Conservative Blogger
Friday, April 15, 2016
It's All Your Money: VA let costly equipment sit unused for months
In the two years since reports about long wait times at the Phoenix VA Health Care System leading to patients’ deaths, federal investigators ultimately found 20 instances where people may have died from deficient care or delayed access to care.
Now, it is the Southern Arizona VA Health Care System, in Tucson, that has attracted unwanted scrutiny. The system, which employs over 2,500 health care professionals and support staff, bills itself as “a national model of clinical and organizational excellence,” in part based on its promise to deliver “efficient” care to its patients.
Yet in a report issued in February, the inspector general for the Department of Veterans Affairs found the organizational efficiency of the Southern Arizona facility sorely lacking. Auditors found that in late 2014, the hospital arranged to lease some 360 pieces of urology equipment, only to let the machinery sit, idle and unused, for over four months – at a cost to taxpayers of $217,000.
“[Southern Arizona] delayed using the urology equipment because of inadequate acquisition planning and coordination with its support services,” the inspectors found. “The lack of coordination occurred, in part, because [Southern Arizona] had not established policies and procedures to ensure support services staff review leased equipment requests during acquisition planning.”
Officials at Southern Arizona said they “concur with the findings” of the inspector general’s office. “We acknowledge that there was a delay in introducing the equipment into the procedural environment,” hospital executives said in a written response included in the final report. “The person who ordered the equipment retired suddenly, and therefore the normal coordination did not occur in a timely fashion.”
The toll of this wasteful spending extended beyond financial impact. As the auditors noted, Southern Arizona also “missed the opportunity to provide veterans services using endoscopic urology equipment with improved visualization.”
That diminution in the care afforded our veterans, while difficult to quantify or gauge, is magnified in the wake of the earlier problems recorded at the Phoenix VA health system – and feeds into a broad perception that our brave women and women in uniform are not being treated appropriately when they leave the armed forces. An Associated Press report last fall found close to 900,000 veterans had health care requests pending at that time.
“It's certainly money that could have been used to get veterans appointments faster, said Carlos Fuentes, senior legislative associate at the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States, about the $217,000 wasted by the Southern Arizona facility. “You have veterans waiting on care, so this could have been put to better use.”
A review of Southern Arizona’s website found the facility advertising for various open positions where the salaries involved provide some idea of what else could have been purchased with that sum. For example, until April 5, the institution was conducting a search for a physician who could serve as its chief of staff, someone whose duties would include "ensuring high quality and cost effective care." That individual’s annual salary was identified as $150,000 to $300,000 – right in the range of the cost associated with the unused urology equipment.
Likewise, Southern Arizona last week closed out its search for a pharmacist; given the minimum starting salary of $105,515, the money spent on the idle urology equipment could instead have purchased the services of two pharmacists for a year’s time. And ongoing right now is the institution’s search for a registered nurse, whose minimum starting salary – $56,292 – could almost pay for the services of four registered nurses for a year’s time.
“In a private marketplace, your boss would immediately say to you, ‘Look at this: You wasted $200,000 by not even knowing you had equipment over here in a closet," said Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., whose office flagged the inspector general’s findings as part of an ongoing project that Paul calls The Waste Report. “But government doesn't have the profit motive; so they work very slowly.”
Fox News Poll: Trump widens lead in GOP race, Clinton-Sanders tightens
Donald Trump jumps to an 18-point lead over Ted Cruz this week with record high support for the Republican nomination.
Trump tops Cruz by 45-27 percent among GOP primary voters in a new Fox News national poll on the 2016 election. John Kasich comes in third with 25 percent.
Three weeks ago, the mogul was up by three over Cruz: 41-38 percent, with Kasich at 17 percent (March 20-22, 2016).
Forty-five percent is a new high for Trump. The previous high was last month’s 41 percent.
CLICK TO READ THE POLL RESULTS
Trump’s best numbers come from GOP voters without a college degree (54 percent) and those who describe themselves as “very” conservative (50 percent).
