By Ed Morrissey
The first head has rolled
in the expanding wait-list fraud scandal at the Department of Veterans
Affairs. Ironically, it belongs to the man who testified in the Senate
that he wasn’t sure wait-list fraud was a firing offense:
Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki said he
accepted the resignation of his top health official on Friday, a day
after the two testified before Congress about a growing scandal over
deadly healthcare delays for veterans.
“Today, I accepted the resignation of Dr. Robert Petzel,
undersecretary for health in the Department of Veterans Affairs,”
Shinseki said in a statement.
In part, this may have been because Petzel wasn’t terribly good at his job:
Dr. Petzel testified before Congress last month that he
had found no sign of the alleged list in the early stages of the
investigation.
“To date, we found no evidence of a secret list and we have found no
patients who have died because they’ve been on a wait list,” he said at a
Senate Veterans Affairs Committee hearing on April 30. “If the
allegations are true, they’re absolutely unacceptable.”
Since then, investigators have found evidence that the VA was made aware of the problem in March 2013,
and again last November. That leaves Petzel in danger of an obstruction
charge, especially since dozens of veterans have died waiting for
service in at least one of these offices. As Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS)
asked at the time NBC reported the new timeline,
it also raises the question of whether Shinseki knew about it and lied
to Congress in his testimony — or was so incompetent that he missed the
signs twice.
On the other hand, we now have more accountability at the VA than we
did at State with Benghazi, or at Treasury with the IRS scandal. I’d
guess that some administration officials are getting very worried about
this particular probe.
Update:
Worth noting, too, is that Petzel was already scheduled to retire later this year. (PK'S NOTE: Read this as being the politically expedient and convenient guy to go)
PK'S NOTE: So if you have (possible) views that are not with the party in power then they will destroy every avenue of livelihood you have.
By Alex Pappas
First they lost their television show. Now the Benham brothers say they are losing their business.
SunTrust Banks is cutting ties with would-be reality stars David and
Jason Benham after liberal activists attacked them for their
conservative views on abortion and gay marriage, The Daily Caller has
learned.
In a statement provided first to TheDC on Friday, the Benham brothers
confirmed that SunTrust Banks has pulled all of its listed properties
with the Benham brothers’ bank-owned property business, which includes
several franchisees across four states.
The move comes just a week after HGTV announced it was canceling a planned home renovation show hosted by the brothers.
“If our faith costs us our HGTV show and our business, then so be it,” said Jason Benham on Friday.
“We were caught off-guard with this one,” David Benham said of
SunTrust’s actions. “Keeping us off television wasn’t enough, now
this agenda to silence wants us out of the marketplace.”
The Benhams, in their statement, said the news came “without warning
or explanation from SunTrust and took place over a 15 minute period” on
Thursday. The Brothers said they have had a “mutually productive working
relationship with SunTrust for many years” and hold a ”preferred
broker” status with the bank.
The brothers said they contacted SunTrust, but bank employees declined to explain the reasoning for what happened.
By Susan Crabtree
The executive branch's internal oversight system is broken and Congress needs to fix it as soon as possible, several ethics experts say.
Attorneys who specialize in government ethics say the case of the Department of Homeland Security's
former acting inspector general, Charles Edwards, shows the
government's own watchdogs are too influenced by political
considerations.
Edwards is being investigated on multiple
allegations of playing politics with his investigations and altering his
reports to benefit senior executive branch officials. In addition, the Washington Examiner has learned that earlier reports of possible misconduct were brushed aside.
....nspectors general are important because they function as a first line of defense against corruption
and mismanagement within the government. Each executive branch
department and military agency has an Office of Inspector General, an
investigative arm whose mission is to root out ethical breaches or
general dysfunction. There are 73 such offices, which were created by a
1978 law.
By Rick Moran
...Beyond
politicized IG's, there is also the matter of Obama's failure to name
and get confirmed permanent Inspector Generals. Nine major departments.
including State, do not have permanent IG's. There is also the war on
inspector generals that the administration continues to wage.
At the time, ABC News reported that a “source familiar with the president’s thinking” said that Mr. Obama wanted to replace Mr. Walpin
with “someone who could effectively provide the kind of independent
oversight that the president values.” The best way to assure
“independent oversight” is to remind all inspectors general that they
will be axed if they embarrass the White House. A joint House-Senate
investigation concluded that firing Mr. Walpin “undermines the Inspectors General Act.”
In the same month Mr. Walpin was fired, the administration
unsuccessfully sought to obliterate the independence of the special
inspector general for TARP, Neil Barofsky. Some IGs who have not been
fired have instead come under withering pressure. Russell George, the IG
who exposed the IRS’ targeting of conservative nonprofit groups, has
been hammered by Mr. Obama’s congressional allies for almost a year. The
special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, John Sopko,
has been harshly criticized by bureaucrats and political appointees for
his forthright reports on Afghan debacles.
...After
more than 5 years, it's clear that the president prefers a certain kind
of IG - pliant, and understanding of the administration's political
necessities. You wonder what other investigations have been squealched
or otherwise hampered by politicized inspector generals.
