Harmonic Chords Ring Against Abuse and Corruption

The Silver Standard with Romona Paden, contributor

This year’s Whistleblower Summit had many interesting and illumination discussion panels.

For us at the Silver Standard and The EARN Project, the panel conducted by Marti Oakley was of most interest.

Many people are drawn to the Summit just to meet Marti. They have listened to her shows on her TS Radio Network, and they appreciate her for being a leading voice for reform and her achievement in bringing this issue to the Summit. She was her usual dynamic self, shining a light into the dark corners of this growing global threat.

Her discussion concerning the massive expansion of individuals licensed as guardians and the very profitable businesses that have sprung up offering management services for senior citizens and the disabled was truly enlightening. Senior citizens and the disabled have become big business, not only with individuals who look to the profession of guardian as a golden path to consistent easy money but also companies selling worldwide franchises. As with everything in life, there is good and bad in their midst, but the opportunity for exploitation has clearly been too irresistible for many. With no existing laws as a deterrent, even good people can be enticed into doing bad things.

We were especially happy to see Marti address the need for public involvement. She emphasized that, with the existing lack of genuine support from most of those in government, there is an urgent need for public outcry. She shares our adamant insistence that change is going to happen only when American citizens use their voices—and their votes—to insist that their elected officials and lawmakers become strong advocates for their elderly and disabled citizenry. Advocacy groups must write the bills themselves and then get the public behind them to insist on political and judicial support. The public needs to get behind elder protection in the same way they supported Mothers Against Drunk Driving. As with MADD, this public support won’t completely end the abuse—but it certainly will reduce it.

The journalist Gretchen Hammond spoke most eloquently.

Hammond, after investigating guardianship for a June 2018 article, “Guardians From Hell” for The Tablet Magazine was so disturbed by what she discovered that she embarked on a full investigation of the Oakland County, Michigan probate court.

She and a small team examined 2,278 separate guardianship cases filed in that court against people ranging in age from 19–96 by agencies such as Adult Protective Services, the Senior Care Network, social workers, and attorneys. The reasons given in the petitions ranged from “bipolar,” to “diabetes,” to “lacks civilization,” “undefined mental illness,” and “fell down in the parking lot of Costco.”

The research revealed that in 98.9 % of these cases, guardianship was awarded to a either a public administrator or an elder, estate, or probate attorney who, it appeared, had “sufficiently impressed” Michigan’s Attorney General.

According to their research, the team discovered that:

• The majority of hearings lasted less than four minutes in which, irrespective of familial protestation, the victim and everything they owned became the property of the state.
• In 68.9 out of 100 of cases, neither the victim nor their family was given any prior warning; instead the hearing was conducted without their knowledge.
• In 97 out of 100 cases, victims were forced out of their homes by the public administrator within a month.

Sadly, says Hammond, “Their destiny was solely dependent upon their income and attitude.”

• The majority of victims were housed in psych or lockdown wards. Those with only a small Social Security income were shuffled about from one unlicensed group home to another where they were neglected, deprived of food, and all too often subjected to torture and beatings.
• In 100 percent of cases, irrespective of the victim’s income or savings at the time of the hearing, they were left completely indigent and reliant on social services within no more than three years.

Hammond and her team proved that while in Michigan it is written in state statute that adult guardianship is supposed to be a temporary measure, Michigan citizens are at the mercy of a heartless and greedy legal system where judges regularly ignore state law and no one cares.

One victim named Annette wrote to a judge from the unlicensed group home in which she had been imprisoned for over a year, saying “I don’t want to be punished and have my dignity and humanity taken away from me. I am young and would like a job and to be a viable asset in society.”

She was ignored and left imprisoned in that terrible Michigan Gulag—which to any American of conscience is a most unacceptable, unforgivable, un-American situation. Her letter is on file at the Oakland County Probate Court.

At the Silver Standard we find it incomprehensible—these are human beings we are talking about, our American brothers and sisters—and this is not just happening in Michigan.

Hammond has made great personal sacrifices in order to pursue injustice, and we all need to heed her warnings or the next Annette will be you or your loved one.

Lights, Camera, Whistle

For Marcel Reid, the whistleblower gauntlet was a springboard for the development of an Annual Whistleblower Summit, and in 2019 she added a film festival.

Recognizing that cinema ranks high among the most effective means of laying out the intricacies of a scenario and conveying a memorable message, the festival added a very successful element to the event. July’s hot and humid weather, within the swampy confines of the nation’s capital, only served to emphasize these powerful stories of heartbreaking civil and human rights violations in our “land of the free.”

