To Understand Shinseki, One Must Understand Hawai’i

“Michelle Obama said to understand Barack you have to understand Hawai’i. The same is true for Eric Shinseki,” said Warren Haruki, as quoted today in The Honolulu Advertiser.

Haruki is Shinseki’s nephew and currently president of Grove Farm, a major Kaua’i landowner. Haruki is also a former president of Verizon Hawaii, the local telephone company, now Hawaiian Telcom.

At least some of Shinseki’s leadership skill comes from “growing up in a diverse place where nobody was a majority, everyone was a minority,” Haruki said.

If Shinseki, a third-generation descendant of Japanese immigrants who was born and raised on Kaua’i, is confirmed by the U.S. Senate, he’ll be the first Hawai’i-born person to serve in a presidential Cabinet.

Veterans Denied Benefits Under Bush May Get Them Under Shinseki

The Associated Press reported yesterday that Gen. Shinseki has said he will reopen benefits to hundreds of thousands of middle-income veterans denied during the Bush administration.

In a 54-page disclosure obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press, President-elect Barack Obama’s choice to head the government’s second largest agency also urged Congress to set VA funding a year in advance to minimize political pressures. And the former Army chief of staff said he will step down from the corporate boards of defense contractors to alleviate potential conflicts of interest.

“If confirmed, I would focus on these issues and the development of a credible and adequate 2010 budget request during my first 90 days in office,” Shinseki wrote to the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, noting that VA funding in the past created “significant management difficulties” that delayed medical care.

The Senate committee is scheduled to hold Shinseki’s confirmation hearing on Jan. 14.

Campaign Donations Not Factor in Shinseki Pick

Roxana Tiron of TheHill.com today reports that many of Obama’s Cabinet selections, including Gen. Shinseki, made no donations at all to Obama, or any other presidential campaign.

“The president-elect’s sole criterion for assembling his Cabinet is looking for people of outstanding qualifications and excellence to serve the American people,” said Tommy Vietor, Obama’s spokesman.

While several of Obama’s Cabinet picks maxed out their contributions, many donated in the $2,000 range, such as Rep. Hilda Solis (D-Calif.), Obama’s choice to become secretary of Labor.

Other Cabinet choices, however, made no contribution to any presidential candidates. Sen. Ken Salazar (D-Colo.), designated to become secretary of the Interior, did not contribute anything to Obama’s campaign. Salazar endorsed Obama in December 2007.

Salazar joins the ranks of other Cabinet picks who did not donate to any campaign, including Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano (D), Timothy Geithner, retired Army Gen. Eric Shinseki and retired Marine Corps Gen. Jim Jones.

10 Things You Didn’t Know About Gen. Shinseki

Bobbie Kyle Sauer yesterday posted a cool list of things people may not know about Gen. Shinseki.

Number three on the list: “Shinseki is married to his high school sweetheart, Patricia Yoshinobu. They have two grown children, Lori and Ken.”

Number six: “In addition to being a West Point graduate, Shinseki received a master’s degree in English from Duke University. He returned to West Point to teach English for two years.”

Read the rest of the list here.

Shinseki ‘best appointment’ yet and on renaming VA to ‘Veterans’ Advocacy’

Joseph Galloway, military columnist for McClatchy Newspapers, a former senior military correspondent for Knight Ridder Newspapers and co-author of the national best-seller “We Were Soldiers Once … and Young,” writes today that Gen. Shinseki’s selection as Secretary of Veterans Affairs is Obama’s “smartest and best appointment he’s made so far.”

It sends a signal to millions of our veterans, and to the active-duty military, as well, that the serious business of caring for those who’ve borne the burdens of fighting our wars will now be in the right hands — the hands of a fine soldier who bears the scars of war himself.

That Obama chose Shinseki to reform the stumbling, bumbling, expensive bureaucracy that is the VA is an unmistakable signal that business is going to be anything but usual in the future.

Scripps Howard News Service political analyst Martin Schram writes today that the Department of Veterans Affairs needs to be renamed the “Department of Veterans Advocacy” in an effort to address one of the major sources of the agency’s failures: mindset.

There are two overriding reasons the VA has failed to provide many veterans with timely benefits and care they earned: Money and mindset. Perhaps you can find sufficient money. But despite your impressive authority, you will bump up against an adversarial mid-level mindset of some who function as if they work for a Department of Veterans’ Adversaries.

We need to change the VA’s name - call it the Department of Veterans’ Advocacy. Let all who work there understand that their job is to be our veterans’ advocates. Their job is to help each veteran assemble the facts of his or her case to determine the benefits they have earned - benefits that it is our duty, honor and privilege to pay to those who fought to keep us free.

Confirmation Hearing on Jan. 14

U.S. Senator Daniel K. Akaka yesterday announced that the date for the confirmation hearing of Veterans Affairs Secretary Designee General Eric Shinseki will be January 14, 2009.  The hearing will be held in the Veterans’ Affairs Committee hearing room, Room 418 of the Russell Senate Office Building, beginning at 10 a.m..

“I intend to hold a hearing on January 14 on the presumptive nomination of General Eric Shinseki to be the Secretary of Veterans Affairs.  I have scheduled the hearing early in the new Congress so the Senate can act on the nomination as soon as it is received.  I am proud to support General Shinseki’s nomination and I look forward to a long and productive relationship with him as Secretary,” said Senator Akaka, Chairman of the Veterans’ Affairs Committee.

Shinseki and the Black Beret

The Atlantic’s James Fallows writes today about opinion for Shinseki’s appointment running 100-to-1 positive and the General’s decision to make the black beret standard wear Army-wide running 100-to-1 negative.

There’s an Army webpage here that goes into this decision and the resulting feedback in more depth. Some excerpts:

Read more