I pit the President for making the same excuse again

In regards to the VA scandal, Jay Carney said, “The first time the President heard about it was in the papers.”

We’ve only heard this, oh, about five times. It’s his answer to everything. “I didn’t know nuthin’”. He takes zero responsibility for what goes on in his administration.

To be clear, the problems with the VA predate his administration. But they continued to get worse, and it was widely reported in the news that they continued to get worse. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that if they get much worse, people were going to start dying. Yet the President seems to have left the VA on autopilot. Worse, Gen. Shinseki seems to have left the VA on autopilot. The guy under him is the guy who was the person dealing with the issue, and he wasn’t doing so well at it, so he resigned before Shinseki did. This is an interesting leadership style, where you know a department has serious problems, but you don’t follow up to find out if things are getting better.

Bureaucracies will not do their jobs unless constantly monitored. Just as with businesses, self-regulation does not work. This has to be the fifth or sixth time that the President has been faced with major failures in the bureaucracy, yet I still see no sign that he’s taking any action other than to cover his own ass. As the President, the guy elected to head the executive branch of the government, he should be devoting major time to bringing the bureaucracy to heel. He knows it’s broken. So what’s his plan? Oh yeah, make sure that whatever happens over the next 2 1/2 years, he doesn’t get blamed for it. Which means that his people will continue to not tell him anything.

So, Benghazi ain’t panning out, either?

Why, do you think it will hurt his re-election chances?

Hillary knew all about this shit, and did nothing!

Is it normal that I hadn’t heard of this scandal yet? Anyone care to tell me what the latest baseless hatemongering is about?

Well, it is definitely a scandal, no two ways about that. The VA has been cooking the books on their patient care, making it look like they were responding adequately and promptly to the flood of VA eligible veterans with health problems. Clearly, the problems result from the budget cuts from the Democrat’s austerity program.

And we know Willard would have nipped this right in the bud, right out of the gate. He would have privatized the whole thing, put it under the care of a good-hearted, responsible venture capitalist group, and everything would be all better by now.

whoosh

I think adaher is upset about the Republican VA ex-governor who accepted loans, vacations, private plane rides, and other goodies in exchange for helping out a Virginia businessman. Granted, this guy will be tried in a federal court on corruption charges but there is no reason for Obama to keep track of every corrupt Republican politician. With this in mind, I see cannot endorse this pitting.

On the one hand: did not participate in the actual cooking of books, and probably was not aware of said cooking up to recent events.

On the other hand: Is, in fact, responsible as the executive, for making it better now that the book-cooking has been exposed. I cannot find anyplace where he has said that this is not true.

So, an expectation that the president should (abase himself/resign/commit hara-kiri) over this is unrealistic and unreasonable. History will judge the outcome for the rest of his administration.

So the Republicans refused to pay for VA benefits (and are actively opposing giving veterans food stamps) but suddenly they’re standing up for veterans?

I agree with this. Yes, it’s a scandal; yes, the President is responsible in the sense that he is the Chief Executive.

No, it is not reasonable to hold him personally responsible: it’s a big government. And for all the people that are seemingly upset for President Obama’s failure to instantly evaluate and fix the issue: be realistic. A thorough investigation is necessary because this may well morph into a criminal prosecution. A quick fix will potentially weaken or kill building a criminal case.

The scandal appears to be about delays caused by rationing – possibly even death panels. So, obviously, this all happened because of Obamacare. Right?

Republicans just like to reflexively bash the V.A., when it’s the best thing going in American health care.

*"I know about a health care system that has been highly successful in containing costs, yet provides excellent care. And the story of this system’s success provides a helpful corrective to anti-government ideology. For the government doesn’t just pay the bills in this system – it runs the hospitals and clinics.

No, I’m not talking about some faraway country. The system in question is our very own Veterans Health Administration, whose success story is one of the best-kept secrets in the American policy debate.

In the 1980’s and early 1990’s, says an article in The American Journal of Managed Care, the V.H.A. ‘‘had a tarnished reputation of bureaucracy, inefficiency and mediocre care.’’ But reforms beginning in the mid-1990’s transformed the system, and '‘the V.A.‘s success in improving quality, safety and value,’’ the article says, ‘‘have allowed it to emerge as an increasingly recognized leader in health care.’’
For the lesson of the V.H.A.'s success story – that a government agency can deliver better care at lower cost than the private sector – runs completely counter to the pro-privatization, anti-government conventional wisdom…farsighted thinkers are already suggesting that the Veterans Health Administration…represents the true future of American health care"*

Paul Krugman has been reminding us of this success story since 2006, and nothing has changed. Or if there are problems, it’s because we still haven’t cleaned up all the mess from the Bush years.

