Day: July 10, 2017

You’re Fired! Trump’s VA Terminates 500, Suspends 200 for Misconduct

Five hundred and forty-eight Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) employees have been terminated since President Donald Trump took office, indicating that his campaign pledge to clean up “probably the most incompetently run agency in the United States” by relentlessly putting his TV catch phrase “you’re fired” into action was more than just empty rhetoric.

Another 200 VA workers were suspended and 33 demoted, according to data newly published by the department as part of VA Secretary David Shulkin’s commitment to greater transparency. Those disciplined include 22 senior leaders, more than 70 nurses, 14 police officers, and 25 physicians.

Also disciplined were a program analyst dealing with the Government Accountability Office, which audits the department, a public affairs specialist, a chief of police and a chief of surgery.

Many housekeeping aides and food service workers — lower-level jobs in which the department has employed felons and convicted sex offenders — were also fired.

Scores of veterans have died waiting for care while VA bureaucrats falsified data to procure monetary bonuses, but fixes have been slow to come by largely because the union that represents VA employees has used its political muscle with Democrats to emphasize job security for government employees.

Former President Barack Obama originally appointed Shulkin as a VA undersecretary. By the end of the Obama administration, however, Shulkin had grown increasingly frustrated with the American Federation of Government Employees union and other groups defending bad employees’ supposed right to a government check even when they hurt veterans.

“Just last week we were forced to take back an employee after they were convicted no more than three times for DWI and had served a 60 day jail sentence … Our accountability processes are clearly broken,” Shulkin said at the White House.

In addition to reluctance by managers to vigorously pursue firings, the overturning of firings after the fact by the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) — often with little public acknowledgment — has been a longstanding problem.

Shulkin asked for new legislation that reduces the role of MSPB, especially when firing senior leaders. Congress passed the Department of Veterans Affairs Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act in answer, and Trump signed the bill in June.

The published data predates those new powers, and does not note which disciplinary actions were later overturned.

One record shows a “senior leader” being removed January 20, while another record shows a “senior leader” being demoted April 21. Those appear to refer to the same person — disgraced Puerto Rico VA director DeWayne Hamlin — who returned to work in a lesser job after he appealed to the MSPB.

Former Obama Secretary of Veterans Affairs Bob McDonald seemed to have so little grasp on firing employees that in August 2016, he said that he had fired 140,000 employees, a figure that made little sense since that would be nearly half the workforce.

He said “you can’t fire your way to excellence” and blamed “negative news articles” for a morose culture, rather than the individuals perpetrating the misconduct described in those articles.

Though high-level hospital officials were affected, according to the data covering the first six months of the Trump administration, relatively few disciplinary actions occurred in the central offices where Washington bureaucrats work. Those employ fewer people than the hospitals, but repeated scandals have also shown such employees looking out for one another to preserve each others’ jobs.

There were five firings in the Veterans Health Administration Central Office, including one senior leader. There were also two in the Office of General Counsel, and one in the office of Congressional and Legislative affairs.

The data does not include employees’ names, and does not show which employees were on new-employee probationary status. Employees can be fired much more easily during their first year.

Obama’s $400,000 Speech Could Prompt Congress To Go After His Pension

Last year, then-president Barack Obama vetoed a bill that would have curbed the pensions of former presidents if they took outside income of $400,000 or more.

So now that former president Barack Obama has decided to accept $400,000 for an upcoming Wall Street speech, the sponsors of that bill say they’ll reintroduce that bill in hopes that President Trump will sign it.

“The Obama hypocrisy on this issue is revealing,” said Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and sponsor of the 2016 bill. “His veto was very self-serving.”

Chaffetz and Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, the sponsor of the companion Senate bill, say they will re-introduce the Presidential Allowance Modernization Act this month. The bill would cap presidential pensions at $200,000, with another $200,000 for expenses. But those payments would be reduced dollar-for-dollar once their outside income exceeds $400,000.

The issue isn’t a partisan one — or at least, it wasn’t last year. The bill passed both the House and Senate with no opposition, and no veto threat had come from the White House.

So when Obama’s veto came one Friday night last July — on the last day for him to sign or veto the legislation — it took lawmakers by surprise. It was the 11th of Obama’s 12 vetoes.

At the time, Obama argued that the bill would have “unintended consequences” and “impose onerous and unreasonable burdens” on former presidents by requiring them to immediately lay off staff and find new office space.

Republican leaders did not call up the bill for a veto override, which would have required a two-thirds majority in both chambers.

Democrats say they won’t necessarily oppose changes.

Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., the top Democrat on Chaffetz’s committee, was a co-sponsor of the original bill. “Cummings definitely supports the concept, and if we can work out the technical issues with the bill that arose late in the last Congress, we expect he would strongly support it again,” said spokeswoman Jennifer Hoffman Werner.

