The article discusses concerns about job cuts in the Department of Veterans Affairs, with a focus on probationary employees. It mentions the impact of these layoffs on the employees and the quality of service provided to veterans. The article also criticizes the lack of transparency and accountability in the decision-making process, and mentions plans for unofficial hearings to address these issues.

Doug Collins, a public figure, has been invited to speak at an event despite recent criticism from Democratic lawmakers. The criticism revolves around changes at the VA bureaucracy, which some claim are causing unnecessary fear among veterans. Collins argues that the current state of care for veterans and the management of specialty programs need improvement. Despite increased spending on these programs, there is no significant improvement in veterans’ care, and issues such as veteran suicide remain unaddressed.

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A potential presidential candidate is causing a stir with his plans to change the Veterans Affairs (VA) department. He’s been critical of the current system, saying that simply adding more money and staff isn’t the solution to the VA’s problems. Instead, he wants to try a new approach to improve care for veterans. However, his critics, including some who initially supported him, are concerned about his proposed staff cuts and contract cancellations, fearing they could negatively impact veterans’ care.

The speaker emphasizes the need for unity to solve problems, particularly in supporting veterans. They express concern about the influence of foreign states on their government and question the allocation of funds to Israel. The speaker also shares personal experiences and beliefs, including their friendship with a black person and their views on Jewish people.

Shadow hearings are the new defense that the Democrats are rolling out as it relates to the VA Anyway, I think we’ve seen all over the country. We’ve seen everywhere these, these arguments and these protests and all of this, this distraught behavior about things like probationary layoffs and trimming the fat from federal agencies. Well, the newest thing that Mr. Blumenthal and his cronies in the, in the Veterans Affairs Committee are pulling apparently is gonna be shadow hearings. So let’s discuss this today, uh, because I think that there’s probably some more things at play here than just shadow hearings.

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Okay, so shadow hearings. I was perusing, I was perusing all of our media outlets. And as everybody knows, our media outlets these days are. They’re Very dependable, right? They’re, they’re, you can, you can take them to the bank, right? Checks in the mail. Now, these things are, they’re set in stone. And it seems like no matter what outlet you choose, whether it’s left leaning or right leaning, and if there are still any independent sources out there, which maybe there’s a couple, you got to kind of sift through all the bullshit and come up with an idea or an outcome for yourself what might really be happening.

And I think on this one, I think on this one, it’s kind of clear to see what the outcome or proposed or hopeful outcome is going to be. And so we’ll go through this quickly. I have my thoughts about it. And I, I gotta say that just from jump street, I’ll tell you this. It doesn’t seem to me that one side of the aisle or the other, organizing shadow hearings, the shadow hearings doesn’t seem to me like that would be a very effective way to combat this, these atrocities on the American people that everyone is talking about.

And by that, I mean President Trump and Elon Musk going through and trimming the fat and finding egregious amounts of money being spent on some really stupid stuff and then saying, hey, I think we are done with that. I think we are finished spending money on all this stuff. And I think if we take a look from January, what was it, 20th he was inaugurated to current day. And then think about all the things that were promised, all the things that were campaigned on by the, the Trump campaign. And of course, there’s gonna be people out there that says, you know, he, maybe it seems like he’s doing what he said he was gonna do, but let’s not be mistaken.

You know, he’s, he’s making deals with the devil behind closed doors to make it look like he’s doing what he said he was gonna do, and that the American people, many American people are being negatively affected by the things. And, and the directives that he’s giving and what his cabinet is doing. What things? Things like Elon Musk, what he’s doing. But still, yet we haven’t had any, any politician that I’ve, that I’m aware of who opposes Donald Trump also come out and say, well, all right, man, okay, maybe some of this stuff is crazy. So maybe we need to, maybe we need to cool out on some of this spending and, and some of these initiatives that we’re funding.

Maybe, just maybe it’s stupid, it’s egregious. I haven’t seen it. I try to. I try to take in as much of the. The mainstream media as I can each day just to try to get a gauge on how out of touch with the American people maybe they really are. And some days, folks, I’ll tell you, it’s a tough task. It’s a tough task, but let’s just, let’s, let’s walk down. Let’s walk down this road of shadow hearings. Uh, the article is titled Senate Democrats Plan Shadow hearings on controversial VA cuts. And there’s our buddy, Mr. Blumenthal, right there, front and center.

