Veterans for Common Sense

September 4, 2008, Minneapolis, MN – World War II veteran Don Holden said Wednesday that the sacrifices made by World War II soldiers which helped establish the U.S. as one of the most admired countries in the world was squandered by the Bush administration and would continue to be squandered under the leadership of presidential candidate John McCain (R-Ariz.).

“The thing that disgusts us veterans is that we left things in pretty good shape after World War II, but now the U.S. and the Bush administration have alienated people around the world,” Holden, who lives in Portland, said over the phone. “If I were the family of those troops, I would have to ask, ‘Why? Why after five years?'”

Holden may be asking that question himself. His grandson, who is a member of the National Guard, served for a year in Iraq. It moved Holden, who calls himself an “Eisenhower Republican,” to support Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.

“Obama understands that the National Guard was never meant to be used as a foreign occupier,” Holden said. “And McCain wants to keep us at war.”

McCain will officially accept his nomination for president when he addresses the Republican National Convention Thursday night.

September 5, 2008 – Suicides among active-duty soldiers this year are on pace to exceed both last year’s all-time record and, for the first time since the Vietnam War, the rate among the general U.S. population, Army officials said yesterday.

Ninety-three active-duty soldiers had killed themselves through the end of August, the latest data show. A third of those cases are under investigation by the Armed Forces Medical Examiner’s Office. In 2007, 115 soldiers committed suicide.

Failed relationships, legal and financial troubles, and the high stress of wartime operations in Iraq and Afghanistan are the leading factors linked to the suicides, Army officials said.

The officials voiced concern that an array of Army programs aimed at suicide prevention has not checked a years-long rise in the suicide rate. Still, they said, the number of deaths probably would have climbed even more without such efforts.

“What does success look like? Frankly, we do not know,” said Col. Eddie Stephens, deputy director for human resources under the Army’s personnel division.

The Army’s suicide rate has increased from 12.4 per 100,000 in 2003, when the Iraq war started, to 18.1 per 100,000 last year. Suicide attempts by soldiers have also increased since 2003, Stephens said.

This year the death rate is likely to exceed that of a demographically similar segment of the U.S. population — 19.5 per 100,000, Stephens said. According to service officials, the last time that occurred was in the late 1960s during the Vietnam War, when the United States had a draft Army that suffered from serious discipline problems. In 1973, the nation created an all-volunteer force that has generally enjoyed an above-average level of mental health, a condition contradicted by the recent rise in suicides.

The latest Army prevention efforts include the hiring of hundreds of new mental health providers, the production of an interactive video on the subject, to be released this fall, and the introduction of an intervention program aimed at teaching junior Army leaders not only suicidal symptoms but actions that can prevent suicides.

The ACE program includes handing out laminated cards decorated with the ace of hearts that advise three steps — “ask,” “care” and “escort” — that spell “ACE”: Ask your buddy direct questions such as “Are you thinking of killing yourself?”; care for your buddy by taking away weapons; and escort your buddy to a military chaplain or health provider.

“Take away the weapon if someone is playing Russian roulette with it. . . . Unfortunately, people have not always done that,” said Brig. Gen. Rhonda Cornum, the Army’s assistant surgeon general for force protection. Army prevention programs to this point have not trained soldiers adequately in what to do after they learn a comrade is in crisis, she added.

Another measure that Cornum said has proven effective is for Army commanders in combat zones to take a more “humanistic” approach and to return soldiers home so they can deal with personal crises and thereby “live another day to keep serving.”

Col. Scott McBride, commander of the 1st Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division, said such measures have helped him prevent any suicides among his 4,000 soldiers, who have been deployed in northern Iraq for the past year.

“If they’re having a problem at home and we can keep a family together, reduce stress by sending a soldier home so he can take care of that problem, we’re doing that,” McBride said yesterday by video link from Iraq.

September 4, 2008, St. Paul, MN – Paul Galanti won’t be in the Xcel Energy Center tonight to witness his longtime friend accept the Republican nomination for president.

He was invited, but he chose instead to continue his work in Richmond recruiting veterans to vote for his “guy,” U.S. Sen. John McCain.

“Everyone I know who’s ever worn a uniform will vote for McCain ” and each of them controls two or three other votes, said Galanti, who leads the presumptive GOP nominee’s veteran outreach effort in Virginia.

