikes against the Islamic State in Libya. Congress didn't object, even though its brief resolution was written 15 years ago and directed at different groups operating on a different continent.

"Americans increasingly treat the military as an all-purpose tool for fixing anything that happens to be broken," writes Brooks. "Terrorists and insurgents in Syria are beheading journalists and aid workers? Afghanistan's economy is a mess? The Egyptian army needs to be encouraged to respect democracy? An earthquake in Japan has endangered nuclear power plants? Call the military."

VA estimates 107,000 vets have undiagnosed/untreated hepatitis CStars and Stripes, by Nikki Wentling, Sept 6, 20166

WASHINGTON — With more than $2 billion appropriated for new hepatitis C drugs during the past two years, the Department of Veterans Affairs treated 65,000 veterans for the virus, but about 87,000 remain untreated and an additional 20,000 are undiagnosed. VA officials are seeking $1.5 billion in the 2017 fiscal year to treat more veterans, a group in which hepatitis C is especially prevalent.Funding for the latest drugs, which have a high cure rate, is not the biggest problem, said David Ross, director of the VA’s HIV, Hepatitis and Public Health Pathogens Programs. Instead, its challenge is finding ways to help veterans who are unwilling or unable to be screened or treated for the contagious virus, which lives in liver cells and is the most common blood-borne disease in the U.S. Until two years ago, the disease was considered incurable. “In some ways, the veterans already treated were the easiest to treat,” Ross said.

Ross and Tom Berger, a leader within Vietnam Veterans of America, said there are several reasons that some veterans don’t volunteer to be screened or decline treatment. Some distrust the VA, are concerned with the stigma of hepatitis C and drug use, and fear traditional drug treatment with severe side effects, they said. Some veterans who test positive for hepatitis C suffer from mental illness or substance abuse — issues that “affect their ability to come in and take treatments reliably,” Ross said. For those veterans, he said, the VA needs to boost its psychological or psychosocial care. “We’re running into issues of veterans more frequently having these other issues,” Ross said. “If someone has alcohol or substance abuse issues, we want to integrate care for those conditions as well to get better outcomes. We need those support systems.”

Vulnerable Vietnam vets

The VA and Vietnam Veterans of America are specifically targeting Vietnam War-era veterans born between 1945 and 1965. In that group, 8 percent of veterans screened have tested positive for the virus. In comparison, about 1.6 percent of the general U.S. population is

estimated to have it. The VA has screened 73 percent of Vietnam War-era veterans enrolled in the VA system. There are about 700,000 veterans born between 1945 and 1965 who still must be screened, and the department is estimating about 20,000 of them have undiagnosed hepatitis C.Some blame the virus on unsterilized medical syringes used by the military during the Vietnam War to inject vaccines. While that is “possible,” Ross said, there hasn’t been a documented case. Blood exposure during combat is another concern, since transfusions were used in great number during the war. The virus also can be sexually transmitted or through intravenous drug use, which was common in Vietnam.

The VA has started to reach out to veterans with hepatitis C to inform them that they have the resources to test and treat them, Ross said. “Facilities have for months now been taking lists and just calling people and saying, ‘Would you like to come in?’ ” he said. “We’re trying to let people know we’re very committed to doing this, and we have the resources to do it.”

Expensive choicesAt one point, hepatitis C care was about money. When a new drug called Sovaldi came on the scene in 2013, it was called a “miracle” said to work nearly 90 percent of the time with few side effects. But it came at a cost: $1,000 a pill. Insurance companies balked at the price; doctors were encouraged to reserve the drug for the most dire hepatitis C patients. Until last spring, only VA patients with a progressed stage of hepatitis C were prescribed the drug. People who didn’t meet the criteria were redirected to Veterans Choice, an often-criticized program in which veterans see non-VA health care providers at the VA’s expense.

Marine Corps veteran Hugh O'Brian, famous for Wyatt Earp role, dies at 91Stars and Stripes -- Edited article written by Travis M. Andrews for the Washington Post, Sep 6, 2016

Hugh O'Brian was one of the forefathers of the modern Western, maintained a headline-generating love life and was (maybe) one of the youngest Marine drill instructors in American history. For all that, he is most beloved for creating a global network of leadership programs, known as HOBY, that has produced 470,000 service-oriented stewards.

