Why The VA Is So Screwed Up, And Why It’s Obama’s Fault

Unless you get your news from NBC, CNN, ABC, New York Times, Comedy Central, CBS, Washington Post, LA Times, MSNBC, or al Jazeera, you probably know that the Veterans Administration has death panels and secret waiting lists which are killing veterans, or more accurately, letting them die rather than doing the hard expensive work of treating them, healing them, and prolonging their lives.  In other words, the VA is performing exactly as designed.  Come to think of it, the entire federal bureaucracy is performing exactly as designed.  The IRS, Fannie and Freddie, The State Department, Obamacare (HHS), The Obama Administration, and all the rest in this “mismanaged carnival of stupidity” (to repurpose Alec Baldwin’s words) are all performing exactly as designed.  What’s more, it’s all Obama’s fault. 

No, I’m not suggesting that President Barack Obama himself is making the day to day decisions at the VA, HHS, IRS, or any one of the alphabet soup exemplars of tragic dysfunction which we call government.  He is far too busy watching college hoops, fundraising, partying with Jay Z, golfing, and dishing one-liners from behind a teleprompter to be involved in running anything.  Running stuff is icky and hard.  Besides, Obama doesn’t ever want to risk having his fingerprints on any part of this travesty.  Yet despite his attempts to float above the mess, his signature is everywhere, for he is the modern ideological leader of totalitarian big government and has been it’s most ardent champion since coming on the national scene. 

Barack Obama is a perversion of King Midas:  everything he touches gets nationalized.   Got a problem with student loans?  Nationalize it.  Got a problem with health insurance?  Nationalize it.  Got a problem with housing?  Nationalize it.  (Don’t forget: as Senator, Barack Obama was known as the “Senator from Fannie and Freddie”.)  Got a problem with curriculum?  Nationalize it.  Got a problem with anything, the answer is always the same: nationalize it.  And when you nationalize it, you politicize it.  Hence, everything becomes political. 

You would think the VA is a healthcare system for veterans.  You would be wrong.  The VA is first and foremost a jobs program for political constituents that was originally set-up to treat veterans but now does so as an afterthought.  You might think Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were mortgage companies for the poor.  You would be wrong.  Fannie and Freddie are first and foremost political operations that originally were set-up to provide mortgages for the poor but now do so as an afterthought.  This goes for Obamacare, student loans, the IRS, and every other agency, policy, statute, and corner of the federal government under this President and those before him who shared his philosophy. 

The framers of our constitution knew this could happen.  They knew totalitarianism and all-powerful government would politicize everything and turn it into a horror show.  That’s why they gave us a “charter of negative liberties” which says “what the federal government can’t do to you…” (to borrow Barack Obama’s own derisive words.).  The constitution specifically limited federal power.  It was a check on totalitarianism and a wall against nationalizing and politicizing everything.  Well, it used to do that anyway.  Not so much anymore. 

No president in our history has openly denigrated the concept of limited government and done more to deliberately undermine it than this president.  Dead veterans, dead ambassadors, more than a doubling of dead soldiers in Afghanistan, death panels, a government weaponized for political purposes, and a mismanaged carnival of stupidity from top to bottom are the inevitable result.