Thing is, he should have known. He was told exactly one year ago:

http://veterans.house.gov/sites/republicans.veterans.house.gov/files/2013_5_21_CJM%20to%20President%20Obama%20re%20VA%20Quality%20of%20Care%20failures.pdf

Dear Mr. President: I am writing to bring to your attention an alarming pattern of serious and significant patient care issues at the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Centers (VAMCs) across the country. Recent events at the Atlanta, Georgia, VAMC provide a perfect illustration of the management failures, deceptions, and lack of accountability permeating VA’s healthcare system…I believe your direct involvement and leadership is required.
But letters don’t move this President to action. Only a media scandal does. As far as he’s concerned, if there’s no press furor, there’s no problem.

Anyway, I’m not so much angry at the President about the VA scandal. Or any of the other scandals in his administration. It’s that his answer is always the same: I didn’t know. Which the NY times analyzes thus:

But five and a half years into his presidency, Mr. Obama has once again found himself exposed to political danger by a bureaucracy that seems out of his immediate control.

The president is now facing fresh allegations that officials at the Department of Veterans Affairs manipulated wait times to hide the long delays many patients faced to see physicians. Aides said he learned of the specific allegations in news reports.

Mr. Obama’s apparent lack of awareness about the current problems at the department has drawn the expected scorn from across the political spectrum, and will probably increase this week as lawmakers return to Capitol Hill. But it has also prompted a new round of condemnation from liberal pop culture allies like Jon Stewart of Comedy Central — an indication that anger about the allegations has moved beyond the halls of Congress.
Now when Jon Stewart and the NY Times essentially Pit you, Mr. President, I think it’s a pretty legitimate pitting.

While your point is well taken, are the choices starkly between “quick fix” and “no fix?”

And if they are, is “no fix” a worthwhile tradeoff for the sake of keeping a criminal case viable?

I’m hopeful that the answer to the first question is “no” (rendering the second question moot). That said, what incremental fixes have been initiated, and when should some visible results become apparent? Or is that beyond the scope of the thread?

ETA: P.S. I like your new .sig. :smiley:

I’d actually like to know what the President has done in the past 5 1/2 years. He entered knowing the VA was a problem. So I would honestly like to know what policy changes he implemented to solve that problem, and did he, like a good boss, follow up to make sure these changes were implemented?

That’s a reasonable position and one I share.

I think there’s truth to this, but i also think that how quickly, and how well, the administration deals with this will be rather instructive.

Obama showed, during the recent problems with the healthcare rollout, and especially with the website debacle, that when he really feels that his administration’s credibility is at issue, he can get things done pretty damn quickly. While the website represented a major screwup and money pit, i was actually pretty amazed at how quickly they managed to get things turned around, to the extent that Republicans have actually stopped complaining about it and are desperately searching for something with traction, like maybe Benghazi (ha!) or the VA issue.

I believe that the ACA stuff was fixed so quickly, at least in part, because Obama and his people understand that the success of this legislation is very closely tied to the (perceived) success of his whole Presidency. It is, in many ways, and for better or worse, one of his defining accomplishments.

He needs to make sure that the VA problems get similar sorts of rapid attention/ Yes, there are some fundamental differences between this screwup and the healthcare screwup, and they should be careful in the areas that might lead to criminal prosecution. But they can speed the hell up in the areas where actually fixing the problems of patient care and delays are concerned.

The government is big, the President can’t fix everything immediately, and it’s not fair to blame his directly for stuff that he did not control. But at the same time, the success of efforts to fix problems like this is often, in considerable measure, a function of the willpower and the prioritizing of the administration, and Obama needs to get on the job in this case.

And adaher, i don’t believe for a moment that you “honestly” want to know anything about this. It’s Exhibit #4851 in your constant, mindless litany of complaints about things that you either don’t understand, or deliberately misrepresent.

Exactly. He’s straight up admitted he roots for the ACA to fail – I don’t trust that anything he says about the President is in good faith. It’s all politics with him.

Well, if it comes to that, I also root for the ACA to fail.

To fail in a way that breaks the health-care industry so badly that the ONLY plausible recovery path is the implementation of single-payer, that is. :smiley: