By Derek Hunter
Thursday, May 22, 2014
President Obama is “madder than hell” about the scandal
at the Veterans Administration. How do we know? Dennis McDonough, Obama’s chief
of staff, told us so.
Between fundraisers and golf outings, the president took
time from his “busy” schedule to inform his chief of staff aside how angry he
was that his administration was, in effect, issuing death sentences to veterans
by hiding them on secret wait lists so as not to endanger performance bonuses
bureaucrats receive for ensuring those vets did not, in fact, die.
The president must be so angry he’s lost the ability to
speak – at least for two weeks when he couldn't be bothered to say or tweet a
word about the mistreatment of veterans by his team. Finally forced to break
his silence Wednesday, he delivered a statement filled with all the passion of
a bag of dirty laundry. But I’m not here to complain about the president’s
failed leadership – at this point it’s commonplace, his “style,” and God only
knows how much worse things would be if he decided to be “hands on.”
No, I’m not going to mock him since it’s hard to mock a
parody anyway. Nor am I going to run through the litany of things “the smartest
guy to ever become president” has found out about through media reports and not
his paid staff whose very job it is to keep him informed of the happenings in
his administration. (The great Washington Free Beacon has a video of some of
them worth watching.)
No, others can do that much better than I. But there is
one thing I noticed in the McDonough distract-a-thon over the weekend that I
found to be incredibly telling, not just about the president, but about
liberalism in general.
When McDonough was on CNN with Jake Tapper, he was
confronted with proof the White House knew for years about the hidden VA wait
times and the consequences of that act. Rather than offer an apology or simply
admit the truth, he offered what is standard fare for liberals – a distraction.
But the distraction in this case is the crystallization of liberalism.
McDonough told Tapper, “The president has seen
dramatically expanded investments in Veteran’s Administration operations over
the course of these last five years … year-on-year historic increases in that
budget. At a time, by the way Jake, when we’ve seen budgets under intense
pressure, we will continue to make those investments.”
Did you catch it? The president has spent more money on
the VA than anyone else has, and to liberals that’s the solution. No concern
for how the money is spent – whether it is being spent effectively, being
wasted or stolen - just that it’s being spent. The appearance of caring,
coupled with a big check, is enough.
We see this not only in the Veteran’s Administration, but
in just about everything liberals touch. Washington, D.C., spends nearly
$30,000 per student and fully 83 percent aren’t proficient in something as
basic as reading.
In Maryland, another big-spending state, Democratic Gov.
Martin O’Malley is gearing up for a presidential run by touting how the Old
Line State is No.1 in national reading tests. What he leaves out is that’s in
large part because Maryland exempts more students who would score lower on that
test that any other state – by a lot. As the Washington Post put it, “The state
led the nation in excluding students on the 2013 National Assessment of
Educational Progress, posting rates that were five times the national average
and more than double the rate of any other state.” (Emphasis added.)
As I’ve said before, when you choose the unit of measure,
or invent one out of whole cloth (jobs saved or created), you’ll always come
out on top. When it comes to caring, liberals have set that unit of measure as
money – always other people’s money. With that as the yardstick, no one cares
more than liberals. But, like a distant rich parent in movies and novels that
raise horrible children, a bottomless checkbook is no substitute for results.
And when it comes to results, at least in the real world, be it health care,
education, anti-poverty programs, the Veterans Administration, or anything else
big government attempts to “fix,” liberals are sadly lacking.
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