This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Veterans’ Affairs Department

  • Government shutdown & the VA

    The Washington Times reports that Congress passed the latest of a long stream of stop gap bills to continue funding the federal government without actually passing a budget. However, the bill delays Obamacare for a year, which has prompted the White House to announce that the bill is DOA, because you know, the word “compromise” isn’t in their vocabulary as anything that the rest of us would recognize. They delayed the healthcare bill in regards to employers, but not for the rest of us.

    Aided by some Democrats, the GOP passed legislation to repeal a widely despised Obamacare tax on medical devices, to halt the entire health law for a year, and to ensure troops get paid even if the government shuts down.

    The votes send the spending bill back to the Senate, though Majority Leader Harry Reid called the moves “pointless” and has already ruled out negotiating on any of the Obamacare measures. He said he will not accept any strings attached to a bill to keep the government open past the midnight Monday deadline.

    Our buddy, Austin Wright at Politico writes that the House bill contains a provision to keep paying the troops and the DoD civilians who support them;

    The GOP unveiled a bill on Saturday that would ensure service members continue getting paid if Congress is unable to pass a bill to fund the government past midnight Monday, when the fiscal year ends and current appropriations expire.
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    The measure would also ensure continued pay for civilian employees of the Defense Department and Pentagon contractors who “are providing support to members of the Armed Forces.”

    The Washington Post writes that if the standoff continues for a few weeks, Veterans’ Administration won’t be able to pay the veterans who depend on them;

    During the telephone briefing, the leadership of the House and Senate Veterans Affairs committees were told that VA will run out of money to make compensation and pension payments if a partial shutdown is drawn out for weeks, according to aides to two members of Congress.

    The briefing, which was provided by VA congressional affairs, represents a significant change from what the members had previously been told, and from the information the VA has released to the public, according to congressional officials.

    Some expressed concern during the briefing that veterans had not been given adequate information to prepare for a possible disruption in payments that many depend upon. Some veterans live check to check, they noted.

    Yeah, well, veterans haven’t been given adequate information because no one is talking to us. You’ll notice that the VA’s Ebenefits website is down today for maintenance. But there was nothing about the government shutdown when it was working before 9am today. So, yeah, nice dodge, there VA, but if we’re not getting timely information, it’s because you haven’t bothered to give us any.

    “This is a big reason why it’s critical that the House join with the Senate to act quickly and keep the government open without any political games,” said Sen. Patty Murray, (D-Wash.), who is chairman of the Senate budget committee. “Our nation’s heroes, who are already waiting too long for the benefits they deserve, shouldn’t be held at the mercy of gridlock and dysfunction in Washington, D.C.”

    In other words, we’re being held hostage once again – and this time it’s to save the credibility of that broke-dick Obamacare BS.

  • The VA and data breaches

    Enrique sends us a link to an article in FCW that discusses how the Department of Veterans’ Affairs deals with the breach of your Personally Identifiable Information (PII). Apparently, it happens more often than we realize;

    Each week, at least some of the Data Breach Core Team’s 30 members gather to pore over suspected data breaches reported through the agency’s Privacy Security Event Tracking System, determining whether an incident is an actual breach. The DBCT assigns a risk categorization – low, medium or high – to each potential breach and determines whether VA should offer credit monitoring to veterans in each case.

    So, if your PII is lost somehow on a Friday, sometime during the next week, this panel will meet and decide whether they should protect you or not. The first data breach that was significant enough for the VA to tell us about, well, they didn’t even tell the Secretary until three weeks after it happened. SO the VA isn’t really johnny-on-the-spot when it comes to protecting your information.

    I’ve said before that I subscribe to Lifelock (it’s about $100/year) because so many government agencies are playing fast and loose with my PII, I can’t stop them from losing it, so, just like life insurance, I have Lifelock so I can sleep at night knowing that if Paul Wickre decides to publish my social security number again, it won’t do anyone any good to have it.

    And that way, I don’t have to wait for some panel of 30 bureaucrats to decide whether my PII is worth protecting through their good graces.

  • VA under the gun from vets

    Our buddy, Coby W. Dillard writes in the Virginian-Pilot today about the failures of the Department of Veterans’ Affairs. Although Dillard is critical, he doesn’t stop thee and offers some common sense and proven solutions. The first solution, of course is to dump Eric Shinseki as the director of the department;

    In 2003, then-VA Secretary Anthony Principi enacted a “priority access” system for veterans claims, pushing combat wounded or disabled veterans to the front of the VA’s processing. While controversial, the practice was able to quickly assist the most deserving veterans. New leadership at the VA should revisit this system, which would include placing a temporary hold on non-service-related claims.

    Most of the VA’s progress in reducing the claims backlog has come from a transition from paper-based claims to electronic applications and processing.

