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Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin said Wednesday the civil service appeals process prevents the agency from firing "terrible managers," and that the Senate must act to reduce the impact of the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) and excessive government employee union-backed due process requirements"Just last week we were forced to take back an employee after they were convicted no more than three times for DWI and had served a 60 day jail sentence … Our accountability processes are clearly broken," Shulkin said at the White House. Shulkin was promoted to VA’s top job by President Donald Trump after...

A notoriously corrupt Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) manager fired in the first day of President Donald Trump’s presidency — to rousing acclaim from veterans who heralded it as a sign of lasting reform — has been returned to work by VA officials after he filed a civil-service protections appeal. The return of the Puerto Rico hospital director is the latest example of Trump’s reform efforts encountering the entrenchment of what he has called Washington’s swamp, and comes in the same month a court ruled that the VA may not even be able to fire the Phoenix hospital director, who...

The Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs cleared a bill Wednesday that would make it much easier for Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Secretary David Shulkin to fire bad employees, moving the legislation one step closer to law. Now that the VA Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act of 2017 has passed the committee hurdle, it will move to the floor of the Senate for further consideration. It’s not clear exactly when the bill will reach the full chamber, but if the Senate passes the bill, it will be sent to the House for a vote. The purpose of the bill is...

Another American hero vet has committed suicide. Except this one is personal. This one hits home. This one isn’t just a statistic, or generic. His name was Sgt. Eric Thomsen. I’ll get to his tragic story in a moment. President Obama ignored vets like Sgt. Thomsen for eight long years. A massive scandal engulfed the Veterans Administration during Obama’s presidency. Vets died on fake waiting lists. Fraud was committed because there wasn’t the money to treat our heroes. So, government employees committed criminal acts to make them go away. Vets died. Obama chose to fire or punish none of the...

Over the weekend we saw another story emerge which reminds us that the lingering effects of the VA scandal are far from gone and too much work remains to be done. It’s not that we haven’t seen some signs of progress at the agency. Shortly after President Trump decided to keep David Shulkin around and place him in charge of the VA, the new Secretary begged for expanded authority to fire failing workers. That prompted the President to create what I like to think of as the Office of Your Butt is Fired inside the VA. That office clearly...

In what could've been a regularly scheduled event held by the American Legion or an attempt at damage control, the Washington D.C. VA Medical Center was the site of a town hall meeting where veterans could let air their comments to the new acting director, Lawrence Connell, regarding the recent and damaging IG report on that facility.

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — JaPharii Jones lost the right to vote after a felony burglary conviction when he was 23 and got it back last year right before Election Day. Now the 31-year-old Hampton activist and founder of a local chapter of Black Lives Matter plans to do what most people usually don't: vote in an off-off-year primary for Virginia governor. Jones is supporting Tom Perriello, a former congressman and diplomat running as an insurgent candidate in the Democratic primary. Perriello was "very diligent" about reaching out to Jones and recently toured parts of Hampton with Jones looking for votes...

Syracuse, N.Y. --There's not a lot tunnel building going on in the United States. Four highway tunnels have been completed over the last 10 years in the U.S. Four more tunnel projects are under construction or in design. And one long discussed project that would have tunneled underneath a national forest in California was dropped. Could be a tunnel in Syracuse's future for Interstate 81? After a tunnel was initially rejected, a tunnel or depressed highway is back on the table as an option to replace Interstate 81's 1.4 mile section of raised highway in Syracuse. The DOT at first...

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has fired Toby Mathew from the position of Shreveport VA medical center director after transferring him to another facility in a non-supervisory role. Aaron Robison, an attorney at the VA’s Office of General Counsel, stated that Mathew was removed from his position on April 13 “based on charges related to general misconduct, and failure to follow policy and provide effective oversight of the Center’s credentialing and privileging program,” ... This man displays ALL the signs and symptoms of someone suffering from extreme, malignant narcissism ... Shea Wilkes, a well-known whistleblower at the Shreveport VA,...

Corey Stewart is running for the GOP’s gubernatorial nomination yet he seems more interested in winning election as president of the Confederacy. His emphasis on Confederate monuments rates as the strangest tactic in Virginia’s political history. And it has redounded to his disadvantage. Stewart serves as chairman of Prince William County’s Board of Supervisors. The other day Glendell Hill, the county’s sheriff, withdrew his support of Stewart and switched his backing to Ed Gillespie, the GOP front-runner. Hill cited Stewart’s Confederate fixation as a reason for his secession. He denounced the divisive nature of Stewart’s platform.

Democratic Lt. Gov. Ralph S. Northam is highlighting gay marriage, gun violence and opposition to President Donald Trump in the first TV commercial of Virginia’s gubernatorial primary season. The ad buy seven weeks ahead of the June 13 primary, described by the Northam campaign as a “substantial, six-figure buy across Virginia,” underscores Northam’s financial advantage over Democratic rival Tom Perriello and the changing tone of Democratic campaigns in a purple state trending blue. The Northam campaign said the ad is believed to be the first in a gubernatorial race to mention marriage equality. The ad features a testimonial from Tim...

Texas Rep. Jody Arrington has introduced legislation to require VA to track the use of official time. An estimated 346 employees in the Department of Veterans Affairs do no actual work for taxpayers. Instead, they spend all of their time doing work on behalf of their union while drawing a federal salary, a practice known as "official time." ... The lack of accountability at the VA when it comes to monitoring official time suggests it might be worse ... Pointing to the waiting list scandals at the department, Arrington said the official time situation is reflective of the "broken culture...

Veterans will now have the opportunity to check wait times at the 1,700 Veterans Affairs facilities across the country. ... The new website is a must for the VA. The unforgivably long wait times at too many VA centers has plagued the agency and placed veterans in danger. At a Phoenix facility, veterans had to wait for care an average of 115 days. The VA is also taking concrete steps of draining the swamp of bad employees. Under current law, some clinics' hands are tied over VA employees who engage in nefarious behavior. For instance, an employee in Houston who...

Firing Offense: Democrats are constantly bleating about the need to better serve the nation's veterans. Yet when it comes down to it, they would rather bow to their union masters than allow the VA to fire workers who aren't doing their jobs. The proof is the Democrats' fervent opposition to a simple reform being pushed by Republicans — the VA Accountability First Act. This bill would let the Veterans Affairs secretary fire someone and not have to wait a month for the person to actually be fired. It would also let the VA cut the pensions for those convicted of...

Hello FReepers, my Mom is in deteriorating health, and we found out recently that her home health care insurance has a weekly cap. Dad served in the Army, to my understanding, during the Berlin Airlift and the beginning of the Korean War. We heard there is possibly Aid and Attendance help from the VA for my Mom, but that we need Dad's DD214 to apply for it. So, I engaged the services of a company that does this research, and just heard back that while they can find there is a valid service number for my Dad, his records have...

Hundreds of thousands of veterans could regain gun rights The House of Representatives passed a bill last Thursday to amend the process used to determine whether a veteran receiving benefits from the Veterans Administration should be denied their gun rights. The Veterans Second Amendment Protection Act would change the process the VA uses to determine which of its beneficiaries are mentally incompetent in a way that disqualifies them from owning firearms. The bill would require a finding by a judge or other judicial authority that the veteran is a danger to himself or others before stripping his gun rights. The...

Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D., Wis.) paid Hillary Clinton's campaign lawyer $90,000 for crisis control following a Veteran Affairs facility scandal that engulfed the senator and her staff. Baldwin, who was first elected to the Senate in 2012, was the only member of Congress from Wisconsin to receive an official federal government inspector general report warning of the over-prescription of narcotics given to veterans at the Tomah VA facility in her state. The abuses at the facility ultimately led to the death of a Marine.A memo was first circulated in 2009 warning of the dangerous amounts of narcotics prescribed to veterans...

A Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) hospital that touted its program focusing on 20 transgendered individuals failed in caring for the remaining 111,000 veterans on health care essentials like keeping its medical equipment clean and properly training employees, government auditors found. "We could not gain reasonable assurance that clinical managers effectively monitor the professional competency of providers ... patient equipment is clean ... [and] employees ensure a safe and healthy environment," according to the Inspect General (IG) report on the activities at Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center released March 13. The hospital in question was the subject of positive...

When Republican congressman and Army veteran Brian Mast saw that a Florida VA hospital didn't have photographs of President Trump and Secretary of Veterans Affairs David Shulkin hanging in the lobby, he took action. Mast and a group of local veterans brought portraits of Trump and Shulkin to the West Palm Beach VA Medical Center and demanded they be installed, and the whole thing was caught on camera. They were successful, but within hours management at the hospital took down the pictures. Their reason? They could not authenticate the photos and they have to follow protocol. A VA spokeswoman said...

One week after promising to keep Congress and the public “fully and currently” informed, the Inspector General (IG) of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) rewrote a report to remove evidence that a senior VA executive tried to steer a massive government contract to her husband’s employer. Laura Eskenazi, then-vice chairman of the Board of Veterans Appeals (BVA), “misused her public office” by plotting with her husband Jonathan to develop a plan that could lead to a major financial “opportunity” for CACI, a government contractor that employed him. Eskenazi then sought to cover it up with “dubious” claims, according to...