This weekend at the Lumberjack World Championships in Hayward, WI I won my 8th log rolling world title. Here is the final match, minus the second fall Darren Hudson got on me (for some reason it wasn’t filmed).

I think I did a pretty good job of covering everything that I wanted to say when I was given my award.  Well, almost everything.  I would also like to say something how the VA health care system once again failed in its obligation to provide me with the necessary care and nearly cost me 2.5 months of training and my 8th log rolling world title.

After spending Monday and Tuesday in our local (private, non-VA) hospital with my wife as she gave birth to our first child, I finally succumbed to my deteriorating condition and complete exhaustion and went to VA urgent care in Minneapolis.  That night I spent 6 hours waiting because they apparently they ran out of doctors and had to call some in (they then had the audacity to ask me to be “extra nice” to the doctor because and was only supposed to work on weekends but got called in midweek).  I had trouble understanding how they were “backed up” when there were only four of us waiting.

Despite the fact I had been bitten by three ticks two months earlier and had nearly all the symptoms of Lymes (and was suggesting the entire time that I have Lymes) I was sent home empty handed pending an out-of-state blood test (that may or may not reveal that I have Lymes Disease, even if I have it).   Had I not consulted with medical professionals outside the VA and acquired the necessary antibiotics my condition would not have improved enough to compete in the Lumberjack World Championships, let alone win another log rolling world title.

As much as I would like to give the VA the benefit of the doubt, I find myself unable to do so based on their prior track record of being unable to provide me with the necessary medical care.  It took me over a year of waiting and a congressional inquiry into my case until I was finally given a prosthetic arm to replace the one I received at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.  (I received a new one within a week of the inquiry).  I bounced around the VA system for year and a half by myself before I was finally assigned a patient advocate to help with my transition from Walter Reed Army Medical Center.  During that time I was unsure how to acquire meds, make appoints, or go through the disability rating process.  And despite my many calls to VA personnel to find out when the appoints were for disability rating, I was informed that after months of waiting I had missed all of them because the “system” made the appointments without sending me a letter or issuing a call notification.  After these repeated displays of incompetence, I cannot give the VA the benefit of the doubt any longer.

To me the moral of the story is clear.  The VA is incapable of providing adequate medical care in a timely fashion.  The system is too big, too bureaucratic, and apparently has no oversight whatsoever.  I have finally learned that if I’m going to receive adequate medical care I need to go elsewhere, even if I have to use my disability payments to pay for it.  It’s a shame that I had to risk 2.5 months of training and my 8th log rolling world title to realize it.

It’s one thing to say that Obama’s Administration showed its ineptitude and mismanagement in its handling of the Gulf oil spill. It is quite another to grasp the situation up close as I did during a recent visit to Alabama.

According to state disaster relief officials, Alabama conceived a plan – early on – to erect huge booms off shore to shield the approximately 200 miles of their state’s coastline from oil. Rather than install the relatively light and shallow booms in use elsewhere, the state (with assistance from the Coast Guard) canvassed the world and located enough huge, heavy booms – some weighing tons and seven meters high – to guard their coast.

So, Alabama decided on a backup plan. It would buy snare booms to catch the oil as it began to wash up on the beaches.

But…the Fish and Wildlife Administration vetoed the plan saying it would endanger sea turtles that nest on the beaches.

So, Alabama – ever resourceful – decided to hire 400 workers to patrol the beaches in person scooping up oil that had washed ashore.

But…OSHA (the Occupational Safety and Health Agency) refused to allow them to work more than twenty minutes out of every hour and required an hour long break after forty minutes of work so the cleanup proceeded at a very slow pace.

The short answer is that every agency – each with its own particular bureaucratic agenda – was able to veto each aspect of any plan to fight the spill with the unintended consequence that nothing stopped the oil from destroying hundreds of miles of wetlands, habitats, beaches, fisheries, and recreational facilities.

Read the whole thing. Makes you feel a lot better knowing they are now in charge of your health care. You know that emergency heart surgery you need to survive?  Yeah, you can forget about that.

