Deroy Murdock:
Imagine that you visit a friend’s house a month after he’s moved in. The place is a mess: The roof leaks. The basement brims with trash. The walls have holes in them, and the porch creaks menacingly in spots.
“It’s a fixer-upper,” your pal explains. “The previous owner didn’t maintain it. But I will!”
So, you go about your business and return five years later.
This time, the house is even more dilapidated. The roof is partially imploded. The basement teems with vermin. Several walls have fallen sideways onto the weed-encrusted lawn. And parts of the porch simply have collapsed.
Far worse, several overnight visitors who braved these conditions actually died as the attic crashed down into the guest bedroom.
You stare at your friend, agog.
“It’s a fixer-upper,” he explains. “The previous owner didn’t maintain it. But I will!”
After five years and four months, this is how the “Bush did it” defense sounds in relation to the scandal consuming the Veterans Affairs department.
Obama “sees the ramifications of some seeds that were sown a long time ago, when you have two wars over a long period of time and many, many more, millions more veterans,” House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California told journalists last Thursday. “We go in a war in Afghanistan, leave Afghanistan for Iraq with unfinished business in Afghanistan. Ten years later, we have all of these additional veterans. In the past five years, 2 million more veterans needing benefits from the VA. That’s a huge, huge increase.”
Translation: Blame Bush.
No doubt, Obama inherited a bad situation. Veterans from the Iraq and Afghan wars came home (and still return from the latter) and require medical attention. Others — who were deployed stateside, in Europe, Asia, and aboard U.S. naval vessels — also need and deserve medical treatment, as both active-duty personnel and as veterans.
Obama was well aware of the VA system’s shortcomings. While still a U.S. senator, Obama declared on August 21, 2007: “No veteran should have to fill out a 23-page claim to get care or wait months, even years, to get an appointment at the VA.”
Well, while the Bush administration was by no means a friend to the Vets, it’s become obvious that at least 41 of the present sitting U.S. Republican Senators are even less friendly. Their voting record under Obama is what it is and their justification is well documented.
Blame Obama all you want but when you have a defiant GOP party hellbent on defeating Obama’s every agenda, even using our injured service men and women as pawns in that mission, I think you’ll have a really hard sale outside the bubble of your ODS capsule.
@Ronald J. Ward:
Yes, but remember Ronald; you’re an idiot.
If the voting record of the 41 sitting U.S. Republican Senators under Obama was such a huge issue for the Collective, then why wasn’t the Collective mentioning this when it was singing the praises of the VA as the perfect model of socialized medicine?
Defiant? Since when was anyone obligated to abide by President Obama’s lunatic Marxism?
When you type out phrases like “I think” it really just opens the door for derisive mockery.
@Ronald J. Ward:
Your post could not be more vague if you tried. Just exactly what “agenda” of Obama’s, that affected the care given through the VA, do you think Republicans thwarted?
@Ronald J. Ward:
Are you saying the minority party is setting the agenda? Since when did the minority party control the senate?
Kraken, Retire05, and Redteam, 3 blind mice trying to argue politics while displaying identical ignorance of politics. You not only lack the knowledge of U.S. Senate bill #1982 but each of you all pretend to have the inability to use the very tool in front of you to find out.
When you stray from your keyboards for any given reasons, who leads you back?
You’re not even good at playing dumb.
@Ronald J. Ward: And yet you can’t tell me why the majority party is unable to control the Senate. Strange indeed.
@Ronald J. Ward:
You mean this one?
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d113:SN01982:@@@X
@Ronald J. Ward:
I don’t think that sentence means what you wanted it to mean. You seem to be in need of a remedial English class.
@Ronald J. Ward:
Wouldn’t that then mean that we’re coming across as intelligent?
It is indeed funny watching the trolls trip over an English issue to somehow offset their failed arguments.
Regardless of who you want to blame for the VA disaster, reasonable people would agree that the first step might be to do something like, fix it! You know, have the legislators we’ve chosen and are paying to make sure that laws are in place and funding is available to treat our wounded service men and women.
