Mass society requires the expenditure of money from the humblest hand bill to leaflets to political ads run during prime time on tv, radio and other mass media to putting up billboards, putting up yard signs or in the modern internet age putting up a website all of that costs money. And, you know, the days when you could stand on a soap box in the Boston Common and speak politically to get people to accept your ideas or to vote for you as a candidate are long gone and, frankly, even then you want to be effective, it costs money and, again, those who say, well, the framers never imagined that the First Amendment would protect money spent on political speech, political activity, well, excuse me, but one of the greatest works in america that helped spur our revolution, Thomas Paynes common sense it cost money to write it, publish it, print it and distribute it and the federalist papers which helped get our constitution accepted by the states were printed in broad sheets which were the equ
Us do our oversight hearing as well. I yield back the balance of my time. Thank you very much for your comments this evening. I would ask that all members would waive their Opening Statements is customary in the committee. I would invite the witnesses to please come to the witness table and as you are coming forward, i will introduce you. We will hear from dr. Debra draper, Record Health care for the Government Accountability office. Koski, richard griffin, acting Inspector General of the department of Veterans Affairs, mr. Griffin is accompanied by ms. Linda halliday, assistant inspector for general audits for the department of Veterans Affairs. Witnesses to stand, raise your right hand. Do you solemnly swear, under penalty of perjury, that the testimony or about to provide is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth . Thank you very much please be seated. All of your complete written statements will be entered into the record. Here tonight being and dr. Draper, you are r
They their people sitting back behind you. I think your sincerity in the work you have done, certainly i am not going to question it. I am reading, this is from dr. Heaney and armstrong. They quoted Peter Drucker and said the greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence but to act with yesterdays logic. The question was, where is the big idea. My question is, where is the big idea . If youre right to come and ask for technology money, that is a cursory thing they found. When they pull the testimony of the people on the questions, you are going to be embarrassed and my guess is you will not want to, and as for that money. My question to you is, where is the big idea . Where is the vision . It is a big idea. It may not sound as such, but it is back to basics. Back to delivering safe, Quality Health care at timely manner, knowing where we can achieve it and where we cannot. An open engagement from partners, a veteran Service Organizations were not mentioned enough today, b
Manner in which all of you were retaliated against, what are you members of the union . Will was the role of the union in terms of protecting the employees, your specific case, let me start with mr. Javier soto. What recourse did you have . I assume your remember. Yes. Okay. Essentially we are still trying to figure out what happened. What i believe is that retaliation for the whistleblowing we have problems with claim processing. There is no other way to address them. We found ourselves in that strange this situation where we have to rely on the union to help. That brought conflict. Server. Well, i am actually the president of local 520. And we have been as a matter of fact, in june of 2012 we had a rally to bring attention to what was going on. The Va Police Department had cameras and video trying to intimidate us so sure. In your testimony you talked about as a lawyer that in your free time you were defending fellow employees that were for one reason or another having difficulties w
Office . Chairman miller i was not present when ms. Rubens came to talk to you. I know her entire purpose for coming to talk to you into your staff was to express persons here regret for her comments made on that piece of paper. I apologize but im going to take two more minutes. On this note, it talks about arrogance. It directs a person to ignore a Committee Staff person and then it makes another derogatory statement about a staff person. Ms. Rubens came to our Committee Offices and when she did she did not apologize for that. What she said was she had told the acting director to ignore what other people may be saying about my staff. And youre telling me this person is still employed even though she gave a directive, do not tell an agent of this committee what was happening at the Regional Office. Chairman miller i will say again without question, without question we respect the oversight of every single one of you on this committee and in these hollywood halls and anyone of you who w