See him there? Looks like he just. Looks like he just woke up from slumber in a casket or something. Yikes. Uh, anyway, Senate Democrats are planning shadow hearings in the coming weeks to highlight the Department of Veterans fair staffing plans and policy changes that they insist were. Will severely curtail services for veterans. Now more than ever, we need to sound the alarm and hear directly from veterans and VA employees impacted by the musk, Trump heartless and heartbreaking cuts, freezes and firings. Senate Veterans Affairs Committee ranking member Richard Blumenthal said this. This last Monday. Um, okay, so right there in the first two.

In the first two sentences, at first I was going to say, well, hey, me, maybe. Maybe there’s hope here. Maybe Mr. Blumenthal is, is on the right track when he said we need to hear from veterans how they’re impacted. But he said here, now more than ever, we need to sound the alarm and hear directly from veterans and VA employees impacted by the heartless and heartbreaking cuts, freezes and firings. Well, that’s where you lost me. Listen, I wonder if anybody out there has ever been part of a reorganization of a company. Did anybody out there work for Wells Fargo, U.S.

bank, any of these big banks that did massive layoffs in these big box names that did massive layoffs and reorganized their. Their companies and had to listen to the speeches from the. The people on high. It is with great regret and sadness that we inform you that we have to. We have to part ways. We’re reorganizing, running out of money. We don’t know what to do. Well, they did know what to do, but is anybody. Has anybody been a part of that? I have. I’ve been a part of that. Was laid off from a job. It was a smaller business, but they couldn’t afford to pay everybody.

And they. And the guy who owned the place who had to let us go did not like it. He did not like pushing people out of work. He did not like pushing employees out of his business. But he could not afford to pay us. He could not afford to pay the workman’s comp insurance. He could not afford to pay whatever benefits package he offered at the time. I did not take any. I didn’t care. I was young. I only worked there for, I don’t know, it was like 13 months or something. But I understood. My thought was, well, shit, the guy can’t pay me.

I don’t want to come here and work. I’ll go work somewhere where I can get paid. I got bills to pay too. Just like all of these people who got laid off, froze or fired or whatever you want to call it. They all have bills to pay, too. They all have a life also. But I don’t know that anybody has taken the time to have that discussion. The discussion always is, well, Donald Trump hates veterans. Doug Collins, Doug Collins, he doesn’t like veterans. That’s preposterous. It’s preposterous and egregious accusations. If we can’t afford to pay the people, if the work is redundant, if people are going to work and they are showing up there and being paid and there are too many of them and there isn’t enough work for everybody, well, then the organization is not getting any bang for their buck.

Is it shitty that veterans are getting laid off? Yeah. Is it shitty that any of our American any of the American people are getting laid off? Yeah, that’s shitty. But ask yourself, is it necessary if you go on the googoo and you look up that in real time. Debt calculator, the US Debt calculator, and I don’t know how accurate that is, Seems to be pretty accurate, but who knows for sure. And watch the speed at which the debt of this country is going, and then think about how many people are working in federal jobs with no work to do or not enough work to do, or not doing their jobs, or maybe not even showing up to work on time or working from home, and they buy these little devices that move your mouse for you to show your boss, who’s at a different place, that you’re sitting at a computer and your mouse is moving, which means, yeah, well, then they’re at work.

There’s so many ways for people to just skate by and do nothing or less than required. And you hate to classify everybody that way because I’m sure it’s not true. But maybe this is part of the case for one or two shitbags screw it up for everybody. Because then we got to the point where nobody wanted to go Back to the office. Everyone wants to work from home. Hmm. Why would that be? Is that because you don’t really have to put in a full day’s work and then you can get a full time salary for everybody? That’s probably not the case for many.

I’m sure that’s part of the case. It’s real easy to have your mouse move and you can do your six reports or whatever or eight reports or your eight interactions for the day or whatever it is that’s required of you. You probably some of that. Sometimes you can knock them out pretty quick. You’ll be done with your work by noon, 1:00, but you don’t get off work till 4:30. God forbid you have a few extra interactions to fill out your day to help veterans move through the process faster. Because we argue about that too. Wait times, applications and, and benefit applications, they don’t move too fast.

