Upon arriving in the cold, brutal, inhumane, sub-arctic conditions of
New Jersey – well, actually it was 26 and cloudy at night – the Broncos
of Denver – where it was 26 with a light snow at the time – were asked
repeatedly how in the world they could or would deal with this cold,
brutal, inhumane, sub-arctic conditions. They, of course, play the Super
Bowl against Seattle in a (gasp) outdoor stadium.
"It doesn't even matter when you get out there," linebacker Wesley Woodyard said.
Oh, but it does, Wesley.
Or at least that's the claim of too many otherwise intelligent people
who have turned into your local meteorologist – screaming that a wintry
mix requires a run on the canned goods aisle of the supermarket. In
fact, the battle over whether the weather should matter for the Super
Bowl is a lot bigger than just Peyton Manning's stats when the
temperature falls below freezing.
Denver's Champ Bailey all but shrugged at questions about Super Bowl weather. (AP)
It is also part of the battle over what football really is. It calls
into question why it was ever determined that one kind of weather is
superior to another in a sport where the season and playoffs play out in
an extreme diversity of conditions.
"I think once you're out there, you just deal with it," Denver
cornerback Champ Bailey said. "It is what it is. Everybody has to deal
with it. Suck it up for three hours and make it happen."
At the heart of this is a philosophy equation.
Football, unlike many sports, is played in all kinds of weather,
which is why all weather is football weather. From the heat and humidity
of the early season to the potential cold and snow of January, it is
rare for a game to be delayed, let alone postponed.
The NFL is so used to playing games in all kinds of conditions that
it has rules and interpretations set up for just about every imaginable
scenario. What happens if the wind blows the uprights to the side
causing a kick to be missed? (It's no good, what the wind does or
doesn't do is fair game.) What happens if a pass is caught in a pile of
snow but never hits the ground? (It's incomplete; any snow sitting on
the playing surface becomes the playing surface.)
This is part of what makes it so much fun. And such a challenge.
And it's why the elements are always – always – part of the game.
Even the absence of elements – such as inside a dome – is part of the
game.
The entire overreaction to the "cold weather" is comical even by the
impressive standards of Super Bowl overreaction. On Sunday, Seattle's
Cliff Avril, who played college ball at Purdue and spent five years as a
Detroit Lion, was asked his reaction to the "cold" when he got off the
plane, like if you plucked someone who lived their entire life in the
Sahara Desert and in the interest of science transported them directly
to Moose Jaw.
"It wasn't too cold to me," Avril noted.
That's because it isn't really that cold.
At issue is the concept that the biggest game of the year should be
played solely under conditions that do not noticeably impact the game –
such as a slippery field or a wind-bent upright. To believe such a thing
however, is to believe that the absence of such things don't also
impact the game.
Last week's snowstorm at MetLife Stadium, the site of Super Bowl XLVIII. (AP)
If your offense is reliant on quick, skilled passing, then calm conditions can be ideal. What about a team that is also built – say, with a grind it out running attack – for conditions not suitable for passing? Some argue warm, windless conditions allow the skill of the players to shine.
Isn't there skill in stuffing the run or laying a block or finding a way to win through the air even as flakes fall?
By placing the game only in tranquil locations you've automatically favored one team over the other in the same manner as if you picked a location that might whip up an icy breeze. It's all the same. It's all a choice. You've just given the nod to one kind of weather; or at least the probability of one kind of weather.
This may date back to the college tradition of playing bowl games in nice weather locales. The Rose Bowl was first staged in 1902 in Pasadena, Calif. The Super Bowl began in 1967, perhaps not
coincidentally in nearby Los Angeles. The old NFL Championship games, played from 1933-1966 were staged on home fields. Once they went neutral site though, they went warm/dome.
College bowl games, however, were first staged in southern and western cities not because the football minds of the time thought the location presented an ideal environment for the game. City fathers created them to lure post-Christmas tourists who might also want to watch Old State U play a little. The games were a joke, for decades they were considered exhibitions. Individual stats didn't count and not until the 1960s did it dawn on anyone to factor their outcome into the awarding of a national championship.
Warm was in, though, because it was better to draw fans. That's it. The Super Bowl started in the L.A. Coliseum (and didn't sell out) but stuck to what is essentially the bowl rotation – unless a northern city had a new publicly financed dome and giving them the Super Bowl helped grease the political skids.
So football's tradition of choosing a probable weather condition for its title game was born. It stands in contrast with baseball, which routinely cancels games for all sorts of rain, cold or whatever, yet
never leaves its home outdoor stadiums, even into the chill of a northern November. That's always how they ran the World Series, however.
All of this changes Sunday in East Rutherford and perhaps for good. It is a long overdue moment to properly remind everyone that football is an all-weather, all-element, all-condition sport.
So if it snows or rains or gets cold on Sunday (current forecast: low of 27 with a chance of snow
showers) ignore the howling of critics. That's just as perfect a representation of how the game should be played as 72 and sunny. You can certainly have a preference, but philosophically you can't definitely claim one over another. "You go out there, you play hard, you play disciplined, you play sound, and you try not to worry about the difficulties of the weather or whatever else happens out there," Seattle cornerback Richard Sherman said. Exactly. Football weather is football weather. Football is football. Go ahead and let it snow.
Dennis Trainor, Jr. (director) is a writer, director and new media activist.
He directed the critically acclaimed documentary the Occupy Wall Street
movement, American Autumn: an Occudoc ("calm and smart, offsetting its
stridency with discussion, music, even humor, while issuing a call to
arms."- New York Times ; "as well made as any Hollywood blockbuster."-
MichaelMoore.com ). Currently, her serves as the producer and host of
The Resistance Report, which can be seen daily at PopularResistance.org .
His work has been featured on many outlets including Truth Out,
Huffington Post, Op-Ed News, Fire Dog Lake, The Real News Network, and
many others.
Formed in September 2009, Move to Amend is a coalition of hundreds of
organizations and hundreds of thousands of individuals committed to
social and economic justice, ending corporate rule, and building a
vibrant democracy that is genuinely accountable to the people, not
corporate interests.
We are calling for an amendment to the US
Constitution to unequivocally state that inalienable rights belong to
human beings only, and that money is not a form of protected free speech
under the First Amendment and can be regulated in political campaigns.
Many patriots wonder how they can best serve their country. I have two words for you. Attack liberals. How do you find liberals to attack?
The easiest way is to piggy-back someone else's conversation. If you see
another Right-Wing Patriot in a debate with a liberal, put yourself in
their shoes; they're obviously struggling. Jump in, attack their
opponent with a short, unrelated insult and, then quickly - jump away!
