Posted on 04/06/2016 4:59:42 AM PDT by Kaslin
What does a suffering military veteran have to do to force an unresponsive government to change its ways?
How about self-immolating in front of his VA clinic? Hello, paper-pushers and desk jockeys? Are you there? Would the heat, the smoke and the smell of burning flesh rouse you in the least?
Nope. Apparently, even this horror is not enough to move the inert bureaucrats at the Department of Veterans Affairs -- let alone the indifferent tango dancer-in-chief.
While President Obama sashayed in Buenos Aires two weeks ago, proud Navy veteran Charles Richard Ingram III, 51, made his last life's journey. He walked nine miles from his home in Egg Harbor Township, N.J., to the curb in front of the Northfield, N.J., VA clinic on New Road.
With a large blue wooden cross looming on the side of a chapel in the background, Ingram stood on the lawn, poured gas all over his body and lit a match. A firefighter told The Daily Beast that the retired chief petty officer, known as "Rich" to family and friends, was "100 percent burned." A bystander had rushed to his side with blankets to snuff out the flames and first responders arrived within minutes.
But it was too late.
CPO Ingram leaves behind a grieving wife, two young children ages 3 and 5, and a charred patch of brown and blackened grass 75 feet from the entrance of the VA's Atlantic County Community Based Outpatient Clinic.
The bloated VA system now employs nearly 400,000 people to carry out its purported "mission of caring." The CBOCs were established to "to more efficiently and effectively serve eligible veterans and provide care in the most appropriate setting," according to the feds. But nobody from Ingram's CBOC -- one of 800 such offices run by the VA, which boasts a record $150 billion budget -- was there to help on that Saturday when Ingram perished.
Why not? Because the facility is closed on weekends. Its daytime, weekday hours (8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.) serve the convenience of the government employees, not of the men and women who put their lives on the line for their country.
Area veterans' advocates and local officials in both political parties have pushed for years to address chronic understaffing and Soviet-era wait times. The Atlantic City Press reports that there is just one lone psychologist to provide therapy to 200 veterans on any given day.
"To make matters worse," local Democratic state senator Jeff Van Drew (who worked in the VA system as a dentist) pointed out last week, "there are no Veterans Affairs hospitals in the region, so even if a veteran is able to schedule a timely appointment at the nearest VA hospital, he or she would have to travel hours to Philadelphia, Penn., northern New Jersey or Delaware to receive care."
Would it have been too much to ask the VA's employees to open for just one day of weekend appointments and one weekday of late-night appointments? Apparently, that was too much of a sacrifice for the 8-to-4:30-ers. Vets' groups petitioned for extended hours for years. Nothing happened.
How about a pilot program to free the VA's hostages and allow vets to receive health care from personal doctors and local hospitals, as Rep. Frank LoBiondo, R-N.J., has long proposed? There must be no escape hatches, anti-privatization special interests have decreed. All must suffer for the Greater Good.
Flacks for the Wilmington, Delaware, VA Medical Services facility, which oversees Ingram's South Jersey clinic, downplayed appointment delays and vets' complaints after Ingram's sacrificial act. Instead, the bureaucrats blithely touted their "telehealth" services via computer, "group therapy" and "additional social workers." Nothing to see here, move along.
When Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc burned himself to death on a Saigon street corner to protest abuses by the Diem government in 1963, the world took notice. The monk left behind his crystallized bones, intact heart and an inflamed movement to end repression against his people. American journalists played a key role in amplifying Duc's message and ensuring that his death wasn't in vain.
Where are the national media voices and advocates for U.S. Navy CPO Charles Ingram and the countless other martyrs victimized by the VA?
If a loyal veteran burns himself to the ground in a forest of government bureaucrats, will anybody hear him?
22
A hardened heart is created by a thousand small cuts, all dismissed as of no consequence.
Very well said
Nothing that makes Obama or the DIMS look bad will last for very long in the media.
Lincoln lied when he mouthed the words,
“Of the people, by the people and for the people”
This government is in reality two branches.
The first is the elected branch that is;
“Of the lawyers, by the lawyers and for the lawyers.
The second is the career paper pushers that is;
Of the bureaucrats, by the bureaucrats and for the bureaucrats.
That laves no room for anyone that is not part of a protected class. Especially the best among us.
Anyone?
Ever?
"When the law no longer protects you from the corrupt,
but protects the corrupt from you -
you know your nation is doomed."
-Ayn Rand
I am crushed and appalled by this news. What drove a retired CPO, only 51 years old, to such a horrible end? The article does not say.
Lord, welcome him into Your kingdom. He knew not what he did.
I’ve been searching on the net for information regarding why this man chose to incinerate himself, and have found nothing. So far, there is nothing to indicate that he had sought treatment and been denied or anything. All I could find out is that he had severed 7 years in the Navy onboard a ship during the fist Gulf War.
There are many problems plaguing the VA, but it would be nice to know the entire story before leaping to the conclusion that it was the fault of the VA.
The hearts of American politicians are colder than a witch’s tit.
But someday they will pay a price. Not in my lifetime, probably, but they will pay a price.
I hate to be the one to say something like this, but if that plane that hit the Pentagon and killed people committed to defending this country, had instead hit Congress and killed a bunch of politicians dedicated to destroying the American people and our way of life, would very many people have shed a tear?
You Lincoln haters are pathetic
I think this is the first time I’ve read this. memory’s not the best.
Was this on all the networks? this is heartbreaking and should be a wake up call.
but it probably wont.
Another bloated, worthless system.
I don’t care what we spend to get our vets the best treatment, but we know so much is being wasted while something like 22 a day commit suicide.
If the Capitol had been obliterated on 9-11 and emergency elections held by all the states, America might have had a new Congressional majority madder than Hell at the Muslim world and ready to really go out & kick Mohammedan @zz and turn Mecca into a smoking crater.
My thoughts exactly.
Baltimorepoet: The muzzies wouldn't attack an area so rich with allies. That's why.
I know what you’re saying but, yes, people would have been upset. First, that building is splendid and secondly, it would have shocked people to tears, I think.
Like it or not the VA health care system is a preview of what the American health care system is becoming.
We all hear about how the poor peons have problems with the VA system. But, what about the health care provided to the senior NCOs and Officers after their retirement? Do any of them use the VA medical system or are their retirement checks large enough to enable them to avoid the VA and use other health care providers?
Like most politically caused problems nothing will happen until the upper ranks of the political establishment are affected and then all H*l* will break lose. Can you say Donald Trump?
The medical people at the VA are mostly OK.
It’s the administrative people, especially the executives, that are just horrible.
I am convinced that there is organized crime in the VA.
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