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A local whistleblower from the Veterans Affairs administration will testify this evening at a congressional hearing in Atlanta.
Scott Davis, an employee at the VA Health Eligibility Center, will speak about wrongdoing within the agency and an alleged pattern of retaliation against those who speak out. Davis drew the attention of the committee following a June article in the AJC that detailed his efforts to draw attention to mismanagement and a focus on bonuses for top leaders -- which he said hurt veterans programs.
How do we know what Davis will say? Because
was kind enough to send an outline of his opening remarks.
A portion of Davis' prepared testimony:
1. Mismanaging critical Veteran health programs and wasting millions of dollars on an Affordable Care Act direct mail marketing campaign.
2. The possible purging & deletion of over 10,000 Veteran health records at the Health Eligibility Center.
3. A backlog of 600,000 pending benefit enrollment applications.
4. Nearly 40,000 unprocessed applications discovered in January 2013. These were primarily applications from returning service members from Iraq and Afghanistan.
The harassment I experienced at the HEC was from top levels of management:
1. My whistleblower complaint to White House Deputy Chief of Staff Rob Nabors was leaked to my manager Sherry Williams, who stated in writing, that she was contacting me on behalf of Acting Secretary Gibson and Mr. Rob Nabors. Neither Mr. Gibson, nor Mr. Nabors have responded to that fact.
2. My employment records were illegally altered by CBO WFM, Director Joyce Deters.
3. I was illegally placed on a permanent work detail by Assistant Deputy Under Secretary, Philip Matkovsky and Acting Chief Business Officer, Stephanie Mardon.
4. I was placed on involuntary administrative leave, curiously at the same time the OIG's investigation was occurring in Atlanta by Acting HEC Director Greg Becker.
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With all the talk about growing numbers
of minority voters in metro Atlanta, the Asian community is flexing its muscles.
The Asian American Legal Advocacy will launch a “10,000 Korean Votes” campaign that targets Gwinnett County. The numerics of the goal are simple: In order to require the county to provide official ballots in Korean, 10,000 Korean-Americans must to register to vote during this election and to sign a petition requesting ballots in their native language.
The effort isn't starting from scratch. Roughly 4,600 voters of Korean extraction are already registered in Gwinnett. Helen Ho, the group’s director, said more than 11,000 Korean-American voters live there.
“We know we the numbers and want to work with our Korean community to push for Korean language ballots,” she said. “We know this will increase the number of Koreans voting and build power for the Korean community as a whole.”
Gwinnett is ground zero for the Asian community’s growing role in Georgia politics with state Rep. B.J. Pak among the elected officials representing the community.
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One of Kingston's biggest boosters has been the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The business lobby released a new ad today as part of its TV ad campaign promoting Kingston. The ad touts Kingston's support for the Savannah Harbor Expansion Project, the Keystone Pipeline and a vote to repeal Obamacare's tax on medical devices, among other things.
Notice what's not mentioned in the video: the U.S. Chamber's support of Common Core standards in public k-12 education, and immigration reform. Both are issues that split the business group and the Savannah congressman.
U.S. Chamber political director Rob Engstrom is also doing a press conference with Kingston on Wednesday at 11 a.m. at the Varsity. Enticing hungry reporters with hot dogs -- these guys must know what they're doing.
FCC files show the Chamber is putting $374,000 behind the ad in Atlanta broadcast TV alone. It hasn't revealed the full size of the buy. (h/t @GeorgiaSenate)
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The fundraising quarter may have just ended, but Michelle Nunn is back out raking in more dough today in Washington -- with a fatherly assist.
Getting into a Capitol Hill townhouse this evening to mingle with former U.S. Sen. Sam Nunn and his daughter only sets you back $250. To be named as a sponsor will cost the $2,600 maximum general election donation. Details can be found here.
Through April, Nunn had raised more than $650,000 from D.C. addresses alone, adding more than $100,000 each from Maryland and Virginia. By comparison, she brought in $2.7 million from Georgia.
Meanwhile, the Nunn campaign denies that it's the source of this candidate makeover, currently making the Democratic rounds on Twitter:
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One of our data junky sources did us a big favor by crunching the numbers from the GOP Senate primary with an estimate of how the 14 congressional districts voted.
