In January 2009 the ACORN 8, eight members previously serving on ACORN’s board, submitted a paper filing charges against other board members. The charged included ACORN co-founder and Chief Organizer Wade Rathke. They were complainants for their summary dismissal from the board for trying to investigate the embezzlement of almost one million dollars. The million dollars was embezzled by Wade’s brother Dale Rathke and a cover up ensued involving several high level ACORN board members. Charges included mail fraud, tax fraud, conspiracy and racketeering.

On July 23, 2009 the 111^th Congress Committee on Oversight and Government Reform issued its staff report- “Is ACORN Intentionally Structured As a Criminal Enterprise?”

The conclusion of the 88 page report was a tepid call for more scrutiny. The Congress as a body took bolder steps when it overwhelmingly voted to defund ACORN last week.

The prescience of these recent events to the inconspicuous annexation of our health care system by people of this ilk can not be overstated.

ACORN will remain viable without government funding through its relationships with big labor organizations which use its organizing machinery. The State Employees International Union (SEIU), still the largest union of health care workers, is such an entity. These two groups are intimately entwined and together promote ACORN’s Health Care for America Now project (HCAN). This project is responsible for advocating the Democrat health care reform that we see the Tea Party patriots pushing back.

Within the SEIU there is already a plan to get America’s doctors to comply with socialism. The Committee of Interns and Residents (CIR) and the Doctor’s Council are two arms of the union which espouse the glories of socialism and the single payer system. In the June, 2009 CIR quarterly newsletter one young physician/Bolshevik in training highlights the “Three Pillars” to CIR’s success- “Collective bargaining, Organizing and Patient Advocacy Through Political Action.”   If you really want to advocate for patients learn to do your job first.

The Doctor’s Council website asks us to help protect patients by being active in ACORN’s own HCAN. They also request that you become active by joining their “Active Response Team.” Here, when needed, you will be called to drop what you are doing and head to the nearest protest against your own health care system and profession.

Bus ride and purple shirt provided.

SEIU thug behavior is well documented and no quarter is given to members of other health care unions even if they have the same message.

The California Nurses Association (CNA) is emerging as a very powerful union and extends well beyond the borders of the Golden State. Currently, they have union representation in several states and the District of Columbia. New York Times reporter Stephen Greenhouse called the CNA-“...an unusually militant union that is seeking to expand nationwide.” You would assume then that the SEIU and the CNA would get along famously. Not so.

In March 2009, the CNA sent rabble rousers to nine Catholic Health Partners hospitals in Ohio to steer workers away from a proposed SEIU contact that was already in negotiations. Shamelessly, the CNA workers maneuvered their way into patient care areas to confront the hospital staff. Not sure of the impact the trespass caused, the SEIU postponed the worker’s vote. Rose Ann DeMoro executive director for CNA (and never a nurse, but longtime Teamsters hack) called the huge violation of the hospital’s and patient’s privacy “a significant victory for employee rights.”

Such an affront was not to go unanswered. The next month, Ms. DeMoro was to be a keynote speaker at a labor conference in Michigan. The SEIU, all dressed in purple, bussed in 800 union thugs who beat their way through the doors of the conference hall and charged the podium. Many people were kicked and beaten with one woman suffering a significant head injury as reported by a witness.  In a simultaneous effort SEIU members stalked and harassed CNA board members, mostly women, at their homes and places of work. Earlier this year, Ms DeMoro stated that the SEIU tactics made the Teamsters “look like choirboys.” She would know.

Fast forward to March 2009. It seems that the two unions, now apparently relieved of their mutual mistrust, are willing to just get along. Like other rackets before them they have learned that turf wars can be nasty and unbeneficial to both sides. In seeking to expand they will advance together. The SEIU will get the hospital workers and the CNA will get the nurses. This reminds me of the last few episodes of The Sopranos.

The physicians who are already in the SEIU are complicit with the actions this union takes. This includes the relationship to ACORN, the CNA and their minions. These groups are about their own power and are fully detached from advocating for anything less than their own self aggrandizement and political influence. These doctors should be pariahs in our profession.

The behavior of the average American citizen in this health care debate, people who before wouldn’t complain of an over cooked steak, is exemplary. When physicians begin to side with the hoodlums in the delinquent groups I have mentioned and not serve as examples of respectful people in a civil society we will lose a great public trust that we may never be able to recover.