Late in the afternoon of December 4th of 2006, laboratory staff of the Veterans Administration Pittsburgh Health Services (VAPHS) based on an order from Dr. Mona Melhem, the associate chief of clinical services, a few minutes earlier – in less than three hours destroying a unique collection of legionella and other isolates that had been collected by two prominent infectious disease researchers over their nearly three decades of research.

So starts a report by the Science Sub Committee chaired by Congressman Brad Miller of the 13th District of North Carolina into a strand of legionella that was destroyed by the Pittsburgh VA and with it thirty years of research by Dr. Victor Yu and his partner Dr. Janet Stout.

This report and its conclusions began a series of events that climaxed with this news broken on in January by Walter Roche of the Pittsburgh Tribune about the same Pittsburgh VA.

A top Pittsburgh Veterans Affairs physician, who got her job back temporarily after congressional intervention, is about to be terminated from her position as the head of radiology in the Pittsburgh facility.

VA officials have issued a formal notice of termination effective Jan. 25 to Dr. Anna Chacko, who has been on administrative leave from the University Drive facility since October.

What, one might ask, does an investigation into a destroyed strand of legionella have to do with the firing of the chief of radiology at a hospital nearly two years later? In reality, the two probably have little do with each other, except in the mind of Congressman Brad Miller. Because Miller made a connection, the events of one lead directly to the events of the other.

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The California chapter of ACORN has split from the group and changed its name.

Thousands of Californians who live in or close to poverty in the state have worked hard for decades to score victories that level the playing field. They’ve passed laws that increase affordable housing and raise the minimum wage, so they can provide for their families. They’ve also spent their personal time, which is in chronically short supply, pushing for better teachers and textbooks so the kids in their neighborhoods can have better opportunities. On these and other issues the odds have been against them, but these Californians leveraged their significant numbers with coordinated grassroots organizing to achieve victory.

Until now, they carried out this work as a chapter of the national organization ACORN. Until now, governance and financial management resided at the national level. In recent months it has become increasingly clear to the leadership, staff and members in California that the serious challenges ACORN is facing are jeopardizing the important work we are doing here in California.

The new entity will be called Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE). It will, on paper at least, be entirely separate now from ACORN. The relationship will be what Wade Rathke characterized the relationship between ACORN and ACORN Housing. ACORN is its own entity and ACCE is its own entity and the two are fighting for common goals.

It’s important to note that most, if not all, of the staff and board of ACORN in California will be kept on with the new company. In fact, at the bottom of the press release the contact person is Amy Schur. Schur, according to a source, was privvy to the knowledge that Dale Rathke had been involved in embezzlement from ACORN and kept that knowledge from the board.

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Over the last month or so, I have featured several posts on the Putback amendment. The Putback amendment is a proposal by an Illinois activist named John Bambenek that tries to dramatically reform the structure and procedures of our government in order, in the hopes of Bambenek, to make the government more responsive.

The Putback amendment is comprehensive and so I did three separate posts on it. It includes a mechanism to allow the rank and file within the legislature to get their bills to the floor. With this amendment, any legislator would need to get 25 legislators to sign off on a discharge petition and that would get any bill onto the floor. Currently, it only goes through the rules committee and the rules committee is manned by the leadership. It also removes so called “shell bills” which are blank bills that filter through the legislature and allow the legislature to write the meat and bones in private and quickly have it voted on.

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I first met up with Tom Tresser when I went to my first Olympics townhall event in the summer. Tresser lead the citizen activist group, No Games Chicago. They opposed the bid, as most have probably figured out. Tresser represented No Games, and their position, in the forum. Here’s how I described Tresser’s best argument that night:

Tresser, on at least five occasions, referred to Daley by the moniker corrupt. No one supporting the bid ever challenged this characterization. Instead, their defense was that the bid was a private non profit effort that is separate from the mayor’s office

The corruption in Chicago’s City Hall was the number one reason to oppose the Olympics coming to this city. While the Olympics aren’t going to be here, the corruption is a major reason, the corruption hasn’t gone away with it. In fact, it’s a part of daily political life in the city of Chicago, the County of Cook, and the state of Illinois in its entirety. (more…)

I first crossed paths with Dennis Lennox more than two years ago. At the time, he was a junior student at Central Michigan University. By the time I first spoke with him, he had engineered a near year long battle with the faculty at CMU over Gary Peters. At the time, Peters was running for the U.S. Congress and concurrently he was holding the distinguished Griffin Chair. (Peters eventually won his Congressional election) The Congressio nal district was about 400 miles from campus. If, and now when, Peters won, he would have had to give up Chairmanship. Furthermore, the Griffin Chairmanship was supposed to be non partisan and a Congressional candidate was hardly that. Subsequently, emails and other leaked correspondence showed evidence of a corrupt process in choosing Peters for the Chairmanship.

