Veterans Affairs Scandal Further Discredits Obama's Big Government Policies

Veterans Affairs Scandal Further Discredits Obama's Big Government Policies

By Michael Barone

President Obama evidently was caught by surprise by the scandal at the Department of Veterans Affairs. So, apparently, was VA Secretary Eric Shinseki, who evidently took at face value the corrupt VA statistics -- and who, after a distinguished military career, resigned last week.

One who was probably not taken by surprise is longtime Yale Law Professor Peter Schuck, who identified the problems at the VA before the scandal broke in his recently published book, "Why Government Fails So Often and How It Can Do Better."  Schuck is no libertarian who wants to do away with government altogether. He says he has voted for every Democratic presidential candidate but one since 1964.

The federal government, he notes, does more things than ever and gets less respect than ever from the people it purports to serve. There is, he argues, a connection between these two trends.

The Department of Veterans Affairs is a case in point. Writing well before the current scandal, Schuck notes that the VA's budget has more than doubled in real terms over a dozen years, from $45 billion in 2000 to $154 billion in 2012, and that it hired many more claims processors.

"Yet as Congress keeps authorizing new benefits and makes eligibility easier, the backlog (now 900,000 claims) grows steadily worse due to the agency's continued reliance on paper records, its perversely designed production quotas that encourage employees to reach for the thin folders first, the numerous refilled and appealed claims after denials, and its lax definition of disability to include common age-related conditions."

Reaching for the thin folders first, it turns out, was not the worst of it. The waiting list scandal uncovered at the Phoenix VA hospital was not just the product of a few miscreants.

As the VA inspector general's report makes clear, there was a widespread conspiracy to keep veterans off the official waiting lists. Dozens if not hundreds of VA employees must have cooperated and colluded.

Each of them knew what was going on. Each knew that they were cheating and violating the rules. And many understood that bonuses and promotions hinged on the success of their conspiracy.

So the Phoenix VA hospital reported that the average waiting time for medical appointments was 24 days -- short of the Obama administration's 2011 goal of 14 days but within ballpark range.

But the actual waiting time, according to the inspector general's report, was 115 days. That is orders of magnitude greater than the 14-day goal.

When Obamacare was under consideration in Congress, liberal bloggers like Ezra Klein, then at the Washington Post, called the VA health system "one of the most remarkable success stories in American public policy." It was an example of "when socialism works in America."

True, in some respects the VA system performs admirably. Its work on prosthetics has helped many severely wounded veterans live productive and satisfying lives.

And it's also true that some VA units perform better than others. Death rates and IV-line bloodstream infections are far better at the top-rated Boston VA than in Phoenix, for example.

But, as the Ethics and Public Policy Center's Yuval Levin points out, "centrally run, highly bureaucratic public health care systems that do not permit meaningful pricing and do not allow for competition among providers of care can really only respond to supply and demand pressures through waiting lines." Long queues are the price of free care. It's easy to call for eliminating waste, fraud and abuse, and sometimes an administrative change can improve performance. Levin, who worked in the George W. Bush administration, credits the Clinton administration for some "very well executed" modernization efforts at the VA.

But policy failure and mismanagement, Schuck argues, are the result of "the deep structures of our policy system -- perverse incentives, collective irrationality, lack of credibility with necessary stakeholders, the superior speed, flexibility and incentives of private markets, obstacles to implementation, the inherent limits of law as a policy instrument and a mediocre and degraded bureaucracy."

It doesn't help when you have a president uninterested in the actual operations of government and a VA secretary unduly trusting of subordinates.

Barack Obama came to office determined to expand government and confident that Americans would like it. Instead, Obamacare, the sluggish economy and now the VA scandal have tended to discredit big government more than any abstract argument could.

THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

Whatever Became Of Morality?

Whatever Became Of Morality?

 by The Daily Bell

What are we to make of this? 

Two 12 year-old white American girls who look perfectly normal stabbed their 12-year old friend 19 times in a murder attempt. By murdering their friend the girls hoped to win the acceptance of a totally fictitious cartoon character on a website.

Does this mean that not only has the enculturation process in the US deleted morality but also that American kids can no longer tell the difference between fiction and reality?

On several occasions I have written that Americans live in The Matrix, just as in the movie, only there is no "The One" to release them. Has the electronic existence in which children are raised destroyed their humanity?

