Taxpayer – DNC-Consulting

Scrutinize the Executive Branch – The Charge for the Legislative Branch: Part 1

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.

“That’s Crazy!!!” – More Chronicles from the VA Chapter 6

I-Care I promised a follow-up article after Chapter 5; it took me the better part of 48 hours to cool down sufficiently to write coherently to effect an update. On 18 March 2002, I wrote about an appointment with my Primary Care Provider (PCP) being tardy, unprepared, and bureaucratese in supposedly holding a phone appointment with me. 01 April 2022, not an “April Fools Joke,” at 0731 hours, lasting 9 minutes, my PCP called me to get my approval to have me changed from her PACT team to another provider’s team. Apparently, in the highly red taped world of PCPs at the El Paso VAHCS, there must be an hour-long handoff call when a provider initiates a change of PACT team. I have my doubts and smell designed incompetence!

Let me pause here for a moment. I generally need two hours to write an article after conducting research. 18 March 2002, it took a bit longer to draft that one due to the need to blow off steam with some choice words and choke down the urge to beat a few brick walls with my fists. I am generally a very controlled person, and the fact that this PCP was so stunningly incompetent, rude, and HIPAA clueless, I admit I lost my cherub-like demeanor! That the patient advocate was able to get my secure message, upload the comments into the electronic medical record, and contact the provider before the provider had even logged the patient notes, speaks volumes about the ineptitude of the PCP. Worse, in the call on 01 April, the PCP was still on speakerphone, still disregarding HIPAA security, and quoted lines out of context from my message to the patient advocate. Speaking volumes about the processes and procedures of the patient advocate’s office to investigate patient claims without breaching confidentiality. Another topic for another day entirely! PACT_model

28 March 2022, I received the following from the patient advocates office, quoted completely:

“We have received your secure message addressing your concerns. I will be sending a Patient Advocate Tracking notification with your concerns to our Primacy Care Service for review. They will be contacting you via telephone to discuss your concerns.”

I never heard anything from this mysterious “Primary Care Service” group/team. 01 April 2022 was the first response, and that was from the PCP. Sourcing the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the Office of Inspector General (VA-OIG), the PCP is the second most important member of the Patient-Aligned Care Teams (PACT) at the VA; the patient is the essential member and an actively engaged and knowledgeable patient is preferred. I promise the VA-OIG has not even scratched the surface of the problems with recalcitrant, snowflake, and bureaucratic PCPs endangering patient health with the VA. Not my first run-in with an inept PCP; I sincerely hope it is my last! PACT 3

In returning to the 01 April call, we find another interesting piece of data. The PCP affirmed that abdominal pain could radiate from, say a hernia, to other parts of the abdomen, but this is for a specialist to diagnose, not a Family Practitioner. Get that; the PCP is directly reversing all the published documentation by the VA and the VA-OIG by declaring that a specialist is the only person who can adequately decipher and detail why pain is occurring—putting all the PCPs in the VA Health Administration under the bus as merely button pushers and drug dealers. Then the PCP has the temerity, nay the chutzpah, to suggest a trust deficiency existing between myself and the PCP. Is it any wonder that people are detested, forlorn, melancholy, madder than a wet chicken with a raging case of hemorrhoids with the care they receive from VA healthcare providers?

Again, I repeat, only for emphasis, when any updates arrive on this issue, I will publish them in their entirety to allow the VA the opportunity to rebut, refute, or explain. Like the ongoing saga with VISN 22, the Phoenix VAMC, and being arrested and injured three times by the VA Police, I am not holding my breath and awaiting a logical response. If this were the only problem in the two weeks since the PCP shenanigans, the VA would be in pretty good shape. Alas, we know, dear readers, that the VA is in dire condition, and the elected leaders need to be scrutinizing the VA a LOT more closely than they are. VA 3

We begin the latest chapter of VA-OIG reports with yet another physician bilking the government:

“Robert Clay Smith, a Louisiana physician, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud, wire fraud, and illegal remunerations (taking kickbacks). According to court documents, the scheme, which ran from 2013 until 2017, involved individuals associated with a medical supply and billing company recruiting Smith to dispense pain creams and patches to his workers’ compensation patients by offering him a split of the profits. The company acted as the billing agent for Smith, handling all the paperwork and submitting the allegedly fraudulent claims to the US Department of Labor, Office of Workers’ Compensation Programs, and private insurers. In exchange, the company paid Smith 50 to 55 percent of the profits collected from successfully billing insurers, at markups of 15 to 20 times what the medications cost.”

Plus the following:

“Robert Schneiderman of Langhorne, Pennsylvania, admitted to participating in a massive compounded-medication kickback scheme that he and others ran out of a pharmacy in Clifton, New Jersey. Schneiderman pleaded guilty in federal court to one count of conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud and one count of conspiracy to violate the Anti-Kickback Statute. From 2014 through 2016, Schneiderman and his coconspirators used Main Avenue Pharmacy, a mail-order pharmacy with a storefront in New Jersey, to run a fraud and kickback scheme involving compounded drugs like scar creams, pain creams, migraine mediation, and vitamins. Schneiderman was the president of Main Avenue Pharmacy and was a founder and CEO of its corporate parent. Main Avenue Pharmacy received over $34 million in reimbursements from healthcare benefit programs on compounded medications alone. Approximately $8 million of that total was paid by federal payers. Schneiderman himself earned over $400,000 through the course of the scheme. This case was investigated by the VA OIG, FBI, Department of Defense OIG, Defense Criminal Investigative Service, and Department of Health and Human Services OIG.”

Don’t forget this one:

“Dr. Harry Doyle, a psychiatrist from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and his wife, Sonya Doyle, have agreed to pay $3 million to resolve alleged violations of the False Claims Act. The alleged violations include submitting false billing to the US Department of Labor Office of Workers’ Compensation Programs (OWCP) for psychiatric services that were not provided and upcoding and double-billing patient claims. The Doyles have also agreed to be voluntarily excluded from federal healthcare programs for 25 years as part of the settlement. This is the largest recovery against a single psychiatrist in the history of the OWCP. A multiagency investigation of Dr. Doyle’s practice revealed that from January 2013 through April 2021, the Doyles allegedly billed for services not rendered, some of which occurred when they were not physically present in the United States. This case was investigated by the VA OIG, the Department of Labor OIG, and the United States Postal Service OIG.”

More is coming on this one:

“Ten Texas doctors and a healthcare executive have agreed to pay more than $1.68 million to resolve False Claims Act allegations involving illegal remuneration in violation of the Anti-Kickback Statute and Stark Law. According to a multiagency investigation, from 2015 to 2018, the doctors allegedly received thousands of dollars in illegal remuneration from eight management service organizations (MSOs) in exchange for ordering laboratory tests from Rockdale Hospital doing business as Little River Healthcare, True Health Diagnostics LLC, and Boston Heart Diagnostics Corporation. Little River funded the illegal remuneration to the doctors in the form of volume-based commissions paid to independent contractor recruiters, who used the MSOs to pay numerous doctors for their referrals. The MSO payments to the doctors were disguised as investment returns but were based on and offered in exchange for the doctors’ referrals. As part of their settlements, the defendants have agreed to cooperate with the Department of Justice’s investigations of other parties involved in the alleged law violations. To date, 17 doctors and two healthcare executives involved in this scheme have agreed on settlements totaling more than $2.7 million. The civil settlements resulted from a coordinated effort between the VA OIG, Department of Health and Human Services OIG, Defense Criminal Investigative Service, and the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Texas [emphasis mine].”

Elected officials, the next time you are asked about the incredible amounts of fraud in government-provided healthcare and insurance, do not buy the media talking points that the fraud is minimal, contained, or anything but designed incompetence on the part of the bureaucrats to act as a jobs program for investigators! The same investigators who are refused sufficient tools to investigate shenanigans by employees in the Federal Government adequately. ?u=http2.bp.blogspot.com-fGEUjJsJ2h4VcJgswaisnIAAAAAAAABcsoFqEewPF_E4s1600quote-if-the-freedom-of-speech-is-taken-away-then-dumb-and-silent-we-may-be-led-like-sheep-to-the-george-washington-193690.jpg&f=1&nofb=1

Frankly, all of these cases need the government workers to be held accountable, and the myriad of red tape loopholes CLOSED! I remember an election; I forget who and the exact when, but a significant election plank in the platform was healthcare reform, promising to clean up the swamp and bring accountability to Washington and the government. The public is still waiting, and I know enough of you have run on this topic from both parties to repaper the walls (inside and outside) of the White House.