He is certain that many of the state’s 807,000 veterans favor McCain’s brand of stiff-jawed fortitude and experience to lead the country as a wartime president.

But political analysts warn there are reasons to believe those votes may not be as assured as they have been for past Republicans.

One is the “general frustration with the war in Iraq,” which could dampen enthusiasm among a voting bloc that is GOP-leaning, said Quentin Kidd, a political science professor at Christopher Newport University in Newport News.

“The military vote is more in play than it has been in recent elections,” Kidd said.

Perhaps sensing that, Democratic Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign has established its own veteran-outreach network to court voters in Virginia and beyond.

Still, McCain is viewed as the favorite among that group, and experts give the Arizona senator an advantage in vote-rich Hampton Roads, home to 110,000 military personnel.

Galanti, who like McCain was a prisoner of war in Vietnam, believes that veterans and active-duty men and women will relate to McCain’s narrative and that their votes will help deliver Virginia for him.

McCain, a naval aviator, was held as a POW for more than five years after his aircraft was shot down over North Vietnam in October 1967. His captors did not provide proper medical care to treat the injuries he suffered escaping the plane. Both his arms and one leg were broken. They also repeatedly beat him and kept him in solitary confinement most of the time.

After his release, he continued his Navy career, retiring in 1981. His honors include the Silver Star, Bronze Star, Legion of Merit, Purple Heart and Distinguished Flying Cross.

Galanti, a retired naval commander who spent 30 years in the military, including nearly seven years as a POW, predicted McCain will win a decisive victory over Obama.

“I don’t think it’s going to be close,” he said.

The large population of veterans and active-duty military seems to favor McCain.

America has 24 million veterans, and as many as 70 million citizens may be eligible for some type of veterans benefits. Another 2.3 million people are active-duty military members or their voting-age family members living in the United States or abroad.

Those voters are hardly monolithic, however.

“Veterans are a diverse lot, and you have to look at them and their situations in many different ways,” said University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato.

Individual veterans will likely factor their gender, race and era of service into how they vote, Sabato said, mentioning that black veterans “admire” McCain but will be “strongly in Obama’s corner.”

But blacks account for only about one-tenth of the nation’s veteran population and one-fifth of the active-duty ranks.

By comparison, whites are fourth-fifths of all living veterans and make up three-quarters of the total active-duty population.

Those numbers reflect overall population trends. While polling shows Obama with a strong lead among blacks, McCain remains ahead among whites, who are a larger share of the electorate.

Likewise, the candidates’ ages seem to provide a boost to McCain, 72, among veterans and a boost to Obama, 47, among active-duty personnel, if primary voting trends and polling hold true.

Roughly 40 percent of veterans are over 65, while the average age of active-duty men and women is 28. Almost half of all active-duty personnel are between 22 and 30.

For Mary Frances “Francie” Golden, a Navy veteran from Virginia Beach, McCain’s military background makes him the right choice.

“Where the rubber meets the road, I need someone to make the hard decisions that has experience and expertise in the military,” said Golden, who served under McCain in 1977.

She said that McCain’s presence in the Senate when her husband and daughter were deployed to Iraq in 2002 gave her some reassurance they would return safely.

Obama, who has never served in the military, had not yet been elected to his U.S. Senate seat from Illinois when Congress in 2002 passed a resolution authorizing military action in the Middle East.

A candidate’s military service, or lack thereof, isn’t always an indicator of how veterans and active-duty personnel will vote.

Military voters favored President Bush, who served in the Air National Guard, over U.S. Sen. John Kerry, a Vietnam veteran, by a margin of 57 percent to 41 percent, according to 2004 exit polls.

This time, voters with military backgrounds favor McCain over Obama by a 56-37 margin, according to a recent Rasmussen Reports poll.

By contrast, troops stationed overseas have contributed more money while out of the country to Obama than to McCain this election cycle, according to a recent analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics.

Not conceding Virginia’s military vote, the Obama campaign is reaching out to those voters through events such as Michelle Obama’s meeting with military spouses in Norfolk last month.

Frank McKinney, a Virginia Beach Vietnam vet and one-time Republican, favors Obama.

