DD-214<\/a>, for ye of military experience). The buyer has an inch-thick file that contains everything from his discharge papers to documents from two previous VA loans. But his DD-214 probably disappeared during one of the earlier loans. Only the VA can supply it now. It’s supposed to take 2-3 weeks. Three days if you pay to expedite the process. <\/p>\nBut (this will come as no surprise to anybody who’s dealt with the VA; or any DMV for that matter) instead it’s been a two-month runaround. “We’re understaffed.” “No, we can’t email you; you have to phone us.” “All those records were lost when the plane hit the Pentagon on 9\/11.”* “We’re working on it but we can’t give you any date.” “Don’t call us; we’ll call you.”<\/p>\n
The buyer is a Vietnam era<\/i> vet and basically the VA is saying, “He’s too old to buy a house because we’re too lazy to dredge up records from way back when.” The bank’s been working on it. The agent’s been working on it. The buyer’s been working on it. Nada.<\/p>\n
The poor agent is understandably livid.<\/p>\n
What’s less understandable is that he’s also shocked<\/i>: “How can the government treat Vietnam vets this way??!” <\/p>\n
But has there ever been a moment since the 1960s when the fedgov hasn’t<\/i> treated Vietnam vets (not to mention everybody) like used toilet paper? Luring young men with promises or browbeating them with threats then tossing them aside has been the way of governments for centuries. And Vietnam was among the worst.<\/p>\n
The agent is a Vietnam vet himself. Surely he knows this?<\/p>\n
—–<\/p>\n
This story may yet end well, but only because of a remarkable coincidence. The agent was a Marine in some very dirty, hardcore job in Vietnam. He’s still in touch with surviving members of his unit. One of his officers just happens to have risen all the way to the Joint Chiefs of Staff<\/i> before retiring. He’s still in DC. Still able to pull strings.<\/p>\n
This week the agent finally had it. He called the general. Within 10 minutes, our local congressthing — in person — called the agent “at the request of a friend.” Now the congressthing’s office is calling everybody in sight to wrangle a DD-214 out of the VA. The VA — the agency that had no email day before yesterday — emailed the bank this morning. Nothing solid yet. Bureaucracy finally in action, though.<\/p>\n
But anybody who didn’t have a DC-based Marine general to pull out of a hat would be out of luck.<\/p>\n
—–<\/p>\n
Why are people so shocked! dismayed! surprised! indignant! when this is how things work — if you can call it working at all?<\/p>\n
—–<\/p>\n
* I got curious enough to try to confirm this claim about records being lost on 9\/11. It makes sense that much besides human life would have disappeared that day. But I can’t find a word about this. Besides — 12 years later you still can’t access your backups?<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I don’t mean what do you expect from government. I can make a pretty good guess at that. I’m thinking of the ordinary Joe or Josie who’s shocked and indignant over and over again upon finding that government isn’t a caring parent or diligent servant. Was talking with a local real estate agent today. He’s had a sale pending for two months. Deal is solid. Buyer’s credit is golden. House has appraised for more than the selling price. No problems whatsoever. Except it’s a VA loan and there’s one piece of paper missing (a DD-214, for ye of military experience).…<\/p>\n
Continue readingWell, what do you expect from government?<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government","ratio-natural","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15049"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15049\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}