Yet, even if only outside providers and executives were scheming, the VA might not be in too bad a condition. Except for the employees of the VA, VHA, and VBA, which continue to be caught up in ethics violations at a minimum:

“The VA-OIG conducted an administrative investigation that included a congressional request to look into allegations that Charmain Bogue, former executive director of the Veterans Benefits Administration’s Education Service, committed ethical violations arising from her spouse’s consulting work for Veterans Education Success (VES). VES is a nonprofit advocacy group that regularly had business before the Education Service. The allegations also pointed to possible incomplete financial disclosures by Ms. Bogue concerning her spouse’s consulting business. In their work, investigators uncovered evidence of other potential conflicts of interest and related misconduct by Ms. Bogue [emphasis mine].”

VA-OIG finding:

1. Bogue participated in Education Service matters involving VES without considering whether it raised an apparent conflict of interest and acted contrary to the ethics guidance she received from her supervisors.
2. Bogue sought résumé feedback from the president of VES to aid in her search for career advancement without considering whether this raised apparent conflict of interest concerns in subsequent VES matters. VES also endorsed Ms. Bogue for presidential nominee positions.
3. Bogue provided insufficient detail about her spouse’s business in 2019 and 2020 public financial disclosures; VA ethics attorneys had found them compliant. She remedied the subsequently identified deficiency in her 2021 disclosure.
4. The OIG found that Ms. Bogue refused to cooperate fully in the OIG’s investigation by refusing to complete her follow-up interview. Her husband and VES president also refused to participate in OIG interviews, and the OIG lacks testimonial subpoena authority over individuals who are not VA employees. Bogue resigned from VA in January 2022.

UPDATE: 14 April 2022 – Sen. Grassley was hoodwinked by the VA on this issue and The Daily Signal (linked) has more of this report. I covered this before, I repeat only for emphasis, when you are discharged from the VA, you lose your ability to be a “whistle-blower.” As a point of fact, this is how the VA is able to hide a lot of their shenanigans, get rid of the person rocking the boat, invent the paperwork, cover the whole incident over as a “bad-apple” and keep you collective heads down and mouths shut until the VA-OIG investigation concludes. The VA’s ability to abuse whistle-blowers is further compounded by Federal Attorneys who cherry-pick the cases they know they can win. Which further protects the VA’s shenanigans and disheartens and mystifies those who have been wrongly terminated. The Daily Signal reflects this pattern of corruption perfectly citing the records obtained by Empower Oversight.

Some commentators have claimed that blaming elected officials for not scrutinizing or not providing tools to investigate entirely is unduly unfair to the congressional representatives. Really?!?!?! The VA-OIG conducts an investigation, the people being investigated refuse to comply, and the VA-OIG is toothless to enforce a full and complete investigation to initiate Attorney General and FBI investigations and actions to recompense the defrauded taxpayer. Ms. Bogue and the VES have invalidated any trust the taxpayer should have in their respective activities, but this, like so many other investigations into VA employees, will die of apathy before anyone is held accountable. Even though a congressional representative demanded an investigation, nobody is being held liable. Nobody is forced to compensate the defrauded taxpayer, yet the taxpayer is still expected to elect the same old representatives to their jobs. Blaming the congressional representatives (legislative branch) for not scrutinizing the executive branch, one of only two jobs these people have, is somehow unfair? NO! Exclamation Mark

Remarkably, between the 18 March disaster with the PCP and 01 April’s compounding idiocy, the VA-OIG published an ironically titled investigation report.

“Improved Governance Would Help Patient Advocates Better Manage Veterans’ Healthcare Complaints.”

Imagine that, more designed incompetence negatively impacting the veterans seeking care at a VA medical facility, stating the obvious by the investigators. Who on earth would be responsible for seeing that regulatory agencies had the tools needed to scrutinize and demand corrective action? Calling all elected officials, did you notice that one of the prima facia tools a veteran has to report problems, conveniently called “patient advocates,” does not have the sufficient authority, adequate oversight, and tools to execute their jobs? The VA-OIG reports the following:

“The Patient Advocacy Program helps advance the Veterans Health Administration’s (VHA) efforts to improve customer service, support veterans’ access to quality care, and provide a mechanism to resolve healthcare issues. Patient advocates document veterans’ concerns, communicate the resolution, provide follow-up and feedback, and identify trends for potential opportunities to improve medical facilities. In FY 2020, VHA tracked about 162,000 serious complaints in its patient advocate tracking systems.”

Angry Wet Chicken On a side topic, VA-OIG, how do you define a “significant complaint” and separate it from other types of complaints? Honest question, the information was, to quote my PCP, “remarkably” missing from your investigation report! Would the VA-OIG like to know why so many veterans’ complaints have risen to a “serious” level? You reported the exact problem:

“A complaint is considered resolved when the complainant communicates the outcome, and the record is closed in the tracking system.”

Maybe, the VA-OIG merely overlooked the logic problem, but complaints increase when the solution pushed down the throats of the veterans does not fix the actual situation. Honest question, no sarcasm involved. Is a “serious” complaint one where significant harm or death to the patient has occurred? Is a serious complaint one that breaks federal laws, EMTALA, comes readily to mind? ?u=https3.bp.blogspot.com-fYRTNk48SCwT8ua0IRDWPIAAAAAAAAFZUpexSmJsN2Kos1600overcoming-adversity-help-yourself-believe-cubby-motivational-1289878102.jpg&f=1&nofb=1

Having had “solutions” forced down my throat, speaking only for myself, I am thoroughly sick of having the patient advocates bureaucratize my complaint, then fail to act, and then compound the problem by quoting policy to me as a reason to close the complaint, when the VHA never have written policies and procedures! Maybe, you might want to look into the root causes of some of those “closed” complaints and ask root causation questions!

What did the VA-OIG find when they investigated the patient advocates?

- VHA lacked adequate governance of the Patient Advocacy Program.
- VHA did not effectively issue and implement adequate policy, monitor complaint practices, and provide guidance to medical facility directors responsible for local program management.
- Patient advocates did not always enter complaints into the system.
- Even though complaint records generally appeared to be closed on time, patient advocates did not always document the communication of the outcomes to the complainants.
- The VA-OIG substantiated an inadequate program policy to identify clear expectations and responsibilities.
- The VA-OIG found that they (patient advocates) did not always adhere to the documentation requirements to show full complaint resolution.
- At the local and VISN levels, responsible personnel did not consistently analyze patient advocate tracking system complaints about trends.

Feel free to read the complete abomination of designed incompetence for yourself. Essentially the VA-OIG concluded that the VHA has been burning taxpayer money in a patient advocacy program, and the designed incompetence is so apparent it can be tracked from L2, where the James Webb telescope is located! Worse, you won’t need the James Webb telescope to see the designed incompetence! James Webb Space Telescope

Unfortunately, I could have guessed the first three findings without looking. Every VA program is designed so ineptly, reprehensibly led, criminally incompetent, and with such dastardly deceptive doings that fiction writers’ storylines have to be written better to sell books. You cannot make this stupidity up and make a profit. Hollywood would run screaming into the night if they made a true story about the ineptitude found at the VA!

Knowledge Check! Elected officials, where are you? The VA-OIG presents copies of their findings to you, and I have yet to witness a single one of you holding the VA Leadership criminally responsible for the failures at the VA. Even when the VA is killing hundreds of veterans, the US Congress refuses even to act upset, let alone scrutinize for a change! Remember how many veterans were intentionally killed in Phoenix waiting for treatment? How many VA employees lost their jobs and pensions or were forced in front of a judge for murder? It is a fair question, where are the elected officials in the legislative branch working to end the criminal “fraud, waste, abuse,” and designed incompetence in the executive branch?

The Year-End Maelstrom! – More VA Shenanigans! (Where is the accountability?)

2021 has finally ended, but before it ended, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) – Office of Inspector General (VA-OIG) increased the pace, and the following is but a taste of the year-end insanity foisted into my inbox. With more than 45 emails to sift thru, some of the topics had to be culled, and I regret that I had to cull the emails. Each and every VA-OIG report deserves to be scrutinized, evaluated, and the actors punished, many times with criminal court. I don’t know what’s worse, summating these stories or getting hit with a truck; seeing as I have been hit by a truck, I think the truck is easier.

We begin the recount of VA-OIG stories with another veteran, deceased because the VA Medical Center refused to do their job and provide continuity of care after a 33-day hospital stay. Leaving me wondering if this was intentional malpractice due to the cost of the veteran to the VA. Listen to the findings of the VA-OIG, then make your own decision.

“The Malcom Randall VAMC’s interdisciplinary team (IDT) failed to develop a discharge plan that adequately ensured patient safety and continuity of care. The Malcom Randall VAMC did not have a discharge planning policy that outlined IDT membership, communication expectations, or roles in discharge planning. The OIG found that the occupational therapy provider did not verbally communicate a new recommendation for a home safety assessment or take action to stop the discharge until the safety concerns were addressed. Additionally, an attending physician failed to review written recommendations for home healthcare services from consultative and ancillary providers before composing the discharge plan for the patient. The social worker, who had significant responsibility for ensuring the adequacy and safety of the patient’s discharge plan, also failed to incorporate recommendations by the occupational therapy provider and failed to discuss and offer home health services to manage the patient’s venous leg ulcer and monitor infection of the right leg. The OIG also found that social workers did not consistently complete thorough and detailed psychosocial assessments that would be pertinent to discharge planning.”