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The shift comes from women. Clinton’s support has declined 11 points among women, while support for Sanders is up by nine. Support among men mostly held steady -- and it’s in Sanders’ favor: 57-37 percent.
Kasich does best against Democrats, Trump worst
Kasich, who is in third both in polling and the delegate count, likes to tell folks on the campaign trail that most polls show he’s the only Republican who can win in November.
That holds true in these new potential matchups.
Kasich is up by nine points over Clinton (49 vs. 40 percent), while she’s the one who tops Trump (+7 points) and Cruz (+1 point).
The Ohio governor also does best against Sanders. The Vermont senator trounces Trump (+14 points) and Cruz (+12 points). Against Kasich, he’s up by just four points.
Still, when voters are asked which Republican candidate has the best chance to defeat Clinton, they pick Trump first (42 percent), followed by Cruz (24 percent) and Kasich (20 percent). GOP primary voters are even more bullish on Trump: 58 percent say he has the best odds, while 21 percent say Cruz and 16 percent Kasich.
"When it comes to electability, the disconnect between what Republicans think and what the polling data show is astounding," says Daron Shaw, Republican pollster who conducts the Fox News Poll with Democratic pollster Chris Anderson. "Close to three times as many think Trump has the best chance against the Democrats despite the fact he's down seven points to Clinton while Kasich is up nine."
Pollpourri
Voters see two nomination battles of strikingly different character. Eight in 10 say the Republican campaign is “rude and disrespectful” (80 percent), while most think the Democratic side is “polite and respectful” (64 percent).
The Fox News poll is based on landline and cellphone interviews with 1,021 randomly chosen registered voters nationwide and was conducted under the joint direction of Anderson Robbins Research (D) and Shaw & Company Research (R) from April 11-13, 2016. The poll has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points for all registered voters, and 4.5 points for both the Democratic (450) and Republican primary voter samples (419).
Clinton, Sanders ignore Latinos, immigration at testy Brooklyn debate
New York – In the ninth Democratic presidential debate, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders sparred about big banks, foreign policy and gun control.
The showdown took place at a critical time in the race, with the Vermont senator giving the former Secretary of State a much bigger challenge than her campaign ever expected.
Clinton is eyeing a victory in her adopted home state of New York's primary next Tuesday, aiming to blunt Sanders' recent string of primary and caucus victories and put his pursuit of the nomination further out of reach. A Sanders upset – or even a narrow defeat – of Clinton would shake up the race, raising fresh concerns about her candidacy.
The location of the debate – Brooklyn – held significance for both candidates, for different reasons. It is where Sanders was born and where Clinton has her campaign headquarters.
But the two-hour debate in New York, which has the nation’s fourth largest Latino population in the nation, lacked any discussion about one of the most important and fastest-growing electorates.
There was no question – or even a mention by the contenders – of immigration, one of the most debated issues in this presidential election, and the subject of many campaign speeches and advertising by candidates of both parties.
At one point, both Clinton and Sanders spoke about disadvantages faced by minorities, but Latinos were not mentioned.
Sanders made specific reference to African-Americans when he spoke about the overrepresentation of blacks in the prison population,and underemployment and unemployment among young blacks.
Clinton said that whites must face that racism that still exists in the United States.
Unemployment and incarceration rates are also problems in the Latino community, but they were not mentioned. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People says on its website, "Together, African American and Hispanics comprised 58 percent of all prisoners in 2008, even though African-Americans and Hispanics make up approximately one quarter of the U.S. population."
The only mention of Latinos, in fact, occurred when Clinton described the coalition of voters backing her as including "African-Americans, women, Latinos, union members."
New York's Latino population, at 3.7 million, nearly 20 percent of New York's residents, according to the Pew Research Center
.New York's Latino community is one of the country's most diverse. New York has a large Puerto Rican population, which the late Mayor Ed Koch used to like to note was larger than San Juan's. It's also home to large numbers of Dominicans, Colombians, Cuban-Americans and, in the last 15 years or so, Mexicans who have come seeking higher salaries and more acceptance than they found in states in the Southwest and West.
