01 July 2007

more bob dean & rep. william daniel chicanery

louisiana state senator joe mcpherson dist 29

lake charles american press columnist jim beam has a rather disturbing, 28 june 2007, column captioned "residents are innocent victims." (see link) at first reading of mr. beam's column it seems to take our own senator joe mcpherson to task and holds him to blame for a shortage of nursing home beds (due to a moratorium) here in louisiana and we have to admit after first reading the column we came away pretty incensed with senator mcpherson.

so, we brought the column to the attention of another local blogger and attorney for his opinion and after some research we learned that things arent exactly as mr. beam would have us believe...

the focus of mr. beam's column it seems, goes back to the 2005 regular legislative session. senator mcpherson authored a bill sb272 which went on to become act 341. this bill did not institute any nursing home bed moratorium as mr. beam leads us to believe. in fact according to some information from 2000 here on the state senate website, not just louisiana but many other states have a moratorium on new nursing home beds. info at that link also explains why, etc. the act 143 mentioned in the senate info link above is from the 2000 1st extraordinary session sb71 by tom schedler and here is the link to it. senator mcpherson's sb272 among other things, did extend the moratorium to 2010 not 2008 like mr. beam wrote.

reading those bills and acts it looks like the nursing home bed moratorium actually came into effect in 1996 probably through legislation passed in '95 or '96 we dont know for sure because the legislature's website only goes back to 1997. although, if the moratorium was passed in 1995 senator mcpherson could have had something to do with it since he was in the state senate from 1984 - 1996. -- you might remember rev. b.g. dyess was the district 29 state senator 1996 - 2000.

to understand how bob dean and his poodle representative william daniel come in you have to go back to senator mcpherson's sb272 page 3 around line 16:
click picture to enlarge
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mr. dean asserts that the prohibition against new nursing home beds doesnt apply to him because he began construction within sb272's specifications. so, instead of filing a lawsuit and letting the courts decide, mr. dean attempts to do an end run around the law through his man in the house of representatives, rep. william daniel, who files hb518 which "repeals the moratorium on replacement nursing facilities." this is akin to you going to the omv to get a drivers license and they refuse to issue you one. so, instead of taking omv to court you get your legislator to file a bill specifically for you to get your drivers license.

bob dean looks to be a very shady character who has done quite well for himself and his organization by sponging off the government which is ultimately the taxpayers of course. this is the same baton rouge tyrant who owns and is holding alexandria's historic hotel bentley hostage to his whims which include all sorts of governmental (again taxpayer) concessions and financing. for more about that see "Bob Dean Seeks Socialist Welfare from the City."

make no mistake, nursing homes are nothing more than a money making scheme. if you own one its better than winning the lottery. over a year ago we received an email from someone who is a nurse in one of mr. dean's nursing homes. we never mentioned it or published it before because we were afraid that someone in mr. dean's organization could identify the writer by the style of the email and of course that would have been the persons job. we feel like enough time has passed that we can share some excerpts:
I came across your Bob Dean blog post this AM and was very interested. You do have part of your story on Bob Dean correct re: his nursing homes. Fact is, in the state of Louisiana he OWNS 7 nursing homes. The other fact is HE approached FEMA regarding the use of The Bentley to be used as an evacuation shelter for his nursing home residents from Lake Charles. (as well as the residents from his nursing homes in New Orleans he had already evacuated to Lake Charles before Katrina hit) The fact is FEMA turned him down because of fire safety issues in the hotel.

The bottom line is he wanted to double dip the system. If the Bentley would have been used as a hurricane shelter he would have received federal money for keeping HIS nursing home residents there and any subsequent damage that would have been done. So he would have not only received money from the State Medicaid/Medicare program while his residents were being taken care of, but he also would have received financial assistance from FEMA because he had a "designated" hurricane shelter.

Whatever your imagination can come up with about him owning nursing homes is true and much worse. How do I know? I work for him. I am a nurse in one of his facilities.
The truth is we never have enough supplies, food or staff to take care of our residents. He doesn't give a damn about the residents or the employees.

Those of us in the facility I work at are only still in it because we are afraid what will happen to our residents if we left. The staff of our facility had to contact the Mayor of our city and FEMA to get us evacuated from Hurricane Rita because we had been waiting all day for "Dean's Buses" to arrive to take our residents and staff to safety in Alexandria.

If we had not contacted our Mayor, only God knows what would have happened. Only because our staff loves and cares about our residents we were able to get outside help. On a daily basis the staff at our facility buy supplies ourselves, out of our own pockets to take care of the residents - soap, lotion, deodorant, diapers, even food. We also purchase office supplies that the nursing staff needs - binders, pens, stethoscopes, blood pressure cuffs, etc. None are paid what the average rate of pay in our area is.

We always are short staffed - and work our collective butts off. Not for Mr. Dean but for our residents. When a right hand man of his was confronted about our low pay at a staff meeting several months ago his reply to the staff was "We can get anyone off the street to come in and do what you do for no pay." I promise if you look and dig into his nursing homes that is where his undoing will be. He is a crook, a liar, a bigot (who at one point instructed his administrative staff to create a nursing staff of whites only), and cares about only manipulating the state and the federal government to be able to get all the money he can. Unfortunately, in Louisiana as far as nursing home owners go - he's pretty much like the rest. Toward the public they seem "caring or even compassionate" but - they all have one thing in common a plantation attitude of using and abusing employees and residents while making the most money they can.

Don't be fooled by his "new facilities" he's building either, that is only his way of having to follow new state legislation that requires nursing home owners to put a certain percentage of profit back into the facilities they own. If they spend millions building beautiful, brand new facilities then they have met the requirement and can back to business as usual of having no supplies or no staff and keep raking
the money in. Dig deep you'll be shocked at what you find.
we find our emailer's story convincing and very easy to believe. not entirely because it concerns bob dean but because of our own experience with (non bob dean owned) nursing homes. some years ago our own grandmother was placed in a local nursing home. this was after the family kept her in their homes and cared for her for over five years. however, because of the advance of her alzheimers disease it made her behavior increasingly erratic and bizarre to the point where we couldnt provide proper care. one day when our nephew was around four or had just turned five his grandmother took him to see her mother, his great grandmother. after they returned we asked him how he liked his trip to the nursing home. he wouldnt say anything so we decided to take a different approach and asked him what he saw at the nursing home to which he immediately blurted out "sad people."
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related posts
  • bob dean/hotel bentley fiasco
  • video: you can see louisiana from here
  • report: hotel bentley sold
  • video: hotel bentley press conference
  • hotel bentley in the balance or rod noles was right
  • deconstructing the bob dean/cyntreniks/wm daniel/hotel bentley racket
  • house committee to hear rep. wm. daniel's corrupt hotel bentley bill today
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