A Texas Mess

An unqualified doctor with a foreign medical degree performs a failed skin graft in the emergency department of a small hospital in rural Texas, without surgical privileges. He improperly sutures a rubber tip to a patient’s crushed finger “for protection.” He e-mails patients about herbal supplements that he peddles on the side. The doctor has a documented history of violation of professional standards of care:

The hospital administrator, Stan Wiley, said in an interview that Dr. Arafiles had been reprimanded on several occasions for improprieties in writing prescriptions and performing surgery and had agreed to make changes. Mr. Wiley, who said it was difficult to recruit physicians to remote West Texas, said he knew when he hired Dr. Arafiles that he had a restriction on his license stemming from his supervision of a weight-loss clinic.

Two nurses who serve as compliance and quality control officers for the hospital, with a combined 47 years experience at the hospital, become increasingly frustrated as administrators fail to act on their concerns. They report the doctor to the Texas Medical Board, in an anonymous letter referencing specific violations by case number. They are fired by the hospital, without explanation. And charged with a felony.

Arrested, indicted, fingerprinted, and photographed at the jail, they face charges of “misuse of official information,” a third degree felony punishable by up to ten years in prison and a $10,000.00 fine.

The local sheriff, Robert L. Roberts, Jr., filed the charges after his friend, Dr. Arafiles, complained of harassment.

The prosecutor [Scott M. Tidwell] said he would show that Mrs. Mitchell had a history of making “inflammatory” statements about Dr. Rolando G. Arafiles Jr. and intended to damage his reputation when she reported him last April to the Texas Medical Board, which licenses and disciplines doctors.

State health regulators disagreed:

In a surprise inspection last September, state investigators found several violations by Dr. Arafiles and concluded that the hospital had discriminated against the nurses by firing them for “reporting in good faith.”

Mari E. Robinson, executive director of the Texas Medical Board, has warned in a blistering letter to prosecutors that the case will have “a significant chilling effect” on the reporting of malpractice.

Charges against one of the nurses were dropped last week. Another nurse, Anne Mitchell, faces trial in a neighboring county tomorrow, February 8th.

This case is disturbing on so many levels. Nurses, like other professionals, are required to report misconduct. These particular nurses were responsible for compliance and quality control, crucial to the health and well-being of patients and to the administration of the hospital. If hospital administrators had acted on the nurses’ complaints, the patients and the hospital would be protected. Instead, authorities not only ignored the complaints, but fired the nurses, then filed criminal charges against the nurses. This was a naked act of retribution, a glimpse into the ugly workings of the good old boy patronage system, a wildly unsuccessful attempt to silence legitimate criticism, and a blatant misuse of the criminal justice system.

While he is preparing for his show trial, this overzealous small town prosecutor, Scott M. Tidwell, may wish to take the time to research the fate of former prosecutor and former attorney Mike Nifong.

Injured? Call Ken at 1-800-ATTYGEN

With Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli now moonlighting as a private attorney, can it be long until we see the TV ads?  All he needs now is a catchy jingle.  Maybe

Who’s your lawyer?  Cuccinelli!
It’s Virginia!  Nothing smelly!

Call on Ken to handle your case,
and rub the power of the state in their face!

Don’t just call any lawyer, when you can call the Governor’s lawyer!

You need a lawyer, who knows when?
He’s not busy — let’s call Ken!

Why go to Lowell “the Hammer” Stanley
When you can have Ken “the Wingnut” Cuccinelli?

Call Cuccinelli, that’s the name,
Away goes conflict of interest, down the drain!

For a pretty penny,
You can buy Kenny!

We’ve got the A-G
In our hands
We’ve got the A-G
in our hands….

Send in the cloooowns ….
Don’t bother …. they’re here.

