{"id":62611,"date":"2015-11-03T11:21:15","date_gmt":"2015-11-03T16:21:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=62611"},"modified":"2015-11-03T11:22:04","modified_gmt":"2015-11-03T16:22:04","slug":"va-officials-take-the-fifth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=62611","title":{"rendered":"VA officials take the Fifth"},"content":{"rendered":"

Illustrating what I’ve been writing for years; two Department of Veterans’ Affairs officials, Diana Rubens and Kimberly Graves, invoked the Fifth Amendment into their testimony before Congress. It seems that they forced VA employees to transfer to other jobs so the pair could step into their places and assume their lesser duties while keeping their own higher pay. In other words, the VA exists to enrich their employees, not care for veterans. From Fox News<\/a>;<\/p>\n

The panel’s chairman, Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., called the allegations against Rubens and Graves disturbing. <\/p>\n

“VA exists for veterans, not for itself or the unjust enrichment of its senior employees,” he said. <\/p>\n

Miller called on VA to take aggressive steps to root out actions identified by the inspector general’s report, hold employees accountable and “be better stewards of taxpayers’ money.” <\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Rubens and Graves kept their salaries of $181,497 and $173,949, respectively, even though the new positions they took as directors at regional offices in Philadelphia and St. Paul had less responsibility and a lower pay range than their previous positions.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Actually, it’s pretty common at the VA and it’s been going on for a long time. Now-Congresswoman Tammy DUckworth was an SES employee at the VA when she up and decided that she was going to college to get her Masters Degree full time while she was still being paid by the US taxpayers to make veterans her main concern, not just one veteran (herself). There’s a real culture problem at the VA that isn’t going to end without an extensive house-cleaning. Why else would a couple of women think that they could get away with feathering their own nests while veterans languish on line for the benefits that they’re owed for their lifetime of service.<\/p>\n

Thanks to Chip for the link.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Illustrating what I’ve been writing for years; two Department of Veterans’ Affairs officials, Diana Rubens and … VA officials take the Fifth<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":41955,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[143],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-veterans-affairs-department"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62611","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=62611"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62611\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/41955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=62611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=62611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}