Posted on 03/14/2007 3:44:52 PM PDT by kellynla
"When Bush came in the Army began looking at contracting out some services at places like Walter Reed. After a review process that took FIVE YEARS and 7 MILLION DOLLARS, the first "independent contractors" just started coming in at the end of 2006."
Actually, I was wrong. They only began to trickle in at the beginning of this year.
And at full flood (which they probably not not yet reached) the contractors will only have at most 200 out of the 1,100 maintenance jobs at Walter Reed.
No matter who is doing the maintenance the commanding officer of the installation is still responsible for the conditions of the facilities on the post. If the conditions were that way when he arrived he should have noted the problems to his superiors and fought to correct the problems.
"I know that the maintenance replaced government employees last year and there wasn't enough time for Walter Reed to go from a pristine state to the state it is in today."
Not according to the article I just posted.
They were only scheduled to begin to replace government maintenance people with contractors at the start of this year. And then, as I said, only 200 out of 1,100 when they were finally done.
"Walter Reed Army Medical Center plans to cut at least 200 jobs early next year in its drawn-out, bitterly contested effort to outsource more work to a private contractor."
And that is from November 2006.
Base on your article it looks like the entire 1100 person staff was being looked at for replacement, but they only outsourced the maintenance.
The problem here is not a political one, it is a bureaucratic one. DoD puts a facility on the BRAC list, which means it is cut off from most capital funding, and then expects it gets tasked with it's highest loading since Vietnam. What do they expect to happen.
The same thing happened with the USS John F. Kennedy. It had a couple major yard periods cancelled and then, what do you know, they failed a major inspection and couldn't deploy on time. In its wake that ship left a couple fired Captains and various other major department heads who were given a turd and told to spit polish it.
That doesn't relieve the commanding officer from his responsibility to try to fix his situation, but he has to have the documentation to protect himself when they come looking for a head to lop off.
First, the ambulance got lost on the way to Rosenbaum. Then, instead of taking him to the closest emergency room, the ambulance took him to Howard University Hospital, nearly 30 minutes away, because one of the "emergency medical technicians" had personal business in the area.
Once he finally arrived at the hospital, Rosenbaum was left unattended on a gurney for 90 minutes because the "emergency medical technicians" had completely missed his head injury and listed him as "drunk" and "low priority."
Months later, the deputy mayor for public safety told The Washington Post that "to the best of his knowledge, no one involved in the incident had been fired."
Great of Ann to put in this nice section so liberals would have a chance to "relate". Coulter's great.
As a member of the DC Chapter and a weekly volunteer at Walter Reed, I would like to point out a couple of things.
First, anyone with a heart would like to see soldiers having relief from bureaucratic nightmares regarding their paperwork and medical care. However, I venture to say that there are few people in the United States with comparable injuries who have not also experienced a bureaucratic nightmare with their hospital and insurance company.
Secondly, the Washington Post articles citing mold and rats referred to Building 18. That building is not a medical care facility, it is a barracks. It is not on the main 116-acre campus of Walter Reed; it is a former motel across the 6-lane avenue that was purchased as an overflow residence.
Of all the approximately 120 rooms in Building 18, only 7 of them were affected by mold according to my sources, representing about 5% of the rooms in Building 18, which is only one of many, many barracks and residences associated with the Walter Reed base. The mold was caused by a bathtub overflow. The men who stay in Building 18 are on MedHold -- they are either outpatients whose injuries are not serious enough to require hospitalization or who are healed up and awaiting orders to go home or to go back into their units. Some times they drink and party on the weekends, leave pizza boxes around and other mess that would attract vermin in any city in the United States, as Coulter illustrated in her column.
Several concerned soldiers held a press conference last week attended by all the major news outlets. They wanted to set the record straight and tell their side of the story -- that they feel they are receiving great care at Walter Reed and that the original series of articles contained serious flaws and misleading claims. Did you see any articles or televised stories as a result of their news conference, which lasted over an hour? Neither did I. Even FoxNews only did a less-than-one-minute clip, according to my sources who were at the conference.
