Our Federal government wants to run your healthcare plan. How well can they do this do you think? Well, our president has recently said that
the “Cash for Clunkers” is a great success,
so maybe we should look carefully at how that was run. Please
take some time and read the following article, it is VERY important…
(-Zee Marketspice Meister)
What REALLY Happened in the “Cash
for Clunkers” Program
YOUR GOVERNMENT AT WORK
Stung! Undercover Celeb Exposes Obama Fiasco
'Milk it, baby – It's free money': You won't
believe what happens inside Cash for Clunkers operation
By Chelsea
Schilling, WorldNetDaily, September 21, 2009
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=110531
While President Obama delivers speeches
praising the alleged success
of Cash for Clunkers, a former rebate processor for the federal program – also
working undercover for WND – is calling it "complete chaos."
After the federal "Cash for
Clunkers" program ended Aug. 24, the Department of
Transportation reported that nearly 700,000 clunkers were taken off the
roads and replaced by more fuel-efficient vehicles. Rebate applications worth
$2.877 billion were submitted by the 8 p.m. deadline. The Transportation
Department hired federal employees and private contract workers to process the
rebates vouchers so car dealers would be compensated.
Former White House aide Kathleen Willey was
hired as an employee with Vangent Incorporated, a company that provides
information technology management and business process outsourcing services to
the public and private sectors. Its clients include federal agencies such as
the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the U.S. Departments of
Defense, Education, Health and Human Services, Justice and Labor and the U.S.
Office of Personnel Management.
But what her employer did not know was that
Willey, the author of the book, "Target: Caught In the Crosshairs of Bill
and Hillary Clinton," was also taking notes on all she observed and
experienced for WND.
Vangent, based in Arlington,
Va., secured a contract from the Department of
Transportation in late August and earlier this month to handle 300,000
applications – or nearly half of all Cash for Clunkers vouchers.Vangent Vice
President Eileen Rivera told WND the company hired at least 4,000 temporary
employees in Chester, Va.,
Tampa, Fla.,
and London, Ky.
No work history needed
Willey processed the Cash for Clunkers
vouchers at her position in Chester,
Va. She attended a job fair on
Aug. 31 and was hired through Astyra Corp., a minority-owned staffing company.
"We were told that we would be working
on the Cash for Clunkers programming, examining all of the documents that the
government had received from dealers all over the country," Willey told
WND.
She said many of the applicants had never
even heard of the Cash for Clunkers program.
"We were not asked for any prior work
history," Willey said. "The job description was listed as data entry
and called for the ability to type 30 words per minute. There were no job
requirements actually listed on the application."
The form requested direct deposit
information, signature on a confidentiality agreement and background check, tax
information and two forms of identification.
Willey said, "Some people did not have
two forms, and I heard one recruiter say, 'We will work with you on
that.'"
She asked a woman who interviewed her what
she would need to do before beginning her new position.
"When I asked if I needed to take any
kind of test, the answer was, 'No,'" Willey said. "She told me to
report for work the next day at 4:30 p.m. When I asked if I had to pass a
background check before I started, she said, 'No.'"
However, Rivera said, "That's
absolutely not true. Every single temporary employee who was hired went through
a background check. If the background check did not clear, then they were
released. They were not allowed to work on this program."
Barefoot and foul-mouthed employees
Willey said she was the only non-minority
applicant in the room. While human resources required a strict dress code for
the position, she said she was shocked by the clothing and conduct of other
candidates who were interviewed:
I was the only one dressed
for a job interview. Everyone else had on jeans and T-shirts. Most women wore
flip-flops. One woman was barefoot. The women were dressed extremely
unprofessionally, in jeans and very revealing tops. A lot of them wore T-shirts
that barely covered their stomachs. What I noticed most were the foul mouths of
everyone around me.
The next day, Willey reported that as many
as 300 new employees attended orientation for new positions with Vangent.
"One of the first things we were told
was that Cash for Clunkers will help the environment," she said.
One supervisor told the group, "The
president has passed a good bill to do something good for the American people,
but this program is a 'moving target.' Rules are changed daily."
A Department of Transportation webinar
instructor repeated the statement about the program being a "moving
target."
"He was obviously with the
administration because he told us that the Cash for Clunkers program was a huge
success for the country as well as the environment," Willey said. "He
told us that we are dealing with 'three times the business in one-third of the
time.' He also told us repeatedly that we were going to have to 'get out of our
comfort zones' and be flexible.'"
She said she knew of only two professional
trainers who had been brought in by the Department of Trainsportation to train
everyone – supervisors, managers and employees. The supervisors and managers
frequently contradicted one another and talked to the employees as if they were
"in the first grade." The recruits were told they would soon receive
photo identification badges.
A paycheck to do 'absolutely
nothing'
The following day, on Sept. 2, employees
waited outside from 4:30 p.m. until 6 p.m. to get into the building.
