It really is looking like The Law no longer applies to Federal Employees - Granite Grok

It really is looking like The Law no longer applies to Federal Employees

VA to reinstate official who stole $130,000 from agency

“The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works — whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified.”  – President Obama, Inauguration (2009)

VASo when you steal and defraud, is that the way our Federal Government is supposed to work?  Certainly Lois Lerner (of IRS targeting of Conservative groups, but also did so while at the FEC) is emblematic of it and Hillary Clinton is starting to become the even bigger poster child of it as her use of a private email server having classified, top secret, and “I have to kill you” level documents on it.  But PLEASE, how bad can this get, especially in the VA that has been accused of allowing those they are supposed to serve die because they simply wanted money (emphasis mine, reformatted)?

A Department of Veterans Affairs official who was demoted after allegedly stealing thousands of taxpayer dollars from the agency was quietly reinstated to her position earlier this week.

Such a Government that can have such a job!  And the legal system that allows it to happen. What a country!

Kimberly Graves, former head of a VA regional office in Minnesota, appeared before the Merit Systems Protection Board Wednesday to appeal the VA’s decision to strip her of her title in the wake of a scathing inspector general report. That report found Graves had pressured a colleague to leave his job so she could manipulate an employee relocation program and pocket nearly $130,000.  Diana Rubens, another VA official named in the watchdog report, will learn her fate Monday. Rubens was accused by the inspector general of creating a less-demanding position for herself at the VA’s regional office in Philadelphia, then netting $274,000 in moving benefits to take the job.

So now we know the extent of the cost: $400K.  And what did the VA do?

The VA demoted both Graves and Rubens in response to the findings, although both officials took their cases to the Merit Systems Protection Board, which weighs personnel disputes at agencies across the federal government. Lawmakers have pointed to the pair of high-profile cases as further evidence of the VA’s refusal to hold its own executives accountable for bad behavior.

Seriously – DEMOTED?  How about a perp walk with law enforcement providing the escort and the clinking of hand-cuffs providing the back-beat??  Really – the harshest smack is demotion and not a full-scale DOJ project?

And yet, look what happens in the private sector when an employee does such a thing.  Not only did they just want to demote-and-hush, it looks like the Left s all about making it worse as far as using the The Rule of Law to, you know, make it clear that when doing Wrong, is to railroad it:

VA leadership, including Secretary Robert McDonald, has argued against legislation that would remove barriers to firing staff members.  A bill designed to increase accountability at the VA was shelved in October, after Senate Democrats and the White House successfully characterized the legislation as unfair to federal officials.

Got it:  make it HARDER to get rid of your bad apples – REJOICE!  Consider part of the Obama transformation: Wrong is right.  In fact, Wrong is celebrated and to be “conserved”.

Let me go out on a limb here – I’m betting that these two embezzlers have Ds in their political affiliations.

Weaponization.

 

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