In what has become typical and usual, the following stories arrive:
“From 2019 to 2021, Ira Westbrook of Bozeman, Montana, served as the fiduciary of an elderly relative who had suffered a stroke and became disabled. A multi-agency investigation found that, during these 16 months, Westbrook stole more than $57,000 in Social Security and VA benefits and used the stolen funds to purchase personal items, including a Jeep Wrangler, a travel trailer, and other day-to-day expenses.”
“From 2016 until 2018, Sloane Signal-Debose of Slidell, Louisiana, served as the fiduciary of a veteran who needed assistance managing his finances. During that time, she took more than $100,000 from the veteran’s accounts, used it as the down payment on a home in her name, and used additional funds from the veteran to pay contractors working on the home. Signal-Debose then submitted false records to VA to hide her misuse of the veteran’s funds. The former fiduciary pleaded guilty to misappropriating funds and faces up to five years in federal prison. The VA OIG conducted this investigation.”
“In 2013, Brandi Goldman of Jonesboro, Arkansas, was married to a US Army reservist who suffered a severe traumatic brain injury in a service-connected accident. As a result of this injury, her husband had many serious physical challenges, and Goldman was appointed as his guardian and fiduciary. Between April 2015 and November 2017, Goldman received more than $258,600 in VA disability payments and $36,000 in Social Security payments. During that timeframe, she withdrew close to $200,000 in cash and accrued about $900 in ATM and overdraft fees. Goldman admitted to spending much cash to fund her methamphetamine habit, spending $150 on methamphetamine two to three times per week. She also admitted that five other people moved into the residence with her and her husband, none of whom paid rent or contributed to expenses, some of whom she regularly gave cash to. She also admitted to paying $68,000 in cash for another home, furnishings for the home, multiple vehicles, and a motor home. Goldman was sentenced to 20 months in prison, three years of supervised release, and $143,000 in restitution after previously pleading guilty to misappropriation by a fiduciary. The VA OIG and Social Security Administration OIG conducted the investigation.”
Why are these stories of particular interest to the supreme legislative body in the United States of America? The executive branch has refused to police its branch of government, and crimes like this have become all too familiar. You, the Congressional bodies of these the United States, are duty-bound and sworn to perform two jobs, scrutinize the executive branch (harshly when necessary), and write laws. You have recently failed too often in monitoring the executive branch, and this story perfectly represents what happens when the executive branch is not examined minutely! Tell the US Public who put you in elected office, how these crimes continue and what programs and processes they MUST change to prevent them in the future.
By pleading for the legislative branch to scrutinize and audit the executive branch minutely, I am in no way condoning or diminishing the personal accountability of those who committed crimes. These three examples are from the October and November press releases of 2022. The widespread ability to commit fraud is a symptom of a more significant problem at the VA. Their leaders have consistently been able to boondoggle, evade, and profit from abusing veterans through designed incompetence, criminal neglect, and obtuse actions. When will Congressional leaders take action to clean up the Federal Government in general and the VA specifically?
The US House of Representatives holds the purse strings for the executive branch; use this leverage to claw back your powers and authority to balance the Federal Government and demand accountability from those empowered to lead their designated branches of the executive branch of government. Let’s talk about patterns; in less than 45 days, three cases of fiduciary fraud were closed, and the speed of closing these cases has escalated throughout 2022. The American people will see more, not less, of these fraudsters being underreported by the US Media before the year ends.
Shifting slightly, let’s talk about government employees and the need for more scrutiny of the executive branch.
“Bruce Minor, of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was sentenced to two years in prison, three years of supervised release, and ordered to pay $462,256 in restitution for his scheme to embezzle money from the Philadelphia VA Medical Center. Between December 2015 and September 2019, Minor, a former travel clerk, created fraudulent travel reimbursement claims in the names of at least three other VA medical center employees. He then diverted the funds into bank accounts he controlled. The VA OIG investigated this case.”