The problem is that elected Republicans have unitedly opposed Obama on every issue, not because of their stand on the issue but rather simply to defy Obama, to insure his “Waterloo”, to prevent any favorable legislation from passing that would be construed as a “win” for Obama or Democrats.
The problem with that strategy is that ultimately, the electorate pays the price. And we can look at numerous GOP filibustered legislation and numerous GOP admissions that validates that argument. This isn’t something they’ve tried to hide. The more they can insure Obama’s failure, the more the GOP Machine can gain traction by blaming Obama for those failures.
And this is the case with The Comprehensive Veterans Health and Benefits and Military Retirement Pay Restoration Act of 2014 which died in the Senate because 41 out of 43 Republicans refused to let it advance.
So today’s Republicans have deliberately harmed the well being of our wounded service men and women for political gain (along with job growth, the unemployed, infrastructure, etc, etc). Regardless, they should act promptly to correct it. But they won’t do that because that would be viewed as a “win” for Obama.
@Ronald J. Ward:
We’ve already seen some of the results of the Collective pushing through a bill based on little more than a warm and fuzzy NewSpeak title and their own unhinged emotional needs. And certainly we can be thankful when any bill authored by lunatic socialist Bernie Sanders is obstructed.
But how is the failure to pass the Comprehensive Veterans Health and Benefits and Military Retirement Pay Restoration Act of 2014 causing these kinds of issues?
Why? Because of the merit or lack of the bill or because Bernie Sanders sponsored it and he’s a socialist?
So, from your very admission, the bill and what it does for America, workers, veterans, the economy, or any other serious issues should be obstructed contingent on who sponsored it and if his/her ideologies suit yours?
That’s your ideal of governance?
Both. The merit of the bill was lacking because it was sponsored by a socialist.
Absolutely. It’s very important to openly obstruct bills that push America towards the blatant lunacy of socialism. In fact, obstructing socialist supported bills is one of the very best things that can be done to benefit America. Obstruct away.
Remember Ronald, The Collective confuses governance with rulership. Unthinking drones such as yourself are incapable of distinguishing between the two.
Regardless, none of this answers my question.
How is the failure to pass the Comprehensive Veterans Health and Benefits and Military Retirement Pay Restoration Act of 2014 causing these kinds of issues?
@Ronald J. Ward:
Are you saying that the funding was not available and that funding has not been increased, year after year, to provide services to our vets that required them? Are you actually making that claim?
And are you claiming that Republicans were the cause of the failure of SB 1982? Really? When Harry Reid has a majority in the Senate, and Harry Reid has throw all normal rules to the winds in order to pass other bills that he wants passed, you’re actually blaming Republicans because Reid could not rally his own to pass SB1982?
And where is President Phone and Pen? He is now threatening Boehner that if the Congress doesn’t pass an amnesty bill that is to Obama’s liking, he will take actions on his own. Where is the outrage from Democrats who constantly had their hair on fire claiming President Bush acted unilaterally, and unconstitutionally, with executive orders?
Was SB1982 redundant? Was it necessary? And if the President refuses to abide by the very laws he lobbied to be passed, and signed, what makes you think Obama would follow this law?
@Ronald J. Ward: 10
So this problem has existed since Obama has been in office, over 5 years and not passing this bill, this year, is causing all those problems? Obama, the House and the Senate, all under Dimocrat control for two years, then lost the House, but still controls the Office and the Senate and still can’t get anything done. Three out of 3 isn’t enough to control, 2 of 3, still can’t get anything done, maybe it’ll be 1 of 3 after next election then 0 of 3 after the 16 election, then maybe the Dimocrats can get something done, like ‘getting out of the way’.
I think it’s rather humorous that you made a dumb ass grammar mistake and then try to blame that on the clearly superior writers.
@Ronald J. Ward:
Correction: “he’s an idiot”.
@Ronald J. Ward: Obama is President. Obama is President NOW. Obama is NOW the President.