    This change has been slow, and the systems used for applications and updates – the Veterans Online Application (VONAPP) and the eBenefits website – are cumbersome and often make the application process more frustrating for the veteran.

    New leadership at the VA should work with veterans’ service organizations and the top leaders in the computer industry to improve these online systems, creating a seamless application process that automatically pulls details of a veteran’s service from the Defense Department, reducing the need to search for these details, which often adds an additional layer of difficulty and delay.

    While Coby goes after the VA in the media, another of our friends, Pete Hegseth at Concerned Veterans for America will be at the White House delivering a petition demanding action in the VA’s failures;

    On April 15, Concerned Veterans for America (CVA) launched a White House petition calling on the President to fix the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) disability claims backlog, relieve VA Secretary Shinseki, and reform the way VA does business. On August 20th—125 days after the launch and with more than 26,000 signatures—CVA will hand deliver this petition directly to the White House.

    Delivering this petition 125 days after the launch of this effort is intentional; that’s how long it takes for a VA claim to be considered “backlogged.” There are still 500,000 veterans waiting in the disability claims backlog, and this is unacceptable. CVA is keeping the heat on and will ensure the voices of veterans are heard.

    President Obama and VA Secretary Shinseki both vowed to fix the VA disability claims backlog. Instead, despite some minor recent improvements, it has increased nearly 2,000% under this administration. It is time for the White House and the VA to stop making excuses, hold people accountable, and start delivering immediate results.

  • Obama: VA has reduced backlog

    Last week, President Obama told the Disabled Veterans of America that the Department of Veterans’ Affairs has reduced the backlog of disability claims and he’s pleased, from the Washington Post;

    “Today, I can report that we are not where we need to be, but we’re making progress,” Obama said during a speech at a Disabled American Veterans’ convention in Orlando. “In the last five months alone, it’s down nearly 20 percent. We’re turning the tide.”

    White House officials told reporters that the administration has reduced the backlog — claims pending for more than 125 days — from 611,000 at the end of March to 500,000 in August, according to an Associated Press report.

    In May, the Department of Veterans Affairs began what it described as a “surge” to address the buildup. The plan required all VA employees who process disability claims to work a minimum 20 hours of overtime each month through September to tackle the delays.

    Our buddy Pete Hegseth at Concerned Veterans of America, think that the problem is systemic;

    Today, President Obama addressed the Disabled American Veterans national convention, outlining what his administration is doing to keep America’s promises to our nation’s heroes.

    Pete Hegseth, CEO of Concerned Veterans for America (CVA) issued the following response:

    “For months now, a multitude of problems at VA—especially the bureaucratic disability claims backlog—have fallen on deaf ears in the White House, so we applaud the President for finally taking the time to address this long overdue issue. It’s unfortunate that it took efforts of groups like Concerned Veterans for America and Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, along with sharp words from many Members of Congress, to finally get the President to give the topic the issue it deserves. This speech was long overdue.

    “For the past year, CVA has brought attention to the VA backlog problem by significantly raising public awareness, thereby forcing VA to respond with short-term measures to reduce the number of pending and backlogged claims. These temporary steps — like mandatory overtime and provisional rulings — have created the perception of improvement. Yet, 800,000 veterans are still waiting.

    “If the president is truly committed about fixing the VA backlog—and the prospects of future backlogs—he should empower Secretary Shinseki, and all future VA secretaries, with the authority needed to hold VA employees accountable for their work. VA employees have one obligation—to serve America’s veterans; and VA employees at all levels should be hired, fired, and rewarded based on the merits of their efforts alone. Bad employees are nearly impossible to fire at VA, and we have seen countless examples of VA employees receiving bonuses when none were deserved. This unacceptable culture must change.

    “Only this type of systemic civil service reform will allow VA to forge a culture of excellence that ensures the needs of veterans are met in a timely, accurate, and appreciative manner. To this end, CVA has gathered more than 25,000 signatures calling on President Obama to instill accountability in the department and fix the VA backlog. CVA will deliver this petition to the White House on August 20th, and continue our efforts from there.”

  • Service-Disabled, Veteran-Owned Small Business program broken

    Several of you folks sent us link to the Washington Examiner article about the government’s Service-Disabled, Veteran-Owned Small Business (SDVOSB) program and it’s rampant fraud. The program is designed to give service-disabled veterans and their businesses preference in government contracts, but, as with anything else that has to do with the government, the intentions are easily defrauded. We wrote about Warren Parker back when he was first arrested in 2011, and he’s just the tip of the iceburg;

    Only one agency – the Department of Veterans Affairs – is required to verify the claims made in the paperwork when a business owner seeks SDVOSB status. The rest do not even check the applicant’s qualifications unless a protest is filed, typically by an unsuccessful competitor.