I mean, it’s not like being Virginia’s Attorney General is a full-time job, right?  You have all those assistants and go-fers.  For the right paying client, you should be able to walk into any courtroom in the Commonwealth and strut your stuff.  And when the judge asks, “Mr. Cuccinelli, is this legal?”  You can answer, “Why, yes, Your Honor, I happen to have an Attorney General’s opinion right here stating that it is!”  How convenient!  What a gig!

Well, if Bill Bolling can be Lt. Governor and keep his day job, why not the Attorney General?  See, Governor Bob McDonnell’s administration is saving and creating jobs already!

If You Can Read This, Thank A Teacher

Harriet Ames of New Hampshire had a dream. She had her teaching certificate, taught first grade, and opened the minds of generations of children to the wonders of reading. But she had a dream to finally get her bachelor’s degree. It was the last thing left on her “bucket list.” And on her deathbed, about three weeks after her 100th birthday, she got it.

During her years of study at various colleges while teaching and working as a principal, it turns out Mrs. Ames had earned enough credits to be awarded her degree.

Paula Finnegan Dickinson of Gilford, who was Ames’ student back in 1956 and became an educator herself, regarded her as a mentor and dear friend.

“Mrs. Ames, along with Dick, Jane, Sally, Spot and Puff, became our friend,” Dickinson said, recalling the “Dick and Jane” series that was used in class reading groups. “With her enthusiasm, these characters came to life. … Mrs. Ames showed us how reading opened the doors to other experiences we in Pittsfield might never have known.”

For many of us, along the way in school, we came across a Mrs. Ames, who opened our eyes to the world of books and began a thirst for learning.  Thank you, Mrs. Ames!

Chesapeake’s Magic Elixir: Aunt Jemima

Yesterday’s Virginian-Pilot headlined yet another brewing environmental disaster in the City of Chesapeake: the City dumps the sludge from its water treatment plant into two lagoons, causing high levels of sulfate to leach into the groundwater. The alternative, trucking the sludge to landfills as other munipalities do, could cost millions.

The sweet solution to this sticky fix?  Pancake syrup. Yep, pancake syrup.

In a 2009 visit to the lagoon, a state environmental inspector learned that the city had been pouring pancake syrup into the wells whenever sulfate levels were high.

The city has been using the syrup since at least 2001 after a recommendation from a consultant….

To reduce levels of sulfate, city workers had been pouring two to eight gallons of cheap, generic pancake syrup into the appropriate wells as needed, said Chesapeake Public Utilities Director Jim Walski. The city gets the one-gallon jugs by piggybacking on a contract with the Chesapeake Conference Center, officials said.

“It’s not the kind of thing where we run to the grocery store and clean out the shelves,” said A. Craig Maples, Water Resources Management administrator for Chesapeake.

Whew, thanks for clarifying that, Mr. “Maples.”  Naturally, our first concern about the pancake syrup was that the City overpaid by buying brand name syrup in multiple 8 ounce containers from the Greenbrier Harris Teeter, without a VIC card.

Now that’s out of the way, we can turn to another concern: fudge. Fudged numbers, fudged results, manipulated and missing data.

City Attorney Ron Hallman sugar-coats it: “Out of over 1,000 samples taken over the last nine years, there have been only 24 exceedances of the sulfate limit, all of which have been under continuous remediation.” More ominously [and more truthfully], a May 2009 inspection by the state Department of Environmental Quality found fudge: the City failed to monitor several wells.  Some monitoring reports contained errors.  Others showed elevated levels of sulfate in violation of a state permit.

Translation: Of course there were very few “exceedances” of the sulfate limit.  If you pour pancake syrup down the “appropriate” monitoring wells, don’t write down results accurately, and skip checking some results entirely, you will get a better grade.  While you’re at it, maybe you could put the pancake syrup off-budget by “piggy-backing” on the conference center.  A truckload of sludge goes into the lagoon every day.  Do a couple of gallons of pancake syrup remediate the sulfate in the entire lagoon, or just the results in the “appropriate” monitoring wells?