On Monday, he died at the age of 91 from a variety of unspecified health issues. Originally born Hugh Charles Krampe, he changed his name to O'Brien (from his mother's side), because it was prone to less misspelling. "They left the 'm' out of Krampe,'" he told the Los Angeles Times in 2013, referring to the mistake made in his first Playbill. "I decided right then I didn't want to go through life being known as Huge Krape, so I decided to take my mother's family name, O'Brien." But they misspelled that, too, as "O'Brian," and "I just decided to stay with that."

In 1955, he landed his breakout role as the titular character in "The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp". He played Earp in the all-American style of a Western lawman, first seen by Gary Cooper in "High Noon." As the 1957 New York Times piece stated, "it portrays a man of

thought and conscience, a nonpareil triggerman who hates to kill." O'Brian cared about making the show realistic — he called it the "most authentic Western series that was on the air."

Although O'Brian was known to most as Wyatt Earp, those who he most inspired knew him as an inspirational leader and a mentor through a program he founded in 1958: The Hugh O'Brian Youth Leadership organization, known as HOBY for short. O'Brian founded HOBY in 1958, after being inspired by the work of the Nobel Prize-winning Albert Schweitzer. More than 470,000 people have attended the program. Its cornerstone is a week-long seminar each summer that teaches leadership skills to high school sophomores. The program began in Los Angeles and now includes 70 seminars across the country. At the end of each summer, students from those statewide seminars gather with other "ambassadors" from around the globe for the World Leadership Congress — a week-long program that expands upon the HOBY vision.The program's alumni include some famous names, including former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who wrote in a statement, "Hugh O'Brian was far more than a Hollywood actor to me. Hugh O'Brian's impact (is) a large part of why I became governor of my state."

Drones, not dirt: Making farm careers cool for vetsMilitary Times, by: Leo Shane III, August 23, 2016

Federal officials have spent the last few years developing new resources to help put veterans into agriculture jobs. Now, they’re working to make those jobs look cool.

Officials from the Department of Agriculture on Tuesday unveiled new plans to better explain and market a host of industry jobs to recently separated service members, calling it a growth area that fits nicely with the skills and training of those veterans.

“People need to know this is about more than just handling livestock,” said Lanon Baccam, deputy undersecretary for agricultural services at USDA. “This is about engineering, drone technology, data analysis and more. Breaking down the walls is key.”

Earlier this year, department officials partnered with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on promoting agriculture as a potential career path for troops after they leave the military. Now, the officials are shifting that work to highlight many of the industry's cutting-edge agriculture jobs, through a new web portal and jobs site. 

The goal is both to help veterans find work and to help industry officials find workers.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, who spoke to corporate officials and

veterans advocates during an unveiling event Tuesday, said that current training programs and job applicants are expected to fill only about half of the industry’s open jobs in the next decade.

Meanwhile, department officials have raised concerns about the long-term viability of domestic food production in the country and the significant drop in America’s rural population in recent decades. The average age of farmers in America is 58, according to USDA data. There are twice as many farmers in America older than 65 than farmers under the age of 35. 

Vilsack said those challenges point toward encouraging veterans to take an opportunity to serve their country again, in an agriculture career.

“These folks understand duty, responsibility and teamwork,” he said. “Anyone who hires them benefits from the training they received.”

Mike Michaud , assistant secretary of labor for veterans employment and training, said his agency has worked to help connect veterans to those openings. But chamber officials acknowledged that most veterans’ perception of agriculture jobs involves shovels and dirt.

Industry leaders want to redefine the potential opportunities as careers with flexibility and plenty of cool gadgets. That includes jobs like drone operators, who help collect data on crop growth and spray pesticides for farms.

The new effort will also include collection more stories of veterans in agriculture, to better relate how their skills and experiences translate into the civilian work.

More information on veteran careers in agriculture will be posted on the Chamber’s Hiring Our Heroes web site. 

Past deadline, feds see no end in sight for veteran homeless crisisStars and Stripes, by Nikki Wentling, August 26, 2016

WASHINGTON — Federal agencies now say they cannot predict the end of homelessness among veterans, a national crisis that President Barack Obama hoped to stop by 2015.