Trump has not taken a position on the legislation. But during the campaign, he said he’d take a close look at pensions for elected officials — especially members of Congress.

“The first thing I’m going to do is tell you that if I’m elected president, I’m accepting no salary, OK?” he said at a town hall in 2015. “They get benefits that nobody else can even think about, OK. And they don’t like to talk about it. But we’ll work on that.”

Under the Former Presidents Act, the nation’s five living former presidents — Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama — get a pension equal to the salary of a current cabinet secretary: $207,800 in 2017. They also get $150,000 to pay staff, and “suitable office space, appropriately furnished and equipped.”

In 2015, the entire benefit package ranged from $430,000 for Carter to $1.1 million for George W. Bush.

With Obama joining the club as of Jan. 20, the 2017 spending bill approved by the House Wednesday contained nearly $3.9 million for all the former presidents through Sept. 30 — a $588,000 annual increase.

Obama spokesman Kevin Lewis said the former president had no comment on the legislation.

Obama has already shown he has considerable potential to raise money in his post-presidential career. He and his wife Michelle have signed a publishing deal for two separate books, which the Financial Times reported was worth at least $65 million. And the Wall Street speech — a health care conference planned by investment firm Cantor Fitzgerald in September — will reportedly net him another $400,000.

“President Obama will deliver speeches from time to time,” said Eric Schultz, a former White House spokesman who continues to advise Obama. “Some of those speeches will be paid, some will be unpaid, and regardless of venue or sponsor, President Obama will be true to his values, his vision, and his record.”

Obama has said he also plans to use his post-presidency to work on a range of issues through his presidential center in Chicago. On Wednesday, he unveiled the design of that center and said he would donate $2 million to a summer jobs program for Chicago youth.

A spokesman for President George H.W. Bush said he does not oppose changes to the law, and expects that Congress will likely take some action.

“At age 93, he recognizes that any change to the act would have a greater impact on the other former presidents,” said spokesman Jim McGrath. “For the sake of future occupants of the office, he does think some consideration should be given to the public role former presidents play — and we are told that very positive conversations addressing that and other matters have taken place.”

Now, That President Trump Is In Charge Look What Is Going To Happen To GITMO

On the first day of Barack Obama’s presidency, he promised that he would close the terrorist prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. However, 8 years later the prison still remains open even though most of the prisoners have been released back into the population with disastrous consquences.

Brack Obama did all he could to release these disgusting terrorists and do what he could to make their lives better too. If it was not banning pork of prison menu’s it was releasing Muslim extremists back to the battlefield to fight against American troops. The prison was almost emptied out completely, but it appears that it will not be for long.

President Trump has made no secret that he planned on utilizing GITMO once he was president. And, like all promises Trump makes he intends on keeping this one as well. It appears that Trump is signaling that he will be filling the terrorist prison once again.
Here is more from The Hill:

The Trump administration appears to be making its first moves toward fulfilling a campaign promise to fill the Guantanamo Bay prison camp with “bad dudes.”

Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein visited the prison on Friday to get an update on current operations, the first concrete action the administration has taken on the facility since taking office.

Up until now, Guantanamo has been running on autopilot; the executive order from former President Obama calling for the facility to be shut down is still technically the law of the land.

But President Trump promised during the campaign to “load it up with some bad dudes,” and Sessions has called it a “very fine place” with no legal reason not to send new detainees there.

Supporters of keeping the facility open and sending new detainees there are confident Trump will fulfill that promise, even if little movement has been made.

“We have taken off the table the silly ideas that the previous administration had about Guantanamo,” said David Rivkin, constitutional litigator and a fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies who served under Presidents Reagan and George H. W. Bush in the White House counsel’s office and the Justice Department.

Obama, having failed in his efforts to close the facility, left Guantanamo with 41 detainees. Five of those detainees were cleared for transfer by either the interagency Guantanamo Review Task Force set up in 2009 or the interagency Periodic Review Boards set up in 2011.

Shortly after Trump’s inauguration, various draft executive orders floated around Washington that would have moved to fulfill Trump campaign promise to begin sending new prisoners to the facility.

The orders would have revoked Obama’s executive order and suspended any existing transfer efforts pending a new review. They also would have called for the continued operation of Guantanamo to hold and try members of al Qaeda, the Taliban and “associated forces,” including the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

But no such orders have been signed.
Of course, the left is already screaming about human rights violations, but do not care about the lives these terrorists have taken. Unlike Obama who believed that incarcerating terrorists would only create more terrorists, Trump has a much more logical approach. And, that is to keep these dangerous individuals locked up so that they cannot harm anyone else.

This prison is in place for a reason and it needs to be used in order to protect our country from harm. If these leftists snowflakes do not like a president that wants to protect the country I am sure they can find a nice place in Germany now.