McKinney, who retired as a commander after 30 years in the Navy, said Obama “puts the interests of the troops who have sacrificed so much at the front of his priorities,” including the Democrat’s pledge to bring home many in the Middle East if elected.

September 4, 2008, St. Paul, MN – For military men and women serving outside of their home states, the question of voting isn’t always whether they want to, sometimes it’s whether their votes will be counted.

Deployment status and distance from native soil are but two of the impediments that can hinder soldiers, sailors and airmen from exercising their right to vote.

If figures from the 2004 presidential election are any indication, those barriers have severely limited voter participation among enlisted men and women.

About 1 million military members requested ballots that year, but only 330,000 or so were returned and counted, according to the federal Election Assistance Commission.

“That’s about a 70 percent failure rate,” said commission Chairwoman Rosemary Rodriguez.

Among military members stationed domestically, the 56 percent voting success rate is considerably higher, she said.

How those numbers compare to previous election cycles is difficult to gauge; the commission was not established until 2002 and not funded until 2004.

Roughly 6 million American military members and civilians are covered by the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, a federal law governing absentee ballot voting in federal elections. Of those, about 2.8 million are military members, their dependents and federal civilian employees, while the rest are citizens living abroad.

In its own armed forces voter participation surveys, the U.S. Department of Defense comes to a different conclusion. Its figures show that nearly two-thirds of those who tried to vote successfully cast a ballot.

Regardless of which agency’s numbers are more accurate, officials with both agree that one of the basic challenges for that population is submitting an absentee ballot.

Complicating matters are laws that vary from state to state about how to transmit absentee ballots to voters and receive them back, Rodriguez said.

This year, the Virginia General Assembly passed a law to allow Americans covered by the absentee voting act to receive ballots electronically. But they must be mailed back.

September 3, 2008, Molalla, OR – The Portland Tribune and Peter Korn have provided an uncommonly great service to Oregon Veterans and their families in the paper of August 21, 2008. Even the Oregonian Newspaper seems to be pussy wussy about the subject.

Peter Korn points out that the battle Veterans suicide rate is at least twice that of non-Veterans with the rate of young war Veterans between 18 and 24 to be about seven times more than civilians. These are the guys doing the killing and the fighting.

This is far beyond “battle fatigue” or PTSD, the modern term. As a WWII Infantry Scout and point man with PTSD and as a physician who has treated at least 400 Vietnam PTSD battle Veterans, I think I may have the answer. This is shocking even to me. I may even have a partial “cure”.

The Army Infantry wanted 18 to 20 year old robust fighting “men” who would follow orders without questioning and charge a machine gun etc. without hesitation. If anything got in the way, kill it. These are the guys with the highest suicide rate.

I was in an Intelligence and Recon section of 6 privates and a sergeant. We were the Pointmen and Forward Observers. These jobs are the most dangerous and almost suicidal. I wonder at my own survival but I paid the price like any of my fellow pointmen or scouts. Most never got to come home.

My comrades were 18 or 19. I was the “old man”. I was 21 and 22. None of the young guys were able to talk of our mutual experiences. That is PTSD.

The Army Infantry wants its “men” to be macho when attacking or even off duty. Army beer helped but we ended up with a bunch of alcoholics and lung cancer from tobacco. One could not admit fear even to your closest buddy in your foxhole.

I read that the Army has changed. I scarcely believe that, and from what I read in The Tribune the Veterans want nothing to do with the VA Hospital System which doesn’t seem to have any idea what or how to treat some 300 thousand PTSD Veterans from the current extravaganza going on in Iraq etc.

Yes, I have PTSD. I earned it the hard way. I still have nightmares and I know that sound I hear in the night is a German Tiger Tank and the loud noise is heavy artillery and as I grab for my rifle and can’t get it I wake up in a sweat.

I got over some of the PTSD by hard work either as a heavy construction millwright or working for two doctor degrees. I still take medications to sleep after 60 plus years from the tanks and the bombs.

According to some, there is something worse than getting seriously wounded or picking up scraps of a buddy. That is killing another human even if he was trying to kill you. If it is women or children it’s even worse.

An Infantry slogan could be KILL OR DIE. That is the basis for PTSD and Veterans Suicide.

August 30, 2008 – The United States Office of Special Councel has decided to pursue a federal whistleblower complaint filed in May against Prescott’s Northern Arizona Veterans Affairs Health Care System, said James Mitchell, chief of staff and director of communications for the OSC.