You'll be helping a fellow conservative plus, you'll look cool!
Now, if you get involved in a debate, it 'can' be hard to remember all
of the important elements involved in arguing with a liberal, but here
is a handy checklist to make sure you've included all of the pieces
essential to maintaining the purity of the Right-Wing brand.
Whatever FOX says, you say. When in doubt, toss out a Drudge
headline or quote any conservative talking head you watch or hear in any
form of media. It doesn't matter who they are; they will all be saying
the same thing.
Incorporate the #fox, #tcot, #tlot or #ocra hashtag in every tweet, because by calling forth other Patriots to also attack your opponent, you'll never have to give a real answer for anything.
If a liberal asks you to prove any claim you have made is a fact by
providing a source for the info, always respond: "Do your own
research!!" or "I'm not going to do your research for you." That way,
you don't have to do any research.
If you feel you must send them a source link, make sure you only
offer links from Drudge, The Blaze or other right-wing blogs or op-ed
pieces. It doesn't matter if you've read them.
It is also helpful to have a ready list of links on-hand that are
completely unrelated to the topic of discussion to flood your
opponent's @replies with. Again, it doesn't matter if you've read them.
If you're unsure about how to start a tweet, try "Why do liberals
hate gay/black/poor people?" That should get your creative juices
flowing.
Whenever you mention Obama, make sure you cleverly alter his name
into something insulting, such as the easy-to-remember 'Obummer'. Or if
you really want to get the debate moving, just refer to him as 'the most
radical President in American history'. The liberals will go crazy
sending you all kinds of links with numbers and facts. Don't worry; no
one expects you to read them.
All of your tweets (whether you are in a debate or not) should contain at least one insulting name for liberals. Libtard is a favorite, but it is getting a bit less effective from constant overuse. I suggest the more modern twist, Libturd.
Stay away from facts. Facts are only opinions reinforced by truth.
If a Liberal has insulted you (especially using large, hard to
understand words), don't panic. Simply tweet back their own words as
though they were your own. That way, you don't actually have to come up
with anything clever to say.
Never answer a question. The best way to counter the left's
expectation for meaningful dialogue is to ask them an unrelated
question in return, such as "Why do you like to kill unborn babies?"
Make sure each of your tweets is riddled with grammatical and
spelling errors. After all, you wouldn't want anyone to be able to
accuse you of being one of the "intellectual elite".
Each of your tweets should include one of the RWNJ
signature terms - commie, Marxist, socialist, or Nazi. You may use
them interchangeably to keep things fresh. To keep up on the latest
trend, trying using "Caliphate" or "sharia law".
If you're a conservative male arguing with a liberal female,
make sure you call her several misogynistic names to make sure she
understand that you're a REAL man and then, tell her she's pretty or
mention how great her ass looks. The ladies all enjoy compliments.
Whenever a libturd (see how I slipped that in there?) presents you
with facts, you will most likely be tempted to turn tail and retreat,
but don't panic. Simply toss out any one of the many variations of this
phrase: "That must be some good Kool-aid you're drinking." Be creative
with it. Maybe ask them what flavor of Kool-aid it is. Advanced technique: Suggest a possible flavor for them but, make sure it's a liberal sounding one like Black Cherry or Piña-Pineapple.
The important thing is to include the word "Kool-aid". I'm pretty sure
Hannity said they pay the tea party every time we use it.
If they happen to bring up GW Bush, tell them they need to stop
living in the past. Then, tell them President Lincoln freed the slaves
and make sure they know he was a Republican.
Mention the most trendy new "scandal" word like Benghazi
or PRISM. But, if you get flustered and forget what's hot right now you
can always fall back on the old reliables: Obamacare, Soros or Alinsky.
Be subtle with your racism. Insist you don't like the President
because of his policies and then, RT a picture of him as a monkey. Then,
when the liberals call you a racist, turn it around on them. Tell them
at *they* are, in fact, the racists because they keep black people down
by helping them. They will be left speechless.
Sprinkle the terms "Patriot," "Constitution," "liberty" and
"freedom" here and there to constantly remind others that you're a real
American, even when you're not acting like one.
What's most important to remember is that as a right-winger, you have an image to uphold and a duty to build yourself up by putting others down. For freedom.
By Billy Corriher, Guest Blogger on January 24, 2014 at 3:28 pm ("This material article was published by the Center for American Progress Action")
"We May Finally Find Out Who Is Funding One Of The Nation’s Shadiest Dark Money Groups"
CREDIT: Shutterstock
Last week, the all-Republican Texas Supreme Court rejected a request by a conservative “dark money” group to keep its donors secret. The lawsuit alleges that the Law Enforcement Alliance of America (LEAA) illegally “coordinated” its ads with Attorney General Greg Abbott’s (R) 2002 campaign. If evidence emerges that the LEAA coordinated with Abbott’s campaign, then the millions of dollars it spent on ads could be considered illegal in-kind campaign contributions. That could spell trouble for Abbott’s 2014 gubernatorial campaign, which currently has a huge fundraising advantage over his leading opponent, state Sen. Wendy Davis (D).
The LEAA, which has repeatedly refused to reveal its donors, asked the Texas Supreme Court in 2011 to overturn a lower court’s order which required it to produce records and communications about its activities during the 2002 attorney general election. Two former attorney general
candidates sued the group for violations of Texas campaign finance laws. The candidates also sued John Colyandro, who recently pled guilty to criminal charges related to the money laundering scandal which brought down former Rep. Tom Delay (R) and several corporate-funded political groups in Texas.
Long before the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United, the LEAA was a pioneer in dark money. The group, which was founded with funding from the National Rifle Association, has spent millions of dollars in recent years to elect judges and attorneys general across America.
The group has run some disturbing “soft on crime” attack ads. In 2008, it accused Mississippi Supreme Court Justice Oliver Diaz of “voting for drug dealers and baby killers.” The LEAA spent more on ads in that election “than all the other candidates and independent groups put together.” A state ethics committee ruled the ads were false and violated state ethics laws. After the LEAA ran similar attack ads against a Pennsylvania Supreme Court justice, it admitted violating Pennsylvania’s campaign finance laws.
A recent study by the Center for American Progress found that these “soft on crime” attack ads have an impact on judges’ rulings in criminal cases. The study examined trends in six states which have seen these type of attack ads, and it concluded: “As campaign cash increased, the courts studied
began to rule more often in favor of prosecutors and against criminal defendants.”
