Original Story: npr.org
Almost two decades ago, Dr. Lars Aanning sat on the witness stand in a medical malpractice trial and faced a dilemma.
The South Dakota surgeon had been called to vouch for the expertise of one of his partners whose patient had suffered a stroke and permanent disability after an operation. The problem was that Aanning had, in his own mind, questioned his colleague's skill. His partner's patients had suffered injuries related to his procedures. But Aanning understood why his partner's attorney had called him as a witness: Doctors don't squeal on doctors. A Chicago medical malpractice lawyer is following this story closely.
The attorney asked the key question: Did Aanning know of any time his partner's work had been substandard?
"No, never," Aanning said.
Now, Aanning, in a stunning admission for a medical professional, has a blunter answer: "I lied."
While it's impossible to know to what extent Aanning's testimony influenced the outcome, the jury sided in favor of his colleague — and, ever since, Aanning said, he has felt haunted by his decision.
Now, 77 and retired, he decided to write about his choice and why he made it in a recent column for his local newspaper, The Yankton County Observer. He also posted the article in the ProPublica Patient Safety Facebook group. Aanning, who is a member, called it "A Surgeon's Belated Confession." A Hackensack medical malpractice attorney represents clients injured due to the negligence of a medical professional.
"From that very moment I knew I had lied — lied under oath — and violated all my pledges of professionalism that came with the Doctor of Medicine degree and membership in the [American Medical Association]," Aanning wrote.
Aanning, who has become an outspoken patient advocate, now assists the medical malpractice attorney who represented the patient in the case in which he lied for his partner.
There's no way to tell how often doctors lie to protect their colleagues, but ProPublica has found that patients frequently aren't told the truth when they are harmed. Studies also show that many physicians do not have a favorable view of informing patients about mistakes and that health care workers are afraid to speak up if things don't seem right. Many doctors and nurses have told ProPublica that they fear retaliation if they speak out about patient safety problems.
ProPublica spoke to Aanning about his unusual column and why he decided to confess all these years later. The interview has been edited for clarity and length. A Washington D.C. medical malpractice lawyer is reviewing the details of this case.
Why did you tell the lie?
I did it as a matter of course. And I did it because there was a cultural attitude I was immersed in: You viewed all attorneys as a threat, and anything that you did was OK to thwart their efforts to sue your colleagues. I just accepted that as normal. It wasn't like, "I'm going to lie." It was, "I'm going to support my colleague."
Did you feel pressure from your peers to never criticize a colleague?
Pressure is the prevailing attitude of the medical profession. The professional societies like the AMA and the American College of Surgeons say you should be a patient advocate at all times. But that goes out the window because here you are, banding together with your peers. Because if you don't, you'll be like a man without a country.
Why are you telling the truth now?
I'm retired now. The big benefit is they can't hurt me, but I can't go to the clinic for any help. All my doctors are out of town. I came to America from Norway in '47 and grew up in New York. I've always been a rabble-rouser. This testifying falsely at this trial was not like me, so it stands out. It's not how I do stuff.
I also told the truth about my lie because I have been helping some of these plaintiffs' lawyers with their cases. It seems that the courtroom is not the arena for adjudication of medical right or wrong. I shared my story to give an explicit example of why you can't always rely on physician testimony in court. I think that's the big reason. There's got to be a different way to help people who have been medically harmed. Looking to the legal system is like mixing oil and water.
Do you feel like it's your fault the patient lost the case?
I haven't touched on that question. It would make it painful for me. I would be moved to tears if that whole case revolved around just my testimony. I was on the stand so briefly. But cumulatively between what I said and the other testimony — it was never a level playing field for the plaintiff. People don't recognize it. How the judges don't recognize it and the system doesn't recognize it is beyond me. It's something I'm coming to grips with.
Have you thought about talking to the patient's family?
The attorney said something about meeting the patient's widow in his office, or something like that. I worry about whether my testimony weighed on the final verdict or not. It's something that you just have to face up to. It's too late to deflect it.
Do you feel any better or worse now that you've gone public with your moral failure?
I'm not altruistic. I'm not a crusader. I got into writing this column accidentally, so I just kind of find myself in this position. I get a great satisfaction out of defining what I see and writing about it. I hope nobody's going to come back at me and accuse me of bad conduct. Although that's what it was. I felt bad about it.
Friday, September 30, 2016
U.S. PROBES WELLS FARGO WHISTLEBLOWER, WAGE THEFT COMPLAINTS
Original Story: cnn.com
The U.S. Labor Department is reviewing both open and closed whistleblower complaints against Wells Fargo amid allegations that the bank retaliated against employees who called the ethics line.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has received "a number of" whistleblower complaints from Wells Fargo (WFC) employees over the past five years, Labor Secretary Thomas Perez said in a letter to Elizabeth Warren on Monday.
The majority of these cases have been concluded, through "settlement or other actions," Perez said. "At least a handful of complaints" are still being investigated, he said.
The whistleblower issue has resurfaced since Wells Fargo admitted to firing 5,300 workers over the past few years and creating as many as 2 million fake bank and credit card accounts. An Atlanta whistleblower lawyer is following this story closely.
Nearly a half-dozen former Wells Fargo employees told CNNMoney exclusively they were fired after trying to put a stop to these practices by calling the ethics line.
"They ruined my life," said Bill Bado, a former Well Fargo banker in Pennsylvania. After refusing to open phony bank accounts, Bado called a Wells Fargo ethics line and sent an email to human resources in September 2013 to flag improper sales tactics. Eight days later, he was terminated for "tardiness."
The whistleblower review is part of a "top-to-bottom review of cases, complaints, or violations" ordered by Perez related to Wells Fargo. That includes allegations that Warren raised in a letter last week that Wells Fargo may have violated federal law by failing to pay workers overtime.