Nearly two million of New York's Latinos are eligible to vote, according to Pew.
In her opening statement, the former First Lady invoked New York several times, expressing pride in “New York values” – a clear reference to GOP candidate Sen. Ted Cruz, who derided “New York values” during a debate to criticize his rival Donald Trump.
“We will celebrate our diversity, we will work together, bringing us back to being united,” Clinton said. “That’s what I’m offering in this campaign.”
Sanders said in his opening statement that he's determined to end a "rigged economy" where the rich get richer and everyone else gets poorer. He says he wants to create an economy that works for everyone and not just the top one percent of Americans.
Later Sanders questioned Clinton's judgment in supporting the war in Iraq and accepting financial support from super PACs.
He asked, "Do we really feel confident about a candidate saying she is going to bring change in America when she is so dependent on big-money interests?"
Clinton said she would order regulators to break up banks if they don't pass their stress tests or submit adequate "living wills" as required by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform bill.
Sanders countered that he doesn't need Dodd-Frank's guidelines to tell him the banks are too big.
Sanders recently angered the Clinton campaign when he suggested she was unqualified to be president, an assertion he later walked back. While Clinton didn't explicitly call Sanders unqualified, she has raised questions about the depth of his policy expertise and did so again in the debate.
She noted the "kind of problems" Sanders had answering questions about breaking up big banks and saying he could not answer a number of questions on foreign policy.
Clinton said, "I think you need the judgment on Day 1 to be both president and commander-in-chief."
Sanders had a big victory earlier this month in Wisconsin. But because Democrats award their delegates proportionally instead of a winner-take-all model, he's struggled to cut into the lead Clinton took earlier in the primary season. He's also failed to persuade superdelegates – party insiders who can back the candidate of their choice regardless of how their states vote – to switch from Clinton.
Clinton has accumulated 1,289 pledged delegates from primaries and caucuses while Sanders has 1,038. Her lead grows significantly when the superdelegates are added in: 1,758 to 1,069.
It takes 2,383 delegates to clinch the Democratic nomination. Sanders would need to win 68 percent of the remaining delegates and uncommitted superdelegates to reach that figure.
Despite his long odds, Sanders has vowed to stay in the race through the party's convention in July. Backed by legions of loyal supporters, he's amassed impressive fundraising totals that give him the financial wherewithal to do just that.
Still, there have been signs in New York that Clinton is starting to turn her eye toward the general election. She's run two ads here targeting GOP front-runner Donald Trump, a native New Yorker, and his policies on immigration.
And with Trump facing the prospect of a contested convention fight with rival Ted Cruz, Clinton has taken on the Texas senator as well.
"I'm really looking forward to debating either Donald Trump or Ted Cruz," Clinton during a campaign stop in Rochester last week. "I mean, it's going to be good."
Sparks fly over wages, Wall Street and war at heated Clinton-Sanders debate
Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders shelved the niceties and went right after each other’s perceived weak spots at a must-win Democratic primary debate Thursday night where the front-runner challenged her rival’s grasp of complex policy issues – and the insurgent senator hammered her as a Wall Street pal just now talking the talk of working Americans.
The charge crystallized when Clinton seemed to surprise Sanders by declaring she’d back legislation for a $15 federal minimum wage.
“To suddenly announce now you’re for 15, I don’t think is quite accurate,” Sanders said, noting Clinton previously has pushed for increasing the hourly wage to $12. “I think the secretary has confused a lot of people.”
However, Clinton said while she supports the goal of raising the wage to $12, she would sign legislation raising it to $15 if a Democratic Congress passes it.
“I have said from the very beginning that I supported the fight for 15,” Clinton insisted.
The heated dispute, in which the candidates frequently interrupted each other, was one of many at a CNN-hosted debate heavy on populist rhetoric – and personal attacks.
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The two faced off in Brooklyn, for their first debate in more than a month, at a critical time. The campaign heads soon into the final stretch with the upcoming New York primary seen as a determining factor. While Sanders trails badly in delegates, he is pointing to his recent winning streak in insisting he can still “win this nomination.”