The LEAA’s ads also described Abbott’s Democratic opponent as a lawyer who “made millions suing doctors, hospitals, and small businesses.” One might wonder why the LEAA—a group which bills itself as an advocate for police officers and crime victims—would be worried about Texas voters electing candidates who sue businesses. In 2004, one Texas newspaper noted that the LEAA had received $4.5 million from unknown sources and that some local “prosecutors hypothesize that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, with ties to the Texas Association of Business, is the alliance’s
mystery benefactor.” Justice Diaz has noted similar allegations that the LEAA was a front group for the Chamber in Mississippi.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has spent millions to elect judges who will rule in favor of corporate defendants and against plaintiffs in tort cases. This effort is bearing fruit, as the courts which have seen the most campaign cash are more likely to rule for corporate defendants.
The following story is original to ProPublica. This is part 1 and part 2 of a series on assisted living facilities.
Joan
Boice needed help. Lots of it. Her physician had tallied the damage:
Alzheimer’s disease, high blood pressure, osteoporosis, pain from a
compression fracture of the spine. For Joan, an 81-year-old former
schoolteacher, simply getting from her couch to the bathroom required
the aid of a walker or wheelchair.
The Alzheimer’s, of course, was
the worst. The disease had gradually left Joan unable to dress, eat or
bathe without assistance. It had destroyed much of the complex cerebral
circuitry necessary for forming words. It was stealing her voice.
Joan’s
family was forced to do the kind of hard reckoning that so many
American families must do these days. It was clear that Joan could no
longer live at home. Her husband, Myron, simply didn’t have the stamina
to provide the constant care and supervision she needed. And moving in
with any of their three children wasn’t an option.
These were the
circumstances that eventually led the Boice family to Emeritus at
Emerald Hills, a sprawling, three-story assisted living facility off
Highway 49 in Auburn, Calif. The handsome 110-bed complex was painted in
shades of deep green and cream, reflecting its location on the western
fringe of the craggy, coniferous Sierra Nevada mountain range. It was
owned by the Emeritus Corp., a Seattle-based chain that was on its way
to becoming the nation’s largest assisted living company, with some 500
facilities stretching across 45 states. Emeritus at Emerald Hills promised
state-of-the art care for Joan’s advancing dementia. Specially trained
members of the staff would create an individual plan for Joan based on
her life history. They would monitor her health, engage her in an array
of physically and mentally stimulating activities, and pass out her 11
prescription medications, which included morphine (for pain) and the
anti-psychotic drug Seroquel (given in hopes of curbing some of the
symptoms of her Alzheimer’s). She would live in the “memory care” unit, a
space designed specifically to keep people with Alzheimer’s and other
forms of dementia safe.
At Emerald Hills, the setting was more
like an apartment complex than a traditional nursing home. It didn’t
feel cold or clinical or sterile. Myron could move in as well, renting
his own apartment on the other side of the building; after more than 50
years of marriage, the couple could remain together.
Sure, the place was expensive — the couple would be paying $7,125 per month — but it seemed ideal.
During
a tour, a salesperson gave Myron and his two sons, Eric and Mark, a
brochure. “Just because she’s confused at times,” the brochure reassured
them, “doesn’t mean she has to lose her independence.”
Here are a few things the brochure didn’t mention:
Just
months earlier, Emeritus supervisors had audited the facility’s process
for handling medications. It had been found wanting in almost every
important regard. And, in truth, those “specially trained” staffers
hadn’t actually been trained to care for people with Alzheimer’s and
other forms of dementia, a violation of California law.
The
facility relied on a single nurse to track the health of its scores of
residents, and the few licensed medical professionals who worked there
tended not to last long. During the three years prior to Joan’s arrival,
Emerald Hills had cycled through three nurses and was now employing its
fourth. At least one of those nurses was alarmed by what she saw,
telling top Emeritus executives — in writing — that Emerald Hills
suffered from “a huge shortage of staff” and was mired in“total
dysfunction.”
During some stretches, the facility went months without a full-time nurse on the payroll.
The
paucity of workers led to neglect, according to a nurse who oversaw the
facility before resigning in disgust. Calls for help went
unanswered. Residents suffering from incontinence were left soaking in
their own urine. One woman, addled by dementia, was allowed to urinate
in the same spot in the hallway of the memory care wing over and over
and over.
The brochure also made no mention of the company’s
problems at its other facilities. State inspectors for years had cited
Emeritus facilities across California, faulting them for failing to
employ enough staff members or adequately train them, as well as for
other basic shortcomings.
Emeritus officials have described any
shortcomings as isolated, and insist that any problems that arise are
promptly addressed. They cite the company’s growing popularity as
evidence of consumer satisfaction. They say that 90 percent of people
who take up residence in assisted living facilities across the country
report being pleased with the experience.
Certainly, the Boice family, unaware of the true troubles at Emerald Hills, was set to be reassured.
“We were all impressed,” recalled Eric Boice, Joan’s son. “The first impression we had was very positive.”
And
so on Sept. 12, 2008, Joan Boice moved into Room 101 at Emerald Hills.
She would be sharing the room with another elderly woman. After a
succession of tough years, it was a day of great optimism.
Measuring
the dimensions of his mother’s new apartment, Eric Boice sought to
recreate the feel of her bedroom back home. He arranged the furniture
just as it had been. He hung her favorite pictures in the same spots on
the wall. On her dresser, he set out her mirror and jewelry box and
hairbrush.
Joan, 5-foot-2 and shrinking, had short snow-and-steel
hair and wintry gray-blue eyes. Eric looked into those eyes that day at
Emerald Hills. He thinks he might have seen a flicker of fear. Or maybe
it was just confusion, his mom still uncertain where, exactly, she was.
A Reform Movement Winds Up on Wall Street
The Emeritus Corp., the assisted living corporation now entrusted with Joan’s life, sat atop an exploding industry.
Two
decades earlier, Keren Brown Wilson had opened the nation’s first
licensed assisted living facility in Canby, Ore., a small town outside
of Portland. Wilson was inspired by tragedy: A massive stroke had
paralyzed her mother at the age of 55, forcing her into a nursing home,
where she was miserable, spending the bulk of her days confined to a
hospital bed.
Wilson aimed to create an alternative to nursing
homes. She envisioned comfortable, apartment building-style facilities
that would allow sick and fragile seniors to maintain as much personal
autonomy as possible.
“I wanted a place where people could lock
the door,” Wilson explained. “I wanted a place where they could bring
their belongings. I wanted a place where they could go to bed when they
wanted to. I wanted a place where they could eat what they wanted.”
These
“assisted living” facilities would offer housing, meals and care to
people who could no longer live on their own but didn’t need intensive,
around-the-clock medical attention. The people living in these places
would be called “residents” — not patients.