Perez cited the "serious nature of the allegations, the recent action of our Federal partners, and recent media reports."
On the whistleblower front, Perez said he has directed OSHA to review "the entire docket" of open and closed complaints against Wells Fargo since 2010 "to examine the handling and disposition of those cases."
Yet Perez cautioned that "it may not be possible to provide recourse" on Wells Fargo whistleblower cases that took place too long ago under current law. A whistleblower lawyer is reviewing the details of this case.
"We want to determine what the facts are, what we can do about them, and how we can learn about this situation," Perez said.
Wells Fargo told CNNMoney it has a non-retaliation policy and that the company makes efforts to protect employees from retaliation. "No team member may be retaliated against for providing information about suspected unethical or illegal activities," a spokesperson said.
"If a team member believes that they or someone else has been retailed against, we want them to report it as soon as possible" to their manager, human resources or corporate employee relations.
The Labor Department is also offering another avenue for Wells Fargo workers. It launched a dedicated landing page for current and former Wells Fargo employees at www.dol.gov/wellsfargo and is monitoring its toll-free hotline (1-866-4USADOL) and email address (TalktoDOL@dol.gov).
In response to allegations of failing to pay overtime, Wells Fargo said, "We pride ourselves on creating a positive environment for our team members, including market competitive compensation" and other benefits.
Former Wells Fargo employees have fought back against the company this week by launching a federal class action lawsuit seeking $7.2 billion.
The fake account scandal and onslaught of legal headaches is weighing on Wells Fargo's stock price, which closed at the lowest level in two-and-a-half years on Monday.
The U.S. Labor Department is reviewing both open and closed whistleblower complaints against Wells Fargo amid allegations that the bank retaliated against employees who called the ethics line.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has received "a number of" whistleblower complaints from Wells Fargo (WFC) employees over the past five years, Labor Secretary Thomas Perez said in a letter to Elizabeth Warren on Monday.
The majority of these cases have been concluded, through "settlement or other actions," Perez said. "At least a handful of complaints" are still being investigated, he said.
The whistleblower issue has resurfaced since Wells Fargo admitted to firing 5,300 workers over the past few years and creating as many as 2 million fake bank and credit card accounts. An Atlanta whistleblower lawyer is following this story closely.
Nearly a half-dozen former Wells Fargo employees told CNNMoney exclusively they were fired after trying to put a stop to these practices by calling the ethics line.
"They ruined my life," said Bill Bado, a former Well Fargo banker in Pennsylvania. After refusing to open phony bank accounts, Bado called a Wells Fargo ethics line and sent an email to human resources in September 2013 to flag improper sales tactics. Eight days later, he was terminated for "tardiness."
The whistleblower review is part of a "top-to-bottom review of cases, complaints, or violations" ordered by Perez related to Wells Fargo. That includes allegations that Warren raised in a letter last week that Wells Fargo may have violated federal law by failing to pay workers overtime.
Perez cited the "serious nature of the allegations, the recent action of our Federal partners, and recent media reports."
On the whistleblower front, Perez said he has directed OSHA to review "the entire docket" of open and closed complaints against Wells Fargo since 2010 "to examine the handling and disposition of those cases."
Yet Perez cautioned that "it may not be possible to provide recourse" on Wells Fargo whistleblower cases that took place too long ago under current law. A whistleblower lawyer is reviewing the details of this case.
"We want to determine what the facts are, what we can do about them, and how we can learn about this situation," Perez said.
Wells Fargo told CNNMoney it has a non-retaliation policy and that the company makes efforts to protect employees from retaliation. "No team member may be retaliated against for providing information about suspected unethical or illegal activities," a spokesperson said.
"If a team member believes that they or someone else has been retailed against, we want them to report it as soon as possible" to their manager, human resources or corporate employee relations.
The Labor Department is also offering another avenue for Wells Fargo workers. It launched a dedicated landing page for current and former Wells Fargo employees at www.dol.gov/wellsfargo and is monitoring its toll-free hotline (1-866-4USADOL) and email address (TalktoDOL@dol.gov).
In response to allegations of failing to pay overtime, Wells Fargo said, "We pride ourselves on creating a positive environment for our team members, including market competitive compensation" and other benefits.
Former Wells Fargo employees have fought back against the company this week by launching a federal class action lawsuit seeking $7.2 billion.
The fake account scandal and onslaught of legal headaches is weighing on Wells Fargo's stock price, which closed at the lowest level in two-and-a-half years on Monday.
Friday, September 23, 2016
MICHIGAN AMONG 21 STATES THAT SUE TO BLOCK EXPANSION OF OVERTIME PAY LAW
Original Story: crainsdetroit.com
LAS VEGAS — Officials from 21 states, including Michigan, sued the U.S. Department of Labor Tuesday over a new rule that would make about 4 million higher-earning workers eligible for overtime pay, slamming the measure as inappropriate federal overreach by the Obama administration.
Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt, a Republican, filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Eastern Texas, urging it to block implementation before the regulation takes effect on Dec. 1. Laxalt, a frequent critic of President Barack Obama's policies, said the rule would burden private and public sectors by straining budgets and forcing layoffs or cuts in working hours. A Little Rock overtime lawyer is reviewing the details of this case.
"This rule, pushed by distant bureaucrats in D.C., tramples on state and local government budgets, forcing states to shift money from other important programs to balance their budgets, including programs intended to protect the very families that purportedly benefit from such federal overreach," he said in a statement.
The lawsuit came the same day that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and more than 50 other business groups filed a legal challenge against the regulation.
U.S. Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez said he was confident in the legality of the rule, describing the lawsuits as partisan, obstructionist tactics. He noted that overtime protections have receded over the years: they applied to 62 percent of full-time salaried workers in 1975 and just 7 percent today. An overtime lawyer has experience representing clients in wage dispute claims.
