POGO Cites Benjamin Krause On Backlog Fix

POGO: Project On Government Oversight

Ben Freeman of POGO wrote a great piece on the backlog yesterday following the VA’s announcement of a fix.

Veterans Affairs Announces Plan to Reduce Claims Backlog

POGO stands for the Project On Governmental Oversight. I have followed this organization for some time because of the way they shine the light on government corruption, so I was pleased when they asked me for comment on the recent news regarding the backlog fix.

In the article, Freeman cited my reaction to the move by Secretary Shinseki. Personally, I have been warming up the to the idea of not throwing out the baby with the bathwater, and in so doing, have avoided the knee-jerk reaction that some have had recently. The knee-jerk reaction I am referring to is the call for Secretary Shinseki and Under Secretary Hickey to step down.

What we are seeing in the VA is the battle between progress from the top against the inertia of the bureaucrats in the middle, and we need to watch this one play out. Essentially, the status quo that has existed within the VA for years is what is at the center of this mess that we are currently calling “the backlog.”

I personally support the move by Secretary Shinseki and Under Secretary Hickey yesterday. Further, this was the maneuver Patrick Bellon and I called for when we stumped Capitol Hill over a year ago.

Here is the citation from POGO:

Benjamin Krause, a veteran and founder of DisabledVeterans.org, applauded the VA’s move to grant provisional decisions, something he and other veterans’ advocates have been fighting to get for years.

“The Department’s leaders had to make an impact immediately to help these veterans from being swallowed into the black hole that is the VA,” Krause said. “We do not need another couple decades like the ones that followed the Vietnam War. I think they made the right choice.”

Read the whole article here: https://www.pogo.org/blog/2013/04/20130419-veterans-affairs-announces-plans-to-reduce-claims-backlog.html

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3 Comments

  1. The “baby and bathwater” are still simply lipstick on pigs in that same bathwater! In order to shake those up “in the middle” I certainly think by start chopping heads at the top downward and placing Veterans that were ENLISTED, not officers, nor past financial managers of insurance companies or banks….no, a huge “sequester” of these very individuals. I would like to say I have more respect towards the Unser Secretary but understand that whomever does not have the gall or balls to report corruption even if right under your nose or in an office adjunct, needs to absolutely go!
    Another thing that needs changed that’s a HUGE disservice to Veterans is fact that the VA WAIVES medical residency requirements on those Dr’s whom you have all encountered that English is not even a second language~!! My civilian Gastro Specialist is an ex-USAF Officer/M.D. and Surgeon. He told me that he thought to opt to sacrifice the nice pay he has at my chosen University Hospital and help Veterans since they had just finished building a 400 Million new VA facility in my city and he was seeing many Veterans because the VA even with this new hugely expensive, with Starbucks inside and everything facility, Veterans were STILL being sent for Specialty Clinics to Dayton, Cincinnati, or as far as West Virginia…on their own dime!!!
    He was told HE WAS OVER QUALIFIED~! He has over 20 years USAF M.D. experience!! Rather, the VA will happily hire someone that has not even completed their medical residency from the Sudan, and to make things WORSE, MOST of the time these VA Dr’s would absolutely NEVER be allowed to work as an M.D. in the USA because they would need to take an additional TWO YEARS of Medical School AND a few years residency to get experience!
    No, the VA uses vastly under qualified, bargain basement individuals that ultimately hold your Disability Claim in their unqualified hands!!
    My main Specialist, an Infectious Disease Dr., whom is so respected in her field, she gives colloquiums all over the Country, to include Mayo Clinic, and she even told me that not too many VA Dr’s could get a job ANYWHERE *but* the VA. This also includes M.D.’s that malpractice insurance claims in past would preclude employment anywhere BUT the VA!!
    Thanks a lot VA for giving me the very tainted blood products and unsterile surgical environment that has changed my life forever~! Yeah, I won my claim but I use Medicare rather than the VA Health System! Working on a book, slowly but surely that will shed light on my little world, but know for fact am not a sole survivor of similar disservices!

  2. My understanding of the Walter Reed scandal would put Eric Shinseki as the epical centerpiece of the scandal if not the hidden hand which operated the panopticon which feigned blindness after the fact; the US Army similar to the Catholic Church and the Church’s reactions to current pedophilia of priests as protocol statements of how to self audit and punish “their own” is unequivocally the same scenario as Shinseki was the personified failure of Walter Reed. Presently as the Catholic Church would reassign a pedophile priest to a different assigned parish rather than reporting the issue to proper third party authorities [the Jesuit community at Georgetown University was guilty of “shuffling” and didn’t notify students a pedophile had been transferred to the Woodstock Theological Library] Shinseki’s executive appointment is the same type of shuffle. Predatory Marketed TV Evangelism … any academician/researcher could quickly understand just as one wouldn’t hear the word “Septuagint” uttered by an absolute uneducated TV evangelist to describe the bible according to a scientific literary history, there is always the marketing for faith which as multi billion dollar business can fake heal actors and sell snake oil to a mega-church crowd or a couch full of wide eyed suckers.
    For some reason and with starved logic, Mr Eric Shinseki and company act as tricoteuse players in this game, and cavaliering with broken promises and nothing more. Mr. Eric Shinseki and company has never understood, faith healing by way of his own actors to get the mega church crowd of the nation’s judiciary/legislative/executive powers and the couch people to buy snake oil is no longer the religious vanguard of what veterans with veterans benefits want [not to mention families – friends – taxpayers and families who survive after the veteran is gone].
    Just as the Catholic Church performs the redistricting or shuffling of deviant priests, Shinseki was shuffled from being a deviant concerning Walter Reed to taking over the VA. For any idea of “Social Contract Theory”, it would be as if one resurrected Reverend Jim Jones to be transferred to the mainland of the continental United States, not to serve 909 cups of kool-aid as a murderous criminal, but to maintain an office in Washington DC with the secretarial function to kill everyone the VA oversees. Little by little the psychological violence which Eric Shinseki and his colleagues promote are killing people two ways; “quick death”, “slow death”.
    Statistically, Eric Shinseki and company have outdone Dr. Jack Kevorkian; I thought about something else, Eric Shinseki and company appear to make Dr. Kermit Gosnell’s murdering appear to be normal by way of statistics. Dr. Kermit Gosnell, is an absolute murderer and should be noted as a monster; take Dr. Gosnell’s stats, add them to Dr. Kevorkian’s stats, add them to Jim Jones stats … Eric Shinseki and his company still have these three men beat. I don’t think Dr. Kevorkian should be in the same category as Jim Jones and Dr. Kermit Gosnell, though I do think for the tumbril cart of absolute crimes against humanity – Eric Shinseki & company have a seat under the table with Jones and Gosnell.

  3. Ben,What we are seeing in the VA is the battle between progress from the top against the inertia of the bureaucrats in the middle, and we need to watch this one play out.
    The Crats are of having “THEIR POWER(I’M GOD), they have reign 4 2 many yrs.
    Their way of doing things engraved into their BHG, their hard drive is corrupted, got viruses deep in their BHG waves.The computer will inhibit the power they think have over the minions(us Veterans).

    They afraid the puters will give power to the Veterans which is the point u made the other day this wk.

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