Most of the films were in a documentary format and, according to the festival’s website, “seek to shine a light on courage and perseverance in the face of injustice, and to encourage individuals to stand together to achieve human rights for all…” The event is described as “an intersection between media, politics, culture and entertainment…”

Whistle Where We Stand

Like Marcel, Sharon de Lobo, publisher of The Silver Standard and head of its parent organization the Elder Abuse Reform Now Project (EARN), had never considered getting into either the activist or filmmaking fields. Then life took one of its unexpected turns—a turn that brought the documentary The Unforgivable Truth: How We Have Turned America’s Greatest Generation into America’s Abused Generation to this year’s Whistleblower Summit.

Starting in 2006, de Lobo came face to face with a soul-crushing experience faced every year by millions of Americans—financial elder abuse. Fighting all the way, she watched as $32 million, along with a multimillion-dollar property that her mother had ordered be put into a foundation as a refuge to feed and support severely at-risk children, simply disappeared. This heinous act—not of just financial elder abuse but of affluent “pillars of the community” denying food to children who frequently go to bed hungry—was perpetrated by the very people she had employed to protect her intentions along with the enthusiastic participation of an organization that cloaks itself in the banner of Christ. Next she learned the cold hard facts of how the courts—and their cadre of buddies, contributors, and professionals—ignore existing laws and act against the best interests of elders and their families, while politicians and lawmakers, influenced by powerful lobbyists, give sincere sounding lip service to the matter but, for the most part, do nothing.

In a discussion about why elder abuse and involuntary guardianship has not raised the kind of public outcry that one would expect, de Lobo’s answer was: “Americans have big hearts; we react with compassion to TV commercials showing sick children at St. Jude’s and The Shriners Hospitals, abused animals rescued by the ASPCA, or even foreign citizens painfully in need of our assistance. In contrast, we are never shown the thousands of American seniors who are spending their ‘golden years’ suffering in poverty due to cunning predators, or the bruised faces and the broken bones inflicted under the care of court-appointed guardians. It continues unseen, their cries for help unheard…The pain being inflicted on our senior citizens is pure evil, and a society that sees evil and does not eradicate it is itself evil. Americans are not an evil society. We just need to put the sights and sounds of elder abuse into their sightlines. If they see and hear it, if they are given what they need to fully understand the extent and gravity of it, they will care, and they will insist upon change. If we leave it in the shadows, it will destroy us all, because it will leave no family untouched.”

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Harmonic Chords Ring Against Abuse and Corruption

The Light that Illuminates Whistleblowing

The Silver Standard and Romona Paden, contributor

Marcel Reid, within a few years of entering the world of grassroots activism, shifted from pointing out institutional injustices against low- and middle-income communities to calling foul on the very “social justice”

organization where she had been devoting untold amounts of time and effort.

Discovering theft and fraud at the highest levels the Association of Community for Reform Now (ACORN) transformed Reid from community activist to whistleblower.

 “Whistleblowing is saying something no one wants to hear,” says Reid. “The kind of truth we’re talking about is the kind that can change the world.”

Too many organizations, while presenting a public face of great benevolence, are in truth fostering abuse, corruption, and wrongdoing at the expense of the needy they claim to help. The whistleblower who speaks the truth that shatters that image can expect plenty of blowback. It takes a strong chord of heroism to weather that, and that was certainly evident at last month’s 2019 Whistleblower Summit in Washington, DC.

As Reid describes her experience in exposing institutional corruption, one is reminded that doing the right thing often means facing disdain and contempt from colleagues as well as some form of retaliation. It frequently can result in job loss, false accusations, and maligned reputations—even with existing whistleblower protection laws. “They’re traumatized,” Reid says of whistleblowers facing down corruption.

Whistleblowing itself plays out on multiple levels. Oftentimes, whistleblowing comes down to calling for institutional accountability around illegal, unethical, or otherwise destructive and dishonest activity. It can be a powerful tool in building general societal awareness around norms and behaviors that need to be changed.

Whistleblowing dates back to the country’s very earliest days. In the months following the signing of the Declaration of Independence, a group of 10 sailors petitioned the Continental Congress with a complaint about British prisoners of war being treated in a “most inhuman and barbarous manner.” In response, the Continental Congress suspended the commander from his post.

Those seamen took on the risk of whistleblowing with open eyes. Though not often mentioned in present-day biographies, the commander, Commodore Esek Hopkins, was the brother of one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence and a former governor of Rhode Island.