Six years after Obama set his goal, he announced Aug. 1 that veteran homelessness in the country had decreased 47 percent since 2010. “We knew that those were all going to be tough goals to achieve,” said Ann Oliva, deputy assistant secretary for special needs at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. “But we thought they were doable, and if we made the right policy decisions and had the right data and resources we needed, we could progress, which is what we did.”

Yet Oliva said she couldn’t give a date when homelessness for veterans across the country would end, though agencies attempt to put more resources toward the effort and more cities are meeting federally established benchmarks that show progress in housing homeless veterans.

Though the 2015 goal was missed, Randy Brown of the nonprofit National Coalition for Homeless Veterans said Obama attracted attention to the issue and created a sense of urgency behind the effort, which increased funding to record highs. In most years since 2008, Congress has appropriated about $75 million toward a voucher program to house homeless veterans. However, lawmakers allocated $50 million in 2011 and $60 million in 2016.

HUD and the Department of Veterans Affairs, the two federal agencies most involved with battling the problem, recently announced funding for the first half of 2016 -- approximately $39 million that the agencies say has the potential to house about 5,300 veterans. “When it was announced that the goal was to end veteran homelessness in five years, I think that was taken by everyone as, ‘Can we actually do that?’” Brown said. “But that goal and the serious efforts to put a plan behind it and put resources behind it changed the landscape from managing homelessness to actually ending homelessness.”

The latest point-in-time count, which are compiled every January, showed there were about 40,000 homeless veterans left to house, and 13,000 of those veterans live on the streets, according to VA and HUD estimates released Aug. 1. Oliva said there are most likely more than 40,000, because the count didn’t include veterans who are newly homeless or veterans who have vouchers and can’t find housing. A lack of affordable housing across the United States is one problem, Olivia said. But the agencies also “haven’t made as much progress as we would have liked,” she said, because more veterans are becoming homeless than was estimated when Obama announced the goal. HUD estimates the number of veterans who are becoming homeless each year by gathering information from VA medical centers and homeless organizations. Oliva said the estimates were “steeped in internal modeling” and made using assumptions, and won’t be released publicly. “We thought it was going to decrease over time,” she said. “That didn’t play out the way we thought it would.”

But the latest round of funding toward the effort was made just days after the city of Austin, Texas, announced it met the benchmarks to declare it had “effectively ended homelessness among veterans.” However, the designation comes with several conditions and doesn’t mean there are no homeless veterans left in Austin. “Well, no, it doesn’t mean that. We’re going to have vets that find themselves in that position,” Austin Mayor Steve Adler said. “The way it’s

defined is that you have removed the backlog for social services, such that we can identify homeless veterans and immediately start accessing those services.”

Communities declaring they have ended homelessness for veterans is based on a set of criteria that the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness established. The criteria aims at ensuring veteran homelessness is “brief, rare and non-recurring.”

Brown said the criteria should be thought of as minimum standards. A key is being able to house veterans quickly. Communities must find veterans permanent housing within 90 days after they’re identified as homeless. Also, the number of veterans in a community who found homes must be greater than the number becoming homeless. The benchmarks make exceptions for instances in which a veteran is offered housing, but refuses it.

Austin is the latest of about 30 cities and counties to meet the benchmarks. The first city to do so was New Orleans in early 2015. Oliva said HUD is continuously reviewing data from other communities that think they have met the requirements. “There needs to continue to be urgency to get these systems in place. That’s a new minimum accepted level of services,” Brown said. “And once they reach that level, it’s not a matter of, ‘OK, we’re done.’ They have to adjust to the needs of veterans in their communities.”

Adler said Austin housed 682 veterans in slightly more than two years and can house veterans within 90 days after they identify them. Now that the city achieved the certification, agencies will attempt to shorten that time, said Ann Howard, director of Austin-based Ending Community Homelessness Coalition. “I know there are some veterans who are on a path to housing that are not yet housed,” she said. “That’s sort of the nature of the beast. We just keep going. We just keep housing them.”

The city is using 450 federal vouchers to house veterans, Howard said, equating to millions of dollars in federal funding. She said it was difficult to estimate the total amount Austin has received from the federal government because the ongoing costs of federal vouchers depend on whether the veteran has a family and where they’re living.

In June, HUD and VA said $38 million would be made available for vouchers and ongoing clinical and supportive services from the VA. On Monday, the agencies announced they would add nearly $1 million.

