Just returned from St Louis. Finally home for several months before we leave again for the wedding of the son of very dear friends.
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Dr Ben Carson offers some cogent and practical advice. (See 1 below.)
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This is what Michelle Nunn's campaign is all about. Jimmy Carter ran the same type of campaign and hammered nails for Habitat for Humanity. Then he got us hammered by Iran's Ayatollahs.
All good, honorable and uplifting activities but we have a community organizer in The White House now and he has been an unmitigated disaster because politics goes beyond Cumbria. It means more than just doing what makes you feel good. It demands hard, unpopular consistent choices and yes, compromise and, if you are married, perhaps using your husband's name not your father's etc.
It means voting for energy independence though specious, false and hysterical science argues otherwise and the same for so many outrageous, hysterical Gore type climate change theories . It means improving a health care system, where needed ,without destroying the one we have. It means voting to engage our armed forces when it might be unpopular because keeping Iran from achieving a nuclear bomb is critical to world peace and our nation's security. It means standing by allies who are threatened and helping them beyond mere platitudes and drawing red lines with no intention of action should they be crossed.
And it means not dancing around whether you would or would not have voted for Obamacare when asked a yes or no question.
This is what politics is all about and it was about voting for Judge Bork for The Supreme Court and voting with President Bush to engage in The Gulf War- two votes Michelle's father failed to do in my humble opinion though I respected him and supported him financially and with my votes. (See 2 below.)
I still maintain a vote for charming Michelle, is a simply a vote for dirty Harry Reid. (See 2a below.)
And this is why Jack Kingston is my candidate for Senator. There are times when tenure and the experience gained through it counts!
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This from a dear liberal friend and fellow memo reader.
There is much to commend in the article he sent and which I have posted.
I responded , let's see what Obama does about Iran.
Russia is a basket case economically speaking and I have reported on that many times.
Putin is a bully and he bullied the West into submission . Time will tell. (See 3 below.)
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This was written by Dennis Prager before the ies about the V.A. and now we have a president who had traded terrorists for one of our own, breaking a policy that has , most certainly, stood us in good stead.
Perhaps this is Obama's way of emptying Gitmo! (See 4 below.)
We were on the verge of winning the Viet Nam War but for Walter Cronkite, who told the American people it was unwinnable and Jane Fonda, who sat on a Viet Cong anti-aircraft weapon and gave comfort to the enemy.
Perhaps the Viet Nam War was not one we should have ever entered but once in, it was a war we should and could have won.
The consequences of Viet Nam's defeat reverberate today.
Obama withdrew from Iraq and now Iraq is engaged in a civil war. Everything we gained is down the drain. He will accomplish the same when he pulls of out Afghanistan having told the enemy of these forsaken Afghan souls we are finished at a time certain. (See 4a below.)
The lies are endless. (See 4b below.)
The lies are endless. (See 4b below.)
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The real enemy of veterans, besides Obama, are the unions. (See 5 below.)
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Dick
==========================================================================1) Conservatives Won't Win Elections by Refusing To Compromise
More discussion on the topic of pragmatism and politics is critical. If conservatives decide to take their marbles and go home rather than fight to the bitter end because they feel their principles have been compromised, they will needlessly subject future generations to untold misery.
Voting for someone who agrees with you 90 percent of the time is far superior to voting for someone who disagrees with you 100 percent of the time. This is exactly what will happen if people refuse to exercise their civic duty and boycott elections because they feel betrayed. Personally, I am not supportive of abortion at all, but I can support people who feel differently if, in the gigantic scheme of things, they can help put an end to the murder of innocent babies. This is especially true of those who are personally inclined to save and protect life.
Perhaps an illustration is in order: Two armies are engaged in a war. Let's call the good army that is trying to defend an entire society the red army and the bad army that is trying to invade and pillage society the blue army. The blue army occupies a superior strategic position and is composed of slightly more troops, putting the red army at a distinct disadvantage. Some in the red army feel that they are right and, therefore, should simply march directly into battle with the blue army because right always wins.
Fortunately, some members of the red army are wise and have a better plan. They send a battalion of troops to the base of the mountain occupied by the blue army to distract them while the vast majority of red troops approach the mountain from the backside. They descend upon the blue army by surprise, completely vanquishing them and winning the war. The decoy red battalion may have sustained some casualties, but in the long run, the war was won, and the entire society was saved.