NOT Bush. The problem was spelled out to Obama when he took office. He was obviously aware there needed to be changes when he was Senator.
Obama is President. Obama is President NOW. Obama is NOW the President.
That could be taken at face value and read as an accurate description of how the VA health care system came to be overwhelmed by rapidly escalating numbers. If you don’t expand service delivery capabilities to keep up with the rising demand, veterans who need timely evaluations and necessary health care services simply don’t get them. Failure to deliver is unacceptable. Deliberately covering up that failure is unforgivable.
I’m sure there’s plenty of fault to go around. That said, there’s clearly a serious systemic problem somewhere in the VA’s managerial level. There’s a layer at which facts have been deliberately hidden or distorted to create the impression of a more efficient operation than that which has actually existed. This is a betrayal of trust and a breaking of oaths taken. Careers need to end as a result and remedial actions need to be closely monitored until the problems are fixed. Partisan politics should be set aside because they only distract from getting what is necessary done.
@Greg:
When it’s Dimocrats that screwed up, partisan politics should be set aside. If Repubs screw up, they need to be fired.
http://dailycaller.com/2013/10/14/department-of-veterans-affairs-spent-more-than-3-5-million-on-furniture-day-before-shutdown/
The VA is not even able to spend all the money it has. Funding has more than doubled since 2006. Even though liberals have convinced themselves that throwing other people’s money at problems makes them feel better about the problem, even if the VA had had the entire budget of the US government, the same corrupt, incompetent idiots that try to avoid more work than they do would still be in charge.
Big government has stomach hands; everything it touches turns to shit and the VA scandal is just one more bit of truth to prove it.
@Greg: Maybe they should have spent the $500 million on VA health care instead of furniture. That would have been a start.
Being a veteran, and being a physician both in and out of the military, I am well versed in the bureaucratic, institutional obstruction inherent in the socialist VA system. It isn’t the doctors and nurses who are the problem. It isn’t a lack of funding that is the problem. It is the insane paradigm of the administrative process required to get anything done, typically over the strenuous objections of whatever clipboard tyrant in charge of a department. Common sense ideas to streamline productivity and reduce costs cannot be considered without running an obstacle course of bureaucratic circle jerks of multiple committees composed of members who do little to no actual hands on patient care, a process which literally takes months to accomplish. If a particular decision is finally approved, then begins the budgetary battle as each departmental fiefdom fights doggedly not to be responsible for having to fund the project. Simply trying to hire personnel is a tortuous process, usually requiring FBI background checks before a new nurse or doctor can be brought on to see patients. Frankly, the only time you see a bureaucrat exert any kind of effort is to block any common sense improvements put forth by the doctors and nurses trying to see more patients. The clipboard tyrants work to make things look good for inspections without actually fixing any problems.
And as to the comments regarding caring for military personnel and retirees, the vast majority of those two groups know the dems do not care at all about them, except to use us as photo ops and as propaganda pieces around election time. We never had to be told to be respectful when President Bush came to speak to us, unlike with Clinton. Fortunately, I never had to deal with Obama coming to speak when I was active duty.
@Greg:
Since when does the Collective ever put partisan politics aside?
When it’s politically expedient to do so. That’s when.
@Ronald J. Ward: Wrong, who’s the Commander and Chief?? The initiative to fix the VA was declared fixed by 0-blama!! Your blame Bush or Republicans mantra is total BS on this one!! I am a disabled Vet who works at the VA. What’s your credentials??
@Ronald J. Ward: It was a three page bill and he said he needs more time?? Yet the idiot didn’t read 0-blamacare!! I’d rather be a troll than a complete idiot!!
@Bill Burris, #20:
As if there have never been any serious problems in the private sector…
No institution, corporation, or person in a position of power and trust in the private sector has ever knowingly deceived the public, overcharged, or engaged in a carefully contrived shakedown of their customers. Correct?
@Greg:
Get back to us when “we the people” can sue Obama for deceiving the public and carefully contriving to shake us down for his redistributive agendas.