"The overtime rule is designed to restore the intent of the Fair Labor Standards Act, the crown jewel of worker protections in the United States," Perez said in a statement. "I look forward to vigorously defending our efforts to give more hardworking people a meaningful chance to get by."
The measure would shrink the so-called "white collar exemption" that exempts workers who perform "executive, administrative or professional" duties from overtime and minimum wage requirements.
It would more than double the salary threshold under which employers must pay overtime to their white collar workers. Overtime protections would apply to workers who make up to $913 a week, or $47,476 a year, and the threshold would readjust every three years to reflect changes in average wages.
"This long-awaited update will result in a meaningful boost to many workers' wallets, and will go a long way toward realizing President Obama's commitment to ensuring every worker is compensated fairly for their hard work," the Labor Department said in May when it announced the new rule.
Business groups say the changes are too much and too fast, especially as states continue to recover from the recession. A Maine employment lawyer is following this story closely.
“This lawsuit is a slap in the face to working people in Michigan,” said Ron Bieber, president of the Michigan AFL-CIO.
“This new rule is long overdue. Overtime protections have been gutted over the past four decades without a significant adjustment for inflation. The new rule will help protect wages from being eroded by rising costs, and ensure that working people get paid for the work they do.
Other plaintiffs include Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and Wisconsin, and the governors of Iowa, Maine and New Mexico.
The Eastern Texas district where the lawsuit was filed is known as a "rocket docket" court where cases move along quickly.
LAS VEGAS — Officials from 21 states, including Michigan, sued the U.S. Department of Labor Tuesday over a new rule that would make about 4 million higher-earning workers eligible for overtime pay, slamming the measure as inappropriate federal overreach by the Obama administration.
Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt, a Republican, filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Eastern Texas, urging it to block implementation before the regulation takes effect on Dec. 1. Laxalt, a frequent critic of President Barack Obama's policies, said the rule would burden private and public sectors by straining budgets and forcing layoffs or cuts in working hours. A Little Rock overtime lawyer is reviewing the details of this case.
"This rule, pushed by distant bureaucrats in D.C., tramples on state and local government budgets, forcing states to shift money from other important programs to balance their budgets, including programs intended to protect the very families that purportedly benefit from such federal overreach," he said in a statement.
The lawsuit came the same day that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and more than 50 other business groups filed a legal challenge against the regulation.
U.S. Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez said he was confident in the legality of the rule, describing the lawsuits as partisan, obstructionist tactics. He noted that overtime protections have receded over the years: they applied to 62 percent of full-time salaried workers in 1975 and just 7 percent today. An overtime lawyer has experience representing clients in wage dispute claims.
"The overtime rule is designed to restore the intent of the Fair Labor Standards Act, the crown jewel of worker protections in the United States," Perez said in a statement. "I look forward to vigorously defending our efforts to give more hardworking people a meaningful chance to get by."
The measure would shrink the so-called "white collar exemption" that exempts workers who perform "executive, administrative or professional" duties from overtime and minimum wage requirements.
It would more than double the salary threshold under which employers must pay overtime to their white collar workers. Overtime protections would apply to workers who make up to $913 a week, or $47,476 a year, and the threshold would readjust every three years to reflect changes in average wages.
"This long-awaited update will result in a meaningful boost to many workers' wallets, and will go a long way toward realizing President Obama's commitment to ensuring every worker is compensated fairly for their hard work," the Labor Department said in May when it announced the new rule.
Business groups say the changes are too much and too fast, especially as states continue to recover from the recession. A Maine employment lawyer is following this story closely.
“This lawsuit is a slap in the face to working people in Michigan,” said Ron Bieber, president of the Michigan AFL-CIO.
“This new rule is long overdue. Overtime protections have been gutted over the past four decades without a significant adjustment for inflation. The new rule will help protect wages from being eroded by rising costs, and ensure that working people get paid for the work they do.
Other plaintiffs include Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and Wisconsin, and the governors of Iowa, Maine and New Mexico.
The Eastern Texas district where the lawsuit was filed is known as a "rocket docket" court where cases move along quickly.
LIFE AFTER SCIENTOLOGY IS CONTENTIOUS FOR CHURCH LEADER'S FATHER
Original Story: latimes.com
After leaving the Church of Scientology and its secretive international base in the desert, Ronald Miscavige Sr. settled into small-town life in Wisconsin, his 40-year ties to the religion cut once and for all.
Or so he thought, as he spent his time hawking exercise equipment online and playing trumpet with Dixieland bands in the Milwaukee area. His suburban tranquility was shattered in July 2013, when police told him that two private eyes had been watching his every move for months — and that the church, led by his son David Miscavige, was behind it.
“I don’t know if you’ve ever hit your thumb with a hammer, but when it happens you go numb: It takes a little while for the pain to set in,” the elder Miscavige said in an interview. “I thought, ‘You have got to be kidding.’ ”
Miscavige, 80, has chronicled his life before, during and after Scientology in a book, “Ruthless: Scientology, My Son David Miscavige and Me.” It paints an unflattering portrait of his son and the church, and it echoes the views of other disaffected ex-members.
“David runs Scientology with an iron fist and, to my mind, it has become a cult, pure and simple,” he writes.
Miscavige’s book includes no blockbuster revelations, but it has evoked an unusually vehement response from the church, which has mounted an aggressively negative publicity campaign, including a website dedicated to discrediting him.
Dozens of testimonials and blog posts by Scientologists praise David Miscavige and lambaste his father for everything from his musicianship to his morals. He is cast as a liar and an opportunist, on the website and in a church lawyer’s letter to The Times.
“That is a father who is a despicable human being, simply trying to make a buck off of the good name, fame and kindness of his son,” attorney Monique Yingling wrote.
