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Feb. 18, 2024 - Stew Peters Show
57:24
Challenging VA Leadership: Accountability and Oversight
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How are they being supported to provide the best service possible to our nation's heroes?
Or so, that's what we're called.
Well, we're going to further that discussion today because there was some new information that came to light earlier this week.
So stick with us.
Don't go away.
We start now.
Hey everybody and welcome here to the next episode of the Richard Leonard show.
I want to, before we get started, say that I hope everyone had a great Valentine's Day, if that's something that you observe.
If not, I hope you had a great Wednesday that day.
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Okay, so let's get started here because I had no intention on continuing the conversation from last week about how the people who are taking care of veterans are treated at work.
Partly because these are the folks that are showing up to work on a daily basis to provide information Our veterans, the men and women who chose to wear a uniform, provide them care.
And the VA touts all the time that they have a high quality of care.
We know that that's not always the case.
And so when these things come to light, I think that it's important that we bring them out to the public, to the people.
There was an article posted earlier this week on Military Times And I read through it and they're claiming that Secretary McDonough blatantly ignored some sexual harassment allegations or claims or whatever you want to call it.
And now, now that we are entering election season, or maybe some would say we've been in election season for quite some time now, that now they're choosing to do something about it.
Because, as we know, the public faith in the VA has been plummeting.
And so, why would they now bring this to light?
Well, I think, personally, that it is coming to light now because somebody is poking the Secretary.
Somebody is poking the powers that be to do something about this and to acknowledge it and to talk about it.
Not only that, but the whistleblowers have gone public.
And so now they have to.
They have to acknowledge it.
They have to do something about it.
They have to play the game.
So what I'd like to do is go through this article in Military Times and kind of dissect it.
It's pretty straightforward.
And so I think we should do that now.
Here we go.
So it reads, House Republicans on Wednesday, so that was the 14th of February, just this last Wednesday, accused Veterans Affairs Secretary Dennis McDonough of ignoring claims of sexual harassment and employee intimidation at the department's diversity office.
And these missteps, they believe, have undermined the public and employee faith in the department.
We already know that.
We talked about that last week.
And quite frankly, we talk about these types of things very often.
McDonough acknowledged serious leadership problems at the Office of Resolution, Management, Diversity, and Inclusion in recent years, but insisted that the issue was not ignored or covered up.
He also vowed improvements to prevent the problems in the months to come.
Well, isn't that just dandy?
He promises, promises that this is never going to happen again.
At least not in the months to come.
How can you promise that?
Democratic lawmakers blasted their Republican colleagues for what they see as exaggerating and politicizing the department's problem for election year attention instead of working to fix the issues.
Well, we'll get further into that.
They describe the chain of events, so to speak, a little bit later in the article.
The hearing before the House Veterans Affairs Committee came one day after the House lawmakers impeached Homeland Secretary Mayorkas along party lines and the culmination of months of congressional investigations into the handling of U.S. border security policies.
So I think what they're trying to outline here is that...
Somebody, whether it's Republicans or Democrats, left or right, doesn't matter.
Somebody is trying to clear up issues, put them into the light for political gain because we are in an election year.
However, here's my take on this and why I believe that they think it's important.
And it's because...
It's not because we're in election year.
I believe that everybody involved in this, both sides of the aisle, VA top to bottom, as far as leadership goes, wants to see this swept under the rug because they don't want their reputation tarnished any further.
But the whistleblowers and the alleged victims of said harassment have gone public and they have filed complaints and they have been talking.
I don't know that it matters that we're in an election year.
The people are talking.
And so if they ignore it and sweep it under the rug like they have been doing, that's a huge problem.
Let's continue.
Let's see here.
Let's go above that.
With partisan tension still simmering on Wednesday, McDonough was the next cabinet secretary to face congressional anger.
Even more scrutiny promised in the coming weeks.
I believe that the chairman, Mr.
Bost, who is the chairman of the House Committee on Veterans Affairs, Told the secretary, told Secretary McDonough, this isn't over.
We're having this conversation, but it's not done.
We will find the truth no matter how long it takes.
There he is, says Representative Mike Bost, a Republican from Illinois.
We're going to continue to demand answers from the department and pressure this investigation as far as it goes.