We got to fix that too. But nobody wants to, nobody wants to have those discussions. All we want to do is have shadow hearings about people that are pissed off about being laid off or let go because they are probationary employees. I mean, hell, here in Minnesota we had Care11 news. It was the NBC affiliate, I believe, did a whole like 8 to 10 minute story on some chick who got laid off from the va who was a veteran, served in the Minnesota army national guard for 20 years. Thank you for your service, ma’am. But then she went on the news and articulated that she was a probationary employee with 9 to 10 months of service and the VA was laid off with a whole lot of other probationary employees.

And her first instinct was to leave work and drive her car off a fucking bridge and commit suicide. But nope, she didn’t do that. Instead she drove her, she drove her vehicle over to the va, to the crisis clinic and when she walked in there, the only word she could get out I need help. Because she was laid off from a probationary job. These are the types of stories that we want to put out about our veterans, about the men and women that serve this country with bravery and courage and honor. We put out stories about veterans who are going to commit suicide because they got laid off from a job and don’t seem to have the wherewithal to tighten up your boots and the next morning at 07, get your ass up and start looking for another one or start doing it that afternoon.

I mean, for God’s sakes, you serve 20 years in the military in the, in the Army National Guard. Either you worked full time for the National Guard, and you were AGR soldier or you were an M Day soldier one weekend a month, two weeks a year. And that whole narrative is bullshit because the operational tempo is way higher than that. And held a civilian job. So either way, you shouldn’t be a stranger to work. Being laid off from a job means you’re going to kill yourself. And I don’t. I don’t mean to pick on anybody for their emotional distraughtness, if distraughtness is even a word.

Probably not, but it’s the first thing that came to me. And maybe she did really feel that way. And if that’s the case, okay. But this is certainly not. Certainly not the story we should be putting out all over the media. Our veterans are so weak, so mentally weak that they can’t handle finding a job, even though we signed the contract that says I’m a probationary employee. And those are the types of stories in news outlets around this country that start shit like this, shadow hearings. Because now we’re going to bring in. We’re going to bring in veterans and VA employees impacted by this heartless and heartbreaking action.

These firings and these cuts. Stupid. Look. And we’re only. We’re only two sentences into the goddang article. Holy crap. Let’s get back. Hearing from veterans and impacted stakeholders firsthand is the first step toward holding this administration accountable for their reckless and lawless directives. Blumenthal and other Democratic lawmakers have been fiercely critical of President Trump’s va. Of President Trump, VA Secretary Doug Collins and businessman Elon Musk for a series of. Man, I’m so, I’m. I. I’m so wound up, I can’t even read the damn thing. Um, it just, it’s, it’s silliness to me. Let’s try again. Blumenthal and other Democratic.

Democratic lawmakers have been fiercely critical of President Donald Trump, VA Secretary Doug Collins and Elon Musk for a series of unannounced and leaked policies regarding reforms at the Department of Veteran Veterans Affairs. The department dismissed nearly 2400 individuals as part of a probationary employee purge earlier this year, but was forced to bring back most of them as their job remains. Job status remains in legal flux. Collins has said he wants to scale back the VA workforce to the levels of 2019, which would involve eliminating more than 80,000 positions. Okay, so probationary employees countrywide, 2400 people. 2400 people nationwide.

And they were brought back to work while they figure all this thing out because everyone was screaming from the rooftops about how crazy and Insensitive President Trump is. And Elon Musk and good old Doug Collins, who, to me, Doug Collins seems to be a pretty good. A pretty good guy. Seems to me, when he speaks, he genuinely cares about the men and women that are walking through the doors of these clinics and these hospitals and these facilities that really need help. It sounds like his idea isn’t that more is better. Better is better. What would happen, do you think? It’s just game to me.

What would happen, do you think, if the Department of Veterans affairs became a medical institution? That was the premier place, like here in Minnesota, we have the Mayo Clinic, right? People from all over the world, kings and princes and amirs, super rich people, super important people, world leaders, come to Rochester, Minnesota to go to the Mayo Clinic for medical care. Best in the world. What would happen if the VA as a whole became a medical institution as premier as Mayo Clinic, where the doctors there are highly respected, which, by the way, there are many who are not to Mayo Clinic standards, probably, but there’s some, there’s some good medical professionals working in the VA system.

