VA Execs Will Leave if Congress Bans Their Bonuses

Keith Roberts - Jailed and convicted
thorough prosecution by
Wisconsin U.S. Atty, Steven Biskupic
(2001-2008) for tenaciously pursuing
his disability benefits claims

President Obama's Department of Veterans Affairs (DVA, VA) has been a sea change from the Bush-Cheney years.

This is due in part because radical changes in VA disability benefit policies the last three years on Agent Orange et al, and PTSD, to the shrieks of neocons.

And in no small part because the DVA (VA) national Director of Compensation and Pension Services no longer colludes with corrupt US Attys and prosecutes and imprisons Vietnam-era veterans for filing for PTSD disability claims.

But I ran across this story this morning VA Execs Will Leave if Congress Bans Bonuses, Group Says.

You see VA employees are actually pocketing hefty bonuses from the clerks to the executives.

No VA employee should be getting any bonuses.

I say to the VA execs: Leave now.

Before 2003 Iraq Invasion, veterans' advocate Steve Robinson warned the Bush-Cheney administration about the coming toll on veterans and what a moron could guess would be a huge caseload of disability claims.

The Bush administration blew Robinson off:

"[We understood the Iraq War] was going to be different, and that it was going to be house-to-house and urban combat. And that type of warfare requires a surge, if you will, and the ability to have mental- health-care treatment available, closer to the front, and also available when they come back home. The harder and uglier the war is, the more the psychological toll is on the human mind. In that meeting [in the spring of 2002], they [DoD staff and Dr. William Winkenwerder, then-Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs] looked at us as if we were people from outer space, wondering why we were there. They patted us on the back and told us they had everything under control, and they would be able to take care of any contingencies that might pop up. And that turned out not to be true."

You want to solve the veterans' claims backlog problem, you hire a bunch of young techies and let them work; and you appoint as VA executives veterans' advocates like Steve Robinson, Paul Sullivan and Robert Walsh.