Discuss.
Thursday, March 08, 2007
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Get Your McPalin Bumper Sticker Here
Followers (6)
B-HO We Hardly Know Ye
OBAMA'S 'FOREIGN' POLICY IS DANGEROUS
Baghdad Time
We Can Do It
Contributors
VICTORIA TAFT
Links
- McPalin for President Bumper Stickers
- WASHINGTON STATE RESPECT FOR THE LAW INITIATIVE 409 PETITION
- Victoria Taft Will Speak Before Your Group! Contact her at victoria@victoriataft.com
- Victoria's Favorite Shoes, Oregon Home Grown Oh!Shoes
- Victoria's Favorite Day Spa: The Waldorf Center
- Victoria's Dentist: Dr. Laura Matin
- Victoria's Jeweler: Judith Arnell
- Victoria's Environmental Air Quality, Air Conditioning and Heating Specialists! Her Guys at AAA Heating and Cooling
- Victoria's Favorite Restaurant Selection Ciao Vito's
- Oregon's Conservative Majority Project
- The Portland Motor Vehicle Alliance!
- CONTACT YOUR CONGRESSIONAL MEMBERS HERE
- IRAQ WAR MYTHS
- LEXIS-NEXIS
- Buy Your AWESOME NEW OREGON FLAG Paraphenalia here
- Ted Knew
- Debunking Portland
- Victoria Taft's TransFat Offset Business
- When Will Bill Bradbury Leave? The Watch has Started
- The Oregon Catalyst
- Oregon Watchdog
- Orbusmax
- Junk Science
- Multnomah County Republican Party
- Sound Politics
- Oregonians for Immigration Reform
- Numbers USA
- Daniel is Right
- Allen of Salem
- Northwest Republican
- Rob Kremer
- Rino Watch
- Drudgereport
- Michelle Malkin
- Politico
- Freedom Works Oregon
- Cascade Policy Institute A Free Market Think Tank in Portland
- Evergreen Freedom Foundation of Washington State
- War Footing: Ten Steps America Must Take to Prevail in the War for the Free World
- Michael Tanji
- Thomas Joscelyn
- American Congress for Truth
- US Central Command
- Blogs of War
- AMERICA SUPPORTS TROOPS
- Democracy in Iraq
- Global Terrorism Map
- US Government Spending
- Walter Reed Blog
30 comments:
Generals Tie Walter Reed Privatization to Deplorable Conditions
Army leaders admit the move to privatize support services and hand base operations, including repair and maintenance upkeep, to a well-connected contractor drove skilled workers from the base and played a role in the deteriorating and substandard living conditions wounded veterans at Walter Reed Army Medical Center were forced to endure.
A company called IAP Worldwide Service, run by a former Halliburton executive, took a $120 million contract to run portions of the Walter Reed Hospital’s services called facilities management. Immediately after, facilities management staff was reduced to 50 privately employed workers."
Why is it that so much of the bad news surrounding this awful war has the name "Halliburton" attached to it?
Because Bush is the stooge of Cheney and Cheney is a tool of Halliburton and a crook. A no-bid contract no doubt.
When all of you whine about "privatization" what you mean is that the funding for the military has been cut. It used to be a right-of-passage that every young Marine served 90 days of mess duty. No more, becuase the numbers are not there to allow that many bodies to be away from their job.
Go ahead and blame Bush for a 30 year old problem.
I can only imagine the screaming from the left if anyone offered a budget that had enough money to allow the military to be its own self-suppporting organization.
I hate to quote Mark Levin because that discredits me to most of you clowns, but as a former member of the military I agree with him that it is the ONLY branch of government that actually works. Performance of your duties is the only standard.
Yeah, yeah, heah. Drag out all the failures to prove otherwise.
FOAD.
Want to know why privitization is a bad idea? Unions. While I could have a crew of Jarheads on the job for as long as it takes to fix a barracks that had incoming wounded, nobody could make a unionized crew of slugs work one minute more than required. Most of the problems at WR are due to the 9-to-5 government employee.
Cramdown said...
"Because Bush is the stooge of Cheney and Cheney is a tool of Halliburton and a crook. A no-bid contract no doubt."
This crap is really getting old.
Tromatic, since you disagree with Cramdown's answer. What is yours?
Why is it that so much of the bad news surrounding this awful war has the name "Halliburton" attached to it?
The privatization game may have backfired in the face of the Bush administration and its friends in the corporate world. It is one thing to screw workers—unfortunately, that’s now considered business as usual—but in the case of Walter Reed the ultimate victims are a much more revered group. The stark evidence that the Bush administration, for all its rhetoric about supporting the troops, is much more interested in supporting the contractors, could be leading to a political earthquake.
Be careful Victoria, you wouldn't want to box yourself into chastising the government's poor care of our Vets (of which I'd have to agree), when you're really trying to make a swipe at the notion of national health care.
threlfeld said...
"Tromatic, since you disagree with Cramdown's answer. What is yours?
"Why is it that so much of the bad news surrounding this awful war has the name "Halliburton" attached to it?"
I'ts been a while since I've heard "Halliburton".
"Cramdown said...