It took Wilson nine
years to persuade Oregon legislators to rewrite the state’s laws, a
crucial step toward establishing this new type of facility. After that,
states across the country began adopting the “Oregon model.”
But
what began as a reform movement quickly morphed into a lucrative
industry. One of the early entrants was Emeritus, which got into the
assisted living business in 1993, opening a single facility in Renton,
Wash. The company’s leader, Daniel Baty, had his eyes on something much
grander: He was, he declared, aiming to create a nationwide chain of
assisted living facilities.
Two years later, Baty took the
corporation public, selling shares of Emeritus on the American Stock
Exchange, and piling up the cash necessary to vastly enlarge the
company’s footprint. Many of Emeritus’s competitors followed the same
path.
The company’s rapid growth was, at least in part, a
reflection of two significant developments. Americans were living
longer, with the number of those in the 65-plus age bracket ballooning
further every year. And this growing population of older Americans was
willing to spend serious money, often willing to drain their bank
accounts completely to preserve some semblance of independence and
dignity — in short, something of their former lives.
As
the assisted living business flourished, the federal government, which
oversees nursing homes, left the regulation of the new industry to the
states, which were often unprepared for this torrent of expansion and
development. Many states didn’t develop comprehensive regulations for
assisted living, choosing instead to simply tweak existing laws
governing boarding homes.
In this suddenly booming, but
haphazardly regulated industry, no company expanded more aggressively
than Emeritus. By 2006, it was operating more than 200 facilities in 35
states. The corporation’s strategy included buying up smaller chains,
many of them distressed and financially troubled, with plans to turn
them around.
Wall Street liked the model. Market analysts touted
the virtues of the company and its stock price floated skyward. One of
the corporation’s appeals was that its revenues flowed largely from
private bank accounts; unlike hospitals or nursing homes, Emeritus
wasn’t reliant on payments from the government insurance programs
Medicare or Medicaid, whose reimbursement rates can be capped. As the
company noted in its 2006 annual report, nearly 90 percent of its
revenues came from “private pay residents.”
In filings with the
Securities and Exchange Commission and in conference calls with
investors, Emeritus highlighted many things: occupancy rates; increasing
revenue; a constant stream of complex real estate deals and
acquisitions; the favorable demographic trends of an aging America.
“The
target market for our services is generally persons 75 years and
older who represent the fastest growing segments of the U.S.
population,” Emeritus stated in a 2007 report filed with the SEC.
Today,
the assisted living industry rivals the scale of the nursing home
business, housing nearly three-quarters of a million people in more than
31,000 assisted living facilities, according to the U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services.
Keren Brown Wilson, the early and
earnest pioneer of assisted living, is happy that ailing seniors across
the country now have the chance to spend their final years in assisted
living facilities, rather than nursing homes. But in her view, the rise
of assisted living corporations — with their pursuit of investment
capital and their need to please shareholders — swept in “a whole new
wave of people” more focused on “deals and mergers and acquisitions”
than caring for the elderly.
She speaks from experience. After her
modest start, Wilson went on to lead a company called Assisted Living
Concepts, and took it onto the stock market. Wilson left the company in
2001, and it has encountered a raft of regulatory and financial problems
over the last decade.
“I still have a lot of fervor,” said
Wilson, who now runs a nonprofit foundation and teaches at Portland
State University. “I believe passionately in what assisted living can
do. And I’ve seen what it can do. But for some of the people, it’s just
another job, or another business. It’s not a passion.”
“A Phenomenal Deal”
Joan
Boice, born Joan Elizabeth Wayne, grew up in Monmouth, Ill. It was a
tiny farm belt community, not far from the Iowa border. Her father, a
fixture in the local agriculture trade, owned a trio of riverfront grain
elevators on the Mississippi and a fleet of barges. As a teenager, she
spent her summers trudging through the fields, de-tasseling corn.
In
1952, accompanied by a friend, Joan packed up a car and followed the
highway as far west as it would go. Then in her early 20s, she was
propelled by little more than the notion that a different life awaited
her in California. In a black-and-white snapshot taken shortly after she
arrived, Joan is smiling, a luxuriant sweep of dark hair framing her
pale face, gray waves curling in the background. It was the first time
she’d seen the Pacific.
Joan had been a teacher for two years in
Illinois, and she quickly found a job at an elementary school in
Hayward, a suburb of San Francisco. In certain regards, her outlook
presaged the progressive social movements that were to remake the
country during the next two decades. She viewed education as a “great
equalizing force” that could help to remake a society far too stratified
by class, race and gender.
“She was just free-spirited and confident,” Eric, her son, said.
Joan
met Myron Boice through a singles group at a Presbyterian church in
Berkeley. On their wedding day, Joan flouted convention by showing up in
a blue dress. The Boice children came along fairly quickly: Nancee,
then Mark, then Eric.
Myron Boice was a dreamer. A chronic
entrepreneur. He sold tools from a van. He made plans to open
restaurants. He had one idea after another. Some worked; others didn’t.
Joan’s
passion for education never dissipated. Even in her late 60s, she
continued to work as a substitute teacher in public schools. After
retirement, she began volunteering with a childhood literacy program.
But
age eventually tightened its grip, and hints of a mental decline began
surfacing around 2005. Eric grew worried when she couldn’t figure out
how to turn on her computer twice in the span of a few months. Then she
forgot to include a key ingredient while baking a batch of Christmas
cookies. The cookies were inedible.
The elderly couple was still
living in the San Francisco suburbs, when, in late 2006, a doctor
diagnosed Joan with Alzheimer’s. As her mind deteriorated, Myron
struggled to meet her needs. The situation was worsened by the fact that
none of the children lived nearby. Mark was in Ohio. Nancee was about
an hour away in Santa Cruz. And Eric and his wife, Kathleen, were
roughly two hours away in the foothills of the Sierra.
“We
offered my parents to come and live with us,” Eric recalled. But Myron
said no. He and Joan wouldn’t move in with any of the kids. The family
patriarch refused to become a burden.
A physician encouraged Joan
and Myron to consider assisted living. It made sense. And so Myron sold
their home in 2007 and the couple moved into a facility called The
Palms, near Sacramento. The move put them approximately 40 minutes away
from Eric and Kathleen.
“They were very attentive to every single
thing she needed,” Kathleen Boice said of the staff at The Palms. “They
actually re-taught her to eat with a fork and a knife.”
By 2008,
however, Myron wanted a change. He wanted to be closer to his son and
daughter-in-law and grandkids. He wanted different meals, a new
environment. Myron began hunting for a new place to live, a search that
led to Emeritus at Emerald Hills in Auburn.