Lennox waged a battle to have Peters choose, the Chairmanship or his Congressional race. By May of 2008, Lennox had effectively won his battle and Peters was asked to resign and he did. Lennox was not unscathed from his battle. The administration threatened sanctions against Lennox on a number of occasions. Eventually, a letter of reprimand was put into Lennox’ university records. In fact, the school attempted to hold a number of disciplinary hearings at which the potential punishment of Lennox could have been expulsion. At one hearing, Lennox showed up flanked by no less than six members of the media. The administration quickly cancelled that hearing and held another in secret over Spring break a couple weeks later.

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The internal report issued by former Massachusetts Attorney General is out. Clearly, here’s what the headline will be.

The high-profile lawyer hired to investigate ACORN has found no pattern of intentional illegal conduct in the community organizing group — a finding that was dismissed as “damage control” by one of the two filmmakers who, posing as a pimp and prostitute, videotaped staffers offering advice on how to operate a brothel .

This was immediately mocked by conservatives in the media.

Harshbarger has determined — wait for it — that ACORN engaged in no wrongdoing
depicted in the nationwide undercover stings conducted by BigGovernment.com / James O’Keefe III and Hannah Giles.

In fact, everyone is getting into word games here. ACORN did in fact engage in no criminal wrongdoing by offering advice to a “pimp” and “prostitute” about how to hide assets and their business practices. Simply offering such advice is not illegal. If that’s what Harschbarger was brought in to do, I could have saved everyone plenty of time. In fact, if that’s what he was investigating, then it’s clear they gave him a scope that would lead to a conclusion that would maximize their positive press. In fact, these videos occurred at no less than five offices. That’s a pattern of behavior for which management, and not merely those on the videos, must take some responsibility. That’s at the heart of the series of exposes by Giles and O’Keefe. It’s not about whether or not the behavior on the videos is or is not technically legal. It’s about what it says about an organization when a “pimp” and “prostitute” can so routinely walk into just about any office and be offered advice that the advisor knows is illegal if implemented. That reality is barely acknowledged and not really addressed.

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Dr. Anna Chacko

Dr. Chacko spent six years at Lahey Clinic in the Boston suburb of Burlington. When she was fired from there, security had to forcibly carry her out all while Dr. Chacko screamed

Kiss my big Indian Ass

(Dr. Chacko is of Indian descent)

After Lahey Clinic,  Dr. Chacko spent about a year at the Boston University until she was removed after complaints of sexual harrassment to the human resources department.

From there, Dr. Chacko moved to St. James Hospital in Butte, Mt. as head of radiology in July of 2007.  Dr. Chacko replaced the three radiologists there. The three radiologists, Drs. William Driscoll, Jesse Cole, and Dennis Wright, had a combined 70 years of service to St. James. Prior to her arrival, St. James CEO, James Kiser, often referred to the radiology department as its “savior” because its consistent seven figure bottom line profitability almost single handedly kept the entire hospital profitable.  Dr. Chacko left St. James fifteen months later in October of 2009, and she took all the new radiologists with her. In the interim, no less than four lawsuits were filed in which she was mentioned prominently. The radiology department, once the savior, was now deep in the red. In fact, the hospital was on the verge of collapse and they were about to default on lease payments for millions of dollars worth of radiology equipment that Dr. Chacko herself ordered.

Despite this, Dr. Chacko was able to land a plumb job as head of radiology at the Pittsbugh VA and started there in October of 2008.

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If you want to know what will happen to ACORN as a result of all the scandals and controversies, this story from Connecticut is a microcosm.

Its political allies fled. And with its national organization fighting for its life and unable to give any money, ACORN of Bridgeport is doing what other chapters have been doing across the nation, going independent, sort of.

This month, the group began a campaign to raise money and create two local nonprofits, one to concentrate on social issues, the other on political action. To be clear, the plan is to continue to work with other chapters on national issues through a federation, according to Emeline Bravo-Blackwood, a small business owner who is leading the effort to transform the group in Bridgeport.