You can find the chart here. Among the findings: U.S. Rep. Jack Kingston was the only of the top five candidates to score an outright majority in any of the districts: A whopping 75 percent in the First District, the southeastern area he's long represented. It underscores how badly he needs to overperform in his home base to win the July 22 runoff.
Businessman David Perdue, the leading vote-getter in the primary, tallied the biggest margins in the Third, Ninth and Eleventh districts, all in the vote-rich northern half of the state. He'll need to have a strong showing again to have any chance of scoring a spot on the ballot against Democrat Michelle Nunn.
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Former congressman Bob Barr has two fundraisers to help get him over the next two weeks to a GOP runoff for the 11th District congressional seat.
One on Friday features former Oklahoma congressman J.C. Watts Jr. at the Capitol Grille. Minimum buy-in is $250. Later in the day, the campaign will have a 6:30 p.m. "private, roundtable dinner" featuring U.S. Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, who – like Barr – sits on the board of the National Rifle Association.
The latter event will be at Adventure Outdoors of Smyrna, a gun and accessories shop that has figured greatly into the Barr campaign. Minimum ticket price is $1,000.
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A 6:30 p.m. forum this evening at NorthStar Church in Kennesaw will feature grudge matches for an Acworth city council seat, and a confrontation between GOP congressional candidates Bob Barr and Barry Loudermilk. But the featured match may be between two GOP candidates for the Cobb County Commission's open western district seat, former commission chairman Bill Byrne and former Acworth councilman Bob Weatherford.
The forum is sponsored by the Cobb Chamber of Commerce and Acworth Business Association. A taste, via the MDJ's Around Town column:
The theme song to "Rocky" isn't playing as loudly at the Weatherford household. Weatherford is far less enthusiastic about sharing a stage with Byrne, and wondered if County Chairman Tim Lee had the right idea by refusing to debate Byrne in his own race two years ago.
"I don't relish it because I know how he is, but I have to go through with it, and I think it will be a stark contrast between the two of us," Weatherford said.
Why?
"Our personalities are different. I have one and he doesn't," Weatherford declared.
Ouch.
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Campaign finance numbers are still trickling in, but one of the reports that jumped out at us involved the race for agriculture commissioner.
Chris Irvin, the grandson of long-time Ag Commish Tommy Irvin, raised only a few thousand dollars in the weeks after he jumped in the race. The Democrat tacked on another $40,000 from April to June, including more than $14,000 from his grandfather and other relatives.
That pales in comparison to the man he hopes to replace. Commissioner Gary Black raised more than $120,000 in the same period, and has roughly $450,000 on hand.
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There's another call and response TV ad spat going on down in the First Congressional District runoff. State Sen. Buddy Carter deployed surgeon Bob Johnson's controversial comments on the TSA in the below ad, which was not publicized by the Carter campaign:
To suggest that Johnson actually wants a terrorist attack, his campaign replies, is to impugn Johnson's patriotism. Thus the indignant response ad from the Johnson camp below, showing his patriotic Army service:
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Delvis Dutton, media magnate. The state representative gave up his seat to run in the 12th Congressional District and lost badly in the Republican primary. He now has set his sights on joining our ranks in the media biz by launching AllOnNews.com. The portal customizes your headlines based on location. Here's Dutton in an email to supporters:
AllOnNews is something new and different. AllOnNews will offer a variety of information from local, state and national news to community events to obituaries and crime beats all within 5 clicks. Working in conjunction with local newspapers as well as various organizations in local communities, AllOnNews will refocus the purpose and role of 'the news'. The site will also focus heavily on pulling back the curtain on elected officials and government operations, at all levels.
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Hey, remember that government shutdown showdown? We could be due for another come Sept. 30, the way Congress is going with the appropriations process. The Washington Post's Paul Kane explains:
At the center of the deadlock is the fight over coal and its place in the manufacturing economies of several battleground states, particularly Kentucky, where Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R) is basing his reelection bid on protecting the coal industry from new regulations by the Environmental Protection Agency.
McConnell is threatening to add restrictions to federal agency budgets that would neutralize the regulations, prompting Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) to at least temporarily derail consideration of the 12 spending bills that need to be approved by Sept. 30.
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