He called the office, Congressman Boast, called the office a broken organization that has been poisoned with toxic culture by bad leaders and called the accusations, evidence, that the VA is broken and dysfunctional.
Folks, this is not a secret.
This is not a secret at all that the VA is dysfunctional and broken.
I still struggle with this idea that this is all a political grab.
If these people who claim they were victimized, which I'm confident that they were because nobody is disputing whether or not that this harassment actually happened, they're just not doing anything about it, not until recently.
But the political grab, it doesn't matter for either side of the aisle.
This thing has to be talked about, resolved, as I said before, because these people are talking publicly.
And that's the biggest problem for the VA in this situation.
That somebody has had enough.
They've had enough of it.
And furthermore...
How ironic is it that this happened in the Office of Diversity Management and Inclusion?
Weird, right?
Let's continue.
The investigation centers on a pair of whistleblowers who worked in the ORMDI. This is that Inclusion Office.
It's up here somewhere, what they really call it.
And accused supervisors of unwanted advances and sending sexually harassing messages to them over several months.
The committee was contacted by the whistleblowers last fall after inaction from the VA officials regarding the complaints.
So, the whistleblowers went to a whole other agency.
The federal government has this Office of Whistleblower Protection Accountability and Whistleblower Protection.
So they went there.
Because why?
Because they emailed and sent complaints up the chain to the Secretary of the VA and got no response.
Weird, right?
But now that they go public and they go to this whistleblower office...
Now they have to do something about it.
And now the secretary, Secretary McDonough, has to answer questions about why he didn't act on this right away.
Right away.
But they're going to talk about the timeline here.
ORMDI Chief, which is the Office on Inclusion and Diversity, the Chief of Staff, Archie Davis, was reassigned last fall after the accusations became public.
Two officials accused of ignoring the whistleblower complaints, Harvey Johnson, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Diversity and Inclusion, And Gina Grosso, who is the Assistant Secretary for Human Resources, have left the department since last November.
Folks, it is halfway through February.
This was last November.
The report came in a lot sooner, or a lot earlier than that.
But this is when they actually started taking action.
The Secretary said in the committee hearing that they started conducting investigations in late October when the allegations were reported in September sometime.
Officials from the Office of Accountability and Whistleblower Protection have recommended Davis be fired and have performance bonuses from recent years recouped.
They also recommended officials rescind bonuses from Mr.
Johnson and note in official records that he resigned while under investigation.
It seems like they want to label him a coward and then take his bonuses back, which I don't disagree with.
In his testimony on Wednesday, Secretary McDonough said the VA does not tolerate sexual harassment and acknowledged that recently ORMDI fell short of that goal in this case.
Well, boy, I'd say we fell short.
Just to be clear, you didn't just fall short.
You completely missed the mark.
Now, Let me be clear about something.
I believe that no matter how poor or good of a leader you are, there are still people that are immoral.
There still are people that are going to pretend like they don't have to follow the rules or they have this idea that they don't have to follow the rules and they can do and say whatever they want.
And in many cases, that's correct.
But when you are in a workplace environment, you can't do or say whatever you want.
You certainly can't anywhere, whether you're in a workplace or not, sexually harass people or harass people at all.
And I just don't...
Why do we have an office for diversity and inclusion?
Why is that a thing?
I still am trying to figure that one out.
Anyway, let's keep going.
I assure veterans...
And this committee that we have treated these allegations of wrongdoing at ORMDI with seriousness, he said.
This is the secretary talking.
VA is strengthening its policies, procedures, personnel, training, and structure to improve its handling of sexual harassment allegations and help eliminate this type of harassment in the future.
Cassandra Law, VA's Assistant Secretary for Human Resources, said officials have already taken steps to fire one individual involved in the investigation and are working on additional disciplinary measures.
But Republican lawmakers took issue with the speed of the response and other parts of McDonough's reaction to the accusations.
Well, absolutely.
Absolutely, he did.
Um...
It's very clear, to me anyway, and maybe I'm off base and maybe I'm wrong or naive or whatever, but if you are the Commander-in-Chief of the Veterans Affairs Department and you are getting emails in your personal work email inbox from employees and they're outlining whether or not they were harassed Or
touched, or whatever these allegations are, why would you not immediately take action on that?
Right?
And Secretary McDonough can't be everywhere all the time.
