When it comes to health care for veterans who have fought around the world defending our freedoms, it is our duty to provide the best treatment and the best resources in a timely manner. Anything less than that is nothing short of failure. President Obama’s Department of Veterans Affairs is failing our veterans with dozens dying before receiving necessary medical care.In Arizona, the Phoenix Veterans Affairs (VA) Health Care System is under fire for covering up evidence that links the deaths of veterans to prolonged waits for necessary medical care. Florida Rep. Jeff Miller, who chairs the House Committee on Veterans Affairs, says his staff has proof the Phoenix VA system secretly keeps two sets of records in order to hide information about prolonged waits that veterans must endure for treatment.“It appears as though there could be as many as 40 veterans whose deaths could be related to delays in care,” said Miller during a hearing on Wednesday. Rep. Miller’s revelations follow VA whistleblower reports that raised red flags about VA’s record-keeping practices, as well as veterans’ deaths and mismanagement.One doctor who retired from the Phoenix VA Medical Center last year sent a letter to the Inspector General and the U.S. Attorney, among others, claiming the Phoenix system is afflicted with “gross mismanagement of VA resources and criminal misconduct” that resulted in “systemic patient safety issues and possible wrongful deaths.”“Possible wrongful deaths.” Welcome to Obama’s VA.There are several lessons to be drawn from the VA problems in Phoenix; the least of which being that the federal government isn’t optimized for administering health care. Bureaucracies don’t run like private markets do. In one, misconduct, fraud, and corruption are inherently discouraged by criminal prosecution, fines and prison. In the other, mismanagement, secrecy, and the concealment of failure is rarely deterred or detected. It’s not difficult to figure out which is which.The current problems at VA demand reform and involve more than just medical care. Nearly 600,000 veterans await a decision on their disability claims. Worse yet, VA data suggests that the backlog of claims more than 125 days old has fallen because of suspect denials. In Obama’s VA, the number of appeals following a denial of benefits has soared to more than 274,000, leaving those veterans waiting more than 400 more days to have their disability claims reviewed.VA health care is available only to a fraction of veterans and is not an entitlement; it is an earned benefit provided to those who were wounded or otherwise disabled during their time in uniform. They deserve better than what Obama is delivering.
If the “sin tax” for stadiums passes May 6, who decides how much will go to the city of Cleveland, and how much to Gateway?
Who’ll decide what gets replaced first — the Quicken Loans Arena roof or the ramps at Progressive Field or the seats at FirstEnergy Stadium? Can any of it go to pay off construction debt, or will it all go to repairs and new scoreboards?
We don’t know. No one does. The city and Cuyahoga County still have to negotiate how they’ll share the alcohol and cigarette tax money. The negotiations won’t be easy. And they don’t intend to hash it out until after voters approve the tax.
“We do recognize that this is a gap in the legislation,” county councilman Dave Greenspan told me recently. “It is an issue we will need to deliberate on.”
The “sin tax” on alcohol and cigarettes is a county tax. So if voters extend it, the Cuyahoga County Council gets to decide how it’s spent. But city, county and business leaders say the extension is meant for repairs at all three publicly-owned sports facilities. (You can see the Indians' and Cavs' wish lists and a report about the Browns' stadium here.)
The city owns the football stadium, while the public Gateway corporation owns the baseball stadium and basketball arena. How will the money be divided?
“I think it will probably be even,” Mayor Frank Jackson said at the February press conference that kicked off the pro-sin tax campaign. Jackson wants the tax revenue, a projected $260 million over 20 years, to be split equally among baseball, football, and basketball.
But at a January meeting, Greenspan and three other Cuyahoga County council members warned Jackson’s chief of staff, Ken Silliman, not to expect an even split.
“A third, a third, a third is not something I am interested in,” Greenspan tells me. “I’m a big believer that the money follows the need. If in one year, Progressive Field has greater needs than the other two, that’s where money will go.”
The city and county haven’t had to share stadium money like this before. The first stadium sin tax, from 1990 to 2005, was earmarked for Gateway, to build Progressive Field and the Q. When the tax was renewed for 2005 to 2015, the first $116 million was earmarked for building and repairing FirstEnergy Stadium. (The last year or so of the tax will go to the county.)
But if the tax is extended to 2035, the city and county will have competing interests for the same pot of cash. The Jackson and FitzGerald administrations want to negotiate a cooperative agreement to figure out how to sort through those interests.
It’ll be tough. The Browns’ lease is more complex and vague about what the public has to pay for than the Indians’ and Cavs’ leases. The football stadium is newer and is used less often, but it’s bigger, and it’s battered by lakeshore winds. Gateway already has a system for weighing Progressive Field’s repair needs versus the Q’s. But that doesn’t help any with the football stadium -- unless Gateway were to take it over too.
The county will have the upper hand in negotiations with the city, because it levies the tax. But the cost of public stadium ownership is falling harder on the city right now. Cleveland is still paying off $13 million a year in construction debt on the football stadium, while the county is paying off $9 million a year in debt from the Q.
Could any sin tax money go to those old debts? City councilmen Brian Cummins and Mike Polensek have asked that question, and Jackson has entertained the possibility. But it seems unlikely. The county council sounds unwilling to hand over a straight third of the tax money to the city, and the county seems entirely focused on future repairs, not past debt.