I hope this illustration is useful in helping some to understand that achieving a critical mass of conservatives and RINOs (Republicans in Name Only, as some call them) in office will ensure that we can get non-activist Supreme Court and federal judges in place who respect the U.S. Constitution. It is essential to achieve a critical mass of individuals in the U.S. House and Senate who can join with a president in upholding the Constitution. These representatives must believe in personal responsibility and creating a business-friendly environment, understand the balance between abundant fossil-fuel development and environmental safety, and yearn to elevate the government-dependent 47 percent rather than make them more dependent. They also must be totally pro-life and believe that the rule of law can undo a host of damaging regulations and restore the value system that made this nation great.
In the long run, with the help of God, we will be in a position to save millions of babies who otherwise would be slaughtered. With this kind of responsible empowerment, energizing a sluggish economy, bringing stability to a leaderless planet and facilitating innovation will not be that difficult. To sit helplessly by and pray for deliverance when the tools to achieve victory are in our hands is not useful. God helps those who help themselves.
Conservatives and those who share their values are the last bastion between freedom and tyranny. If the secular liberals, who are very clever, succeed in dividing us during the next two national elections, America as we know it will be gone. We can stop this, but we must work together. I disagree with those who think it is going to take decades to undo the damage that already has been done. Americans are exceptional and extremely resilient. We cannot allow ourselves to be defined by those who wish to fundamentally change our society.
I am convinced that Americans with common sense will soon regain power. It is essential that we not use the opportunity to exact revenge upon the liberals. Rather, we must govern by the Constitution in a way that is fair for all. It is not reasonable to have favorites and to enforce laws selectively. Most importantly, it is not the place of our government to rule the people; the government must always remember that it is in place to serve the people.
I believe that when people who were being manipulated by the secular liberals, including the media, have an opportunity to see how much better off they are when the proper relationship between the people and the government is restored, they will adopt a different attitude. This will empower them and the entire nation.
Now is the time to rise above partisan politics and recognize the incredible blessings God has bestowed upon our nation. It is time to elevate common sense, decency, honesty and compassion to their proper positions. Rather than simply repeating the words, we must actually achieve "one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."
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2) Obama at West Point
The President skipped a few world events in his big foreign policy speech.
The speech President Obama delivered Wednesday at West Point was intended to be a robust defense of his foreign policy, about which even our liberal friends are starting to entertain doubts. But as we listened to the President chart his course between the false-choice alternatives of "American isolationism" and "invading every country that harbors terrorist networks," we got to thinking of everything that wasn't in his speech.
No mention of the Pivot or "rebalance" to Asia. This was billed by Hillary Clinton in 2011 as "among the most important diplomatic efforts of our time" and meant as proof that America's withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan wasn't simply a retreat from the world. But as assistant secretary of defense Katrina McFarland admitted in March, following the latest round of Pentagon cuts, "Right now, the pivot is being looked at again, because candidly it can't happen."No mention of the Reset. "The reset button has worked," Mr. Obama avowed in a 2009 meeting with Dmitry Medvedev, Russia's figurehead president. That was the same year Mr. Obama announced in Moscow that, "The days when empires could treat sovereign states as pieces on a chessboard are over."
No mention of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, which occupied the bulk of John Kerry's first year as Secretary of State and which has now collapsed as Mahmoud Abbas patches up his differences with the terrorists of Hamas.No mention of Mr. Obama's Red Line in Syria against the use of chemical weapons. No mention, either, of the ostensible success of using diplomacy to disarm Bashar Assad. The President was fond of boasting of this achievement until recently, when it emerged that Assad continues to use chlorine bombs to kill his enemies. Somehow that also didn't make it into the speech.
No mention of Mr. Obama's effort to seek "a world without nuclear weapons," as he said in Prague in 2009, or of his arms-control treaty with Russia. No mention that Russia is widely believed to be cheating on the 1987 INF Treaty on medium-range nuclear weapons, and no mention that North Korea may be gearing up for another nuclear test.
We know that no foreign policy speech can cover the entire world. But listening to Mr. Obama trying to assemble a coherent foreign policy agenda from the record of the past five years was like watching Tom Hanks trying to survive in "Cast Away": Whatever's left from the wreckage will have to do.