But if we scale back and we make the VA a premier, a premier hospital, a premier clinic, a premier institution for veterans to get the care that everyone says they need, they deserve, why would anybody have a problem with that? And 2400 individuals who are probationary, laid off cause this kind of stir to have shadow government meetings. What do you think would happen when Doug Collins and the administration cut 80,000 VA jobs? 80,000. If you’re a veteran and you have been using VA services for some time now, think about how things were six or seven years ago.

Because they say here they want to restore back to the workforce levels they had in 2019. Now, I’m not here to make a case that I had super amazing care in 2019 and before, but I’m also not here trying to make a case that I’ve had amazing care from 2020 till today, because that isn’t true either. So what really is the difference? Clearly, since 2019, if that’s where we want to get back to, if that’s where the sweet spot, so to say, is what has changed? Clearly, the more is better philosophy hasn’t worked. I don’t. I don’t think anybody can argue with that.

All right, let’s move on. Democrats on the Senate Veterans Policy Committee have petitioned for hearings on those potential staff cuts, plus other contract cancellations and new department policies. But thus far, they have been rebuffed by Republican leadership of the panel. The shadow hearings, unofficial meetings that will be presided by Democratic lawmakers, will invite employees impacted by staffing cuts and other outside critics of the department. The first will be held on April 2. Blumenthal, in the statement, said that Doug Collins has been invited to speak at the event. Collins, who was sworn into office in early February, has been publicly criticized by Democratic lawmakers in recent weeks, accusing them of manufacturing controversy and stoking fears amid needed changes at the.

At the VA bureaucracy. Well, yeah, he did. Doug Collins came out publicly. I think he was with Maria Bartiromo. We talked about it on this show. I think we played part of the interview on the show last week or the week before. Stop scaring our veterans. Stop scaring them. Stop telling them that their medical care is going to go away. Stop telling them that their benefits are going to go away. Stop telling people that they’re fucked. Stop it. But they’re not going to listen to him. They’re going to have shadow meetings. Well, I’ll tell you what.

Doug Collins, in my opinion, he should go to these shadow meetings or whatever the hell they call them, shadow hearings. I think he should go. I think he should bring all of his people with him with all of the data and just keep preaching the same message. We have become a country that is so. We’re so damn focused on complaining about problems. All we talk about is what our problem is. All we talk about is me, me, me, and how it hurts me and how it hurts this particular group of people. And then the discussion just keeps going round and round and round and round.

I thought the point of talking about things that bother us, that we perceive as shortcomings, that talking about all of those things were to be able to come to a common consensus and then slowly or fast in some instances, but slowly make change, make change for the better. So in this, in this particular situation, when Doug Collins comes in to a department like the VA and you can see, based on the data, and I’m sure they pulled a lot of data, well, shit, things aren’t really getting a whole lot better. Maybe they’re not getting a whole lot worse either.

But I think that one thing that both sides of the aisle can agree on is that the current state of care for veterans, the current state of wait times for benefits, the way that some of these specialty programs are being ran and facilitated is not right. It’s not fair, it’s not conducive to taking care of the men and women that wore the uniform. Nobody talks about these programs. And on this show, we’ve talked a lot about the VA Caregiver program, which we could certainly highlight again. But there’s millions and millions of dollars spent on specialty programs and millions and millions of dollars being spent.

Way more. It’s way more money than was spent back in 2019 by millions, maybe even billions. But I don’t know that for sure. But for sure, millions. And nobody’s getting any better help. But we keep hiring more people and we keep signing more contracts to community partners and other agencies that can provide this service and that service to veterans. We keep having these discussions and bringing on these people and spending this money, just spending. Just dump more money at it with no results, no better results anyway. I mean, shit, Doug Collins even said, said it also.

I think we played that part of the interview. There hasn’t been. There hasn’t been so much as a smudge on the windshield of the veteran suicide problem with the billions of dollars that have been tossed at that issue. And like he said, a large percentage of the men and women that wore this uniform, that killed themselves have never been involved in the VA system, or at least were done and haven’t been involved in the VA system at the time of their accident or the time of their. Their suicide or the time of their. Whatever you want to call it.