HUD gathers data on homeless veterans and determines which communities should receive vouchers, and how many. The cities benefitting from the founding announced Monday are: Hayward, Calif.; Martinez, Calif.; Decatur, Ga.; East Point, Ga.; Paducah, Ky.; Kenton County, Ky.; Grand Rapids, Mich.; Minot, N.D.; Harrisburg; Pa., and Knoxville, Tenn.

The most recent statistics show 85,205 vouchers have been awarded and slightly more than 114,000 homeless veterans have been served through the program since 2008. Of those permanently housed, 13 percent have dropped out of the program, Oliva said. What’s not tracked is whether those dropouts are caused by positive change – veterans finding housing without assistance – or not. HUD and the VA are working on a report that will identify the reasons

people leave the assistance program, she said. “Certainly we’re on the right path,” Oliva said of the overall effort. “We need continued bipartisan support on making sure our resources continue, and local support and political will to make it happen.”

How The VA Is Partnering With The Private Sector To Solve Its Biggest Problems TaskandPurpose.com by James Clark, August 16, 2016

The VA held an innovation demonstration in Washington, D.C., showcasing 33 new projects being field-tested across the country.

For the last year, the Department of Veteran Affairs has been trying to implement some of the

private sector’s best practices, namely innovation and entrepreneurship. On Aug. 15, a mix of

employees, veterans, and senior leaders in the department gathered to discuss the results of those

efforts during an innovation demonstration in Washington, D.C.

The main focus was on the VA’s Innovators Network, which launched eight sites across the

country over the course of the year. Innovation specialists at these sites work with other VA

offices and clinics, providing training, support, and seed funding to help get their ideas off the

ground. The VA has innovation sites in Portland, Oregon; San Francisco, California; Milwaukee,

Wisconsin; Atlanta, Georgia; Chillicothe, Ohio; Boston, Massachusetts; and two in Mississippi.

“We wanted to arm them with the tools through innovation to really see and solve problems and use tools that you see often in the private sector, like human-centered design and entrepreneurship, but bring that to the VA,” said Andrea Ippolito, who leads the Innovators Network at the VA, in an interview with Task & Purpose.

Support for new projects follows a tiered system reminiscent of the startup industry. Funding is

broken down into three tiers: Spark funding allots between $5,000 and $10,000 to get a proof of

concept off the ground; seed grants are awarded after enough evidence is gathered to validate

that a concept works, and amounts to roughly $50,000 to help pay for a pilot project; and spread

grants are between $100,000 and 500,000, and are used to expand a program to other sites.

“For us, innovation is not just important to do, it’s actually essential,” said David Shulkin, the

Undersecretary of Health for the VA, during his opening remarks. “Much like every healthcare

organization, if you are involved in the delivery of medical services to Americans, you have to

be rethinking what you’re doing, reinventing, and innovating to be able to survive. Those that

don’t will find themselves increasingly irrelevant.”

At the demonstration, 33 projects were presented, some of which are in their early stages, like

the one in Jackson, Mississippi, that provides emergency room care for patients with acute

mental health issues. Other projects and innovations were more tech-based, such as the

smartphone app developed by the VA in Atlanta, Georgia, that allows patients to receive cardiac

rehabilitation and support from home.

A few even focused on reshaping the way their VA clinic works, by making their veteran

patients the driving force behind their own treatment. “When we noticed that veterans weren’t

responding to the mental health treatment the way we wanted to see, we conducted focus groups

to figure out what we could do better,” explained Grishelda Hogan, a founder of one of the

projects showcased that day.

This led Hogan to start the Center for Integrated Wellness and Self-Expression in Boston,

Massachusetts. The program is co-run by both the veterans who attend and the VA staff,

explained Hogan. The studio offers alternative methods to help with mental health and wellness,

as well as doubling as a kind of communal hub for attendees. “They wanted a program they

could attend not only when something was wrong, but when it was right,” Hogan told Task &

Purpose. “They wanted to share with their peers; they want to come in on the day they need the

service; they don’t want to wait for the service; and they wanted an alternative pathway to mental

health and wellness.”

