Support our troops

 

Mistakes were made

When an AI script written by a Department of Government Efficiency employee came across a contract for internet service, it flagged it as cancelable. Not because it was waste, fraud or abuse — the Department of Veterans Affairs needs internet connectivity after all — but because the model was given unclear and conflicting instructions.

Sahil Lavingia, who wrote the code, told it to cancel, or in his words “munch,” anything that wasn’t “directly supporting patient care.” Unfortunately, neither Lavingia nor the model had the knowledge required to make such determinations.

“I think that mistakes were made,” said Lavingia, who worked at DOGE for nearly two months, in an interview with ProPublica. “I’m sure mistakes were made. Mistakes are always made.”

  Propublica

Not that HE made them, of course.

[T]he code relied on older, general-purpose models not suited for the task; the model hallucinated contract amounts, deciding around 1,100 of the agreements were each worth $34 million when they were sometimes worth thousands; and the AI did not analyze the entire text of contracts. Most experts said that, in addition to the technical issues, using off-the-shelf AI models for the task — with little context on how the VA works — should have been a nonstarter.

Lavingia, a software engineer enlisted by DOGE, acknowledged there were flaws in what he created and blamed, in part, a lack of time and proper tools.

Continue reading if you're interested in what was wrong with Lavingia's code.

By the numbers

The Department of Veterans Affairs will slash more than 80,000 jobs under a major restructuring plan that the agency intends to carry out by August to meet President Donald Trump’s executive order for downsizing the federal government, according to an internal VA memo.

[...]

The Trump administration already imposed a hiring freeze and two rounds of layoffs in February that resulted in the loss of 5,000 jobs. Veterans, who are given preference in hiring, make up about one-third of federal employees.

[...]

The VA expanded staff by more than 60,000 to meet demand by veterans filing for benefits and health care following the legislation adoption in 2022. The legislation awarded disability compensation to veterans with illnesses connected to their exposure to hazardous materials while on active duty that included burn pits, radiation and industrial solvents.

“This memo makes [the administration’s] goal crystal clear: They want to roll back the PACT Act by cutting 80,000 jobs — including 20,000 veterans — while starving VA’s ability to meet increased demand in order to justify privatizing VA,” Blumenthal said.

  Stars and Stripes

Trump 2.0 - Chainsaw politics

 I really don't understand why they're so adamant everyone return to work in the office.

Jesus wept.

Support our troops

 This is gonna land very, very hard in MAGAland.

An internal memo from the new Secretary of the VA obtained by Military.com shows that the agency intends to fire more than 83,000 employees.

  Meidas Touch

If that were the ONLY segment of the MAGA population that will be suffering under Trump 2.0, it would be bad enough.

Trummp 2.0 - Veterans Affairs

Fired before they're hired.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

MAGA cut off their noses to spite their faces

I doubt this will fly, but you never know.

And don't forget Trump's favorite fable: You knew I was a snake when you took me in.  This is the successful coup.

A bit of good news

Not everybody has been intimidated into silence - yet

A whistleblower came forward Friday accusing leaders of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) of seeking damaging information on a woman who alleged she was sexually assaulted at a VA facility.

The House Veterans Affairs Committee told Military.com Saturday that it had "received details from an individual with knowledge of decision making by senior VA leaders that shows they attempted to gather damaging information" on Navy Reserve Lt. Andrea Goldstein. Goldstein works on the panel and focuses on issues impacting female veterans.

The committee added that VA leadership also "may have improperly utilized government time and resources" to dig up dirt on Goldstein, and that it was working “to determine to what extent VA leaders attempted to tarnish a staff member's character and spread false information about her past in retaliation for her reporting of a sexual assault.

  The Hill

What now?

James Byrne, the deputy secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, was fired Monday after holding the post for less than five months.

VA Secretary Robert Wilkie said he terminated Byrne due to a loss in confidence in him.

“Today, I dismissed VA Deputy Secretary James Byrne due to loss of confidence in Mr. Byrne’s ability to carry out his duties,” Wilkie said in the statement. “This decision is effective immediately.”

Byrne, 55, [...] previously served as the department’s general counsel, leading the VA’s legal team, for about two years. Byrne was confirmed as deputy secretary by the Senate in a vote of 81-11.

[...]

Trump’s administration has gone through four deputy secretaries at the VA, with two of them in temporary acting positions. The Obama, Bush and Clinton administrations all had two deputy VA secretaries across both of their terms.

[...]

The news outlet Axios, citing three unnamed sources, reported that Byrne’s ousting was due to frustration from the White House on how the VA handled an investigation into a claim by Andrea Goldstein, a House staff member who said she was sexually assaulted at the VA hospital in Washington D.C.

“That is not true. James Byrne’s dismissal has nothing to do with that,” VA spokeswoman Christina Mandreucci wrote in an email.

