The VA needs a sign
I remember it well. It was 1969. McDonalds restaurants changed their signs. They had read "4 billion served" and had to be changed to read "5 billion served." In the wake of the latest report on how badly the VA fails in providing care to eligible veterans, they should have a sign. "More than 57,000 waiting to be served."
There are more than 25,000,000 veterans in the U.S. but not all are eligible for VA medical care. To be fair, it must be noted that there are far more categories of eligibility for healthcare benefits than there were in the past. The pool of veterans who are eligible for care has gone up accordingly. While funding for the VA has increased, it isn't growing fast enough to keep pace with demand.
Add to that a system where managers are paid bonuses for meeting certain goals and you have people falsifying records to collect those bonuses.
A two-pronged approach is needed. 1. Get those veterans who are waiting for appointments into the facilities and get them the treatment they need. 2. Clear up the backlog of applications for disability for issues connected to military service. The Obama administration has made some progress with #2 but more improvement is needed.
This is not a new problem and it didn't begin on President Obama's watch. However, he needs to make sure that "ship is righted."
* * *
Radio Shack is going to close another 200 stores. Best Buy's stock price is down 26% from last year. Office Depot will close over 400 of its stores. Both the chain restaurants and the family-owned places are struggling.
All indicative that the traditional brick and mortar economy is going to continue to shrink. So why is it that in the face of this, cities are continuing to look to street parking to increase revenues to fund city operations? If you are the owner of a restaurant, do you want your patrons to have to dash out mid-meal to put more money in the "One Hour Only" meter? Of course not. Yet streets that are lined by small businesses and restaurants continue to see the parking meters changed from two hours of parking to one hour.
I work in an office on one such street. There isn't a public parking lot with meters within a mile. The street in front of the store is lined with one hour metered parking, and those smart meters that require you to vacate the space before more time can be added to the meter.
I'd rather see the two hour meters return, with an increase in the fine for violating that limit.
* * *
I couldn't care less how much money Hilary Clinton is earning by giving speeches. If people are willing to pay her to listen to her give a speech, more power to them.
But for her to claim that she and Bill were broke when they left the White House is just wrong. She's saying they were dead broke when they left, but in December of 2000, she signed a book deal where she stood to receive an advance of $8 million. Their 2001 tax return shows an adjusted gross income of $15.9 million and a taxable income of $14.4 million. That's not broke.
The following year of 2002 was an off year, with an AGI of only $9.5 million.
Give the speeches. Write the books. Just don't whine that you were broke. You weren't.
* * *
Random Ponderings:
How did a 19 year old manage to rent a $240,000 sports car with a stolen credit card? Did they not check the driver's license closely against the card? Something stinks about this.
Derek Fisher is an extremely court-smart basketball player, but I'm not sure that he's ready to be an NBA head coach the year after he retires from playing. That doesn't mean I don't wish him good luck with the Knicks...I do.
Michael Jackson's kids split an allowance of $8 million per year among them. That's a tad excessive.
I adore Anna Paquin. I admire the fact she's proud of her bisexuality. I'm not sure I understand why it's important for her to label herself as a happily married bisexual, unless she's having female on female sex outside of her marriage to her husband.
I'd love to know what the real story is about a real estate deal involving Shaq. He bought a 5 bedroom, 4 bathroom house in Orlando for $235,000 in 2012. Now he's sold that house to a Haitian businessman for $10.
Would someone please explain to Donald T. Sterling, holder of a Juris Doctorate, that if he presses forward with his suit against the NBA, since his wife has indemnified the NBA, he's actually suing his wife? Is there some reason that isn't clear to him?
Is there some reason Halle Berry shouldn't be paying child support if her kid's father has custody?
What's going on right now with Casey Kasem is the best illustration of why we all need advanced care directives.
How can someone lose a lottery ticket worth $50 million?
* * *
June 10th in History:
671 – Emperor Tenji of Japan introduces a water clock (clepsydra) called Rokoku. The instrument, which measure time and indicates hours, is placed in the capital of Ōtsu.
1190 – Third Crusade: Frederick I Barbarossa drowns in the river Saleph while leading an army to Jerusalem.