]]> http://jrsalzman.com/2010/07/01/government-to-the-rescue/feed/ 0 http://jrsalzman.com/2009/04/29/budget-crisis/ http://jrsalzman.com/2009/04/29/budget-crisis/#comments Wed, 29 Apr 2009 06:40:55 +0000 J.R. http://jrsalzman.com/?p=503 Continue reading →]]>

This has been around since March, but I have yet to post it. The Congressional Budget Office has a record of being more accurate than most presidents. The CBO estimates that from 2010 to 2019 the Obama budget we will have a total budget deficit of 9.27 trillion dollars.

If you’re like me and you want to see the data for yourself, click here (requires Excel). If you want to check out all the information, check out the Congressional Budget Office.

Coincidentally, I was bouncing around from link to link last night, reading random stuff that happened when I was too young to know anything, and stumbled upon this lovely tidbit of information (4th paragraph from the bottom) involving Janet Napolitano when she served under Clinton back in 1996.

The BATF and U.S. Attorney Janet Napolitano may have overlooked the weaknesses in the case against the Vipers because both were eager for some good press. Napolitano, a Clinton appointee, last January 1996 declined to seek search warrants requested by U.S. postal inspectors who were finishing a two-year child pornography sting operation. The inspectors, who had received 106 warrants with the help of other federal officials during the investigation, were surprised. They turned to Maricopa County officials, who obtained the warrants and made the arrests. A search of the prime Phoenix suspect’s house yielded numerous photos and videotapes of children having sex with men, plus a confession that the suspect had sodomized numerous boys. The case became a public issue in May when a postal inspector appeared on ABC’s 20/20 with a letter from Napolitano stating that she had refused to take the child pornography case because it unfairly targeted homosexual men. Perhaps she was right, but the case has generated local criticism and a Senate investigation.

So here were two known child molesters. This wasn’t a “might be” situation. They weren’t sitting outside gay bars searching people’s cars, following people home, or wiretapping outspoken homosexuals simply for being homosexual. These were child molesters hurting innocent children. There was obviously enough evidence to obtain 106 warrants against these individuals previously, yet Janet Napolitano declined because she felt it would be unfairly targeting homosexuals.

So let me see if I have this straight. According to Janet Napolitano, it is wrong to target known child molesters if they are homosexuals, but it is ok to target anyone who is basically right leaning in their ideology.

Oh, I get it! This is about politics!

Arrayed around a long mahogany table in the White House state dining room last week, the CEOs of the most powerful financial institutions in the world offered several explanations for paying high salaries to their employees – and, by extension, to themselves.
“These are complicated companies,” one CEO said. Offered another: “We’re competing for talent on an international market.”
But President Barack Obama wasn’t in a mood to hear them out. He stopped the conversation, and offered a blunt reminder of the public’s reaction to such explanations. “Be careful how you make those statements, gentlemen. The public isn’t buying that.”
“My administration,” the president added, “is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.”
“The only way they could have sent a more Spartan message is if they had served bread along with the water,” says a person who attended the meeting. “The signal from Obama’s body language and demeanor was, ‘I’m the president, and you’re not.’”…
The president spoke of public outrage over the high flying executive lifestyle. “The anger gentlemen, is real,” Obama said. He urged pay reform and said rewards must be proportional and balanced, and tied to the health and success of the company.

In other words, “If you don’t take this bottle of KY and bend over, we’re going to stir up another angry mob and throw you to them.” Slublog sums it up:

“So let me see if I’ve got this right. The Democrats helped cause the crisis through bad policy, fanned the flames of outrage against CEOs and Wall Street and are now saying they’re the only ones who can protect the CEOs from all of those angry people out there.”

Hotair adds:

Anyone recognize the phrase “the anger is real,” though? The last time Obama used it was in his speech on race to back off all the haters who thought, inexplicably, that a would-be president should have piped up about Reverend Wright sometime in the course of 20 years. Evidently it’s a favorite formulation when he wants to lean on his audience. In which case, if he’s so worried about pitchforks, instead of creepily exploiting the threat of mob violence to centralize the economy, how about our modern-day Lincoln gives a speech asking Americans to cool off before bailout fatigue leads to someone getting killed? After all, the anger really is real.

You know all those retroactive AIG Taxes they threatened to pass? They quietly let them die. Americans need to start calling Obama’s bluff and stand up to his class warfare agenda. Remember, this is all about politics. If any of this were an actual legal matter, half of the house and senate would be in jail.