Long Live the Long-Range Standoff NukePresident Obama should think twice before unilaterally giving up leverage in nuclear-reduction talksWall Street Journal, Aug. 26, Pg. A9 | Matthew R. Costlow

As his presidency enters its final months, President Obama is considering sweeping changes to U.S. nuclear policy. One consequential choice is whether to cancel the Long-Range Standoff (LRSO) weapon, a nuclear air-launched cruise missile. The president should resist the temptation. Canceling the LRSO would weaken America's nuclear deterrent and give up future negotiating leverage, making the president's vision of a "nuclear free world" even less plausible.

Opponents of this next-generation missile, such as former Secretary of Defense William Perry and former Assistant Secretary of Defense Andy Weber, contend that cancellation "could lay the foundation for a global ban" on nuclear cruise missiles. This bold claim runs contrary to the lessons history has taught about unilateral nuclear reductions.

The U.S. tried this approach to reducing nuclear cruise missiles in 1991. The Presidential Nuclear Initiatives unilaterally withdrew nuclear cruise missiles from U.S. naval forces while "urging" the Soviets

to mirror U.S. actions. President George H.W. Bush hoped that the U.S.-Soviet relationship could enter a new phase based on mutual trust. He said the U.S. expected "our bold initiatives to meet with equally bold steps on the Soviet side."

Soviet and later Russian leaders made pronouncements in response, but they have marked the end of progress. For two decades, and despite all the promises, Russia has been modernizing its nuclear cruise missiles. In December 2015, Russia deployed conventional variants of these missiles over Syria. President Vladimir Putin then reminded the world that the missiles could be fitted with "special nuclear warheads." The U.S. unilateral gambit failed.

The Kremlin has repeatedly rebuffed U.S. supplications for further nuclear arms control because Moscow has no incentive. With every new call in the U.S. to kill the LRSO program, Mr. Putin moves closer to reducing America's nuclear bargaining leverage -- and to having a near-monopoly on nuclear cruise missiles. Who believes canceling the LRSO would lead Mr. Putin to become an international peacenik and renounce nuclear cruise missiles?

The LRSO missile is also necessary to maintain U.S. national security. In a rare display of unity, Pentagon and State Department officials agree the weapon is needed to replace the current rapidly aging cruise missile. If existing strategic threats do not diminish, or get worse, the U.S. would retain an important weapon for deterring Russia and assuring NATO allies in Europe. If security improves, the U.S. retains a significant bargaining tool. LRSO opponents appear willing to give up that prospect in their unrequited search for Russian love and respect.

While previous presidents have reduced the role and number of nuclear weapons in U.S. defenses, each has also endorsed a strategy of hedging against unpredictable and worsening security threats. The era of increasing threats has arrived, and policy makers must adjust again. Killing the LRSO would be an unforced error in a world with little room for mistakes.

--Mr. Costlow is a policy analyst at the National Institute for Public Policy

DEFENSE DEPARTMENT RELEASES NEW TRICARE TRANSGENDER POLICYMilitary.com | Sep 06, 2016 | by Amy Bushatz

The U.S. Defense Department on Tuesday released a new Tricare policy for expanding transgender treatments for military family members and retirees.

The coverage change had been in the works and was first reported by Military.com. The move gives the health care system's regional contractors the go-ahead to cover some transgender care starting Oct. 6.

The policy covers mental health counseling and hormone therapy for "gender dysphoria," the clinical term for those who identify as a gender different from the one

they were assigned at birth. It prohibits hormone therapy coverage for children under 16. "Because a diagnosis of gender dysphoria in a prepubertal child may resolve [a majority of childhood cases do not persist into adolescence], endocrine treatment of prepubertal children ... is not authorized," the policy states.

Prior to the release, some transgender Tricare treatment has been covered through waivers provided by Navy Vice Adm. Raquel Bono, head of the Defense Health Agency. A ban on openly serving transgender troops was lifted by Defense Department officials in June.

By Oct. 1, officials will issue a handbook for commanders and all those affected by the new policy, as well as medical guidance for providing transition care to transgender troops. As part of the new policy, military medical facilities will provide hormone treatment, counseling and sex-change surgery when deemed "medically necessary." Sex-change surgery is explicitly prohibited in Tricare's new policy, unless it is treating "ambiguous genitalia which is documented to have been present at birth," the policy states. Tricare is prohibited by law from covering the procedure, according to a Defense Department spokesman