“Kyhati Undavia, of Houston, Texas, was sentenced to 27 months in federal prison after previously pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud. From December 2012 to December 2018, Undavia hired employees to market Memorial Pharmacy, which she controlled and operated, to physicians as a place to submit compounded drug prescriptions. Instead of providing prescriptions directly to the patients who could select a pharmacy of their choice, physicians sent the prescriptions directly to Memorial Pharmacy. Then, Undavia paid the physicians illegal kickbacks for the prescriptions. Beneficiaries often received medicated creams that they did not need or want. Undavia received approximately $22 million from TRICARE, Department of Labor Office of Workers’ Compensation Programs, and CHAMPVA for the prescriptions.”
These stories also fall into the same timeframe mentioned above. But, they are not the only stories from 2022 where VA employees conducted long-term fraud for personal profit. Here’s the rub: hundreds of additional employees knew of these schemes, were probably running their schemes, and haven’t been caught, and nothing is being done by VA leadership to cease the fraud and abuse of veterans by VA employees. There is a culture of corruption at the VA, long hidden by scheming and abusive leaders and condoned by previous Congresses, that must be stopped! What will you, the congressional leaders of the United States, do to halt this insanity, demand personal accountability, and clean house of the designed incompetence that allows these criminal activities to flourish? The American People are waiting!
The following site holds press releases for the VA specifically, but investigations often cross into Social Security, the Department of Defense, state investigatory bodies, the FBI, and more. Suppose nothing else is learned from only perusing this site, that more scrutiny needs to be done to every single department of the executive branch. In that case, we, the American People, might count ourselves lucky. However, this is not the case. The rot from poor leadership, criminal mismanagement, and supreme dereliction of duty is etched deeply into the workings of the executive branch operations, and more needs additional discussion.
03 November 2022, the VA-OIG released a report titled, “VHA Progressed in the Follow-Up of Canceled Appointments during the Pandemic but Could Use Additional Oversight Metrics.” The report only covers the time from 2020 to the present, and regular readers know that the VA has been failing on every measurable metric for over a decade. To couch in politically correct non-threatening jargon, how designed incompetence continues to hamper and hinder is not surprising. That the current Congress has bought the excuses hook, line, and sinker, from the inept VA leadership, was not surprising either. This article is about the future, and the next Congress MUST take immediate and direct action to root cause and improve VA performance!
31 October 2022, the VA-OIG released the following: “Review of VA’s Staffing and Vacancy Reporting under the MISSION Act of 2018.” This is a report about how the VA continues failing to report improvements in hiring practices to the legislative branch. The report details VA leadership’s continued failures through designed incompetence. Tell me, if you were in charge of a report for your business that is essential to receiving funding, would you keep your job if, from 2018 to the present, you still cannot report what is happening and why and be held personally accountable for a report to a legislative body? Don’t take my word for it; read the report, and be careful of the temperature of your blood boiling!
Unfortunately, this behavior is the normal operating procedure for the VA. The same can be easily and quickly witnessed in every other Federal Department of the US Government under the executive branch. As the legislative branch, you are duty-bound to investigate and demand compliance in a timely manner. Where have you been; more importantly, will you allow these problems to continue or kill them?
Do you doubt designed incompetence is a standard operating procedure? Let’s discuss another part of the MISSION Act of 2018 that the VA-OIG recently reported on, “Additional Actions Needed to Fully Implement and Assess Impact of the Patient Referral Coordination Initiative,” dated 27 October 2022. The Referral Coordination Initiative (RCI) is a program to improve timely access to care using community providers. RCI sounds good in theory, but as usual, in the practical application, the program is full of self-serving charlatans, unsupervised or poorly supervised people, weak policies and procedures, and zero accountability! Plus, when the veteran runs into problems with local providers, reporting these problems is so time-consuming as to be ineffectual at best!
A personal example that was reported to the VA when it happened, and nothing was done but to issue the provider a check. Dr. Herekar, Neurologist, clinic: Advanced Neurology Epilepsy & Sleep Center, El Paso, Texas. A VA Primary Care Provider wrote to my employer on VA Letterhead with a wet signature, declaring my inability to wear a mask. Dr. Herekar’s office was presented with this letter and hassled me before both appointments for not wearing a mask, becoming hostile, argumentative, and a nuisance over the mask issue, even after I complied with putting on a face shield. 23 September 2021, over Facebook messenger, I was informed that I would be invited to find a different provider due to my refusal to wear a mask. Imagine that; Facebook Messenger became the medium of choice for ending a patient’s relationship with a medical provider. What did the VA tell me to do; file endless paperwork with TRICARE and then disregard the problem’s urgency. Worse, the medical care for the neurological issues decreased, and I have had to wait, sit, and hope for future consideration and possible treatment. Does this sound like an aberration; it is, unfortunately not!
