{"id":35401,"date":"2013-05-02T11:05:54","date_gmt":"2013-05-02T15:05:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=35401"},"modified":"2013-05-02T11:05:54","modified_gmt":"2013-05-02T15:05:54","slug":"shinseki-rewards-murderer-at-pittsburgh-va","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=35401","title":{"rendered":"Shinseki rewards murderer at Pittsburgh VA"},"content":{"rendered":"

TSO forwards a link in the Pittsburgh Gazette<\/a> from a reader in regards to the $62,000 annual bonus (the highest allowable cash award for a government executive) paid to VA regional director Michael Moreland in Pittsburgh just days before an investgation laid the deaths of six veterans from Legionaire’s Disease at his feet;<\/p>\n

That confluence of events has members of Congress, VA employees and families of the Legionnaires’ victims furious that VA Secretary Eric Shinseki — who nominated Mr. Moreland — allowed him to receive the award even though many people believe he deserves at least some of the blame for the outbreak since it occurred under his watch as regional director.<\/p>\n

Many believe Mr. Moreland played a more direct role by closing the Special Pathogens Laboratory — which oversaw Legionella control and prevention — and firing and forcing out Legionnaires’ experts Victor Yu and Janet Stout, when he was director of the Pittsburgh VA in 2006.<\/p>\n

“Are you kidding me?” said Judy Nicklas, daughter-in-law of William Nicklas, 87, of Hampton, who died in November after contracting Legionnaires’. “Unbelievable.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Oh, by the way, Moreland received the Presidential Distinguished Rank Award at a black tie banquet Friday at the White House. OK, maybe “murderer” is a little strong, but certainly Moreland is culpable in those deaths if what the Gazette reports is true. <\/p>\n

But more importantly, this is indicative of the incompetence that is routinely rewarded in the Department of Veterans’ Affairs under Shinseki. The Administrator of the Department has to be a leader, and we constantly find Shinseki with shit on his shoes. He’s no leader and veterans are fricking dying as a result of his utter incompetence as a failed leader.<\/p>\n

The Pittsburgh VA first publicly revealed it had an outbreak on Nov. 16, 2012, even though officials, including Mr. Moreland, knew they had a serious problem as early as July 2011, when Mr. Ciarolla died.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So is this going to be the VA’s Benghazi? Not if you don’t speak out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TSO forwards a link in the Pittsburgh Gazette from a reader in regards to the $62,000 … Shinseki rewards murderer at Pittsburgh VA<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[143],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-veterans-affairs-department"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35401"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35401\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}