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Thursday morning Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki came before the Senate Veterans Affairs committee and proclaimed—with a straight face—that the VA health care system is “a good system.”
While Politifact has already deemed President Obama’s infamous “if you like your health care plan, you can keep it” the lie of the year—Shinseki’s statement ranks a close, and unfortunate, second.
The totality of the Secretary’s remarks before the committee Thursday were not only deceptive, they were detached, defensive, and unbefitting a leader who should be fighting mad about the scandals engulfing the VA.The totality of the Secretary’s remarks before the committee Thursday were not only deceptive, they were detached, defensive, and unbefitting a leader who, by now, should be fighting mad about the scandals engulfing VA, firing those responsible, and fundamentally challenging every assumption he has about the manner in which care is provided to our veterans.
Instead, Shinseki played the role of aloof bureaucrat, reading dispassionately from his prepared remarks in a monotone voice, as if this was a run-of-the-mill budget hearing. Shinseki’s comments were spot on in that respect—a perfect personification of VA’s indifferent and unaccountable bureaucracy.
As my organization Concerned Veterans for America has been saying for years—and Fox News has been reporting aggressively—the VA is an infected bureaucracy, incapable of delivering timely care to veterans; instead, the VA has been cooking the books to preserve the jobs and bonuses of senior officials.
The Phoenix VA scandal has been the most publicized example—with as many as 40 veterans allegedly dying while waiting on a secret list.
But Phoenix is just the tip of the iceberg, with another half-dozen whistleblowers from across the country stepping up in the past few weeks to reveal similar secret lists.
Plain and simple—the VA is failing in its core mission to veterans: providing timely and quality healthcare. Across the country, veterans are waiting months for basic appointment, let alone specialized care.
By VA’s own account, only 41 percent of veterans are seen for a medical appointment within 14 days; a number that is certainly dramatically lower in light of how VA has cooked the books on appointments.
Wait times of weeks and months are unacceptable anywhere, let alone for our veterans.
As for the quality of care, while it is great at many facilities, it has been uneven at others—just ask the families of veterans in Pittsburgh and Atlanta about deaths that could have been prevented due to medical malpractice.
All of this is unacceptable.
As a result of these revelations and his performance before Congress Thursday, there will be more calls for Shinseki to resign, and rightfully so. But that action alone would not solve this problem. Just as the problem is more than just the scandal in Phoenix, the problems at VA are much larger than Shinseki.
Shinseki should be fired immediately—as my group, the American Legion, and many Senators have called for—but that is only the beginning.
Fundamental reform is needed, from top to bottom, to shake up a calcified and unaccountable bureaucracy. These reforms start with accountability at the very top, and throughout VA.
VA must also be made more transparent, and the benefits veterans have earned should be more portable—meaning if you can’t get timely or convenient care at a local VA, you can go elsewhere.
It also must be made clear that the problems at VA are not funding problems. Some individuals testified Thursday that more money might solve the problem. This is bogus.
Sure, there are certain aspects of VA that could use additional funding, but reallocation of existing funds would be more than sufficient.
In Phoenix alone, 59% of salaries are spent on administration and operations, notmedical care.
The VA bureaucracy is very adept at gobbling up additional funding; so before we spend more money on VA, we need to reform it. Let’s stop throwing more money at a bureaucracy incapable of using it wisely or efficiently.
Finally, some members at Thursday’s hearing pointed, with hopeful expectation, toward the White House’s decision to appoint a top Obama political operative to oversee a VA “review.”
Count me as underwhelmed and skeptical about it.
The White House has zero incentive to find wrongdoing at VA, and I have very little faith that anything substantive will be found from this investigation.
Only a bipartisan and independent investigation will do the job, and Congress should press for one; but not at the expense of immediate and real reform.
If one thing was clear today, it’s that Congress should get to work providing much-needed oversight for VA.
The House and Senate would be wise to start with the VA Management Accountability Act of 2014, a bill that would allow senior managers at VA to actually be fired.
It’s common sense, non-partisan, and long-overdue reform. The bill is not a silver bullet, but is a great start.
It will likely see a vote soon in the House; but the question is whether the Senate, with all the Republican and Democratic bluster we witnessed on Thursday, will step up to the plate and pass an actual piece of reform legislation.
