What’s interesting in the news today?
1. The VA has known about the records manipulation since at least 2010. But Obama just heard of it.
From TheWashingtonPost “Robert Petzel resigned last week as the top health official for the Department of Veterans Affairs, just one day after testifying before a Senate committee that he knew VA health clinics were using inappropriate scheduling practices as early as 2010.
Whistleblowers claim the schemes continued until this year, leading to a recent wave of outrage that sent the VA and White House scrambling to correct the alleged problems and restore confidence in the department.”
“Petzel admitted that he knew of the issue after Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) questioned him about the memo below, in which a top VA executive warned the directors of all VA health networks that questionable scheduling practices would “not be tolerated.”
The message summarized at least 17 tactics that VA hospitals were known to have used to hide treatment delays and give the impression they were meeting the department’s goal of seeing patients within 14 to 30 days.”
Just heard about it on the news. Sure Barry. 🙄
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2. Just how dumb does he think we are? Pretty dumb apparently.
From NationalJournal “News quiz: President Obama and his communications team hope that Americans are: 1) Dumb; 2) Distracted; 3) Numb to government inefficiency; 4) All of above. Answer: 4, all of the above.
That answer along with utter incompetence are the best explanations for why the White House thought it could get away with claiming that the departure of Veterans Affairs official Robert Petzel was a step toward accountability for its scandalous treatment of war veterans.”
“Well, Secretary Shinseki accepted Dr. Petzel’s resignation this afternoon. He was due to retire early next month, and obviously there has been a nomination made for his replacement,” White House Chief of Staff Dennis McDonough told CBS’s Major Garrett last week. “I leave to Rick the explanation of his decision, but there is no question that this is a termination of his job there before he was planning to go.”
No. This was neither a termination nor a housecleaning. It was a scapegoating. For all of its 21st-century savvy in the field of campaign technology, the Obama White House has repeatedly proven that its communications philosophy is stuck in the 20th century. Before the Internet gave voters instantaneous access to information, including every public utterance of the president and his team, White House strategists could hope to wear out the truth: If you said a lie enough, people might believe it.“
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3. Another extensively vetted choice by the President. Oh wait….. never mind. Nothing like giving the fox the keys to the hen house.
From HotAir “In a changing world, it’s good to know that some things don’t change … like the ability of this White House to vet it Cabinet-level appointments. Barack Obama named Julian Castro as the new Secretary of Housing and Urban Development last week, but no one checked with the Inspector General at HUD first. Late yesterday, Politico also named Castro as a subject of criticism in a 2012 IG report that alleged San Antonio misused HUD funds while Castro was mayor:
San Antonio failed to properly spend funds approved by Congress to combat the housing crisis while President Barack Obama’s expected nominee to run the Housing and Urban Development Department was mayor of the city, according to a 2012 report from the agency’s inspector general. …
San Antonio was awarded $8.6 million from HUD in 2008 as part of the national Neighborhood Stabilization Program. The city used the money to buy, refurbish and resell homes left vacant after eviction and to also renovate large apartment complexes in the city that were rented out to lower-income tenants.
The HUD IG audited how the money was being spent from 2009 to 2011 and found that city officials had awarded $2.5 million in renovation contracts without a competitive bidding process. Castro, 39, became mayor in May 2009, a job he continues to hold.”
Another million was misused elsewhere.
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4. And now you know why Obama insisted on a nation-wide database with everyone’s info stored together.
From CNSNews “The federal government is piecing together a sweeping national “biosurveillance” system that will give bureaucrats near real-time access to Americans’ private medical information in the name of national security, according to Twila Brase, a public health nurse and co-founder of the Citizens Council for Health Freedom. The Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response is currently seeking public comment on a 52-page draft of the proposed “National Health Security Strategy 2015-2018” (NHSS).”
“Health situational awareness includes biosurveillance and other health and non-health inputs (e.g., lab/diagnostics, health service utilization, active intelligence, and supply chain information), as well as systems and processes for effective communication among responders and critical health resource monitoring and allocation,” the draft states.
But Brase warns that the NHSS proposal would allow the federal government to monitor an individual’s behavior before, during and after any government-defined health “incident” – which could be anything from a local outbreak of the flu to a terrorist anthrax attack.
“It’s very broad. It doesn’t seem to have any limits, except they say something about, you know, properly protecting the data. But from our perspective, if the government gets access to this kind of data, [and] is allowed to do research with the data…then our privacy has already been compromised. The government has already said that our data is their data for their purposes of national health security,” Brase told CNSNews.com.”
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5. Think he’s right?
From TheHill “President Obama said Americans were “better off now than when I came into office,” during a fundraiser Monday night outside of Washington.
Obama also slammed congressional Republicans for their focus on the terror attack in Benghazi, Libya, and the implementation of ObamaCare.”
“The president told attendees at the high-dollar soiree in Potomac, Md., that his Republican opposition in Congress had been “captured by ideologues” whose principal focus was on “how to make people sufficiently skeptical, so they can win the next election.”
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Wandering Views 
Re #2, I totally believe that 4 is the correct answer. And I would add to that, in the words of an African American I know, “We don’t care – we’re just happy to have a black president.” Who’s the racist?
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Two. More. Years.
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My editor took a phone call from a local doctor complaining about this recently, doctor said it’s become a major problem at the hospital where he works:
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/05/obamacare-who-could-have-seen-this-coming.php
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Many doctors are opting out of Obamacare, Medicare and Medicaid. They don’t pay enough to cover costs. They require too much paperwork. Ad Naseum.
Many doctors are refusing Obamacare patients. They want cash customers.
If you can’t see a doctor through Obamacare and you are sick, go to the emergency room.
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I think things will get worse in two years. Hillary will be a more effective liberal than Obama. At this point he knows he is in over his head and is content to play golf and take vacations.
Doctors are going to have to adjust. For the last 49 years docs, hospitals, drug companies and other health care providers have been overpaid because of the waste in Medicare and Medicaid. The US spends 50% more of its GDP on healthcare than any other country. Most of that spending comes from government and most goes to providers. My guess is that docs will end up making more after 5 years of Obamacare. Smart farmers learned how to get money from the Ag Dept. Smart docs, hospitals and drug companies have never had any trouble getting money from our government.
I read today where Obama was taking steps to send billions to insurance companies to pay for losses caused by Obamacare. Those losses will be caused by increased payments to providers.
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A radical, but interesting article:
http://beforeitsnews.com/opinion-conservative/2014/05/burn-down-the-colleges-2854070.html
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Good point Ricky. The problem we’re having now is basically because Lyndon Johnson was an effective leader and knew how to get what he wanted. We’ll pay for it for a long time.
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If “The War on Poverty” is and has been a failure, why don’t we get rid of it?
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Because there are too many entrenched bureaucrats making a living off orchestrating, overseeing, and as Chas said, expanding it. Just think how many govt workers and community organizers would be jobless if we did.
Won’t. Ever. Happen. Expansion is all that lies ahead. And eventually, we’re Greece or numerous other 3rd world countries. That is LBJ’s legacy. Very little of it was ever about helping the poor.
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Agreed. If you tour the LBJ Library, there is a list of all the Great Society legislation. After spending ten minutes reviewing his “accomplishments”, I was convinced he was the worst president in history even if you leave Vietnam out of the equation.
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http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/05/barack-obama-an-epic-incompetent.php
“The emerging narrative of Barack Obama, the one that actually comports to reality, is that he is a rare political talent but a disaster when it comes to actually governing. The list of his failures is nothing short of staggering …”
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Donna J, A good article. I like my liberals to be incompetent.
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Yes, that may actually have been the good news for us 🙂
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