So people are going to do stupid shit, and they're going to break the rules, and they're going to do whatever they think they can do.
That's why we have leadership.
And so this idea that, well, you know, we're going to conduct an investigation and find out what the truth is before we take any further disciplinary action, to me is kind of a cop-out.
You should have done this in October.
Why are we still talking about this?
The discussion about this today should be, hey, did you hear about what happened a few months ago?
Why was it ignored?
I don't know.
I have an assumption, but I'll leave you to form your own opinion on it.
The committee sent the whistleblower complaints to senior VA leaders in late September.
Here's the timeline.
Several weeks before the whistleblowers officially filed them with his office, McDonough did not respond directly to the committee until mid-November, although some internal investigative work was started in October.
Let's see here.
Okay.
Mr.
Boast called the delay inexcusable.
I agree with that.
Members also questioned McDonough's decision to quietly dismiss Grosso, a move he insisted was not connected to any of the ORMDI failings.
So what you need to know about this, and I watched the three, almost three and a half hours of this committee hearing where they were talking about this, Secretary McDonough had expressed through his testimony to the committee that early September-ish, he had been questioning whether or not this gross old person should remain in their position.
That he was...
He was starting to wonder if things were going to work out, and there were red flags raised for him.
But when this all came out, she was just gone.
She magically disappeared.
Resigned.
But he claims that it had nothing to do with...
This whole incident at the Office of Diversity and Inclusion.
The American people are so upset and angry that no one in the federal government is ever held accountable, said Representative, well I'm going to slaughter this one, Marinette Miller Meeks from Iowa.
I find the conduct of this office to be deplorable.
I think we can all agree to that.
But Committee Democrats said they believe the supervisors at fault are being held accountable, albeit more slowly than they would like.
Ranking member Mark Takano, who is a Democrat from California, said that Republican members publicizing details of the ongoing investigation have damaged that work and hurt efforts for reform.
I don't think so, man.
If you're a victim of this, you want justice or you want accountability as swiftly as possible.
If you're a perpetrator In my opinion, you don't reserve the right to stay anonymous.
This Takano guy wants all these perpetrators, alleged perpetrators, to remain anonymous until they can figure all of this out so nobody's reputation is tarnished and nobody's feelings are hurt.
And my guess is that the goal of Mr.
Takano and his cronies would be to push this out past election season.
To hopefully get these other folks put back into their positions.
Any of these positions that are appointed.
You know, they're all appointed by politicians.
My colleagues across the aisle are being intentionally reckless and cavalier with the truth or willfully blind as they continue to push their narrative of widespread misconduct in ORMDI. Democratic lawmakers also said evidence uncovered in the investigation does not support accusations of widespread mismanagement at VA and criticized claims leadership is unaware or uncaring.
Well, but we all know.
So these claims that leadership in the VA, they don't care, and they're not sensitive to their employees' needs or things happening in their lives.
We know that that's true.
So why are we talking about We're going to tarnish these reputations.
Nobody gives a shit about the reputations being tarnished.
As we discussed last week, VA employees are filling their water bottles and bathroom sinks.
Places are dirty.
They're stinky.
They're not sanitary.
It's not a very good environment for somebody to work.
Imagine being a single parent or just a parent at all and going home to your family every day And not knowing that you have some blood-borne illness or you have some whatever you can contract from dealing with sick people.
If your stuff is not sanitary, it's dirty, it's stinky, and you're not working in safe conditions, especially in a medical facility, of course they're going to be upset.
Of course they're going to be pissed.
I'd be pissed.
Take care of it.
Take care of your people.
So we know that there is already issues of VA employees being mistreated.
And now, this last week, we hear about how VA employees are being sexually harassed, and then the powers that be above these folks do nothing about it until they're forced to, until their hand is forced.
Last month the committee voted nearly unanimously with only Mr.
Takano opposed to subpoena thousands of documents related to the case.
And senior leadership response to the accusations.
Mr.
Bost said officials have not fully complied with that subpoena.
The secretary talked about this also, and he had said that they are providing about 50,000 copies of paperwork and information that have been requested a week.
He didn't have a timeline on when it was going to be put.
All turned in and put down for them to be reviewed by the committee, but said that they were working on it.
