The Trifecta and The Future of Your Medical Care?
Yesterday, we growled that after almost 20 years, key federal agencies had not yet fully implemented the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) that became law in 1990. Another day, another example of the federal government’s inability to effectively manage its basic mission. According to a blog entry by Marian Wang at ProPublica on Wednesday:
“In a memo released on Tuesday, a Senate subcommittee disclosed that it has “obtained information suggesting that 4,900 to 6,600 graves may be unmarked, improperly marked, or mislabeled” on the maps at the historic Arlington National Cemetery. These problems, according to the memo, are “far more extensive than previously acknowledged.”
“The Subcommittee on Contracting Oversight gave kudos to Salon.com for a series of articles about the cemetery’s mismanagement, and to whistleblowers whose concerns went largely ignored for years.”
Today’s Washington Post reported on a Senate subcommittee hearing yesterday, writing:
“The 2 1/2 -hour hearing, a lively Washington ritual, was full of indignant senators demanding answers from defensive bureaucrats, and it ratcheted up pressure to comprehend the cemetery's problems and correct them. But the subcommittee's chairman, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), conceded that in the end perhaps no one, beyond the two cemetery officials who were allowed to retire this month, will be held responsible for what she called a "long scenario of catastrophic incompetence."
"No one took full ownership, and if you don't have full ownership, then you can't take full blame," McCaskill said. "Because there wasn't one person's head who was going to roll, nobody's heads will. It's the old finger-pointing."
The Post quoted an obviously "testy" Senator Claire McCaskill (D-Missouri), subcommittee chairman as saying:
"We've got waste . . . We've got abuse. We've got fraud. The whole trifecta." (emphasis added)
If you can’t manage a single cemetery, what are the chances the federal government is capable of managing 16% of the entire United States economy? Makes you wonder just what members of Congress were thinking in voting for the so-called ObamaCare.
The Kansas City Star, Fox News, the Australian, and the Chicago Tribune have additional reporting. As the Chicago Tribune wrote in its opinion piece, there is probably "no more honorable place in this nation than Arlington National Cemetery," adding that "(t)o hear of the unfolding scandal there, it just kicks you in the gut."