Registered nurse Jerri Bedell said she was fired from the Prescott VA’s Community Living Center two days after writing a lengthy letter to a supervisor outlining her concerns about abuse and neglect of veteran patients.

Bedell – who has a master’s degree in nursing with additional certification in geriatric care and more than 20 years experience nursing and teaching – worked at the center for three years.

Mitchell said the OSC assigned an investigator in its San Francisco office to the case on Aug. 25. The OSC investigates cases only that it believes it has adequate evidence of proving, Mitchell explained.

“It’s possible our investigator would go to Prescott in the course of the inquiry,” Mitchell added.

He said the investigation – which is concerned only with whether Bedell was fired in retaliation for complaining about abuse and neglect of veterans at the Prescott VA – could take months to complete, depending on the total case load of the individual investigator and the complexity of the allegations.

Meanwhile, Mitchell said, a second case involving disclosures of neglect and abuse that Bedell made in her whistleblower retaliation case is still developing.

“It may be referred to the Secretary of the Department of Veterans’ Affairs for investigation,” Mitchell said.

“Our first task is to see if we can make a substantial likelihood finding, which means we believe there is a better than even chance that the whistleblower’s disclosures are true,” Mitchell explained.

Because of the information contained in Bedell’s retaliation complaint, the OSC asked her to file a “disclosure” complaint in early June.

Prescott VA’s director, Susan Angell, has declined to speak directly to The Daily Courier. But when a staff member to Sen. John McCain asked Angell about some of Bedell’s charges, Angell – in a letter that The Daily Courier obtained – said that the Prescott VA fully investigated Bedell’s allegations.

“Most of the allegations were unsubstantiated,” Angell wrote. “Several allegations were found to be essentially a difference of opinion … Other allegations were found to be substantiated in part and corrective action was taken.”

Bedell denies that her complaints were fully investigated.

The Daily Courier has been looking into Bedell’s charges of abuse and neglect at the Prescott VA since June, after learning of Bedell’s firing.

During the past three months, The Daily Courier has spoken with four nurses with knowledge of the center’s caregiving practices.

The Daily Courier also spoke to more than two dozen patients, family members and other Prescott VA staff.

In addition, The Daily Courier has examined nearly 100 pages of documents, letters and e-mails, including Bedell’s federal whistleblower prohibited personnel practice complaint as well as the federal whistleblower “disclosure” document that federal officials asked Bedell to file.

Nurses, veteran patients and relatives of veteran patients at the Prescott VA say some of the nursing staff there – mainly at the center – abuse, neglect and overmedicate patients – actions the nurses say have sometimes lead to injury and in some cases may even have hastened death.

Prescott VA officials say the employees making the complaints are “disgruntled” and that family members are misinterpreting what they see.

The officials say every patient at the Prescott VA gets the same high-quality care and they flatly deny any abuse or retaliation is taking place.

VA CONFIRMS SOME PATIENT CARE PROBLEMS

However, during a recent interview with The Daily Courier, the same officials – Associate Director for Patient Care Services Marianne Locke and the center’s medical director, Dr. Jyoti Walavalkar, with Prescott VA spokesman Frank Cimorelli present – confirmed at least some of the accusations.

For example, Bedell in her whistleblower complaint says that a nursing staff member shoved a wheelchair-bound patient’s injured foot into a wall so hard that doctors had to reset the pins in the patient’s foot.

The term “nursing staff” at the Prescott VA refers to registered nurses, licensed practical nurses and certified nursing assistants.

Two other employees that The Daily Courier interviewed backed up Bedell’s charge.

Locke confirmed that the incident took place but said the employee responsible for the incident no longer works there. When told that nurses say the man is still there, Locke said she would find out the man’s status and get back to The Daily Courier. But VA officials later declined to comment further about that specific incident.

Officials did say that the Prescott VA takes situations like these “very seriously” and reviews them to assess and fix any personnel and training issues involving patient safety.

Bedell and the other nurses also said three veterans were overmedicated so badly for constipation that they were found laying in liquid pools of their own excrement from their armpits to their knees. Their explosive diarrhea continued until the medicine wore off.

