The Philip DeFranco Show - PDS 11.12 Jeffree Star, Miley Cyrus, Trump and Everything California Fires, & More

Episode Date: November 12, 2018

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Sup you beautiful bastards, hope you're having a fantastic Monday. Welcome back to the Philip DeFranco Show and let's just jump into it. And the first thing we're gonna talk about today is we actually have a special guest host today. Uah! His name is Carl DeFranco, he's a little young, he's a little green. Got, uh, some interesting thoughts. They're not fantastically pronounced thoughts, or you could argue they're not even fully words. I dig the vibe.

Does that sound good? You are just so confused. You just see yourself. Alright, this isn't gonna work out. I'm sorry. Ugh! You can go that way. Your services aren't needed. Oh, no. Alright, I think I got a better, better replacement host. You ready? Yeah. Okay, um, the first thing we're gonna talk about today is what? The VA?

Yeah. What happened with the VA? I don't know. Well, okay, well you just, that's half the job really. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Bye. Thanks really Bye thanks for trying that was a failed experiment I guess you and I are still stuck together But with that said the actual first thing I do want to talk about today is with yesterday having been Veterans Day in the United

States on top of just saying thank you to the men and women who have served and sacrificed for this country I also think it's important to talk about how as a country we fail our veterans Well, there are many different things we could talk about how as a country we fail our veterans. While there are many different things we could talk about here, what we're gonna be talking about today is something more recent and affecting the immediate lives of veterans now. And to start things off with this story, we briefly need to look back to 1944.

And the reason for that is to mention that the US government has provided benefits to veterans since 1944, when the first so-called GI Bill of Rights was passed. At that time, veterans returning from World War II were eligible for a number of benefits, things like better mortgage rates, tuition support, business loans, and it's largely been considered a huge success,

and the GI Bill of Rights has been updated over the years to reflect the country and what veterans need, with the latest version of the GI Bill of Rights, the Forever GI Bill, passing unanimously into law in 2017. But a small part of that bill has resulted in big problems for veterans receiving their benefits. And by that, I mean many are not. So the gist of this is that while the forever GI Bill expanded veterans benefits, the Department of Veterans Affairs' technical capabilities didn't expand to keep up.

And so the result has been thousands of veterans' educational or housing stipends being delayed or just simply not delivered. And so with this, of course, you have the question, okay, well, where is the problem? Well, the Veterans Affairs Office of Information and Technology was given the responsibility of calculating the housing allowance.

And the new GI Bill required the stipend to be based on the zip code where the veteran goes to school, not where they live. That was supposed to go into effect on August 1st, but instead there were huge problems. And according to VA spokesman Terrence Hayes, there were severe critical errors during testing that resulted in incorrect payments.

So the VA decided to postpone deployment of the system and pay student veterans under 2017 rates, which also meant that they were ignoring a 1% increase in payments for 2018. But reportedly they plan to reimburse students the difference at some point in the future. And according to Patrick Murray, Deputy Director of Veterans of Foreign Wars,

after these issues with the zip code system and the VA telling schools to wait to enroll students, that's when the flood gates open. With all the delays trying to get the upgrades in the zip code processing, they suddenly got all their enrollments, which usually come during the spring across the summer. Instead, they all came a few weeks before the fall semester

and they couldn't keep up. And so the result was that by November 8th, reportedly 82,000 veterans were waiting for housing payment. And it really doesn't appear that the VA was prepared for this. And to kind of give you a frame of reference here, at the end of August, the Veterans Benefits Administration

reportedly had nearly 239,000 pending claims. That is reportedly 100,000 more claims in the same time in 2017. And what's really crazy is according to Hayes, the spokesman for the VA, they are unable to identify the number of veterans solely impacted by delayed payments until all enrollment documents are processed.

And it's really important to understand this is a massive issue that's causing problems for veterans. I mean, you have people being evicted, being kicked out of school, getting unnecessary loan and credit card debt. You have people like, for example, Shelly Roundtree, a veteran who served in the army,

who was studying marketing at Berkeley College in New York, hasn't received benefits recently. His housing stipend wasn't delivered, he was kicked out of his apartment, he's sleeping on his sister's couch, which is further away from school. And as if that wasn't enough, after moving his belongings to a storage container,

reportedly they're now in danger of being auctioned off because he can't afford it. Roundtree telling NBC News, "'I'm about to lose everything that I own "'and become homeless. "'I don't wanna be that veteran on the street "'be begging for change because I haven't received what I was promised.'" Adding, "'It's just confusing. Who is there for us? Who is representing us? Who is helping us?

Who is doing what they need to do to better the situation for veterans?' Also in October, you had Jane Wiley, a former Marine and current Air Force reservist, saying she sent her certification documents two months before but had no idea about her payments, telling NBC, "'People are homeless and starving because they can't rely on getting their benefits. If it means making VA employees stay all night, then get it done because it's better than putting families in crisis.