Peter Schless, a longtime Scientologist and composer who worked with Ron Miscavige, used some of the same language in a 12-minute video that castigated him as “vile and disgusting.”
“I know him inside out and that’s all he’s doing is he’s figured out a way to make a buck off of selling out his own family,” Schless said in the video.
Miscavige said he expected the intensely personal criticism posted on the website.
“Clearly, all it is is a character assassination of me,” he said.
Other ex-members say the website is yet another example of the church’s longstanding efforts to dissuade current and former Scientologists from publicly discussing their experiences.
Ron Miscavige has been singled out for particularly harsh treatment because of his relationship to David, said Mike Rinder, once a top church official and now one of its staunchest critics. He said the elder Miscavige also has been targeted by an email campaign and negative online ads.
“This is stuff that is even beyond the normal smear tactics,” Rinder said.
Even if I can’t help myself, maybe I can help hundreds of others forced to disconnect.
— Ronald Miscavige Sr.
Founded in 1954 by science-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, Scientology has its own “study technology,” vocabulary and long-held secret story of Xenu, a soul-stealing galactic overlord. The church teaches that spiritual freedom — the state of “clear” — can be reached through one-on-one auditing, a form of counseling aided by a polygraph-like device called an e-meter and expensive training courses.
David Miscavige, 56, became the head of Scientology after Hubbard’s death in 1986. As chairman of the board of the Religious Technology Center, he is the church’s ultimate authority and its ecclesiastical leader. He also is its most controversial living figure.
Ex-members, including Rinder and other top officials who told their stories to the St. Petersburg Times in 2009, have accused him of physical assaults and bizarre behavior — all of which he and the church deny.
His father’s book details the family’s history, some of it fondly remembered, some of it anything but heartwarming. Among other things, he writes about his sometimes abusive relationship with his late first wife, Loretta, the mother of his children.
“It pains me to admit it now, and I regret ever doing it, but there were times when I punched Loretta,” he writes. “I never slapped or hit her in the face but, still, sometimes I did strike her. ... She threw things at me — pots, pans, a pot of boiling water once.”
Miscavige said he regrets that his children witnessed the domestic violence and thinks it might have affected David’s personality.
“When I compare the happy, fun-loving boy I raised to the man he has become, the images of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde spring immediately to mind,” he writes.
David and his three siblings were introduced to Scientology by their father, a musician and cookware salesman. At age 16 he left their home near Philadelphia to join the Sea Organization, Hubbard’s religious order.
Years later, in 1985, Ron Miscavige was accused of an attempted rape. He denied the allegation and, after his son sent lawyers to defend him, the charges eventually were dismissed, according to the memoir and the church website.
Soon after, the elder Miscavige also joined the Sea Organization and he and his wife divorced. He spent 27 years at the sprawling “Gold Base” near Hemet, where Golden Era Productions makes videos, audio recordings and e-meters. Miscavige played trumpet in the Golden Era band.
He and other ex-Scientologists describe long hours and low pay for “Sea Org” members there and demeaning punishments, including stints in “the Hole,” for those who upset David.
“It’s a dark world,” Miscavige said. “It’s a grim existence, buddy.”
In March 2012, Miscavige and his second wife, Becky, drove off the base while pretending to run errands, and eventually wound up in Wisconsin.
Life there was unremarkable until July 2013, when West Allis police arrested private investigator Dwayne Powell on obstruction and prowling charges and found firearms and a homemade silencer in his rented SUV.
For more than a year, Powell told detectives, he and his son had followed Miscavige, eavesdropped on him and spied on his emails. They were paid $10,000 a week through an intermediary, he told police, explaining that David Miscavige was the “main client.”
On one outing, Powell told police, he saw Ron Miscavige clutch his chest while loading his car and thought he was having a heart attack. He called his go-between for instructions, and minutes later a man who identified himself as David Miscavige called back and told him that “if it was Ron’s time to die, to let him die and not intervene in any way,” a police report states.
Scientology attorneys dispute that account and last year said that David Miscavige had never spoken with Powell and had no connection to the surveillance of his father. They noted that they sometimes retained private investigators in “matters related to litigation” and have since acknowledged hiring Powell.
Church attorney Yingling said in her letter to The Times that he was hired to follow the elder Miscavige but that it was for his own well-being and “out of concern that people with hostile intentions toward Scientology” would harass him.
“It would be naive to think that the father of the leader of a worldwide religion would not be at risk of harm from people inimical to Scientology,” she wrote.
Yingling also forwarded a signed declaration from Powell, recanting his statements to police about the phone call from David Miscavige.
“Certain statements I allegedly made to the West Allis Police Department have been misinterpreted,” it read in part.
Police in that Milwaukee suburb stand by their account: “There is no confusion in the statements that were made by Dwayne and Daniel Powell,” Chief Patrick Mitchell said in an email.
Now, in the latest twist in the saga of church-sanctioned surveillance, Powell says he was paid thousands of dollars to sign the declaration after church attorneys summoned him to a meeting last year in Atlanta.
“The whole meeting took less than 10 minutes,” he said. “They said, ‘This is what this is, and this is what it’s for. Goodbye and good luck.’ ”
He furnished no documentation, and Scientology attorneys deny that any such payment was made.
But other records obtained by The Times show that Scientology lawyers, who had publicly sought to distance the church from Powell, kept him on the payroll two years after his arrest — and long after he stopped conducting investigations.
In the spring of 2015, just weeks before Powell signed the declaration, a Scientology attorney paid him at least $16,000 for “security” services in five payments, according to check stubs obtained by The Times. The checks were written on the trust account of Kendrick Moxon, a prominent Scientology attorney in Los Angeles, the records show.
Reached by phone, Powell confirmed the payments but would not comment on them.
