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| -Lurid Crime Tales- |
| VA defends officials who allegedly stole $400,000 from agency |
| 2016-02-05 |
| [WASHINGTONEXAMINER] A high-ranking Department of Veterans Affairs official on Tuesday defended the VA's failure to discipline two employees accused of misconduct, and blamed the outrage over their lenient treatment on "considerable external pressure" by the media and Congress to punish personnel who may not have done anything wrong. Sloan Gibson, deputy VA secretary, praised a judge's recent decision in personnel cases that stopped the demotions of Diana Rubens and Kimberly Graves, two VA officials accused of together stealing more than $400,000 in benefits from the government. The allegations against Graves and Rubens came in a September 2015 inspector general report, which found the two officials had created job openings for themselves in far-away cities and gamed a VA program meant to pay the moving expenses of agency employees. But Gibson said Tuesday the inspector general report was flawed, arguing Graves and Rubens should never have been demoted in the first place. According to the inspector general, Graves had pressured a colleague to leave his job so she could manipulate the VA's employee relocation program and pocket nearly $130,000 in benefits. The same report found Rubens had created a less-demanding position for herself at the VA's regional office in Philadelphia, then netted $274,000 in moving benefits to take the job while retaining the same six-figure salary. Gibson denied either official had stolen taxpayer money. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #3 Patronage was intended to be for the senior leaders of government agencies to be selected to reflect the current administrations policies that were approved by the voters since they elected the President based on them. Essentially lifetime tenure in the Civil Service and a massive disparity in ethnic, demographic, and political positions held by civil service workers now, along with their overwhelming Union political contributions, have made them a permanent overclass for the democrat party. Democrats have salted away a massive and permanent constituency in places like Justice Civil Rights Division, the IRS, the EPA, increasingly DHS, Treasury.....and they make all the tens of thousands of regulations and rules that are choking the Republic. |
| Posted by: NoMoreBS 2016-02-05 17:48 |
| #2 Repeal the Civil Service Act. If they're going to be crooks and operatives for one party, they might as well be cleaned out every four or eight years. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2016-02-05 08:10 |
| #1 Gibson and the other two should be part of a Jan 21st housecleaning |
| Posted by: Frank G 2016-02-05 05:42 |