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JIM STRICKLAND: A MILITARY VETERAN'S GUIDE TO

DISABILITY COMPENSATION AND PENSION BENEFITS --

"I wanted to give the veteran simple access to knowledge

as a tool to use to improve his or her life."

knol  =  a unit of knowledge

NOTE FROM LARRY SCOTT:

It is my great pleasure to know and work with Jim Strickland.

When Jim first started talking about writing a guide to filing a VA claim, I told him to get to work and write faster :-) ... veterans need this information.

Jim and I share the same philosophy:  Information to help a veteran file a claim should be absolutely free. 

So, just like the VA Watchdog dot Org site, there should be nothing to buy ... nothing to join ... no fees ... no logons ... just quality information upon which veterans can rely ... and Jim has provided a guide that meets all of those expectations.

Thanks, Jim!  What you and your co-authors have created will help innumerable veterans.

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by Jim Strickland

The explosive growth of the Internet couldn't have been predicted by the most visionary science fiction writer. Until the 1980s, the thought of having a computer for personal use was so far fetched an idea as to be laughable. If we wanted to learn, we went turned to books.

If we needed to communicate, we telephoned or wrote a letter. If we wanted our communication to have a professional look, we used a typewriter. With a little luck we could use an electric typewriter that would automatically make mistakes for us, saving us the effort of inventing our own errors. A product known as "White-Out" stained everything, even the ashtrays next to the manual typewriters in public libraries.

In those "good old days", if we needed information about law or government rules and regulations, we would trudge off to a library and sift through the reference sections hoping to find what we needed. If we got lucky, we could copy our treasure page by page on a cantankerous machine made by the Xerox folks.

(If you're under the age of 45 or so, I've probably already lost you.)

Fast forward to the 1990s and we were learning more about a thing called the World Wide Web. There was a company called AOL that seemed to own whatever WWW was and they were determined to pave the universe with shiny disks that offered everything imaginable for free as long as you turned over your credit card to them. A little known outfit called Microsoft had made it possible for small businesses to use computers and even some wealthier people were installing them in their homes.

Access to information never dreamed possible was a reality. It was apparent that there was way too much information available. A lot of the information available was irrelevant. To sift through it all required a thing called a "search engine". Many search engines were tried, most came up short.

Then along came a couple of Stanford PhD candidates who had an idea. They devised a method of organizing information found on the WWW (by now called the Internet) that would offer it up to you by its relevance, filtered in a way that made it useful to you. Their little company, Google, had categorized 26 million pages of information by 1998 and by 2008 Google announced that they had catalogued over one trillion unique pages.

Prior to these events, the American military veteran who needed some help with a benefit from the Veterans Administration was often lost with no reliable source to turn to.

Today, all the information necessary to file a claim and reap the rewards is available with an inexpensive home computer connected to the "information superhighway". The ability to access all of this isn't without some pitfalls. When a veteran searches for VA benefits information today there are usually hundreds of thousands of choices presented from any search.

Much of what is available is copied up from legal texts or government sources and the average user can't understand it. The worst trap of all is the amount of misinformation available. The access to computers is a double edged sword. Almost anyone anywhere can post to web sites and say anything that comes to mind.

All too often, opinions are posted as facts. A veteran who has been denied a benefit may post a diatribe of why it happened to him and how the law was broken by the VA and what he is going to do about it.

Advice comes from people on posting boards or chat rooms who are unknown to you except for pseudonyms or "handles" that reflect some mysterious and often heroic military experience they've had. Some of the advice is reasonable, much of it can cost a veteran those benefits and lead to real trouble.

When I started writing advice for veterans a few years ago I had some decisions to make. I first decided that I wouldn't be anonymous and hide behind an avatar and a handle. My reader deserves to know who I am and see my face. Then I knew that I had to work hard to check everything I wrote to ensure that it was right. It frightened me to think that I may offer a bit of advice to a veteran and cause more problems with my mistake.

As the task grew and more readers became interested, I realized I needed to streamline the process of getting information ... knowledge ... to interested veterans. By 2008 I couldn't answer every email personally with the detail the veteran deserved. I needed a repository for knowledge about veterans benefits that would be easy to read and comprehend, easy to search through and as accurate and focused as possible.

I wanted to give the veteran simple access to knowledge as a tool to use to improve his or her life. I was writing a lot and had a lot of shared knowledge but the "simple access" wasn't all that simple.

Google made a quiet announcement in the summer of 2008 that they were offering a new place on the Internet for writers to organize their knowledge. Each author who had unique information or expertise to share could access the site and write a "knol" ... defined by Google as a "unit of knowledge".

I began writing my knol in July of 2008 with a goal of publishing it by September. It grew and I knew I needed coauthors and contributors who had expert skills and knowledge far beyond my own. I invited 4 lawyers to join me. Karl Kazmierczak, Robin Kazmierczak, Katrina Eagle and John Forristal are lawyers who work exclusively with veterans who are disabled. These lawyers are to be commended for their efforts. They are giving their knowledge and expertise with no thought of remuneration. Their goal is to ensure America's warriors are treated fairly and with the respect we all deserve.

In the final analysis my success has depended on the guidance and generosity of Larry Scott at VA Watchdog and Clairice Still at The Veterans Voice. They've each offered me bandwidth on the Internet and printer's ink on a published newspaper. Without them I'd be typing advice to myself, a lonely effort.

This knol isn't finished. It won't ever be finished. It's a constant work in progress to provide you with the knowledge required to rise up and speak for yourself...with the voice of a veteran who knows their rights.

I'm proud to introduce you to my coauthors, my friends, my editors and pleased to invite you to our knol. We hope you'll find it useful. Your comments and suggestions are always welcome.

A MILITARY VETERAN'S GUIDE TO DISABILITY COMPENSATION AND PENSION BENEFITS is here...

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posted by Larry Scott
Founder and Editor
VA Watchdog dot Org

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