Emeritus opened the
Emerald Hills complex in 1998. It was, in many ways, a classic Emeritus
facility, situated in a middle-class locale that was neither
impoverished nor especially affluent. It was a sizable property, capable
of housing more than 100 people.
In part because of its appetite
for expansion, Emeritus was in the early stages of what proved to be a
period of enormous stress. In 2007, the company had made its biggest
acquisition to date, buying Summerville Senior Living Inc., a
California-based chain with 81 facilities scattered across 13 states.
The
purchase — which expanded Emeritus’s size by roughly one-third — helped
the company make another major leap, bouncing from the low-profile
American Stock Exchange into the big leagues of commerce, the New York
Stock Exchange. News of the Summerville deal propelled the company’s
stock to a new high. Emeritus was poised to become the nation’s No. 1
assisted living chain.
But
the timing for this bold move turned out to be wretched. The real
estate market was freezing up, and it would soon collapse, plunging the
nation into an epochal recession. For Emeritus, the economic slowdown
and then the housing crash posed direct challenges. Its services didn’t
come cheap, so many people needed to sell their homes before they could
afford to move into the company’s facilities. With the real estate
market calcified, Emeritus’s customer pool shrank.
“Our stock
price plummeted,” recalled Granger Cobb, Emeritus’s chief executive
officer, who joined the company as part of the Summerville deal. The
company’s occupancy rates had been trending skywards. Now they went
flat.
At Emerald Hills, the economic slowdown that summer was making life tough for Melissa Gratiot, the lead sales agent.
“It was way harder to move residents in,” she remembered.
But
there was some good news. She was close to a significant sale, this one
to a couple. Gratiot worked the pitch. She talked with the family. She
emailed. She gave them a tour of the facility’s memory care unit, called
The Emerald City. She told the family she’d received approval from
higher ups to offer the family “a phenomenal deal.”
Gratiot closed
the sale. On Aug. 29, 2008, Myron and Eric signed the contract, and the
family opened its wallet: A $2,500 initial move-in fee; $2,772 for
Joan's first two weeks in Room 101; another $1,660 for Myron.
There
had been one oversight, though. No one at Emeritus with any medical
training had ever even met Joan, much less determined whether Emerald
Hills could safely care for her.
Correction (7/29): An
earlier version of this story stated that Emeritus at Emerald Hills had
failed a company audit of its memory care unit before Joan Boice moved
in. It has been corrected to say an audit found flaws in the facility’s
medication handling process before Boice moved in. The memory care unit
was audited while Boice was living there and failed nearly every
important test.
PART 2 -- "They're Not Treating Mom Well"
When
the ambulance crew arrived, about 8:20 p.m., Joan Boice was in the TV
lounge, face-down on the carpet. Her head had struck the floor with some
velocity; bruises were forming on her forehead and both cheeks. It
appeared she’d lost her balance and fallen out of a chair.
But no
one at the assisted living facility could say precisely how the accident
had occurred. No one knew how long Joan had been splayed out on the
floor. She had defecated and urinated on herself.
Worried that
Joan might have injured her spine, the emergency medical personnel
gently rolled her over and placed her on a back board. They pumped
oxygen into her nostrils.
It was Sept. 22, 2008 — just 10 days after Joan had first moved into Emerald Hills.
No
Emeritus employees accompanied Joan to the hospital. And even though
Joan’s husband, Myron, was living in the facility, the Emeritus workers
didn’t immediately alert him that Joan had fallen and hurt herself.
Joan, confused, injured, and nearly mute, ended up in the local hospital
by herself, surrounded by strangers.
California
law requires assisted living companies to conduct a “pre-admission
appraisal” of prospective residents, to ensure they are appropriate
candidates for assisted living.
But Emerald Hills took Joan in
without performing an appraisal. It wasn’t for lack of time. The Boices
had signed the contract to live at Emerald Hills more than two weeks
before Joan moved in.
Joan, then, had taken up residence in the
memory care unit at Emerald Hills. The unit — referred to as a
“neighborhood” by the company — is a collection of abouta dozen small
apartments on either side of a central hallway. At each end of the
hallway are heavy doors equipped with alarms, which sound when anyone
enters or leaves. The alarm system is meant to prevent residents from
simply walking off.
On the day Joan moved into Room 101 in the
unit, a company nurse named Margaret “Peggy” Stevenson briefly looked
her over. The nurse realized that Joan needed to be monitored closely to
keep her from falling — she wrote it down in her cursory assessment —
but facility records show she didn’t craft any kind of detailed plan for
her care and supervision.
Stevenson, asked years later about Joan, said she could recall nothing about her or her stay at Emerald Hills.
Kathleen
had immediate suspicions about Joan’s fall. The family, she said, had
warned the facility not to leave Joan sitting in a chair without
supervision because she was liable to try to stand up, lose her balance,
and topple to the floor. Joan had fallen several times during an
earlier stay in an assisted living facility near Sacramento, but the
staff had developed a specific plan to address the issue.
Despite
the warning, Kathleen said that when she visited Emerald Hills during
Joan’s first days there she often found her mother-in-law sitting in a
chair alone.
The recent track record at Emerald Hills featured a
host of falls similar to Joan’s, and ambulances were often called to
take the injured off to the hospital. Falls are a particular hazard for
the elderly, and assisted living facilities like Emerald Hills are
required to report them to state regulators.
Internal company records documented 112 falls at Emerald Hills in 2008. Some residents fell repeatedly.
Consider the case of one Emerald Hills resident, 83-year-old Dorothy “Dottie” Bullock.
On
April 5, 2008, an Emeritus employee discovered Bullock “on the floor in
a semi-seated position” in the memory care unit, according to a state
report. She “was unable to tell” the worker what had happened to her.
The incident was described as a fall in state records. Emerald Hills
sent her to the hospital.
On April 7, Bullock, back at Emerald
Hills, fell again, according to the handwritten log of her personal
attendant, who was hired by Bullock’s husband to give her extra help.
On
April 8, Bullock, complaining of pain, was hauled by ambulance back to
the hospital. Doctors concluded that she’d fractured her pelvis, but
soon returned her to Emerald Hills. She fell again on April 12.
Bullock would fall again months later, for the final time.
Emeritus
records show Bullock tumbled in front of her apartment and was found on
the carpet with her aluminum walker beneath her. Blood spilled from her
nose and a “bump” developed on her forehead, according to the company
documents. The impact broke a vertebra in Bullock’s neck and crushed her
nasal bones and sinus structures, hospital records show. A CT scan
revealed possible fractures of both eye-sockets and the base of the
skull.
