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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   6642 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 2, 2026

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Military disability pay. My gut says like 90% of it is fraud

What in the world do you mean by this? Military disability by definition only goes to those who were in the military, and who have documented injuries/disabilities related to that service. Where do you imagine fraud comes in to it?

Some cases of genuinely disabling PTSD exist, but it is easy to fake.

Maybe I am online too much but most people who follow the data collection on military disability pay realize it’s a lot of healthy people getting disability who spent a couple years in the military. To begin to educate you on the issue look at Graham Platner who ran for Senate and runs a farm while getting a 100% military disability rating.

https://www.pressherald.com/2026/05/11/how-can-graham-platner-run-for-senate-with-a-100-va-disability-rating/

If you are serious curious spend a half hour with Google and AI to see why policy wonks consider military disability as semi-legal fraud now.

I'm neither 'curious' nor need to 'begin to educate' myself, I'm in the military and know many people on VA disability. A friend of mine had to fight for years to get 100% disability, he hasn't been able to work since he got out. Another one got blown up and it affects his ability to think - is that fraudulent because it's mental health?

If you want to argue that military servicemembers don't deserve disability payments, or that they should be less, or that standards for medical evidence are too low, then make that case. But calling it 'fraud', even '90% fraud', is simply offensive.

So if someone doesn’t have an actual injury that prevents them from working but gets disability that’s not fraud?

I 100% agree there are real cases of military disability but that in no way contradicts my point that many cases of military disability appear to be essentially fraud.

We currently have 1.85 million Americans with 100% disability rankings in 2026. In 2015 we had 493k veterans with 100% disability ratings. The US withdrew from Iraq in 2011. Afghanistan we only had like max 20k troops since 2014. So where did 1.3 million fully disabled veterans come from? These are massive numbers. Since 9/11 we have 2.7 million Americans who have deployed.

So yes a 50% rate of “fully” disabled is insane. And most people in the military do not serve in combat roles.

Just because a group has a “sympathetic core” does not mean that there aren’t a huge amount of people adjacent to the core abusing the system.

And yes if you are fully capable of running a Senate Campaign then you are not 100% disabled so we even have very high profile cases of obvious fraud.

My 90% fraud might be too high. The 2014 disability numbers are likely mostly true cases.

My understanding is that (now) disabilities include mental disabilities, which are trivial to fake.

No doctor and no government wants to be the guy to say to an angry and potentially violent veteran, "You were in Iraq, but you never actually got into combat. I don't believe that you really have PTSD from that time your buddy's drinking-partner's friend got blown up driving out of Helmand".

It's easier to pay them all off with a lifetime pension.

It's not super strong evidence, but there's this show called Financial Audit by Caleb Hammer, and every time a veteran is on the show, they're on disability, and it doesn't look like they're really disabled.

Here's a video of just four examples from his show:

https://youtube.com/shorts/cJSWeCwIIZQ

Comment from Caleb on the above video:

And to be fully clear, I want those who experienced any issues what so ever to get 150% disability. But the only way to do this, just like any other social system, is to call out those who are abusing that system. 

For example, we have cases of acne getting 100%. We’ve had many instances on my show alone where people have admitted that their injury did not come from anything involving their service, but they claimed it regardless.

Supporting people like that hurts those who deserve to get even MORE.

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