We are constantly told that we could get so many wonderful, super-fantastic things done if only both sides would lay down their ideological blah blah blah blah and work together for yada yada yada. Well, welcome to the VA. How’s that working out for you?"Work together"? What account of Republicans screwing veterans would you prefer -- the most recent, or some vintage?
It is absolutely true that the VA was plagued with problems before Obama came into office and Republicans who talk a lot about how much they love the military are open to criticism as a result. But Democrats talk about how much they love the government. And everything they need to make the VA work is available to them. And yet, it’s a mess and has been a mess for decades. Why? Maybe it’s a mess because such messes come with the territory when you put bureaucrats in charge. Criminality, as alleged, may not be inevitable (though I’m not so sure). But rationing, incompetence, bloat, waste, rent-seeking and a sort of legal corruption certainly are.This is a perfect reductio ad wingnut: If a government agency has problems, it's proof that government can't do anything right, including things that governments pretty much have to do, like veterans' services. Who's going to take them over, the guys who run the outsourced prison industry? As I've said before, normal people can easily imagine what a for-profit medical corporation would do with uninsured veterans -- shove their gurneys in the general direction of a county hospital, probably, or secretly grind them down into pet food.
Nobody in their right mind believes veterans' care should be privatized. But cases of government mismanagement are windows of opportunity for conservatives, just as ambulances bring out ambulance chasers, and so here's Goldberg like Paul Newman at the beginning of The Verdict, except less in need of mouthwash than Shreddies, pressing privatization cards into the hands of the bereaved. Though, as I recall it, Newman's character was ashamed of himself.
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