But he did say that he had not worked for the church after giving up his Florida private investigator’s license in 2014, when he was indicted on a federal charge of possessing an illegal silencer. It was dismissed when he entered a pretrial diversion program.
Moxon told The Times in a written response that Powell performed “security and research services” for his firm last year.
“The relationship between this firm and any investigators I retain is privileged and confidential,” he wrote. “However, I can categorically state for the record that no payments were made to Mr. Powell for the testimony in his truthful declaration.”
Ron Miscavige spent much of his summer promoting his book. He said he wrote it because his son and the church, through a form of shunning called “disconnection,” had turned his family against him.
“Someone has to stand their ground and take a position,” he said. “Even if I can’t help myself, maybe I can help hundreds of others forced to disconnect.”
In response, the church has posted a joint statement by his two adult daughters accusing him of “a pattern of physical and emotional abuse” against them and their late mother.
“We know what is right and moral, and what is evil,” they wrote. “Evil is Ronald T. Miscavige. We reject him.”
Miscavige said he was surprised and hurt by their statement. On his 70th birthday, he said, they and David bought him a car; on his 75th they showered him with 75 gifts. Everything was fine, he said, until he spoke out against the church.
“Now all of a sudden I’ve changed into this beast?” he said.
Miscavige said he hopes his story will help “reform” Scientology. He also hopes to someday reconcile with his son.
“I will always hold that hope in my heart,” he said. “Would I put much money on it? No.”
After leaving the Church of Scientology and its secretive international base in the desert, Ronald Miscavige Sr. settled into small-town life in Wisconsin, his 40-year ties to the religion cut once and for all.
Or so he thought, as he spent his time hawking exercise equipment online and playing trumpet with Dixieland bands in the Milwaukee area. His suburban tranquility was shattered in July 2013, when police told him that two private eyes had been watching his every move for months — and that the church, led by his son David Miscavige, was behind it.
“I don’t know if you’ve ever hit your thumb with a hammer, but when it happens you go numb: It takes a little while for the pain to set in,” the elder Miscavige said in an interview. “I thought, ‘You have got to be kidding.’ ”
Miscavige, 80, has chronicled his life before, during and after Scientology in a book, “Ruthless: Scientology, My Son David Miscavige and Me.” It paints an unflattering portrait of his son and the church, and it echoes the views of other disaffected ex-members.
“David runs Scientology with an iron fist and, to my mind, it has become a cult, pure and simple,” he writes.
Miscavige’s book includes no blockbuster revelations, but it has evoked an unusually vehement response from the church, which has mounted an aggressively negative publicity campaign, including a website dedicated to discrediting him.
Dozens of testimonials and blog posts by Scientologists praise David Miscavige and lambaste his father for everything from his musicianship to his morals. He is cast as a liar and an opportunist, on the website and in a church lawyer’s letter to The Times.
“That is a father who is a despicable human being, simply trying to make a buck off of the good name, fame and kindness of his son,” attorney Monique Yingling wrote.
Peter Schless, a longtime Scientologist and composer who worked with Ron Miscavige, used some of the same language in a 12-minute video that castigated him as “vile and disgusting.”
“I know him inside out and that’s all he’s doing is he’s figured out a way to make a buck off of selling out his own family,” Schless said in the video.
Miscavige said he expected the intensely personal criticism posted on the website.
“Clearly, all it is is a character assassination of me,” he said.
Other ex-members say the website is yet another example of the church’s longstanding efforts to dissuade current and former Scientologists from publicly discussing their experiences.
Ron Miscavige has been singled out for particularly harsh treatment because of his relationship to David, said Mike Rinder, once a top church official and now one of its staunchest critics. He said the elder Miscavige also has been targeted by an email campaign and negative online ads.
“This is stuff that is even beyond the normal smear tactics,” Rinder said.
Even if I can’t help myself, maybe I can help hundreds of others forced to disconnect.
— Ronald Miscavige Sr.
Founded in 1954 by science-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, Scientology has its own “study technology,” vocabulary and long-held secret story of Xenu, a soul-stealing galactic overlord. The church teaches that spiritual freedom — the state of “clear” — can be reached through one-on-one auditing, a form of counseling aided by a polygraph-like device called an e-meter and expensive training courses.
David Miscavige, 56, became the head of Scientology after Hubbard’s death in 1986. As chairman of the board of the Religious Technology Center, he is the church’s ultimate authority and its ecclesiastical leader. He also is its most controversial living figure.
Ex-members, including Rinder and other top officials who told their stories to the St. Petersburg Times in 2009, have accused him of physical assaults and bizarre behavior — all of which he and the church deny.
His father’s book details the family’s history, some of it fondly remembered, some of it anything but heartwarming. Among other things, he writes about his sometimes abusive relationship with his late first wife, Loretta, the mother of his children.
“It pains me to admit it now, and I regret ever doing it, but there were times when I punched Loretta,” he writes. “I never slapped or hit her in the face but, still, sometimes I did strike her. ... She threw things at me — pots, pans, a pot of boiling water once.”
Miscavige said he regrets that his children witnessed the domestic violence and thinks it might have affected David’s personality.
“When I compare the happy, fun-loving boy I raised to the man he has become, the images of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde spring immediately to mind,” he writes.
David and his three siblings were introduced to Scientology by their father, a musician and cookware salesman. At age 16 he left their home near Philadelphia to join the Sea Organization, Hubbard’s religious order.
Years later, in 1985, Ron Miscavige was accused of an attempted rape. He denied the allegation and, after his son sent lawyers to defend him, the charges eventually were dismissed, according to the memoir and the church website.
Soon after, the elder Miscavige also joined the Sea Organization and he and his wife divorced. He spent 27 years at the sprawling “Gold Base” near Hemet, where Golden Era Productions makes videos, audio recordings and e-meters. Miscavige played trumpet in the Golden Era band.