Locke and Walavalker also confirmed that these incidents took place. They said a pharmacist and several nurses were retrained as a result. They also said that nurses should use their own judgment in determining how much medication to give.

The nurses who spoke with The Daily Courier also said some nursing staff members refuse to help patients.

“We’ve had issues with (some of the nursing staff) and we’ve addressed that appropriately,” Locke said.

NURSES SAY NEGLECT CONTINUES

But the nurses The Daily Courier has spoken with say problems with patient care continue. They said a few of the nursing staff deliberately treat patients badly while low staffing levels and poor communication among staff members lead to the kind of benign neglect from other staff members that endangers patients.

Examples of their concerns over the past few years – which are also alleged in Bedell’s whistleblower complaints – include:

• Patients left sitting in urine and feces for so long that they are found with their private areas sore and reddened or with crusted urine in their pelvic area.

• Nursing staff who sometimes handle patients roughly and openly mock them.

• Nursing staff who falsify medication and treatment records to show that treatments have been applied to patients or medicine given to them when it hasn’t been. This includes charting – verifying that a staff member has completed a patient care task – as long as two days ahead of time.

A Sept. 5, 2007, memo from supervisor Karen Martin to Bedell, which is included in Bedell’s whistleblower complaint, asked Bedell to document her witnessing of “staff pre-pouring meds and doing other work-arounds.”

“We want this documented so that we may start corrective measures,” Martin wrote.

• Patients found with pills scattered in their bed sheets or left laying on their nightstands.

• Missing medications.

• Staff overmedicating patients, sometimes without their knowledge, for the convenience of the staff – a practice known in the medical community as “chemical restraint.” In one case such overmedication resulted in a patient’s inability to eat or drink because of excessive sedation, Bedell said.

• Too frequent use of foley catheters in patients who don’t need or want them, leading to bloody, overflowing catheters that cause infection, pain and needless use of patient restraints. A foley catheter is a thin tube inserted into the bladder to drain urine.

• A nurse who accidentally left a cap on a foley catheter when she inserted it so no urine drained for several hours until the next shift discovered the problem.

• Two nurses who accidentally gave forced air instead of oxygen to a patient who had just returned from surgery.

• A patient who slept on a blanket because his sheets were dirty from not being changed.

• Nursing staff who put patients to bed after dinner without taking their clothes off, who hang up on patients when they put their call lights on and who take excessive time to answer call lights because they are chatting or surfing the Internet.

• A nurse who initially ignored a patient with a painful herpes chest wound saying, “What does it matter. He’s dying anyway.”

• An Aug. 19, 2007, memo – which also is part of Bedell’s whistleblower complaint – to housekeeping supervisor Steven Peterson, complaining about filthy rooms: “I just can’t tell you how disgusting some of the patients’ rooms are when I come in to work … especially the floors, sinks, bathrooms, toilets. We find things under the beds that have been there for days. Some of the sinks and mirrors look (like) they haven’t been washed in days. The floors are sticky around the patients’ beds. Bedside tables are never cleaned except by nursing staff.”

Peterson replied in a memo to Bedell the next day that “this will be checked into immediately.”

VA officials, in responding to questions about patient care at the center, declined to answer specific questions about employees or patients.

However, Cimorelli explained that when anyone reports an incident, the Prescott VA investigates it thoroughly.

He also said the center’s nursing staff “maintains appropriate standards of care.”

Locke also said the Prescott VA is not abusing or neglecting patients.

“These things are not happening here,” Locke said. “We have people who would like to see us in a bad light.”

Cimorelli said that when “adverse” events do happen at the center, staff reviews them carefully so they can learn from them.

He also said all medication errors, including medications not being given to patients, are “tracked and trended” and spot observations of staff passing medications also are conducted.

“Identified concerns are addressed immediately,” Cimorelli said, and staff always looks for opportunities for improvement. He said the Prescott VA’s medication error rate for the second quarter of fiscal year 2008 was “very low.”

DIFFERING VIEWS ON TERMINATION

Bedell’s termination notice, signed by Angell and obtained by The Daily Courier, said Bedell was fired “because on several occasions you have removed foley catheters from patients without orders to do so.”

However, Locke – an RN herself – and Dr. Walavalker emphatically stated in a July 3 interview with The Daily Courier that a nurse should immediately remove a bloody, overflowing catheter from a patient and does not need “orders” to do so.