For Congress, and the White House, it’s put up or shut up time.
Pete Hegseth is a Fox News contributor. He is the CEO of Concerned Veterans for America and the former executive director of Vets for Freedom. He is an infantry officer in the Army National Guard and has served tours in Afghanistan and Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay. Learn more at:www.concernedveteransforamerica.org.
Millions of people have come to America legally and invested the time and effort to become naturalized citizens in pursuit of personal freedom and their American Dream. We admire them for their courage, determination and desire, all of which reflect the founding principles of the United States.The position of Tea Party Patriots is clear. We must first fully secure our borders. Immigration reform cannot happen without this necessary first step.We support legal immigration and the rule of law, according to the Constitution. There is already a legal path to citizenship for those wishing to come to the United States. Anyone who decides to get off that path and enter the United States illegally should not be given any sort of amnesty because doing so is neither fair nor equal treatment under the law.We must also demand the Obama administration enforce our current immigration laws. Those who are determined to have entered the country illegally and are on-track for deportation should be deported.Those who have been convicted of crimes and are serving sentences for their crimes should remain incarcerated until their sentences have been served.Conservatives are watching Congress like a hawk and will do everything to make sure immigration reform is done in a manner that respects the law and those who abide by it.In liberty,Tea Party Patriots National Support Team
By Sal Russo
May 14, 2014, 5 a.m.
The U.S. immigration system is flawed and broken. Conservatives should be at the forefront of reform so the law reflects the just interests of the United States, not misty-eyed ideals of some of the liberal do-gooder reformers. What is good for America should be the sole criteria for immigration reform.
Our laws today are unenforced and citizens and companies who play by the rules are undermined by bad actors who do not. This undermines our rule of law and slows our economic growth. In today’s global economy, we cannot afford the status quo.
Congress must pass legislation that will fix our broken system. We have the strongest economy in the world, the most innovative businesses and a history replete with examples of how legal immigration has made us stronger. Conservatives need to seize on immigration reform as an opportunity for growth, to reaffirm who we are and what makes our country great.
Our economy has long outgrown the visa programs we have now. In high-skilled industries such as engineering and medicine, we do not have the talent we need to fill the jobs. These industries are the fastest growing in the country and we depend on them for job creation and economic growth. But according to the Partnership for a New American Economy, we face a shortage of more than 235,000 jobs in science, technology, engineering and math fields by 2018.
On the other end of the spectrum, we face debilitating workforce challenges as well. Visa limits for seasonal workers, such as those needed by farmers, cannot keep up with demand. And those visas that are available are too cumbersome, complex and cost prohibitive for many employers to use. That means fewer fruits and vegetables per season, lost revenue and an increased reliance on imports, many of which are not subject to the same level of health regulations as our homegrown crops. By instituting worker visa programs that adequately address our farm labor demands, we can keep American agriculture strong.
With a rational visa policy, we also improve security by allowing border security agents to devote their attention where it is most needed — keeping out law-breakers, drug dealers, criminals and terrorists.
Border security must be an essential element of any immigration reform. In addition to using physical barriers, surveillance and enforcement, we have to stop the biggest problem — the rich incentives for illegal immigration. They are a magnet for people to come here illegally. That means fixing the broken system we have that relies on quotas and diversity, instead of a system based on what America needs.
Doing nothing now means hurting businesses just as we are coming out of the Great Recession. Today, 40 percent of our Fortune 500 companies were founded by an immigrant or child of an immigrant. Much of the new small-business growth in the country is because of legal immigrants.
Because we have no visa for entrepreneurs, the most innovative people around the world are starting companies and creating jobs elsewhere. Meanwhile, other countries understand that entrepreneurs are an economic necessity. While we actively turn away future CEOs, the rest of the world is offering incentives to attract new businesses. (Continue Reading...)
As the EPA tries to systematically impose their will on every aspect of your life in trying to make air and water cleaner than God himself ever intended - it appears these out of control green energy goose-steppers stepped into a knee deep pile of their own!For years, a senior Environmental Protection Agency employee viewed pornography at work for up to six hours a day. Managers entered fraudulent pay records for work-from-home employees who did no work. A top EPA personnel manager arranged for paid internships for friends and family — and bonuses for her own daughter. Another employee was paid for more than a year after moving to a nursing home.