But nobody wants to talk about that. Why would it be. Let’s just. Let’s just jump down that road for a second. Why would it be that a soldier gets out of the. Gets out of the United States Military and he knows, or she knows, if I have issues, I can go to the va. The VA is meant for me to go and get mental health care, to get physical care, to go and get some disability benefits. If I need prosthetics, I can get it there. If I have sleep apnea, I can get my CPAP there. If I need glasses, I can get glasses there.

If my disability rating is high enough, I can get dental care, I can do all the social workers shit. The VA might even if I need it for my mental health purposes, the VA might even fund a service dog for me if it’s something I think might help me. There is all kinds of things. There are all kinds of programs within the VA to help veterans with whatever they need. And when you get out, they tell you about these things. And it is safe to say that as soldiers are exiting the service, they know enough people.

They know people that are going to the va, they know people that aren’t going to the va. And so why would. If the VA is such a great place for veterans to be, and you’ll hear a lot of veterans around this country talk about great experiences they’ve had at the va. I’ve had some good care at the va. Full disclosure, I’ve had some pretty good experiences. But the VA also almost killed me. They almost killed me when I had my first throat surgery. I had a surgery for sleep apnea because I really wanted to deploy to Afghanistan and I volunteered a couple times ago.

Back in that day, you couldn’t deploy to a combat zone because I was an infantryman with a cpap, obviously. So I chose to go to the va, have a U triple P done. They took out my tonsils, they took out my uvula, they cut off a bunch of the meat at the back of my tongue. They made my airway wider. It was a pretty major surgery and I had it twice, mind you. I had the same surgery two times in four years because I wanted to put on my uniform and go serve in Afghanistan. I was already in Iraq.

I wanted to go to Afghanistan, and I couldn’t do it with a cpap. So I chose to go to the VA and have a surgery that would allow me to be able to deploy once I was healed. I never got a chance to go to Afghanistan. My requests were denied. Some of my command staff thought that it was probably not a good idea for me to go because I’d already earned a Purple Heart on my first deployment to Iraq. But that’s neither here nor there. But they almost killed me. They sent me home with a half gallon jug of liquid morphine with the wrong directions on it.

And a week later, after taking this medication and healing, I woke up and I was as yellow as a banana. Jaundice. My liver was failing. My liver was shutting down. I had to go back to the VA and spend another four or five days there while they got my liver in order. And still to this day, still to this day, all these years later, every time I have blood taken, they call me with some emergent deal about my liver function and this and that. My liver was permanently damaged. They say, I don’t know. I don’t know what that means.

So I can say that I had. I’ve had some pretty good care. But I can also say that the VA almost killed me. The doctor told me, it’s a good thing you came. If you had tried to ride this thing out, you probably would have died. Who knows how long it would have taken. But knowing me, I probably would have just tried to ride it out instead of going back there. But my mother and my. And my. And my Good friend Dan were the ones that were like, I know, I don’t know, buddy. It’s probably time we go back into the, into the hospital.

And without them, I probably would have tried to ride it out. So let’s not pretend like, like there’s, there’s all these claims of, of bullshit and bad care and less and subpar conditions at the facilities and all those other things are made up because it’s not. They’re doing work to remodel places and make them look nice. They are doing that. But at the end of the day, we can’t keep paying everybody to do the same amount of work that 80,000 less people. According to these guys, 80,000 less people would still do the trick. They were doing it in 2019.

I don’t know. I don’t know what happened there, but we went way over time. Let’s take a break. We’ll be right back. Don’t go away. Hey folks, real quick. Before we get back to the show, it’s no secret that we have been experiencing a loss of sponsorships. Sponsors have been leaving the network or the network leaving sponsors due to our convictions. And so we have recently began to ask you, the viewer, for help. We need your help. You are the most important thing when it comes to this network. You are what you are the lifeblood of the Stu Peters Network.