1329 – The Battle of Pelekanon results in a Byzantine defeat by the Ottoman Empire.
1523 – Copenhagen is surrounded by the army of Frederick I of Denmark, as the city won't recognise him as the successor of Christian II of Denmark.
1539 – Council of Trent: Paul III sends out letters to his bishops, delaying the Council due to war and the difficulty bishops had traveling to Venice.
1619 – Thirty Years' War: Battle of Záblatí, a turning point in the Bohemian Revolt.
1624 – Signing of the Treaty of Compiègne between France and the Netherlands.
1692 – Salem witch trials: Bridget Bishop is hanged at Gallows Hill near Salem, Massachusetts, for "certaine Detestable Arts called Witchcraft & Sorceries".
1719 – Jacobite Rising: Battle of Glen Shiel.
1786 – A landslide dam on the Dadu River created by an earthquake ten days earlier collapses, killing 100,000 in the Sichuan province of China.
1793 – The Jardin des Plantes museum opens in Paris. A year later, it becomes the first public zoo.
1793 – French Revolution: Following the arrests of Girondin leaders, the Jacobins gain control of the Committee of Public Safety installing the revolutionary dictatorship.
1805 – First Barbary War: Yusuf Karamanli signs a treaty ending the hostilities between Tripolitania and the United States.
1829 – The first Boat Race between the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge takes place.
1838 – Myall Creek massacre: Twenty-eight Aboriginal Australians are murdered.
1854 – The first class of United States Naval Academy students graduate.
1861 – American Civil War: Battle of Big Bethel - Confederate troops under John B. Magruder defeat a much larger Union force led by General Ebenezer W. Pierce in Virginia.
1864 – American Civil War: Battle of Brice's Crossroads - Confederate troops under Nathan Bedford Forrest defeat a much larger Union force led by General Samuel D. Sturgis in Mississippi.
1871 – Sinmiyangyo: Captain McLane Tilton leads 109 US Marines in a naval attack on Han River forts on Kanghwa Island, Korea.
1878 – League of Prizren is established, to oppose the decisions of the Congress of Berlin and the Treaty of San Stephano, as a consequence of which the Albanian lands in Balkans were being partitioned and given to the neighbor states of Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria and Greece.
1886 – Mount Tarawera in New Zealand erupts, killing 153 people and destroying the famous Pink and White Terraces.
1898 – Spanish–American War: U.S. Marines land on the island of Cuba.
1912 – The Villisca Axe Murders were discovered in Villisca, Iowa.
1916 – An Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire led by Lawrence of Arabia breaks out.
1918 – The Austro-Hungarian battleship SMS Szent István sinks off the Croatian coast after being torpedoed by an Italian MAS motorboat; the event is recorded by camera from a nearby vessel.
1924 – Fascists kidnap and kill Italian Socialist leader Giacomo Matteotti in Rome.
1925 – Inaugural service for the United Church of Canada, a union of Presbyterian, Methodist, and Congregationalist churches, held in the Toronto Arena.
1935 – Dr. Robert Smith takes his last drink, and Alcoholics Anonymous is founded in Akron, Ohio, United States, by him and Bill Wilson.
1935 – Chaco War ends: a truce is called between Bolivia and Paraguay who had been fighting since 1932.
1936 – The Russian animation studio Soyuzmultfilm is founded.
1940 – World War II: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt denounces Italy's actions with his "Stab in the Back" speech at the graduation ceremonies of the University of Virginia.
1940 – World War II: Norway surrenders to German forces.
1940 – World War II: Italy declares war on France and the United Kingdom.
1942 – World War II: Nazis burn the Czech village of Lidice in reprisal for the killing of Reinhard Heydrich.
1944 – World War II: Six hundred forty-two men, women and children are killed in the Oradour-sur-Glane Massacre in France.
1944 – World War II: In Distomo, Boeotia, Greece 218 men, women and children are massacred by German troops.
1944 – In baseball, 15-year old Joe Nuxhall of the Cincinnati Reds becomes the youngest player ever in a major-league game.
1945 – Australian Imperial Forces land in Brunei Bay to liberate Brunei.
1947 – Saab produces its first automobile.
1957 – John Diefenbaker leads the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada to a stunning upset in the Canadian federal election, 1957, ending 22 years of Liberal Party government.