Dottie Bullock died in the emergency room.
While
Emeritus recorded the fatality in its internal logs, the company did not
report her death to state regulators, a violation of California law.
The state requires assisted living facilities to file reports on all
deaths, even those believed to be from natural causes, so that it can
look into suspicious or troubling incidents.
Emeritus said it lacked information about Bullock’s death and thus could not say why it had occurred.
Bullock’s personal attendant, Julie Covich, says Bullock was not supervised properly.
“I
think there was neglect,” said Covich, who usually visited Emerald
Hills once or twice a week to help out Bullock. “I would go in there and
never see a caregiver.”
“It was hard to find anyone that was running the place,” she said. “It was crazy.”
“Heads on the Beds”
In
early 2008, the year Joan Boice entered Emerald Hills, Emeritus rolled
out a new business campaign. The company dubbed it the “No Barriers to
Sales” effort.
The concept was straightforward: Move as many
people as possible into Emeritus facilities. Wall Street was looking
closely at the company’s quarterly occupancy numbers and a few
percentage points could propel the stock price upward or send it
tumbling down.
With the housing market foundering, Emeritus needed to step up its sales efforts.
In
case there was any confusion about just how seriously the company took
this new campaign, a company vice president sent a blast email to
facility directors across California. In the body of the email, the vice
president got right to it:“SALES and your commitment to sales is your
highest priority right now.” Facility directors, the message concluded,
would be “held responsible for census and occupancy growth.”
Emeritus employees across the country realized they were entering a new era.
“There
was a different sense of urgency. The tone was different,” said a
former Emeritus manager who ran a facility at the time. “The message
from above was put as many people as possible in the beds and make as
much money as possible. That’s what they said. Verbatim. Honestly.”
According
to Lisa Paglia, a regional executive in California at the time, Budgie
Amparo, the company’s top official for quality control, was openly
critical when a Northern California facility declined to admit someone
who did not have a doctor’s evaluation.
Such evaluations, which
are designed to keep out seniors with problems that assisted living
facilities aren’t equipped to handle, are required under a California
law known as Title 22.
But on a conference call with roughly half a
dozen California managers, Paglia said, Amparo declared that the
Northern California facility should have admitted the resident.
“Our priority,” Amparo declared, according to Paglia, “is to get the heads on the beds.”
The
issue arose again in October 2008 during a training session for
approximately 25 facility directors and salespeople held at an Emeritus
property in Tracy, Calif. During the seminar, a company vice president
reiterated Amparo’s instruction to disregard California law, according
to court records and interviews.
The mandate prompted something of a staff revolt.
At least one facility director spoke out at the meeting: His license to operate the facility was at stake, he said.
An
employee who worked at the Tracy facility eventually alerted California
regulators. The state dispatched an investigator, and state records
show that the investigator met with employees who confirmed that a
company official had approved the practice of admitting someone without a
doctor’s report. The investigator reviewed a random sample of seven
resident files, finding that two people had been moved in illegally,
documents show.
Amparo,
a nurse whose full title is executive vice president of quality and
risk management, denies directing employees to violate the regulation.
In a written statement, Emeritus said, “Neither Budgie Amparo nor any of
our other officers issued a directive to violate Title 22 or any other
law. Emeritus does not condone allowing residents to move in without the
proper documents.”
Emeritus eventually fired Paglia, and lawyers
for the company have since portrayed her as a poor worker who failed to
do her job competently. Along with two other former Emeritus employees,
Paglia sued the company alleging wrongful termination, and wound up
settling on secret terms.
For assisted living chains such as
Emeritus, there is a powerful business incentive to boost occupancy
rates and to take in sicker residents, who can be charged more.
Emeritus,
for its part, rejects any suggestion that a quest for profits has
tainted its admission practices. But in interviews, former Emeritus
executives described a corporate culture that often emphasized cash flow
above all else. The accounts of the executives, who spoke independently
but anonymously, were strikingly consistent.
“It was completely
focused on numbers and not human lives,” said one executive, who worked
for Emeritus for more than three years and oversaw dozens of facilities
in Eastern states.
The company’s emphasis on sales and occupancy
rates, the executive said, transformed the workforce into “a group of
people who were grasping at every single lever they could pull to drive
profitability.”
Emeritus operates a sophisticated, data-driven
sales machine. There are occupancy goals for each facility, as well as
yearly company-wide goals. The company tracks dozens of data points —
including every move-in and move-out of residents — in a vast database.
It posts a monthly snapshot of each facility’s sales statistics on an
internal website, allowing employees to see which strategies are most
successful.
Sales specialists are instructed on how to use
psychology to persuade potential customers to sign on. One
suggestion: Give the customer “a sense of control and choice by offering
two possible options.” A 2009 Emeritus sales manual, which runs 181
pages, encourages sales people to generate publicity by hosting seminars
on Alzheimer’s or organizing charity efforts in the event of a natural
disaster like a “flood or earthquake.”
Emeritus motivates its
workforce with a broad range of financial incentives. There are bonuses
for hitting monthly occupancy goals. Bonuses for hitting yearly
occupancy goals. Bonuses for boosting overall earnings. And the money
doesn’t just go to sales people: The company hands out checks to
maintenance workers, nurses, facility directors and other workers.
Nurses
play a key role in assisted living, providing much of the hands-on
care. But nurses at Emeritus facilities are also expected to be deeply
involved in increasing revenue by making sales.
During more than a
year of reporting, ProPublica and PBS Frontline spoke to 10 facility
directors who said nurses were required to participate in weekly
conference calls focusing on little but economics. Those accounts are
backed by an internal Emeritus document that lays out the agenda for the
weekly calls and that shows an overarching concentration on finances.
Doris
Marshall was at the forefront of Emeritus’s efforts to have nurses play
the dual roles of caregivers and salespeople. After receiving her
nursing license in 1984, Marshall had spent many years tending to
patients in the emergency department of a Southern California hospital,
and she’d later gone on to help run a nursing school.
But Marshall
was intrigued by the assisted living business and in March 2008 she
signed on to supervise 10 Emeritus properties scattered across Northern
California. Amparo, the company’s head nurse, convinced Marshall to take
the job, telling her nurses “had a voice” at Emeritus.
Marshall
was to oversee the well-being of roughly 800 elderly people. But her job
description went well beyond that: She was to help with “marketing” and
“attaining financial goals.” Her job, in the end, actually involved
very little nursing.