Remember when the media became hysterical when then VP Candidate Gov. Sarah Palin suggested ObamaCare would institute “Death Panels?” Bureaucrats decided that the government had invested sufficient money into a patient and was going to stop providing medical care. When this media hissy-fit was going on, I claimed that the VA had been exercising this right to discontinue care for a long time. Several people took umbrage at this commentary; yet, what do we find from the VA-OIG, a dead veteran, five recommendations by the VA-OIG to do the job these “providers” were already hired to perform, and I am left thinking, “Death Panel in action.”

What else should I conclude with no accountability, responsibility, and consequences?

On the topic of holding a job with responsibility and not being held accountable, we find another hit to the VA and their lack of IT/IS security. Desiring brevity but passing along factual information, the following summary has been condensed:

The Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) standardizes security and risk assessments for cloud technologies for federal agencies, including VA. In April 2019, the VA Office of Inspector General (VA-OIG) received allegations that VA’s Office of Information and Technology’s (OIT’s) Project Special Forces (PSF) was not following FedRAMP policies or VA policy for deploying software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications.

- - The VA-OIG found that OIT granted security authorizations for applications FedRAMP did not authorize.
    - - Eight of the nine applications cited by the complainant were used on the VA network—some without FedRAMP or VA authorization.
      - Another three applications were approved to operate on VA’s network without FedRAMP authorization.
  - The OIG did not substantiate that PSF-developed applications were improperly managed outside the VA Enterprise Cloud group.
  - PSF did not follow VA security requirements in developing interfaces that allow third parties to “plug into” the VA to send and retrieve data.
    - - OIT personnel stated, “no formal OIT authorization process until April 2019.” After that date, the review team did not find instances of VA-authorized applications without FedRAMP authorization.
  - OIT staff “apparently” misunderstood the FedRAMP authorization requirements for SaaS applications containing data classified as less sensitive.

Please note if you think the VA IT/IS performance has improved since April 2019. You are sadly mistaken, as in 2021, there have been three major VA-OIG reports declaring how IT/IS systems at the VA remain insecure, failing legislative mandates for basic security, and are hopelessly too expensive and useless. I have two VA-Apps on my phone, both of which work “sometimes,” and never sufficiently support the end user. Worse, these apps do not interface with the old software the VA is helplessly tied to while the new software continues to prove its uselessness and security problems in real-world beta testing.

Tell me, would you trust the government, any of the alphabet agencies, with your child to babysit? If not, why do we trust the government to secure our identity? If so, please elaborate, for I would love to know of a government/NGO operating with trust and efficiency.

Continuing under the heading of failure to perform the job hired for, we find the VA-OIG issuing a total of 20 recommendations to Vet Centers. The Vet Centers included record keeping of suicidal veterans seeking mental health support as a point of reference. Not for the first time, but I keep hoping it’s the last. The VA continues to fail veterans, abuse veterans actively, and take advantage of veterans, and I remain unconvinced this torture of their customers is not intentional. Maybe not all employees, for I have met some great employees, but the leadership appears hellbent on killing as many veterans as possible.

Why isn’t this big news, huge headlines, and a major story to the corporate media? Where is the coverage? You cannot convince me that 1)You are not aware of this story and 2) That you are unfamiliar with its implications.

VA statement on GPO printing and mailing delay

WASHINGTON — Due to supply chain and staffing shortages, the vendor contracted by the Government Publishing Office to provide printing services for the Department of Veterans Affairs is experiencing delays in printing and mailing notification letters to Veterans and claimants. The disruption may impact the ability of some claimants to meet required deadlines via written correspondence with the VA.

In response to the mailing delays and to protect the best interest of claimants, the Veterans Benefits Administration is extending its response period by 90-calendar days for claimants with letters dated between July 13, 2021, and Dec. 31, 2021.

For those not aware, everything in the bureaucracy abbreviated as the VA is time-sensitive. Miss a deadline, and you have no opportunity to recoup lost time without investing significant amounts of resources. Since I continue to be in an embroiled battle with the VA over not receiving a proper decision in 2004, time delays represent problems untold due to budget cuts and bureaucracy, and the VBA and VHA bureaucracies will do everything they can not to help you. Then we add the time delays, and the consequences can be disastrous. Think veterans dying with an active application for benefits, and you come close to how big this story is, and not covering it with wall-to-wall coverage is the epitome of lackluster asininity!

It took dead veterans on waiting lists to get bad press through the Media fawning over President Obama; what will it take to penetrate the media quilt for Biden? Continuing under the heading of failing to do the job you were hired to perform, we find another VA-OIG comprehensive healthcare inspection (CHIp). Guess what; this one is beyond utterly dismal and flagrantly reprehensible!

The administration and delivery of care to female veterans continues at its expected and atrocious, slovenly pace, being outstripped by one-winged butterflies. How can the VA Leadership continue to keep their jobs when they allow such incorrigible behavior from lower staff members? Would the elected Representatives and Senators address this question? You were hired to scrutinize the government; that is the only other job you have after writing fair and equitable legislation to all citizens. Why should you be re-elected when this behavior abounds, and you refuse to scrutinize the executive branch officers?

Consider the following, “The VA-OIG audit team estimated that improper payments for acupuncture and chiropractic care amounted to about $136.7 million during fiscal years 2018 and 2019.” Continuing, “The audit team also found that VHA did not always follow guidance when reauthorizing acupuncture and chiropractic care. Not documenting assessments of prior treatments before authorizing additional care may interfere with veterans’ treatment.” Failure to ensure your underlings have established proper processes and procedures that are effective and followed is a prerequisite to holding a leadership position. Where is the leadership at the VA? Where is elected representative scrutiny? What are the consequences for doing a poor job of cleaning the house and protecting the taxpayer?

How big is this problem? Try upwards of $341 Million, on top of the $136 Million already discussed, and before the full force and cost are known on delays in properly notifying veterans in a timely and efficient manner.

“The VA-OIG audit team found that some providers are billing VA at a significantly higher rate for high-level evaluation and management services than their peers in the same specialty. The team determined that in fiscal year (FY) 2020, more than 37,900 non-VA providers billed and were paid for significantly more high-level evaluation and management codes than were all providers in that specialty on average. These non-VA providers received about $39.1 million (13 percent) of the approximately $303.6 million paid for all non-VA evaluation and management services.

Additionally, some providers billed separately for evaluation and management services when the global surgery package was in effect. This package is supposed to cover all surgery-related services for a set period. The review team identified more than 45,600 providers were compensated about $37.8 million in FY 2020 for these evaluation and management services.

Improper payments were not easy to detect because VHA staff did not retrospectively audit medical documentation as required. Additionally, the OIG found no evidence that VHA or contractors trained non-VA providers on documenting evaluation and management services, similar to how VA providers are qualified. The OIG determined VHA risked overpaying for evaluation and management services by about $19.9 million in FY 2020.”

While discussing audits, failed processes, and the lack of consequences for senior leadership, we must break and wish a “Happy Birthday” to the audit hits turning 10, 12, 15, 21, and older. It never ceases to amaze me how these financial failures can continue to age, and nobody is held accountable! May you age out and finally be corrected! Would the elected leaders of America like to know why the VA is consistently failing financial audits?

“VA continued to be challenged in consistently enforcing established policies and procedures throughout its geographically dispersed portfolio of outdated applications and systems.”

Now, explain why we should re-elect any elected official to office?

Elected officials, your job is to scrutinize and write legislation; that is what we, the electorate hired you to do. Do you realize the far-reaching consequences of your failure to perform your job? Let me introduce you to an example:

“Anthony Medrano, a veteran of the US Marine Corps and former employee of VA, admitted that between approximately November 2015 and May 2020, he submitted claims to VA in which he purported to be disabled to obtain caregiver benefits for his wife, when he was actually able-bodied and even participated in fitness challenges and coached youth sports. Medrano was sentenced in federal court to eight months in custody for defrauding VA out of more than $183,000. He executed this scheme while employed by VBA as a veterans service representative, a position in which he explained benefit programs and entitlement criteria to veterans applying for VA benefits.”

Or the following:

“Barry Wayne Hoover of Tampa, Florida, a veteran of the United States Navy, exaggerated the extent of his visual impairment to receive VA disability benefits to which he was not entitled. Specifically, Hoover manipulated the results of subjective tests of his peripheral vision to reflect that he had only a five-degree visual field and was legally blind. VA found that Hoover was 100 percent disabled based on those manipulated tests. Hoover was found guilty of theft of government funds and making a false statement to a federal agency. He faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in federal prison. His sentencing hearing is scheduled for March 2022.”