As the soldiers must have expected, he retaliated. He filed a criminal libel suit against all the men and arrested and jailed the two service members who were present in the state of Rhode Island.

Again, the whistleblowers spoke up, appealing to the country’s new Congress, in a petition stating that they had been “arrested for doing what they then believed and still believe was nothing but their duty.”

Not long after, on July 30, 1778, the Continental Congress unanimously passed the first whistleblower law.

As Reid plowed through the trials of her modern whistleblowing experience exposing ACORN’s entrenched corruption, she found an ally in Pacifica Radio, a progressive/liberal non-profit organization of five independently operated, non-commercial, listener-supported radio stations. She was ultimately elected to serve as a director on their national board, leading it to become the first national media outlet to incorporate whistleblowing into its platform. Many say that credit for the passage of the 2012 Whistleblower Enhancement Act rests with Pacifica’s steadfast commitment to whistleblower coverage.

Currently, Reid serves as the first national media whistleblower liaison for Pacifica Foundation, a sole position within the media industry. By supporting whistleblower efforts globally, Reid continues her efforts to shed light on corruption worldwide.

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The Light that Illuminates Whistleblowing

From The Silver Standard’s Elder Abuse Reform Now Project: RIGHT-TO-DIE LAWS HASTEN EXPENDABLE HUMANITY

By Romona Paden

Fifty years ago, Western society cherished its life-affirming attitudes, but contemporary society has moved a long way from those norms.

In 1975, 21-year-old Karen Ann Quinlan fell into a vegetative state after mixing alcohol and Valium. When Quinlan’s parents requested removal of the life-support respirator administered by doctors, local prosecutors threatened homicide charges against any hospital official who complied.

As the case entered the legal sphere, much centered on the definition and application of “extraordinary means” of life-saving care. Finally, a decision was handed down by the New Jersey Supreme Court allowing for the removal of the respirator. Miss Quinlan, however, continued breathing on her own and lived ten more years in a nursing home nourished through a feeding tube.
“We never wanted her to die,” Quinlan’s mother said of the situation.

The layers of nuance in the Quinlan case spurred a national debate around morals, bioethics, and euthanasia. The progression of the debate to 2019 demonstrates a slippery slide as legislators around the country embrace and promote the death option—especially for society’s most vulnerable populations.

Euthanasia, mercy killing, and assisted suicide target disabled and elderly elements of the population. Regardless of what it’s called, proponents of these legal positions in other countries have wholeheartedly embraced the notion of disposable humanity.

Legislators wrestle with efforts to create an “acceptable” legal definition of characteristics associated with legitimate reasons to permit the withdrawal of a life. Known under a variety of euphemisms, right-to-die legislation—euthanasia, physician-assisted suicide, death with dignity, and so on—embraces the pursuit of death.

Death with Dignity, an organization promoting the “basic idea that it is the terminally ill people, not government...politicians...or religious leaders…who should make their end-of-life decisions” believes that people have the right to decide how much pain and suffering they must endure and determine when death has become the preferable option.

Despite the irony of seeking legislation in order to avoid state and institutional interference, the Death with Dignity statement speaks to a well-meaning position centered on enabling an escape plan for those faced with an unyielding circumstance.

But from a rational perspective, our understandable sympathy begets unintended—and to many, unacceptable—consequences. In countries where assisted suicide is legal, it is also more and more frequent, with proliferating accounts of unrequested doctor-assisted deaths.

In the United States, according to one report, an intensive-care doctor prescribed “excessive” pain medication, far beyond what was needed to provide comfort and at a potentially fatal level, to at least 27 patients between 2015 and 2018. Each of the affected patients was described as having been near death. Each patient’s family members had requested halting life-saving measures.

The story becomes even more egregious considering that pharmacists and nurses assisting with patient care acted in support of the doctor. If prosecutors prove allegations, it demonstrates staffers’ belief in right-do-die propaganda.

In Belgium and the Netherlands, “euthanasia of people with mental illnesses or cognitive disorders, including dementia, is now a common occurrence,” according to The Wall Street Journal. Bureaucrats defend the practice, which includes euthanizing patients in their 20s and 30s who are diagnosed with mental illness, as wholly in keeping within legal guidelines. Of course, this ignores the essential objections: Are the mentally ill less capable of forming a “true will”? Are their intentions intrinsically more difficult for a doctor—or anyone—to establish? Are they capable of evaluating a situation that asks them to make a life-or-death decision? Do we have the right to decide that their intellectual limitations make them so invaluable as human beings that we can simply dispose of them? In some countries the answer is yes. Is that an answer we Americans have come to feel comfortable with?