He and other ex-Scientologists describe long hours and low pay for “Sea Org” members there and demeaning punishments, including stints in “the Hole,” for those who upset David.
“It’s a dark world,” Miscavige said. “It’s a grim existence, buddy.”
In March 2012, Miscavige and his second wife, Becky, drove off the base while pretending to run errands, and eventually wound up in Wisconsin.
Life there was unremarkable until July 2013, when West Allis police arrested private investigator Dwayne Powell on obstruction and prowling charges and found firearms and a homemade silencer in his rented SUV.
For more than a year, Powell told detectives, he and his son had followed Miscavige, eavesdropped on him and spied on his emails. They were paid $10,000 a week through an intermediary, he told police, explaining that David Miscavige was the “main client.”
On one outing, Powell told police, he saw Ron Miscavige clutch his chest while loading his car and thought he was having a heart attack. He called his go-between for instructions, and minutes later a man who identified himself as David Miscavige called back and told him that “if it was Ron’s time to die, to let him die and not intervene in any way,” a police report states.
Scientology attorneys dispute that account and last year said that David Miscavige had never spoken with Powell and had no connection to the surveillance of his father. They noted that they sometimes retained private investigators in “matters related to litigation” and have since acknowledged hiring Powell.
Church attorney Yingling said in her letter to The Times that he was hired to follow the elder Miscavige but that it was for his own well-being and “out of concern that people with hostile intentions toward Scientology” would harass him.
“It would be naive to think that the father of the leader of a worldwide religion would not be at risk of harm from people inimical to Scientology,” she wrote.
Yingling also forwarded a signed declaration from Powell, recanting his statements to police about the phone call from David Miscavige.
“Certain statements I allegedly made to the West Allis Police Department have been misinterpreted,” it read in part.
Police in that Milwaukee suburb stand by their account: “There is no confusion in the statements that were made by Dwayne and Daniel Powell,” Chief Patrick Mitchell said in an email.
Now, in the latest twist in the saga of church-sanctioned surveillance, Powell says he was paid thousands of dollars to sign the declaration after church attorneys summoned him to a meeting last year in Atlanta.
“The whole meeting took less than 10 minutes,” he said. “They said, ‘This is what this is, and this is what it’s for. Goodbye and good luck.’ ”
He furnished no documentation, and Scientology attorneys deny that any such payment was made.
But other records obtained by The Times show that Scientology lawyers, who had publicly sought to distance the church from Powell, kept him on the payroll two years after his arrest — and long after he stopped conducting investigations.
In the spring of 2015, just weeks before Powell signed the declaration, a Scientology attorney paid him at least $16,000 for “security” services in five payments, according to check stubs obtained by The Times. The checks were written on the trust account of Kendrick Moxon, a prominent Scientology attorney in Los Angeles, the records show.
Reached by phone, Powell confirmed the payments but would not comment on them.
But he did say that he had not worked for the church after giving up his Florida private investigator’s license in 2014, when he was indicted on a federal charge of possessing an illegal silencer. It was dismissed when he entered a pretrial diversion program.
Moxon told The Times in a written response that Powell performed “security and research services” for his firm last year.
“The relationship between this firm and any investigators I retain is privileged and confidential,” he wrote. “However, I can categorically state for the record that no payments were made to Mr. Powell for the testimony in his truthful declaration.”
Ron Miscavige spent much of his summer promoting his book. He said he wrote it because his son and the church, through a form of shunning called “disconnection,” had turned his family against him.
“Someone has to stand their ground and take a position,” he said. “Even if I can’t help myself, maybe I can help hundreds of others forced to disconnect.”
In response, the church has posted a joint statement by his two adult daughters accusing him of “a pattern of physical and emotional abuse” against them and their late mother.
“We know what is right and moral, and what is evil,” they wrote. “Evil is Ronald T. Miscavige. We reject him.”
Miscavige said he was surprised and hurt by their statement. On his 70th birthday, he said, they and David bought him a car; on his 75th they showered him with 75 gifts. Everything was fine, he said, until he spoke out against the church.
“Now all of a sudden I’ve changed into this beast?” he said.
Miscavige said he hopes his story will help “reform” Scientology. He also hopes to someday reconcile with his son.
“I will always hold that hope in my heart,” he said. “Would I put much money on it? No.”
Thursday, September 15, 2016
MICH.’S FARM LABOR SHORTAGE HITS IMMIGRATION POLITICS
Original Story: detroitnews.com
Sodus— Immigration politics are colliding with a growing shortage of farm workers in west Michigan, where farmers have turned to a federal visa program to bring workers from Mexico to harvest the state’s fruit and vegetable crops.
Michigan’s participation in the federal government’s farm labor visa program has grown nearly 14-fold in the past five years. Farmers say they desperately need the foreign workers to get their crops picked on time after years when vegetables were left to rot in fields.
“There’s a real shortage of agriculture harvesting labor in west Michigan,” said Fred Leitz, a fourth-generation tomato, cucumber and apple grower from Sodus in Berrien County. “You can’t go anywhere without farmers talking about how bad the situation is to get crops harvested.”
Farmers in west Michigan say the shortage of labor has resulted from fewer migrant workers coming north, a more secure southern border that has slowed the flow of Mexican immigrants and a Congress at odds over immigration reform. An immigration attorney at Hubbell Law is following this story closely.
“If the border’s tightened, we’ve got a lot less of the undocumented (workers) coming up here to work on the farms,” said Leitz, who has about 150 foreign workers with visas on his farm this year.
Both presidential candidates, Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton, have signaled their willingness to expand the foreign worker visa program to help the agricultural industry. This comes even as Trump has promised to deport an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants if he is elected.
