Thread: Democrats try to run out the clock on the VA scandal

Democrats try to run out the clock on the VA scandal



By: John Hayward
5/23/2014 08:50 AM

It’s comically obvious that the Democrats (and their good buddy, “independent” socialist Bernie Sanders of Vermont) are fully committed to the Obama Scandal Damage Control playbook over the VA outrage. They’re going to try to drag this thing out for months, and hope the public loses interest. The delaying tactics are painfully obvious. In one voice, everyone from President Obama and Secretary for Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki, to Administration flacks and congressional Democrats, is saying: slow down, wait for more reports, forget about this story, stop asking what Obama’s been doing for the last five years.
The endgame is easy to see: crucial news cycles will roll by with friendly media having nothing fresh to report – because we’ve got to wait for more studies and reports before jumping to any conclusions, don’t you know! – and the tides of the 24-hour news grind will wash the whole thing away. It’s Fast and Furious, Benghazi, ObamaCare, and the IRS scandal all over again, except it’s even more transparent this time.
The Republican-controlled House of Representatives acted swiftly to pass the VA Management Accountability Act this week, with a lopsided vote of 390-33. The bill would have swept aside bureaucratic obstacles and given the VA Secretary the ability to clean house by swiftly terminating those who orchestrated the appalling treatment of veterans, and the ensuing cover-up. In other words, Obama and Shinseki would have to put their money where their mouths are. And we can’t have that, so the urgency of the House was quickly dissipated in the Democrat-controlled Senate. The Heritage Foundation hears the loud snores emerging from the meadows where Harry Reid’s caucus slumbers:

Passage of the bill marks “the first step on the road to accountability at the Department of Veterans Affairs,” Pete Hegseth, chief executive of Concerned Veterans for America, said on the organization’s website.
Hours earlier, Hegseth’s group had castigated President Obama for not demanding accountability from Shinseki in the growing scandal over substandard veterans health care.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has not pushed for quick action on a similar Senate bill sponsored by Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla.
“For everyone talking about how quickly we need to act on this — here is your chance,” Rubio urged today in a floor speech.
But although Reid called the House bill “not unreasonable,” Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., blocked Rubio’s request for immediate action. Instead, Sanders, chairman of the Senate Veteran Affairs Committee, said he would hold a hearing within a few weeks.

Veterans are dying and the Obama Administration was caught in a vast nationwide cover-up to hide it, but Harry Reid and Bernie Sanders feel no rush to get the bottom of things. They’ll hold some hearings in a few weeks, by which time Obamabots will be calling the whole story “old news” and/or a “phony scandal.”
This follows President Obama’s first public statement on the scandal after weeks of mounting outrage, in which he said he wants to wait for more reports to be filed on the “allegations” absolutely no one doubts are 100 percent true. Then he dashed off to some more fundraisers and some poll-goosing sports events. The only surprise is that he didn’t provide the White House press pool with a pamphlet listing ten other stories he thinks they should be covering instead of the VA scandal, the way he ordered them to stop covering the ObamaCare disaster (and they eagerly complied!)
Sure, there are a couple of badly endangered Democrat candidates in 2014 calling for Secretary Shinseki to resign, but that’s mostly meaningless kabuki theater designed to hoodwink voters, not a serious rebellion within the party. (Not yet, anyway. If the Obama delaying tactic doesn’t diffuse public anger, a real schism may form between Democrats slavishly loyal to the Administration, and those who really are disturbed by what they see happening here.) Also, a bit of strategically controlled hubbub from red-state Democrats about wanting Shinseki’s scalp can build up the value of that scalp as a way to release pressure from the scandal, as a last-ditch measure, if Obama concludes his standard delaying tactics aren’t killing the story.
Shinseki does need to go – it’s laughable to leave the man in charge of the VA for the entire Obama era at the helm – but that’s only the beginning of both accountability and serious reform. Rep. Jeff Miller of the House Committee on Veterans Affairs had the right idea, in a Fox News interview on Thursday:

The chairman of the House Committee on Veterans Affairs said Thursday on “The Kelly File” the agency is suffering from “a systemic problem that is a life and death issue” and can’t be solved simply by removing the cabinet secretary in charge.
“This has been going on for years, and of course, the Obama administration wants to say this goes all the way back to the Bush administration, and that may be true,” Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., told Megyn Kelly. “But (Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki) has been in office now for well over five years and has had an opportunity to make a difference and he hasn’t done it, and the agency has continued to grow.”
Miller said he believes President Obama should have taken a more proactive stance when news of the scandal first broke last month with the disclosure that key data allegedly was concealed at the Phoenix Veterans Affairs center while dozens of veterans died waiting for care. Since then, allegations of neglect and misconduct have been made at VA facilities across the country.
“This is a systemic problem that is a life and death issue, and the president should have come out and immediately said, ‘I will allow any veteran who is on a waiting list to receive the medical care that they have earned to go outside of the VA network and get it on the private market,’” Miller said.