Those are among the allegations aired Wednesday at a congressional hearing into whether the EPA is capable of policing itself in the aftermath of the John Beale case.
Beale, a former deputy assistant administrator, was convicted last year of theft after he took an EPA paycheck and travel expenses for 13 years while falsely claiming to be out of the office serving as a CIA agent.
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., said Beale's deception was "just the tip of EPA's fraudulent iceberg" and convened the hearing to figure out whether there are systemic management problems at the agency.
The most serious allegation came from investigator from the inspector general's office who testified she was assaulted while questioning an employee of the Office of Homeland Security, an EPA unit unrelated to the Cabinet department. Special Agent Elisabeth Heller Drake said Steven Williams, an EPA senior intelligence adviser, physically obstructed her as she attempted to investigate and that she would have arrested him if he wasn't a government official. Williams did not respond to a request for comment.
Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., called the October 2013 incident "one of the most disturbing things I've heard in 17 years in Congress. ... This is not part of your job description to go through that kind of hell."
The U.S. attorney's office declined to bring assault charges, and EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy put a halt to the inspector general's investigation four days later, citing "discord, distrust and conflict" between the two offices. She also asked an outside inspector general to investigate the incident.
EPA spokeswoman Alisha Johnson said the incident "is an isolated instance and does not represent the manner in which the EPA and its Inspector General work cooperatively on a daily basis." She said the administrator called off the investigation "to ensure the safety of all EPA employees" and consult with outside agencies.
EPA Deputy Administrator Bob Perciasepe told the committee that the EPA has cooperated with 2,600 inspector general audits and investigations since 2009. "The overwhelming majority of the approximately 16,000 EPA employees are dedicated, hardworking, professional public servants — a point on which I know the Inspector General agrees with me." He said he would instruct the Department of Homeland Security to turn over documents related to the investigation Wednesday.
Among other incidents the committee is investigating:
• An unnamed high-level civil service employee had 7,000 pornographic files on his work computer and visited pornographic websites two to six hours a day since 2010. The Justice Department is investigating.
• Office of Administration Director Renee Page sold jewelry and weight loss products from her office during business hours, according to an inspector general's report. The report said she also hired 17 family members and friends as interns, and that she arranged for her daughter, also an EPA employee, to get a cash bonus out of her budget. Page did not return an e-mail seeking comment.
• An EPA employee with a work-from-home job did no work for five years — and still earned a total of $600,000 and performance bonuses. She retired after an inspector general investigation.
• Another unnamed employee kept getting regular paychecks for more than a year after moving to an assisted living facility. The Justice Department is investigating.
Will you join with us in calling for the repeal of the 16th Amendment?
The amendment, which went into effect in 1913, gives the federal government power to levy an income tax. Yet the Internal Revenue Service has time and time again, abused that power to harass law-abiding citizens with opposing political beliefs – including Tea Party Patriots.It’s also clear that the federal government cannot be trusted to responsibly and efficiently spend our hard-earned tax dollars. We believe there is simply a better way for Americans to pay their taxes. We believe the tax code shouldn’t be so rife with opportunities for fraud and the IRS is an agency with too much power and a demonstrated willingness to abuse its authority. The current tax system is an antiquated model that has no place in the 21stcentury or a free society. All it does is breed corruption and waste – not to mention rampant inefficiency.Congressman Jim Bridenstine of Oklahoma has already introduced legislation to repeal the 16th Amendment. He believes, as we do, that real tax reform won’t happen until Congress loses its constitutional authority to impose an income tax. Let’s help get Rep. Bridenstine’s bill the attention it deserves, and call for full repeal.It’s time for a change! It’s time for Americans to have more control over their own money, but we need your help.
Visit www.teapartypatriots.org/repeal16/ to sign our petition to repeal the 16th Amendment! There, you’ll also find other resources to help you in the fight for a fair, fixed and flat tax system. With your help, we will make it happen.