Too frequently, the establishment demonstrates excessive mission-driven zeal in executing right-to-die actions, and the public as well is beginning to demonstrate a finance-driven philosophy. In a 2013 study of 84 Facebook groups comprised of 20 to 29 year olds, university researchers reported pervasive comments like, “Seniors are burden to society,” “I hate everything about them,” “They don’t contribute to society,” as well as the desire to see “anyone over age 69 immediately be put in front of a firing squad!”

Underscoring this, former President Obama addressed the issue of end-of-life care costs by suggesting, “Maybe you’re better off not having the surgery, but taking the painkiller.” Perhaps it is the pressure of crushing student loan debt and low-wage jobs that contribute to the callousness and animosity of these young people, but would they make the same proclamations if the elderly people in question were their parents or grandparents?

“There is a growing tendency to promote ‘mercy killing’ as a solution to not just suffering, pain, but aging, mental or physical challenges, social ills, and even rising health costs and cost containment,” according to the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition’s (EPC) list of concerns. Other EPC observations include:

• Sanction of euthanasia and assisted suicide as a gateway to euthanasia without consent, circumvention of the law, and abuse of vulnerable citizens
• Threats to hospice and palliative care and pain management advances
• Lack of instruction to medical professionals regarding hospice and palliative care and effective pain control
• Lack of willingness to acknowledge depression as a common factor in right-to-die requests and then to treat the depression

EPC members “believe that euthanasia and assisted suicide should continue to be treated as murder/homicide, irrespective of whether the person killed has consented to be killed.”

Well-intentioned government involvement will invariably develop into mission creep. Oregon is a case in point. The northwestern state spearheaded the right-to-die movement two decades ago. Dubbed Dr. Death in press reports at the time, Jack Kevorkian brought the right-to-die issue to national conversation for his advocacy of physician-assisted suicide.

“Dying is not a crime,” the pathologist said in promoting his pro-death position in the late 1990s.
Included among the individuals Kevorkian assisted in dying were people who were not suffering from any terminal illness as well as some with a history of depression.

Nevertheless, legislators ultimately adopted the Oregon Death with Dignity Act, which went into effect in 1998. In the 21 years since adoption of the “world’s first assisted dying statute,” according to its website’s information, “a total of 2,216 people has received prescriptions under the Act, of whom 1,459, or 65.8 percent, have died from ingesting lethal doses of medications.”

In a January 2019 Euthanasia Prevention Coalition blog entry, Executive Director Alex Schadenberg responded to the information by pointing out that the Oregon Health Authority (OHA) once again achieved their standard year-over-year increase of right-to-die deaths in the state.

OHA information describes victims of these deaths as mostly over age 65 with a diagnosis of cancer. “Similarly, the most frequently reported end-of-life concerns were loss of autonomy (91.7%), decreasing ability to participate in activities that made life enjoyable (90.5%), and loss of dignity (66.7%).”

Despite a history of right-to-die program growth, OHA officials currently seek an expansion of definitions within the law. Under the death-creep move, terminally ill patients include those who refuse medical treatment and “therefore the new definition of terminal has an undefined and nearly unlimited application,” Schadenberg writes. “Many people who are not close to being ‘terminally’ ill have a disease that will, within reasonable medical judgement, produce or substantially contribute to death.” Including the refusal of medical treatment within the definition “enables wide-open assisted suicide.”

Still, the state’s presumptive position serves as a model for other states around the country. Washington adopted its version of the right-to-die law in 2008, and then Vermont followed suit in 2013. Since 2015, legislative bodies in California, Colorado, Hawaii, and Washington D.C. each implemented right-to-die statutes.

In a right-to-die bill under consideration within the New Mexico legislature, which Schadenberg describes as the “most extreme assisted suicide bill I have seen,” assisted suicide allowances extend to patients with psychiatric conditions and undefined “terminal” prognosis with lethal injections administered by non-doctor medical professionals—nurses and physician assistants. The bill even grants assisted suicide approvals via telemedicine.

Current legislative right-to-die debates for 2019 are also on the table for Arizona, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Utah, and Virginia.

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From The Silver Standard’s Elder Abuse Reform Now Project: RIGHT-TO-DIE LAWS HASTEN EXPENDABLE HUMANITY

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