A DEQ spokesman was complicit circumspect: sure, the sugars from the syrup help break down the sulfate, but  ”I don’t know that we were in agreement with the methodology they were using.”

In its rapid transformation from charming rural backwater to bustling suburban hub, the City of Chesapeake unfortunately neglected to replace the good old boy back-slappers of the past with competent professional leadership.  One result: a growing list of environmental disasters.

When will the City hire a professional environmental advisor to audit test results and avert the next disaster before it occurs?  When will it protect the public safety and not the City’s ill-deserved reputation?  Until then, wait for more syrupy happy talk (not to mention waffling) from the City government.

Compare and Contrast

Smart a** white boy: Run, run very fast. Don’t have anything to do with these people. But, being a Christian, you do have to help your fellow man.

Jeanette: Thank you, God (breaks into song).

Update: This morning another 6.1 magnitude earthquake hit Haiti. And last night, Mexican rescuers pulled Ena Zizi, a 69 year old devout Catholic, alive from the wreckage of Port-au-Prince’s Roman Catholic cathedral, declaring that “I’m all right, sort of.” She explained that, during her ordeal, she prayed and waited.

‘I talked only to my boss, God,’ she said. ‘And I didn’t need any more humans.’

Doctors who examined her said she was dehydrated and had a dislocated hip and a broken leg. Her son, Maxime Janvier, said that he never gave up hope that she would be found.

‘We were praying a lot for that to happen,’ he said.

For the Bible Tells Me So

In an article Sunday in the Virginian-Pilot, Christian Broadcasting Network producer Julie Jenney of Chesapeake defends televangelist Pat Robertson’s statement, pronounced within hours of the devastating 7.0 earthquake, that Haiti is “cursed” by a centuries-old “pact with the Devil.”

Regardless of whether you believe in God, or in the Bible, there is just too much empirical evidence to doubt the Bible. In the 1700s during the revolution, Haiti was believed to have made this pact with the devil. Any missionary who has worked in Haiti can tell you how the people mix traditional religion with voodoo. The practice of voodoo is still very much embedded in their culture.

Don’t misunderstand, the Haitian people are wonderful. But a few facts bear witness: Normally in Haiti, there’s only one doctor for every 10,000 people; life expectancy for a man is 59, for a woman it’s 62; 20 percent of children die before age 5; most exist on $2/day; 80 percent of the country is illiterate….

Does a loving God punish people for going down the wrong path? Read about it in the Bible.

In the same article, Ms. Jenney touts televangelist Pat Robertson as “a statesman, a great leader, a loving husband and family man, . . . a man who ardently defends Israel (if you don’t know why, look it up in the Bible), a man who founded a major TV cable network, CBN International Ministries and Regent University.” She leaves out his voiced hatred of millions of Muslims, his blaming feminists for 9/11, his business deals with Liberian dictator Samuel Taylor, his misuse of charitable organizations, and so much more.

Ms. Jenney, here are some other things you obviously overlooked in your selective, paternalistic Bible reading:

The first shall be last and the last first. (Matthew 19:30)

. . . remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. (Parable of Lazarus at the Gate: Luke 16: 19-31)

Be careful not to do your acts of righteousness before men, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. (Matthew 6:1)

Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. (Matthew 7:1-2)

If I give all I possess to the poor, and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing. (1 Corinthians 13:3)

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. (James 1:27)

Ms. Jenney, we’ll pray for Pat, and hope that he has a great turning to God. Maybe he will learn to love and even to tame his tongue. In the meantime, we’ll point out that the rich, bragging, televangelist, politician, businessmen types (Pharisees?), don’t make out so well in the Bible. You can look it up.

That Is Who We Are.

Why help Haiti? President Obama eloquently remembered Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. during services this morning at D.C.’s historic Vermont Avenue Baptist Church (video) and answered that question in an article for Newsweek (below):

. . . [A]bove all, we act for a very simple reason: in times of tragedy, the United States of America steps forward and helps. That is who we are. That is what we do. For decades, America’s leadership has been founded in part on the fact that we do not use our power to subjugate others, we use it to lift them up—whether it was rebuilding our former adversaries after World War II, dropping food and water to the people of Berlin, or helping the people of Bosnia and Kosovo rebuild their lives and their nations.

At no time is that more true than in moments of great peril and human suffering. It is why we have acted to help people combat the scourge of HIV/AIDS in Africa, or to recover from a catastrophic tsunami in Asia. When we show not just our power, but also our compassion, the world looks to us with a mixture of awe and admiration. That advances our leadership. That shows the character of our country. And it is why every American can look at this relief effort with the pride of knowing that America is acting on behalf of our common humanity.

….

In the aftermath of disaster, we are reminded that life can be unimaginably cruel. That pain and loss is so often meted out without any justice or mercy. That “time and chance” happen to us all. But it is also in these moments, when we are brought face to face with our own fragility, that we rediscover our common humanity. We look into the eyes of another and see ourselves. And so the United States of America will lead the world in this humanitarian endeavor. That has been our history, and that is how we will answer the challenge before us.

We’re Americans. We help. That is who we are. Unfortunately, in times of natural disaster, a very few reveal their character by questioning our responsibility, casting blame, dispensing ridicule, scoring political points, blaming the victims, and misusing religion and the promise, care, hope, and love it offers. Fortunately, most people stand up, step up, ask how we can help, and offer help and hope.

How Dare He?

Elizabeth Hasselbeck gets it right.  (Never thought we’d write that!)  How dare Pat Robertson say that Haitians suffering from a devastating 7.0 earthquake made a pact with the devil?

Trying to get the toothpaste back in the tube, and their founder’s televangelist foot out of his mouth yet again, a CBN spokesman explained the latest accidental glimpse into the real depths of Pat Robertson’s warped personality by dressing it in faux “history” and “scholarship”:

On today’s The 700 Club, during a segment about the devastation, suffering and humanitarian effort that is needed in Haiti, Dr. Robertson also spoke about Haiti’s history. His comments were based on the widely-discussed 1791 slave rebellion led by Boukman Dutty at Bois Caiman, where the slaves allegedly made a famous pact with the devil in exchange for victory over the French. This history, combined with the horrible state of the country, has led countless scholars and religious figures [er, at least one televangelist in Virginia Beach] over the centuries to believe the country is cursed. Dr. Robertson never stated that the earthquake was God’s wrath.

If you watch the entire video segment, Dr. Robertson’s compassion for the people of Haiti is clear. He called for prayer for them [and money for him]. His humanitarian arm [is that his right arm or his left--and why won't he show anyone the books?] has been working to help thousands of people in Haiti over the last year, and they are currently launching a major relief and recovery effort to help the victims of this disaster. They have sent a shipment of millions of dollars worth of medications that is now in Haiti, and their disaster team leaders are expected to arrive tomorrow and begin operations to ease the suffering.

Chris Roslan
Spokesman for CBN

A little history lesson from the Christian Science Monitor explains that the “pact with the devil” legend originated with Haiti’s former slaveholders and colonial masters.

After the French revolution, in 1794, the 500,000 slaves brought from Africa to work Haiti’s lucrative sugar and coffee plantations, were freed by decree. But Napoleon Bonaparte, seeking empire, wealth, and territory, tried re-enslave them in 1802.

Once slaves breathed the free air, they did not wish to return to their former status as drones or fodder for empire. Toussaint L’ouverture, a house slave whose father came from Africa, and whose master, Count de Breda, educated him – stepped up. Mr. L’ouverture’s reading of French enlightenment and revolutionary writers Mirabeau and Voltaire is thought to have been extensive. The slave revolt itself took place in the name of the values and ideals of the French revolution in many readings of history ….

Haiti had been “a hell on earth” for the slaves, writes Le Monde’s history specialist, Jerome Gautheret. “Each year, 50,000 slaves were brought to Haiti to compensate for the … terrible mortality among the slaves. In such a fragile society, order could only be precarious, based on terror and violence: the French Revolution shook it in an irreversible way. In Paris, while ‘Friends of the Blacks’ pled for civil equality for all free men and gradual emancipation of the slaves, a powerful colonial party [in Haiti] tried to maintain the status quo.”

Quoted Thursday on Salon.com, UCLA anthropologist Andrew Apter says the notion of a “pact with the devil” as behind the slave victory “is so absurd it is almost funny. This notion of a pact with the devil is basically an echo of an old colonial response to the successes of the 1790s Haitian revolution.”

The problem for Haiti is that if it was a hell on earth under slavery, it was also so after the slave revolt, French historians argue.  Africans plucked and sent to Haiti to work under the lash and suddenly freed were not a model constituency for civil society. Haiti went from the largest sugar exporter in the world to chaos. “The plantations were deserted. The former slaves refused to work on the places they were enslaved,” Mr. Apter said.

UCLA’s Apter argues, “the reason Haiti is poor is because Europe imposed a blockade on trade after the slave revolt in 1804, and you have an extremely polarized class structure in which a few families stepped into the positions of the former colonial plantation owners. There has been a horrible cycle of plundering and autocracy within Haitian leadership.”

So, Pat Robertson is wrong on history.  Not the first time.  In Robertson’s reading of history, would the Haitians have been better off staying slaves and not causing all this trouble in the first place?  Hmmmmm.  Haiti, it turns out, is a mostly Catholic country, honeycombed with Christian missionaries, many of whom were killed or injured by this earthquake.  Pat Robertson pronounced his judgement on millions of human beings suffering from a natural disaster based on flawed history, his sick misinterpretation of Christian doctrine, and a callous attempt to solicit donations for “his humanitarian arm,” which is accountable to no one.

Pat, no amount of public relations hoodoo can undo the voodoo that you do so well.

Oh. My. God.

He said it.  He really said it.  While buildings are still collapsing, while bodies are being pulled from the rubble and stacked by the roadsides, while survivors are struggling for breath and life, while millions of desperately poor people search for food and water, he said it.

We pray that Pat Robertson will have a great turning to God, and that out of this horrible tragedy some small good will come.  Oh boy, do we pray.

Please send help to Haiti.  Please don’t send it through Pat Robertson.

Demagogues: Ready, Fire, Aim!

Senator Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) has completed his careful, thoughtful investigation into the Christmas Day terrorist attack that failed. Now he plans to hold hearings.  In the meantime, we get to hear his conclusions:

Lieberman complains we’re treating the suspect as a criminal instead of a POW.  He joins the chorus that includes ex-VP Cheney, Senator Jim DeMint and ABC’s blowhard George Will.  Of course, if we treat the suspect like a POW, he can “Geneva Convention up” instead of “lawyering up.” Then a federal judge may find we have no declaration of war with Nigeria or Yemen, and we have to let him go.  But this doesn’t prevent the demagogues from stamping their feet and demanding that we indulge their torture fantasies, all the while ignoring the fact we have a criminal justice system that has worked pretty well against people who got caught red-handed trying to blow up planes.

Remind us again why Lieberman holds a Senate Committee chairmanship? Oh yeah, to reward his loyalty to the Democratic majority.

That’s the problem with our reaction to this failed terror plot! We’re not fearful enough! Not enough panic generated! Quick! How can we generate more terror! More! More!! More!!! Where can we find someone who can fan the flames of terror in the Motherland, er  Fatherland, er Homeland??  What Republican will step in to make sure that this incompetent extremist doesn’t fail in his mission to strike fear into the heart of every American??  And can we make money at it, too?

Thank you Pete Hoekstra!  Not since you released classified data as the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee have you made us feel so safe.  With morons like you on the loose, we should have no intelligence problems anytime soon.