Who really runs the Veteran's Administration?

I'll guarandamntee you it ain't Secretary Shinseki!!

Among those 300,000 employees over there at the VA are a whole passel of career civil servants.... Grade Levels in the Senior levels of GS-16 thru GS-18. All living la dolce vita with a taxpayer paid salary in the $200,000 range, plus cars and other perks of course.  They have been there for years, what ever the VA is or isn't - they created it. 

It certainly isn't managed by a political appointee of a couple years..... his job is to make appearances, testify from talking points prepared by those civil servants before congress. Remain calm was the elected representatives and senators bloviate for the cameras.....and generally, stay out of the way of the worker bees.  

Thus it is, firing the Secretary doesn't solve the problem -- he'd just be replaced with another political rewardee who helped the POTUS on his campaign or something..  And who would spend the first year just finding out where the bathrooms and the coffee pot were..

Nope, if you want to get to the bottom of the problem, you've got to start by firing - all those hundreds of senior civil servants.... loudly and with great fervor.   If they knew about the problems and did nothing, they deserve the axe.  If they didn't know about the problems, after years on the job.. the really need firing!