[...]

Goldstein wrote an article for the website Jezebel, which was posted online Monday shortly before Byrne’s termination became publicly known. The article blasted Wilkie for shrugging off her assault and strongly implying it was a fabrication.

  Stripes

So why would that implicate Byrne?

Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif., chairman of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, said the questions lingering over Byrne’s sudden ousting need to be answered.

[...]

“Secretary Wilkie has agreed to meet with me to discuss this leadership change in detail, and I look forward to speaking with him.”

And we look forward to your report.

When will he learn how to delete a tweet?

Also, Veterans Choice was already in place when he took office.




...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

"Dear King"

Everybody knows the Trump administration is a pay-to-play organization.

When [Albert] Hazzouri is not at Mar-a-Lago, he’s a cosmetic dentist in Scranton, Pennsylvania. At a campaign rally there in 2016, Trump gave him a shoutout: “Stand up, Albert. Where the hell are you, Albert? Stand up, Albert. He’s a good golfer, but I’m actually a better golfer than him. Right?”

[...]

In a telephone interview, Hazzouri said he sent the note as a favor to the 163,000-member American Dental Association. He said he had only the vaguest sense of what proposal he was vouching for.

“I’m really not involved in any politics, I’m just a small-time dentist,” he said. “I guess there’s a lot of money spent on veterans’ care and American Native Indians’ care, and I guess they wanted to have a little hand in it, the American Dental Association, to try to guide what’s going on or whatever.”

The idea seemed to intrigue Trump. He took a thick marker and wrote on top of Hazzouri’s note, “Send to David S at the V.A.,” referring to David Shulkin, then the secretary of veterans affairs. Next to the Mar-a-Lago coat of arms, an aide stamped: “The president has seen.”

[...]

As ProPublica revealed last year, Trump handed sweeping influence over the department to club member Ike Perlmutter, who is the chairman of Marvel Entertainment and was a major donor supporting Trump’s campaign, along with a physician and a lawyer who are regular guests at the resort. The trio, known as the “Mar-a-Lago Crowd,” acted as a shadow leadership for the department, reviewing all manner of policy and personnel decisions, including budgeting and contracting. The House veterans committee is now investigating the trio’s “alleged improper influence.”

[...]

In Hazzouri’s case, the details of his pitch to “create an oversight committee” are murky. A spokeswoman for the American Dental Association, Katherine Merullo, declined to elaborate on the proposal. [...] In general, [Michael Graham, who heads the ADA's lobbying arm in Washington] said, the organization wants the government to pay for more dental services.

[...]

Hazzouri’s overture doesn’t appear to have succeeded. Shulkin, who was fired in March 2018, said in an email that he did not recall having received the message. Hazzouri said neither he nor the ADA ever got a meeting.

Hazzouri did, however, reference the proposal a few months later, in an effort to open an office in Florida.

“My intention is to establish a small office in order to treat the President, his family and visitors who may have dental needs while conducting official business,” Hazzouri wrote to the Florida Board of Dentistry in a February 2018 letter.

  ProPublica

Grifters play with grifters.

“An additional intention is to have the office serve as a dental delivery site on selected dates for U.S. veterans or children from underserved populations.”

Secondary. LOL.

Despite invoking the project as part of a bid to expand his business, Hazzouri said he wasn’t pursuing any personal benefit by pitching the ADA’s proposal to Trump. “I wasn’t doing this for any opportunity,” he said.

Of course not.

Hazzouri’s Florida office never materialized either: According to the minutes of his board hearing, Hazzouri hadn’t completed a required examination and withdrew his application for a license to practice in the state.

Couldn't his friend "King" have that taken care of?

Hazzouri declined to explain why his note to Trump addressed him as “King,” calling it an inside joke from long before Trump became president. “I call other people King,” he said. “It’s a very personal thing.”

Did anyone ask him if he signs letters to other people as "Foreign President"?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Veterans Affairs reverses its decision on Forever GI Bill

They may be deep in debt or even dead by the time they get their money.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Nobody has more respect for veterans than Trump

NBC News previously reported that some veterans were forced into desperate financial straits stemming from a change in calculating housing allowances under the Forever GI Bill, which President Donald Trump signed into law in July 2017. When its computers were unable to process that change, the VA quickly faced a backlog of veterans’ claims three times higher than normal.

[...]

For weeks, student veterans across the country have raised an alarm about delayed or incorrect GI Bill benefit payments.

[...]

But on Wednesday, the department told congressional staffers that it would not reimburse those veterans who were paid less than they were owed, two committee aides told NBC News.

The news conflicts with a promise VA officials made to a House committee earlier this month that it would reimburse those veterans who received less than the full amount they were due.

[...]