Because Bush is the stooge of Cheney and Cheney is a tool of Halliburton and a crook. A no-bid contract no doubt."
I guess my answer would be that Bush is dealing with the shortage of active-duty military by passing it off to a business that specializes in this sort of thing?
Given that any sort of unqualifed business can bid for these as long as they meet the "standards", I'd say we are ahead.
Go ahead, support the trrops. Stand up and say give them WHATEVER they need to win and come home.
No? I'm surprised.
It is this mix, where someone is contracted to provide, for profit, to a captive consumer who has no choice to go elsewhere.
This is an example of what happens when the Governments controls a service, and then contracts it back out to the for-profit private sector.
So if this is the model, the government is proposing for national health care, then I do see some logic in the argument you are trying to make.
But take note of the word "Privatization".
I think this is a better example of why government should not be privatized.
tromatic,
Did the employees who were maintaining Walter Reed belong to a Union?
I don't think the 9-5 Government employee is as much of a problem as is the low paid, low benefit, private employee; working on a government contract while some private company profits from the labor.
Clear back to WWll The VA has _ _ _ _ _ _. Democrats didn't give a Rats _ _ _ _ _about it. Its well known that if a person Wants to see what "HILARY SOCIALIZED COMMUNIST CARE" would be like just look at the VA. There Building a
new WALTER REED available in 2011 I beleive, but in the meen time Fix that one side of the 'OLD WALTER REED where the problem is at.
PS HEY LIBERAL'S boo boo boo
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. Now go tell your Socialist Comrades in the State of Washington that you just got BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOED.
Turn me in, ARREST MEEEEEEEEEEEE
klatu:
Yes, we know that you can hold the key on your word processor down. That does not mean you have that much to say.
As i recall, some three years ago, there was a major bill on VA funding in Congress, and one of the most vocal people on the subject, insisting that the cuts that the administration was making were criminal, was Washington Senator Patti Murray.
Klatu, if the Democrats are the ones messing with Veterans Administration programs, why was Senator Murray, a Democrat, so forceful that the cuts to the VA budget were wrong?
westsidedavid said...
why was Senator Murray, a Democrat, so forceful that the cuts to the VA budget were wrong?
Klatu said: There wasn't any cuts david.
Lots of good comments, in my opionion. And only one or two from Klatu. At any rate, what do all of you think about the potential impact of military downsizing pre-G.W. Bush on the situation? I even see mention that the conditions at Walter Reed (and, it would logically follow, other military healthcare centers) might have to do with the lack of active-duty military men and women to support them.
And another question: I seriously doubt that these conditions are so recent as to be a surprise to those who frequently visit the facility. Case in point, I recently received a response to a letter from Congressman Brian Baird of Washington that stated, and I quote, "Since this war began... I have been many times to Walter Reed to visit the wounded." Even in the private sector, a serious decline in overall care and facility condition takes quite a bit of time. Why has it taken so long to find out about it, if so many of our representatives visit the soldiers in recovery so often? Don't they control the flow of funds into the system? That makes me more frustrated than any speculation on who is to blame. Especially since my family and I will be under military health care later this year.
While finger-pointing and BDS rule the day, one sentence in the articles about this goes unnoticed.
"The letter said the Defense Department “systemically” tried to replace federal workers at Walter Reed with private companies for facilities management, patient care and guard duty – a process that began in 2000."
Committee subpoenas former Walter Reed chief
From Orbus
BLUE WAVE SUICIDE WATCH? "FOX News Channel (FNC) entered into an agreement to order 13 additional episodes of "The Half-Hour News Hour..."
All "emergency rooms" through out the country should be alerted every Sunday Night from 7:00PM
-7:30pm for liberal depression.
Do any of you anti-Bush/Cheney clowns actually think that the rotten conditions at Walter Reed occurred just ing the 6 years Bush/Cheney have been in power/ That these conditions were not even present until noon on January 20, 2001? If that is your line of thinking, then there is no hope for you. You apparently think that everything there was pristine and sanitary and pure until the day of Bush's inauguration, then things went bad immediately.
Maybe, just maybe, prior administrations knew about these conditions and chose to do nothing about it. And who came before Bush?
I do not recall a war raging on 1/20/01. George Bush started the war. What did his administration and the Republican Congress do to improve conditions for the returning wounded? I believe the answer is woefully little.
You mean the Republican controlled congress, in place since 1995, knew about these conditions and ignored them? Seems like something could have been improved in 12 years. Or maybe you're in it just to blame Clinton like the "anti-Bush clowns" you are speaking too?
Shame on you fizziwigg and r_equals_bs. Bush has only been in office 6 years, and what with the war, Katrina, all those scandals and convictions, well......it's hard work.
So if the military is short staffed (as I suspect it is) why is there a claim that recruitment goals are close to being met?
Is that misleading spin to pump up the war effort, or to make it look like there are enough people in favor of our current military action that they are signing up to help?
Is our leadership not competent enough to know how many resources it really takes to do the job?
Is Government falling way behind the Private sector in the realization that the out-sourcing (not to be confused with off-shoring) model is often not a good solution?
