"The Trump administration's callous efforts to deny veterans the care they need are outrageous. I've been leading the effort in New Mexico to secure critical benefits for Vietnam veterans suffering from health conditions associated with their exposure to Agent Orange. I have called on the Trump administration to stop denying scientific evidence and expand the VA's list of medical conditions associated with exposure."

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Retired Army 1st Sgt. Jim Rogers served 27 years in the military, including in the Vietnam War, where he was exposed to Agent Orange. Rogers suffers from hyperthyroidism and hypertension, health conditions linked to Agent Orange exposure, but not currently recognized as service-connected illnesses by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).

Hundreds of thousands of veterans suffer from diseases linked to Agent Orange exposure, but many aren't receiving the care they need. In 2017, then-VA Secretary David Shulkin moved to add bladder cancer, Parkinson's-like symptoms, and hypothyroidism to the list of Agent Orange-related conditions eligible for benefits, but the Trump administration's Office of Management and Budget reportedly rejected this recommendation over cost.

My office has worked with several veterans like Rogers who continue to live with the effects of their exposure to Agent Orange. His story was featured on KOB.

The Trump administration's callous efforts to deny these veterans the care they need are outrageous. I've been leading the effort in New Mexico to secure critical benefits for Vietnam veterans suffering from health conditions associated with their exposure to Agent Orange. And I have called on the Trump administration to stop denying scientific evidence and expand the VA's list of medical conditions associated with exposure to Agent Orange.

As your United States Senator, I am committed to keeping America's promise to all our veterans so that when our troops return home, they receive the health care and benefits they have earned. If you or a family member is having trouble filing a claim, receiving benefits, accessing health benefits or military records, replacing medals, or other veterans issues, you can contact my office by calling (505) 346-6601 or visit the Veterans Resources Center on my website for assistance.

Sincerely,

MARTIN HEINRICH

United States Senator

Authors Website: https://www.facebook.com/groups/592985284186083/

Authors Bio:

Early in the 2016 Primary campaign, I started a Facebook group: Bernie Sanders: Advice and Strategies to Help Him Win! As the primary season advanced, we shifted the focus to advancing Bernie's legislation in the Senate, particularly the most critical one, to protect Oak Flat, sacred to the San Carlos Apaches, in the Tonto National Forest, from John McCain's efforts to privatize this national forest and turn it over to Rio Tinto Mining, an Australian mining company whose record by comparison makes Monsanto look like altar boys, to be developed as North America's largest copper mine. This is monstrous and despicable, and yet only Bernie's Save Oak Flat Act (S2242) stands in the way of this diabolical plan.

We added "2020" to the title.


I am an art gallery owner in Santa Fe since 1980 selling Native American painting and NM landscapes, specializing in modern Native Ledger Art.


I have always been intensely involved in politics, going back to the mid's 1970's, being a volunteer lobbyist in the US Senate for the Secretary General of the United Nations, then a "snowball-in-hell" campaign for US Senate in NM in the late 70's, and for the past 20 years have worked extensively to pressure the FDA to rescind its approval for aspartame, the neurotoxic artificial sweetener metabolized as formaldehyde. This may be becoming a reality to an extent in California, which, under Proposition 65, is considering requiring a mandatory Carcinogen label on all aspartame products, although all bureaucracies seem to stall under any kind of corporate pressure.


Bills to ban aspartame were in the State Senates of New Mexico and Hawaii, but were shut down by corporate lobbyists (particularly Monsanto lobbyists in Hawaii and Coca Cola lobbyists in New Mexico).


For several years, I was the editor of New Mexico Sun News, and my letters to the editor and op/eds in 2016 have appeared in NM, California, Wisconsin, New York, Maryland, the Christian Science Monitor, USA Today, and many international papers, on the subject of consumer protection. Our best issue was 10 days before Obama won in 2008, when we published a special early edition of the paper declaring that Obama Wins! This was the top story on CNN for many hours, way back then....


My highest accomplishments thus far are

1. a plan to create a UN Secretary General's Pandemic Board of Inquiry, a plan that is in the works and might be achieved even before the 75th UN General Assembly in September 2020.


2. Now history until the needs becomes clear to the powers who run the United Nations: a UN Resolution to create a new Undersecretary General for Nutrition and Consumer Protection, strongly supported ten years ago by India and 53 cosponsoring nations, but shut down by the US Mission to the UN in 2008. To read it, google UNITED NATIONS UNDERSECRETARY GENERAL FOR NUTRITION, please.


These are not easy battles, any of them, and they require a great deal of political and journalistic focus. OpEdNews is the perfect place for those who have a lot to say, so much that they exceed the limiting capacities of their local and regional newspapers. Trying to go beyond the regional papers seems to require some kind of "inside" credentials, as if you had to be in a club of corporate-accepted writers, and if not, you are "from somewhere else," a sad state of corporate induced xenophobia that should have no place in America in 2020!

This should be a goal for every author with something current to say: breaking through yet another glass ceiling, and get your say said in editorial pages all over America. Certainly, this was a tool that was essentially ignored in 2016, and cannot be ignored in the big elections of 2020.


In my capacity as Editor of the Santa Fe Sun News, Fox interviewed Mikhail Gorbachev: http://www.prlog.org/10064349-mikhail-gorbachev