1963 – Equal Pay Act of 1963 aimed at abolishing wage disparity based on sex (see Gender pay gap). It was signed into law on June 10, 1963 by John F. Kennedy as part of his New Frontier Program
1967 – The Six-Day War ends: Israel and Syria agree to a cease-fire.
1967 – Argentina becomes a member of the Berne Convention copyright treaty.
1977 – James Earl Ray escapes from Brushy Mountain State Prison in Petros, Tennessee, but is recaptured on June 13.
1977 – The Apple II, one of the first personal computers, goes on sale.
1980 – The African National Congress in South Africa publishes a call to fight from their imprisoned leader Nelson Mandela.
1990 – British Airways Flight 5390 lands safely at Southampton Airport after a blowout in the cockpit causes the captain to be partially sucked from the cockpit. There are no fatalities
1996 – Peace talks begin in Northern Ireland without the participation of Sinn Féin.
1997 – Before fleeing his northern stronghold, Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot orders the killing of his defense chief Son Sen and 11 of Sen's family members.
1999 – Kosovo War: NATO suspends its air strikes after Slobodan Milošević agrees to withdraw Serbian forces from Kosovo.
2001 – Pope John Paul II canonizes Lebanon's first female saint, Saint Rafqa.
2002 – The first direct electronic communication experiment between the nervous systems of two humans is carried out by Kevin Warwick in the United Kingdom.
2003 – The Spirit Rover is launched, beginning NASA's Mars Exploration Rover mission.
Famous Folk Born on June 10th:
Sessue Hayakawa
Hattie McDaniel
Howlin' Wolf
Saul Bellow
Judy Garland
Nat Hentoff
F. Lee Bailey
Jurgen Prochnow
Ze'ev Friedman (one of the 1972 Israeli Olympic Team members murdered by the Black September terrorists)
Kevin Corcoran
Dan Fouts
Rich Hall
Andrew Stevens
Eliot Spitzer
Gina Gershon
Carolyn Hennesy
Brent Sutter
Jeanne Tripplehorn
Kate Flannery
Elizabeth Hurley
Bobby Jindal
Steven Fischer
Dustin Lance Black
Kate Upton
There are more than 25,000,000 veterans in the U.S. but not all are eligible for VA medical care. To be fair, it must be noted that there are far more categories of eligibility for healthcare benefits than there were in the past. The pool of veterans who are eligible for care has gone up accordingly. While funding for the VA has increased, it isn't growing fast enough to keep pace with demand.
Add to that a system where managers are paid bonuses for meeting certain goals and you have people falsifying records to collect those bonuses.
A two-pronged approach is needed. 1. Get those veterans who are waiting for appointments into the facilities and get them the treatment they need. 2. Clear up the backlog of applications for disability for issues connected to military service. The Obama administration has made some progress with #2 but more improvement is needed.
This is not a new problem and it didn't begin on President Obama's watch. However, he needs to make sure that "ship is righted."
* * *
Radio Shack is going to close another 200 stores. Best Buy's stock price is down 26% from last year. Office Depot will close over 400 of its stores. Both the chain restaurants and the family-owned places are struggling.
All indicative that the traditional brick and mortar economy is going to continue to shrink. So why is it that in the face of this, cities are continuing to look to street parking to increase revenues to fund city operations? If you are the owner of a restaurant, do you want your patrons to have to dash out mid-meal to put more money in the "One Hour Only" meter? Of course not. Yet streets that are lined by small businesses and restaurants continue to see the parking meters changed from two hours of parking to one hour.
I work in an office on one such street. There isn't a public parking lot with meters within a mile. The street in front of the store is lined with one hour metered parking, and those smart meters that require you to vacate the space before more time can be added to the meter.
I'd rather see the two hour meters return, with an increase in the fine for violating that limit.
* * *
I couldn't care less how much money Hilary Clinton is earning by giving speeches. If people are willing to pay her to listen to her give a speech, more power to them.
But for her to claim that she and Bill were broke when they left the White House is just wrong. She's saying they were dead broke when they left, but in December of 2000, she signed a book deal where she stood to receive an advance of $8 million. Their 2001 tax return shows an adjusted gross income of $15.9 million and a taxable income of $14.4 million. That's not broke.