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Thank you for joining us. Thank you for supporting us. We really do appreciate it. We really do love you. Thank you. Foreign hey folks, let’s, let’s continue on here. I, I, I, I hate to get, I hate to get wrapped around the axle but man, there’s just, I feel like sometimes these seemingly smaller issues have such broader and bigger repercussions to the people that these institutions aim to serve. Right? And so for us here at this show, just like at, on, on my other channel, 3 clicks media, these things are a big deal to us. You know, we have this idea that seemingly a lot of times there’s just no help coming.

There’s no help coming. And the people that we hope to be able to swing to our side of the fence, if you want to call it that, it becomes real cumbersome. Almost like they push back. And it’s always a fight. It’s always a fight when really as it relates to the va, for example, we just want them to take care of veterans. It should be, and I’ve said this for many, many years before I started sitting here at this desk in front of this camera and talking into this microphone. Veterans issues, VA issues should probably be the most nonpartisan topic or series of topics in all of government.

Because you hear, you hear on campaign trails you hear in all kinds of speeches to the media or in town halls or whatever how important it is. Our veterans are our treasure in this country. Without them, who knows where we’d be? I mean, shit, back in the day, they used to say without the men and women that serve this country, we’d be speaking German. But then when it comes down to. When it comes down to money, when it comes down to power and control of that money and power, it’s an extremely partisan issue. Veterans in general.

I mean, shit, not only at the. Not only at the federal level, but, excuse me, but even here locally in Minnesota, our state legislature is fighting about where veterans can go to get help filing VA claims in the state of Minnesota wants to have the ability to tell veterans where they have to go and take away their choice. And I said it over there on three clicks. When I chose to join this country or to join the military and serve this country, I did it of my own free will. Nobody coerced me. The only thing that coerced me is the path I was going down.

At the time, I felt lost. I felt like I needed to be a part of something positive. It was a year or two. A year after 9, 11 had happened. So, I mean, I had my reasons, but I did it on my own free will. I walked in there, I put my hand on a Bible and rose my other one and swore allegiance to the United States of America to defend it against all enemies, foreign and domestic, just like so many others. And now we have elected officials in our government who are telling me and telling us our culture, the warrior culture.

They are telling us that we are. That we are under this tyrannical takeover by homegrown terrorists that sit in our own government that are making. That are making decisions and are giving us directives, and they’re terrorists. And they try to spin this as if, well, hey, all you. All you guys who served and gals who served this country, you should be concerned because these are the people that you swore to defend this country against. You swore to. To defend this country against people like Donald Trump and Elon Musk and Doug Collins, and that’s crap. Maybe you don’t agree, maybe you don’t agree with them, but you know who does? The vast majority of people in this country agree with them.

You can’t argue that. And as time goes on further and further into Donald Trump’s last administration, as time creeps on, it’s my opinion that people like Richard Blumenthal and these other Democrats who are super pissed off that they Lost. It seems like they’re just. They’re just digging themselves deeper and deeper and deeper of a hole and separating themselves further and further away from the American people that they hope vote for them in the upcoming midterms, of course, and then elections to come. I mean, I guess. I don’t know, man. It’s hard for me to understand. It’s hard for me to understand how you represent a side of government that in my lifetime, anyway, as long as I’ve been paying attention, is the biggest ass whooping ever to be seen, as far as I know.

Maybe I’m wrong about that, but I haven’t paid attention to a whole lot of presidential elections. Five, something like that. But now you’re going to say you’re on the losing side of this and you’re going to. And you’re going to fight back with all of your might and all the people that didn’t agree with you anyway. You’re going to double down on all those things and push those narratives harder to push all those people further away instead of, instead of trying to do something to maybe reign them in a little bit, maybe not get them on your side of the fence, but get them back to the fence anyway.

You got some time, right? There’s four years, you got some time to creep people back towards the fence, then make a push in four years to maybe get them to swing a leg over the fence and the next presidential election. But I mean, there’s all this. There’s just all this madness going on already. What are we, 11 weeks, 10 weeks? 12 weeks or something like that into the, into this administration. And you got dipshits like Tim Walls running around the country talking about what, nothing that’s helping him. Just digging himself holes, how much he loves to watch Tesla stock plummet.