"Once inside, we waited another 30
minutes to sign in 'so we would get paid,' Willey recalled. "I noted that
it was written on the piece of paper that our work day started at 4:30. We then
waited in line at the 'badge table' to get our badges. When I got there, I had
no badge. I finally got to my desk at about 6:45 p.m., where I sat with nothing
to do until 10 p.m."
The employees waited for their user IDs and
passwords to access the Car Allowance Rebate System, or CARS. Meanwhile, they
were being paid $14.71 an hour "to do absolutely nothing," Willey
said.
"There was not a supervisor to be
found," she said. "Because I was bored to death, I read a newspaper
and a book."
At 10 p.m., more than five hours after
signing in, she said the employees were still being paid to remain idle. Willey
and another employee went to find a supervisor.
"When we finally found one, we told her
we wanted our user IDs and passwords so we could get to work, but she was too
busy ordering out," she said. "At 10:20 p.m., we finally tracked down
someone who had a list of our user IDs and passwords. I tried to get in and was
ultimately locked out of the system. At 11:30 p.m., I found another supervisor
and told her my problem. She told us she would look into it, but we couldn't
find her again. We were told to go home at midnight, but that we should put
12:30 a.m. on our timesheets."
Rivera told WND, "It's very likely that
she went through four or five hours of training. There was about two or three
hours of onboarding to make sure that they were familiar with what they were
about to be doing. A lot of employees all had to be trained at the same time,
and there were different waves of that process that were going on."
Willey stopped by the security room to
request her badge before leaving. A woman told her the badges were ready but
that she could not have hers yet.
"I told her that we were told that we
would have to wait another hour and a half the next day to get in, and I asked
if she would reconsider giving them to us," Willey recalled. "She
told me, 'No, because there were four bags of them,' and she didn't want to go
through the bags. I asked if we could look ourselves or help her look because
we wanted to get into the building to start working, but she again said, 'No.'
When I asked why, she said, 'No.'"
More trouble with federal CARS
system
On Sept. 3, Willey said she waited almost
two hours to get into the building and collect her badge.
"Once again, I was unable to sign in to
CARS," she reported. "My desk was filthy. On my way to the bathroom to
get paper towels to clean my desk, I went in search of a supervisor to ask for
help with signing in. When I finally found one, he told me that he couldn't
help me and I should go to the other side and look for help. I finally found
one who took my name and said he would check on it and that he would be
back."
Willey went to the restroom to gather paper
towels to clean her desk. When she arrived, she said she was shocked at the
condition of the facility.
"I found overflowing toilets and vomit
all over the floor," she said.
At 9:15 p.m., Willey was still waiting for
help to access the CARS system.
"Despite all of my efforts to find
help, I found myself sitting at my desk with absolutely nothing to do,"
she said. "Most everyone around me seemed to have no problem with that. I
finally started reading my newspaper while I waited."
Suddenly, she said, a supervisor appeared
and admonished her for reading at her desk.
"When I tried to explain to her that
there was no work and that I had nothing to do but stare at a blank screen, she
ordered me to put my paper away," Willey said. "When I asked her if
she would help me get into the system, she told me she could not. I folded my
newspaper and put it on my desk. She reappeared and yelled at me to remove it
from the top of my desk, saying that newspapers, books, etc., are not allowed on your desk."
Another supervisor appeared to help the
employees with the computer problem.
"I finally got in, but was immediately
locked out again," she said. "She was gone and could never be found
again. My friend and I finally figured out by ourselves how to get in and stay
in."
Once in the CARS system, employees were told
to send an e-mail requesting assignments. Willey waited for work until 11:50
p.m., when she approved her first transaction. She ended the shift and left
work only 50 minutes later.
Free money!
During a 37.5-hour work week, Willey
reported actually working only 14 hours – but she was paid for more than 37
hours of work.
"Two of those nights, I had no work at
all," she said. "On those two evenings, when I left, I complained to
two different supervisors and I got two different responses: 'Milk it, baby!'
and 'Free money!'"
However, Rivera told WND, "A 37.5-hour
work week was typical, but it is very unlikely that anyone was sitting around
with nothing to do because there was so much work to do."
Willey continued, "After our 10:30 p.m.
break, it was party time. Not a lot of people worked between 10:45 p.m. and
12:30 a.m. I will say, that there were some hard workers there, but they were
all older women and a few older men."
Willey, a Level 2 reviewer who examined Cash
for Clunkers vouchers after they had been checked once by a Level 1 reviewer,
said the vouchers were being returned to "irate" dealers as many as
seven times.
She said the vouchers are "rife with
idiotic mistakes by Level 1 reviewers who are rejecting them for no reason at
all, mostly because they are not paying attention."