The VA Leadership realized if community care succeeds, they lose power to control the destiny of veterans. Thus, they implemented the MISSION Act of 2018 with such feet dragging, designing incompetence into every facet of the program, to promote more complaints to Congress, and hopefully to squash the MISSION Act of 2018 and end community care. 07 November 2022, while waiting to speak to representatives of Community Care Services at the VA Out Patient Clinic in EL Paso, the veteran being served ahead of me was told, “The provider does not fax documents, so you will need to go to the provider, and then walk the paperwork back to us.”
The normalcy of reporting providers not submitting paperwork was beyond the pale. Not having secure document transfer processes between the VA and local providers is technically abysmal and unacceptable. Are we in the 1990s, where the cream of technology is sending and receiving a fax? The designed incompetence includes Luddite-like technical disciplines, and the VA_OIG and the Congress should be furious; I know I am!
Before the MISSION Act of 2018, I was making 5 and 6 trips to local providers to retrieve hard copies of medical records, going to the VA Records office, submitting the documents, and then following up 7-14 days later to find out I had to repeat this process as my VA Providers still had not received the records of my interactions with community providers. Interestingly, in 2020 I discovered the treatment records still had not been submitted from community providers into my VA eHealth Record, from treatment received from 2012-2016. Is the pattern of designed incompetence clearer? Is the VA Leadeship’s intransigence more apparent? How about the fraud, waste, and abuse of VA resources?
You, the congressional leaders, must take immediate action, not wait, not hold hearings, concrete action to demand compliance from the executive branch leaders to the congressional leaders who are held accountable to the citizens. America is a representative republic, and it is time the bureaucrats learned the citizens are awake and interested. You, the congressional leaders, are the people’s tool for correcting government abuses; you have two years to show you are dedicated to that principle, or you will be replaced!
© Copyright 2022 – M. Dave Salisbury
The author holds no claims for the art used herein, the pictures were obtained in the public domain, and the intellectual property belongs to those who created the images. Quoted materials remain the property of the original author.
A particular political party is trying to force the lexicon of America to adopt that all humans pledged to a cause are to be considered “human infrastructure.” Sure, what they are trying to communicate is the value of humans in a particular endeavor. No one will know what human infrastructure means until the term is adopted and Americans are reduced to mindless pieces in a machine controlled by the government, paid for by the human infrastructure.
I prefer not to quote radical far right, far left, or emotionally driven people. However, Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity have made similar comments over the past 10-days that have resonated with me: any government’s purpose is to look after their people. There is no higher duty! In Afghanistan, Britain and France have sent special forces, heavily armed convoys, rescued their citizens and closed their embassies in good order. America created a middle-of-the-night Charlie-Foxtrot for the world to handle, then left her citizens to barter with their lives. Representing cowardice and treason most vile before an enemy most intolerant!
While Afghanistan and Saigon have been compared, I repeat, only for emphasis. Afghanistan makes Saigon look like a tip-toe through tulips on gossamer wings of spun sugar plum spice. Both are catastrophes that represent politicians making policies they should be utterly ashamed of! Both represent days when America broke her promise, people died, countries were abandoned, and the world took a hit for representative government. Worse, both incidents spun off years of pain, sorrow, and destitution for millions, and those responsible need held accountable for their despicable behavior. I hope they live long and healthy lives to appreciate the breadth and depth of their disastrous decisions fully!
