CRDP verses CRSC . . .

Greek to you, eh?  Those are terms, acronyms, used regarding military retirement pay and Veterans Administration (VA) compensation.  I am recompensed by both, military retirement and VA.  Military retirement is straight forward, it is a typical retirement system, so many years of service at such and such pay grade and you collect X dollars for that.  VA is a bit different but it is tax free money.

VA compensation is the result of disabilities incurred while serving on active duty.  In my case, I am 90% disabled by the VA's assessment.  The biggest contributor to that is Diabetes Type II (aka Diabetes Mellitus) as a result of exposure to the chemical named Agent Orange.  No, it was not orange colored, it was however shipped in orange barrels.  Hence that is where the name came from.  The primary damaging chemical is Dioxin.  It is a form of Dioxin that is very potent and will eventually get into your liver and stays there.  And it gradually causes Diabetes to occur.

Diabetes II in and off itself spawns other disabilities such as Peripheral Neuropathy (PN), that is nerve damage at the extremities of the hands and feet.  Diabetes attacks all kinds of nerves but that is the most common occurrence.  Well I have PN too.  Basically I am losing the ability to feel things with my feet and fingers.  Makes it hard to pick up tiny things like pills, pins, needles and the like.  In the case of feet one begins to lose one's stability and sometimes get other manifestations, such as tingling feet, itching and pain.  But the Diabetes is the basic culprit and it is a result of war time exposure.

War time based Service Connected disabilities are known as Combat Related Service Connected or CRSC disabilities.  They are included in the whole pile of disabilities referred to Compensation
retirement Disabilities Pay (CRDP).  This is important distinction.

Congress in its great generosity enacted laws regarding military retirement and VA disability compensation.  Originally, one could not collect both.  One could only collect his retirement or VA disability.  And one always elected to waive part of his retirement pay in the amount of the VA compensation to be able  collect the VA disability compensation.  Since all VA compensation is tax free from both federal and state income taxes, one usually waive the retirement pay amount.

It was recognized that was patently unfair, we military were essentially paying our own disability compensation.  So Congress changed the law but threw some hooks in.  First unless your were 50% or greater rated by the VA for disability you got nothing, nada, zilch.  You were stuck with the old process.  I started at 30% in 1989.  So I did the typical waiver, saved a few bucks but not having to pay tax on the VA money.  Yes, military retirement is all taxable unless you incur some kind of disability while on active duty.  I did not have such bad luck.

Then along came Diabetes and my total VA disability went to 6o%.  So now I was under this new legislation which had further hooks to it.  I could not collect all of the CRDP at first, it took a 10 year program to gradually get my CRDP to equal my VA compensation amount.  I have achieved that now. 

Then came another Congressional change.  CRSC could be collected at any VA disability rate and it was tax free in and of itself.  So each military service had to set up an office to assess all the VA disabilities and some of them were rated CRSC.  CRDP was known because it is equal to the VA compensation awarded. 

Congress also said one could not collect both CRSC and CRDP.  You could get one or the other not both or parts of both.  And since the CRRP by its nature was going to be greater percentage of the two, one elected to use the CRDP option.  Those few that had their disabilities turn out to be the same, that CRSC equals CRDP, well they went to the CRSC option because that amount was carved out of your retirement as tax free along with the VA compensation that was tax free.  The net was pay less taxes while not changing the net dollar amounts.  But unless the CRSC got close to the CRDP it was not cost effective.  And the Defense Finance Accounting Service (DFAS) does the calculations for you.

So the upshot is my CRSC numbers are 60% and CDRP numbers are 90%.  Ergo I opt for the CDRP option.

Times have changed.  I have developed Coronary Artery Disease which is an Agent Orange SC disability.  And that rating is 30% in and over itself.   That will raise my CRSC from 60% to a net of 70%.  DFAS needs to do another calculation and maybe, just maybe it will swing my way tax wise.

I don't think it will change but it is worth running the numbers.  We shall see just what happens.

The Finches are Back . . .

The little Gold Finches are back.  They are not gold yet, though have some yellow showing.  When they turn more solid gold they migrate to the North away from us.  Right now they are just feeding away on our hanging bags of Niger seed. 

Niger seed is really thistle seed imported from Niger.  I am sure there may be a local source of thistle seed to but I do not know where or what about it.  It is said that fresh seed must be loaded in the feeders but I loaded it up with the stuff from last year and they are chowing down on it.  So I rather doubt that old or older seed is an issue.  Keeping it dry probably helps and this seed was well stored.

We had also bought a 10 pound bag of the seed last year that we did not get around to opening.  It is going to be in the next batch I put out.  I use a funnel and will the porous sacks with the stuff.  The little birds hang on the sacks and feed inverted or straight up as may be.  The mesh is open enough so that the seed, a long narrow seed, sticks through the mesh.  The birds hang on the sack and pull seeds through to eat.

There is a lot of spillage but other birds including Finches will feed off the ground.  And all the activity draws the attention of other birds.  They want in on the action too.  But they are not equipped like the Finches with their talent to hang on the bag and feed.  So they are relegated to feed off the ground.  Saw a beautiful Red bird yesterday.  He was really miffed he could not get on that bag but he got a few seeds off the ground and left.

The flock of Finches feed for a while then for some unknown reason all fly off.  They will be gone for an hour or so, then all of a sudden are back at it.  So they come and go like that all day.  The bags are hanging in our oak tree outside the den window.  There are flitting movements attract my eyes and I stop fiddling with the computer and watch for a while. 

A sure sign we have turned the corner into a new year.  We will have the Finches for about six weeks and then they are gone.  Better feeding to the North and the North is their traditional breeding grounds.  We are told a few stay around but I never see them.  When they change color they leave us.

Got A New Lap Top . . .

My old lap top was showing its age and it is time to replace it.  So I got a new one.  I purchased a Lenovo with an AMD A8 chip in it instead of they typical Intel chip.  This chip is roughly equivalent to a four core Intel chip and has built in graphics.  The pros say the graphics are nothing to shout about.

One of the things I did was down load the latest AMD software dated 1/7/2016 so a lot of fixes ought to be in the package.  Frankly I can not notice any difference.  But then I do not play games other than solitaire, so it is not a big deal to me.  But this computer is a lot faster than the old one, has a Terabyte hard drive and 8 Gigabytes of  RAM.  So it has more that twice the ram of the old one and three times as much storage as the old one.  It was time to move up.

I have been downloading the stuff I use.  It has the standard DVD drive, which is optical drive.  I learned a long time ago, the same drive can copy CD-ROMs all you need is the software.  And I downloaded the software for free to use on it.  So now I can make both DVDs and CD-ROMs but no floppy's any more.  That is a thing of the past.

I threw away a ton old little floppy's the other day.  Not enough capacity to be worth anything at all.  And I got rid of all my old programs like DOS.  Boy that ages me, DOS.  We are up to Windows 10.

The new computer is supposed to be touch screen but I have not gotten that far yet.  And I plugged in the old optical mouse to use as a pointer.  I hate the touchy feely system with two buttons.  I find them very hard to use and I am very used to the good old mouse.  It is connected by a little bug and takes up no room.  So I am satisfied with it as is.

Now I must go off and install more stuff on the new lap top.  It is already connected to my local connection to the Internet.  So I am in the plug and play mode as it were.  Not hard to do.

A New Year . . .

Christmas is done and we have begun a new year.  We have clean up, put up and shut down all the Christmas doings and are moving forward with expectation to the new year.  We had a good time but realize we are getting older and less viable, we do not bend as easy, stand as quick or can keep up with young children as well as in the past.  Neither one of us has improved hearing and that really shows up with youngsters flashing around us.  But we cope, they are after all our grand children.

A woke this AM, got my breakfast, made coffee and read the news paper.  Then on to the computer and to learn we are in a stock market down turn.  China has the beginnings of a severe correction and it could get worse.  And the Arabs and the Persians are at it.  The Iranian's fresh from their thumbing of noses at the US, trashed a Saudi Arabian Embassy (shades of Jimmie Carter again).  But this time they face each other across the Persian Gulf and both are oil giants.  There is no love lost between the two Muslim nations as the best of times and times are not so good at the moment.  World wide economic recovery is not in great shape.

So the price of oil has ticked up a bit but not by much.  Right now it is a lot of shouting and banning of Ambassador's.  Iran has yet to produce the oil that they say they can and many experts think they will not come up to speed for at least another six months.  The thinking is that Iran's oil infrastructure is old, worn out and leaky.  I am sure there will be those that will charge in to make a dollar or two off the situation that will help Iran.  But maybe not.  The oil patch is suffering from the demise of OPEC and there will be those who careless about geopolitics and only care about money that will pitch in and try to fix up Iran oil production.  Maybe they speak Russian or Chinese or Korean as in North Korean.  It will be the Russians that have any real knowledge of what and how to do it, but you never know who it will be - Venezuelans even.

We have to see how the China thing plays out.  If they have another bad day it may shake up all the markets even more.  That could be bad.  Things are not great here in the states but they are better off here than almost anywhere else in the world.

Not an auspices beginning to the New Year.  Looks and sounds like a bad omen.