Free Republic

Believe it or not, it was 10 years ago this month that Barack Obama, then a candidate for the U.S. Senate, introduced himself to America with a speech that shook the Fleet Center in Boston. The main theme of that Democratic convention was the litany of George W. Bush's failures — an unpopular and unending war in Iraq, a faltering image abroad, a stagnating middle class. Obama gave eloquent voice to those frustrations, arguing that all of them could be addressed if only we reunited the electorate. Probably Obama himself would not have guessed then that he would ascend to...

Attention, veterans: Ignore your 2014 Department of Veterans Affairs calendar. Independence Day does not fall on July 3 this year. About 357,000 VA calendars given to veterans across most of Florida, southern Georgia and Puerto Rico mistakenly label Thursday, July 3, as Independence Day and remind veterans that VA outpatient clinics are closed today for the holiday. Apologies to the Founding Fathers. The Fourth of July still falls on July 4. So VA clinics actually will be closed Friday, not today. A VA spokeswoman said the error was not noticed by agency proofreaders before the calendar went to the printer...

Politicians have always touted their support for military veterans back home. The willingness to expend federal dollars to provide the best care possible is popular across the partisan spectrum and is rarely cause for controversy. But the issue has been turned on its head in recent months, with the fallout from the Veterans Affairs scandal prompting even the Obama administration to admit a “corrosive culture” at the VA affecting facilities across the country. It’s also invited criticism of vulnerable House and Senate Democrats from Republican candidates and outside groups. For Republican challengers and operatives, the VA scandal offers a striking...

ATLANTA | Federal investigators are probing a whistleblower's allegations that applications for veterans seeking health care benefits may have been improperly purged from the VA's Health Eligibility Center in suburban Atlanta. Eligibility Center program specialist Scott Davis told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that health benefit applications for more than 10,000 veterans may have been improperly purged from the Health Eligibility Center's national data system in DeKalb County. The center doesn't process all applications, but helps manage the national enrollment computer system and offers enrollment guidance for VA hospitals across the country.

(CNSNews.com) -- The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has 59,297 employees – 17.3 percent out of 342,089 workers total -- that make $100,000 or more in yearly salary, according to data from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). Among those employees, 18,709 of them earn a salary of $180,000 or more.An OPM database, FedScope, contains historical data on the federal civilian workforce going back to 1998. The database holds information about civilian federal workers employed by most Executive Branch agencies (excluding intelligence agencies, the White House, and the Office of the Vice President) and some Legislative Branch agencies. It does...

Doug Chase, a Vietnam veteran who was diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2011. In 2012, his wife, Suzanne, tried to move his medical care to a nearby Veterans Affairs hospital. “It was so difficult for him to take the ambulance ride into Boston, we wanted to be closer.” They waited about four months and never heard anything -- Chase died later that year. But two weeks ago, he got a letter, from the VA in Bedford, saying he could now call to make an appointment to see a primary care doctor. “It was addressed to my husband and I...

If the VA scandal weren't bad enough, read the article below and see exactly how the Obama administration treats those with REAL medical problems vs. those who want to change their s.e.x. Vets are dying waiting for treatment while men who want to look and sound and feel like women get seen and trreated. If it doesn't make you mad, why not? SECRET TO SURVIVING OBAMA'S VA: S-E-X A bit from the article: “My dad has believed his whole life that he is really a woman,” said Kori Peterson. “He currently has appointments for a rhinoplasty (a nose job) and...

Back in the Middle of June there were calls for a special prosecutor for the VA Scandal (or scandals). In the middle of June, there were calls for a Special Prosecutor for the VA Scandal by Congressmen John Barrow, Bill Cassidy, and Rick Allen. It seems serious crimes have been comitted by people work in the VA System. Whistleblowers have been retaliated against. One article on this is: Barrow, Allen call for special prosecutor Another is: VA SCANDAL: Cassidy Demands Special Prosecutor To Probe VA Abuse There are people that really need to be behind bars or executed over this...

A 90-year-old decorated World War II veteran still fighting to correct what he says is an erroneous war record may finally be getting closer to realizing his goal. Thomas Joseph Smith, Jr., of Glenville, N.Y., who survived some of the bloodiest battles in the Pacific, said he received the shock of a lifetime when he realized military records detailing his time with the U.S. Marine Corps incorrectly indicated he went AWOL for one month during his unit’s deployment on the Marshall Islands in the early 1940s.

ACTON (CBS) – “He was steadfast. He took care of us, all of these years.” Suzanne Chase of Acton was talking about her husband, Doug, a Vietnam veteran who was diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2011. In 2012, she tried to move his medical care to the Veterans Affairs hospital in Bedford. “It was so difficult for him to take the ambulance ride into Boston, we wanted to be closer.” They waited about four months and never heard anything. Then Douglas Chase died in August 2012. But two weeks ago, he got a letter, from the VA in Bedford,...

The Veterans Affairs Department is apologizing to a Massachusetts woman for offering an appointment to her husband almost two years after he died. Suzanne Chase, of Acton, tells WBZ-TV her Vietnam veteran husband, Doug, was diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2011. …

Joe Bastardi @BigJoeBastardi · 6m I am worried this can get to cat 3 by July 4..we have it as a 2. But to put in perspective, Able, MAY 1951 was cat 3 off NC.

President Obama plans to nominate former Procter and Gamble executive Robert McDonald to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs, sources confirm to Fox News.

Veterans Administration hospitals have spent at least $420 million on solar panels and windmills while vets wait months — or even lay dying — to see a doctor. In total, VA hospitals reported 23 deaths due to 76 instances of delayed care, an April 2014 VA fact sheet said. Then on June 5, Acting Veteran Affairs Secretary Sloan Gibson revealed that at least 18 Phoenix patients died while waiting for treatment on a secret list kept off the books. It is not clear if that number is in addition to the 23 deaths reported earlier. During the past month, the...

More whistleblowers are coming forward from the VA, but this woman from North Carolina gives a special insight into the way that wait-list fraud propagated within the system. Paulene DeWenter makes clear that the use of secret wait lists was no spontaneously-occurring method for front-line workers to deal with overstressed resources, but a deliberate strategy employed by VA management. DeWenter tells WITN that her boss told her to use the secret wait list method, or else she would buy DeWenter a bus pass — one way out of town ... DeWenter blew the whistle after one of the patients on...

It’s like the The Never Ending Story meets the Bad News Bears: the VA implosion, the implosion of Iraq, the implosion at the border, the implosion of IRS computer hard drives (along with the EPA’s) and now, the implosion of the economy. And that’s just in the past month!…a giant sucking soundImagine how you’d feel if you were president and had to find out about all of this when you tuned into the evening news. Without so much as a heads up before another disaster strikes it’s hard to “frame the discussion” properly. Which is to say, it’s hard to...

A Veterans Affairs nurse who spent 28 years at the embattled agency's facility in Albany, N.Y., says when she came forward to report abuse including stolen drugs and mistreatment of patients, her supervisors turned on her instead of trying to fix things. Nursing manager Val Riviello, 55, was considered an outstanding employee at the Albany Stratton VA Medical Center until last November, when she reported that doctors had restrained a patient for seven hours in violation of VA rules. Now she has been banished to an office cubicle, stripped of her nursing duties and supervisory role and faces a 30-day...

Imagine how much better off America’s veterans would be if the federal government spent more time delivering actual care and less time compiling tyrannical lists. The death-inducing secret waiting lists for patients are just the tip of the iceberg. Did you know, for example, that the VA keeps a database on “disgruntled” and “disruptive” vets that results in arbitrarily restricted care?

Doctors at the Philadelphia Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Regional Office are sitting around with nothing to do, despite the fact that hundreds of thousands of U.S. veterans continue to wait for medical appointments. “Urgent! Need work for In-house Physicians,” wrote the Office’s assistant veterans service center manager Ameen Khabir in the subject line of a June 19 email to colleagues, which he placed on “High” importance. The Regional Office is responsible for processing compensation, benefits, employment and insurance claims. More than 276,000 veteran benefit claims across the country are still backlogged, having been waiting for more than 125 days....

CNN: Whistleblower: VA Changed Records To Make Dead Patients Appear To Be Alive (June 24, 2014)