“We have told the nurses to use their judgment,” Walavalker said.

One of the two patients that Bedell removed bloody catheters from wrote a letter to Bedell thanking her for her actions, which the patient says were done at his insistence. The patient’s letter is part of Bedell’s whistleblower complaint.

But Locke said, “That situation was investigated and found not to be as the nurse described it.” Locke declined to elaborate.

Bedell said she carefully monitored both patients after removing their catheters.

She says the last time she removed a catheter was on Jan. 28 and the issue never came up again until she was fired in April – two days after writing a lengthy email to Locke alleging patient mistreatment and that staff often falsifies records.

Prescott VA officials deny that they retaliate against anyone.

One VA employee, who asked that her name not be used, said Angell recently held a staff meeting during which she told employees that if they didn’t like the conditions at the Prescott VA, they should leave.

Cimorelli said Angell often meets with groups of employees.

“One of the areas she discusses is the privilege of serving veterans,” Cimorelli wrote in an email. “This privilege requires a high degree of commitment and compassion by employees. If this level of expectation is not comfortable for an employee, she asks them to think about making choices that fit their own individual needs.”

STAFFING SHORTAGE

Many of the center’s problems stem from an overworked and exhausted staff pushed to the limit by too many patients with increasingly serious health issues, the nurses told The Daily Courier.

They say morale at the center has plummeted, turnover has risen, and a tense climate of fear has taken hold.

Locke agrees that the center is struggling with a serious nursing staff shortage. An internal VA management memo that The Daily Courier obtained called the shortage a “crisis.”

Locke said that between the center and the acute care facility, which is in a different building, 10 nursing staff positions are unfilled.

She says they are working to fill the shortage by hiring temporary nurses and by asking staff to work overtime as well as by not operating at full capacity. The center has a total of 85 beds, Locke said, but fills only 60 to 65 beds.

Locke said the center typically has one nurse – either a registered nurse or a licensed practical nurse – and one to two certified nursing assistants on each of five wings. But, Locke said, sometimes supervisors have to send even those nurses and CNAs elsewhere to help out.

A memo, entitled “Staffing Issues and Patient Safety” that Locke sent to staff this past spring said officials had decided to divert admissions to the center as much as possible and to share staffing between units.

“But this is not reliable, as all units are experiencing staffing issues…,” Locke wrote.

NOT OUR FIRST RODEO

Cimorelli, the Prescott VA’s spokesman, said the Prescott VA would weather any investigation that any reports of abuse may prompt.

“This isn’t our first rodeo,” Cimorelli said. “We know what it is to deal with Congressionals,” he continued, referring to members of Congress.

Prescott VA director Angell does, too.

She was the associate director at Bay Pines VA Medical Center in Florida in 2004 when several Congressional committees and the VA Inspector General’s office conducted investigations there.

That round of investigations turned up mismanagement by senior staff at Bay Pines and lead to an upper management shake-up there.

Before the VA Inspector General’s investigation of Bay Pines concluded, Angell volunteered for a temporary assignment in Afghanistan.

According to the Aug. 11, 2004, final report on Bay Pines by the Office of Inspector General, “In many areas of (the facility), a culture of safety and accountability was not evident. Communication that was important for patient safety was not discussed out of fear of adverse consequences.”

The report also said that, “Senior leadership needed to better manage and administer facility operations … Factors such as … employee mistrust in leadership’s ability to manage and treat them fairly, morale challenges, and a growing workload demand generated by a rapidly expanding veteran community contributed to lapses in providing timely care and ensuring administrative accountability.”

The report about Bay Pines, where Angell was second in command, stressed that, “One important tenet of a culture of safety is the ability for an employee at any level to feel empowered to express a view against the authority gradient without fear of adverse consequences.” The Bay Pines report did not specifically name Angell although it did refer to an interview officials had with the associate director.

The Prescott VA employees who The Daily Courier spoke with say the same mismanagement that investigators found at Bay Pines is happening in Prescott.

Mary Garrison, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 2401 at the Prescott VA, says management there wouldn’t have so many problems if it would accept responsibility for its poor supervisors.

“They don’t even want (people to file) reports,” Garrison said. “And they badger the employees that (do) file the complaints.”

She says most employees with complaints simply give up after awhile.

