A Malaysian passenger jet is believed to have been shot down with a Russian missile over Ukraine. As many as 300 innocent passengers, from various countries including the United States, were killed. The finger pointing started immediately, did you do it? No I didn't do it, he did. Ukraine's president has stated the they didn't have the equipment or the knowledge to do it. (If I were the president of Ukraine, I wouldn't be saying that on TV.) The pro-Russian separatists said they have the equipment and the knowledge, but they didn't do it. Putin has stated in news conferences that Russia, and especially him personally, didn't do it.
CNN has shown pictures of the pro-Russian separatists walking through the airliner's debris field, dead passenger's bodies there for exhibit, laughing and talking about the crash. These separatists refuse to let investigators enter the crash site and they refuse to let family in also. Yesterday, CNN showed pictures of these same separatists placing some bodies in body bags, loading them on trucks, and refusing to divulge where they were taking them. In some pictures, dead bodies were shown still strapped in their assigned seats. These separatists were shown bemoaning the fact that the field smelled bad, due to dead bodies, and they had to wear masks to keep from getting sick. Well get the heck out of there and let trained professionals take care of the dead.
I think it's pretty obvious who downed this passenger plane. The Russians gave the separatists the missile systems and obviously taught them how to use them or there are Russian personnel in country helping them use the equipment. Either way, and it may have been a mistake, the plane is blown out of the sky, innocent people die, and the separatists are laughing about it, refusing to let investigators find out who did it, and messing with dead bodies instead of letting them be processed and given to the families for burial. Is there anything here that anyone does not understand?
I think it's time for our government and all of the decent countries of the world to take a stand. This nonsense needs to be dealt with on a forceful side. There are United Nation's troops and European Union troops that can handle this, that's why these organizations were founded. Since Putin disavows any knowledge or connection to this incident, he shouldn't mind that these two organizations clean it up. A missile for a missile? Or, are we waiting for this same thing, or something worse, to take place before anyone does something?
Or, maybe, when it clucks like a chicken, it really is a chicken! Don't shoot missiles, throw chicken feed.
Sunday, July 20, 2014
Sunday, July 13, 2014
The Department of Veterans' Affairs
The scandal at the Department of Veterans' Affairs is much bigger than it's medical problems. I once worked at the Department of Veterans' Affairs, May 2000 thru August 2001. I worked in the Director's office in the division handling disability claims. The Department of Veterans' Affairs handles many veterans' benefits: home loans, GI Bill education benefits, disability claims, medical care, and probably more that I'm not aware of.
I use the VA hospital on occasion and I never had a problem with them. Then the scandal hit the news and things in the Albuquerque VA hospital kind of got strange. I called to make my annual mammogram appointment and the volunteer on the phone told me they would have to take my name and phone number so they could call me back, "because they were making an appointment for a veteran." Never got that line before, and didn't get a call back either. I waited two days and called again. This time a woman who told me she was the supervisor of the person who made the appointments said, "I don't know how to make the appointments, but if you give me your name and phone number, I will make sure the appointment maker calls you back." OK, how do you supervisor someone if you do not know how they do their job? Oh well, the next day another woman called me back and said she was the technician who performed the mammograms, and proceeded to tell me how overworked she was, but she did make me an appointment. Guess they were having more problems than I was aware of.
And, I sympathize with them, since I work for the government and we are now understaffed and underpaid. But, back in May 2000, when I worked in the Director's office, I didn't sympathize with the VA. I'm not going to name names here; but, the man who was in charge of the office where the disability claims were adjudicated, and believe me this was a big man must have weighed a good 300 pounds, was constantly bragged about how he was in the Army and worked in undercover operations in Vietnam. (Bet he didn't weigh that much then.) He found great joy in turning down veteran claims for disability submitted by veterans who were involved in undercover or classified missions, had suffered injuries, but didn't have documentation to prove it.
One man had tried numerous time to get disability benefits because he had thrown himself on a live grenada to save his platoon. He finally sent a claim to the director with pictures of the skin graphs all over his body. The adjudicators still wouldn't give him benefits because when you work undercover or on classified missions, the military doesn't document that, or any injuries received, in your military or medical records. If you're real smart you go to a private doctor and have every injury documented.