You can count on us to serve, but we can't count on the VA to make a deadline. Now on that note, the VA has reportedly been making attempts to resolve these issues. Hayes saying that education services has the regional processing offices and mandatory overtime to get the claims out. They've also reportedly added 202 temporary employees

to handle these pending claims, amounting to what they say is 16,000 claims process per day. Also reportedly, the House Committee on Veterans Affairs is going to hold a hearing on Wednesday to investigate these issues. And on this note, you had Phil Roe, the chair of the House Committee on Veterans Affairs, saying, this is, to be kind, a train wreck.

It's really frustrating the amount of money that Congress has appropriated for veterans, and this is the way VA has rolled it out. This discussion started over a year ago. But also an important thing to note is even without these increases, the VA might have still been unprepared. In a letter to the Secretary of Veterans Affairs,

Roe said that when visiting a VA processing center, they found rampant technological problems. Reportedly, employees told his staff that systems frequently froze and crashed, so some tasks that normally took five minutes now took 45. Employees talked about suffering blue screens of death, and managers actually had to write off 16,890 man hours due to system crashes or latency issues.

And actually, before the new GI Bill passed into law, you had Deputy Undersecretary for Economic Opportunity, Curtis Coy, saying in a House hearing, my biggest concern is two words, IT. We have an IT system in much or almost all of these sections that requires some degree of changes. But Coy actually retired this year, and the VA cut his position

and the Office of Economic Opportunity where he worked, which many VA service organizations says cuts off veterans from communicating with the organization and removes their ability to lobby higher ups about GI Bill issues. And actually on that point, according to VA numbers, there are more than 45,000 vacancies at the VA. And the department hasn't had a permanent CIO

since the previous one departed with the outgoing Obama administration. But with all of that said, ultimately that is where we are right now. It will be interesting to see what comes out of this hearing this week, if there is any sort of movement or progress. But I think really the main point here is

this is something that we need to focus on, we need to address as a country. If we can't make sure that we are looking after and providing for those that looked after our country, provided themselves to this country, I think that says a lot about us. And while I get hopeful when I see things like a 2017 report from HUD noting that since 2010,

homeless veterans have dropped by 45%, I also get concerned because even before this issue, that report says from 2016 to 2017, there was an increase. It was small, it was by 1.5%, but when we talk about that there is no new CIO, when we talk about the problems now, I get very concerned. And so with this story, because I don't think a valid question is, do you think we should be taking care of the veteran?

Instead, the question I have today is a little more targeted. If you are a veteran or you have a veteran in your family, what has your experience been with the VA? Whether it be fantastic experiences, horrific, horrible experiences, maybe something more in the middle, frustrating, things like that. Let me know any and all, because I think it's just important that we talk about these things. And then let's talk about these horrible fires in California. And there are actually three that we're going to talk about. In Southern California, you have the Woolsey Fire and the Hill Fire, which together are forced the evacuations of around a quarter million people in Ventura and LA counties. The Hill Fire is the smallest of the three. As of this morning, it had burned 4,531 acres and was 80% contained.

Meanwhile, the Woolsey Fire has burned over 91,000 acres and is only around 20% contained. That fire has destroyed an estimated 370 structures, and fire officials actually say another 57,000 are threatened. Also, the Woolsey Fire has killed at least two people, with three others injured. And according to reports, what's been making this fire difficult to tackle is you have these strong Santa Ana winds that have been fanning the flames. And authorities warn that these gusts will continue through Tuesday. But the worst of the damage that we're seeing is happening in Northern California where you have the Camp Fire. A fire that has covered nearly the entire town of Paradise, California, which is home to more than 26,000 people. And it's already considered the most destructive fire in California's history.

It's scorched through 113,000 acres. It's only 25% contained. It's also destroyed more than 6,700 structures, 15,000 more are threatened. So far, the fire has taken at least 29 lives, which actually also makes it one of the deadliest fires to ever happen in California. It has the same number of deaths as the 1933 Griffith Park fire,

but right now there are over 200 people reportedly still missing, which means that the number could rise soon. And while this situation has gained national and international attention, I think largely due to just how horrifying so much of the footage coming out is, it also appears to have gotten a lot more attention due to some of the people that have been affected by this fire, as well as some notable responses.

We've seen tons of celebrities posting on social media about their homes being in the path of the fire, right, the likes of the Kardashians, Orlando Bloom, Lady Gaga, also from the digital world, people like Shane Dawson, Jeffree Star. It's not just people saying they had to evacuate, but several people have actually lost their homes. And the thing I really appreciated from these latter posts were people like Gerard Butler and Miley Cyrus. What we saw them do is they were using this opportunity to say, hey, you look at me, look, this is what happened to me, but it also happened to so many other people. And so you saw people like Gerard Butler promoting to supportlafd.org, a place where you can support the Los Angeles Fire Department.

