{"id":62903,"date":"2015-11-22T09:00:34","date_gmt":"2015-11-22T14:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=62903"},"modified":"2015-11-22T08:19:46","modified_gmt":"2015-11-22T13:19:46","slug":"va-officials-demoted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=62903","title":{"rendered":"VA officials demoted"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We&#8217;ve discussed Diana Rubens and Kimberly Graves, two officials from the Department of Veterans&#8217; Affairs who created vacancies in the Department and then used their positions to get the jobs and raked in hundreds of thousands of dollars in relocation compensation for their efforts. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.stripes.com\/news\/veterans\/va-officials-rubens-graves-demoted-to-general-worker-status-1.379956\">Stars &#038; Stripes<\/a> reports that they have been disciplined but not the extent that a rational person might expect. They were merely demoted and they&#8217;re expected to report to their new jobs immediately;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p> \u201cFor those wondering whether VA is committed to real accountability for corrupt employees, VA leaders answered that question today with a resounding \u2018no,\u2019\u201d said Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., who chairs the House Committee on Veterans Affairs.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cRubens and Graves clearly should have been fired,\u201d Miller said in a statement. \u201cThe fact that VA leaders refused to do so gives me no hope the department will do the right thing and take steps to recover the more than $400,000 taxpayer dollars Rubens and Graves fraudulently obtained.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A committee staffer said the VA is not taking steps to recoup the relocation benefits and both executives will continue to earn well over $100,000 a year.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Yeah, well, the VA doesn&#8217;t exist for veterans, it&#8217;s a jobs program. While I&#8217;m sure that there are people out there who work for the VA and their focus is on making life better for veterans, the upper echelons of the SES mafia aren&#8217;t in the veterans business. <\/p>\n<p>Thanks to Bobo and Richard for the link.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We&#8217;ve discussed Diana Rubens and Kimberly Graves, two officials from the Department of Veterans&#8217; Affairs who created vacancies in the Department and then used their positions to get the jobs and raked in hundreds of thousands of dollars in relocation compensation for their efforts. Stars &#038; Stripes reports that they have been disciplined but not [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":41955,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[143],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-veterans-affairs-department"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/Veterans-Affairs2.jpg?fit=259%2C195&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4ozh1-gmz","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=62903"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62903\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/41955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=62903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=62903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}