Monday, May 26, 2014

A Memorial Day Rant

It is ridiculous that on Memorial Day 2014, we are faced with misconduct at the Veterans Administration. Our veterans deserve much better treatment than this! So today, I've just the following letter to my Congressman, Senators and President Obama. I would urge you to do the same. If you need assistance finding out who your Congressman and Senators are, click here.

Dear {Congessman/Senator/President Obama},

I am writing to you this Memorial Day to express my outrage over the Veterans Administration misconduct and the treatment of our veterans. This horrible treatment of the men and women who have served so that we can be free should not be tolerated! I’m failing to understand how the ridiculous policy of treating our veterans so badly has been allowed to continue - and how leaders, like yourself, feign ignorance of the problem when your job is the oversight of it.

First and foremost, Eric Shinseki needs to resign immediately. It is obvious that he does not possess the skills needed to lead the agency out of the debacle it’s in. Second, anyone who has been found to have committed misconduct needs to be fired and charged with crimes if necessary. There should be an immediate and harsh response to this callous treatment of the men and women in our armed forces.

If part of this problem is the lack of good Information Technology to assess patient needs, waiting times, etc., I would like to volunteer to help fix it. I have been a software engineer for many years and have donated volunteer hours with the nationwide GiveCamp organization. GiveCamp and other charitable IT organizations would most likely be willing to donate time to fix this problem and give our armed forces personnel what they need to get better.

From now on, please stop talking about the problem and actually do something to fix it! Our veterans have waited long enough! They didn’t wait when you sent them on missions. Now it’s our turn to take care of them when they need it. Stop failing them!

Rob Heckart