2a) Harry Reid Hates the Redskins
The U.S. Senate's speech enforcers won't stop with the NFL.
By Daniel Henninger
Harry Reid is the Majority Leader of the Senate of the United States. He occupies a position of influence at the pinnacle of the American system of government. Of late, the senator from Nevada has become a one-man, First Amendment wrecking crew.
If like Charles and David Koch, your political opinions offend Harry Reid's ears, or if like the Washington Redskins, your taste in sports-team logos offends his eyes, Sen. Reid will use his office to try to shut you up or make you disappear.
For those who think the Kochs or the Redskins' logo are unsympathetic victims, think again. The enforcers Sen. Reid is leading will get around to you eventually. In some places, they already have.
Martin Kozlowski
Sen. Reid, with Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington state, outputted a letter signed by a total of 50 Democratic senators and addressed to National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell. It condemns Washington D.C.'s NFL team and its owner Daniel Snyder for not abandoning the team's logo, the Redskins.
The letter calls the Washington Redskins a "racial slur." Sen. Reid has accused the Washington Redskins of a "tradition of racism." The letter says "Redskins" is the equivalent of the racist remarks of Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling.
Continuing in this vein of senatorial logic, the 50 members of the world's greatest deliberative body more or less order Mr. Goodell ("Now is the time for the NFL to act") to use his power to coerce a name change for Washington's football team.
Should Commissioner Goodell buckle beneath Harry Reid's gang tackle, make no mistake: That same Senate letter would go straight to Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig, ordering him, under the Sterling Precedent, to kill the Cleveland Indians' logo, Chief Wahoo. Were Mr. Selig to do so, there of course would be riots in the streets of Cleveland, whose single most beloved citizen is . . . Chief Wahoo.
In recent weeks, people across the political spectrum professed to be aghast when a small coterie of "offended" students shut down commencement speeches by conservatives, centrists and liberals.
At Smith College, they didn't want to hear IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde. At Haverford College, they'd only let former Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau speak if he signed a letter of apology and guilt for his handling of the Occupy Cal sit-ins in 2011. How, the world of astonished adults wondered, have these students come to believe they could shut people up on any aggrieved whim?
They got it from the Majority Leader of the United States Senate and 49 senators. They got it from the many adults who think a little restriction on some speech is OK, and then cry shock when the mob goes too far. That Senate letter isn't just about the Washington Redskins. It's part of a broader, active effort to define and limit what people can say—not just in politics or sports, but anywhere anyone tries to open his or her mouth.
The New York Times, the New Republic and others have carried articles on the suppressive phenomenon known as "trigger warnings" for college courses. The idea is that professors should post warnings about course content that may "trigger" traumatic memories or thoughts in some students for a list of reasons related to feminist concerns, sex and multiple violations of social justice. Look for a letter soon from Harry Reid to Turner Classic Movies demanding trigger warnings on John Ford westerns.
Last fall at a private party at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Ore., two athletes—one of them white, the other black—were overheard trading racial jokes during a game of beer pong. Someone reported them to the administration. Lewis & Clark convicted the students of hate speech and ordered them to undergo "Bias Reduction and Bystander Intervention Training." To their credit, 40 Lewis & Clark professors signed a letter of concern about the school's notion of due process. American academics must be worrying they may have to go underground to teach freely. We could soon see samizdatdoctoral theses.
In another corner of Harry Reid's Senate sits an attempt to expand federal surveillance of "hate speech." Sen. Edward Markey of Massachusetts just introduced a bill called the Hate Crimes Reporting Act. Its purpose, said Sen. Markey, is "to ensure the Internet, television and radio are not encouraging hate crimes and hate speech that is not outside the protections of the First Amendment." The potential causes of offense are "gender, race, religion, ethnicity or sexual orientation." In other words, anything.
Sophisticates will recognize that the bill should be better known as the Shut Up Fox News and Rush Limbaugh Act (newspapers are protected from any such regulation). But on their current, unrestrained course, federally deputized talk censors would get around to cleansing and sterilizing MSNBC, too.