Of course, Obama’s not going to do any such thing, because it would be a death blow to his ideal of socialized medicine. He’s not going to admit that veterans need to flee from a single-payer medical system to escape brutal and corrupt rationing and get the care they need. Unless he’s really backed up against the wall, Obama’s not going to do anything that reminds Americans of the uncomfortable similarities between these secret VA waiting lists and the ObamaCare death panels awaiting them. His “signature achievement” is in bad enough shape as it is; ObamaCare will not survive any further ideological body blows. It’s also not helpful to the ObamaCare cause for the VA story to settle into the public mind as an example of Big Government ineptitude and dishonesty.
Democrats are using the time purchased with these delaying tactics to work on their blame-shifting narratives, betting quite a few of their chips on a plan to reframe the whole thing as George Bush’s fault, because Iraq. No one outside the hardcore Democrat base is stupid enough to fall for that. The VA system received enormous increases in funding throughout the Obama years – more than any other Cabinet agency. And it’s not as if the return of veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan (aka the “good war” Democrats used to swear up and down they wholeheartedly supported, and damn George Bush from distracting the nation’s attention from it by going into Iraq!) was some unforeseeable event that took the Obama Administration by surprise.
Actually, the Democrats’ feeble “blame Bush” narrative is a staggering indictment of Obama, who somehow managed to get blindsided by the most predictable increase in demand any system has ever encountered. Once again, the story comes back to administrative incompetence, to say nothing of the lies and cover-ups, which were designed to cook the books and play the our allegedly super-intelligent Leviathan State overlords for chumps. And it worked, for years.
So for Team Obama, it’s steady as she goes, all sails hanging slack as the VA story wallows in flat seas of delay and obfuscation, with the clock ticking until the overheated news media moves along to another story. Meanwhile, the hits just keep coming, as long-intimidated whistleblowers step forward with horrifying stories of abuse, about far more than those secret waiting lists. There is a certain feel of dams breaking. Here’s another one, courtesy of Fox News, in which VA police officer Thomas Fiore claims “administrators at the hospital in Miami where he works are covering up crimes at the facility, including evidence of physical abuse of patients and drug dealing”:

“I actually prepared a written plan, if you will, pertaining to an undercover operation so that we can at least identify who our targets are for the drug sales,” he said. “And I presented that in an email and I’m still waiting on a response. I submitted it about two years ago.”
Fiore earlier told the Miami Herald that the breaking point for him was a March 2013 report on the facility’s residential drug rehab program, which charged the program failed to adequately monitor patients or stop illicit drug use.
The report highlighted Nicholas Todd Cutter, a 27-year-old Iraq war veteran who overdosed on drugs shortly before he was set to graduate the program. Fiore told the Herald Cutter’s death “could have been prevented.”
“There are just so many things that have occurred that are just an absolute disgrace,” he said.
Fiore told the newspaper that when he tried to report drug dealing among patients, patient abuse or missing drugs from the pharmacy he was either ignored or his attempts to investigate the incidents were thwarted.
“I was told that the police reports were to stop,’’ he said, “and they would notify me if something important came up.’’
Fiore told the Herald he was eventually reassigned to a clerical position.
“I was reassigned because I continued to bring things up to the director, and he continued to ignore it,’’ he said. “They just needed to get rid of me.”

26 hospitals are under investigation now. This is a massive systemic crisis, not the work of a few low-level rogue employees. And the people in charge of the system are trying to evade accountability by boasting of everything the VA has done right – as if the core accusation here is that Barack Obama and Eric Shinseki don’t personally care enough about veterans, so all they’ve got to do is talk up a few accomplishments to demonstrate their compassion, while the sand of outrage runs out of the public’s hourglass. It is infuriating to note how Obama discarded all his campaign promises and forgot about the VA system once he got into office, a record of neglect that cannot be erased by giving a few speeches today. But ultimately this is a matter of the mind, not the heart – of outcomes, not intentions. What matters is what happened, not how high officials feel about what happened.

http://www.humanevents.com/2014/05/2...paign=heupdate

The VA Scandal - "Shut up, Sit Down, Take a Number and maybe we’ll see you before You Die"

Richard Anthony 10 hours ago
1 Comment

Like all of you, I am watching the latest scandal unfold about the Veterans Administration. Am I surprised? No, but what insults my intelligence is the president saying that the situation is "un-acceptable." Really? Once again, our president is looking right into the face of the American people and L-Y-I-N-G! Obama knew about the problems with the VA when he took office. Those same problems continued to present themselves during the first four years of his presidency, and all the while he knew about them.
It is obvious that Obama doesn't give a tinkers dam about what happens to veterans. If he did, these problems would have been taken care of four or five years ago. Instead, he focused on Obamacare, his baby, his signature piece of legislation, which was going to insure not only his legacy, but a place in American history. Well, just like everything else this man has done, problems with the VA are only a small part of a long list of screw-ups.