How about this:

“Professional Family Care Services, Inc. (PFCS), a home health services company based in Fayetteville, North Carolina, has agreed to pay more than $45,000 to settle civil False Claims Act allegations related to fraudulent billings for work by a recently convicted felon under their employ. During 2015 and 2016, PFCS billed VA for home health services provided to W.R., an Army veteran, even though, at that time, W. R. was residing with the company’s employee, Certified Nurse Aide Tracey McNeill. PFCS based its billing for those services on falsified timesheets provided by McNeill, who failed to provide both the time and quality of care required under the VA program. After several months living with McNeill, purportedly receiving home health services provided by McNeill through PFCS, W. R. had to be admitted to the hospital. He was extremely malnourished and ultimately died within a few days of admission. Earlier in 2021, McNeill was convicted of wire fraud for her misconduct related to W. R., sentenced to 12 months and one day in federal prison, and ordered to pay over $90,000 in restitution.”

Morality is exemplified by leadership and then exercised under scrutiny. Because you, the elected officials, refuse to be morally upright and scrutinize the government, the executive branch officers and employees have become careless, irresponsible, and taken the American Taxpayer for a ride!

Each time the VA-OIG reports an investigation beginning with the death of a veteran, the root cause is always a failure of people to do the job they were hired or contracted to perform, and the casualty is a dead or severely injured veteran. The culling of the email included a urologist who performed procedures, puncturing internal organs, and not notifying the patient. Several other CHIp summaries reflected the egregious and despicable leadership hidden at VHAs and VAMCs across the country. Other Vet Centers possess failing bureaucrats just trying to hide until they reach retirement and escape.

America, you deserve better from the alphabet agencies representing the executive branch! Fellow veterans, please do not give up hope; we can still help protect this country from those enemies domestically located who make your lives a living hell. Please pass the word, these VA-OIG investigations deserve to be read, and questions asked! Elections are coming; join the fight as a citizen and run for office.

© Copyright 2021 – 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.

Do We Understand – Important Truths From President James Madison

Exclamation Mark Sometimes revisiting a topic is required to help promote urgency in learning. Other times revisiting a subject helps to broaden the mind to more of the problem. My intent in reviewing the topic of understanding is for both of these reasons. President Madison provides counsel that every American should be adhering to, regardless of political flavor, as the first policy in being a responsible citizen.

We begin with an absolute from President Madison, stated two different ways, with the same meaning:

- - “The trust is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted.”
  - “All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree.”

To those who would like to be female apologists and excuse women just because President Madison used the term “men” here, the President spoke of “men” as in all humankind. As in, when power is invested in any person, they should be mistrusted. They should be carefully watched, monitored, and scrutinized. Not blindly trusted to act and never called out for their actions. Hence the role of the media, the role of laws, the role of three co-equal branches of government. Yet, what do we find today?

Honestly, take a look around, and take off the political glasses of partisan politics for a moment. Can you honestly claim that the media is representing fairly both sides of the partisan political spectrum? Can you honestly trust the co-equal branches of government not to be intimidated, cajoled, browbeaten, or unduly influenced by another branch? Is the military following their civilian leaders without political influence and acting in the best interest of all Americans? Is each of the co-equal branches of the government pulling their weight and acting in accordance with the law?

Now, look closer to home. How about the school board, the mayor, the governor, the state legislature, the county board, the city council, the town council, and every other bureaucrat vested with public trust. Are they obeying the duties and honoring the roles of their office and deserving of the public trust? What about the teachers in classrooms who the school board officials directly supervise? Are your children taught reading, writing, and arithmetic, or are they being taught wokeism, sexism, and being groomed for sexual perverts?

“Public office is a public trust, the authority and opportunities of which must be used as absolutely as the public moneys for the public benefit, and not for the purposes of any individual or party.” ~ Dorman Bridgeman Eaton

Public trust remains the single most important and least discussed aspect of American culture and American politics, mainly because public trust is the most misunderstood concept. Public trust has been intentionally misunderstood (plasticized), so it can be perverted and challenging to understand. Yet, public trust comes down to one thing and is revealed through an easy test in its most simple form. Would you leave your home and children alone, under the supervision of any person holding public office? If the answer is yes, they hold your public trust. If the answer is no, why are they in office?

Using President Madison’s quotes above, no one in a position of public trust should be “trusted” without verification, scrutinization, and they should be held accountable for their decisions made while in office. Missouri is the “Show-Me State!” I possess a “Missouri Mindset,” show me you have done the job correctly. Show me; you are transparent in doing the job you were elected to perform. Show me you can be trusted. I am willing to give anyone a chance at leadership, but they had better show me they can do the job!

Under the heading of trust and show me comes an important principle, and President Madison elaborates this principle simply, eloquently, and precisely.

“I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.”

Find me that article of the US Constitution. If you cannot find that, then the Federal, State, and City governments need to get out of taking money through taxes and giving money to people who have not earned it. Welfare belongs to charity groups and religions, not governments! Pork barrel spending is anathema to good order and discipline and should be shunned and shamed. Consider with me the plethora of laws that have been invented to control society just because of the government welfare programs. Soulful Musings: Don't Tell Me, "Show Me"

Food controls, including price controls, control what, when, and how much a farmer can grow, how a farmer can grow, and much more. These controls include legalized theft of a farmer’s goods which the supreme court has upheld.

Dairy, farm, and rancher controls for grain, meat, and milk. Then when the government has too much in store, they force price-controls, forcing dairy and ranchers out of business in support of large commercial production facilities at the expense of smaller and medium-sized operations. Labeling laws that unfairly punish smaller and medium-sized establishments.

Larger governments manage programs through bureaucrats and bureaucratic inertia that are abused at every potential opportunity and are not scrutinized adequately for waste, fraud, and abuse. Where systems and operations are regularly gamed to keep the benefits rolling in at the expense of society, taxpayers, and those needing assistance cannot receive assistance due to the gamesmanship and fraud of others. Show Don't Tell - Working Writers

I am all for helping people learn how to help themselves, using charity programs and religious outreach. But, taxpayer dollars should NEVER be spent in helping one person at the cost of another person!

The following has caused many a discussion in my home. I hope it will cause many a conversation in your homes. May those discussions be heated, be full of lovely disagreement, and be full of fiery opinions. For in the spirited debates come ideas and solutions that work. Invite people who disagree with you to dinner, and may the food and conversation be a delightful experience and a gustatory wonder!

“In framing a government, which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty is this: You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.”

What is the discussion in my home centered upon, “How does a citizen ‘oblige a government to control itself?’” I will offer a couple of suggestions here. Feel free to refute my recommendations with your own in the comments below. Better still, suggest more ideas for topics of discussion. I am not the only person with ideas, and we need every person to help “oblige” the government to control itself!

1. 1. Be an informed electorate! – The one thing a politician fears or should fear more than a ballot box is an informed electorate. Do you know why the politicians preferred Dewey’s system of functionally illiterate stooges to the informed electorate of the early 1900s? They could get away with robbing the citizens blind! When the citizenry is not informed, they become property, bought and sold as chattel (cows, goats, sheep). Doesn’t this make you angry that your elected leaders and the unelected Hollywood elite think of you this way?
  2. Scrutinize government and demand transparency! – It is your government. Tell me something, if your neighbor went across town and graffitied buildings, broke windows, burned property, and defecated on private property, then told the authorities that you had paid him to do these acts, would you be a little concerned? If your neighbor did these things and used your hard-earned money to pay for these crimes, would you want revenge and a criminal charge levied against your neighbor? These are the actions of your government; why does the government get a pass? Your name is on the check, right beside mine, claiming full financial responsibility for the actions of our intermediaries, the government.
  3. Gather with like-minded people, teach each other, learn from each other, and teach your children WHY! – Every tin-pot dictator in history has captured children, taken them from hearth and home, and “educated” them away from parents to influence the next generation. Today, we call this “education,” “state-run schools,” using “laws,” and obligations as “good parents” to shame and force parents to send their children into re-education camps. Want to freak out the government; change the next generation!

Finally, President Madison provides two pieces of advice for living in the American Society worthy of knowing and on-boarding.

- - “Knowledge will forever govern ignorance.”
  - “The circulation of confidence is better than the circulation of money.”

Consider a parable. Give a person a fish, and he eats for a day. Teach a person to fish, and he eats for a lifetime. Teach a person to fish and sell his wares, and his children build a prosperous society. Knowledge will always govern ignorance, but knowledge and confidence build nations! I do not want to build small communities; I want to rebuild the American Nation, a free nation under God, with liberty and justice for all. I cannot do this alone; our forefathers did not undertake this task alone. It took every member of the 13-original colonies to shake off tyranny and oppression and then build America.

Knowledge Check! It will take every single American citizen, and every single person desiring to be an American citizen to rebuild America, after all the damage intentionally done to her by the political leaders, secret societies, and bitter haters who have abused American generosity and then wanted to protect their pile by destroying America. America has been abused by countries foreign, and enemies domestic, corporations foreign and domestic, and individuals who have paid large sums to watch America burn. Do you understand better now? Is the mission clearer in your mind? Is the task ahead more urgent and more desirable? What are your next steps?

© 2021 M. Dave Salisbury
All Rights Reserved
The images used herein were obtained in the public domain; this author holds no copyright to the images displayed.

Political Dysfunction – The IRS Detailed in Spades!

Exclamation Mark Enlighten me, how is the taxpayer to “understand and meet” “tax obligations” when the agency who collects those tax obligations refuses to answer questions, actively hinders transparency, denies accountability and refuses scrutiny? Through forced taxation, collected by fear of the stick, America has been abused since the IRS was created out of whole cloth, not from the U.S. Constitution, but the demented minds of a president and complicit Congress.

Under the heading of “Statutory Authority,” we find the following:

“The IRS is organized to carry out the responsibilities of the secretary of the Treasury under section 7801 of the Internal Revenue Code. The secretary has full authority to administer and enforce the internal revenue laws and has the power to create an agency to enforce these laws. The IRS was created based on this legislative grant.

Section 7803 of the Internal Revenue Code provides for the appointment of a commissioner of Internal Revenue to administer and supervise the execution and application of the internal revenue laws.”

Progressive

Progressive and progressivism is a political philosophy that empowers a more extensive and more intrusive government, a government without any shred of decency, and a government as intrusive as possible into your daily life. Progressivism has been the catchphrase for all sorts of political hooliganism and liberty theft at all levels of government. These abuses by the government have been made possible because, as everyone knows, progress, the root of progressivism, is a good thing; it is progress, right? Not quite, according to the politicians and the bureaucrats who think they own you and me. Lemmings 1

Progress is defined as moving forward or onward towards the desired destination. Also, progress can be advancement or development towards a better, or more complete, “modern condition.” Archaic definitions sometimes provide critical insight into a word, and in this instance, the archaic meaning of progress was a state journey or official tour, especially by royalty.

Progressive means something relating to or characterized by progress without the political connotations, using new ideas, findings, or opportunities. In the classroom, progressive relates to an educational theory marked by an emphasis on the individual child, informal class procedures, and encouraging self-expression to the point of sacrificing educational opportunities. The meaning of progressive also refers to making progress, moving forward or advancing, increasing in severity or extent, expanding the base rate of something, and a few other definitions specific to the sciences of computers and lenses for glasses. Lemmings 4

President Woodrow Wilson (D) was a progressive, and many of his political detractors were regressive. The distinction was drawn on a political scale to aid in differentiating and scorning political opponents concerned about the spread of government. We need to be clear that any time anyone talks about progressive taxes, they discuss expanding the base tax rate. Making tax increases sound more pleasant is a key to twisting the meaning of words and exercising tyranny on a population.

Regressive

As you might have probably guessed, regression is the exact opposite of progression. Regressive relates to regression production, decreasing the rate as the base increases, and is characterized by simplifying structures in an evolutionary process. Regression is the act of regressing. Regressing relates to the act of reasoning backward, moving backward to a previous and possibly worse or more primitive state. It is also a privilege of going or coming back to something. Plato 2

Regressive is most used in refusing to cut taxes, so the opponents to “progressive” taxes are automatically regressive. In actuality, progressive is all about increasing government size, government taxes, and government bureaucracy; thus, the opponents of progressive taxes should own and explain why being regressive is a good thing. Yet, they never do, and representative governments across the globe are worse for this plastic language. The consequences of ever bigger government and taxes, fees, surcharges, fines, etc., dreamed up as “progress.”

Tax Gap

Bait & Switch Due to proposed legislation, the media has been quick to jump onto the tax bandwagon. The media are trying to drum up a lot of hype for the proposed bill, calling it fairness, catching the tax cheaters, working to bring “fairness” to the tax system, and progressing the tax system to close the loopholes improve tax enforcement. The “tax gap;” is $600 million in mostly tax errors because the tax system is too complicated. How do you tell the difference between tax cheaters and honest people trying to obey the tax authorities? Therein lies the problem, to the IRS, everyone making an error is guilty until proven innocent, and either way, you will pay something to the IRS to get out of trouble.

What is the problem? The IRS is going to use its newfound enforcement ability from this legislation to punish and abuse. Congress is always talking about closing loopholes, but what they mean is allow political cronies and connections to keep doing what they are doing and force the rest of America to pay for the privilege of being abused.

Tax Enforcement

Question Long have I been concerned that the agencies of the Federal Government have become weapons against the citizenry. With Lois Lerner and the 501 (C) (3) debacle still ongoing at the IRS, this concern about government weaponizing has only strengthened. Yet, what do we find from politicians on both sides of the aisle; crickets, platitudes, double-speak, and an attitude of not caring. What do we see from state and local government officials who are in a position to protect the citizen from run-away government, even less. With the proposed legislation being kicked around, granting money to a Federal Agency with a history of sleight of hand, deviousness, and abuse of power, seems to be the worst mistake possible. Why are the legislatures not taking the IRS to task and scrutinizing them more closely, ending the farrago of Lois Lerner and holding real people accountable for real crimes?

© 2021 M. Dave Salisbury
All Rights Reserved
The images used herein were obtained in the public domain; this author holds no copyright to the images displayed.

$1.8 Trillion Annual Deficit – The Problems with Biden’s Budget

Angry Grizzly Bear With gratitude to the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), their analysis of the proposed budget was broken down, and some sense was made. Not that the news is logical, acceptable, or palatable, just that the budget documents were broken down, which was helpful. We start with the most bass-ackwards aspect of the budget by asking one question, “Where is the money supposed to come from?”

The 2022 Budget Proposal left President Biden’s desk requesting Congress to spend $6 Trillion and add $1.8 Trillion in new deficit spending to the bloated debt the government already owes. “Who is going to buy the bonds and make money on this debt?” When a person employs a search engine, asking this exact question, many answers come forward, and some do not make any sense.

Peter Schiff stated:

“The government doesn’t have money that it doesn’t take. Any dollar that the government spends is a dollar that the private sector can’t spend or can’t invest. The government has to take money out of the economy before it can put it back in. Nobody seems to understand this basic point because they see the Fed creating money, and they think, well, we just print money. They don’t realize that when they print money, they destroy the value of the money that’s already there. So, they’re not adding new purchasing power. They’re just redistributing it” [emphasis mine].

Thus the first problem with America’s debt and proposed budget transparent; there is no money that government can spend unless it first forcefully removes it from the owner. That is theft, or as we recently discussed, legalized theft. The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) has ruled that legalized plunder, legal theft, or forced taxation are the price we pay for civilization, thus making legal the government’s actions to steal money. Government Largess

Let me be clear; I am not an economist. I select several very bright and experienced people to help explain things to me. However, I can help others with less interest in economics understand what is happening in America right now to answer the question put forward, “Who is buying America’s debt instruments?” The simple answer is that the Federal Treasury is buying the debt instruments, as the whole world sells their bonds and other American debt instruments. What the Federal Reserve is doing is called “monetizing debt.”

Monetizing Debt

Gravy Train 3 The definition of monetized debt is as follows. “Debt monetization or monetary financing is the practice of a government borrowing money from the central bank to finance public spending instead of selling bonds to the private sector or raising taxes. It is often informally and pejoratively called printing money or money creation.” Money can only be created in two ways: selling products and services and lending money where the borrower pays interest. While there are many different debt instruments, i.e., credit card, home loan, student loan, bonds, Treasury Notes, etc., the principle remains the same: you either sell goods and services to make money or lend money and make money on the interest.

Why does monetizing debt matter?

Two simple reasons the government allows debt to be monetized. To hide debt, it doesn’t want the public to know about, and to absorb cash on the market as a tool to fight inflation. Here’s the problem, there is too much debt on the government’s books to hide it from the public any longer. Add to that the sheer volumes of cash in the marketplace after handing out money during COVID, and the Federal Reserve will monetize debt. Even if the chair of the Federal Reserve denies monetizing debt, debt is being monetized. Burning money - THE JOSIAH BARTLETT CENTER FOR PUBLIC POLICY

In short terms, your pocketbook is going to take another hit on the chin, and possibly two. First, your interest rate on privately held debt, credit cards, student loans, homes, etc., is going to go up, all while making lenders nervous and refuse to lend money. Second, inflation is already making the dollars held less valuable.

Inflation first; inflation is the devaluation of dollars. The government floods the marketplace with cash, and the currency you hold will drop in value. For example, recently the inflation was reported to have been 4.6% higher year-over-year. This announcement was made in April 2021, so all the money you earned last year suddenly became 4.6% less valuable this year, all before the interest rate increases affected those dollars. Inflation - 8 Things Everyone Ought To Know.