To our allies, but more importantly to our enemies, America is not our government! We might be saddled by this deleterious administration through fraud and deception, we might have too many weak-kneed, yellow-bellied, no-spine bureaucrats in positions of power, but they do NOT represent AMERICA! You will find AMERICA is a whole lot different than what you see surrendering on TV. Do not test us, especially we, 
On this momentous day, marking 100-days of the fraudulent president, I thought it fitting to mark the occasion by reminding everyone of freedom grabbing runaway government promoted by President Biden. As 
Examining closer the 50-executive orders issued by President Biden, we find the most egregious of these orders, 
Another interesting aspect of the president’s first 100-days is immigration. The current president’s Trump Derangement Syndrome has him reversing 10 of President Trumps Executive Orders and writing two additional immigration-related orders. The plasticization of modular language reveals the tyranny of ruling by executive order! The terms “fair,” “equitable,” “just,” “proper,” etc., all point to the president’s desire to see America devalued by illegal immigrants. Look at the rhetoric used by the president to “explain” why he has reversed, revoked, and wrecked the legal immigration process, and you will find that through Congressional inaction. With Congresses’ refusal to exert its rights, the president can do anything he wants on immigration, and Congress’s leadership just cheers!
I have been insulted, denigrated, derided, and many other things for my stand that every president should have a contentious Congress! I firmly believe that when a president has a contentious Congress, the will of America’s people is better respected, observed, and through the process of working together, real compromise occurs. But, what do we see in the US House of Representatives; we see a Speaker who is also the majority leader and the minority leader abdicating their duties to their caucuses and the US House of Representatives. We see members of the US House race-baiting, employing every card in the deck of identity politics deck and refusing even to acknowledge the other party. But, the US Senate, if anything is worse, and the US Senate’s problems can be traced directly to the executive actions of Speaker Harry Reid (D) during President Obama’s tenure.
America, we learned a lot about the “families” presenting themselves at the US Southern Border for entry into America. We learned about child prostitution, children being “attached” to two strange adults and calling it a “family.” We learned about a lot of schemes to feed the growing human trafficking problem in the United States. Yet, the media continues to call the separation of “families” unfair, and the president has proved he learned nothing but smoke and mirrors. At the same time, these children are raped, abused, disappeared, and destroyed, all through executive order instead of legislated demand! Legitimate families should be kept together, but until documentation can be obtained, separating the families for the safety of the children should be paramount! Sorting through the MS-13 plants is not uncaring; it protects America’s main streets from terrorists! But, these immigration policies, designed by President Trump, are hated by the media; so, these policies have to go. Thus, I ask again, do you feel safer in your home or not?
I was never a President Trump (R) supporter; but, I did, and do, support anyone willing to try new ideas to make America safer. I am not a supporter of holding children indefinitely in nice hotels when veterans are homeless and fully support an America FIRST agenda. But, I also firmly believe that the churches and non-profit groups of America can organize to help in a humane way better than runaway government supported by executive fiat!
America, we need legislation on immigration, NOT executive orders that change as frequently as the president! I have maintained this stance, publicly, since President Reagan signed the first orders providing paths to citizenship for illegals. The illegal immigration policies in America can be directly traced to President Roosevelt and WWII executive orders allowing foreign workers access to America’s jobs in agriculture.
Loyal Oppositionists never use violence to control the thoughts of others. We refute ideas with more potent ideas. We employ words, conviction, and confidence. We love the freedom found under the “Rule of Law.” We are constructive in our comments, truthful, and we research and report, even if it means we must improve our individual actions to meet the US Constitution’s ideals. Now, more than ever in American History, America needs loyal oppositionists to step forward, answer the call, and defend liberty against the tyranny that has been thrust upon us.
Our duty to be loyal oppositionists begins now! We must be faithful to the US Constitution but oppose heart and soul the radicalization, weaponization, and government’s terror. That the liberal leftists have corrupted our neighbors into aiding and abetting the destruction of liberty is not new. But ending the rot, fixing the problems, and rising to the challenge is where we focus. We do not have a rear-view mirror as loyal oppositionists; we have a windshield as we move forward. We build, we support the good where we find it, we dig in against the enemy that would tear us apart, and we find strength from the cause of liberty. As we do this, we will discover America is strong. America is great. America can survive!
