SAR #14159

Until we straighten out the VA mess, maybe we should stop creating quite so many veterans.

First Shoe: The new VA secretary plans to privatize great portions of the VA health care system, allowing veterans to seek ‘purchased care’ at for-profit private hospitals. The Republicans, who have repeatedly refused to increase VA funding to care for the increasing numbers of seriously ill and injured veterans, approve. Given the increased load placed on the primary care network via Obamacare, it is hard to imagine that our woefully unbalanced medical delivery system is up to the task. How long do you have to wait to see your doctor? Have you tried to join a doctor's practice lately? How did that go? 
 
Back To The Starting Gate: After six years we have nudged the jobs market exactly back to where it was before the Recent Unpleasantness. But we still haven't created a single job for any of the 12 million workers who entered the workforce while we were busy fattening up Wall Street.

Shhh! They'll Hear You: The administration has argued in a federal appellate court that 'national security concerns' justify keeping the number and effectiveness of drone strikes secret. Sure, they admit, the enemy knows who we're killing, but that doesn't mean the public needs to know.

Suffering The Little Children Some More: Ireland was not a good place to be born out of wedlock or otherwise end up in Catholic-run facilities. If you were not killed outright or just left to die, you could be farmed out to drug companies as a test dummy for illegal trials of various vaccines. At least 2,000 babies and children were used a guinea pigs by Burroughs Wellcome (now GSK Pharmaceuticals). No records exist to document how many died or suffered from the injections. At least nine different 'homes' contriubted victims. The Sisters of Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, who ran some of these facilities say they would welcome an independent cover-up inquiry.

The “Just Us” System: After billionaire Samuel Curtis Johnson III, who inherited all that money, confessed to repeatedly sexually assaulting his teenage stepdaughter for years, he was given a four-month jail sentence because – according to the judge – his family was important to the community. Don't try this at home unless you're one of the idle rich.

Just The Fracts: Scientific studies have proven that fracking is directly responsible for methane contamination in Parker County, Texas' groundwater and wells. Maybe so, say the frackers, but that doesn't mean it's to blame for similar contamination elsewhere in the Barnett Shale area, much less in any other part of the nation. That will take more tests, they say, in every neighborhood. Wouldn't want to make any unwarranted generalizations based on just that science stuff. 
 
Opinions Differ: Of late some have taken to saying that bailing out the banks and not the homeowners was the biggest policy mistake of the Great Recession. I think there's an unwarranted assumption in that statement, which implies that bailing out the banks was a Good Idea. Wouldn't bailing out the homeowers have bailed out the part of the banking system that matters to us mere humans?

Porn O'Graph: Parts of the problem, Red Queen version.

The Parting Shot: