Veterans Administration Changes — Culture

The toxic culture at the Veterans Administration is finally getting some overdue attention. Bravo!

Big Red Car here on an incredibly beautiful Texas day. Will be hot, sunny, and Texas. On Earth as it is in Texas, y’all!

So, big things going on over at the Veterans Administration. Finally!

In late June, the President signed the Veterans Administration Accountability bill codifying some simple commonsense changes to an organization with a toxic culture which falsified records resulting in veterans not receiving timely care and employees receiving performance related bonuses based on bogus information. Not a good thing. One would that fraud in most instances, financial fraud. The kind of fraud folks go to jail for, but not at the VA.

The Union — can you believe that government employees at the VA are union members? — says it is a wholesale assault on Federal workers to which the Big Red Car says, “Bravo! About time!”

Veterans Administration, Big Red Car?

The outgrowth of all of this is that the VA head, David Shulkin, has dismissed 526 employees since taking charge in January. That is out of a workforce which totals more than 340,000 employees. There are another 200+ who have been suspended.

That is not a huge number of dismissals given the size of the work force. In fact, it is surprising that the number is so small.

The unions, of course, would like nobody to be dismissed. Ever. They want to be able to conduct union business during work hours and to be paid by the Federal government (meaning y’all, dear citizen funders) while conducting union business. Can you believe that?

The Boss is a veteran and applauds this long overdue change in the toxic culture of the Veterans Administration.

Me, the Big Red Car, hopes that Director David Shulkin is ruthless in cleaning up the VA, reminding the VA for whom they work, and re-orienting the VA to serve the veterans. Let’s keep our veterans alive. That’s the deal we struck with them when we sent them into harm’s way. Keep our end of the deal, shall we?

This has been going on for decades. During the Obama administration, they talked a good game, but dismissed nobody. Candidate Trump promised action and, now, we have gotten some action. We are off to a good start. Promise made, promise kept. We should be ashamed of how poorly we take care of our veterans.

Honor our veterans with a non-toxic Veterans Administration. Keep our end of the contract wherein we sent them into harm’s way. More attention on the VA and less attention on cemeteries.

 

But, hey, what the Hell do I really know anyway? I’m just a Big Red Car. Be good to yourself and let’s treat our vets as well as we treat immigrants and refugees. Why not?

 

 

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