John McCain gets tax-free disability pension

[trof]

The disclosure of the Navy benefit for injuries incurred as a Vietnam POW may raise fitness questions.
By Ralph Vartabedian
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

Sen. John McCain has long said he is in robust health and is strong enough to hike the Grand Canyon, but he also is receiving what his staff Monday termed a "disability pension" from the Navy. When McCain released his tax return for 2007 on Friday, he separately disclosed that he received a pension of $58,358 that was not listed as income on his return.

On Monday, McCain's staff identified the retirement benefit as a "disability pension" and said that McCain "was retired as disabled because of his limited body movements due to injuries as a POW."

"It is a legitimate question to ask about the commander in chief: Is he fit to serve," said Robert Schriebman, a senior Pentagon tax advisor and tax attorney who recently retired as a judge advocate for a unit of the California National Guard.

If McCain can hike across the Grand Canyon, then why should he be getting disability payments from the government that are tax-exempt, Schriebman asked.
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-pension22apr22,1,7561167,print.story

[onehandle]

1. Old guys want "their due" no matter how rich the wife that keeps them is. nt

[Warpy]

2. The guy's arms were broken twice

during "vigorous questioning" by the Viet Cong. He can't raise them above the level of his shoulders.

I don't begrudge him this pension. It reflects the narrowing of his job choices in his post service career. He is, in fact, partially disabled through his service to this country.

I would rather focus on his emotional and cognitive unfitness for the office. He proclaims his ignorance of important subjects as though it were a strength; he sees only military solutions for problems; he is still fighting the Vietnam war and will not let go of the dream of victory in any unwinnable situation when a prudent person would cut losses by withdrawing.

I want him to keep his pension. I don't want to give him a post presidential pension to add to it. He is unfit.

[zbdent]

7. so ... how much heavy lifting does being a Senator entail?

I mean, besides lifting his disability check?

My cousin-in-law has broken his right leg three times in his life ... it's slightly shorter than his left leg ... and he may have suffered a mini-stroke ... and he's still working in a factory ... tried for disability, but they turned him down ...

[Warpy]

10. His job choices were reduced to desk jobs

His recreation choices were similarly reduced. I don't know how much pain he's been in all these years.

Consider that "service connected disability" also covers guys who get drunk on Saturday night and drive into bridge abutments and wind up quadriplegic. If they were active duty, then it's a service connected disability.

I say this to put McCain's pension into perspective. He was actually injured while in service to the country. He is partially disabled even now.

He deserves his pension. He does not deserve to be elected president.

[zbdent]

14. Republicans whine about how the "poor" refuse to get off the system

and get a job so that they can pay for daycare ... any gains a person gets with a job are erased by the fact that they have to pay as much or more for the babysitter ... and yet, the Rs cling to this ancient fairy tale about how nice it is for a mom to stay at home and raise the kids (on today's wages?) ...

So, double-dipping by anybody who doesn't look or act like them is HORRENDOUS ...

And yet McCain, married to an heiress worth millions of dollars, gets praise for something which was such a terrible thing in 2004 ...

[Warpy]

15. The fact that GOPs are a bunch of screaming hypocrites

in no way diminishes the country's debt to this one man. Yes, his life choice of dumping a disabled wife in favor of a beer baroness rendered his pension laughably small, but we still owe it to him as a nation.

We're not hypocrites. THEY ARE.

[mitchum]

12. Well, some Senators do have to carry a lot of water for lobbyists

[trof]

8. These were ejection injuries. His own words.

John McCain spent 5½ years in captivity as a POW in North Vietnam. His first-person account of that harrowing ordeal was published in U.S. News in May 1973. Shot down in his Skyhawk dive bomber on Oct. 26, 1967, Navy flier McCain was taken prisoner with fractures in his right leg and both arms.

"I pulled the ejection handle, and was knocked unconscious by the force of the ejection—the air speed was about 500 knots. I didn't realize it at the moment, but I had broken my right leg around the knee, my right arm in three places, and my left arm. I regained consciousness just before I landed by parachute in a lake right in the corner of Hanoi, one they called the Western Lake. My helmet and my oxygen mask had been blown off."
http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/2008/01/28/john-mccain-prisoner-of-war-a-first-person-account.html

[Warpy]

11. I thought his arms had been rebroken during beatings

Still, these are service connected injuries. He deserves his pension.

[trof]

13. Not according to him.

He was denied medical care (according to him) until his captors found out what a prize they had in an admiral's son.

And he agreed to tell them whatever they wanted to hear.
I don't blame him for that.
I would probably have done the same.

But is a guy who brags that he's fit enough to "hike the Grand Canyon from rim to rim" (again, his words) really entitled to a full disability pension?

I would submit that Seaman 3rd Class Smith wouldn't have been granted that.

RHIP
Rank (and being kin to rank) Has It's Privileges.

[MiniMe]

9. I agree with you, the problem is that most of the repukes are so hypocritical

that they would say McCain should keep his but another soldier serving in Iraq shouldn't.

[ThomWV]

3. $58 Grand? What vet gets that kind of money?

[JDPriestly]

4. He has lost some ability to move in certain ways.

As I understand it, he cannot raise his arms above his head to a certain degree. I'm concerned about whether he has chronic pain or a lot of pain. That could explain his temper tantrums, his irritability.

[mitchum]

6. That is correct; he can only turn to the right

[Wcross]

5. He did serve 20+ years in the Navy.

Perhaps the 58k is retirement pension plus disability pension? I don't know much about how that works.