"I am amazed at the number of vouchers
that have been rejected in the last six weeks," Willey said. "Many
have been rejected and returned to dealers three to seven times! And for no
good reason. What is happening here is that the Level 1 examiners are so inept
and lazy that, rather than take the time to closely examine and review these
vouchers the way that they should, they just hit the reject or approve button
without a second thought. That, of course, slows down the whole process and the
dealers aren't getting paid by the Department of Transportation. The dealers
are frustrated and irate, and make no bones about it when they return their
documents that are correct and don't need to be revised. When their documents
are returned for revision, they have no number to call or person to
e-mail."
Willey told WND that auto dealers were often
very good about submitting the eight documents required to receive a rebate,
but some vouchers were being sent back because Level 1 examiners failed to hit
the "next" button to go to the following page of documents.
She said, "I saw that time and time again.
Then the dealers would write back and say, 'It's on Page 2.'"
Willey said a single voucher would be passed
around to as many as a dozen workers without being processed.
"I'd get something, and I would see
that it had gone around to people in our office in Chester six or seven times and nobody had
worked on it," she said. "It was obvious that maybe someone would
look at it and say, 'This is too complicated. I'm going to back out of it.'
Then they would back out of it and someone else would do the same."
Crashing CARS
The New York Times reported that the CARS
computer systems were often overloaded, and dealers said they would finish one
page in the application, hit enter and nothing would happen. Then a message
would notify the dealer that the page had "timed out."
The DOT declined to respond to WND's
requests for information on its CARS database. Vangent Vice President Eileen
Rivera said, "There were times when an ID had to be reset. If you can
imagine, there were thousands and thousands and thousands of people all logging
in to the system at the same time. We were asked by the Department of
Transportation to use this system, so we did our best to train everyone."
Dealers have indicated that failure to be
reimbursed would be a "nightmare" for them. At Los Angeles' Galpin
Motors, Vice President Beau Boeckmann told the New York Times his company would
"try to 'unwind' the sale, get the slightly used car back and try to sell
it again."
Other dealers told the Washington Post that
failure to repay them for the Cash for Clunkers program could force them into
bankruptcy. When Cash for Clunkers was first announced, the government said it
would reimburse dealers within 10 days of a sale. But many dealerships pulled
out of the program early following frustrations concerning delays on federal
payments.
Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said the
government has compensated dealers or approved rebates for 83 percent of the
cars sold. The government has paid or cleared $2.38 billion of the $2.87
billion in dealer vouchers, according to the Transportation Department.
Officials claim 8.8 percent of applications have been rejected and 8.1 percent
are still being reviewed.
"I know some of you have a little
heartburn, but you're all going to get paid," LaHood said in a Sept. 16
speech to the National Automobile Dealers Association. "Maybe not in the
timely way you would have liked."
'Complete waste of taxpayer money'
LaHood has said all dealers will be
reimbursed by Sept. 30. In August, the
Dow Jones Newswire reported that federal bailout recipient Citigroup was
selected as one of the private contractors to process Cash for Clunkers
paperwork. It was awarded an estimated $7.7 million federal contract.
Edmunds.com, a website for car buyers,
predicts that the hangover from Cash for Clunkers could be responsible for the
loss of 100,000 car sales across the nation this month. Some dealerships now
say they are once again facing hard times because car sales are declining and
many companies are still waiting for voucher reimbursements, the Boston Globe
reported.
"It was probably, in the end, a
complete waste of taxpayer money," said John Wolkonowicz, a senior auto
analyst at IHS Global Insight, Lexington
forecasting firm. "The dealers, who were supposed to be the primary
beneficiaries, many were forced into cash flow problems because the government
didn't pay them in a timely fashion."
Robert O'Koniewski, executive vice president
of the Massachusetts State Automobile Dealers Association, which represents 441
dealerships, told the Globe that most dealers are probably still owed money.
"This program was very good at getting
product off the lot, but there haven't been long-term benefits," he said.
"Dealers are reporting that showrooms are pretty dead right now."
On Sept. 14, less than two weeks after she
was hired, Willey received a surprise when she appeared for work:
"After sitting at work tonight from
4:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m., we were all herded into a room and told that our jobs
were over and we were no longer needed."
Willey said the contractor released the day
and night shifts without explanation. Likewise, Vangent workers in Florida were let go
after only two weeks, according to the Tampa Tribune.
"I spent the majority of my time
sitting in that office waiting for work. I have never seen anything like
this," she said. "What I saw while I worked on Cash for Clunkers
rebates was complete chaos."
However, Rivera told WND that Vangent
successfully processed 300,000 vouchers in less than three weeks –with 98
percent accuracy.
"If you think about it, that was a lot
of work," she said. "It was a matter of ramping up the number of
employees as quickly as we could, getting everybody trained and processing the
vouchers. We finished the contract."
Rivera told WND she believes the government
will finish processing the vouchers and meet its Sept. 30 deadline.
"We were very efficient," she
said. "We are very proud of the work we did, and 98 percent of all the
vouchers done correctly is testament to the good work that all of the employees
did during the program."
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