Instead, she said, she was drawn into
Emeritus’s evolving strategies aimed at upping its revenues. The company
planned to bring in more seniors with Alzheimer’s and dementia because
they could be charged more, she said. Her boss gave her a digital
tracking tool showing how much more money Emeritus could make by
admitting sicker, frailer residents.
By the fall of 2010 Marshall was worn out and disillusioned. She quit.
Emeritus’s
extraordinary drive to put heads in beds — perhaps routine in, say, the
hotel industry — has distorted the admissions process at some
facilities, records and interviews show. Since 2007, state investigators
have cited the company’s facilities more than 30 times for housing
people who should have been prohibited from dwelling in assisted living
facilities.
A 2010 episode at an Emeritus facility in Napa
highlighted the perils of improperly admitting people. The facility
rented a room to a 57-year-old woman with an eating disorder,
depression, bipolar disorder and a history of suicide attempts. The
woman, who was distraught over the death of her husband, taped a note to
her door saying she wasn’t to be disturbed and committed suicide,
overdosing on an amalgam of prescription painkillers.
The state’s
investigation into the death was scathing: the woman should never have
been allowed to move in; the staff had missed or ignored bulimic
episodes and her obvious weight loss; no plan of care was ever developed
or implemented despite the resident’s profound psychological problems.
Emeritus,
asked to respond to the state’s investigation, said only that the woman
had overdosed on drugs she had brought into the facility on her own,
and that as a result they could not be faulted in her death.
“She Barely Even Talked to Us”
In
the aftermath of her fall in September 2008, Joan returned to Emerald
Hills. But the staff, inexperienced and often exhausted, worried about
her.
“She couldn’t walk, she couldn’t feed herself, she barely
even talked to us, and her health wasn’t that good,” recalled Jenny
Hitt, a former medication technician at Emerald Hills.
But if concern was abundant at Emerald Hills, expertise was in short supply.
Alicia
Parga ran Joan’s memory care unit. On some weekends, she managed the
entire building — not only the wing of residents with dementia, but the
rest of the three-story assisted living facility, one that could hold a
total of more than 100 residents.
After Parga started on the job,
it took Emeritus roughly 18 months to give her any training on
Alzheimer’s and dementia. The state regulations were hardly substantial:
Someone such as Parga was obligated to get six hours of training during
her first four weeks on the job. But even that requirement wasn’t met.
Emeritus
has insisted that Emerald Hills had properly trained personnel to care
for Joan and others, and they described Parga as a woman deeply invested
in tending to the residents.
But Parga, who had barely earned a
high school degree, wasn’t even familiar with the seven stages of
dementia. Though she was responsible for the well-being of 15 or more
seriously impaired people, as well as the supervision of
employees, Parga was paid less than $30,000 per year.
Catherine Hawes, a health care researcher at Texas A&M University, conducted the first national study of assisted living facilities.
In her view, training is absolutely crucial. A well-educated employee
can “interpret non-verbal cues” from people like Joan, intercept seniors
before they wander away from the building, or keep residents from
eating or drinking poisonous substances.
“You can do great care,” she said. “You just — you’ve got to know how.”
Other
than the Emeritus employees working in the memory care unit at Emerald
Hills, only one person saw Joan enough to know what kind of daily care
she was getting: Her husband, Myron.
He was worried. And he did his best to sum up his concerns to his son Eric:
“They’re not treating Mom well.”
After contacting the "Real" Eubanks Funeral Home, on January 15th. here is the response I received from them the following day. -
Re: Funeral Home Email-
Thank
you for helping get the word out about this SPAM. We have had well
over 100 calls and dozens of emails today concerning this. Again, thank
you for your help.
And I received this nice e-mail from someone who had read my post. I am removing Identifying information as there is no need to share it. Plus, I hadn't mentioned that I was posting this on my blog.
From:Amy S. Sent: January 16, 2014 9:06 AM To: me@panglossiancurmudgeon.com
Thank
you so much for posting and adding this scam to the internet. I was
able to view the email without opening it then went to the internet to
see if I could
find anything out regarding a hoax. It took me a while but I did find
you.
Thank You for the e-mail, as I usually don’t get them from things I post online.
I received this e-mail from these yahoos, and it just didn’t feel right. -
From:Eubank Funeral Home Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 2014 9:20 AM To: me@panglossiancurmudgeon.com
Eubank Funeral Home & Cremation Services
For this unprecedented event, we offer our deepest prayers of condolence and invite to you to be
present at the celebration of your friends life service on Thursday, January 17, 2014 that will
take place at Eubank Funeral Home at 11:00 a.m.
Please find invitation and more detailed information about the farewell ceremony here.
Best wishes and prayers,
Funeral home receptionist,
Arnav Bennett
Copyright 2014 Funeral Home Website Design By: Frazer Consultants LLC
I lost my mom on Dec 4, 2013 after her having complications from a stroke she had on November 13, 2013.
Up until 2 weeks ago, when I finally came back home to Wyoming, I’ve spent every minute in Florida, for the Wake, Funeral, and helping my dad out afterwards, as my mom handled all the financials, and he was really broken up. They would have had their 60th wedding anniversary on Sept. 18, 2014.
I’ll be going back down there in 6 weeks for another month with dad, and we’ll play it by ear after that.
My dad doesn't want to come and live with me in Wyoming, and I know my siblings, or sibling will try and convince my 83 y.o. dad to move to NY near them. My dad wants none of that and he wants to stay in Florida for his the rest of his life, and be buried with my mom in Florida at the Sarasota National Cemetery. Plus, in a few years, my siblings have plans of moving down to Florida after they retire. So then my dad would have to move again? Family- sometimes they’re??? confusing… I don’t know?
I think it is pure evil for whomever thought it was a good idea to send out this type of e-mail. Someone needs to take these folks out behind the woodshed for a few minutes and straighten them out.
I mean really, who would do this to people? Just pure evil without a hint of a conscience.
Where do these evil people come from? I know we have really bad actors in our society, but this is the lowest of the low, and what, to spam about a some paper/plastic bags? Or maybe an in to get you to share personal information? Or have you download a Trojan virus? Know wonder they from out of the country,(USA) they figured we can’t touch them as they hurt fellow Americans! Now this is what our intelligence community should be working on, stopping this international organized crime.
FYI- I don't have a Target near me in Sheridan, and haven't shopped in one in years, so... just to let you know.
There are quite a few different iterations of the e-mail they had attached to the link. They used .nl domain which is the Netherlands, but they’ve also used .ca,(Canada) .ke,(Kenya) and eastern European countries. It’s an organized effort to screw with people and their money during an extremely emotional time in their lives. They probably scan all the obits and use them as their source of targets.