@Greg: “As if there have never been any serious problems in the private sector…”
There are some major differences. First, I am not funding the ineptitude and corruption which is sacrificing veterans for the sake of bonuses for some irresponsible bureaucrats (there is a reason, Greg, the “bureaucracy” is synonymous with “obstructive”) . Secondly, in the real world incompetence means financial losses and financial losses means accountability. In all the scandals this administration has borne, even if they did not directly cause it, they obstruct and stonewall the corrective actions, which includes investigating root causes and holding people accountable; this is not how the private sector works. Third, in the private sector, if an organization fails to meet the needs of the customers, there is always other options. With government-provided services, they usually monopolize the field and then, without competition and accountability, fails to deliver.
@Bill: and @Common Sense: , I understand who the POTUS is. What your childish covering of the ears to sing “la la la” distraction disregards is how the 3 branches of goverment operates over here in the real world.
@Ronald J. Ward:
If you understand how the 3 branches of government are supposed to work, according to our Constitution, then please tell us this: under what Constitutional authority does Obama lobby for a law, sign that law into affect, and then violate that law by simply having bureaucrat departments change the rule?
The Dream Act never passed. On what Constitutional authority does Obama usurp the authority of the U.S. Congress by granting amnesty to certain illegals?
Get your head out of
your lower regionthe sand; this is the most lawless president we have had since Woodrow Wilson.@Ronald J. Ward: “What your childish covering of the ears to sing “la la la” distraction disregards is how the 3 branches of government operates over here in the real world.” Of course, YOU wouldn’t be covering YOUR ears and yelling “la, la, la” because YOU put an incompetent in office and in control of Congress? Because, YOUR chosen representatives had complete control of the government for two years (not to mention control of Congress the previous two years under Bush) and still control the White House and Senate. So, “la, la, la-ing” your way through an administration that CAMPAIGNED to resolve this issue, has thrown additional funds at it (the VA cannot even SPEND all their budget and has to dump cash into artwork and office furniture to keep from LOSING budget) and bears the responsibility of leadership.
So, Ronald, blame all you want. See how many problems that solves. Meanwhile, the REAL problem, the inherent inefficiency of a large federal government and the corrupt that comes along with huge sums of free money with no oversight, not only goes unresolved, but grows worse under bureaucrats that believe MORE bigger government is the answer for everything.
Obama is President. Obama is President NOW. Obama is NOW the President. And people like YOU are responsible. Blame no one but yourself.
@Greg:
All human institutions are subject to human fallibility. No one is supporting the notion that the private sector is emblematic of divine perfection.
But certainly nothing on Earth has generated more atrocity, poverty, and ruin than the institutions of government. It’s a simple historical reality.
@Bill: Aside from your nonsensical ODS rant, when it comes to elections, you generally have 1 of 2 choices. Given another opportunity to pick between Obama or Romney, I’d again vote for Obama in a hands down heartbeat.
But the argument you’re determined to ignore in your howl-at-the-moon fit throwing Obama bashing hate fest is that we have the most obstructive GOP leadership in U.S. history , which they have repeatedly admitted was an objective to undermine the sitting POTUS.
So the real problem is that we didn’t vote enough of the obstructionist out. If we did, the VA would have received their funding, The American Jobs Act would have passed, people would be making a higher wage, and a huge number of other issues would have been resolved.
@Ronald J. Ward:
Thank God. Let’s hope the GOP is able to obstruct anything and/or everything that this imperial president can’t force down our throats with unilateral executive orders.
In fact the opposite is true. We desperately need to vote more obstructionists in.
But the Collective never mentioned funding to be a problem when it was singing the praises of the VA as the perfect model of socialized medicine. What changed?
What issues would inflation solve?