We are moving way past the amusements of political correctness. A creeping, even creepy, effort is under way to shut people up for a broad swath of offenses. The distance is shortening between the First Amendment's formal protections and a "Fahrenheit 451" regime for torching speech in America. The time for adult pushback is overdue
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3) Ukraine: The Price Putin Will Pay
By Gwynne Dyer
4)
Conducting an orderly retreat is the hardest thing not only in war but also in politics, as Russian President Vladimir Putin is now learning. His own desire to avoid humiliation gets in the way of rapid disengagement from a losing battle, which why he waited until two days before last Sunday’s Ukrainian presidential election to say that he would respect the result. And even then he said “respect”, not “recognise”.
The Ukrainian election went well. Petro Poroshenko, a minor-league oligarch with business interests in Russia, won convincingly in the first round, and 60 percent of voters actually showed up at the polls. Even in Donetsk province, where most city centres are occupied by separatist gunmen, seven out of twelve district electoral commissions were able to operate normally. It’s a good start on stabilising the country.
So why didn’t Putin just say “recognise, when that is clearly what he will have to do in the end if Russia and Ukraine are to have peaceful relations? Why prolong the uncertainty about his intentions in the West, where the belief that he is an “expansionist” bent on recreating the Russian/Soviet empire takes deeper root with each passing day? The answer is pride – and Russia will pay a significant price for Putin’s pride.
Last week Prince Charles, heir to the British throne, enlivened his royal tour of Canada by telling an elderly Polish immigrant that Hitler's relentless take-over of European countries in the 1930s was “not unlike what Putin is doing now”. Prince Charles is well known for saying silly things, but what he said in Canada sounded quite sensible to many people in the West. That is a big problem for Putin.
Putin’s seizure of Crimea from Ukraine, though completely illegal, was not the first step in his plan for world conquest. That is preposterous: Russia is a relatively poor country of only 140 million people. But it is a regrettable fact of life that the Hitler analogy has a powerful grip on the popular imagination throughout Europe and North America, and Putin’s aimless belligerence has been setting him up in Western minds as the next Hitler.
He was very cross when his tame Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych, was overthrown by protesters after he obeyed Putin’s demand to break off trade talks with the European Union. Putin punished Ukraine by annexing Crimea, and he started doing some heavy breathing about Ukraine’s eastern provinces as well.
He encouraged pro-Russian gunmen to seize government buildings in eastern Ukraine and warned that he might intervene militarily if the Ukrainian government used force against them. He moved 40,000 troops up to Ukraine’s eastern border on “exercises”. It was quite pointless, since he could neither annex the eastern provinces nor remove the Ukrainian government without actually invading, but he was VERY cross.
Three months of that, and the damage to his and Russia’s image is starting to pile up. Simple-minded people like Prince Charles talk about a new Hitler. Terrified Poles, Estonians and other Eastern Europeans who used to live under the Soviet yoke fear that they might be next and demand NATO troops on their soil. And clever people in the Western military-industrial complexes see an opportunity to sell more of their wares.
So at last, in early May, Putin sobers up and calls off the fright campaign. He says that the Ukrainian election could be a move “in the right direction.” He publicly urges the pro-Russian gunmen in Donetsk and Luhansk provinces to postpone a planned referendum on union with Russia. He even says that he is withdrawing his troops from Ukraine’s borders.
But he doesn’t really withdraw the troops yet. He doesn’t use his influence to force the separatist gunmen in eastern Ukraine to postpone their referendum, and he doesn’t actually say that he will recognise the Ukrainian election as legitimate. Putin wants to walk away from the game, but it’s too embarrassing to do a complete about-face. So he leaves the pot of fear and suspicion boiling for another three weeks.
FINALLY, only two days before the Ukranian election, Putin says he will “respect” the result, and his tanks start to pull back from Ukraine’s border. Too damned late. There won’t be any more Western sanctions against Russia, but Putin has managed to resurrect the image of Russia as a mortal threat to its neighbours. It will not lie down again soon.
European defence budgets will stop falling, and the integration of the armed forces of the various new NATO members in Eastern Europe will accelerate. Leading-edge technologies like missile defence will get more funding in the United States. Foreign investment in Russia is already declining. And the countries of the European Union will move heaven and earth to cut their dependence on Russian gas exports.
Putin has already turned to China as a new customer for Russian gas, but it will never pay as well as Europe did. He used to be able to play the Europeans and the Chinese off against each other, but that game is over. NATO sees him as a wild card at best, and at worst a real threat. The master strategist has lost his touch.
