Also see Decimate the V.A.

Agenda, if elected

I will seek assignment to the Veterans Affair Committees

1. Fire all patient reps/ombudsmen to be replaced by vets fulfilling their community service duty. As is, and shown to me ("We don't do that."), patient reps have a conflict of interest--their jobs are on the line if the fully represent the veterans who have a complaint.
2. Anyone who says "You cannot fire your way to excellence" should be fired (Deputy Secretary Sloan Gibson). This is like saying you cannot Ex-lax your way out of constipation. Corruption or incompentence should not be tolerated. You cannot achieve excellence if you signal that someone will cover-up your incompetence or corruption. As to firing people to increase productivity and excellence, it is one of the first thing that new management does when assuming responsibility for a failing organization in the private sector ... Mr. Gibson's statement notwithstanding.
3. Clearly, based on the V.A. pay systems, bonuses do not increase efficiency in service but increased gaming of the system. In private enterprise, whether a good worker or a poor worker, people work better when they realize that heads will roll for wrong-doing.

I will seek to use brainbees, particularly the Super Brainbee, to the replace the political spoils system by which the White House appoints 4,000 top administrative positions. The V.A. Secretary and Deputy Secretary are examples of why we need to clean up the political appointment system. The mother-of-all untrained appointees was the U.S. ambassador to Iraq in 1990 who gave Saddam Hussein a de facto go-ahead to invade Kurwait in the G.H.W. Bush administration.