VA inspector general's office was reportedly told of wait lists months before scandal broke

The office of the Veterans Administration's Inspector General had launched an investigation into claims that the VA's Albuquerque hospital was hiding the length of time patients were made to wait for treatment months before a similar scandal was made public at the VA's Phoenix facility, according to a published report. 
The Albuquerque Journal reported Friday that the Inspector General's office had started an inquiry after receiving complaints from employees that wait times were being falsified by officials. However, the paper said that the status of the investigation was unclear. 
On Sunday, The Daily Beast, citing an unnamed doctor at the Albuquerque VA hospital, reported that patients faced an eight-month wait to get ultrasounds of their hearts, and a four-month wait to see a cardiologist, with some dying before they could receive the results of their examinations. 
The report said that there was no proof that veterans had actually died waiting for treatment, as was allegedly the case at the hospital in Phoenix where lists were also kept. However, the doctor told the website that officials are trying to hide any evidence of a waiting list's existence. The steps being taken reportedly include removing or renaming databases.
"When everyone found out the [inspector general] was doing the audit, the word I heard was 'make sure nothing is left out in the open,'" the VA doctor told The Daily Beast. "And that ranged from make sure there's no food out to make sure there’s no information out in the open."
The reports of secret waiting lists have led to an investigation by the VA's inspector general and the resignation Friday of Dr. Robert Petzel, the VA's undersecretary for health. However, critics have said that the Obama administration's response has not been strong enough, due in part to the fact that Petzel was already planning to retire.

Plan to name Lake Tahoe cove after Mark Twain scrapped after tribe complains

RENO, Nev. –  A state panel has effectively killed a bid to name a Lake Tahoe cove for Mark Twain, citing opposition from a tribe that says he held racist views on Native Americans.
The Nevada State Board on Geographic Names this week voted to indefinitely table the request after hearing opposition from the Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California, whose ancestral homeland includes Lake Tahoe.
Supporters had sought to name a scenic cove on the lake's northeast shore for Samuel Clemens, Twain's real name.
But Darrel Cruz, head of the tribe's cultural resource department, said Twain was undeserving of the honor because of derogatory comments about the Washoe and other tribes in his writings.
Among other things, he cited Twain's opposition to the naming of the lake as Tahoe, which is derived from the Washoe word "da ow" for lake.
Cruz also objected to a Twain quote about Lake Tahoe: "People say that Tahoe means 'Silver Lake' — 'Limpid Water' — 'Falling Leaf.' Bosh! It means grasshopper soup, the favorite dish of the digger tribe — and of the Pi-utes as well."
Cruz said Washoes dislike being referred to as the "digger tribe," a derogatory term applied to some tribes in the West who dug roots for food. Other tribes ate grasshoppers.
"Samuel Clemens had racist views on the native people of this country and has captured those views in his literature," Cruz wrote in a letter to the board. "Therefore, we cannot support the notion of giving a place name in Lake Tahoe to Samuel Clemens."
But James Hulse, history professor emeritus at the University of Nevada, Reno, said it's irrelevant whether Twain's writings were insulting to Native Americans.
The cove should be named for Twain because he praised Tahoe's beauty while visiting the lake in 1861-1862, and he became one of America's most beloved authors after assuming his pen name as a Nevada newspaper reporter around the same time, Hulse said.
"In his early days, (Twain's) ironic-comic mode was insulting to everyone, including governors, legislators, mine bosses and journalistic colleagues," he told the board. "He learned and overcame his prejudices far better than most of his contemporaries and successors."
Thomas Quirk, an English professor emeritus at the University of Missouri and leading Twain scholar, said the author eventually overcame his racism against blacks. But Quirk said he has found no evidence that he significantly changed his views on American Indians.
Twain did not embrace the idea of idolizing what he called the "noble red man," Quirk said, and poked fun at writer James Fenimore Cooper for doing so.
"When it comes to African Americans, he was ahead of his time substantially," he said. "When it comes to Native Americans, his record is not very good. If he were alive today, he would sing a different tune."
Board member Robert Stewart, who initiated the plan to name the cove for Clemens, said it's unlikely it would resurface.
He said he dropped his support of it, even though he learned about a later letter Twain wrote objecting to the treatment of tribes in Arizona and New Mexico.
"I have a great deal of respect for the Washoe Tribe. And if their cultural committee is unhappy with naming the cove for Mark Twain, I'm not going to fight them," Stewart said. "We need to show sensitivity to the tribe."
Stewart said he still believes the cove near Incline Village is where Twain camped and accidentally started a wildfire while preparing to cook dinner in September 1861. But David Antonucci, a civil engineer from Homewood, California, maintains Twain camped on the California side of the lake.
It's the second time the bid to name the cove for Twain failed. In 2011, the U.S. Board on Geographic Names rejected the request after the U.S. Forest Service said Twain's influence on the Sierra Nevada lake was minimal and other historical figures were more deserving of the honor.
Supporters sought to honor him because there is no geographic feature in the state named for Twain, whose book "Roughing It" put Nevada on the map.