And so I do imagine that it is quite the data dump that they're doing, but also how many of these things, and I'm sure every one of these documents are being reviewed before they're sent to the Veteran Affairs Committee for sure.
Okay.
McDonough promised to do so, but several Democrats on the panel said that they now feel conflicted by House subpoenas because of misinformation supplied by Republican colleagues.
Committee leaders had scheduled a meeting later on Wednesday to issue additional subpoenas but canceled them after McDonough's appearance.
Officials have already provided more than 50,000 documents related to the case, including 40 transcribed interviews from VA's internal investigations.
A heavily redacted copy of the Whistleblower Office report was provided to reporters ahead of this committee hearing.
Secretary McDonough would not directly comment on the report but said it highlights the need to update the department's policies on fraternization and appropriate workplace behavior.
The department does not currently have such policy regarding relationships between supervisors and subordinates.
And then also to close it out, Republican members promised further investigation and hearings on the harassment and VA's response in the future.
So, although kind of long, and I apologize, folks, for my stumbling through that.
I've been ill the last few days, but I wanted to get this out to you.
This is all very troubling.
The fact that the Department of Veterans Affairs has no policy about fraternization between you and your boss...
It's extremely troubling because, here's why, to me, it's most troubling.
In the United States military, there are very, very, very strict rules on fraternization with your soldiers, with your subordinates.
So you would think that those types of policies carry over to the VA and all of its properties, all of its buildings, all of its offices.
It's alarming that you can openly, without consequence, date your boss, sleep with your boss, or whatever, and there's no oversight on that?
It's not frowned upon at all?
What other offices in the federal government have no policy about subordinate and supervisor relationships?
Could that be why there's such a seemingly large problem in some federal workplaces about sexual harassment and unwanted things?
Is it possible that this relationship that we are talking about now, that made it into the public eye, Is it possible that it was a supervisor and subordinate and things went wrong?
Maybe one of them was married or one of them was dating somebody else or whatever and then all this stuff turned out to be harassment.
Is that possible?
I think it might be.
So, I would agree, Secretary McDonough, not just this report, But many other things are probably a cause for some updated policies.
Get your people in line.
You see, I believe that this here is another issue of the frontline workers that go to work at VA facilities every day are not always excited.
Not everyone's excited to go to work every day.
But I believe that a lot of people, not everybody, but a large amount of people that work in VA facilities do it because they care.
They do it because these men and women need a high quality of care.
They deserve a high quality of care.
And so I would like to think that not only do people want to go work for the VA because federal employment, it can be profitable.
The benefits are seemingly pretty good.
It seems like a good place to work.
There's definitely job security.
There's more veterans in this country than there ever has been.
But for how long are they going to be motivated to go to work When they're being treated like shit by their supervisors, they're being harassed, they're being touched, they're being dismissed when they ask for simple things that an employer should provide.
It isn't going to be a mediocre experience for long.
It's going to turn to shit real quick.
And so I believe that the VA has a major, major responsibility to handle these types of situations, this one in particular, because it's the one we're talking about, swiftly, and make an example.
Make an example out of these people.
This is not acceptable.
We're adults.
If you're working in a federal facility, you're an effing adult.
Act like one.
Why are these things not handled with swift justice?
Now, I'm not saying that these folks deserve to go to jail.
Maybe they do.
I don't know.
I didn't read all the details of the actual allegations.
They haven't really been put out.
But make examples of these people.
Much like a lot of other things in this country, if we make examples out of the ones who are the most egregious or the most ridiculous, it's going to cause a chain reaction, I think.
People don't want to be in that situation.
They don't want that treatment.
They don't want that discipline.
I don't know.
Maybe I'm way off base.
Maybe I'm old school.
It's an old school way of thinking or whatever.
But please do me a favor.
Leave some comments about what you think of this so far.
When we come back from the break, we'll have a little further discussion about it, and then I have like five minutes of the committee hearing.
There was one member in particular who gave a pretty good five minute.
He used five minutes of his time, and he had some really good things to say to the secretary, but also to one of his colleagues across the aisle.
So stick with us.
Don't go away.
We'll be right back.
Hey folks, welcome back here to the second half of the show.
Before we went to the break, we were talking about these allegations of sexual harassment within VA walls and how the secretary and his cronies, whoever is in between the secretary and this low-level VA employee that made these accusations, failed to act in a timely manner about it.