I would bet that crimes that result from life in virtual reality will be used by governments to shut down free expression on the Internet. The Internet is the last medium in which criticism of the US government can be made. As criticism is a constraint on unaccountable power of government, expect the Internet to become a member of the Ministry of Propaganda, just like the New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, Fox News, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, BBC, etc.


The 12-year old girls' attempt to murder their friend does offer insight into why the American population, including the "christian" churches, has been mute for the entirety of the 21st century while the US government and its military have murdered, maimed, and displaced millions of people in 7 countries that have been destroyed in whole or part, entirely on the basis of Washington's lies. There is scant sign of any American remorse over these extraordinary crimes against humanity.

We see no sign of any moral conscience in Congress's curtailments of the social safety net or in the constant stream of lies that intend to lead to more wars for the sake of the military/security complex's profits and the neoconservatives' agenda of US supremacy, which risks nuclear war and the extinction of life on earth.

I don't think we can dismiss the 12-year old girls' murder plot as just another aberration the way "law and order" conservatives do every time the police employ violence against the innocent citizens who pay the salaries of the goon thug police who body slam infirm 92-year olds, shoot down usually innocent "suspects," kill the family pets and throw grenades into the cribs of sleeping babies.

It is a mystery how the US masquerades as "a light unto the world," when morality is totally dead in Amerika.

Can morality be resurrected?

Don't hold your breath.

Remember ObamaCare? Yeah, That's Still News

Remember ObamaCare? Yeah, That's Still News

The outrageous prisoner deal may have bumped the Veterans Affairs scandal and ObamaCare from the headlines, but both items are still causing trouble. When the oddly titled federal "marketplace" for ObamaCare opened last October, the ensuing disaster was such that Americans who lived in states that had set up their own exchanges were no doubt glad they didn't have to deal with the federal exchange. The "marketplace" to buy insurance was a farce anyway -- it sold insurance many people wouldn't have bought if they hadn't lost the plan they already had, but that's another story.

Now that a few months have passed, though, it seems state exchanges are catching up to Healthcare.gov's nosedive. And they're hoping the federal government will buy them out of their misery. As National Review's Veronique de Rugy reports, "[F]ive state exchanges -- Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada and Oregon -- are in need of serious fixes. And it won't be cheap." Indeed, it will cost nearly a quarter billion dollars to fix their messes or join the federal exchange. Considering how bad the federal exchange is, any desire to join it must indicate a pre-existing condition nigh on terminal.

Surprisingly, though, given how notoriously inefficient the federal government is, states are actually more inefficient when it comes to the cost of enrolling people in exchanges. For example the average cost-per-enrollment for Healthcare.gov was $647 in taxpayer dollars. Pricey, yes, but nowhere near the $1,503 per-enrollee average for the state exchanges -- and far below the astronomical $23,899 taxpayer tab per enrollee in Hawaii, the most expensive-per-capita among state exchanges.

Yet even a move towards the federal exchange won't approach the starting line to solving ObamaCare's unsolvable woes. Remember those eight million people who theoretically signed up for ObamaCare? Turns out that more than two million of those signups have "data inconsistencies" related to income or to immigration and citizenship status. As a result, enrollees may be getting the wrong subsidies, or subsidies may be going to illegal aliens. Shocker, we know.

But this isn't the worst deception. Spotlighting Obama's BIG Lie that under his plan, no taxpayer dollars would fund abortions, taxpayer dollars are, you guessed it, funding abortions. As Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel Casey Mattox writes, every consumer in Connecticut buying an ObamaCare-compliant plan "will be required to pay a separate surcharge that the insurer must use solely to pay for abortions." This is a cost insurers must calculate separately and charge to the insured, allowing Obama to claim that taxpayer dollars are not funding the slaughter of innocents.

Insurance companies, however, are not permitted to disclose to customers how much the surcharge is or whether the plan includes abortion coverage. In Connecticut, there are no known abortion-free plans, and this is possibly also the case in Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island and Wyoming.

Indeed, the more we see of ObamaCare, the more apparent it becomes that broken promises are too kind a description for what Barack Obama and his administration have delivered to the American people. Outright lies is more accurate.

As the disaster continues to unfold, conservative House Republicans are now pushing for a vote on an alternative health care plan that would fully repeal ObamaCare and replace it with a plan that, among other things, expands health savings accounts, allows Americans to purchase health plans across state lines, provides tax deductions for health care costs, bans federal funding for abortion, and increases federal support to help cover those with pre-existing conditions.