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TRUST IS GONE, by Dennis Prager
You're looking at the most political liar in American history.
By Dennis Prager
I have been broadcasting for 31 years and writing for longer than that. I do not recall ever saying on radio or in print that a president is doing lasting damage to our country. I did not like the presidencies of Jimmy Carter (the last Democrat I voted for) or Bill Clinton. Nor did I care for the “compassionate conservatism” of George W. Bush. In modern political parlance “compassionate” is a euphemism for ever-expanding government. But I have never written or broadcast that our country was being seriously damaged by a president.So it is with great sadness that I write that President Barack Obama has done and continues to do major damage to America . The only question is whether this can ever be undone.This is equally true domestically and internationally.
Domestically, his policies have had a grave impact on the American economy.
He has overseen the weakest recovery from a recession in modern American history.He has mired the country in unprecedented levels of debt: about $6.5 trillion — that is 6,500 billion — in five years (this after calling his predecessor “unpatriotic” for adding nearly $5 trillion in eight years).
He has fashioned a country in which more Americans now receive government aid — means-tested, let alone non-means-tested — than work full-time.He has no method of paying for this debt other than printing more money — thereby surreptitiously taxing everyone through inflation, including the poor he claims to be helping, and cheapening the dollar to the point that some countries are talking about another reserve currency — and saddling the next generations with enormous debts.With his 2,500-page Affordable Care Act he has made it impossible for hundreds of thousands, soon millions, of Americans to keep their individual or employer-sponsored group health insurance; he has stymied American medical innovation with an utterly destructive tax on medical devices; and he has caused hundreds of thousands of workers to lose full-time jobs because of the health-care costs imposed by Obamacare on employers.His Internal Revenue Service used its unparalleled power to stymie political dissent. No one has been held accountable.His ambassador to Libya and three other Americans were murdered by terrorists in Benghazi , Libya . No one has been blamed. The only blame the Obama administration has leveled was on a videomaker in California who had nothing to do with the assault.In this president’s White House the buck stops nowhere.
Among presidents in modern American history, he has also been a uniquely divisive force. It began with his forcing Obamacare through Congress —the only major legislation in American history to be passed with no votes from the opposition party.Though he has had a unique opportunity to do so, he has not only not helped heal racial tensions, he has exacerbated them. His intrusions into the Trayvon Martin affair (“If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon”) and into the confrontation between a white police officer and a black Harvard professor (the police “acted stupidly”) were unwarranted, irresponsible, demagogic, and, most of all, divisive.He should have been reassuring black Americans that America is in fact the least racist country in the world — something he should know as well as anybody, having been raised only by whites and being the first black elected the leader of a white-majority nation.Instead, he echoed the inflammatory speech of professional race-baiters such as Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson.He has also divided the country by economic class, using classic Marxist language against “the rich” and “corporate profits.”Regarding America in the world, he has been, if possible, even more damaging. The United States is at its weakest, has fewer allies, and has less military and diplomatic influence than at any time since before World War II.One wonders if there is a remaining ally nation that trusts him. And worse, no American enemy fears him. If you are a free movement (the democratic Iranian and Syrian oppositions) or a free country ( Israel ), you have little or no reason to believe that you have a steadfast ally in the United States .Even non-democratic allies no longer trust America . Barack Obama has alienated our most important and longest standing Arab allies, Egypt and Saudi Arabia . Both the anti–Muslim Brotherhood and the anti-Iran Arab states have lost respect for him.And his complete withdrawal of American troops from Iraq has left that country with weekly bloodbaths.
Virtually nothing Barack Obama has done has left America or the world better since he became president. Nearly everything he has touched has been made worse.He did, however, promise before the 2008 election that “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America .” That is the one promise he has kept.
3b)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Obama Was On Veterans Affairs Committee From 2005-2008,
Yet Still Feigns Ignorance Of Problems
Barack Obama appeared to try to shift responsibility for the VA scandal to his predecessors,saying the problems “predated my presidency” and “I only found out from reporters”.
4a)
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5) Big Labor's VA Choke Hold
How Democrats put their union allies before the well-being of veterans.