We went through the article that was written.
There's a lot of stuff to unpack there, but it's all very concerning.
The Secretary of the VA, in the video of the committee hearing in which he testified, didn't seem to be all too concerned about it.
It almost seems like He doesn't believe that it happened, but he is not in a place or willing to say that, of course, and he'd be stupid to.
But, you know, I just have a hard time believing that you take things seriously and they go three months before action is taken.
Yeah.
And the only time you really take any action other than conducting a little investigation is when you're subpoenaed to testify in front of Congress.
And when that subpoena comes, the people who were actually there and perpetrating these employees, they just leave or get fired, but don't have to answer for any of it.
And I think that's what's troubling for me.
We went long on the first segment, so I want to fit in this few minutes of video for you to hear before we get to the end of the show.
So let's play that, and then we'll get to the rest of the show.
So there is Mr.
Boast.
Here we go.
Representative Van Orden.
Thank you, Mr.
Chairman.
I'll be frank.
I had no intention of addressing this in this manner.
Mr.
Secretary, I'll be with you in a moment.
But, you know, I'm just not going to sit here and listen to members of this committee, particularly the ranking member, do these spurious, inflammatory, disingenuous,
and blatantly politicized comments That can very easily be construed to be defending the gross misconduct by senior leaders in the VA and have a chilling effect on people who may be sexually harassed as we speak.
Wholly inappropriate.
And to attempt to justify sexual harassment because it was reported by a lower level employee is offensive.
Because I used to be the lower-level employee, sir.
I started at the bottom cleaning toilets on a tugboat in the Navy.
And so for you to say that, that a lower-level employee should not be able to report these things, is the reason that Congress's approval rating is just above a root canal.
So knock it off!
Might be even with a root canal.
Seems like the lunatics have taken over the asylum.
You know, I have tremendous personal respect for you.
I do.
And I know that you have an incredibly difficult job.
But I gotta tell you what, man.
Leaders have to protect those we have been given the privilege to lead.
Amen.
Just as we, as members of Congress, have to protect those that we have been given constitutional authority of oversight to make sure that our employees Our constituents and our fellow veterans are protected from the acts that it's just crystal clear.
No one is debating whether or not this stuff took place.
And it's horrendous.
Absolutely.
And I have to say that I believe that this is a systemic issue in the Veterans Affairs Administration, but also, unfortunately, in the Biden cabinet.
You're the second member of the Cabinet that has had some very significant issues with something that could be very readily addressed, sir, and they're called Commander's Critical Information Requirements.
So just as the Secretary of Defense failed to notify the President that he'd be hospitalized for a very reasonable reason, having cancer, and I do wish him well, if you had established procedures, like getting a letter from the Chairman of the Committee that's responsible for writing the paychecks for your people, essentially, It should go to the top of your list.
I think a lot of this could have been avoided.
So I have had the privilege of leading thousands of men and women throughout my career in the Navy, and I've always made sure that these things that rise to this level of importance, like people being sexual harassed, Or being discriminated against in any way.
I never tolerated that in my presence.
And sir, if you do not tolerate these things in your presence, I would encourage you to elevate these types of issues to an immediate report to you.
So, you are the commander.
You're the captain of your ship.
And if these things are important to you, which I believe they are, I would hope that you would stress this to your staff, and if they're not meeting your standard, that you get rid of them.
And if you're incapable of meeting your own standard, then maybe you should think about doing something else.
And I would hope that that would not be the case.
I do have confidence in you.
I want every single veteran to go to the VA to get health care, mental health care, so that they can thrive as citizens.
So I have one question for you, and that's in regards to the subpoena that you're issued.
Has the VA been fully compliant with that subpoena, to the best of your knowledge?
Yeah, so we are being compliant, but we have not yet provided all the documents that have been asked for, and that's not a function of us withholding the documents, it's a function of us getting through all the documents.
Very well, do you have an approximate timeline?
We're providing thousands of documents a week.
And we have been since I made a commitment to the chairman to get him those documents.
And so I get that you're not going to take the heat off us until we get them to you.
I understand that.
Very well.
I would encourage you to elevate this to a level commensurate with how seriously we're taking this as a committee.
Thank you for your time without a yield back.
Thank you.