While undoing the damage already done by ObamaCare won't be an easy task, the GOP plan is a strong step away from the deadly precipice of the president's disastrous hallmark and towards a system more in keeping with self-determination and the free market. And as for keeping your plan if you like it? Not to worry; thanks to ObamaCare, we'll soon be hard pressed to find anyone who actually likes his or her plan.

Bill Clinton’s loving wife

Bill Clinton’s loving wife

By Dick Morris, former political advisor to President Bill Clinton by

"Her winning in 2016 means the final death knell for America! Her whole public life has been a LIE. "

If you happen to see the Bill Clinton five minute TV ad for Hillary in which he introduces the commercial by saying he wants to share some things we may not know about Hillary’s background, beware as I was there for most of their presidency and know them better than just about anyone. I offer a few corrections:

Bill says: "In law school Hillary worked on legal services for the poor."

The facts are: Hillary’s main extra-curricular activity in law school was helping the Black Panthers, on trial in Connecticut for torturing and killing a federal agent. She went to court every day as part of a law student monitoring committee trying to spot civil rights violations and develop grounds for appeal.

Bill says: "Hillary spent a year after graduation working on a children's rights project for poor kids."

The facts are: Hillary interned with Bob Truehaft, the head of the California Communist Party . She met Bob when he represented the Panthers and traveled all the way to San Francisco to take an internship with him.

Bill says: "Hillary could have written her own job ticket, but she turned down all the lucrative job offers."

The facts are: She flunked the DC bar exam, yes, flunked, it is a matter of record, and only passed the Arkansas bar. She had no job offers in Arkansas , none, and only got hired by the University of Arkansas Law School at Fayetteville because Bill was already teaching there. She did not join the prestigious Rose Law Firm until Bill became Arkansas Attorney General and was made a partner only after he was elected Arkansas Governor.

Bill says: "President Carter appointed Hillary to the Legal Services Board of Directors and she became its chairman. "

The facts are: The appointment was in exchange for Bill's support for Carter in his 1980 primary against Ted Kennedy. Hillary then became chairman in a coup in which she won a majority away from Carter's choice to be chairman.

Bill says: "She served on the board of the Arkansas Children's Hospital."

The facts are: Yes she did. But her main board activity, not mentioned by Bill, was to sit on the Wal-Mart board of directors, for a substantial fee. She was silent about their labor and health care practices.

Bill says: "Hillary didn't succeed at getting health care for all Americans in 1994 but she kept working at it and helped to create the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) that provides five million children with health insurance."

The facts are: Hillary had nothing to do with creating CHIP. It was included in the budget deal between Clinton and Republican Majority Leader Senator Trent Lott. I know; I helped to negotiate the deal. The money came half from the budget deal and half from the Attorney Generals' tobacco settlement. Hillary had nothing to do with either source of funds.

Bill says: "Hillary was the face of America all over the world."

The facts are: Her visits were part of a program to get her out of town so that Bill would not appear weak by feeding stories that Hillary was running the White House. Her visits abroad were entirely touristic and symbolic and there was no substantive diplomacy on any of them.

Bill says: "Hillary was an excellent Senator who kept fighting for children's and women's issues."

The facts are: Other than totally meaningless legislation like changing the names on courthouses and post offices, she has passed only four substantive pieces of legislation. One set up a national park in Puerto Rico. A second provided respite care for family members helping their relatives through Alzheimer’s or other conditions. And two were routine bills to aid 911 victims and responders which were sponsored by the entire NY delegation. Presently she is trying to have the US memorialize the Woodstock fiasco of 40 years ago.

Here is what bothers me more than anything else about Hillary Clinton. She has done everything possible to weaken the President and our country (that's you and me!) when it comes to the war on terror.

1. She wants to close GITMO and move the combatants to the USA where they would have access to our legal system.

2. She wants to eliminate the monitoring of suspected Al Qaeda phone calls to/from the USA.

3. She wants to grant constitutional rights to enemy combatants captured on the battlefield.

4. She wants to eliminate the monitoring of money transfers between suspected Al Qaeda cells and supporters in the USA.

5. She wants to eliminate the type of interrogation tactics used by the military & CIA where coercion might be used when questioning known terrorists even though such tactics might save American lives.

One cannot think of a single bill Hillary has introduced or a single comment she has made that would tend to strengthen our country in the War on Terror. But, one can think of a lot of comments she has made that weaken our country and makes it a more dangerous situation for all of us.