@Ronald J. Ward: “I’d again vote for Obama in a hands down heartbeat.” Of course you would, Ronald. Of course you would. After all, you could not detect failure after 4 years of it, how could anyone expect you to see it after 6 or 8? Especially when you seek out only propaganda that supports your warped view. I didn’t vote for Obama the first go-round because he was too inexperienced, had accomplished nothing and made far too many contradictory promises to far too many divergent groups. I definitely did not vote for him the second time because he then had a historic record of failure, even with two years of absolute control of the government and two owning 2/3’s of the power.
“But the argument you’re determined to ignore in your howl-at-the-moon fit throwing Obama bashing hate fest is that we have the most obstructive GOP leadership in U.S. history ” Waa, waa, waa and, I should add here, waaaa. Did the GOP obstruct “stimulus”? Did they obstruct Obamacare? Did they obstruct raising the debt to historic levels and repeatedly increasing debt limits so no fiscal responsibility is required? Did they obstruct proposing budgets? No, in fact, only THEY proposed any. Did they obstruct Obama’s “pass it NOW” jobs bill? No, that would be Harry Reid, who didn’t have the guts to bring it to a vote because too many Democrats opposed it. VA funding has more than doubled since 2006 and, as I have REPEATEDLY shown, they have so much budget (and so little managerial ability) so as to not even be able to apply the funds to the delivery of services.
No, no, no, no, no, Ronald. Obama got all he asked for in Obamacare and “stimulus” and all that has done is crater the economy further. Obama has no one to blame for failure but his own lousy ideas and the incurable sycophants such as yourself who keep giving him the power to bring on more failure. The failure is of the liberal ideology; it hasn’t worked, it never works and it never will work.
Doctors’ War Stories From VA Hospitals
Administrators limited operating time so that work stopped by 3 p.m.
While Vets Wait, VA Employees Do Union Work
Millions of dollars are spent on paying health professionals to do full-time work for their unions.
VA Awarded $3M in Prizes in Appointment Scheduling App Contest in 2013
Surprise!
@Ronald J. Ward:
So, again you are saying the problem with the VA is funding?
but clearly, not the most obstructive OPPOSITION leadership ever, you could hang that on the Dimocrats when GHW Bush was prez. Isn’t the job of the opposition to be the opposition? Being a Republic and NOT a Democracy means that it has to be passed by the Congress representing the people and signed by the president. If it is in the best interest of the country, it is usually passed. If it is in the interest of one party, it usually isn’t. That’s what living in a Republic is all about. Notice when an amendement is really in the interest of the country, even with the high requirements, passage by 2/3 of both houses and by 3/4 of the states, that it still passes. So the constitution is deliberately written to create obstacles to changing the laws. May it continue to work correctly.
@Kraken:
It’s totally delusional thinking. Government is simply the political right’s whipping boy. It’s also something that a nation cannot exist without.
The right’s target of opportunity—their scandal du jour—is presently the VA. (Most likely. I haven’t had the television on today. They might be off on something else by now.) There are obviously some serious problems in the VA. That doesn’t mean that the VA is a corrupt and ruinous bureaucratic institution, however. Take all of the good the VA does and all of the trouble with the VA and weigh them in the balance. On the whole it’s a worthy, noble, and totally essential governmental institution—an essential governmental institution with certain identifiable problems, that need to be corrected.
@Greg:
No one is suggesting that a nation can exist without government. Rather what sober and rational minds suggest, is that as George Washington said, “Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.” That’s why those right of center support limited government, not the lack of it. So once again we find the Collective arguing against points that no one is making.
To understand that government is responsible for the world’s worst atrocities isn’t delusional thinking. Rather, it’s delusional to think the opposite. The Final Solution was instituted through governmental policy. The Holodomor was instituted through governmental policy. The long list of atrocities under communist governments were enacted through governmental policies. 6,000 years of recorded human history offer unlimited examples of atrocities, widespread poverty, and human misery brought about through governmental policy making.
Government is the right’s whipping boy for a reason; it deserves to be.
@Greg:
Yet the party in charge of correcting is the basic root of the problem.
Ah, but government is not the subject, Corrupt government is, and we can exist very well without it.