So, more and more ACORN chapters are moving away from their current structure, which is one organization where all the local chapters answer to a national board, to a federation. Where have I heard that term federation in relation to ACORN? Oh yeah, it was in my interview with Wade Rathke. He explained that ACORN is one organization whereas COI, what Rathke now runs, is a federation. Here’s how Rathke described the difference.

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Everyone knows that things in Springfield, Illinois are broken. Everyone knows that the government of the State of Illinois is inefficient and corrupt. That’s all true, however, to truly understand the problems in Springfield, we must look at the structure of the legislature.

By its design, the legislature in Springfield consolidates all power in the hands of four people: Tom Cross, Christine Radogno, Mike Madigan and John Cullerton. Those are the Republican and Democratic leaders in the House and Senate. Power is consolidated through the process by which bills see the light of day. In the Illinois legislature, there’s only one way for a bill to be heard and debated: the rules committee. Not surprisingly, each of those four folks are head of the rules committee for their side in the House and Senate. As such, the head of the two rules committees have carte blanche over what bills will and won’t see the light of day. So, if any legislator wants their bill to get a hearing in the House, Michael Madigan must approve. You can see how such a process could corrupt, and does.

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Yesterday, I finished the third part of my interview with Wade Rathke. I felt, correctly, or not that after spending several hours with Rathke, that I was starting to understand Rathke, his vision, and his goals. So, I tried to make these questions as pointed and interesting as possible.

1) What can the local, state, and federal government do right now to help the poor and middle class?

The answer that Rathke gave was both surprising and impressive. I expected him to rattle off several laws that could be implemented, maybe a moratorium on foreclosures, and other policy changes that he believed in. Instead, Rathke was practical and pithy.

He said that all government programs: unemployment insurance, welfare, etc. should be streamlined on the internet so that all citizens would be given access to electronic files. By doing this, the government would cut all sorts of red tape and save those in need all sorts of time and energy in receiving these benefits. For the money the government would spend in implementing these systems, the benefit to the people would come back ten fold.

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Last Tuesday, I had round two with former ACORN Chief Organizer and current head of Community Organizations International, Wade Rathke. This interview was a lot more sweeping. It ranged from Rathke’s philosophy, his philosophy on organizing, his views on the tea parties, to all sorts of issues surrounding ACORN.

1)What do you think of the tea parties?

It’s important to note that I wasn’t asking about political philosophy or personal preference, but rather as an organizing philosophy.

Rathke is impressed by their ability to organize. As an organizing phenomenon, the tea parties are effective and, as an organizer, Wade Rathke believes they took advantage of a vacuum, stepped in, and filled a void that the president never saw coming. Rathke once referred to the tea party movement as “tea baggers”. He did this only once. He never really took any pot shots at them besides this and so I don’t know that this was a deliberate dig.

Rathke did, however, also point out that often the tea parties fail basic organizing principles.

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People that know him, and know him well, have described him as an “organic genius” and a “diabolical genius”. He’s become a lightning rod and a polarizing figure, and he’s at the center of a national debate. Wade Rathke is the former long time CEO, or Chief Organizer, of ACORN, the Association for Community Organizations for Reform Now. He’s now running Community Organizations International, the former ACORN International. When I emailed Wade Rathke  Friday October 23rd, I was surprised that he agreed to an interview. I was even more surprised that he was familiar with my work. Yet, he was willing to give me some time on the afternoon of the 26th of October. What follows are some of my thoughts following an interview that lasted about an hour.

The campaign that COI is most involved in, or at least featured on their main page, is the campaign to reform global remittance. Global remittance is the process by which ex patriates send money back to family in their home country. For instance, it’s been well documented that Mexico’s main economic source is actually money sent back home from the USA. According to Rathke, this is an industry that topped $300 billion, and far too many of its players practice predatory lending practices. For instance, Rathke has seen fees up to 20% of the amount to be wired. So, if someone were to send $1000 back home, they would be charged $200 to process this transaction. Rathke stressed that such fees were an “outlier” but fees of 5% are about the norm. In his view, this is far too much, and the poor are being taken advantage of by predatory lending practices in this area. Furthermore, with these rates, it also leads to a black market. That’s what’s happening. Often people send money home with all sorts of strangers because they’re promised that it will get there with no charge.

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