Bottom line: She goes hand in hand with the ACLU on far too many issues where common sense is abandoned.

Share this with everyone you know ask them to prove Dick Morris wrong. Think about it - he's (Dick Morris) said all of this openly, thus if he were not truthful he'd be liable for defamation of character!

And you better believe Hillary would sue him.

DESPERATION DROVE THE OBAMA STUMBLE ON BERGDAHL

DESPERATION DROVE THE OBAMA STUMBLE ON BERGDAHL

Why did Team Obama so badly botch the publicity of the release of five Islamist militant leaders in exchange for an accused Army deserter? The deal was sure to have been controversial, but might have, if done with humility and a low-key approach, engendered respect. Instead, the publicity blitz backfired on the administration. New Fox News polling explains how the struggling White House team ended up here, with Democrats in open rebellion and President Obama’s old rivals in Hillaryland taking potshots at his judgment? Desperation seems to be the thing. After a damaging turn with the revelation of widespread abuse of veterans at government hospitals and deepening concerns about the administration’s foreign policy setbacks in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Asia, the president’s previous strong suits are a shambles. The desire to return to the high point of his presidency, the killing of Usama bin Laden and subsequent Afghan drawdown, was understandable. But with a milky foreign policy speech at West Point, N.Y. and then the accused deserter PR fiasco, Obama finds himself in even worse position. But the poll shows us why he got greedy for a big win.

Worse than Bush - The latest Fox News poll shows Obama’s job approval on foreign policy, previously his most reliably good measure, slipping to the bottom of the heap, with just 36 percent approval, lower even than on the economy and health care, his perennial weak spots. But what ought to truly terrify Democrats who are running for office is that a president whose unofficial foreign motto was recently revealed to be “don’t do stupid sh*t” is widely seen as incompetent. Obama was viewed as less competent than both of his predecessors, with a 48-percent plurality saying that Obama’s administration is less competent than that of George W. Bush, including 18 percent of Democrats. That’s dire, given Bush’s low ratings on those issues at this point in his tenure. Worse still, the poll shows that 55 percent of voters, including 53 percent of female voters, believe the president has made America less safe.

The survey, which was taken before full details had emerged about ransomed Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl’s alleged desertion and the dangers posed by the released Taliban members were widely known, showed split opinion on support for the deal. But as to the question of whether negotiating with the Islamist terrorist group would encourage more American hostages to be taken, 84 percent agreed.

And kind of like Nixon - George Will: “The 44th president, channeling - not for the first time - the 37th (in his post-impeachment conversation with David Frost), may say: ‘When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.’ Already the administration says events dictated a speed that precluded complying with the law. … This episode will be examined by congressional committees, if they can pierce the administration's coming cover-up, which has been foreshadowed by the response to congressional attempts to scrutinize the politicization of the Internal Revenue Service. If the military stalls on turning over files to Congress pertaining to the five years of Bergdahl's absence, we will at least know that there is no national institution remaining to be corrupted.”

Kelly File: White House ‘Swift Boat’ charge gets broadside from the right - Iraq and Afghanistan war veteran Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., told Fox News host Megyn Kelly Wednesday allegations by administration aides that Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl’s platoon members are “swift boating” are “pathetic” and designed to “hide a foreign policy move.” Hunter told Kelly, “When you’re fighting and it’s dirty and you’re tired and hungry, it’s not always for your flag and for your country but for the man and woman standing next to you. He betrayed that. That is the most sacred trust you have in the military.” Watch the full interview  courtesy of the “Kelly File.”

And volley from the left - On MSNBC, staunch Obama defender Chris Matthews cried, “Wait a minute! The swift boating of John Kerry was a dishonest PR campaign!” Matthews continued, “Where’s the dishonesty in the portrayal of Bergdahl so far? I haven’t seen it. What’s been misconstrued about him so far?”

The Judge’s Ruling: unfaithful to duty - New Today at Fox News Opinion Judge Andrew Napolitano asks Can President Obama faithfully enforce the laws?: “The president has a serious problem with competence and with fidelity to his oath. In one week, he has alienated and demoralized much of the intelligence community by revealing the true name of one of them and by releasing their worst nightmare back into the theater of Middle East warfare. He has, as well, flagrantly failed to enforce federal law by materially aiding a non-state terrorist group condemned by American law. This is almost inconceivable in an American president.”

How much longer can the U.S. tolerate such behavior?