The following year of 2002 was an off year, with an AGI of only $9.5 million.
Give the speeches. Write the books. Just don't whine that you were broke. You weren't.
* * *
Random Ponderings:
How did a 19 year old manage to rent a $240,000 sports car with a stolen credit card? Did they not check the driver's license closely against the card? Something stinks about this.
Derek Fisher is an extremely court-smart basketball player, but I'm not sure that he's ready to be an NBA head coach the year after he retires from playing. That doesn't mean I don't wish him good luck with the Knicks...I do.
Michael Jackson's kids split an allowance of $8 million per year among them. That's a tad excessive.
I adore Anna Paquin. I admire the fact she's proud of her bisexuality. I'm not sure I understand why it's important for her to label herself as a happily married bisexual, unless she's having female on female sex outside of her marriage to her husband.
I'd love to know what the real story is about a real estate deal involving Shaq. He bought a 5 bedroom, 4 bathroom house in Orlando for $235,000 in 2012. Now he's sold that house to a Haitian businessman for $10.
Would someone please explain to Donald T. Sterling, holder of a Juris Doctorate, that if he presses forward with his suit against the NBA, since his wife has indemnified the NBA, he's actually suing his wife? Is there some reason that isn't clear to him?
Is there some reason Halle Berry shouldn't be paying child support if her kid's father has custody?
What's going on right now with Casey Kasem is the best illustration of why we all need advanced care directives.
How can someone lose a lottery ticket worth $50 million?
* * *
June 10th in History:
671 – Emperor Tenji of Japan introduces a water clock (clepsydra) called Rokoku. The instrument, which measure time and indicates hours, is placed in the capital of Ōtsu.
1190 – Third Crusade: Frederick I Barbarossa drowns in the river Saleph while leading an army to Jerusalem.
1329 – The Battle of Pelekanon results in a Byzantine defeat by the Ottoman Empire.
1523 – Copenhagen is surrounded by the army of Frederick I of Denmark, as the city won't recognise him as the successor of Christian II of Denmark.
1539 – Council of Trent: Paul III sends out letters to his bishops, delaying the Council due to war and the difficulty bishops had traveling to Venice.
1619 – Thirty Years' War: Battle of Záblatí, a turning point in the Bohemian Revolt.
1624 – Signing of the Treaty of Compiègne between France and the Netherlands.
1692 – Salem witch trials: Bridget Bishop is hanged at Gallows Hill near Salem, Massachusetts, for "certaine Detestable Arts called Witchcraft & Sorceries".
1719 – Jacobite Rising: Battle of Glen Shiel.
1786 – A landslide dam on the Dadu River created by an earthquake ten days earlier collapses, killing 100,000 in the Sichuan province of China.
1793 – The Jardin des Plantes museum opens in Paris. A year later, it becomes the first public zoo.
1793 – French Revolution: Following the arrests of Girondin leaders, the Jacobins gain control of the Committee of Public Safety installing the revolutionary dictatorship.
1805 – First Barbary War: Yusuf Karamanli signs a treaty ending the hostilities between Tripolitania and the United States.
1829 – The first Boat Race between the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge takes place.
1838 – Myall Creek massacre: Twenty-eight Aboriginal Australians are murdered.
1854 – The first class of United States Naval Academy students graduate.
1861 – American Civil War: Battle of Big Bethel - Confederate troops under John B. Magruder defeat a much larger Union force led by General Ebenezer W. Pierce in Virginia.
1864 – American Civil War: Battle of Brice's Crossroads - Confederate troops under Nathan Bedford Forrest defeat a much larger Union force led by General Samuel D. Sturgis in Mississippi.
1871 – Sinmiyangyo: Captain McLane Tilton leads 109 US Marines in a naval attack on Han River forts on Kanghwa Island, Korea.
1878 – League of Prizren is established, to oppose the decisions of the Congress of Berlin and the Treaty of San Stephano, as a consequence of which the Albanian lands in Balkans were being partitioned and given to the neighbor states of Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria and Greece.
1886 – Mount Tarawera in New Zealand erupts, killing 153 people and destroying the famous Pink and White Terraces.