Instead of helping veterans the employees in our department were too busy evesdropping on each other and starting interdepartmental rumors and problems. My job was going along fine and then one day the director stopped talking to me and avoiding me. Finally one day I had to give her some information and inform her I had to change my hours if possible because my husband and I were meeting with a marriage counselor to work out some personal problems. Once inside her office, she informed me that another employee had come to her with a conversation that was overheard, that I had been passing on some personal information about the director to a third party. She wanted to know why I was taling about her behind her back.
The coversation that was "overheard"concerned my personal problem, didn't have anything to do with the director. So, I told the director that when people are eavesdropping they usually don't get the entire story, so she could believe what she wanted, I would be looking for a better place to work.
Thus the short employment at the VA. I wouldn't work there again for anything.
Eric Shinseki had his hands full running the VA. No one person can be an expert in all of the benefits administered by that Department. He really needs to have people to head each division of the VA that are experts in that field: home loans, GI Bill for education, disability benefits, and medical. I think he got the shaft, as a lot of department heads do. He was a military general, they have colonels under them who are the experts. Mr. Shinseki gets run out of a job because the employees in the battlefields (so to speak) can't do their jobs properly or honestly. It's a dog-eat-dog world out there, folks, and it ain't getting any better.
I use the VA hospital on occasion and I never had a problem with them. Then the scandal hit the news and things in the Albuquerque VA hospital kind of got strange. I called to make my annual mammogram appointment and the volunteer on the phone told me they would have to take my name and phone number so they could call me back, "because they were making an appointment for a veteran." Never got that line before, and didn't get a call back either. I waited two days and called again. This time a woman who told me she was the supervisor of the person who made the appointments said, "I don't know how to make the appointments, but if you give me your name and phone number, I will make sure the appointment maker calls you back." OK, how do you supervisor someone if you do not know how they do their job? Oh well, the next day another woman called me back and said she was the technician who performed the mammograms, and proceeded to tell me how overworked she was, but she did make me an appointment. Guess they were having more problems than I was aware of.
And, I sympathize with them, since I work for the government and we are now understaffed and underpaid. But, back in May 2000, when I worked in the Director's office, I didn't sympathize with the VA. I'm not going to name names here; but, the man who was in charge of the office where the disability claims were adjudicated, and believe me this was a big man must have weighed a good 300 pounds, was constantly bragged about how he was in the Army and worked in undercover operations in Vietnam. (Bet he didn't weigh that much then.) He found great joy in turning down veteran claims for disability submitted by veterans who were involved in undercover or classified missions, had suffered injuries, but didn't have documentation to prove it.
One man had tried numerous time to get disability benefits because he had thrown himself on a live grenada to save his platoon. He finally sent a claim to the director with pictures of the skin graphs all over his body. The adjudicators still wouldn't give him benefits because when you work undercover or on classified missions, the military doesn't document that, or any injuries received, in your military or medical records. If you're real smart you go to a private doctor and have every injury documented.
Instead of helping veterans the employees in our department were too busy evesdropping on each other and starting interdepartmental rumors and problems. My job was going along fine and then one day the director stopped talking to me and avoiding me. Finally one day I had to give her some information and inform her I had to change my hours if possible because my husband and I were meeting with a marriage counselor to work out some personal problems. Once inside her office, she informed me that another employee had come to her with a conversation that was overheard, that I had been passing on some personal information about the director to a third party. She wanted to know why I was taling about her behind her back.
The coversation that was "overheard"concerned my personal problem, didn't have anything to do with the director. So, I told the director that when people are eavesdropping they usually don't get the entire story, so she could believe what she wanted, I would be looking for a better place to work.
Thus the short employment at the VA. I wouldn't work there again for anything.
Eric Shinseki had his hands full running the VA. No one person can be an expert in all of the benefits administered by that Department. He really needs to have people to head each division of the VA that are experts in that field: home loans, GI Bill for education, disability benefits, and medical. I think he got the shaft, as a lot of department heads do. He was a military general, they have colonels under them who are the experts. Mr. Shinseki gets run out of a job because the employees in the battlefields (so to speak) can't do their jobs properly or honestly. It's a dog-eat-dog world out there, folks, and it ain't getting any better.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)