V.A. “You Can’t Fire Your Way To Excellence”

by JASmius



That's true, as far as it goes.  Of course, as far as it goes isn't very far, and firing the crooks is the first step towards replacing them with non-crooks, and that would presumably be a step in the right direction.  Something in which Sloan Gibson clearly is not interested:

A Veterans Affairs official on Wednesday defended the department’s decision to demote but not fire two senior executives who collected $400,000 in a relocation scheme, and pushed back sharply against lawmakers for pressing for punishment rather than accountability for the VA workforce.

“In my many years in the private sector, I’ve never encountered an organization where leadership was measured by how many people you fired,” Deputy Secretary Sloan Gibson told the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee.

“You can’t fire your way to excellence.”

A classic Obama-esque rhetorical strawman, that.  Nobody (outside of William Wayne Zimmerman III, anyway) has said or is saying that leadership is measured by how many people you fire.  But in the case of two senior VA executives, Diana Rubens and Kimberly Graves, who fired two lower level regional managers for no other reason than to take the positions for themselves and pocket nearly a half million dollars in relocation expenses so they could move to more desirable locations, termination does seem like a step that a true leader would take.  Particularly since there may be criminal charges filed against Miss Rubens and Miss Graves for their actions.

But you know what they say about a company culture being set by the boss.  Sloan's defiant defense of this outrageously corrupt conduct speaks volumes for the V.A.'s culture:

But Gibson, reading from prepared testimony, said the inspector general’s office exaggerated the actions, which the watchdog’s office has referred to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution.

“We won’t administer punishment based on IG opinions, referrals to the Department of Justice, recycled and embellished media accounts, or external pressure,” Gibson said. “It’s simply not right, and it’s not in the best interest of the veterans we serve.” He called the cases “failures in judgment” and not “ethical breaches.”

What does it have to do with "the veterans we serve"?  Especially given that the way you "serve veterans" is by letting them literally wither on the vine until they expire and then covering it up?  And how does deliberate fraud - which, again, is being criminally investigated - constitute merely "judgment failure" and not an ethical breach - which is itself a crass euphemism?  How about asking the two lower level regional managers who got shitcanned for no reason other than Rubens' and Graves' greed how they feel about their "failures in judgment"?  I'd say those two women are keeping company with my old friend Zim as far as they're concerned.

This also, in turn, helps explain why there has been no reform of and at the V.A. in the year and a half since the original V.A. scandal broke.  And why would there be when the culture in that agency is indistinguishable from the the imperious, morally supremacist, royally entitled mentality that permeats the entire Obama Regime?  If you want genuine reform at the V.A., you're going to have to wield your ax a lot higher in the chain of command than Sloan F'ing Gibson.