“Secretary Clinton cleaned our clock in the deep South. We got murdered there,” he conceded, before adding. “We’re out of the deep South now.”
“I’m not taking anything for granted, or any voter or any place,” Clinton said, while noting she’s gotten millions more votes and saying the party will eventually have to unite.
Eyeing the contest ahead, both candidates courted Empire State voters Thursday by stressing their New York ties – and more broadly, hitting working-class themes.
At the same time, the debate veered heavily into foreign policy in the second half, with Sanders using the issue to challenge Clinton’s judgment while she questioned his experience.
“Describing the problem is a lot easier than trying to solve it,” Clinton said at one point, challenging Sanders as he laid out his goals for achieving Middle East peace.
Sanders also took heat from Clinton for describing Israeli military action as at times disproportionate. “They do not invite rockets raining down on their towns and villages,” she said. Sanders said Israel has a right to defend itself, but the U.S. needs to be even-handed in peace talks.
Sanders, as he has before, hammered Clinton for supporting regime change in Libya and Iraq, warning that it has “unintended consequences.” He said the former secretary of state’s continued support for a no-fly zone in Syria – which he noted President Obama does not support – “runs the risk of getting us sucked into perpetual warfare in that region.”
But Clinton defended her stance, and argued: “Nobody stood up to Assad and removed him and we have had a far greater disaster in Syria.”
Earlier, Sanders also pointed to Clinton’s support for the Iraq war, as well as “virtually every disastrous trade agreement,” in challenging her “judgment” to lead.
However, Clinton fired back, pointing to an editorial board meeting Sanders had with the New York Daily News where he seemed to struggle to explain his plan to break up the banks and various foreign policy positions.
“He could not explain how” he would break up the banks, Clinton said. She defended her own judgment and said: “I think you need to have the judgment on day one to be both president and commander-in-chief.”
While the tone was tougher than past face-offs, the candidates hit several familiar themes. Clinton suggested Sanders is too closely aligned with the gun industry. Sanders knocked Clinton for not releasing transcripts of her past paid speeches (while saying he would soon release a new batch of tax returns).
On that point, Sanders said that despite the financial industry-fueled recession, “Secretary Clinton was busy giving speeches to Goldman Sachs for $225,000 a speech.”
Clinton, though, denied that any of that money influenced her decisions in office. Further, she said, “I stood up against behaviors of the banks when I was a senator.”
Sanders gave a sarcastic retort: “Oh my goodness. They must have been really crushed by this.”
As he did on the minimum wage, Sanders also seemed to accuse Clinton of shifting her position when it came to Social Security taxes, though Clinton again claimed she’s been consistent.
Sanders has been on an election roll lately, winning seven of the last eight state contests, most recently in Wyoming over the weekend. On stage Thursday, he touted his “landslide victories” in recent contests.
But analysts note the primary map could soon be turning back in the front-runner’s favor, not only in New York but other Eastern primary states.
With the stakes getting ever-higher, the tone of the contest had sharpened well before Thursday’s debate. Sanders recently alleged Clinton may not be qualified for president, before walking back the remark. And the Clinton campaign has criticized Sanders for the aggressive efforts by some of his supporters to persuade so-called superdelegates to back the Vermont senator.
Superdelegates are elected officials and other party insiders free to support whomever they want. Most of them are siding with Clinton, giving her an even wider delegate lead. But Clinton noted Thursday night that she holds the pledged delegate lead as well.
Going into the Empire State primary on Tuesday, Clinton so far has held the lead in most polls. Clinton spent eight years as a New York senator.
But Sanders, a Vermont senator who was born in Brooklyn, has been touting his local roots as he seeks to upset Clinton in the state.
While Sanders is on a winning streak in primaries and caucuses, he desperately needs a big victory in New York if he hopes to cut into Clinton's delegate lead and slow her march to the nomination. To date, Clinton has accumulated 1,758 total delegates, compared with Sanders’ 1,069. It takes 2,383 to win.
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