How Harry Reid Carpet-Bombed the South

When the latest round of polls in key states showed vulnerable Democratic senators holding their own and the GOP’s dream candidate, Rep. Tom Cotton, an Iraq veteran and Harvard grad, down 10 points in his race against Arkansas Senator David Pryor, Republicans blamed the Senate Majority PAC as the chief culprit in shifting the landscape and upending the numbers.

Formed in 2011 and staffed by former aides to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, it has been spending heavily and early in races that will determine which party controls the Senate after November, and of course whether Reid keeps his job as leader.

Uncontrolled Immigration is like having a tree with too many apples.

 America Before

America After

Climategate II? Scientific community accused of muzzling dissent on global warming

Some are calling it the new "Climategate."
A paper by Lennart Bengtsson, a respected research fellow and climatologist at Britain's University of Reading, was rejected last February by a leading academic journal after a reviewer found it "harmful" to the climate change agenda. The incident is prompting new charges that the scientific community is muzzling dissent when it comes to global warming.
"[Bengtsson] has been a very prolific publisher and was considered one of the top scientists in the mainstream climate community," said Marc Morano, of the website ClimateDepot.com, which is devoted to questioning global warming.
Bengtsson had grown increasingly skeptical of the scientific consensus, often cited by President Obama, that urgent action is needed to curb carbon emissions before climate change exacts an irreversible toll on the planet with extreme drought, storms and rising seas levels.
The president repeatedly has rejected naysayers in the climate debate -- most recently, when he spoke May 9 in Mountainview, Calif. "We've still got some climate deniers who shout loud, but they're wasting everybody's time on a settled debate,” he said.
The administration recently released a comprehensive climate report that critics worry will be used to justify additional environmental regulations.
Bengtsson's paper, submitted to the journal Environmental Research Letters, found that greenhouse gas emissions might be less harmful and cause less warming than computer models project. For that, Morano said, Bengtssonpaid a steep price.
"They've threatened him. They've bullied him. They've pulled his papers. They're now going through everything they can to smear his reputation. And the ‘they’ I'm referring to is the global warming establishment," Morano said.
The Times of London reported that Bengtsson resigned from the advisory board of a think tank after being subjected to “McCarthy-style pressure” from other academics. Pressure even reportedly came from one U.S. government scientist.
Bengsston told the Times of London this week: "It is an indication of how science is gradually being influenced by political views. The reality hasn't been keeping up with computer models."
He added, "If people are proposing to do major changes to the world's economic system we must have much more solid information."
His view helps to illustrate the cavernous divide in this debate. Climate scientists who question the consensus often say they're demonized -- unable to publish, unable to find research funding. The scientific establishment presses on -- frustrated with anyone who, in their view,would impede saving the planet.
The debate raises a question about whether consensus in science is even relevant. As the novelist and global warming skeptic Michael Crichton argued,"The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with consensus."
The Bengtsson allegations recall a similar controversy in 2009, dubbed “Climategate,” when hundreds of emails were leaked, several of which raised questions about whether scientists were overstating the climate change case.

Rural New Mexico county fights feds over water rights

WEED, N.M. –  The latest dispute over federal control of land and water in the West has erupted along the banks of the Agua Chiquita, a small spring-fed stream in the mountains of southern New Mexico where the federal government has installed metal fences and locked gates to keep cattle out.
The move has enraged one rural county, where the sheriff has been ordered by the county commission to cut the locks. The U.S. attorney for the district of New Mexico hoped a meeting Friday would ease tensions enough to avoid an escalation like the armed standoff last month over grazing rights in Nevada.
The discussion resulted only in more frustration and disappointment.
Otero County Commissioner Ronny Rardin said after the meeting that the dispute was far from over.
"Ultimately, it is incumbent upon the commission, the sheriff and the citizens of Otero County to stand up for our constitutional rights," he said.
In a statement, U.S. Attorney's Office in New Mexico said no resolution was reached during the meeting and that the office will continue to monitor the situation "to ensure that public safety is preserved" in Otero County.
"To that end, the U.S. Attorney's Office will make every effort to facilitate a dialogue between county officials and the Forest Service," the office said.
Decades in the making, the dispute in Otero County centers on whether the Forest Service has the authority to keep ranchers from accessing Agua Chiquita, which means Little Water in Spanish. In wet years, the spring can run for miles through thick conifer forest. This summer, much of the stream bed is dry.
The Forest Service says the enclosures are meant to protect what's left of the wetland habitat. Forest Supervisor Travis Moseley said the metal fences and gates simply replaced strands of barbed wire that had been wrecked over the years by herds of elk.
The Otero County Commission passed a resolution earlier this week declaring that the Forest Service doesn't have a right to control the water. Ranchers say they believe the move is an effort by the federal government to push them from the land.
"If we let them take over our water rights, that's the first step. Then we would have nothing left here," said Gary Stone, head of the Otero County Cattleman's Association.
U.S. Rep. Steve Pearce, R-N.M., said what's happening in Otero County is another example of overreach by the federal government.
"These disputes could be easily avoided if federal bureaucrats would stick to their constitutional oath and respect property rights," he said.
With no resolution in sight, Sheriff Benny House said Friday he plans to continue investigating whether forest employees are breaking state law by fencing off the water. The commission is also seeking a congressional hearing on the matter.
Rancher Ed Eldridge is next in line to see a fence erected around the water on his allotment.
"I don't think any foreign power could take us over, but we might lose our country from within our borders if we lose our constitutional rights," Eldridge said.
Still, Eldridge, Stone and other residents said they aren't looking for an armed standoff with the federal government. They just want their water and property rights recognized and respected, they said.
Attorney Blair Dunn, who is representing the county, said he's worried that transparency and a media spotlight could be the only things that prevent the dispute from reaching a dangerous boiling point.
"Generally, cooler heads prevail when we're able to sit everybody down and figure out something that works," Dunn said.
Moseley of the Forest Service said he's not surprised by the conflict, given the pressure the agency is under to manage the land for different uses.
"I can't speak to a broader spectrum of federal regulations and how they affect private businesses and lives, but I don't believe there is a conspiracy per se," he said when asked about ranchers' claims of being pushed from the land.
County Commissioner Tommie Herrell disagreed. Describing the agency's actions as tyranny, he said the Forest Service is unwilling to temporarily open the gates while the parties search for long-term solutions.

More than 1 million Americans may be receiving wrong ObamaCare subsidies

Hundreds of thousands of Americans signed up for coverage under ObamaCare may be receiving incorrect subsidy payments -- some bigger than they actually deserve -- from the federal government, The Washington Post reported.
The government has identified the errors, which are the result of discrepancies in income listings on insurance applications and those on file with the Internal Revenue Service, but has been unable to fix the problem, according to the report.
Since income information is used to determine subsidy eligibility under the law, the federal government may be paying insurance subsidies that are too generous or not enough for more than 1 million Americans with income discrepancies. 
Only a fraction of consumers notified about the discrepancies have responded to federal health officials' requests to submit pay stubs or other proof of their income. Officials told The Washington Post they do not yet know the percentages of overpayments or underpayments.
According to internal documents obtained by the newspaper, income discrepancies exist on 1.1 million to 1.5 million out of nearly 4 million applications containing inconsistencies. About 650,000 pieces of evidence for income verification have reportedly been submitted by consumers.
Because technology does not exist to match income "proof" with applications, officials plan to start the work of sorting out inaccurate incomes and subsidies by hand starting this summer, Obama administration officials told The Post. 
Americans receiving excess subsidies are currently required to return any unwarranted payments next year, according to the report.
Julie Bataille, communications director for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said that despite the inaccurate subsidies, the federal health insurance marketplace has processed tens of millions of pieces of data successfully.
"While most data matched up right away during the application process, we take seriously the cases that require more work and have a system in place to expeditiously resolve these data inconsistencies," Bataille told The Post.
She added that federal health officials are "working every day to make sure individuals and families get the tax credits they deserve and that no one is receiving a tax credit they shouldn’t."
During last year's budget negotiations, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius vowed to vet income information that people submitted as part of their health insurance applications after Republican lawmakers voiced concerns about the potential for fraud. 
Consumer advocates told The Post they are concerned about the consequences of inaccurate income information for ObamaCare enrollees. 
"I have this sick feeling that there are these people out there who have made unintentional errors, and in a few years will be subject to massive tax bills," Jessica Waltman, senior vice president for government affairs at the National Association of Health Underwriters, told the newspaper.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.

More whistleblowers detail VA abuses, suffer retaliation

The allegations of wait times, delayed care for veterans and cooked books began in Phoenix, but new revelations by two more Veterans Affairs whistleblowers in two different states suggest the VA problems are endemic.
“What really bothered me was that this delay was a direct result of this extremely low sense of caring for the patient,” said Dr. Jose Mathews, the chief psychiatrist for the VA Medical Center in St. Louis starting in Nov 2012.
Mathews and another whistleblower in Texas detailed their concerns to Fox News.
According to Mathews, he noticed that the doctors he oversaw who were responsible for seeing veterans with post-traumatic stress and other acute mental health issues were working just a few hours a day. They were seeing about half the patients they could, Mathews alleged in a federal whistleblower complaint filed last year. Meanwhile, there were mounting suicides among veterans being treated at his facility -- and officially, the St. Louis VA was reporting to its headquarters in Washington that its productivity was among the highest in the nation.
“They all got bonuses -- that's the sad part. Because in reality we were not really doing a good job, but it shows up on paper as if we are,” Mathews told Fox News.
When Mathews complained, he was removed from his job, assigned to an isolated office to oversee pensions and compensation. He was told not to contact the other doctors or patients.
“I think they have some form of moral blindness or something. They're not able to see that this is not right, what they're doing is not right,” said Mathews, a soft-spoken psychiatrist who says the veterans would have to wait a month or more for mental health treatment.
Spokesman Paul Sherbo, of the St. Louis VAMC, said in a written statement: “The St. Louis VA Medical Center leadership is aware of and is addressing the alleged issues. VA is committed to providing the best quality of care that all our nation's Veterans need and deserve."
A second whistleblower -- from Harlingen, Texas – Dr. Richard Krugman accused the VA facility he oversaw in southeast Texas of delaying life-saving colonoscopies in order to cut costs. He provided a memo from his boss from 2011 outlining the shift in policy. He, too, was fired.
“I was treated like an animal. I was treated like a leper. I was treated like, how dare you attack me, or how dare you say what you're saying,” said Krugman, a former associate chief of staff at the Veterans Affairs health care system.
He argued that his boss told them to require three successive fecal occult blood tests before sending the patient for a colonoscopy, a delay that could cause potential colon cancer to go from a treatable stage 1 to a deadly stage 4, if unaddressed.
His boss -- now a VA director in Texas -- pushed back, issuing the following response:
"Allegations such as the [VA] stopped sending patients for colonoscopies because the agency could not afford non-VA care and instead utilized a fecal occult blood test instead of colonoscopies was not substantiated" by the independent Office of Special Counsel that investigated Krugman’s charges and closed the case last November, according to the statement provided by Jeff Milligan, former director of VA Texas Valley health network. Krugman disputed the claim.
The Office of Special Counsel found none of Krugman's claims to be substantiated. But when it closed the case, it admitted in a report and letter written to President Obama last November that it was forced to rely on an internal investigation carried out by the VA itself. It did not have the ability to independently investigate Krugman’s claims. The investigative panel assigned to get to the bottom of Krugman’s allegations was appointed by VA Under Secretary of Health Robert Petzel, who resigned Friday.
As first reported by Fox News last September, Petzel told congressional oversight committee members he had “no regrets” about awarding $63,000 in bonuses to hospital administrators in Pittsburgh after more than five veterans died of preventable Legionnaire’s disease contracted at a VA facility. 
“What I really got upset about was, over the last couple of weeks, everybody is now saying, ‘Oh, I never knew that. Oh, I didn't see that,” Krugman said in an interview with Fox News. “The reports have been there since 2010, 2011, and each article, or each new material that I received, I purposely sent to those different gentlemen, with a backup copy, just so that they can't say, ‘Oh, I never knew this, or I never knew that because every time that they say, ‘I don't know this or I don't know that,’ somebody else dies.”
Veterans' groups met in Washington this week to call for secure hotlines so that more whistleblowers feel they can come forward and not face retaliation.
Jennifer Griffin currently serves as a national security correspondent for FOX News Channel . She joined FNC in October 1999 as a Jerusalem-based correspondent.