VA Accountability: a Project of Concerned Veterans for America

(MEDFORD) - I am a member of an organization called the Concerned Veterans For America (http://www.concernedveteransforamerica.org/). They are laser-focused on veterans rights and recently launched the VA Accountability Project. They also have a daily news feed called The Morning FRAGO that I highly recommend.

Below this message is a request from the CEO to write a handwritten letter on March 13th to our U.S. Senators and Congressman to ask for their support on the VA Management Accountability Act. I'd like to take that up a notch and form a task force to hand deliver the handwritten letters to the local Medford offices of our representatives. They are not always fully staffed, so we would need to ensure that someone would be there to receive the letters. I propose we rendezvous at 1000 on the 13th, at one of the 3 locations - walk, en masse, from one office to the next, delivering our letters, one at a time, circling back to our origin. The route on 6th St. would take directly past the Mail Tribune offices and be a block or so from KOBI TV. We could ask some of our political candidates to join us for the march - Linthicum, Challstrom and the Jackson County Sheriff hopefuls come immediately to mind.

I can transport at least 5 people, including myself. I'd also like to do a foot recon beforehand of the possible routes, insertion and extraction points, etc. Let me know if there's any interest. I plan to do so myself regardless but would welcome the company. I suppose we'd need some sort of permit if there's enough interest.

Here are the office locations:

Wyden:
Federal Courthouse
310 West 6th St.,
Room 118
Medford, OR, 97501
tel (541) 858-5122

Merkley:

Suffice it to say, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is worried. News stories of persistent backlogs, destruction of records, and preventable deaths are flooding the airwaves -- and VA is in full-panic mode.

Yet nothing has changed. Nobody has been fired. There is still no accountability inside VA's calcified bureaucracy.

But with your help, we can change this. The subject of this email is "Will you write a letter for our veterans?" because next week -- on Thursday, March 13 -- legions of CVA staff and volunteers across the country will come together to write hand-written letters to their Senators and Congressmen. It's our second "National Day of Action" and and we need your help.

The letters will urge Congressional leaders to support the VA Management Accountability Act, a new piece of legislation that would bring long-overdue accountability to senior managers at VA. The bill is short and simple: it empowers the VA secretary to fire bad managers that are failing our veterans. Thanks to mountains of red-tape, it's nearly impossible to fire poor performers at VA -- and this bill would change that, creating space for real reform.

Will you join us? Go to www.CV4A.org/DayOfAction2 to sign up to write letters to your Members of Congress on Thursday, March 13. Or, simply download the sample PDF letter and send one yourself today. Every voice counts, and hand-written letters from constituents are particularly powerful.

For years, the default Washington solution to VA problems was more money. But more money has not meant better outcomes for veterans. As VA budgets grew, wait-times and bureaucracy for veterans grew along with it. Turns out, a bigger VA does not necessarily mean a better VA. These letters, and this effort, is a fight for a better VA, not a bigger VA.

A few weeks ago, we launched the #VAaccountability Project. Last week we held our first "National Day of Action," making thousands of phone calls. And next week is our second "National Day of Action." Will you take 10 minutes on March 13 to help our veterans? It's the next step in our fight, and we need your help.

See you on Thursday...for our Country and our Veterans,
Pete Newsletter Signature
Pete Hegseth
CEO, Concerned Veterans for America
Army Veteran, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay