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Of all possible causes of the Veterans Affairs Department’s front-page woes -- corrupt managers, funding shortfalls, an exploding population of veterans, a poor communications culture -- there is one that has drawn perhaps the least attention. Too many highly paid VA employees spend their time on union organizing, some say. On May 29, Kimberley Strassel devoted her regular column in The Wall Street Journal to an essay titled “Big Labor’s VA Choke Hold: How Democrats put their union allies before the well-being of veterans.” Stating that two-thirds of the VA workforce is unionized, she said, “That's a whopping 200,000 union...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Some Vietnam veterans in California are outraged after learning Jane Fonda, a.k.a. “Hanoi Jane,” will be giving the commencement speech for UCLA’s School of Theater next Friday. Miss Fonda was given the disparaging nickname in 1972 after she called American soldiers “war criminals” and traveled to Hanoi, Vietnam, to meet with enemy soldiers. “The Butler” actress is scheduled to speak on June 13 for the school’s commencement ceremony, but her appearance is drawing harsh criticism from veterans all over the country. “We hate her,” Nick Callas, president of the Santa Clarita chapter of Vietnam Veterans of America, told Fox News....

Wikipedia/American troops  As  I write, we are approaching 70 years after D-Day as well as may other anniversaries marking the end of World War Two.  [reference:  D-Day 70th anniversary - 2014 - Normandy commemorations]Many of my readers may have had relatives that fought in that war.  Those in their their 80s or older may be veterans of this war. Likewise, my father-in-law had fought in World War II and had served in the Army during Korea and Vietnam.  But he first saw action in the North African theater.  And he may have witnessed many of the events as shown...

About two years ago, Brian Turner took a job as a scheduling clerk at a Veterans Affairs health clinic in Austin. A few weeks later, he said, a supervisor came by to instruct him how to cook the books. “The first time I heard it was actually at my desk. They said, ‘You gotta zero out the date. The wait time has to be zeroed out,’ ” Turner recalled in a phone interview. He said “zeroing out” was a trick to fool the VA’s own accountability system, which the bosses up in Washington used to monitor how long patients waited to...

Last February, before the Veterans Affairs health care scandal broke, Sen. Bernard Sanders, chairman of the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs, joined with 28 Democratic co-sponsors to offer a bill increasing funding for the VA by $20 billion -- even though the agency had failed to use all the money Congress had given it in the form of big budget increases in recent years. Sanders' bill, S.1982, officially titled the Comprehensive Veterans Health and Benefits and Military Retirement Pay Restoration Act of 2014, was a hodgepodge of several previous bills. "The package would improve VA health care and dental care,...

Public sector unions are out of control. They are extracting wealth from the productive economy and playing taxpayers for chumps. Simple as that. Whether the it’s the teachers unions, the municipal unions, the SEIU, the workers at the myriad of of alphabet soup agencies, the assumption is that somehow taxpayers work for government employees, for the low level cronies. Our money is supposed to fund their pensions and above market salaries. We owe it to them. The average federal worker makes over $120,000 in total compensation. A comparable private sector worker? About $50,000. This should not be. To some degree...

A new VA internal audit found wait-list fraud at almost two-thirds of all VA facilities, and that 13% of schedulers had been trained to commit fraud as part of their work. This new audit, which is separate from the Inspector General probe of the Phoenix facility, provided the final straw that forced VA Secretary Eric Shinseki to offer his resignation yesterday: AppointmentsÂ’ wait times were manipulated at more than 60 percent of the Department of Veterans Affairs health facilities investigated as part of a new internal audit. The White House-ordered audit found that schedulers faced pressure to manipulate the system...

This was probably the worst week of the Obama presidency so far. President Obama’s foreign policy reboot failed, the economy is in the tank, the VA scandal is a growing cancer on the presidency, criticisms of the administration’s forthcoming gratuitous plan to raise everyone’s power bill via regulations that will essentially shut down coal-fired power plants have already emerged, VA Secretary Eric Shinseki resigned this morning and just a short while ago solid but beleaguered White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said he is throwing in the towel. How could things get any worse for Obama and the Democrats? In...

After less than four months at the Veterans Affairs Department, Sloan D. Gibson suddenly finds himself in charge of fixing the problems that led to the resignation of VA Secretary Eric Shinseki. "Sloan, I think, would be the first to acknowledge that he's going to have a learning curve that he's got to deal with," President Barack Obama told reporters Friday after announcing that Gibson would replace Shinseki temporarily. A career banker, Gibson was confirmed by the Senate on Feb. 11 as deputy VA secretary, just weeks before allegations of long waits for doctor's appointments at VA hospitals nationwide led...

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Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin joined Sean Hannity from the Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans, La. to speak out on the ongoing VA scandal. "I think there's a lack of understanding on our commander-in-chief's part about what the mission of the military is, and why it is that we owe a debt of gratitude that's manifested in benefits paid to those who've already earned them," Palin said. Palin ripped President Obama's speech to West Point cadets this week, calling it "weak," and went on to say that she doesn't think Obama believes in American exceptionalism. "It's not that we...

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Here’s a not-so-bold prediction: After the press loses interest in the Veterans Affairs scandal, after the investigations have been completed and one or two officials have resigned . . . nothing will change. Is this cynicism? Not really. It comes down to one’s view of how much government can achieve by bureaucratic, top-down management. The progressive project has limitless faith in the capacity of wise managers to run complex systems for the benefit of all. Untainted by the profit motive, bureaucrats can deliver services equitably and efficiently. Every leftist/progressive program has the effect of taking decision-making away from individuals,...

Big Labor's VA Choke Hold How Democrats put their union allies before the well-being of veterans. By Kimberley A. Strassel May 29, 2014 We know with certainty that there is at least one person the Department of Veterans Affairs is serving well. That would be the president of local lodge 1798 of the National Federation of Federal Employees. The Federal Labor Relations Authority, the agency that mediates federal labor disputes, earlier this month ruled in favor of this union president, in a dispute over whether she need bother to show up at her workplace—the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Martinsburg,...

You always have to be on the lookout for backdoor schemes by Washington D.C. politicians as they pander for votes while dismissing the plight of the American people. My dad, who served in World War II, taught me that it is a distinct privilege to don the uniform of this nation and serve in its Armed Forces. He began a tradition that has now spanned four generations in the West family, including my older brother, myself, and now my nephew. But something quite disturbing is happening on Capitol Hill regarding wearing the uniform of our nation – disturbing, because history...

Fox News host Sean Hannity sat down with former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin on Thursday night at the Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans where she was asked about the unfolding scandal surrounding the Department of Veterans Affairs. Palin blasted the VA for failing veterans and said that “illegal aliens” in the United States often have access to better care than American servicemen and women. “Is the VA a death panel for many?” Hannity asked Palin. “That is what government-run health care will result in,” Palin replied. “Our prisoners at Gitmo,” Hannity said. “There is one doctor for every 1.5...

A memorable moment from last night’s House hearing courtesy of Florida’s Corrine Brown, whose congressional legacy is already secure. I’ll say this for her: It takes guts to double down on your faith in the VA after yesterday’s IG report, at a moment when more prominent Democrats like Al Franken and Jeanne Shaheen are running in terror from Shinseki. Then again, it’s a fine line between “guts” and “reckless stupidity.” Remember this story from a few weeks ago? Three mental health administrators at the Malcom Randall VA Medical Center in Gainesville have been placed on administrative leave after U.S. Department...

Talk show host and military veteran Montel Williams went after President Barack Obama on Wednesday for not using his West Point speech as an opportunity to apologize to members of the U.S. military for having “dropped the ball on the veterans’ health.” “The president just promised $5 billion for terrorists around the world?! At West Point?!” Williams said angrily. “Where he could have used the day to say, ‘I’m sorry for the pain that I’ve caused you, the families, and I’m gonna fix it today!’” Williams then called for a “#VASurge” campaign to make sure there is enough funding to...

Montel Williams went on Cavuto yesterday and spoke very passionately about how we are treating our veterans. He was very upset that Obama didn’t use his speech at West Point to apologize to veterans and make the case that they were going to fix it once and for all. I got the feeling he wants to see the passion he feels about the reflected in how Obama responds to this issue. Williams also pointed out that people aren’t even visiting our wounded vets anymore in the hospitals like they used to. He said he used to see celebrities visiting all...

Sparks flew during a rare late-night hearing before the House Veterans Affairs Committee, as visibly upset Republicans raked VA officials over the coals while the ink was still wet on a scathing inspector general report condemning the agency's deadly failures. The report found that in Phoenix, Arizona alone, 1,700 U.S. military veterans were denied medical care and others waited an average of 115 days to be seen by a doctor – and that officials covered up the lapses by manipulating wait-lists and other official records. Tennessee Republican Rep. Phil Roe, a physician and veteran of the Army Medical Corps, summed...