And I’ll tell you what, that whole thing, that whole thing was almost comical to me. But the other thing I’ll tell you is I have family members and close friends who are retired state employees who are also champions for Governor Walz. And maybe it won’t make a big difference to him, but when they saw that their retirement fund lost $50 million in a week, they’re no longer Governor Walz supporters. And so take that for what it is. But you would think that a guy like that needs to hold on to as many voters as he can, especially that dummy, is going to try to run for president, which man, I’ll tell you what, if he even gets past one debate, he could probably tack that on up as a, As a w for Team Walls.

I don’t know, man. That guy is, is. He’s out there. He’s out. If you ask me, he’s quite, he’s quite interesting. Let’s finish this article, man. Democrats on the Senate Veterans Policy Committee have petitioned for hearings on those potential staff cuts, plus other contract cancellations and new department policies. Maybe here is more of the, more of the important stuff here, but thus far they have been rebuffed by Republican leadership of the panel. The shadow hearings, unofficial meetings, will be presided over by Democratic lawmakers, and they will invite employees impacted by staffing cuts and other outside critics of the department.

The first will be held on April 2nd. I’ll be looking for those videos to come out. Blumenthal, in a statement, said that Collins has been invited to speak at the event. We already covered all this. He was. Collins was sworn into office in February, and he has been publicly critical of Democratic lawmakers in recent weeks, accusing them of manufacturing controversy and stoking fears amid needing changes at VA bureaucracy. In a social media post last week, he wrote that those saying more money and more employees are the only way to improve veterans health care and benefits are the same people who stood by and watched for years as the VA struggled with waste, wait times and backlogs.

We’re going to try something different. We’re going to actually fix things. Interesting. That’s an interesting take, isn’t it? We’re not going to. We’re not going to do. We’re not going to do the same things we’ve been doing for years, folks. We’re going to try something different. We’re going to try to fix it. We’re not going to throw more money. We’re not going to throw more staff. We’re not going to throw more wait times and backlogs and all that bullshit. We’re going to try to fix this thing because the ultimate goal is VA care for veterans. Our main goal is not to employ a bunch of people that maybe not qualified.

Maybe we don’t need. Maybe we don’t need a bunch of redundancy. We need better care for veterans. It’s an interesting take. Who, who would have thunk? Right? The Senate Veterans Affairs Committee has held seven hearings so far this year, but none directly on proposed changes to the department. Two have been confirmation hearings, including one of Collins. Two others have been on pending legislations, and three were annual legislative presentations from veterans advocacy groups. The committee genuinely is genuinely collegial. That’s a horrible word. I don’t know that one. I sound dumb. Sorry but remains divided among partisan lines when it comes to legislative votes and support for nominees.

Blumenthal voted to confirm Collins to his Cabinet, but has said in recent weeks that he regrets that decision. Well, isn’t that too bad? But one thing I wanted to lay out there is that they talked about not only staff cuts, but contract cancellations. So here’s an interesting one. There are a whole lot of community partners that the VA uses for different purposes. And we’ve talked about one, one big ass community partner here on this show, which is the Elizabeth Dole foundation, who claims to have the best answers when it comes to the VA caregivers. Now, the amount of money that that ridiculous organization gets is astronomical.

Millions of dollars, dare I say hundreds of millions of dollars over all these years. And all they have done up into this point, in my opinion, they shove out people that they don’t think are qualified because they want to make the rules. When you have veterans who are homebound, bedridden, or who just want to be at home for their care and they have children or they have a spouse or they have a neighbor or a nephew or an aunt or an uncle or whoever that has dedicated their time to take care of them and they qualify, organizations like the Elizabeth Dole foundation say, no, no, no, we can do it better.

We can have these people come in, we can offer these services, we can offer respite, we can do this, we can do that, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and shove out families from this program. And then their answer was, well, maybe your veteran needs to just go to adult daycare while you’re at work during the day. And if you want to care for your veteran, you can do that on your off time at night. Or if you work at night, you do it during the day. And don’t forget to take care of your kids and make sure the bills are paid and all these other things.

But we have veterans in our communities who struggle with things that folks can’t even imagine. Things like going to the meat market to get some chicken for dinner, super difficult, task anxiety, guys are on edge, crowds, people you don’t know. There’s just a lot of, there’s a lot of sensory issues. There’s a lot of, there’s a lot of things that go into all of this. And maybe that’s a whole nother show. But it will be interesting to see what kind of contracts get canceled and which ones stay intact. Because I think if you follow the money trail, you’ll find that a lot of these Nonprofits and these NGOs who provide these community based services.