Harry’s Dirty Amendment
By Charles C W Cooke
...Rambling in the general direction of a BuzzFeed reporter
earlier this week, Reid inadvertently revealed something about his
motivations. His reelection to the Senate in 1998, he griped, “was
awful”: “I won it, but just barely. I felt it was corrupting, all this
corporate money.” Translation: I almost lost my seat once, so I need the
supreme law to protect me. Corruption, schmorruption. This is about power.
The Emerging Junta
The IRS’s illegal actions — and its efforts at cover-up — undermine the foundations of our government.
By Kevin D Williamson
....Context is again here important. The IRS scandal is not a
standalone issue but comes at a time when the Democratic party is
seeking to radically expand the power of the federal government to
regulate political speech; we can safely assume that the same people who
were using the IRS’s political-speech regulations for political ends
will have precisely the same motives and precisely the same opportunity
to use other political-speech regulations for precisely the same
political ends: to benefit their allies and persecute their enemies. So
committed are the Democrats to keeping their critics under the thumb of
federal police powers that they have introduced an amendment in the
Senate that would effectively repeal the free-speech provisions of the
First Amendment, those having proved inconvenient to Democrats in
Supreme Court rulings such as McCutcheon and Citizens United,
the latter case involving a federal attempt to make it a crime to show a
film critical of a political figure under unapproved circumstances.
The
most important question that must be answered in this matter does not
involve the misbehavior of IRS officials and Democratic officeholders,
though those are important. Nor is it the question of free speech, vital
and fundamental as that is. The question here is nothing less than the
legitimacy of the United States government. When law-enforcement
agencies and federal regulators with extraordinary coercive powers are
subordinated to political interests rather than their official
obligations — to the Party rather than to the law — then the law itself
becomes meaningless, and the delicate constitutional order we have
enjoyed for more than two centuries is reduced to a brutal
might-makes-right proposition. Elected officials and public servants of
both parties take an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United
States and to faithfully discharge the duties of their office. That oath
is now being tested. The IRS investigation is no mere partisan scandal,
but a moral challenge for the men and women who compose the government
of this country. Whether they are sufficient to meet that challenge is
far from obvious, but the evidence so far is not encouraging.
By Awr HawkinsA May 7th solicitation by the U.S. Department of Agriculture seeks
"the commercial acquisition of ballistic vests, compliant with NIJ
0101.06 for Level IIIA Ballistic Resistance of body armor."
According to the solicitation,
"The U.S. Department of Agriculture, Office of Inspector General,"
seeks "Body Armor [that] is gender specific, lightweight, [having]
trauma plate/pad (hard or soft), [and] concealable carrier." The order
includes "tactical vest, undergarment (white), identification patches,
accessories (6 pouches), body armor carry bag, and professional
measurements."
"All responsible and/or interested sources may submit their company
name, point of contact, and telephone number." The solicitation says
those sources received in a "timely" manner "shall be considered by the
agency for contact."
On May 15th Breitbart News reported on a Dept. of Agriculture solicitation for "the commercial acquisition of submachine guns" with 30-round magazines.
By Wynton Hall
Sens. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and John Barrasso (R-WY) introduced a bill
on Wednesday that would require states who ditch their busted Obamacare
exchanges and join the federal HealthCare.gov to pay back the money they
wasted.
The bill, known as the State Exchange Accountability Act, would make states repay 10% of the federal grant money they received each year for a period of 10 years.
"Hard-working American taxpayers should not be forced to foot the
bill for what has already turned into an almost $550 million dollar
boondoggle," said Hatch in a statement.
"Enough is enough," said
Barrasso in a statement. "States that scrap their state-run Obamacare
exchanges are admitting they've wasted millions of dollars in federal
grants. It's only fair that states have to pay American taxpayers and
the federal government back for their total incompetence."
Joining Hatch and Barrasso as co-sponsors are Sens. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), Tom Coburn (R-OK), Mike Enzi (R-WY), and John McCain (R-AZ).
Fourteen states presently run their own Obamacare exchanges. Oregon,
Maryland, Hawaii, Nevada, and Massachusetts have all experienced
disastrous problems with their exchanges that have caused state
officials to consider scrapping their state exchanges to join the
federal HealthCare.gov exchange.
"Taxpayers shouldn't have to pay twice for the mistakes of
incompetent state bureaucrats who couldn't set up a working health care
exchange," said Barrasso.
Senate Dems Push ‘National School Board’ for Preschoolers
By Bridget Johnson
The senior Republican on the Senate committee that oversees education
charged that an early education proposal by HELP committee Democrats
would essentially create a national school board for preschoolers.
The Democrats’ early education plan would put decisions for states on
such details as teacher salaries, class sizes, staff qualifications and
length of the school day in federal hands, Sen. Lamar Alexander
(R-Tenn.) said. States would then be required to pay half of the
program’s cost after 8 years.