Why wasn’t this all figured out before the tax went on the ballot? Greenspan asked that question at the January meeting.
“Those discussions need to happen, in my opinion, before the vote in May,” he said then, “so that the voters understand the complexity and understand the fundamental decision-making process as to how these funds are going to be used.”
He was ignored. Our elected officials would rather present a united front to get the tax passed, then argue about the messy details later.
Politicians may be known for stretching the truth, but Speaker John Boehner's claim he's attended “hundreds of Tea Party events” over the past four years apparently pulled it well past the point of breaking.In reviewing press reports, Breitbart News was only able to identify three Tea Party events Boehner has attended, all of which occurred before he became speaker. Boehner's spokesman now says the Ohio Republican has merely “talked with hundreds of Tea Party supporters.” Several top Ohio Tea Party activists, meanwhile, said they didn't know of Boehner's attending any Tea Party events in his home state.Boehner made the claim at a Thursday luncheon event at the Middletown, Ohio, Rotary Club, specifying that by attending so many events he's been able to identify patterns in who makes up the Tea Party.“I've gone to hundreds of Tea Party events over the last four years. The makeup is pretty much the same. You've got some disaffected Republicans, disaffected Democrats. You always have a handful of anarchists. They are against everything. Eighty percent of the people at these events are the most ordinary Americans you've ever met – none of whom have ever been involved in politics. We in public service respect the fact that they brought energy to the political process,” Boehner said.In 2009 and 2010, Boehner attended at least three Tea Party rallies.The first was April 15, 2009 in Bakersfield, California, where he attended with House Republican Whip Kevin McCarthy. The second was September 6, 2009, where he spoke against Obamacare, then under consideration in Congress, at a Cincinnati Tea Party Voices of America Freedom Rally. The third was April 13, 2010 at a Tea Party rally held in Orlando, Florida, organized by Tea Party activist Jason Hoyt and attended by an estimated 2,000 people.Incidentally, all were more than four years ago, which was the length of time Boehner specified during which he had attended the events.Michael Steel, a spokesman for Boehner, told Breitbart News late Friday, “Rep. Boehner attended Tea Party rallies, including in Florida and California, from the very start of the movement, and he's talked with hundreds of Tea Party supporters in recent years as he has traveled in Ohio and around the country.”Boehner keeps an extremely busy schedule as he travels the country fundraising for Republican candidates, during the course of which he has undoubtedly met many people who self-identify as being of the Tea Party.However, back home in Ohio, prominent local Tea Party activists say he has largely been missing in action.“Speaker Boehner is my Representative,” Ann Becker, an Ohio Tea Party activist, said Friday. “He has been to only one Tea Party event. It was in September of 2009. His staff has been to a few more events. But hundreds is an extreme overstatement. He also has met with Tea Party leaders in the district a few times.”“I am unaware of Boehner attending 'hundreds of Tea Party events,'” Ralph King, co-coordinator of the Cleveland, Ohio, Tea Party Patriots, said. “I would say the closest Boehner would ever be to a Tea Party event is he would have been driving the British ship in the Boston Harbor!”Marianne Gasiecki, founder of the Mansfield, Ohio, Tea Party told Breitbart News on Friday, “John Boehner has not been to any Tea Party rallies outside of his district that I know of.”“If he does go to Tea Party rallies in his district," Gasieki said, "it's only during campaign season."Boehner was a notable no-show at the massive rally attended by more than 20,000 Tea Party activists on the west lawn of the Capitol on March 20, 2010 called to oppose Obamacare one day before the final vote. Numerous Tea Party-friendly members of Congress, including Steve King (R-IA), Michele Bachmann (R-MN), and Mike Pence (R-IN) spoke at the event.Boehner also did not attend an August 27, 2013 Tea Party rally of 300 activists held in front of Speaker Boehner's Troy, Ohio, offices. The purpose of the rally was to urge Boehner to defund Obamacare.At the luncheon Thursday, Boehner went on to explain how he has a fairly positive view of the Tea Party movement but not the organizations that claim its mantle in urging Congress to be more conservative.According to Boehner, "[t]here's the Tea Party and then there are people who purport to represent the Tea Party.""I don't have any issue with the Tea Party," Boehner said. "I have issues with organizations in Washington who raise money purporting to represent the Tea Party, those organizations who are against a budget deal the president and I cut that will save $2.4 trillion over 10 years. They probably don't know that total federal spending in each of the last two years has been reduced, the first time since 1950."According to Boehner, Tea Party activists "probably don't realize that we protected 99 percent of the American people from an increase in their taxes. They were against that too, the same organizations. There are organizations in Washington that exist for the sheer purpose of raising money to line their own pockets.""I made it pretty clear I'll stand with the Tea Party," Boehner concluded, "but I'm not standing with these three or four groups in Washington who are using the Tea Party for their own personal benefit."Boehner also mocked Republicans who opposed his efforts to pass immigration reform legislation."Here's the attitude," he told the audience. Then, in a high pitched, theatrical voice, Boehner screeched out, "Ohhhh. Don't make me do this. Ohhhh. This is too hard."