“We’re going to have a very strong border, but our businesses will not suffer,” Trump told The Detroit News during his Sept. 3 visit to Detroit. “We need workers, and we will have all of the workers we need.”
Lorella Praeli, national Latino vote director for the Clinton campaign, said in a statement: “Guest worker and farm labor policies will be addressed as a part of comprehensive immigration reform.”
But some Michigan farmers who depend on workers from Mexico and other countries say neither Clinton nor Trump has laid out a detailed plan for overhauling a visa program that they consider an expensive bureaucratic maze involving at least four government agencies. For information regarding H2A Visas in Traverse City or Leelanau, contact attorney Dan Hubbell.
“We need a workable guest worker program,” said Mike DeGrandchamp, co-owner of a family blueberry and cranberry farm near South Haven. “The H-2A program is cumbersome, expensive, unreliable.
The Michigan Farm Bureau’s political action committee has supported every Republican presidential candidate going back to at least George H.W. Bush in 1988, but hasn’t yet endorsed this year.
Byron Center farmer Dave Miedema, whose family grows sweet corn, cabbage and squash on 1,500 acres in Kent County, said he supports Trump. But the third-generation vegetable farmer said the GOP nominee is trying to balance the needs of the agricultural industry with the conservative wing of his party that is clamoring for a crackdown on illegal immigration.
“I really feel that Trump does understand the problem, but he has to tread softly now because he doesn’t want to be thrown into the amnesty camp,” Miedema said.
Visa program grows
A generation of migrant workers who traveled from Southern and Western states from the 1970s through the early 2000s have become too old to do manual farm work, and their American-born children have pursued careers outside agriculture, farmers said.
“We’re proud to say over the years we’ve had kids who worked here who are now doctors, lawyers, teachers and all kinds of things,” said Leitz, president of the National Council of Agricultural Employers.
The number of foreign workers cleared to travel to Michigan this year to work in fields, orchards and packing houses topped 3,800 — according to the Michigan Farm Bureau. In 2011, 276 workers entered the country legally to work on Michigan farms, according to a U.S. Department of Labor report.
“We’ve got jobs for workers that not a lot of people want to do and who’s doing it is mainly the Hispanic work force,” DeGrandchamp said.
Farmers also are seeing record harvests for certain crops this summer, adding pressures to pick, sort, pack and ship their products quickly.
“With a big crop like this, you need double the workers you’re going to have,” DeGrandchamp said. “There just isn’t that pool of workers willing to do this job.”
Trump and Clinton have vaguely similar policy stands on the foreign worker visa program, but otherwise have starkly different approaches to immigration.
The New York businessman has made sweeping promises to deport immigrants who entered the country illegally and committed crimes. He has said he would deport all 11 million illegal immigrants, but vowed any mass removal would be done “in a very humane fashion.” A Traverse City business lawyer is reviewing the details of this story.
Some of the 11 million illegal immigrants could get work visas if they returned to their home country and then re-entered the U.S. through legal channels, Trump told The Detroit News.
“Businesses will be helped by this, not hurt,” said Trump, whose Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida has reportedly hired foreign workers for years.
By contrast, Clinton supports providing a legal pathway to citizenship for individuals who entered the country illegally and now may have homes, children and established lives.
“Hillary will introduce comprehensive immigration reform with a pathway to full and equal citizenship within her first 100 days in office that treats every person with dignity, fixes the family visa backlog, upholds the rule of law, protects our borders and national security and brings millions of hardworking people into the formal economy,” Praeli said in a statement.
Consistent policy sought
Michigan’s labor shortage was most noticeable in 2013 when some migrant workers didn’t return to Michigan after an unusual 2012 early spring warming was followed by frosts that wiped out the tree fruit industry.
Recognizing the growing problem, the Michigan Farm Bureau started a company in 2014 to serve as the recruiting agent for foreign workers called Great Lakes Agricultural Labor Services LLC.
“We were seeing crops rotting in the field,” said Bob Boehm, a manager for Great Lakes Agricultural Labor Services. “They’d have to mow down a crop of asparagus because it was growing too fast.”
The program brought 407 workers to 10 farms last summer and 730 workers to 22 farms this year, Boehm said. Farmers pay their foreign workers a $12.02 minimum hourly wage, though some make more money if they’re more productive, he said.
On northern Kent County’s “fruit ridge,” where the moisture-holding soil and climate are ideal for growing tree fruit, fifth-generation farmer Mark Youngquist bulldozed rows of apples in 2013 “to get it down to what we could manage with less quality help and less quantity of help.”
In 2014, Youngquist Orchards near Kent City became one of the first farms in the state to get foreign workers through Great Lakes Agricultural Labor Services. Youngquist’s farm has 28 workers this fall from Mexico helping pick its apples through the visa program, which requires American farmers to pay the workers’ bus fare, food and lodging expenses.
“It’s a definite skill to pick an apple,” he said. “It’s not just grabbing an apple and throwing it in a bag.”
Youngquist said the next president needs to tread carefully with immigration policy so it doesn’t disrupt the farm workforce.
“Whatever the policy, if it could just be consistent every time the White House changes hands, we’ll work with whatever — just tell us the rules and we’ll follow them,” he said.
Sodus— Immigration politics are colliding with a growing shortage of farm workers in west Michigan, where farmers have turned to a federal visa program to bring workers from Mexico to harvest the state’s fruit and vegetable crops.
Michigan’s participation in the federal government’s farm labor visa program has grown nearly 14-fold in the past five years. Farmers say they desperately need the foreign workers to get their crops picked on time after years when vegetables were left to rot in fields.
“There’s a real shortage of agriculture harvesting labor in west Michigan,” said Fred Leitz, a fourth-generation tomato, cucumber and apple grower from Sodus in Berrien County. “You can’t go anywhere without farmers talking about how bad the situation is to get crops harvested.”
