VA - what FEMA has morphed into under the Bush Administration

The sad legacy of the Bush Administration/Republican-controlled Congress will be summed up in two anagrams – FEMA and VA. Because of the lack of the most minute amount of congressional oversight and the need to distribute political rewards through a policy which should now be termed “hackism,” this administration has shown its callous regard for what happens to people AFTER failed policies strike their lives.
The latest fiasco – how Veterans Administration is handling wounded soldiers and the nonchalant bureaucracy that denies or delays needed treatment – is too sad to often contemplate. At the head of the cabinet department is nothing more than a political hack, Jim Nicholson, who got the job in 2005 because … he was the former chairman of the Republican National Committee. It is a political payoff, not done to better the system, but as a payoff for re-election.
His head, along with every general in charge at Walter Reed and other facilities, should roll. Nicholson’s comment on the Bob Woodruff’s ABC News Special (“To Iraq and Back”) made my stomach turn in terms of too much indifference and protection of the bureauracy. He learned nothing from that other political hack-in-charge, FEMA’s Michael Brown.
This, and similar situations, where those in charge have run amok and failed miserably in their administrative duties, was one major reason why the GOP was tossed out last November by voters. At least someone is asking hard questions and demanding answers – albeit a little to darn late.