Our goddamned government killed another Vet.

Homeless Marine Veteran Jailed For Trespassing ‘Baked To Death’ In His Cell | ThinkProgress

Murdough’s mother, who described him as a “lovely, caring guy” who would “give you the shirt off his back,” said she didn’t even learn of his death until a month later, when she was called by the Associated Press.

via Homeless Marine Veteran Jailed For Trespassing 'Baked To Death' In His Cell | ThinkProgress.

Despite rising related incarceration and in-custody deaths, our Veterans Administration has not yet confirmed the link between Traumatic Brain Injury, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and epilepsy.

As this is hardly the first “link” the VA has chosen to ignore rather than acknowledge and treat, it’s crystal clear that it’s time for a drastic change.

Our Vets need and deserve in-community care from physicians with no military agenda.

Our Vets need no co-pay Medicare, and they needed it the minute Traumatic Brain Injury became more common to returning Vets than head colds … eleven years ago.

It would have forced medical professionals nationwide to see just how common the TBI/PTSD/epilepsy connection is: Any head wound significant enough to permanently disrupt the brain’s electronics is certainly significant enough to – DUH!!! – cause significant emotional trauma.

Given its heinous record of letting thousands of Vets die before it admits the obvious, all that should be saved from the Veterans Administration is its ability to negotiate drug prices – which should have been rolled in to Medicare long, long ago, and most certainly would have if so many legislators weren’t so eager to keep Medicare’s costs artificially high on behalf of Dark Money benefactors, many of whom enjoy the negative taxation of having subsidies received wildly exceeding taxes paid, many of whom are wildly profiting from our status as The Incarceration Nation.

That least-discussed aspect of Dark Money – just how much of it consists of unearned taxpayer subsidies – must become the most-discussed aspect of Dark Money.

It’s how to unwind the world’s biggest ball of strings and find the puppeteers controlling them. And our legislators.

My Florida U.S. Senators didn’t vote for Vets this week.

What did yours do??

[Update 3/26/14: It came to my attention that Jerome Murdoch was suffering from schizophrenia rather than PTSD. It doesn’t make the circumstances of his death more acceptable, or change the logical conclusion that Vets need and deserve no co-pay Medicare instead of an agenda-laden Veterans Administration. All it does make me even less confident that Veterans are being thanked for their service in any meaningful way.]