Farmers in west Michigan say the shortage of labor has resulted from fewer migrant workers coming north, a more secure southern border that has slowed the flow of Mexican immigrants and a Congress at odds over immigration reform. An immigration attorney at Hubbell Law is following this story closely.
“If the border’s tightened, we’ve got a lot less of the undocumented (workers) coming up here to work on the farms,” said Leitz, who has about 150 foreign workers with visas on his farm this year.
Both presidential candidates, Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton, have signaled their willingness to expand the foreign worker visa program to help the agricultural industry. This comes even as Trump has promised to deport an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants if he is elected.
“We’re going to have a very strong border, but our businesses will not suffer,” Trump told The Detroit News during his Sept. 3 visit to Detroit. “We need workers, and we will have all of the workers we need.”
Lorella Praeli, national Latino vote director for the Clinton campaign, said in a statement: “Guest worker and farm labor policies will be addressed as a part of comprehensive immigration reform.”
But some Michigan farmers who depend on workers from Mexico and other countries say neither Clinton nor Trump has laid out a detailed plan for overhauling a visa program that they consider an expensive bureaucratic maze involving at least four government agencies. For information regarding H2A Visas in Traverse City or Leelanau, contact attorney Dan Hubbell.
“We need a workable guest worker program,” said Mike DeGrandchamp, co-owner of a family blueberry and cranberry farm near South Haven. “The H-2A program is cumbersome, expensive, unreliable.
The Michigan Farm Bureau’s political action committee has supported every Republican presidential candidate going back to at least George H.W. Bush in 1988, but hasn’t yet endorsed this year.
Byron Center farmer Dave Miedema, whose family grows sweet corn, cabbage and squash on 1,500 acres in Kent County, said he supports Trump. But the third-generation vegetable farmer said the GOP nominee is trying to balance the needs of the agricultural industry with the conservative wing of his party that is clamoring for a crackdown on illegal immigration.
“I really feel that Trump does understand the problem, but he has to tread softly now because he doesn’t want to be thrown into the amnesty camp,” Miedema said.
Visa program grows
A generation of migrant workers who traveled from Southern and Western states from the 1970s through the early 2000s have become too old to do manual farm work, and their American-born children have pursued careers outside agriculture, farmers said.
“We’re proud to say over the years we’ve had kids who worked here who are now doctors, lawyers, teachers and all kinds of things,” said Leitz, president of the National Council of Agricultural Employers.
The number of foreign workers cleared to travel to Michigan this year to work in fields, orchards and packing houses topped 3,800 — according to the Michigan Farm Bureau. In 2011, 276 workers entered the country legally to work on Michigan farms, according to a U.S. Department of Labor report.
“We’ve got jobs for workers that not a lot of people want to do and who’s doing it is mainly the Hispanic work force,” DeGrandchamp said.
Farmers also are seeing record harvests for certain crops this summer, adding pressures to pick, sort, pack and ship their products quickly.
“With a big crop like this, you need double the workers you’re going to have,” DeGrandchamp said. “There just isn’t that pool of workers willing to do this job.”
Trump and Clinton have vaguely similar policy stands on the foreign worker visa program, but otherwise have starkly different approaches to immigration.
The New York businessman has made sweeping promises to deport immigrants who entered the country illegally and committed crimes. He has said he would deport all 11 million illegal immigrants, but vowed any mass removal would be done “in a very humane fashion.” A Traverse City business lawyer is reviewing the details of this story.
Some of the 11 million illegal immigrants could get work visas if they returned to their home country and then re-entered the U.S. through legal channels, Trump told The Detroit News.
“Businesses will be helped by this, not hurt,” said Trump, whose Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida has reportedly hired foreign workers for years.
By contrast, Clinton supports providing a legal pathway to citizenship for individuals who entered the country illegally and now may have homes, children and established lives.
“Hillary will introduce comprehensive immigration reform with a pathway to full and equal citizenship within her first 100 days in office that treats every person with dignity, fixes the family visa backlog, upholds the rule of law, protects our borders and national security and brings millions of hardworking people into the formal economy,” Praeli said in a statement.
Consistent policy sought
Michigan’s labor shortage was most noticeable in 2013 when some migrant workers didn’t return to Michigan after an unusual 2012 early spring warming was followed by frosts that wiped out the tree fruit industry.
Recognizing the growing problem, the Michigan Farm Bureau started a company in 2014 to serve as the recruiting agent for foreign workers called Great Lakes Agricultural Labor Services LLC.
“We were seeing crops rotting in the field,” said Bob Boehm, a manager for Great Lakes Agricultural Labor Services. “They’d have to mow down a crop of asparagus because it was growing too fast.”
The program brought 407 workers to 10 farms last summer and 730 workers to 22 farms this year, Boehm said. Farmers pay their foreign workers a $12.02 minimum hourly wage, though some make more money if they’re more productive, he said.
On northern Kent County’s “fruit ridge,” where the moisture-holding soil and climate are ideal for growing tree fruit, fifth-generation farmer Mark Youngquist bulldozed rows of apples in 2013 “to get it down to what we could manage with less quality help and less quantity of help.”
In 2014, Youngquist Orchards near Kent City became one of the first farms in the state to get foreign workers through Great Lakes Agricultural Labor Services. Youngquist’s farm has 28 workers this fall from Mexico helping pick its apples through the visa program, which requires American farmers to pay the workers’ bus fare, food and lodging expenses.
“It’s a definite skill to pick an apple,” he said. “It’s not just grabbing an apple and throwing it in a bag.”
Youngquist said the next president needs to tread carefully with immigration policy so it doesn’t disrupt the farm workforce.
“Whatever the policy, if it could just be consistent every time the White House changes hands, we’ll work with whatever — just tell us the rules and we’ll follow them,” he said.
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