The government doesn’t seem to have many good days, these days. If it isn’t a vast hacking of its employees’ personal information by, presumably, the Chinese, then it is the revelation that the people who are supposed to keep air travel safe, the crack agents of the TSA, missed some 95 percent of the dummy bombs that a task force attempted to slip by them in a recent test. Ninety-five percent. The performance, all around, recalls the words of Casey Stengel when he was managing the Mets in an era when they were the worst team in baseball: “Can’t anyone here play this game?”
Today’s entry for the “government doesn’t work” files concerns the VA. This one is especially perplexing. The duty of the government to care for the people who wore the uniform (some after being drafted) and in many cases went off to war and often returned injured and needing care … that duty seems clear cut. The government may not necessarily have a duty to make sure school lunches are nutritious and healthy (and, by the way, it is blowing that one, too) but care for veterans is not optional and does not fall under the heading of “pork barrel spending.”
Today, Heath Druzin of Stars and Stripes writes:
“I’m wondering what problems have been fixed,” she said Monday, as a bipartisan delegation of congressmen showed up to grill managers about the scandal that has engulfed the office, which oversees benefits to more than 800,000 veterans in three states. “I’m seeing the same things, and it’s worse than ever. Employee morale is at an all-time low.”
Meanwhile, the VA reacted to what it plainly considers a problem of public relations and image-mending to be handled in the usual way. So:
And, of course, with sublime predictability, Ms. Hickey played the card that always appears when there is failure in Washington. She:
More money. That, of course, will fix everything.
