In an act of unscrupulous defiance that would make the most hardened drug cartel kingpin blush, the Department of Veterans Affairs read the Riot Act to Congress – The VA will not comply with a 2014 law that was enacted in response to the wait-time scandal, which was specifically designed to terminate and cull the herd of VA corruption.
Although you cannot expect the cattle to simply guide themselves to the slaughterhouse. There has only been a facade of action and the herd is mad, riddled with plague, and bursting at its stationary seams.
The narrative of our reality has shifted and to get current with the time, our entertainment industry must stop production of gangster rap, mafia movies, and made for T.V. crime shows. Because there is a new, greater, more defiant, illicit, and infectious piece of human garbage that feeds off the misery of others for fast returns and a comfortable lifestyle. This streamlined staff can be found within the Teflon-halls of federal employment where they think in slogans and talk in bullets. Their ranks boast all the great crooks of the 21st-century whom rest comfortably, protected, and untouchable as federal employees. The most rotten of the bunch, the truly deplorable, those without morals, or conscience are housed within the benefit-rich for staff, not veterans; chop-shop called – The Department of Veterans Affairs.
Mafia – They Take Care of Their Own
U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch is playing a shell game, and celebrating the latest decision in favor of the corruption of the system. For her and her affiliated loyalties in the system, this is another victory to tout on the citizens – ‘They’re better than we are and can do whatever they want’ – whenever they want. Albeit, for us lowly plebeians this is another demonstration in failure from the common in the shape bureaucratic pandering of the federal civil service system, this case just happens to be the VA.
The VA has again failed to do the bare minimum that one expects of an employee, their job. It now appears that the minimum is no longer required, and a federal employee cannot and will not be terminated for even the most unbecoming conduct.
U.S. Attorney General Lynch and President Barack Obama’s administration are backing the triumphant return of Teflon-Overseer, Sharon Helman, who has recently weaseled her was through federal court. Helman has been contesting her 2014 VA termination, which resulted from knowingly and willingly accepting bribes, “gifts,” tickets for a Beyoncé concert, and a trip to Disneyland.
U.S. Attorney General Lynch said,
The law for fast-tracking firings are unconstitutional because VA employees cannot appeal a final decision by an administrative judge.
Most disturbingly, the demand for the law that Overseer Sharon Helman is circumventing, the roots of the law specifically designed as a result of her own gross negligence. Her crimes were made public, thanks to a report from the minority of professional care providers within the VA, a doctor at a Phoenix, Arizona VA medical facility alerted federal officials and the press that veterans were dying while waiting for care in her facilities. Now, as the public’s attention is on the POTUS election, Daesh (ISIS), and another terrorist attack – a vile act of federally sanctioned guerilla warfare against the America people has been launched.
From the Phoenix incident, there was not, nor will there be a tearful press conference from President Obama as he mourns the deaths of veterans within the VA system. A system, his actions demonstrate that he cares little for. Perhaps if Overseer Helman and her network of corrupt counterparts personally executed the veterans they neglected with an assault rifle. No, they’re federal employees – untouchables, and our system rests comfortably with its ability to spin the blame away from individual responsibility.
So, even if she did hypothetically-personally pull the trigger, she would walk. A strange encumbrance, as we often and most severely punish the commanders in charge of the place where a war crime was committed.
Make no mistake; the number of veterans lost to the incompetence of the VA from corruption, facility failings, gross negligence, incompetent management, malpractice, and staggering substance abuse and suicide rates has surpassed Hague-levels for genocide.
But she is in the federal mafia, so ‘fuggedaboutit.’
Case Law – Doomed to Failed
Under the red-hot sun of the capital wasteland in 2014, a call-to-action was heard on behalf of the Phoenix-based VA doctor who created a wave of public disapproval that crested 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
In the capital wastes, a majority voice of the public still forces a reaction. Then and immediately upon such a public demand is an often knee-jerk, half-hearted, and short-sighted reaction designed to look proactive rather than calculating. We live in the word that accepts soundbite media as a conclusion after all.
It was 2014, and the national and political climate was quite similar to the present. There on the streets of the capital from the offices surrounding the monuments, a drove of interns and correspondents took to the streets in search of answers. Most of this mob waited in meeting and screening points, doorsteps, and halls. Good little soldiers, who formed up at their designated assembly areas while Congressmen, Senators, and the President barked along their lines of communication in search of a response to give the public.