In the Welfare State, America’s governmental largesse steals products from growers to give to those who, after the second generation on welfare, no longer understand work or can perform work. America’s Welfare State is the envy of the lazy people the world over. I have been bankrupted through decisions I thought were right at the time but were not good at all. I tried to gain some temporary assistance through the welfare program and was ineligible because I made too much money the year before.
Hence, welfare leads to promiscuity, moral degradation, and lying. As an operations manager, I had several hard-working people who hired on as day laborers; I asked them if they wanted to come on full time, and was refused because if these hard workers got a full-time position, their girlfriends’ welfare would be cut. I was invited into these workers’ homes; their parents owned the home, three younger couples live in the house and the combined children. Grandma gets welfare for latchkey kids; each mother receives welfare rent assistance, food assistance, clothing assistance, school assistance for themselves and their children, and WIC. The amount of assistance for the same kids is received by four different people living in the same home. The grandmother said she was trained on obtaining maximum assistance for welfare and has taught her friends and family how to milk the welfare system.
Better still, return the powers of helping people to religions and non-profit organizations. Thus, releasing the government from stealing from farmers, illegally and immorally regulating prices, and interfering with the market as injuries to the productive class of citizens to benefit the few who refuse to work.
The verse above from Isaiah also speaks to another point needing discussion; the work we do has consequences we cannot escape! Accountability and responsibility follow the choices we make, like shadows; accountability and responsibility are ours to accept or reject, but they never go away! For example, Speaker Pelosi spent the better part of 6-months refusing to help Americans during this governmentally fed emotional hysteria called “COVID,” but as soon as Biden/Harris won, fraudulently, the presidency, it was time to hurry up and act! Now, Speaker Pelosi has exercised her “Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS)” and ramrodded another erroneous impeachment through the US House of Representatives. Aided and abetted by, if the count is correct, ¾’s of the GOP, acting as craven yellow-belly spineless entities.
Companies can give and take at their discretion to the political parties of their choice; that matters not. But, if you claim to represent the American People, duly elected, and you weaponize government to browbeat, hammer, control the electorate, you will be held accountable! Hence, I call for the voters to begin holding the newly formed 117th Congress to task for their misbehavior.
If your two supporters for your speakership were allowed to travel freely, then COVID is not as dire and dangerous as you have been preaching. What about those members who were exposed and have now tested positive because your decisions put them in the House of Representatives while contagious? May their families sue you personally for lost wages, harm, and being infected with COVID?
Take another large group who came to the capital, BLM. The guards for the House were doubled, on alert, and ready if anything happened. As House Speaker, Speaker Pelosi has the power to direct DC Police and other law enforcement agencies. Still, for a Trump Support event, magically, all the security protocols were purposefully not instituted, but after damage and a riot that left five people dead, it is suddenly time to tighten security checks and policies. Something is wrong and smells to high heaven!
Yet, you have wasted valuable time in the 117th Congress to blackball, criticize, shame, and express disdain while weaponizing the Federal Government against President Trump, his family, his associates, his administration representatives, and a host of other private citizens. Why? I cannot believe this is all TDS, especially since 
How long Speaker Pelosi? How long liberal leftists? How long will America have to be sorely vexed before charges are brought for your treason and vilification of America? How long will America be patronized by one-side of your mouths and vilified from the other side? How long will honest men and women be called terrorists for serving in America’s military arms while you enjoy the liberty of their service? My soul is sore vexed; I know millions of other people share in that sentiment. Thus, how long will you proclaim to be the head of the People’s House of elected representatives and continue to ignore, shame, and abhor the people of these the United States of America, a free people, under law, a Republic like none other in history?
All these problems and more have torn at the basic and fundamental power American’s have always held, unity. Unity born of hope, fed a diet of accomplishment, nurtured with education and exposure to work. The unity of farmers has seen America fed. The unity of churches has seen America support religious freedoms and become a bulwark to religious beliefs. The unity of schools of higher education kept standards for academic performance that paved the way for great minds to leave academia prepared to lead industries and stand against tyranny and oppression. The unity of the states has allowed America to weather fires, floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, and every other natural disaster.
