Furious- Shulkin

The News is rightly consumed with the White House dumpster fire and impeachment drama. Every day brings new revelations about petty people perverting the basic processes of government for their own narrow greed. As we dwell on this abomination it’s tempting, almost reassuring, to think that it’s one corrupt aberration while the rest of the government is working fine. Nope, not hardly. To make you Furious this month we’ll pull aside that blanket of reassurance to show you that the pettiness, coverups, and grade-school thuggery we’re seeing in Ukraine aren’t a bug, but a feature. It’s the prime method at all levels in all departments, and this story of the rise and fall of VA Secretary David Shulkin brings it into focus. No, news about corruption in Trumpworld is hardly surprising… but it will make you Furious!

Meet David Shulkin, ex-secretary of the Veterans Adminsitration. While not a Trump loyalist, he took the job under Trump to reorganize the bloated and lurching care of our Veterans. He was the Secretary, and whether we/you/anyone agreed with his plans or not, he was the guy in charge of making them. That is, until Trump “political appointees” began talking with Donny about privatizing the VA. They talked and Trump listened until Shulkin, mere hours after being guaranteed the president’s unqualified support, was fired by tweet.

Shulkin says it was disturbing at the time but he didn’t see a larger significance aside from confirming the chaos apparent in the administration. But now, with the Ukraine scandal showing precisely the same pattern of a shadow government undermining the work and legitimacy of the real one, it confirms that the crimes in Ukraine were hardly unique.

This month we’d like to direct you to “A Victim of the Shadow Government”, an episode of the New York Times podcast “The Daily” with Michael Barbaro, in which he interviews former secretary of Veterans Affairs David Shulkin about his brief tenure at the department.