Category Archives: Veterans Affairs

The Veterans Administration Suspends

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But it chooses, again, not to fire a failed executive.

The Department of Veterans Affairs is suspending the head of the Veterans Benefits Administration for allowing two lower-ranking officials to manipulate the agency’s hiring system for their own gain.

Deputy VA Secretary Sloan Gibson says acting VBA chief Danny Pummill will be suspended without pay for 15 days for his role in a relocation scam that has roiled the agency for months.

Pummill failed to exercise proper oversight as Kimberly Graves and Diana Rubens forced lower-ranking managers to accept job transfers and then stepped into the vacant positions themselves, keeping their senior-level pay while reducing their responsibilities, Gibson said Tuesday.

Suspended.  For two whole weeks.  For defrauding the Veterans Administration and the American taxpayers who are paying these salaries and funding this travesty of a Federal department.

Gibson needs to be terminated, too, and for cause.

Better yet, veteranos administratio delende est.

The VA and the IG

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I’ve disparaged Inspectors General as not being truly independent—they work directly for the boss of the organization they’re presumably inspecting and on which they’re engaging in oversight. I’ve also said that the Secretary of the Veterans Administration should be terminated for cause. Here’s an example of the particularly incestuous relationship between Veterans Administration MFWICs and their IGs and the damage that relationship can do.

A top government watchdog on Thursday accused the central agency tasked with holding Veterans Affairs accountable of dropping the ball—by failing to properly investigate whistleblower claims of secret wait lists at Shreveport, LA, and Chicago hospitals where thousands of veterans languished up to 15 months without care.

Further, Special Counsel Carolyn Lerner said the VA’s Office of Inspector General even tried to “discredit the whistleblowers” who brought the allegations by focusing on a narrow aspect of the case.

And

[T]he focus and tone of the OIG investigations appear to be intended to discredit the whistleblowers by focusing on the word “secret,” rather than reviewing the access to care issues identified by the whistleblowers and in the OSC referrals.

The OSC’s letter and reports can be seen here. (Note: osc.gov is handing out a taking too long to respond error as I schedule this yesterday.  Make of that what you will.)

Veteranos administratio delende est.

A Problem with Veterans Administration Management

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Leo Shane described one aspect of this in his piece in the Military Times. Shane centered his article on Democratic Party Presidential candidate and Senator Bernie Sanders’ (I, VT) role in making it nearly impossible to fire non-performing Veterans Administration executives.

Sanders—the independent Vermont senator who at the time was chairman of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee—insisted on preserving the protection board’s appeals role, and held up reform legislation in his chamber until it was included.

That protection board is the Merit Systems Protection Board, an allegedly independent facility with a degree of judicial authority that supposedly ensures that nobody gets fired without due process. In the realization this Board, which Sanders was so desperate to protect, is a union facility that ensures that nobody gets fired.

The larger problem, though, is less Sanders’ union’s interference with the VA leadership’s inability to get rid of the trash and other non-performers in the VA leadership, than it is that inability to throw out the trash.

In recent weeks, the VA has seen a host of job actions against senior employees overturned by the Merit Systems Protection Board [see, for example, here]…. They include the demotion of two VA executives accused of gaming the department’s hiring system for personal benefit, and the dismissal of a New York VA director over patient safety concerns.

And

The appeals fight has grown into an escalating intra-administration showdown between VA leaders, who call the decisions off-base, and protection board officials, who blame bad legislative changes for the unsatisfactory rulings.

These union hacks even are trying to turn the problem back onto Congress:

They also accused lawmakers of overhyping problems within the department, saying lawmakers are conflating malice and malfeasance with mistakes made by under-trained supervisors.

Under-trained? The union hacks agree, then, that these supervisors are unfit for their positions, yet they insist these unfits must be retained, anyway. No trash out, not under-performers out, nobody out.

After all, our veterans are used to the idea of becoming casualties on a war’s battlefield. They and everyone else should just shut up, and our veterans should accept being casualties on an artificial VA battlefield, too.

Veteranos administratio delende est.

Veterans Administration Strikes Again

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Now we have a decorated WWII veteran, a Purple Heart winner from injuries he suffered while in a Philippines foxhole, the attack on which killed two of his fellow soldiers and wounded a third badly enough to require a leg to be amputated. He was patched up and returned to duty; over the course of his tour, he earned two Bronze Stars.

This man has never asked for any help from the Veterans Administration until now: he and his wife are in their 90s, they’re living in an assisted living facility, they’ve sold most of their possessions to pay for the facility, and they need his VA benefits.

No dice. Despite having

his discharge papers, a roster of those injured in the attack, and the X-ray taken of his leg after he returned home [and that Purple Heart and those Bronze Stars]

The VA is claiming it has no record of his having served. Discharge papers. That x-ray (taken at a VA hospital shortly after his discharge, pursuant to having some remaining shrapnel from that attack removed). No, these official records aren’t good enough for the VA.

The VA wants affidavits from his fellow soldiers, most of whom at this late date are dead; and proof of treatment from the hospital where he was treated in the Philippines, a field medic station that existed, as such facilities do, on a strictly ad hoc basis.

The VA is still refusing him and his wife his benefits.

Veteranos administratio delende est.

Veterans Affairs, Yet Again

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Screen shots from a leak inside VA show Secretary Bob McDonald is diverting emails from whistleblowers into a special account within VA Central Office. The lists of names on the screen shot are titled “Sec Divert Internal.” The IT worker turned whistleblower told Washington Examiner that he/she believes the emails from those workers are being sent right to DC.

After Congress initiated the probe, VA admitted it was monitoring some emails that were flagged and diverted to DC.

Of course, the VA is saying the diversions are entirely innocuous.

Here’s the perspective of one of those whistleblowers, Scott Davis:

Instead of diverting the emails to ensure the matters are resolved, Davis’ emails are being diverted to his superiors.

Plainly, he’s already been to his superiors; that’s why he’s having to blow whistles. There is no legitimate reason to divert his whistleblowing communications back to those superiors who’ve done nothing about the problem already or given no rational answer for why they were unable.

And, it seems to be occurring without the whistleblower’s knowledge, and certainly without his permission. This is what SOFREP has on the matter:

A congressional investigation has been opened over allegations that the Department of Veterans Affairs has been diverting the emails of whistleblowers in an effort to spy on them. It does not appear to be a question of if they were, it is a matter of why they were, since the VA has admitted to the flagging of the emails. In an ethical matter like this, it is very difficult for the VA to justify their actions, particularly when email rules such as “Sec Divert Internal” are used. The VA wasn’t just spying, they were redirecting those emails without the sender being aware.

Veteranos administratio delende est.