Unsurprising: Every Top Manager at the VA Got a Positive Performance Review, Despite Wait-Times and Patient Deaths
Almost as Unsurprising: They Wrote Their Own Performance Reviews

Ah, the Golden Days of Government under Emperor Obama.

We have seen the Obama Administration routinely review its own actions for illegality -- Eric Holder, for example, conducted a vigorous inquiry into the possible lawless behavior of Eric Holder.

This, as you know, was the ultimate chessmatch between investigator and target, a battle of two masters. It was like a game of wits between Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarity, if both were corrupt and both were dullards.

But in case you think that's a case of favoritism for the high-ranking officials in the Obama Administration, Think Again, Buddy.

The policy is extended downwards to mid-level managers, too.

Every top manager of the Department of Veterans Affairs received a positive performance evaluation for the past four years, and 78 percent got a bonus in 2013, despite a string of patient deaths and falsification of records related to patient wait times, according to congressional testimony Friday.

Agency executives write their own performance evaluations, which seem to receive only cursory reviews from their supervisors, several committee members said in questioning the VA’s top personnel officer.

While everyone was deemed at least "fully successful" in meeting their performance goals, 57 percent of top managers were rated to have exceeded expectations and another 21 percent were found to be "outstanding," according to testimony from Gina Farrisee, assistant secretary for human resources and administration at VA.

Self-Administered Performance Review

* I have exceeded all expectations of myself

* I have surprised myself at nearly every turn with my outstanding performance

* My attendance record at work is nothing short of exemplary, as I showed up whenever I felt like it and, even more incredibly, occasionally when I didn't

* I'm buyin' a fuckin' jet-ski, baby

...

Past evaluations cannot be rescinded, even in light of new revelations that hospital administrators nationwide engaged in “systemic” falsification of patient wait lists to hide backlogs in medical care, Farrisee said.

Keep this in mind as you read Jonah Goldberg's piece, linked by both @benk84 and @rdbrewer4, so you know it must be good.

Of the Bureaucrats, by the Bureaucrats, for the Bureaucrats The naked self-interest of the government-worker class By Jonah Goldberg

...

The Veterans Affairs scandal can be boiled down to the fact that VA employees are the agency’s most important constituency. The Phoenix VA health-care system created secret waiting lists where patients languished and even died, while the administrator paid out almost $10 million in bonuses to VA employees over the last three years.

Working for the federal government simply isn’t like working for the private sector. Government employees are essentially unfireable....

In 2010, the 168,000 federal workers in Washington, D.C. — who are quite well compensated — had a job-security rate of 99.74 percent. A HUD spokesman told USA Today that “his department’s low dismissal rate — providing a 99.85 percent job security rate for employees — shows a skilled and committed workforce.”

Uh huh...

The Democratic party today is, quite simply, the party of government and the natural home of the managerial class...

We constantly hear how the evil Koch brothers are motivated by a toxic mix of ideology and economic self-interest. Is it so impossible to imagine that a class of workers might be seduced by the same sorts of impulses?

Main link from @drawandstrike. He has previously rubbished the claim from progressives that any misbehaving agency just needs more taxpayer money.

More money. That'll fix their wagons.

posted by Ace at 05:56 PM

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