By Jude Eden, Jane of Trades
“It is impossible to read the history of the petty republics of Greece and Italy without sensations of horror and disgust at the distractions with which they were continually agitated, and at the rapid succession of revolutions by which they were kept in a state of perpetual vibration between the extremes of tyranny and anarchy.” – Publius, Federalist Paper No. 9.For those who haven’t heard, Operation American Spring is a group of so called patriots led by retired Col. Harry Riley, who are planning to demonstrate in Washington on May 16th. Their announced aim is to oust politicians they deem corrupt, and to replace them with politicians they like. OAS is claiming the authority of the Constitution and Declaration, to “throw off the bonds” of an unjust government and to redress grievances. There’s just one problem. Transferring power by these methods is totally unconstitutional. If we follow this lead, we can forget elections and voter sovereignty.
Any group of citizens can collect in public to air grievances and urge a course of action. They can speak to create a tension in the mind of the community. But OAS can’t claim to be restoring our constitutional republic by inviting ten million people to show up in Washington to throw people out of office outside the electoral process. Be they ten or ten million, no one voted for them to represent America; and they certainly do not represent the Tea Party, which has from the start been a constitutionalist movement. Riley and OAS represent only themselves.
In the Federalist Papers, Publius warned against exactly what OAS is, a faction: “…a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens…” (Federalist Paper No. 10).
PubliusThe Founders took great pains to create a government that would prevent the changeable passions of a group in frenzy from imposing their will on the rest of the country.
Dr. Mickey Craig of Hillsdale College, puts it succinctly:
“The Constitution, while it is a popular government, it is a form of popular government which recognizes the disease of popular government, and has put in place institutional arrangements that will make it less likely that a factious or tyrannical majority will form and lead to the loss of liberty for the country.”
Operation American Spring is taking its cues from the populist Occupy and Arab Spring movements. The first brought destruction and anarchy to the streets of New York City and elsewhere. The second lead to the installation of one of the most tyrannical, fanatical leaders in Egypt’s recent history. This is horrifying enough. But more, they are preying on the well-meaning patriotism of many in the Tea Party movement, trusting that these same folks won’t see that OAS is completely antithetical to how we change power in America.
They are using the genuine and understandable frustrations of patriots who are fed up, citizens who see government out of control and want to do something to bring us back from the brink; from unsustainable debt, a government that won’t enforce our laws, a tyrannical health care policy that infringes on our liberties, and an economy and foreign policy that are in the toilet. They want to do something – something with faster results than our republican form of government allows. So here comes OAS with a call to action, miming Constitutionalism and encouraging the people to rise up and kick the corrupt bastards out via Washington sit-in.
constitution imaeThe slow, deliberative nature of our electoral process exists to temper the passions of just such a furious mob with its great potential for violence and anarchy. The constitution guarantees the peaceful transfer of power through the consent of the governed. It doesn’t matter how many papers OAS submits to Congress to get the Obama administration and John Boehner to resign. They can’t usurp and disregard our electoral process. To do so is to destroy the civil rights of the rest of the country who voted in 2012 and who certainly have a stake in November, 2014.
As Publius says in Federalist Paper No. 54, “This constitution will only work if the people choose men of wisdom and virtue to occupy the offices.” Where there are corrupt politicians, it is our duty as citizens to vote them out and vote in better representatives. Where there is voter or election fraud it is our duty to expose it and to stop it by requiring the same government-issued photo IDs we need to do everything else in our lives. Where millions are persuaded to vote for corrupt politicians and destructive policies, it is our job as citizens to persuade them otherwise. Where these problems are addressed we can begin to right the ship and save our country, no revolution needed.
Either Col. Riley and OAS are totally ignorant of what they are claiming to represent, or they are deliberately hijacking constitutional patriotism to enact what comes down to a coup – and mere months before our next election. Isn’t it ironic that a group claiming to restore our constitutional republic won’t use constitutional methods to do it?
Patriots from coast to coast should soundly reject Operation American Spring for exactly what it is: a tyrannical faction that is illegitimate, destructive, and unconstitutional.
Jude Eden is a Hillsdale College grad, a Jewish Marine Corps Iraq War Veteran, cancer survivor, musician, conservative activist and the wife of a legal immigrant. Follow on Twitter at @Jude_Eden
