Accountability
Theater: Nobody Got Fired Over the VA Scandal
by John Hayward 24 Apr 2015
The Obama Administration
and its new Secretary of Veterans Affairs, Robert McDonald, loudly claimed
that sixty people lost their jobs over the Secret Death List scandal. According
to the New York Times, the
actual number is: zero.
As the Times recalls, soon after the “Sixty
heads rolled!” headlines were written, the Department of Veterans Affairs backpedaled and said that only 14 people had
actually been removed. That was a lie, too. As so often in the Obama years, it
fell to a committee of congressional Republicans to flog the truth out of the
Administration, and it took months of effort:
The documents given this month to the House Committee on
Veterans Affairs, which provided them to The New York Times, show that the
department punished a total of eight of its 280,000 employees for involvement
in the scandal. One was fired, one retired in lieu of termination, one’s
termination is pending, and five were reprimanded or suspended for up to two
months.
The only person fired was the director of the Phoenix
hospital, Sharon Helman, who technically was removed not for her role in the
manipulation of waiting lists but for receiving “inappropriate gifts,”
according to the department.
In a statement released Wednesday night, the department did
not dispute the numbers released by the committee, but said that more than 100
other employees were facing disciplinary action.
“V.A. is committed to holding employees accountable for
misconduct,” the statement said.
One person fired for other reasons, one pending termination,
and one retirement. If the pending termination goes through, and it actually
does cite the Secret Death List horror as the reason, that individual will
become the only person explicitly fired for it. Former VA Secretary Eric Shinseki wasn’t fired, he resigned, and Obama made a big production
about how it was Shinseki’s idea to go, not the President’s.
What an outrageous load of garbage.
President Obama, Secretary McDonald, and the VA bureaucracy
didn’t say they were thinking about vague “disciplinary action” for a hundred
employees, back when the scandal was so hot it was burning holes through the
daily newspapers. Remember, Obama’s first instinct was to blow the whole thing
off with some mumbled promises of reform; he didn’t give a damn until the
stories of veterans left to die on secret lists, while administrators filed
phony reports and collected fat bonuses for their “superior performance,”
created so much public outrage that the White House had to get
involved.
Obama resisted asking for former Shinseki’s resignation for
an absurdly long time, because he wanted to shrink the scandal until it could
be dropped down the Memory Hole, and he worried that sacking the Secretary
would pump up the story. In the end, Shinseki was ousted, McDonald took his
place… and the Administration put the story to bed with a bald-faced
lie about how they were going to fire everyone involved. If McDonald’s
appointment had been followed with an airy commitment to subject a hundred
people to undefined “disciplinary actions” but keep them on the job, there
might have been pitchforks and torches in the streets of Washington.
It’s Accountability Theater, and we get a fresh performance
every time scandals explode in the Obama Administration, because they know the
public has a short attention span, and their faithful media has an even shorter
one. All it takes to keep the news cycle rolling is a little puppet show,
narrated by a President who declares himself stunned and angry over the
incredible story he just read in the newspapers – more angry than anyone in
America, he often insists. He vows to get to the bottom of it all, and maybe
stages a sham resignation or two. The Times says one of the
three people that might, with a great stretch of the imagination, be described
as “losing their jobs” at the VA actually retired. The same thing
happened in the IRS scandal – Obama pretended to fire a couple of people who
were actually retiring on schedule, or reaching the end of temporary
appointments.
The furious chair of the House Veterans Affairs, Rep. Jeff
Miller (R-FL), vowed to introduce legislation that would make it easier to fire
VA employees, noting that instead of disciplining or terminating them, “VA
often just transfers them to other VA facilities, or puts them on paid leave
for months on end.”
Funny, the same thing happens with awful public school
teachers. The abuse of paid leave
for “disciplinary” purposes is one of the great under-reported outrages of
Washington, the government “punishment” that only hurts the victims.
Miller said “everyone knows accountability is a major
problem” at the VA. It’s not just that one department, although Veterans
Affairs has presented one of the most grotesque examples, with victims who
deserve the full and faithful attention of our mega-government far more than
most of the people it showers billions of dollars on. And even this most
blood-boiling example of corruption and failure proved utterly impervious to
consequences!
The Administration won’t even do us the courtesy of whining
that their hands are tied, and they can’t sack anyone responsible because
they’re protected by bureaucratic inertia and public unions, because they’ll
never admit to such deadly flaws in the filthy-rich, all-powerful system they
worship. They don’t want the American people to notice that virtually all
promises of meaningful reform end up as cobwebbed skeletons in forgotten
corners of that vast bureaucratic maze.
I’m afraid I must disagree with Rep. Miller’s assertion
that “everyone knows” the Department of Veterans Affairs has severe
accountability problems. We don’t know that, because the Department,
its Secretary, and his boss in the Oval Office lied to us about it.
Department of Veterans Affairs
Robert A. McDonald
is the secretary for the U.S. Department
of Veterans Affairs, was a director at the U.S.-China Business Council, and the chairman & president &
CEO for the Procter & Gamble Company.
Note: William M. Daley
was a director at the U.S.-China
Business Council, the chief of staff for the Barack Obama administration, and is a member of the Commercial Club of Chicago.
Commercial Club of
Chicago, Members Directory A-Z (Past Research)
Tuesday, December 17, 2013
W. James
McNerney Jr. was a director at the U.S.-China
Business Council, is a member of the Commercial
Club of Chicago, and a director at the Procter
& Gamble Company.
Robert A. McDonald
was a director at the U.S.-China
Business Council, the chairman & president & CEO for the Procter & Gamble Company, and is
the secretary for the U.S. Department of
Veterans Affairs.
Togo
D. West Jr. was a secretary for the U.S.
Department of Veterans Affairs, and is a director at the Atlantic Council of the United States (think
tank).
Eric
K. Shinseki was a secretary for the U.S.
Department of Veterans Affairs for the Barack
Obama administration, and a director at the Atlantic Council of the United States (think tank).
Open
Society Foundations was a funder for the Atlantic Council of the United States (think tank), the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton
Foundation, and the Center for
American Progress.
George
Soros is the founder & chairman for the Open Society Foundations, a co-chair, national finance council for
the Ready PAC (Ready For Hillary),
was the chairman for the Foundation to
Promote Open Society, a contributor for Priorities USA Action, and a supporter for the Center for American Progress.
Foundation
to Promote Open Society was a funder for the Committee for Economic Development, and the Center for American Progress.
Angela
F. Braly is a trustee at the Committee
for Economic Development, and a director at the Procter & Gamble Company.
Deborah Platt
Majoras is a trustee at the Committee
for Economic Development, and the chief legal officer for the Procter & Gamble Company.
Mary Agnes
Wilderotter is a trustee at the Committee
for Economic Development, and a director at the Procter & Gamble Company.
Joseph
T. Gorman was a trustee at the Committee
for Economic Development, and a director at the Procter & Gamble Company.
Procter
& Gamble Company was a funder for the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation.
Hillary Rodham
Clinton was a director at the Bill,
Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation, and is the candidate for the 2016 Hillary Rodham Clinton presidential
campaign.
Priorities USA
Action is supporting the 2016
Hillary Rodham Clinton presidential campaign, and was a super PAC
supporting the 2012 Barack Obama
presidential campaign.
John
D. Podesta isthe campaign manager for the 2016 Hillary Rodham Clinton presidential campaign, the founder of
the Center for American Progress,
was a temporary CEO for the Bill, Hillary
& Chelsea Clinton Foundation, a counselor for the Barack Obama administration, and a director at the Center for a New American Security.
Norman R.
Augustine was a director at the Center
for a New American Security, and a director at the Procter & Gamble Company.
Robert A. McDonald
was the chairman & president & CEO for the Procter & Gamble Company, a director at the U.S.-China Business Council, and is the
secretary for the U.S. Department of
Veterans Affairs.
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