@Kraken, #40:
Government wasn’t responsible. People having very bad intentions who took control of government were responsible.
@Redteam, #41:
The party in charge has responsibility for seeing that any problems that come to light during their tenure are corrected. That doesn’t mean that the party in charge is responsible for having created them.
@Greg:
Which of course is one of the primary problems with government. It’s responsible for giving people with very bad intentions access to control.
Honestly, how the free-love flower children fundamentally transformed into fascist supporters of the heavy hand of government is one of the biggest unexplored sociological mysteries of the 20th Century.
@Greg: “Government wasn’t responsible. People having very bad intentions who took control of government were responsible.” This is precisely correct, Greg, because “government” is a concept, not a person. But people make the laws, enact and enforce them. While the US government is about the best example there is, it is PEOPLE who do the abusing, wielding the IRS as a weapon or ignoring dying veterans and casting them off to secret lists for the sake of bonuses.
I am sure the VA could function in an ideal way… if only it was staffed with people who actually cared about their jobs. To actually care, they have to actually believe performance is a condition of employment and to have that, it has to be understood that failure means dismissal, not promotion.
The larger government gets, the less accountability there is due to the increased ability to slip in between the cracks of oversight. The less accountability there is, the more potential for corruption there is, and the more potential there is, the more actual corruption there is and the more expensive it is.
What has been the usual response to this has been to ask for more and more money. Metering the money has been politicized to the point that not blindly providing funds in whatever quantities they are asked for is racism, anti-immigrant, anti-women, anti-poor, anti-elderly or anti-veteran, as the case may be. Finding out why $180 billion or so is not enough to care for our veterans is too difficult; the easier path is to simply bump it up to $250 billion or so, as the money just magically appears when it is appropriated. No concern that, regardless of how much is applied, the lion’s share is simply wasted on fraud, corruption or inefficiencies.
It is about the desire to serve and the pride in actually doing a good job, not how long one can get away with doing how little. That culture will NEVER be changed until it is understood that failure means termination and that is certainly not the culture of any aspect of the government today.
The Collective’s delusional fantasy:
Factual reality:
@Bill Burris, #44:
What evidence is there that the average government employee doesn’t care about his or her job?
The problems with most bureaucracies—both governmental and private sector/corporate—can be traced to mid-level management and above, where people making operational decisions are totally out of touch with actual rubber-meets-the-road daily operations. For such people mission statements are abstractions, having more to do with public relations than reality. Their true dedication is to playing the games that further or protect their positions. Accountability is a matter of placing any blame elsewhere. Their present concerns will have more to do with CYA activities than with actually fixing problems.
This is probably what we’ll find with the VA situation. It’s not a private/public sector issue. It’s a Deadwood sector issue.
@Greg: If they cared, they would do the job better.
Greg,
The difficulty with government running things that private enterprise can do better is that government has no incentive to be the best. What does government do better than a private company can do? Name one thing besides procrastinate and tax!
@Randy, #47:
The private sector’s incentive is profit, not seeing that customers get the best value for their money. Anyone who thinks this guarantees superior services or cheaper products should try dealing with the Customer Services department of any major consumer products manufacturer, or look into the cost markup percentages of any of the 50 most common prescription drugs. It’s not the government that’s shaking me down every time I turn around these days.
@Greg: 42
That’s correct and using the excuse that the minority party doesn’t want to go along with you is no excuse for not fixing the problem. If the majority can’t take care of business and fix problems that need to be fixed then they need to get the hell out of the way.
@Greg:
Of course it is. It is how they pay dividends on their stocks. Dividends that are paid to teachers, fire fighters, union members, all who are invested in retirement funds.
Poor service, and poor value, loses customers. Loss of customers reduces profit margin. Lack of profit causes businesses to go bankrupt. Economics 101. You should have taken it.
Odd how you left wingers complain about profits on drugs yet are mute on the profits of breweries, which is the highest profit margin of any industry. Guess the left hasn’t decided that having a beer is a personal right.