Case in point, the US Government sent me $1000 in January; I held onto those funds due to a move that was coming and spent the money in June. However, between January and June, inflation moved up at a steady pace, and when I went to spend that $1000, it was only worth $850. That is the power of inflation in your pocket.

Have you asked for a credit increase recently and been denied? What about your credit limits on your credit cards, have they shrunk? Both are indicators that the lenders refuse to lend due to the tremendous risks caused by fiscal insanity in the Federal Government. What about home loans, have you had to produce more documentation, prove more income, and work harder to qualify for a loan? What about student debt? The government controls the lending of student debt. Even here, the Federal Government cannot demand a lender loan money to student’s and many students have found their college expenses grow, and their ability to borrow shrunk. Inflation pickpocket | Cayman Compass

In a simple fact of life, every household in America understands perfectly. When your credit scores go down, your ability to borrow reduces, and it becomes harder to meet all your bills every month. Every city, county, state, and even the Federal Government should know this lesson, but they refuse to believe problems arise when credit scores go down. All because those elected believe they can tax some more, and the money magically appears.

Does money magically appear in your pocket; of course not! It must be earned through working, selling goods and services, or trading your time for employment with an employer for a paycheck. Does the law allow you to write blank checks, kite checks, backdate checks, or simply float a check waiting for a future payday; of course not! Yet, this is what the government is doing right now with your money. The government is spending money, promising the lenders that a future payday will be theirs, but the government has to spend money to get money. Does that excuse work for you when the electric company, gas company, cellphone, and other bills arrive? A Helpful Chart : How Inflation Changes Mortgage Rates

The most heartbreaking statement I have heard in a long time was recently made by a physician’s assistant, who claimed, “Aren’t we all just one paycheck from disaster?” The simple truth, mostly, yes! Studies exist that talk about financial resiliency in America. Financial resiliency is all about being able to weather a patch of trouble without losing your possessions in bankruptcy. The conclusions were all but unanimous. Along with most industrial nations, America has no financial resiliency due to government fiscal policies that hinder saving money and the need to live on credit cards to keep the basics of life paid for each month.

When inflation is stealing the value of your money, no wage can compete with government theft, all before taxes. Add in tax laws that are counter-productive, job-killing, and increase the cost of doing business, and the job you have becomes tenuous at best. Add in the hidden debts the government is trying to hide, and nobody in America is making money.

What about those who consider themselves “Rich?”

The same problems you are having with inflation are the same problems everyone is having with inflation. Let’s go back to my $1000 that became $850 through six months of inflation. We all spend the same money, and inflation is killing everyone’s dollar equally! Hence, I beg you, do not allow the media hype about rich versus poor to derail the point. Inflation and monetized debt are killing the US Dollar, which is why so many foreign investors have dumped their US Debt instruments for safer financial shores.

While some people have more financial resiliency than others, everyone’s dollar is dropping in value. Inflation and low financial resiliency mean making budget cuts to charities, hiring someone to maintain a lawn, and a host of other ways and means American’s share our money. It can mean turning off services, weighing how much fuel can be used, and a host of other belt-tightening decisions. All things the government should first be doing, and they refuse. 24+ Inspirational Quotes For Unemployed - Audi Quote

Yours and my liberty and freedoms depend upon stable economic policy, firm fiscal policies, and elected officials scrutinizing the government for waste, fraud, and abuse. Yet, what do we regularly find; fraud, waste, and abuse! The Department of Defense has lost multiple trillions of dollars; not a single politician is asking for an audit and an explanation or is willing to withhold additional appropriations until the lost money is accounted for. The Department of Veterans Affairs continues to mismanage funds, misappropriate funds, and waste money like overripe fruit; yet, still, we have zero interest from the politicians elected to scrutinize government.

I repeat Peter Schiff, only for emphasis:

“The government doesn’t have money that it doesn’t take. Any dollar that the government spends is a dollar that the private sector can’t spend or can’t invest. The government has to take money out of the economy before it can put it back in. Nobody seems to understand this basic point because they see the Fed creating money, and they think, well, we just print money. They don’t realize that when they print money, they destroy the value of the money that’s already there. So, they’re not adding new purchasing power. They’re just redistributing it” [emphasis mine].

Inflation Quotes | Inflation Sayings | Inflation Picture Quotes - Page 2 In redistributing your money, the government has proven they are the problem, and the solution begins locally! Change your mayor, city council, county board, school boards, and every other elected official. Getting the local governments in fiscal shape allows state governments to begin practicing fiscal health and sanity. Then, we put people into the Federal Office more interested in scrutinizing the government than in writing endless laws and abdicating their legislative role to the executive bureaucrats and the judicial branch.

Knowledge Check! The budget put forth by President Biden is the height of insane, and I have only covered less than 1/10^th of the budget problems in this article. Granted, I covered the most egregious problem, but the fact that the legislative branch is even negotiating a compromise is beyond insanity and borders on criminal negligence! We, each citizen of a representative government, must stand and tell our representatives NO MORE! No more fiscal insanity, borrowing to buy votes, entering into debt obligations that make captives of unborn millions of other people. No more will we allow them to buy votes to maintain power. End the financial abuse of the taxpayer; your wallet will thank you!

Did you hear? The IRS Edition

FLASH: 20 May 2021, President Biden wants to spend $80 Billion on expanding the workforce of the IRS by 87,000 new employees over 10-years. Riddle me this, $919,540.23 is the approximate amount per employee; Would someone tell me why the IRS needs to spend so much per employee? Does this announcement seem particularly worrisome? If not, please cease reading now, as I will never convince you to be wary of the Department of Internal Revenue Service. However, with its incredible price tag, if this announcement worries you, let’s discuss a few topics an expanded IRS means.

Where is the money to expand the IRS coming from?

Simple question. I want clear and concise answers. While President Biden thinks some of those funds will come from “catching tax cheats,” cheating taxes is a game for lawyers, and I want to know what the president means by “Tax Cheats.” For example, will he further chase the rich people who are not paying their “fair share;” if so, when will Biden and Obama belly up and write a check for all the back taxes they owe? When will the Clinton Machine be forced to become accountable for all the tax money avoided? Are “tax cheats” regular people who missed a box, forgot to include some income, or cannot fathom how to fill out their taxes and made honest mistakes?

Until Big-Tech did an excellent job of cleaning OIG reports for the IRS, I used to have an OIG report claiming that the Federal Employees owing the most in back taxes was the IRS. Are they in the “Tax Cheat” category, or will the IRS employees continue to be exempt from audits and “fair share” taxpaying because the agency is overwhelming voting Democrat in every election? The more I dig into the IRS; the more questions arise about “fairness,” transparency, accountability, and responsibility.

Politicized or unpoliticized, the IRS is a weapon.

There is a massive problem in the IRS; the “IRS Targeting Controversy” has never been settled at the IRS. On 09 Feb 2018, the last non-profit targeting case was settled. The plaintiff sees no remuneration for the legal fees. The government had to admit it was wrong to target non-profits based upon political leanings. The IRS is hoping lawmakers will see this last settlement and give them a break. Yet, the core problems of being or not being a political weapon, the core complaint of the scandal, was never addressed! The leadership in Congress stopped scrutinizing, and the IRS got away with browbeating people based upon political leaning.

Never forget, Lois Lerner, the IRS official at the center of the non-profit targeting scandal, who had contact with the U.S. President (Obama), pled the Fifth Amendment, and none of the elected officials did anything to get to the truth! I will not allow the elected representatives off the hook to enable the IRS to become a weapon or remain a political animal! America deserves better and can only obtain better through asking questions and demanding concise and truthful answers after transparent audits and investigations that conclude with punishment for wrongdoing!

This leads to a simple question: Is the IRS a political weapon for Democrats and Liberals, or is it an apolitical unit of the government? Let us test the current IRS leadership for a potential answer to this question. 17 June 2021, The Daily Signal reports that the IRS denied tax exemption to a Christian Group because the Bible the group adheres to is associated with the GOP (Republicans). If that decision has you scratching your head, wait until you check out the rest of the story.

From The Daily Signal story, we find the following pretzel logic from the IRS. The link is live; see the letter for yourself!

“In an 18 May denial letter, IRS Exempt Organizations Director Stephen A. Martin said Christians Engaged is involved in “prohibited political campaign intervention” and “operate[s] for a substantial non-exempt private purpose and for the private interests of the [Republican Party].”

“A “legend” at the top of the letter shows nine letters of the alphabet being used as shorthand to represent something. In this letter’s example, oddly, “D” represented “Republican.”

“Specifically, you educate Christians on what the Bible says in areas where they can be instrumental, including the areas of sanctity of life, the definition of marriage, biblical justice, freedom of speech, defense, and borders and immigration, U.S. and Israel relations,” Martin wrote. “The Bible teachings are typically affiliated with the D party and candidates. This disqualifies you from exemption under IRS Section 50I(c)(3).”