VA officials told congressional staffers in a telephone call on Wednesday morning that once the system is made right next year, they will not make retroactive payments to those who were underpaid because of the housing miscalculations.

"They are essentially going to ignore the law and say that that change only goes forward from Dec. 2019," one aide told NBC News.

[...]

While this decision could mean the agency is flouting the law because it would not provide the correct amount of money to student veterans as required by two sections of the Forever GI Bill, the VA told the congressional staffers that they have a legal justification that would allow them to move forward with this decision.

They did not share that justification, however.

  NBC

Unbelievable.

UPDATE 11/30:  Reversed.

Happy Veterans Day: adding injury to insult

The Department of Veterans Affairs is suffering from a series of information technology glitches that has caused GI Bill benefit payments covering education and housing to be delayed or [...] never be delivered.

[...]

Without the GI Bill's housing stipend, [Afghanistan veteran Shelley] Roundtree was kicked out of his apartment and is now living on his sister's couch, miles from school, where he feels like a burden on his family. The new living situation required him to move all his belongings into a storage container, which he can no longer afford. Now all of his possessions are in danger of being auctioned off by the storage facility.

[...]

Roundtree said that because of his extremely strained finances, he is forced to choose between spending money on public transportation to get to his marketing classes or buying food — not both. At the end of the day, the veteran said he often makes himself go to sleep hungry.

[...]

There are many veterans, like Roundtree, across the country who are still waiting for VA to catch up with a backlog created after President Donald Trump signed the Forever GI Bill in 2017. The landmark piece of legislation greatly expanded benefits for veterans and their families, but it did not upgrade the VA's technical capabilities to account for those changes.

While it is unclear how many GI Bill recipients were affected by the delays, as of Nov. 8, more than 82,000 were still waiting for their housing payments with only weeks remaining in the school semester, according to the VA. Hundreds of thousands are believed to have been affected.

[...]

At the end of August, Veterans Benefits Administration had nearly 239,000 pending claims — 100,000 more than at the same point in 2017. As school began, thousands of students faced dire circumstances and some faced eviction, getting kicked out of school or taking on loan or credit card debt. As the problem appears to have no clear solution, the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs is holding a hearing Wednesday to investigate the matter.

  NBC

I'm sure it will all be cleared up very quickly.

"This is — to be kind — a train wreck,” said Rep. Phil Roe, R-Tenn., the chairman of the veterans' affairs committee. “It’s really frustrating the amount of money that Congress has appropriated for veterans, and this is the way VA has rolled it out. This discussion started over a year ago.”

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Cronyism writ large

Last February, shortly after Peter O’Rourke became chief of staff for the Department of Veterans Affairs, he received an email from Bruce Moskowitz with his input on a new mental health initiative for the VA. “Received,” O’Rourke replied. “I will begin a project plan and develop a timeline for action.”

O’Rourke treated the email as an order, but Moskowitz is not his boss. In fact, he is not even a government official. Moskowitz is a Palm Beach doctor who helps wealthy people obtain high-service “concierge” medical care.

More to the point, he is one-third of an informal council that is exerting sweeping influence on the VA from Mar-a-Lago, President Donald Trump’s private club in Palm Beach, Florida. [...] None of them has ever served in the U.S. military or government.

[...]

[H]undreds of documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and interviews with former administration officials tell a [story] of a previously unknown triumvirate that hovered over public servants without any transparency, accountability or oversight. The Mar-a-Lago Crowd spoke with VA officials daily, the documents show, reviewing all manner of policy and personnel decisions. They prodded the VA to start new programs, and officials travelled to Mar-a-Lago at taxpayer expense to hear their views. “Everyone has to go down and kiss the ring,” a former administration official said.

[...]

Former administration officials say that VA leaders who were at odds with the Mar-A-Lago crowd were pushed out or passed over.

[...]

Other presidents have relied on unofficial “kitchen cabinets,” but never before have outside advisers been so specifically assigned to one agency. During the transition, Trump handed out advisory roles to several rich associates, but they’ve all since faded away. The Mar-a-Lago Crowd, however, has deepened its involvement in the VA.

  ProPublica

Continue reading.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

What a dick

President Trump signed a sweeping new law Wednesday aimed at expanding veterans’ access to private-sector health care. But behind the scenes his administration is fighting a bipartisan Senate effort to fund the legislation.

  WaPo

I do wonder how many laws have gotten signed but not funded.  Politicians are evil.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Jackson was "aggressively" vetted

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders offered a vehement defense of President Trump's embattled pick to the lead the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), saying Navy Rear Adm. Ronny Jackson’s record is “impeccable” and that the choice was aggressively vetted.

“He has received more vetting that most nominees,” she told reporters at a daily briefing dominated by questions about Jackson, whose nomination appears on life support after allegations of misconduct that senators from both parties described a day earlier as serious.