1898 – Spanish–American War: U.S. Marines land on the island of Cuba.
1912 – The Villisca Axe Murders were discovered in Villisca, Iowa.
1916 – An Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire led by Lawrence of Arabia breaks out.
1918 – The Austro-Hungarian battleship SMS Szent István sinks off the Croatian coast after being torpedoed by an Italian MAS motorboat; the event is recorded by camera from a nearby vessel.
1924 – Fascists kidnap and kill Italian Socialist leader Giacomo Matteotti in Rome.
1925 – Inaugural service for the United Church of Canada, a union of Presbyterian, Methodist, and Congregationalist churches, held in the Toronto Arena.
1935 – Dr. Robert Smith takes his last drink, and Alcoholics Anonymous is founded in Akron, Ohio, United States, by him and Bill Wilson.
1935 – Chaco War ends: a truce is called between Bolivia and Paraguay who had been fighting since 1932.
1936 – The Russian animation studio Soyuzmultfilm is founded.
1940 – World War II: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt denounces Italy's actions with his "Stab in the Back" speech at the graduation ceremonies of the University of Virginia.
1940 – World War II: Norway surrenders to German forces.
1940 – World War II: Italy declares war on France and the United Kingdom.
1942 – World War II: Nazis burn the Czech village of Lidice in reprisal for the killing of Reinhard Heydrich.
1944 – World War II: Six hundred forty-two men, women and children are killed in the Oradour-sur-Glane Massacre in France.
1944 – World War II: In Distomo, Boeotia, Greece 218 men, women and children are massacred by German troops.
1944 – In baseball, 15-year old Joe Nuxhall of the Cincinnati Reds becomes the youngest player ever in a major-league game.
1945 – Australian Imperial Forces land in Brunei Bay to liberate Brunei.
1947 – Saab produces its first automobile.
1957 – John Diefenbaker leads the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada to a stunning upset in the Canadian federal election, 1957, ending 22 years of Liberal Party government.
1963 – Equal Pay Act of 1963 aimed at abolishing wage disparity based on sex (see Gender pay gap). It was signed into law on June 10, 1963 by John F. Kennedy as part of his New Frontier Program
1967 – The Six-Day War ends: Israel and Syria agree to a cease-fire.
1967 – Argentina becomes a member of the Berne Convention copyright treaty.
1977 – James Earl Ray escapes from Brushy Mountain State Prison in Petros, Tennessee, but is recaptured on June 13.
1977 – The Apple II, one of the first personal computers, goes on sale.
1980 – The African National Congress in South Africa publishes a call to fight from their imprisoned leader Nelson Mandela.
1990 – British Airways Flight 5390 lands safely at Southampton Airport after a blowout in the cockpit causes the captain to be partially sucked from the cockpit. There are no fatalities
1996 – Peace talks begin in Northern Ireland without the participation of Sinn Féin.
1997 – Before fleeing his northern stronghold, Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot orders the killing of his defense chief Son Sen and 11 of Sen's family members.
1999 – Kosovo War: NATO suspends its air strikes after Slobodan Milošević agrees to withdraw Serbian forces from Kosovo.
2001 – Pope John Paul II canonizes Lebanon's first female saint, Saint Rafqa.
2002 – The first direct electronic communication experiment between the nervous systems of two humans is carried out by Kevin Warwick in the United Kingdom.
2003 – The Spirit Rover is launched, beginning NASA's Mars Exploration Rover mission.
Famous Folk Born on June 10th:
Sessue Hayakawa
Hattie McDaniel
Howlin' Wolf
Saul Bellow
Judy Garland
Nat Hentoff
F. Lee Bailey
Jurgen Prochnow
Ze'ev Friedman (one of the 1972 Israeli Olympic Team members murdered by the Black September terrorists)
Kevin Corcoran
Dan Fouts
Rich Hall
Andrew Stevens
Eliot Spitzer
Gina Gershon
Carolyn Hennesy
Brent Sutter
Jeanne Tripplehorn
Kate Flannery
Elizabeth Hurley
Bobby Jindal
Steven Fischer
Dustin Lance Black
Kate Upton
posted by me at 12:22 PM
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