To me, it matters not that the letter D represents republican. America is a Republic, and any political action taken can be connected to a Republican government. Not necessarily the “GOP” as the Republican Political Party. If the IRS official cannot ask questions, the voices inside his head speak louder than his abilities to make logical decisions. In that case, he does NOT deserve his position, having been promoted above his maximum level of incompetence! In making this decision, the IRS official has declared that the democratic party does not ever use biblical teachings to reach conclusions. Is Speaker Pelosi and President Biden aware of this fundamental change in political foundations?

Feel free to tell me in the comments section, do you feel the IRS Non-Profit Targeting Scandal of 2010 thru 2013 has been handled effectively and properly closed? Better still, was it appropriate for Lois Lerner to plead the Fifth Amendment and not have legal actions taken? Finally, do you honestly trust the IRS to be an apolitical, unpoliticized, and neutral agency engaged in honest and forthright government business?

Details about the IRS.

From irs.gov, we find the following, and it raises more questions than answers. Under the heading, “The IRS Mission,” we find the following, poor grammar, wrong sentences, and detestable language and all:

“Provide America’s taxpayers top quality service by helping them understand and meet their tax responsibilities and enforce the law with integrity and fairness to all.

This mission statement describes our role and the public’s expectation about how we should perform that role.

- - - - In the United States, the Congress passes tax laws and requires taxpayers to comply.
        
        The taxpayer’s role is to understand and meet his or her tax obligations.
        
        The IRS role is to help the large majority of compliant taxpayers with the tax law, while ensuring that the minority who are unwilling to comply pay their fair share.”

Would someone at the IRS tell me, how are you “providing top quality service” when you cannot reach the IRS by phone, the office hours are limited, and answers are forced to come from hired third parties? I have been forced into multiple-day issues with the IRS Website, no answers, no contact information, and no assistance until I hired someone who answered my questions at $100 an hour. If the IRS reads this article, that is not how you define “top quality service.”

What is “fair share?” Using this phrase, the IRS declares it is already politicizing the payment of taxes, as the expression “fair share” has been captured for more than a decade by the Democratic Party. Using this phrase in your mission statement demands a straight and correct answer in the rest of your marketing materials. Yet, no explanation has ever been found.

Enlighten me, the second bullet point, how is the taxpayer to “understand and meet” “tax obligations” when the agency who collects those tax obligations refuses to answer questions, actively hinders transparency, denies accountability and refuses scrutiny? What are “compliant taxpayers?” Through forced taxation, collected by fear of the stick, America has been abused since the IRS was created out of whole cloth, not from the U.S. Constitution, but the demented minds of a president and complicit Congress.

Under the heading of “Statutory Authority,” we find the following:

At least the grammar and sentence structure are better. However, having read sections 7801 and 7803 of the Internal Revenue Code, I have serious reservations. For example, how did the IRS become the sole government agency in charge of defining an employee, controlling the employee/employer relationship, and acting as the force behind employment law? When did Congress provide you with this authority?

I repeat, only for emphasis, the following:
“The IRS governs every action made in an employment situation, and the IRS has given great latitude to the employer, making you the property of the IRS, with control granted to your employer. As a result, the IRS remains a danger to every American and the globe. Why is the United States the only industrialized nation to not allow options to the employee/employer relationship, squashing innovation, curtailing small business opportunities, and unequally tipping the scales for large organizations? Look to the IRS! Want to point fingers, thank President Woodrow Wilson (D), his complicit Congress, and his executive orders!”

Division vs. Unity, Labels, and Big Tech

Last week, while scrubbing my SPAM folder on Gmail, I discovered that Google had arbitrarily been sending several emails containing news of a more conservative slant straight to SPAM. Why would Google arbitrarily act in a manner to thwart the delivery of email? A topic for discussion later in this article.

America faces a huge test right now; division is costing us opportunity, liberty, freedom, and potential. Worse, it will eventually destroy the United States of America, a free Republic (if we can keep it). What is this nefarious foe; a lack of unity. The political parties have become so divisive that families are being torn asunder over something as petty as which political party to embrace. Religion, lifestyle choices, employment opportunities, and so much more are being used to erode America at the family foundation.

Socialsolutions.com reports some disturbing statistics from 2018. However, the COVID-Farrago has seen these numbers only increase, and the numbers for 2020 are still not compiled and updated. ACLEDdata.com provides some of the statistics from 2020, and the political violence inflicted on families is stunning! Where does the blame lay for all this violence, property damage, public property destruction, and the host of terrorism committed in George Floyd’s name; the US President, Vice President, Speakers of the House and Senate, the governors, the mayors, and state legislators.

I am not excusing individual accountability for specific acts, but every silent politician in America has condoned the divisive behavior. The corporate media have fed the violence and division, and the press has even been videoed participating in the violence. My wife stated something, “The problems have become too great for any single individual to make a difference.” I vociferously disagreed then and state unequivocally now that good is still in the majority of America and Americans and that one individual who declares enough is enough can make a world of difference!

Charmaine Yoest, Jack Spencer, John G. Malcolm, and James Carafano, writing for The Daily Signal, published an article on 11 June 2021 worthy of reading. The twelve points they outlined are listed below, and additional commentary is mine.

1. 1. Protect Our Vote – I cannot stress this enough. The November 2020 elections, like all elections since we allowed computers into the mix, were fraught with illegal and illicit behaviors and reflects malfeasance towards the voter. However, that problem is specifically targeted at the local political leaders and judges who refused to allow time for transparent investigations. President Biden and his administration are definitely not helping the situation. Getting the Federal Government out of elections is the pre-eminent step we need to return State Rights to State Governments.
  2. Secure Our Border – America was built on defensible borders, and neglecting those borders is the height of Treason! Webster defines Treason as “The betrayal of allegiance toward one’s own country, especially by committing hostile acts against it or aiding its enemies in committing such acts.” Hostile acts can be refusing to act when problems arise if the failure to act benefits you personally. The continued flaunting of National Security on America’s borders (North and South) is treasonous, and those committing these actions of inaction need to be held accountable before the bar of law!
  3. Stop Adding Debt – Of all the points raised in this Daily Signal article, this point is second most important, only behind defensible borders! Inflation must be fought with smarter monetary policies. Want a good reference for smarter economic policies; Mark Skidmore is a leading economist in the field of government economics and is almost entirely unknown unless you have a hobby in following government monetary policies. Dr. Skidmore has worked with a highly intelligent team of economists to try and find more than $94 Trillion in lost money in the Federal Government. Before America spends another dime, a full and transparent audit must be completed, all the books opened, and criminal charges brought!
  4. Stand Up To China – One of the things I particularly loved about President Trump, and honestly, there weren’t very many, was his hard stance against China! I applaud President Trump’s efforts at leading America while surrounded by enemies foreign and predominantly domestic! But to take a hardline stance against China is still desperately needed; yet, what do we see in the capitols of America, kowtowing to China by America’s elected leaders. ENOUGH! Stop committing Treason with a dedicated foreign enemy!
  5. Do NOT Raise Taxes – [Emphasis Mine] You cannot spend yourself out of debt, and you cannot tax your populace for personal benefits to remain elected by buying votes through forced taxation and government largess! America has never had an income problem; we have always had a spending problem! Debt is captivity, captivity to our enemies is Treason, and those committing Treason need to be held accountable before the law. From the bureaucrat to the politician, every single one needs to be held responsible for what they have and have not done in properly honoring the funds delivered to the Government through forced taxation!
  6. Stop the woke! – From Critical Race Theory to wave upon wave of identity politics, America is being divided so as to be more easily conquered. If you cannot see how dangerous these lines of division are, we need to talk about waking up mentally and recognizing the 800# Gorilla in the room! You do not need to have special identity laws for every single invented identity, and going down that slippery slope produces nothing but harm, chaos, and destruction. Ask Caesar from Ancient Rome how identity politics worked in Ancient Rome. History relates what happens at the end of the identity politics games, and the results are never beneficial!
  7. Cut Red Tape – Another one of those things I applaud President Trump for doing was cutting the Federal Government Red Tape to free the American worker, businesses, and manufacturing. Want a startling statistic; besides inflation, the only other driver of higher costs is government red tape. I learned this as a kid when I saw the taxes included in a gallon of gas. I asked if the same was true of all prices and my parents had no idea. Thus began my hobby of understanding and tracking economics! But, do not take my word for it; look up the cost of bread from 1940 to today, and look at how much government red tape has influenced just a loaf of bread. We, the proper owners of the Government in America, must regain the reigns from the asylum patients and cut government red tape!
  8. Help Us Sleep Safe at Night – Talk about a conjoined issue with defensible borders! Tell me, why are portions of America’s National Parks just as deadly as Northern Mexico? I have read first-hand accounts of scouts stumbling upon drug manufacturing facilities, landmines and guerilla war tactics employed to dissuade investigation, and the armed terrorists living in America’s National Parks to produce drugs for the American markets. Before Big-Tech thought this would blacken certain political parties’ chances at re-election or election, many of those stories were scrubbed from the Internet. Tell me, do you sleep safer at night right now than you did three years ago? My home security costs have skyrocketed, 24/7 surveillance makes me feel like a prisoner in my own home. Yet, the elected officials have blocked all attempts at using the military to root out the terrorists and gangs from America’s National parks and defend the US Borders.
  9. Stop Big-Tech! – Have you noticed the censorship occurring across the Internet? How one day you can find stories on a specific topic and the next you cannot locate those same sources? Perfect example, in February 2020, I could find Dr. Fauci’s research on Coronaviruses and many other research topics. Now, I can find nothing of those early research projects that proved Dr. Fauci is either lying in his research then or lying to the public now. I have emails being sent arbitrarily to SPAM if it is content Google opposes politically. I have witnessed LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and other social media restrict access, shut down accounts, and destroy people’s livelihoods, all because of content the Big-Tech does not find politically palatable. I am done being censored, censured, and prohibited, all because some tech company does not like the truth!
  10. Deliver School Choice – Long have I written that K-12 education is sexually grooming and abusing America’s children instead of teaching them how to read, write, and think logically through arithmetics. K-12 education in America, since the 1860s, has been purposefully designed not to teach students how to read because a literate society knows freedoms and liberties, and an illiterate society can be controlled. Hence, I disagree with these authors; even school choice cannot save America’s youth from abuse at the hands of teachers and bureaucrats embedded in the education system. The individual states need to be freed from the Federal Department of Education. Then, the states need to revamp what education means and begin to throw out the bureaucrats and increase the abilities of teachers to lead and instruct in their classrooms!
  11. Empower Patients, NOT Government – [Emphasis Mine] Being a disabled veteran, having my medical care through the VA, I could not agree more that the Government needs to be ripped out of healthcare and the doctor-patient relationship. However, we also need the litigious nature of society to be corrected. The cost of malpractice insurance is so exceedingly prohibitive that doctors cannot practice independently, and the corporatization of medicine has been growing twice the government intrusion rate! Thus, the red tape needs to be removed, government intrusion needs to be clipped, and people looking at the judicial branch as a gold mine need to be shunted and stopped!
  12. Make Our Streets Safe! – Again, we find an issue with root causes behind defensible borders, military action to fight the drug trade, and the overhaul of the criminal justice system. When the criminal has more rights and protections than the victims, justice is not served! When sentences do not include community service to repair damage to a society, justice for the community is not served. When jail has more privileges than not being incarcerated, the criminal justice system is everything but bringing justice to criminals! We have enough trash, graffiti, weeds, and other community service work needing to be performed for three armies of criminals. Get them on this service instead of sitting all day. Worse, all those “peaceful protestors,” a.k.a domestic terrorists, need to be out repairing the damage to the communities they wrought!

Unity is a precious resource America has always enjoyed in abundance, and the political enemies of America despise America for the unity that has always been here. We might fight like brothers amongst ourselves, we might have ancient grudges and family disputes that spill over state lines, but we are inherently a unified people. Stop allowing the media to preach division, hate, and identity politics. Stop allowing those elected as representatives to divide you and your family. America, we have a choice before us, unite and live, or divide and fall. All of the changes discussed stem from a simple point, will we choose to unite and live or allow division to separate us to be conquered as unpitied sacrifices in a contemptible struggle?

Join me! Join with your neighbors and family members! Let us for a community of responsible and intelligent citizens, who are informed, and active in halting the government abuses at every turn! As a united front, we can win! Believe that, and we are halfway to restoring America to the ”Shining city on a hill!”

A Recent Customer Service Issue – Or, An Example of Why it is Past Time to Shift the Employment Paradigm

Many sources, most of them veterans, will agree with this statement, “Dealing with the Veterans Administration is an activity fraught with hostility.” On March 2013, I had the misfortune to experience another hostile occurrence. Following is what happened. The VA Hospital left a message in my voicemail alerting me that they had scheduled an appointment for me. The message included instructions for me to call if this appointment caused scheduling difficulties, which it did. I called the number, punched in the extension, was hung up on once, called back, and reached an appointment scheduler. The VA had scheduled my appointment for the middle of my workday, which required that I take time off my job to make the return call to discuss the scheduling conflict of the appointment. The request was simple; please change the appointment to either early morning or late afternoon. Although I requested no date preferences, travel and loss of work considerations were important and difficult to arrange and especially significant because I was a new employee and attendance is critical.

The attitude of the appointment scheduler went from simple hostility to overt and active hostility at my request to move the appointment time. The appointment scheduler reminded me in the most descriptive tones bordering, but not crossing into, profanity that it is “YOUR RESPONSIBILITY” [Emphasis his, meaning my responsibility] to keep the appointments as scheduled by the VA regardless of the inconvenience it causes me. December 2012, before the start of my current employment, this appointment had been scheduled three times. The VA canceled the appointment three times, and only once was the cancellation communicated to me prior to my driving to the hospital, checking in, and waiting for the appointment. The same appointment scheduler provided the same hostile attitude in person as on the phone and made the following statements, quoted verbatim:

“Employment is NOT an excuse for moving an appointment with the VA Hospital System.” [Emphasis his]

“Moving your appointment is a privilege being extended to you that has not been earned.”

Judging by certifications on the walls of this person’s office, he is an example of award winning customer service at the VA Medical Center. Having been a patient at several VA Medical Centers across the country, having been a customer at several of the VA Regional Offices, and having been a customer of the various VA Call Centers, unfortunately I have found this attitude typical. This conversation was reported to the Patient Aligned Care Team (PACT) for review. I declined further follow-up as unnecessary. The PACT team member did have a unique thought process; she continually returned with the same descriptive term for this incident, ‘not compassionate’. I refuted this determination several times claiming unprofessional, irresponsible, and ludicrous, but the main complaint continued to be ‘not compassionate’. The term simply does not fit the incident. This incident was not created by a lack of compassion, but through an organizational culture gone rogue, hostile, and grown wild.

Returning to the incident, let us be clear and simple; the problem is not the workload the scheduler was quick to point out and often stated the amount of appointments scheduled in a month; it is not the individual; always the problem remains with the system, the organization, the processes and procedures, and finally the training. This is institutional deterioration at its most egregious level. “Juran’s rule (Tribus, n.d., pg 5) whenever there is a problem, 85% of the time it is in the system; only 15% of the time will it be the worker.” This is very telling in this situation. Before looking to the worker, examining the system will be the answer 85% of the time. Organizational cultures are the “system” described by Tribus (n.d.) and Juran. Organizational Designers will specify cultural steps for improvement, thus the PACT team, the focus on compassion, and the ultimate deception ‘customer focus’ hidden under the guise “Patient Aligned Care.”

The problem is a dual core issue, no personal responsibility for outcomes and no personal accountability for results. This is the organizational culture feeding the hostility, the derision, and animosity found in all VA/Veteran interactions. The front-facing customer service agent is not held accountable nor feels a responsibility towards the work he or she performs. Because the same employee is protected in his work by the system, the system becomes a detriment to patient/customers and safeguards the individual from criticism and censure preventing the possibility of change in the individual. The incredible amount of bureaucracy legislated, litigated, and lumped upon the VA must be exposed to the disinfectant of sunshine i.e. brought to the public attention, reduced bureaucracy in support of veterans and their families, and new solutions created to improve service. The real solution is not focusing upon a culture grown wild, but short-circuiting the existing corporate culture to jumpstart a new culture. It is past time, especially where all government agencies are concerned, to shift the paradigm, remove the job security, and breathe the life of freedom and true customer centered focus, i.e. the taxpayer, back into the various government and non-government organizations.

Considering the above incident, if the scheduler was an independent knowledge contractor whose contract extension rested solely upon the referrals and customer surveys of the VA’s customers, the above incident would not have occurred because accountability and responsibility would demand the patient receive higher value as a customer. If the same accountability and responsibility were carried to the entire chain of command, to all the processes and procedures, and to the organizational hierarchies, the VA would not be the punchline before the epithet in a veteran’s story, but become respected for the work it does. Yes, the VA has a difficult task to perform. Yes, the workload is daunting. Yes, as a government entity, cost constraints and budget decisions matter more than patient care. Nevertheless, the patient should be more respected, valued, and serviced more appropriately. By shifting the employment paradigm, an advantageous outcome to all stakeholders involved in the organization is a firmly projected possibility.

Reference

Tribus, M. (n.d.). Changing the Corporate Culture Some Rules and Tools. Retrieved December 5, 2008, from: Changing the Corporate Culture Some Rules and Tools Web site: http://deming.eng.clemson.edu/den/change_cult.pdf

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