Well, it's more of an issue of us getting through all the documents.
Sir, it would seem to me that when Congress starts poking you for information, for documents, that you just, clearly you have to search for them and compile them.
But you don't need to go through them, do you?
It's Congress.
They all have top secret clearances or some kind of security clearance.
No need to redact them.
Why not just put them on a thumb drive or print them out and send 100 reams of paper over to the committee?
But Mr.
Van Orden brings up a really good point about leadership.
Leadership is a privilege, and sometimes the privilege of leadership becomes more than people are willing to do.
It becomes more cumbersome than some folks are willing to do, and they find that out in the course of their attempt to be leaders.
But if you are a person, such as Secretary McDonough, who has been given the privilege, and I sincerely believe that a person in his position, and many others in high positions at the VA, have been given the opportunity to take advantage of this privilege, I think it's a pretty cool thing to be able to hang your hat on at the end of your days.
That you were the top dog at the Department of Veterans Affairs.
And it was under your leadership that veterans got a paramount level of care.
And I have a hard time grasping why anybody would take advantage of that.
And maybe that sounds really stupid of me to say because we see it all the time.
We see people in leadership roles taking advantage of their position and their power all the time.
And it's really something that I never really have understood because I've had some really crappy leadership, both in the military and on the civilian side of things, over the years.
But I always felt like when given the opportunity to lead, I always took it very seriously.
And so I will say that I wasn't in leadership roles for years and years and years.
I also wasn't in leadership roles that paid me like six figures or a really great salary.
And so maybe that's why folks who have been in leadership roles similar to the ones I've been in have been good leaders.
They haven't had the opportunity to be corrupted or bought or compromised in any way.
But it really is a privilege.
You know, many, many years ago, I had decided to get into some coaching.
And I was coaching some youth basketball team.
It was a select team.
So it was, you know, upper tier of the age group.
You know, these kids were all very talented.
And they played some really good basketball.
But it was such a rewarding experience to see our players...
Struggle with something and then provide them some type of leadership and then watch them succeed.
And so when we talk about things like Secretary McDonough and sitting on this information, these allegations for so long, it really makes me wonder if he's even fit to be a leader.
And Jason and I last week got into his resume a little bit.
And so, I mean, I don't know, man.
I really feel like maybe there is a cleansing of sorts that's needed in upper echelons of all these agencies, but especially the VA, right?
And why the VA? Well, because that's what I'm here to talk to you about.
And that's where my passions lie, is ensuring that the men and women who are willfully going to these clinics and these VA hospitals and all these places where they're getting VA services, they don't deserve to be lied to.
They don't deserve to be mistreated.
They don't deserve any of those things.
And right along with them are the people that work in these facilities.
The people who are making $30,000 to $40,000 a year and working 50 hours a week because they're understaffed and they're asked to stay longer so that our patients can get the care that they need.
Thank you.
And so I believe that people who work at the VA, for the most part...
Like I said earlier, they do it because federal employment can be good as far as benefits go and stuff.
The pay is not amazing.
Not at the lower levels for sure.
But I feel that people go to work there because they want to take care of veterans.
They want to help take care of veterans.
And we all know, or maybe we don't all know, but if you don't now, you do know, that getting into federal employment can be difficult.
And so, at times, you take what's open to get your foot in the door, and then it's a lot easier to move around.
Whether you go from one agency to the other or you transfer internally in that agency, it's a lot easier than coming in as an outsider, not a federal employee.
Even for veterans, and veterans get preference points.
But in my experience, and in my opinion, it doesn't make it any easier for them.
It's still competitive.
It's still difficult.
There's a lot of hoops to jump through.
And maybe this is a whole other show, but if you're interested, just check out what it takes to even get a job as a custodian in a federal facility.
Applying for a federal government job is five times harder than applying for a state job, a county job, a city job, or a private industry job, whatever that is.
And I believe that they do things like that to try to weed out the people that don't want to put in the work to fill out the paperwork and to go through the steps because they can be cumbersome.
But having this type of environment, there's no way that these low-level employees are taking good care of the patients.
If they can't even be comfortable at work to the point that they don't feel like they're going to get harassed or discriminated against or all that stuff.
But hey, we have an office for that.
For inclusion.
For inclusion.
All that crap.
