VA says 80 percent
of senior executives got
bonuses; congressman
says system ‘failing’ vets ADVERTISING VA says 80 percent
of senior executives got
bonuses; congressman
says system ‘failing’ vets WASHINGTON — Nearly 80 percent of senior executives at the Department
VA says 80 percent
of senior executives got
bonuses; congressman
says system ‘failing’ vets
WASHINGTON — Nearly 80 percent of senior executives at the Department of Veterans Affairs got performance bonuses last year despite widespread treatment delays and preventable deaths at VA hospitals and clinics, a top official said Friday.
More than 350 VA executives were paid a total of $2.7 million in bonuses last year, said Gina Farrisee, assistant VA secretary for human resources and administration. That amount is down from about $3.4 million in bonuses paid in 2012, Farrisee said.
The totals do not include tens of millions of dollars in bonuses awarded to doctors, dentists and other medical providers throughout the VA’s nearly 900 hospitals and clinics.
Workers at the Phoenix VA Health Care System — where officials have confirmed dozens of patients died while awaiting treatment — received about $3.9 million in bonuses last year, newly released records show. The merit-based bonuses were doled out to about 650 employees, including doctors, nurses, administrators, secretaries and cleaning staff.
Farrisee defended the bonus system, telling the House Veterans Affairs Committee that the VA needs to pay bonuses to keep executives who are paid up to $181,000 per year.
Obama moves to expand government benefits
for gay couples in states
without same-sex marriage
WASHINGTON — A year after the Supreme Court struck down a law barring federal recognition of gay marriages, the Obama administration granted an array of new benefits Friday to same-sex couples, including those who live in states where gay marriage is against the law.
The new measures range from Social Security and veterans benefits to work leave for caring for sick spouses. They are part of President Barack Obama’s efforts to expand whatever protections he can offer to gays and lesbians even though more than half of the states don’t recognize gay marriage. That effort has been confounded by laws that say some benefits should be conferred only to couples whose marriages are recognized by the states where they live, rather than the states where they were married.
Aiming to circumvent that issue, the Veterans Affairs Department will start letting gay people who tell the government they are married to a veteran to be buried alongside them in a national cemetery, drawing on the VA’s authority to waive the usual marriage requirement.
In a similar move, the Social Security Administration will start processing some survivor and death benefits for those in same-sex relationships who live in states that don’t recognize gay marriage. Nineteen states plus the District of Columbia currently recognize gay marriage, although court challenges to gay marriage bans are pending in many states.
Ukraine’s president orders 1-week unilateral cease-fire; Kremlin dismisses plan
KIEV, Ukraine — Ukraine’s president ordered his forces to cease fire Friday and halt military operations for a week against pro-Russian separatists in the country’s east — the first step in a peace plan he hopes will end the fighting that has killed hundreds.
The Kremlin dismissed the plan, saying it sounded like an ultimatum and lacked any firm offer to open talks with insurgents.
Petro Poroshenko, making his first trip to the east as Ukraine’s president, said that the cease-fire will run until the morning of June 27 and that his troops reserve the right to fire back if separatists attack them or civilians.
Review confirms study that was basis for Japan’s landmark ’93 apology for wartime sex slavery
TOKYO — The study that led Japan to apologize in 1993 for forcing Asian women into wartime prostitution was confirmed as valid by a parliament-appointed panel Friday after South Korea and China slammed the review as an attempt to discredit historical evidence of such abuses.
Officials said Japan stood by its earlier pledge not to change the landmark apology.
“We concluded that the content of the study was valid,” said lawyer Keiichi Tadaki, who headed the five-member panel that reviewed about 250 sets of documents used for the government study that was the basis of the 1993 apology.
The new investigation focused on how the study, which included interviews with 16 former Korean victims, was conducted, not evaluation of its historical findings. But any discussion of bitter World War II history is sensitive, especially when Japan’s relations with its two closest neighbors are soured by territorial disputes.
The panel started its study in April after Nobuo Ishihara, a top bureaucrat who helped in the 1993 study questioned the authenticity of the interviews, while suggesting Seoul possibly pressured Tokyo into acknowledging the women were coerced. Ishihara spoke at parliament as a witness for a nationalist lawmaker who demanded the review.
By wire sources