I’ll come back to somebody on advisory committees, I’ll come back to people on VA affairs committees, or come back to the spouses of politicians, or come back to this bureaucrat through this organization. And if you just trace the connections, which can be cumbersome, I’ll give it to them. One thing that these bureaucrats and politicians and these NGOs have gotten really good at doing is, is making their, making their trail of shit loop through so many different places that you get easy to lose track. But rest assured, there’s some really smart people out there that are, that are doing all of this.

And up until now, maybe, maybe we’re at a point now where somebody will listen to them. Maybe we’re at a place where they can be heard. Maybe no action taken, but maybe something can be done. Maybe something can. At least they can put their case out on the table and somebody will listen. But I think where we really fall short in this issue is that like I was saying in the first segment, we do a lot of listening to people bitch about their shortcomings and what’s unfair and the things that are happening to them and then go forward and have multiple discussions and put out all this stuff.

Isn’t the point of bitching about the things that bother you or the things that are an injustice to you is to process them, find a way to make them better or at least find a way to get to the next step and move on to something bigger and better. That’s kind of like, that’s the goal with things like therapy, right? Like I’m going to go in, I’m going to talk to my shrink. We’re going to talk about the things that piss me off or the things that ail me, the things I’m scared of, the things that make me sad, the things that make me anxious, whatever the case may be.

And the goal is to go in there time after time again, however many times it takes to put this shit out and then get to feeling better, Right? Like this isn’t that movie what About Bob where we stay in therapy for 50 years and we complain and we bitch and we moan and we cry and we complain some more until somebody just gives us what it is we want. You got laid off from a probationary job. Sorry, that does Suck. I agree 100%. Go find another job. There are a lot of jobs out there. Tom Holman and crew are taking folks out of here that apparently were taking up all of our jobs.

So there are jobs out there. And if that doesn’t work for you, build a business, find other people that are building a business and join them. I mean, there’s a lot of options out there, but driving your car off a bridge because you got laid off is not the right answer. We are better than that. The men and women that served in the United States military are supposed to be stronger than that. We can be better than that. But sometimes, sometimes you got to just take a. Take a small step back, lick your wounds for a couple hours, tie your boots up, put that cover on, go outside and put one foot in front of the other.

So bitching about it and having shadow hearings behind the backs of everyone else in government and just bringing in people that are mad to your hearings is not going to get anybody anywhere. All you’re going to get is a consortium of people all saying the same thing. That’s not helpful. It’s not going to solve any problems. It’s just going to. It’s just going to make you further away. It’s going to put you further away from the solution to the problem. And who knows, maybe we will get lucky. We don’t need any of them to come to a solution, but I am guessing that that’s not going to be true either.

I think we all need to work together to come to a solution to better help veterans in our communities. Anyway, that’s all the time we have for today. I wish we could go on. There’s a lot more to cover. But we will be back with you next week. So take care of yourselves, have a great rest of your evening and we’ll see you next time. Good night. As Christians in a Christian country, we have a right to be, at minimum, agnostic about the leadership being all Jewishly occupied. We literally should be at war with Israel a hundred times over and instead we’re just sending them money and it’s craziness.

Look at the state of Israel. Look at the state of Tel Aviv and look at the state of Philadelphia. You tell me where this money’s going. You tell me who’s benefiting from this. I am prepared to die in the battle fighting this monstrosity that would wish to enslave me and my family and steal away any rights to my property and you take away my God. Go fuck yourself. Will I submit to that? And if you’ve got a foreign state, you’ve got dual citizens in your government, who do you think they’re supporting? God right now? Would you protect the nation of Israel and protect those of us, not just our church, but every church in the world and in this nation that’s willing to put their neck on the line and say, we stand with them, we stand with them.

You go to Trump’s Cabinet. You go to Biden’s cabinet. Spoiled Jews. I have a black friend in school. I have nothing against blacks. She has nothing against me. She understands where I’m coming from. Excuse me. I’m a Jew. And I just like to say that, you know, in our Bible, it says that you’re. You’re like animals. The Jews crucified our God.
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