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Corrupt Government Title: Board reverses firing of another VA executive This is a problem which has long since grown past the flaws of a single person, one regional office, or even the entirety of the Veterans Affairs Department itself. For the third time in a matter of weeks, the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) has met and reversed the order to terminate the employment of a VA employee who was taken to task for falling down on the job. This time the candidate in question was from a facility in New York. (Government Executive) Gibson said he removed Weiss from her job because she did not do enough to ensure the safety of vets seeking care at the Albany medical center, despite complaints from patients. Its worth noting that this was a rare case where Sloan Gibson actually took action and fired somebody. (This will come as a shock to many of you who are more familiar with the VA as a department where the firing of anyone is somewhat less common than the sighting of unicorns at the water cooler.) The subject in question is Linda Weiss, formerly in charge of one of their medical centers in Albany, New York. She was let go back in November for what seemed rather obvious causes. (Albany Times Union) There have been obvious, perhaps fatal problems at the VA for some time now, but as I alluded to above there may be a second and even more serious wound in the body of this beast. When the first disciplinary reversal took place we looked into the origins and function of the MSPB and what role they played in this process. Heres a reminder of what they do. The Board assumed the employee appeals function of the Civil Service Commission and was given new responsibilities to perform merit systems studies and to review the significant actions of OPM. The CSRA also created the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) which investigates allegations of prohibited personnel practices, prosecutes violators of civil service rules and regulations, and enforces the Hatch Act. Although originally established as an office of the Board, the OSC now functions independently as a prosecutor of cases before the Board. Theyve now gone three for three on executives who were either demoted or dismissed for egregious violations, restoring each of them to their perch in defiance of not only common sense, but the directives of the head of the VA. We may be zeroing in on the second half of the problem here. Yes, it took a long time to get the VA leadership to a place where they would actually be willing to punish the corrupt and the incompetent, but that progress is totally negated if there is a toad in the garden which can overrule him at every turn. The MSPB clearly seems to be nothing resembling a fair and impartial actor in this, but rather a tool of the federal employee unions, put in place to ensure that nobody can ever be held accountable and lose their lifetime jobs and generous, taxpayer funded benefits. If anyone in Congress wants to really solve the problems in the VA, the ongoing examinations need to move beyond the leadership of the department itself. We need to revisit the law which summoned the MSPB into existence and see if its time to either severely reform it or do away with it entirely. Poster Comment: Some good followup reporting on the VA scandals. We should see more reporting on this neglected topic, especially during the campaign season. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top Page Up Full Thread Page Down Bottom/Latest
#1. To: TooConservative (#0)
yes we should . Here's one I found out about yesterday : The Department of Veterans Affairs says one WWII veteran with two Bronze Stars and one Purple Heart still does not have enough proof of military service. Disabled veteran Emil Limpert recently submitted a claim for benefits for his injured leg that was wounded in a Philippines foxhole when a grenade went off. The grenade killed two soldiers and severely wounded Limpert. WWII VETERAN EVIDENCE He supplied evidence of his two Bronze Stars and one Purple Heart along with an xray of the wound. He also provided his discharge papers. But VA claims the evidence is insufficient to prove his military service and military injuries. Limperts records were destroyed in the 1973 Missouri fire that conveniently destroyed the military service records of millions of veterans. Now, VA wants him to provide additional evidence including buddy letters from his dead comrades. I get this letter that says we cant accept it because weve got no record of you being in the service, said Limpert. I guess Im the unknown soldier. VA wanted Limpert to provide the identity of the hospital that treated him for his initial wounds. He would provide that information if he was injured anywhere other than the jungle of the Philippines, where there were no hospitals. There aint no hospital, said Limpert. We were in the jungles. VA always throws common sense out the window whenever adjudicating claims, and it is a shame we keep hearing stories like Limperts. http://www.disabledveterans.org/2016/02/08/wwii-veteran-must-prove-military- service-despite-discharge-papers/ "If you do not take an interest in the affairs of your government, then you are doomed to live under the rule of fools." Plato
The VA hospitals have become a multicultural infested slaughtering house of incompetents with too many doctors having the first name Mohammed. Where are these immigrants getting their medical degrees? To hell with the Merit Systems Protection Board.
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