America has suffered since the 1960s from the disease of disunity. We have failed to grasp the power we all possess, which is exponentially greater than the sum of our individual numbers, when we boldly stand and commit to “I Can” America’s enemies quake and pale. Combined, “I Can” does not become “We Can.” Combined, the power of “I Can,” is a force greater than “We” because each person shoulders their own load, looks after their own families and friends first, and in doing so multiplies the power of “I Can” into the wonder and majesty that has lured millions of people to come to America and become citizens; that is unity in action!
An example, illegal immigration. If you support the rule of law, and fair play, you would see illegal immigration closed for the good of all current and future immigrants. But, between rabid and hostile factions, a complicit media, the person opposed to illegal immigration is castigated, denigrated, and derided; while, those who are for illegal immigration, law breaking, and chaos are heralded as heroes. Simple right and wrong, many of us were taught at our parent’s knee, but the issue has been twisted and warped until confusion reigns and the issue now divides homes, families, and communities.
President Lincoln’s full address can be found 
According to the US Constitution, the President is the Commander in Chief of all the US Military branches including the National Guard and Coast Guard. Article II of the U.S. Constitution endows the President with this power. Article I of the Constitution gives the U.S. Congress the power to declare war; a purposeful separation of powers instituted by the Founding Fathers that underscored a fear of large standing armies and their potential to impede a free and republican society. The term “reserve component” collectively refers to two organizations—the Reserves and the National Guard. The Reserves are a Federal reserve force that augments the active component as personnel requirements dictate.
The National Guard has two missions—a Federal mission and a State mission. The Guard’s primary mission is to support the States in times of natural and human-made disasters. Guard units in each state can be mobilized by the Governor to provide support within the state or, under certain conditions, across state lines. This occurs when the Governor declares a state of emergency following civil unrest or natural disaster. The U.S. Constitution places control of the National Guard firmly in the hands of the Governors of each state, there are legal provisions that allow the President to mobilize National Guard units for Federal service. The National Guard can be mobilized in whole or in part to support the nation in times of emergency, in response to national disasters, or in times of war. The State Governors are subservient to the US President, and the Secretary of Defense, but answer as the Commander in Chief for the National Guard in their states.
Where the role of the military is concerned, J. Pournelle and S. M. Stirling wrote a series of books that when combined form the compendium “The Prince” (
The 
For Memorial Day (2020), the National Cemetery, through the directive of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), restricted the placing of flags at several national cemeteries, upsetting the plans of Boy Scouts, and angering countless veterans, survivors, dependents, and extended families. However, the intransigence of the VA on this matter is but a symptom of a larger problem.
The Department of Veterans Affairs – Office of Inspector General (VA-OIG) recently released two additional reports on behavior unbecoming at the VA. The first report concerns the delays in diagnosis and treatment in dialysis patients, as well as patient transport at the Fayetteville VA Medical Center in North Carolina. The second is another death of a patient, as well as deficiencies in domiciliary safety and security at the Northeast Ohio Healthcare System in Cleveland.
Bureaucratic inertia is the cause of too many issues, problems, and dead veterans, at the Department of Veterans Affairs. The symptoms include delays in administrative tasks that lead to patients dying for lack of transport to a hospital. The symptoms include cost overrun on every construction project the VA commences. The symptoms include abuse of employees, creating a revolving door in human resources where good people come in with enthusiasm, and leave with anger and contempt, generally at the insistence of a leader who refuses to change. The symptoms include a bureaucrat making a decision that has no logical sense, costs too much and is never held accountable for the harm because the decision-maker can prove they met the byzantine labyrinth of rules, regulations, and policies of the VA.
Secretary Wilkie, until you can overcome the bureaucratic inertia prevalent in the ranks of the leadership between the front-line veteran facing employee and your office, lasting change remains improbable. Real people are dying from bureaucratic inertia. Real veterans are spending their entire lives in the appeal process for benefits and dying without proper treatment. Real families are being torn asunder from the stress of untreated veterans because the bureaucratic inertia cannot be overcome from the outside. I know you need legislative assistance to enact real change and improve the VA. By way of petition, I write this missive to the American citizen asking for your help in providing Sec. Wilkie the tools he needs to fix the VA.
DNC-Consulting 