I would also like to point out that when I have been talking with soldiers at Walter Reed, I have heard complaints from two of the head-injury patients that they believed that WR does not understand the needs of head injury patients as well as those of amputees.
Two of the soldiers whose complaints were quoted in the Washington Post were head injury patients. I was fairly well acquainted with one of them and knew the other one in passing. I have also known a few civilian head injury patients over the years, including one who went on to do graduate work in brain injury and who discussed the topic with me at length; I was working as a writer about medical issues at the time.
We need to take into account that the brain is not a mechanical part like a leg or arm that may be rebuilt or to which a prosthesis may be attached. It can be greatly more difficult to assess and repair a head injury than a limb injury. Furthermore, many head injury patients experience bouts of combativeness and rage. While understandable from a psychological point of view, rage after head injury may also be a physiological response that takes an indeterminate amount of time and pharmaceutical intervention to manage and resolve. Therefore, we should allow a wider margin of credibility when evaluating the comments by Walter Reed head injury patients about their care. Instead, their angry responses have been taken as gospel by the sensationalizing news reports and waves of chatter afterwards, including on this forum.
And finally, as a householder with a nice middle-class life, I must nevertheless admit that I have had mice in both the houses I have owned at one time or another, that the mice in the City were bigger than the ones in the suburbs; and that once I had a City water main break that dumped two feet of water into my basement, rusted out my heater and clothes dryer and ruined my stored business records and clothing and my kid's baby furniture. We had rot and mold problems afterwards that took us months to clean up – none of which State Farm would cover. Yet no one took my child away nor threatened to impeach me as a parent. And no congressional oversight committee denounced anyone, nor demanded that I be repaid by the City or the insurer, because there was nothing to be gained politically by it. But there has been plenty to be gained by the fame-seeking reporters and the grandstanding politicians who could easily have visited Walter Reed countless times during the past 5 years of war – but didn't.
The exposé articles were written to embarrass the Bush administration, to worry and harass the soldiers, to give aid and comfort to the Democrat quislings in Congress and to discourage enlistments. Don't think for a moment the authoresses cared one bit about the troops. The troops were just Pulitzer-fodder for another generation of Woodward 'n' Bernstein wannabes.
Thanks for update.. and effort..
At my last command - CNCTC Wash DC - I complained to the LT in charge of the galley because the galley was continually not open for breakfast an average of 3 days of the week. I sat down with him and he told me that the cooks are civil service employees getting the basic min wage and could probably make more on welfare. Also, the last LT in charge still had an EEO suit against him so basically the LT was afraid to say anything because he didn't want his career harmed. It's probably easier fighting the terrorists than most of these civil service employees.
Well, I can tell you there is one group of people in the DC workforce who do work. It's the meter maids handing out parking tickets. They are quick to do that job!
Thank you for the ping. I'm going to quote you.
Thank you for the ping. I'm going to quote you elsewhere.
I just noticed in that picture - the gun has no chamber!
A extremely well writen and concise article. May I have your permission to send it via email to people I know?
Who wants to bet that someone is going to be offended with the use of the word "rat"
This is a hand-made scandal by the Post. The fact that it's gone as far as it has is merely more proof that the MSM has a vendetta against Dubya. How dare he not just give up on the Battle of Florida in 2000?!
Walter Reed Army Medical Center plans to cut at least 200 jobs early next year
How many of the 200 anticipated cuts have actually taken place?
YES...."Faggots are balls of low quality pork"
Which reference leads to all SORTS of wry comments, unfortunately bannable here.....
Ann hit the nail on the head with that statement. I've been in the Civil Service for over 30 years and the past few in "management". The ONLY people I've ever seen fired, were drug users.
Several employees viewed porn while at work and all they got were reprimands. Some did that on a consistent basis and finally management has to do something. Many times, these people are allowed to "resign", instead of being fired.
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