“The Democrat bill that’s being proposed today would, in effect,
create a national school board for 3- and 4-year-olds. It would spend
$27 billion in new funding over 5 years with Washington making the
decisions about how states should run their preschool programs. It
includes requirements I don’t think the federal government has ever even
attempted with elementary and secondary education,” Alexander said.
“Never before, not even in No Child Left Behind, has the federal government told school districts from Maryville to Memphis how to run their schools in such detail,” he added.
By Michelle Malkin
At least 40 American veterans are dead thanks to bureaucratic delays
at Veterans Affairs clinics. But you wouldn't know it from VA Secretary
Gen. Eric Shinseki's bland and bloodless demeanor at a Senate hearing
Thursday. He droned on like an apathetic office manager fielding
complaints about the copier being jammed.
Shinseki told the Senate panel he "can't remember" getting warnings
from federal watchdogs last fall about ghost clinics and
double-scheduling schemes. He said he was "not aware" of explosive
book-cooking allegations like the ones at a Fort Collins, Colo., VA
facility, where employees were ordered to make their records show that
veterans got appointments within 14 days of the day requested, whether
or not it was true.
In response to bipartisan disgust with the VA's serial incompetence
and fatally long wait times, oblivious Shinseki blathered about
"customer satisfaction surveys." And when it came time to deliver his
calculated sound bite about being "mad as hell" at mounting allegations
of criminal fraud and neglect, Shinseki's perfunctory tone echoed a
jaded 411 operator: "City and state, please?"
Asked whether VA employees who alter records should be fired,
Shinseki's deputy Robert Petzel said he didn't know "whether that's the
appropriate level of punishment." Shinseki interjected that a whopping
3,000 VA workers, including senior managers, had been "involuntarily
removed" for misconduct last year -- only to admit that an unknown
number of those had simply been reassigned or allowed to retire.
In true paper-pusher form, the VA's top brass have ordered yet
another study to assess how and why the VA ignored years of other
studies, reports and audits of the department's waste, fraud and abuse.
Showing even more tone-deafness, Shinseki bragged openly about his close
friendship with top White House aide Rob Nabors, who is now overseeing
the kabuki "review" of his department's failures.
Can you spell crony whitewash?
Pressed on why he hadn't reported illegal data falsification to the
FBI, Shinseki demurred that it was the inspector general's call, not
his.
In other words: The buck stops somewhere else.
Attorney General Eric Holder hid behind the VA inspector general,
too. There are no plans for a DoJ probe into the secret waiting lists at
the Phoenix VA hospital, where scores of sick vets languished for
months before perishing. Question: Why is activist zealot Holder so
content to wait for the IG?
Given this administration's shady record of crushing whistleblowers,
railroading IGs and replacing them with dirty lapdogs, Shinseki's vow to
"get to the bottom" of this latest deadly scandal while Holder and the
FBI sit on the sidelines stinks to high hell.
PK'S NOTE: In the category of "you can't make this stuff up" because no one would believe the stupidity:
By Charlie Spiering A “Hump Day” event featuring a live camel at a college campus in
Minnesota was canceled after students launched a protest on Facebook
complaining that it was culturally disparaging, inhumane, and bad for
the environment.
According to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, the event was
organized by a student social committee before finals at the University
of St. Thomas, offering students the chance to meet the animal and take
pictures.
Event organizers told the Star-Tribute that angry students
protested the event in the comment section, suggesting that it was
disparaging to Middle Eastern cultures, an example of animal cruelty,
and environmentally unfriendly.
The Facebook Group called “Protest Hump DAAAAAAY!” was deleted after the
event was canceled, but a copy of the description of the page still
exists on Feest.
Read the description below:
DO NOT take pictures with a REAL Camel on Hump Day. Here is why:
This event is not in line with the UST mission and, frankly, is completely asinine.
We do not need to be spending our money on events like this, especially
in light of tuition increases. Can we not have community events without
abusing an animal with no agency?
Is the camel and transportation going to be calculated in the carbon footprint for the university?
The animal's owner says it treats the animals in a humane way, but is
it humane to have a bunch of students come gawk at this poor creature?
Or the fact that this animal has been taken from its natural environment
so privileged students can take pictures with the exotic animal from
Africa. It is time we started using our brains in a more critical way.
Let's ask ourselves a question: what would Jane Goodall say?
This event is only one of the MANY events that RHA and STAR put on that
are a complete waste of money and make Saint Thomas look like a joke.
For those who are ACTUALLY concerned for the Camel:
We don’t care what wildlife park they are working with. The owners of
this park have exploited animals for 20+ years. They made these animals
travel far away from their natural habitats. We know what they are doing
is wrong.
They don’t care for the animals, and do everything they can to assure
they get a paycheck at the end of the day regardless of how the animals
are being treated.
POSTER MAKING FOR PROTESTING WILL OCCUR THIS COMING SUNDAY IN THE PR
ROOM ON CAMPUS. IT'S LOCATED IN THE LEADERSHIP CENTER WHICH IS IN ASC.
WE'LL BE IN THERE MAKING POSTERS FROM 6 TO WHENEVER NEED BE!! BE THERE!
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