I also love that Jeffree Star, in addition to raising awareness, saying, you know, these places, they need donations, went and donated himself. And I appreciated Miley Cyrus promoting to several organizations where people could donate. And so before moving on to where this story goes, I do wanna take the opportunity to take advantage of the celebrity that is involved with this story and use it as a way to promote good. If you do want to help, I do wanna take the opportunity to take advantage of the celebrity that is involved

with this story and use it as a way to promote good. If you do want to help, I'm gonna link down below to a ton of fantastic organizations. Additionally, GoFundMe has organized a page where you can donate to families that have lost their homes. Additionally, you have Airbnb launching a program where until November 29th, people can open up their homes for people who have been displaced or aid workers

where they can stay for free. So I'm gonna provide all of that down below if you can and you want to help. Now, with that said, that opportunity taken advantage of, the other reason that people knew about this fire was because of the president's response. On Saturday, we saw President Trump tweet, "'There is no reason for these massive, deadly,

"'and costly forest fires in California, "'except that forest management is so poor. "'Billions of dollars are given each year "'with so many lives lost, "'all because of gross mismanagement of the forests. Remedy now or no more Fed payments." And while we saw responses from people in the celebrity world like Leonardo DiCaprio, Katy Perry, also responses in the political world by California Governor-elect Gavin Newsom along with Congressman Ted Lieu, I instead just wanted to highlight the response from Brian K. Rice. Brian is the president of the California Professional Firefighters

and he criticized Trump's remarks in a statement saying is dangerously wrong. Wildfires are sparked and spread not only in forested areas, but in populated areas and open fields fueled by parched vegetation, high winds, low humidity, and geography. Moreover, nearly 60% of California forests are under federal management and another one-third under private control. It is the federal government that has chosen to divert resources away from forest management, not California. And while over the weekend and into Monday we saw the president still talking about this situation, saying our hearts are with those fighting the fires, God bless them all, writing please listen to evacuation orders from state and local officials, California firefighters, FEMA, and first responders are amazing and very brave, he still on Sunday hit on the note of forest management, tweeting with proper forest management, we can stop the devastation constantly going on in California, get smart.

But once again, that comment in the face of comments like that from Brian K. Rice. Also on Sunday we saw Governor Jerry Brown holding a press conference where he thanked the firefighters and first responders. But also he warned that based on climate conditions this was likely not to be the last fire. This is not the new normal. This is the new abnormal. And this new abnormal will continue certainly in the next 10 to 15 to 20 years. And unfortunately, the best science is telling us that dryness, warmth, drought, all those things, they're going to intensify. Without saying Trump's name,

he responded to the criticism of forest management saying this. Scientists and the engineers and the firefighters all tell us forest management is one element. It's only one. And we have to take care of the whole range of threats and conditions and actions that are part of our living with fire, living with fire threats. Managing all the forests in every way we can does not stop climate change. And those who deny that are definitely contributing to the tragedies that we're now witnessing and will continue to witness in the coming years.

And according to Brown's office, he has requested a major disaster declaration from President Trump. And as of right now, that is where we are with this story. And if there is kind of a final note that I can hit on again, there are tons of different ways to help. There are a lot of organizations that are trying to provide for a lot of different things. Obviously, when it comes to donations, I highly encourage people to do research on those organizations, but that's also why I'm going to include a list down below.

And that was going to be where we ended today's show, but I did wanna add this little bit, just because right at the end of today's show, we got the horrible news that Stan Lee has passed away at the age of 95. There is a lot to be said about the man, his body of work, and many stories around him. But if there is something I can say that goes beyond

thank you, Stan Lee, for providing the stories that so many of us grew up on, I think it's important to hit on a note that we see with Stan Lee, and that is we are more than what we are. We are and we live past this body with what we put out into the world. And we do so to varying degrees.

Some of us are privileged enough to be able to reach a large number of people and hopefully we do good with that. But every single person can do that to some degree starting with friends and family, whether through the stories we tell, the words we say, or the actions we take. I think that's an important thing for us to take into every day. I don't know, maybe there's something there, or maybe that's just the the word vomit as I am still processing it all. But with that said, that is where I'm going to now end today's show. With that said, remember if you liked today's show, you like what I try and do with this channel,

hit that like button. If you're new here, hit that subscribe button. Also, if you missed the last Philip DeFranco show, you wanna catch up, you can click or tap right there to watch that. Or if you wanna watch today's bonus video around veterans, click or tap right there. But with that said, of course, as always,

my name's Philip DeFranco, you've just been filled in. I love yo faces and I'll see you tomorrow.