Is the truth that we need a draft to meet the mission the military has been assigned?
If we do need a draft, we need a leader to propose one, for some reason other than the crap being spewed by Rangel.
Or maybe we just raise the military pay until it attracts the number of people needed, and then raise taxes to cover the cost.
Now for a whole new angle on what many think is government intervention into our private lifestyles:
If we (the US Population) are not physically fit and healthy, we will not make very good warriors.
There are Walter Reed problems in Canada? Do tell!
Canada? Eh, what did I miss?
This stuff has been an ongoing problem for more than 20 years, but now, all of a sudden, it is all the fault of Bush and Cheney. Sure we've had a Republican-controlled Congress until last November and nothing was done by them either. But, since you libs are blaming Bush/Cheney for the Walter Reed debacle, it is time that you start laying the blame on Clinton/Gore, too. And maybe Bush 1/Quayle or Carter/Mondale. This has been, apparently, an ongoing problem for a good many years, not just since Bush took office.
And, since fuzzi brought it up, the war in Iraq and Afghanistan has been going on for just a few years, less than four, but Walter Reed Hospital has not been closed up before these wars began. That hospital has been open to all the services continuously since 1909. That it has been left to deteriorate badly in last 20 or more years, certainly is not the complete fault of Bush/Cheney, as many of you would like to believe and/or want to have everyone else believe. That blame can be laid on a great many people, including a lot of Congresses back over the years.
As an aside, Chucky Schumer has been a huge critic of the conditions at Walter Reed. But, on the Imus program in the last day or two, he admitted he has not even been to the Hospital to see for himself what the conditions are, or to even visit the wounded that are there. And that is true of many of the other critics, also. They holler a lot and blame Bush for the conditions there, but haven't been there themselves. And you can bet the ranch that Teddy Kennedy and Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi sure haven't been there, either. If they are going to complain, they ought to go and see for themselves what they are complaining about.
Well scottie, I'm not sure where you get your 20 years figure, but overall I think you are making a "fair" argument. Honestly, I think what gets the "Bush haters" all fired up about something like this, is all the "Democrats/liberals don't support the troops" BS that's been handed around the last few years. If conditions are so deplorable, and "they" so handily support the troops, why are "they" allowing those conditions to continue? If "they" are the only group of people who support the troops, then why does VA funding continue to receive cuts every time a new budget is due?
Why all service men and women don't get a big pay boost, along with full, lifetime medical coverage with retirement is beyond me. Combat (and non-combat) pay, benefits, equipment, training, and veteran's care and support is something that shouldn't be a question, nor a political opportunity. Especially in war time.
Hey, no Friday open thread?
That whole "if you're not breaking the law, the Patriot Act isn't something you have to worry about" argument really went out the window, didn't it? That whole thing about how it's only used to hunt down terrorists, and how the FBI won't spy on anyone it doesn't need to?
A statement from this administration and echoed by its supporters that was, as usual, completely incorrect.
That's a heckuva streak you guys have going - every single thing you say is happening or will happen turns out to be the exact opposite.
The incompetence and/or shadiness of this administration knows no end.
r=bs: The only place I used the word "they" in my last post was referring to the extremely vocal critics of the conditions at Walter Reed without going there to see for themselves what things are like, but to also give some semblance of aid, comfort, and support to the wounded there. (I am wondering if such actions are within the capabilities of the people I cited).
As for the "20 years or more" timeline, I was referring to something I heard on the one of the radio talkshows yesterday. My point was that people should not narrow their criticism of the conditions at Walter Reed as happening in just the 6 years since President Bush took office. The images I have seen on various and sundry news programs over the last couple of weeks would have taken place over a period much longer that 6 years. If anyone should have the most of the blame for the conditions there, it should be the powers that be in the VA, regardless of whose administration they were under at the time of their appointments to the VA hierarchy. Surely they would have known of the conditions there, and just a surely, they chose not to do anything about it. The VA top brass will always cite lack of money as a prime reason, but nearly everyone who choses to let things slide in whatever venue they are in, will use that same reason. Witness the reasons the Portland schools and the City of Portland itself is lacking. No money.
I don't know with any certainty the "lack of money" is the main reason the VA did nothing at WR, but it sure sounds good when they are trying to cover their collective butts for the debacle. But CYA is the name of the game for all politicians, whether elected or appointed, is it not?
klatu:
"There were no cuts to the VA programs"? Well, klatu, you seem to be the only person in the nation to adhere to that position. Veterans groups have complained about the cuts. Administration opponents have complained about the cuts. New media have complained about the cuts.
Do you have something other than your own ripe imagination for this position of yours?
.
"There were no cuts to the VA programs"? Well, Westside you seem to be the only person in the nation to adhere to that position. (Democrat Veterans groups, if there really is a such thing) have complained about the cuts. Democrat Socialist Administration opponents have complained about the cuts. New media have "NOT" complained about the cuts.
Do you have something other than your own Chavez, Castro Loving,Global Whining,Socialist agenda for this position of yours ?
Funding for Veterans up 27%, But Democrats Call It A Cut
The Veterans Affairs affair Is all Bush's fault
Post a Comment