After a few minutes, a consensus and then a press conference – our elected officials, were going to look into it. The White House launched a joint investigation with the VA, to get to the bottom of the allegations and what they found was undeniable. An unprecedented ‘corrosive culture’ was revealed, one that awarded and nourished the nation-wide management and customer service professional practices of a truck-stop adjacent motel.
Their findings were glanced over and passed down to the hordes of Congressional staffers to digest and they in-turn, regurgitated for their boss in bi-partisan language, and then the staffers got to work. Like a horde of 1,000 monkeys at typewriters, they passed notes and concocted a few heavily indexed plans of action for approval by their office managers. The office managers met, and a few cocktail luncheons later they handed their Congressional, Senatorial, and Representatives a plan with a very short synopsis, there was to be a witch-hunt and a disingenuous one.
Here Congress acted with rhetorical overtones worthy of a daytime soap opera and demanded the internal reform of VA human resources practices. They called for the cut of the dexterous safety net that is the appeals process for terminated VA executives and employees; a move designed to box in the long-winded and erroneous Merit Systems Protection Board procedure into a limited twenty-one-day proceeding where an administrative judge would have to make a ruling on the case. Notwithstanding this Congressional act was immediately called into question by way of a curious argument, as unconstitutional.
VA employees and executives, like Congress and others who are federally employed, are defended by an airtight titanium box of litigation. And as the ink dried on the Congressional act, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch proclaimed that she would at first, not defend and then backpedal after the press vans left the scene. She vowed to stand up, in the name of diluted justice to defend against the acclaimed, unconstitutional proceeding that Overseer Sharon Helman and other scandalous VA executives and employees were set to stand in front of.
Not only was the system geared to fight for the jobs of the infamous VA staff, there was also never any mention of bringing real criminal charges against these 21st-century Mafiosos.
An ugly game of deception and delay was now afoot, while the Justice Department pushed Congress back to square one. Title 5 of the United States Code outlines the role of government organization and employees who are protected by United States Code – federal employees, VA employees.
Title 5, calls for a 30-day period and without offering an opportunity for due process, a firing could be overturned on appeal. Despite the absolute truism that Congress exempted the VA within the Act from that particular provision of Title 5. Congress had sought to counter a loophole in the VA system, which allows for a phantom five-day appeal period, prior to the beginning of the proceedings.
How can one appeal a decision before it has been made? That’s a deep philosophical question and another criminally adept protection given to federal employees.
Your tax dollars, hard at work.
In the interim, before the June 2016 ruling – the VA, under Congressional oversight was able to actionably terminate only five executives and dismissed two others of the VA old guard. A success that was only managed, as the measure was pinned onto VA funding – a $16.3 billion-dollar veteran’s package, titled: Veterans Access, Choice and Accountability Act. The five terminations and two dismissals that resulted from the Act are already in the works for full reversals. There was no, real additional veteran’s access, but there was less choice for veterans and minimal accountability of VA as a result of the act.
The VA was only forced to play ball to get paid . . . for a short while at least.
Protection by Affiliation – The Two Families; Democrat and Republican
This tragedy marks the second recent legal victory for the Darkside of the VA, for this particular case. Last year, an administrative judge ordered the VA to pay Overseer Sharon Helman, $5,624 in back pay, which was garnished while she was on administrative leave and facing termination. She was paid to get fired for criminal acts.
There is nowhere to look for help; the people have realized that they looked upon another unethical case within the federal government – knowing they have no one to turn to. Sure, we will shun these acts, as simply being under displeasure and murmur about them, yet in repute or estate, we will all eventually suffer as our system goes unchecked. There is a vindictive and unfettered criminal running for office with a mass of public support . . . HRC, so what area few more layers of corruption?
The political game strums on thoough, and Arizona Senator, John McCain challenged President Obama, who had originally promoted and signed the Congressional Act into law but later abandoned his stance,
The Obama administration is sending the message that the sanctity of a federal bureaucrat’s job is far more important than the health and well-being of our veterans.
The VA continues to be publicly shamed for a chain of terrible policy failures, heedlessness, and on-going punishing reversals of employees, including a decision to reinstate VA executives and crooks, Diana Rubens and Kimberly Graves. The pair had significantly promoted themselves,
- Rubens earns $181,497 as director of the Philadelphia regional office for the Veterans Benefits Administration. There with her significantly increased wealth, one can speculate that she has flipped her fast cash and purchased control of the heroin market, South of Pier 68. Strong arming and making power plays across the city – and it is thought to keep it real on them streets.
- Kimberly Graves receives $173,949 as head of the St. Paul, Minnesota VA Region and is hypothetically-theorized to have pursued adult continuing education courses to become a block certified professional hustler, player, and pimp.
- Both received a $400,000 combined estimated total in questionable moving expenses . . . Good god, what did they move; their entire house from out of the ground?
If these two and their fellow snakes within the VA nest were deported to Syria, I’d be happy and they’d fit right in . . . Wait, they fit in here, the announcement of their crimes, or of any other in federal employment who is corrupt amazes none, as of late. We sit in paralysis and no longer bother to even chalk up the count.
Florida Representative Jeff Miller, chairman of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, has reflected best on this dance with the devil in the pale moonlight. In the utmost simplicity on this situation that taxes morality,
The effect of this reckless action is clear. It undermines very modest reforms to our broken civil service system supported in 2014 by the president and an overwhelming majority of Congress.
You’re Joking – Right? No, the Pit is Deep, Moldy, and Crawling with Vermin.
VA Secretary Robert McDonald, the voice of dread in this calamity, who ironically reminded us that we have indeed fallen upon evil times, after comparing long waits for VA health care to lines at a Disney theme park. Perhaps this was a reminiscent slip of the tongue to his own Disneyland kickback, or possibly some lustful get-away with Overseer Sharon Helman on her known all expenses paid vacation to the theme park . . . One can only speculate.
Yet, on the matter at hand, Secretary McDonald in his most scathing bureaucratic voice of passing blame and responsibility stated,
The new law did not give me the authority to simply fire people.
If you’re sitting on your hands all day, I supposed he is right in the most lethargic manner . . . America needs its modern day Elliot Ness to start cracking skulls, starting with the VA.
U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, the antithesis of Elliot Ness who contested the entirety of the Congressional Act and maintains that it is in violation the Constitution. Lynch claims that the Act is unconstitutional, on the grounds that no-one can review and appeal the judge’s determination, including Secretary McDonald. On the enactment, in a letter to Congress, she wrote,
[It] vests a federal employee with the final authority – unreviewable by any politically accountable officer of the executive branch – to determine whether to uphold the removal of a [VA] senior executive, which includes the power to overrule the decision of a cabinet-level officer . . .
Lynch continued and also defied Congress, and posted notice, that the Justice Department will no longer defend the law in court against Helman and other challenges.
In response to the on-going fiasco, Georgia Senator Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., chairman of the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, declared,
The loss of the reform law will allow the Merit Systems Protection Board to continue second-guessing VA’s efforts to discipline senior executives.
Meanwhile, the trimmed appeals process has lost significant legal ground since the initial Congressional assault on VA corruption charged forth over two years ago. Their charge, most recently took a devastating blow, when the U.S. Justice Department chose the dark arts of politics over the light of justice and successfully fought for Overseer Sharon Helman. The argument of the Justice Department rested on the faulted premise of U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch; that the short appeals were unconstitutional.
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley’d and thunder’d;
Storm’d at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro’ the jaws of Death
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.
-The Charge of the Light Brigade, Stanza Five,
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
There will be consequences, as the likelihood that Overseer Sharon Helman and her cohort of associate corrupt executives at the epicenter of the 2014 scandal may very well return to their same posting, if not supplementary promoted and back paid.
It’s clear that the VA is not interested in disciplining employees, nor is the federal government.
An urgent call for reform is being shouted, a need for uncanny, decisive action is in demand across the civil-service spectrum. The federal government empowers a despicable criminal syndicate, matched only by the narcotics cartels. There is no will or desire to discipline those who can’t or won’t do their jobs. In fact, being a gangster in encouraged.
Up next – We’ll examine how the VA operates and the insanity behind the federal human resources system . . . I suspect the entire department is run solely by Keyboard Cat or a 1970’s supercomputer that someone spilled coffee on while installing it.
Featured Image – Buck Clay – DVIDS/VA Hybrid
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