And the reason why that pisses me off is because we as a country have gotten so far away from just doing the right thing and having some damn integrity.
Now we have to spend taxpayer dollars and man hours that are funded by taxpayer dollars To make sure that we're inclusive.
And to make sure that there's no funny business going on.
Whatever happened to just treating people the way you would like to be treated?
Whatever happened to discipline and accountability?
And most importantly, whatever happened to integrity?
What does it say about us as a population of people, Americans, that we have to construct committees and whole offices just to ensure that we're inclusive and that we're not discriminating against each other?
This bullshit about the color of our skin is Has gotten so far out of hand that we can't even go to work anymore without having to some way, somehow, somewhere, report to some office to ensure that we're being inclusive and not discriminating.
My question is, when the hell are we going to just get to work?
When are we, as a people, just going to get to work?
Taking care of the people that need to be taken care of?
When are we going to get to work to raise our kids to be contributing members of society?
When are we going to be done worrying about What effing football game Taylor Swift shows up to?
When are we done with that?
I'm hoping that it's soon.
I'm hoping that we get to a point where everybody just gets it out of their system.
Because it's my opinion, folks, that on the world stage, we look like complete D-bags and degenerates.
And we're all just playing American.
Just playing.
The reality is, seemingly, we don't give a shit about each other, our neighbor, the less fortunate.
We do things like let floods and floods of Migrants come in and flood our cities.
And we actually have individuals who see no problem with it.
That's alarming.
These are the types of people...
God forbid I ever end up on a plane and the masks come down.
If I ever see one of these folks who tout that we need to help each other and do this and help other countries be better and allow these types of things to happen, if I see you put on your mask first, I'm going to slap the shit out of you.
Even though they tell you, before you help anybody else, make sure you put on your own mask.
That idea is completely out in left field.
We don't abide by any of that at all.
We do things like allow illegal immigration.
We do things like spend hundreds of millions, if not many billions of dollars...
Funding wars that we have no part in, nor should we.
We do, as a country, I shouldn't say we do, our government does a whole lot of things that could be paused or just taken off the agenda completely while we get our own backyard in order.
What happened to that?
What exactly?
What exactly is the American dream anymore?
It seems that there's many interpretations of it.
What is it?
My version of the American Dream is to thrive in my community, help my neighbor when they need it, and hope that they're going to help me when I need it.
Build something that provides me enough income to ensure that my family is taken care of, that we're fed, we're clothed, we're housed, have a little bit of walking around money, And just be happy.
Live out our days in peace together.
But instead, we do none of that.
All the things that we were taught as children...
Treat people the way you want to be treated.
Help your neighbor...
Be kind to somebody.
If you don't have anything good to say, then say nothing at all.
Those fundamental things that we were all taught as kids have completely walked out the door.
And what is it doing for the generation after us?
It's a domino effect, and I know that people say that these types of things are all cyclical, and don't worry, we'll be back.
It may not be in our lifetime, but we'll be back.
Well, okay, then I'm worried about that.
I've got a lot of life left to live.
And I don't want to have to go to the grocery store worried about whether or not I'm inclusive.
It's ridiculous.
I don't want to have to move about my community worried about whether or not I'm going to be berated because I don't have an electric vehicle.
That's coming too.
Sooner or later, you're going to be racist if you don't want to drive an electric vehicle.
Who knows what the hell they're going to say.
But none of it accomplishes the goals of taking care of each other and getting back to being The superpower that we used to be, because we certainly aren't anymore.
I don't know, man.
Unfortunately, we've run out of time for the week.
I didn't even really bring this whole thing full circle.
I got off into the weeds again.
Anyway, our leadership in the VA may, in my opinion, just need to be cleansed.
Get rid of all of them.
And maybe the next president, whoever that's going to be, hopefully somebody who doesn't have dementia, will do something like that.
Just clean house.
It can't get any worse, I don't think.
I suppose I shouldn't say that because maybe it can.
But I don't think it can.
Start taking care of the people who take care of the men and women that serve this country.
you It's not that difficult.
Quit groping each other.
Quit harassing each other.
Go to work.
Do your job.
Try to have a good time doing it.
Smile.
And be nice.
Just be nice.
Anyway, folks, have a great week.
Have a great evening.
Take care of yourselves, and we'll see you next time.
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