  The Hill

"More vetting than most nominees." That's not saying much for the others, is it?

The vetting process was still underway when accusations surfaced this week that Jackson had drank on the job, improperly dispersed prescription medications and helped create a hostile work environment at the White House Medical Office.

"There has been no area of concern that was raised about Dr. Jackson specifically," Sanders said.

Is this specific enough...

Navy Rear Adm. Ronny Jackson, President Trump's pick to become the next Veterans Affairs (VA) Secretary, got drunk and banged on the hotel room door of a female employee during an overseas trip in 2015, CNN reported.

The Secret Service intervened after Jackson's actions became so loud that agents worried he would wake up then-President Obama, according to CNN.

The incident made the female employee uncomfortable, and one former staffer told CNN that it was "definitely inappropriate, in the middle of the night."

[...]

Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) told CNN that he had spoke to Jackson, who denied the misconduct allegations.

  The Hill

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Ronny Jackson wasn't qualified when Trump nominated him

And now he's calling for the man to withdraw?

During his joint news conference with French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday, President Donald Trump wanted to make two things very clear in regard to his embattled Veteran Affairs nominee, Ronny Jackson:

• Jackson is a terrific guy, a great physician and everyone likes him and Trump is totally behind him.


• Jackson needs to step aside.

[...]

"I told Admiral Jackson just a little while ago, what do you need this for?" Trump said of his conversation with the White House physician. "This is a vicious group of people, they malign ... what do you need it for?"

In case there was still any doubt about what path Trump wants Jackson to take, the President noted that "I don't want to put a man through a process like this. It's too ugly and too disgusting. ... If I were him, I wouldn't do it."

[...]

Jackson can now bow out somewhat gracefully, saying the political partisanship exhibited by Democrats was simply not something he was willing to put his family through. Trump can graciously accept Jackson's decision -- seizing on those terrible Democrats who won't let a "fine man" like Dr. Jackson serve.

[...]

Jackson's problems -- whistleblowers have made allegations to the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee regarding excessive drinking by Jackson and a negative work environment under his leadership, according to two former White House medical staff members -- have nothing to do with the fact that Trump picked Jackson literally out of the blue, without seriously vetting him or game-planning how a nomination fight might play out.

To admit that would mean Trump made a bad choice, an error in judgment. And Trump doesn't do admitting errors.

[...]

Trump's lack of concern with vetting, coupled with his desire to surround himself with people he likes, leads to situations like this one with Jackson. And that's nobody's fault but Trump's.

[...]

A senior administration official told CNN Tuesday that Jackson is not planning to withdraw his nomination as of now.

  CNN

Trump has to be careful.  If he dumps on Ronny, Ronny could reveal his actual height and weight.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Jesus Christ, these people

Was there ever a more inept administration in all of US history?

The White House is now asserting that recently departed Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin resigned. Shulkin has made it clear in his public comments that he was forced out.

[...]

Shulkin’s removal happened so quickly, [a person familiar with the situation] said, that he was never given the opportunity to return to his office or address VA employees. Shulkin, for his part, has publicly criticized the White House fo

[...]

While Washington often wraps firings in the verbal cloak of a resignation, the distinction this time could have far-reaching implications that could throw the Department of Veterans Affairs, the second-largest federal agency, into further disarray.

[...]

The debate centers on vague language in the Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998, which gives the president broad authority to temporarily fill a vacancy at a federal agency with an acting official if the current office holder “dies, resigns, or is otherwise unable to perform the functions and duties of the office.”

But some legal experts note that the law does not explicitly grant that authority to the president in the case of firings. That could make Trump’s decision to [bypass Shulkin's deputy director and] appoint [Robert] Wilkie, the under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness, as acting VA secretary a potential test of the president’s authorities under the act.

[...]

Wilkie could serve as acting VA chief for several months while Trump’s nominee to permanently lead the department, White House physician Ronny Jackson, awaits confirmation in the Senate.

Any significant policy decision Wilkie makes during that time could prompt a challenge from an injured party claiming that Wilkie doesn’t have the legal authority to lead the department in an acting capacity.

[...]

When POLITICO asked the White House for comment about the potential legal issues surrounding Shulkin’s replacement, spokeswoman Lindsey Walters said in a statement, “Secretary Shulkin resigned from his position as Secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs.”

  

Like hell he did. He found out he was fired by Trump tweet, like others before him. If he resigned, let's see his resignation letter.

The Justice Department, for its part, has suggested that firings are applicable under the Vacancies Act. In 1999 guidance issued shortly after the act was signed into law, DOJ acknowledged that the “full range” of what would constitute a vacancy under the act is “unspecified.” But the guidance noted that senators mentioned the issue of firing when debating the legislation.

Then why are they lying about Shulkin resigning?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.