By
KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL
May 29, 2014 7:08 p.m. ET
We know with certainty that there is at least one person the Department of Veterans Affairs is serving well. That would be the president of local lodge 1798 of the National Federation of Federal Employees.The Federal Labor Relations Authority, the agency that mediates federal labor disputes, earlier this month ruled in favor of this union president, in a dispute over whether she need bother to show up at her workplace—the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Martinsburg, W.Va. According to FLRA documents, this particular VA employee is 100% "official time"—D.C. parlance for federal employees who work every hour of every work day for their union, at the taxpayer's expense.In April 2012, this, ahem, VA "employee" broke her ankle and declared that she now wanted to do her nonwork for the VA entirely from the comfort of her home. Veterans Affairs attempted a compromise: Perhaps she could, pretty please, come in two days a week? She refused, and complained to the FLRA that the VA was interfering with her right to act as a union official. The VA failed to respond to the complaint in the required time (perhaps too busy caring for actual veterans) and so the union boss summarily won her case.The VA battle is only just starting, but any real reform inevitably ends with a fight over organized labor. Think of it as the federal version of Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan and other states where elected officials have attempted to rein in the public-sector unions that have hijacked government agencies for their own purpose. Fixing the VA requires first breaking labor's grip, and the unions are already girding for that fight.A rally of VA workers, members of the American Federation of Government Employees, near the White House, June 13, 2012. Getty Images/The Washington PostFederal labor unions are generally weak by comparison to state public-sector unions, though the VA might be an exception. The VA boasts one of the largest federal workforces and VA Secretary Eric Shinseki bragged in 2010 that two-thirds of it is unionized. That's a whopping 200,000 union members, represented by the likes of the American Federation of Government Employees and the Service Employees International Union. And this is government-run health care—something unions know a lot about from organizing health workers in the private sector. Compared with most D.C. unions (which organize for better parking spots) the VA houses a serious union shop.The Bush administration worked to keep federal union excesses in check; Obama administration officials have viewed contract "negotiations" as a way to reward union allies. Federal unions can't bargain for wages or benefits, but the White House has made it up to them.Manhattan Institute scholar Diana Furchtgott-Roth recently detailed Office of Personnel Management numbers obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by Rep. Phil Gingrey (R., Ga.). On May 25, Ms. Furchtgott-Roth reported on MarketWatch that the VA in 2012 paid 258 employees to be 100% "full-time," receiving full pay and benefits to do only union work. Seventeen had six-figure salaries, up to $132,000. According to the Office of Personnel Management, the VA paid for 988,000 hours of "official" time in fiscal 2011, a 23% increase from 2010.Moreover, as Sens. Rob Portman (R., Ohio) and Tom Coburn (R., Okla.) noted in a 2013 letter to Mr. Shinseki, the vast majority of these "official" timers were nurses, instrument technicians pharmacists, dental assistants and therapists, who were being paid to do union work even as the VA tried to fill hundreds of jobs and paid overtime to other staff.As for patient-case backlogs, the unions have helped in their creation. Contract-negotiated work rules over job classifications and duties and seniorities are central to the "bureaucracy" that fails veterans. More damaging has been the union hostility to any VA attempt to give veterans access to alternative sources of care—which the unions consider a direct job threat. The American Federation of Government Employees puts out regular press releases blasting any "outsourcing" of VA work to non-VA-union members.The VA scandal is now putting an excruciating spotlight on the most politically sensitive agency in D.C., and the unions are worried about where this is headed. They watched in alarm as an overwhelming 390 House members—including 160 Democrats—voted on May 21 to give the VA more power to fire senior executives, a shot over the rank-and-file's bow. They watched in greater alarm as Mr. Shinseki said the VA would be letting more veterans seek care at private facilities in areas where the department's capacity is limited.This is a first step toward a reform being drafted by Sens. Coburn, John McCain (R., Ariz.) and Richard Burr (R., N.C.), which would give veterans a card allowing them health services at facilities of their choosing. The union fear is that Democrats, in a tough election year, will be pressured toward reforms that break labor's VA stronghold.Not surprisingly, Sen. Bernie Sanders (D., Vt.), chairman of the Veterans Affairs Committee, has promised his own "reform." Odds are it will echo the unions' call to simply throw more money at the problem. Any such bill should be viewed as Democrats once again putting the interests of their union allies ahead of veteran
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