Take care you all and chat soon.
Best wishes always, Bill
_______________________________________
That's it, hope no one got screwed by these yahoos. We have to work together to stop these dirtbags, and there should be harsher penalties for this kind of crime, so devious and evil it has no name, but just taking a moral low into the depths of hell! I'm a pacifist, but a 42" Louisville Slugger Just might straighten them out for a long time.
Good luck and good night, And be careful out there!
James K. W. Atherton/The Washington Post -Mr. Pike pats the classified material on the 1973 Arab-Israeli war that the White House turned over to the House Intelligence Committee on September 10, 1975.
Otis G. Pike, a nine-term New York
congressman who was a persistent critic of Pentagon overspending and
led one of the first congressional investigations of abuses by U.S.
intelligence agencies, died Jan. 20 at a hospice in Vero Beach, Fla. He
was 92.
His daughter, Lois Pike Eyre, confirmed the death and said she did not yet know the cause.
Mr. Pike, who was elected to the House of Representatives in
1960, was regarded as an independent-minded maverick during his 18 years
in Congress. He was a Democrat elected from a Republican-leaning
district on Long Island, a Marine Corps veteran who was skeptical of
Vietnam War escalation, and a patrician, bow-tied lawyer with a wicked
sense of humor, which he used to ridicule wasteful spending.
In
1973, Mr. Pike was credited with single-handedly grounding a $14 million
program that awarded extra pay for flight duty to generals and admirals
who never piloted anything more aerodynamic than a desk at the
Pentagon.
Standing on the floor of the House with his arms outstretched like a plane in flight, Mr. Pike used mockery to plead his case.
“If
the in-basket is continually loaded on the starboard, or right-hand,
side of the desk, and the out-basket is continually empty on the port,
or left-hand, side of the desk,” said Mr. Pike, who flew 120 missions as
a Marine pilot in World War II, “wood fatigue sets in, the landing gear
tends to buckle and the whole fuselage crashes down on your feet.”
As the chamber echoed with laughter, the flight-pay policy was abolished.
Mr.
Pike had his most conspicuous moment in the public eye in 1975, after
revelations of the CIA’s “family jewels” — suspected involvement in
clandestine operations that may have included killings and coups
overseas and spying on U.S. citizens.
In July 1975, he became
chairman of a committee that was the House counterpart of a Senate
committee led by Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho). Both panels reviewed
activities of the CIA and other intelligence agencies, marking the first
time Congress had examined secret dealings and suspected abuses by the
CIA since the spy agency’s founding in 1947.
During the
often-testy hearings, Time magazine called Mr. Pike “the model of a
properly pugnacious public servant — sharp-tongued and not easily
intimidated.”
Mr. Pike challenged CIA Director William E. Colby
to accept greater oversight of the CIA’s budget — then, as now, a
secret, off-the-books appropriation. The CIA balked, saying the
country’s intelligence operations could be hurt by opening its books.
Mr.
Pike was alarmed by CIA excesses, including suspected involvement in
efforts to oust leaders in Chile and other countries. After Secretary of
State Henry A. Kissinger withheld certain documents and limited the
number of State Department officials who could testify, the Pike
Committee voted to hold him in contempt of Congress.
The contempt
went both ways, as Kissinger charged the committee with acting “in a
tendentious, misleading and totally irresponsible fashion.”
Among
other findings, the Pike Committee called for central congressional
oversight over intelligence operations, a prohibition of CIA-sponsored
killings and more transparency in the intelligence budget.
“It
took this investigation” into the CIA, Mr. Pike said in a 1976 New
Republic interview with Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci, “to convince
me that I had always been told lies [and] to make me realize that I was
tired of being told lies.”
When Mr. Pike’s committee was scheduled
to release its full report in January 1976, the full House of
Representatives voted to keep it secret, citing national security
concerns. A copy of the 338-page report was obtained by Daniel Schorr of
CBS News and published by the Village Voice in New York.
Summoned
to appear before a House committee, Schorr steadfastly refused to name
the source of the leak and kept the secret until his death in 2010. Mr.
Pike was adamant in conversations with his family and others, his son
said, that he did not give the report to Schorr.
In the end,
because the document was never officially released, Mr. Pike’s
investigation was soon overshadowed by the Senate’s Church Committee,
some of whose recommendations were adopted in measures to rein in the
excesses of the CIA and other intelligence agencies.
Otis Grey
Pike was born Aug. 31, 1921, in Riverhead, N.Y., a town on the northern
shore of Long Island then known for its potato farms and fishing fleet.
He was an orphan by 6 and was raised by two older sisters and an aunt.
One of his sisters was a social worker during the Depression and told Mr. Pike about a local farm family.
“All
they had for Sunday dinner was boiled potatoes,” he recalled in a 1967
interview with the New Yorker magazine. “I was surprised that in a great
country like America such a thing could happen. All my family had
always been Republicans, but that kind of thing, and what Franklin
Roosevelt tried to do about it, turned me into a Democrat.”
Mr. Pike graduated from Princeton University in 1946 and from Columbia University law school in 1948.
He practiced law in his home town, was elected justice of the
peace and served on his town council. After losing his first
congressional bid in 1958, Mr. Pike defeated the Republican incumbent,
Stuyvesant Wainwright II, two years later. He went on to hold seats on
the Armed Services and Ways and Means committees.
Mr. Pike enjoyed
singing and playing the piano and ukulele. By the time he decided not
to seek reelection in 1978, he lamented to The Washington Post that
Congress was no longer much fun and had become dominated by “two kinds
of people — millionaires and Boy Scouts.”
After his congressional
career, he wrote a column on public affairs for Newsday and the Newhouse
News Service until 1999. He retired to Vero Beach.
His first wife, Doris Orth Pike, died in 1996 after 50 years of marriage. A son, Robert Pike, died in 2010.
Survivors
include his wife of 10 years, Barbe Bonjour Pike of Vero Beach; two
children from his first marriage, Lois Pike Eyre of Riverhead and
Douglas Pike of Paoli, Pa.; and two grandchildren.
While
speaking out against what he considered outlandish defense spending
during the Vietnam War, Mr. Pike cited the example of small metal rods
with a retail cost of 50 cents. The Pentagon, which bought them for
$25.55 apiece, described them as “precision shafting.”
“For once,” Mr. Pike declared on the House floor, “the American taxpayer got precisely what he paid for.”
Reuse paint cans, tins, mason jars,
and plastic containers to store small things. There are so many creative
ways to repurpose them. Shown: paint cans covered in fabric.