    “The program is vulnerable to fraud and abuse,” GAO said in an August 2012 report, which echoed three years of the congressional watchdog agency’s prior findings.

    “The government-wide program remains particularly vulnerable since it relies on an honor-system-like process whereby firms self-certify their eligibility.

    The only way Parker was busted happened when he pissed someone off and they submitted his records to the government.

    From Fox News;

    The VA has since made changes to that certification process to great effect. “In 2011 when they changed the process for verification, 10,000 firms stopped, just dropped out of the program,” says Rep. Phil; Roe (R-Tn.) “That showed how much fraud there was in the program.”

    No other federal agencies have moved away from self-certification.

    10,000 folks just thought it wasn’t that important to rock their lies. We’ve seen teh VA’s process fail when they grant disability checks to people like Joseph Cryer and they could only find two people who had defrauded them with claims of being POWS, even though we know that there are thousands and more are exposed every day.

    I understand that the VA doesn’t want to screw any vets out of what they earned, but if we can do it from our LA-Z-Boys, certainly they can do it from their offices if they put a little effort into it. Because by letting the criminals slip through, they’re screwing all veterans.

  • Happy ending to VA mix up

    Chief Tango sends us a link to the story of Jim Mitsch, a veteran, who was notified of his own death by the Veterans Administration this past weekend.

    “They have you listed as dying on July 5, 2013 which coincidentally was July 5, 1967 that I thought that I really did die when we were ambushed. My squad was ambushed,” veteran Jim Mitsch said.

    Mitsch served in Vietnam. He said he was one of the few who made it out alive that day after being attacked.

    “It raised the hair on my arms a little bit that that’s when I should had died. That’s when I thought I was going to die on that particular day and just through the luck of God that I’m still alive.”

    But a succeeding story reports that the VA has allowed Jim Mitsch to live for the time being;

    An Administrative Assistant with the VA Northern Indiana Healthcare System, Jennifer Baran-Prall, told NewsChannel 15 Tuesday evening that the error has been corrected. Mr. Mitsch is listed ‘alive’ again with the VA. She said the U.S. Department of Veteran’s Affairs is not sure how the oversight happened. It is investigating the error though.

    But you can bet they’ll be crowing when Jim is finally dead and sending letters that say “See, we told ya so”. They’re probably just trying to get ahead of the curve, you know, in case Jim takes his final breath when they’re backlogged or something.

    But, welcome back, Jim, glad you’re still here.

  • Thanks, Ric, but you really shouldn’t have

    According to the Stars & Stripes, Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki told the VFW convention that the only reason that he’s still the Secretary, instead of moving on, is because of the claims backlog;

    Last year, in his speech before the VFW’s annual meeting, Shinseki vowed that the share of backlogged claims in the system would be no higher than 40 percent when he returned this year. Instead, it sits at 65 percent, the same level as a year ago.

    But Shinseki insisted that the department is on the right path, thanks to new processing procedures and software that officials have put in place over the last two years.

    So he continues to miss the goals that he set, but the VA is “on the right path”, somehow.

    In remarks to the Veterans of Foreign Wars annual conference in Kentucky on Tuesday, Shinseki acknowledged that “we are behind where we predicted and where we wanted to be” on the processing those claims, but also promised “that will shift downwards quickly.”

    What the hell does that mean, “we’re behind…where we want to be”. Behind is where you want to be?

    “We’ve said all along it would take time to solve this correctly,” he said. “And we are not going to leave this for another secretary and president to wrestle with.

    Yeah, Lord knows we can’t go out and find someone who’ll do the job they’re paid to do and make Shinseki look like the boob that he is.

  • Dayton Veterans Affairs Medical Center chief indited for bribery

    Preston sends us a link to a story in the Dayton Daily News about William Montague who came out of retirement to run the Dayton Veterans Affairs Medical Center after it was investigated for unsanitary practices. He immediately set to work lining his own pockets with bribes from contractors;

    That developer, Michael Forlani, is serving eight years in federal prison on racketeering, bribery and other charges. The charges against Montague are related to the ongoing corruption investigation into government in Cuyahoga County that implicated Forlani along with more than 60 elected officials, public officials and contractors, according to The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer.

    Montague, 61, pleaded not guilty to 36 counts including bribery, wire and mail fraud, and disclosing public contract information.

    “As a Veterans Affairs Medical Center Director, William Montague misled staff and misused his position to enrich himself and businesses pursuing contracts with the Veterans Administration,” Stephen D. Anthony, the special agent in charge at the FBI Cleveland Office, said in a written statement. “The arrest of Montague reflects law enforcement’s continued dedication to root out corruption at any level.”

    Montague was rehired from his retirement in 2011.