These rumor driven discussions bring up an interesting issue related to software.
Information related to the VA scandal has been spotty and inconsistent, and the understanding of the underlying causes are ill served by this lack of clarity. But central to the entire scandal is the software which had to be written by someone in order to force the lowest level VA employees who had to process appointments, to use the fraudulent hidden phony list of appointments. The lists which have reportedly been erased electronically and shredded physically. There have to be a few federal laws totally broken and ignored there.
First of all, who created the idea of keeping a phony list of appointments? Who ordered the specific program created specifically to commit the fraud? Who approved it? Who actually wrote it?
Every link in that dirty chain is complicit in enabling a criminal act.
Isn't that clearly a criminal act that the RICO laws were created to root out an punish?
Do the RICO laws include an exemption for elected, appointed or Union-member criminals? Where is the citation for that exemption?
How about the other "word from sources" rumor that suggest that 70% of the significant additional funding received by the VA in the last 5 years have been used for middle management and higher positions? Bunuses?
That would be stealing, plain and simple.
Not only should ALL the participants in the crime be prosecuted and jailed, but they should all also be ordered to return all bonuses obtained in the last 6 years (what is the statute of limitations for that crime?) and perhaps even forfeit all or a good chunk of their accumulated retirement package.
If a charitable organization spent more than 15% of their working funds for "overhead" they would be investigated and placed on the fraud list, in addition to losing their non-profit status.
When no oversight whatsoever exists, the criminal element is instantly there to exploit the incompetence.
Why aren't the RICO laws applied?