Many of the people The Daily Courier spoke with for this article said the Prescott VA has plenty of good employees. But there are problems, they say, and the VA needs to fix them.

“There are good staff there and basically the care is good,” Bedell told The Daily Courier. “The staff that are bad are few in number; the staff that are overworked and stressed are many and (they are) making mistakes.”

VA spokesman Cimorelli said the Prescott VA would deal with any problems it has.

“If there’s problems here, then we are going to address it,” Cimorelli said. “If there’s sensitivity issues, then we’re going to address that, too.”

September 2, 2008, St. Paul, MN – Has anyone noticed that Sarah Palin’s central claim to political fame is a fraud? She represents herself as a fiscal conservative who abhors pork-barrel projects and said no thanks to the “Bridge to Nowhere” — a $398 million span that would have linked Ketchikan, Alaska, to its airport across the Tongass Narrows. But as mayor of Wasilla (pop. 9,780), she hired a Washington lobbyist to bring home the bacon. And as a candidate for governor just two years ago, she supported both the Ketchikan bridge and the congressional earmark that would have paid most of its cost.

I know, we’re not supposed to pay attention to such inconvenient details. We’re supposed to be dazzled by how unaffected she is, how plain-spoken, how “genuine.”

Indeed, if you don’t get hung up on her actual record, Palin simply is who she is. It’s not her fault that she’s a former Miss Wasilla with a campy “Northern Exposure” vibe, doctrinaire social-conservative views and no discernible qualifications for being vice president. It’s undeniable that people in Alaska apparently like her well enough, though they seem to have been even more shocked than the rest of us when she was named to the Republican ticket. In any event, she’s not the one who created this farcical situation.

We learned last week that John McCain is not who he is — not, at least, who he claims to be. The steady, straight-talking, country-first statesman his campaign has been selling is a fictional character. The real McCain is either alarmingly cynical or dangerously reckless.

You will recall that McCain gave the same prime criterion for choosing a running mate that every presidential candidate gives: someone who is ready to step in as president if, heaven forbid, the need arises. Barack Obama echoed those words before picking Joe Biden, who is about as prepared as a vice presidential candidate could ever be.

You will also recall that McCain and his supporters have been lecturing us about the grave and urgent dangers our country faces — Islamic fundamentalism, the resurgence of Russia and other geopolitical threats. In a menacing world, McCain says, he will keep America safe.

So, at 72 and with a history of cancer, how could McCain choose a vice presidential nominee who has, let’s face it, zero experience in foreign affairs? Being the nominal commander in chief of the Alaska National Guard doesn’t count, unless you think Vladimir Putin is about to order an invasion across the Bering Strait.

At a time when the nation also confronts enormous challenges at home, Palin has, um, slightly more than zero experience in domestic affairs. The reason most people move to Alaska is that it’s different from the rest of the country. Salmon fishing and snowmobile racing are not front-page news in Ohio, Pennsylvania or Florida.

McCain’s political calculation in choosing Palin is obvious. Social conservatives, who had been unexcited by his candidacy, are ecstatic that he has picked a running mate who staunchly opposes abortion, favors the teaching of “intelligent design” in the public schools and generally embraces the agenda of the religious right.

I have my doubts about the other objective of McCain’s gambit: to win the votes of blue-collar women who supported Hillary Clinton. For one thing, these voters disagree sharply with Palin on most of the issues. For another, initial indications are that many women were insulted at the notion that they would automatically swoon over any candidate who happened to have two “X” chromosomes. Republicans tend to have a comically simplistic view of how “identity politics” works. They should recall how African Americans reacted when Clarence Thomas was named to the Supreme Court.

Whatever the political impact, so much for the John McCain we thought we knew. In choosing Palin, he cynically did the kind of thing that his party is always accusing Democrats of doing: He selected a running mate based on her potential ability to appeal to targeted segments of the electorate rather than for her honestly assessed ability to lead the nation should the occasion arise.

The other thing we learned about McCain is that he is willing to take an enormous gamble based on limited information. He only met Palin once before summoning her for a final interview. He realized he needed to shake up the presidential race, and that’s what he did. But we are reminded, if we did not realize it before, that the three things not to expect from a McCain presidency are caution, prudence and a willingness to always put the nation’s interests above his own.