I am only one of a long list of veterans, who have had bad experiences dealing with the VA. I'll let you in on something. VA employees can say or do anything they want. They can insult you, they can call you names, they can curse at you, they can even threaten you with physical harm, and there's not a thing that you can do about it.
Here's why; the union! VA employees are part of one of the single most powerful unions in this country. As you have seen while watching the news, not even an act of congress is enough to get a VA employee fired. Maybe if a VA employee was caught red-handed murdering a patient, and they were caught on camera committing the alleged murder, it would still literally take an act of God to get them fired (and that's only "maybe").
I have personally experienced all of the things (except the "murder" part) that I just mentioned. As a patient of the VA, don't you dare say anything remotely offensive, or in a raised voice, because then they put what is known as a "Red Flag" on your records. A "Red Flag" denotes you as a "violent," possibly dangerous, person.
What happens then, is that every time you have an appointment, prior to being seen by VA personnel, a VA police officer is called (these are ARMED federal Police mind you), and before you are seen, the officer places himself right outside the office/ treatment room. So much for "Patient Confidentiality," huh? If he feels you are about to harm the VA employee, he has the legal right to burst in the room/office and shoot you dead! That is a stone cold, solid fact - absolutely no exaggeration folks!
How do I know this? Simple, I have a "Red Flag" on my records, even though I have never, ever threatened, or ever physically harmed a VA employee. Why do I have a "Red Flag" you may ask? I dared tell a VA doctor he was an "A-hole." That was 10 years ago, and the Red Flag is still on my records.
It was the VA that diagnosed me with PTSD many years ago and I have never received one single dime in disability from them.
Now, don't get me wrong. I appreciate what they do and there are a few kind, decent people who work there, but more often than not, too many VA employees seem to have forgotten that if it weren't for guys like me, they wouldn't even have a job. A VA employee can say and get away with things that would otherwise, not only get them fired if they were working for a civilian medical facility, but possibly land them in jail and get the hospital sued. But you can't sue the VA (nice huh?). That's "job security" on steroids.
I have never told anyone the things I have just told you about my experiences with the VAMC. The main reason is because nothing would ever get done about it and that's the truth. As other veterans can attest to, I'm sure they have experienced far worse things than I have.
That's what we veterans get for serving our nation faithfully. "Shut up....sit down.... take a number and maybe we'll see you before you die."
Ladies and Gentlemen, if you want to hear something really scary. That's what the future of medicine in the U.S. is headed towards in the next ten years if Obamacare is not repealed.

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http://freedomoutpost.com/2014/05/va...-well-see-die/

Bernie Didnt have time to read a 3 page Bill but signed off on 2,000 plus pages of Obamacare without reading it

Here’s The Incredibly Controversial Bill To Clean Up The VA That The Senate Just Blocked

By Steve Straub On May 23, 2014 · 88 Comments · In US, Video


This is outrageous and shows that Democrats care way more about government workers than they do about Veterans.

Via IJ Review:

Amazingly, a senator just blocked a bill that makes it easier to fire poorly performing employees at the scandal-plagued Veterans Administration. This comes in the wake of 33 Democrats opposing the same bill, including the second-highest ranking Democrat in the House, Steny Hoyer of Maryland. The measure passed the House with 390 votes on Wednesday and has been cosponsored by 151 Republicans and Democrats.
What’s so controversial about the bill? We don’t know:
H.R. 4031, the “Department of Veterans Affairs Management Accountability Act of 2014” would amend title 38 U.S.C., and give the Secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs authority to remove employees of the Senior Executive Service, whose performance the Secretary believes warrants removal, from the government service completely or transfer them to a General Schedule position within the current civil service system. The ability to remove such an employee is modeled after the same authority that Members of Congress have to remove their professional staff members who work for them.
Does this strike you as partisan? At all?
Senator Marco Rubio (R-Florida) asked to bring the bill forward by unanimous consent. The chairman of the Senate Veterans’s Affairs Committee, Bernie Sanders, an independent socialist from Vermont who caucuses with the Democrat party, rose and objected to the bill. He said he was going to hold hearings on the V.A. in several weeks.
Sanders has been a staunch defender of the V.A., stating in a heated interview with CNN’s Chris Cuomo that most veterans were satisfied with the V.A.’s quality of care, and that “people die every day.” He also praised V.A. Secretary Eric Shinseki for the job he has done.

The stalling of the reform bill in the Senate brought this response from Speaker John Boehner:

“As we head into the Memorial Day weekend, I am disappointed, and—frankly—shocked that Senate Democratic leaders chose to block legislation that would hold VA managers accountable,” Boehner said in a statement. “As we head home to honor the men and women who have sacrificed so much for our freedom, it’s fair to ask why Senate Democrats won’t stand up for more accountability?”

Watch the video:



In your opinion, what’s the real reason Senate Democrats are opposed to reforming the VA and improving care for Veterans? Could it be that not enough of them vote Democrat for Obama and Harry Reid to care?

http://www.thefederalistpapers.org/u...-by-the-senate