Fri, 05 Mar 2010 09:07:26 +0000

A few things about the Dec 22 protest at Sen Landrieu’s Baton Rouge Office, FRC President Tony Perkins role in the protest, and this sign, (image filename is la_rally_1.jpg)taken from this FRCblog post on the rally.

Tony Perkins pre-event press release announces that he’s going to the health care protest on the sidewalk outside her office, will be speaking there, and will be delivering a letter to the Senator. It is not clear from the FRC press release who organized the protest. It is clear in his press release the FRC does not take credit for organizing it and a search on the web identifies only frc.org as making reference to it.

If FRC organized it why don’t they say so? If they didn;t, why is Perkins addressing them? And it seems weird to me that Perkins would announce, in advance in a press release, his intention to hand-deliver a letter… unless he had a reason to make his intentions, for such a thing, clear and public, in advance.

150 people showed up including three guys wearing Roman legion costumes. (image filename la_rally_2.jpg) A rather elaborate attention grabbing costume for a person going to protest health care and no other reason. I think its reasonable to suspect some astroturfing going on here.

Add to that observation, this observation FRC wanted you to see, a photo of a kid holding a sign “Mary answer your phone.” evan as Tony Perkins himself claims to learn (stunningly so) at that very rally “We were stunned to learn why so many phone calls have been unanswered and met with continuous busy signals.”

Is this where O’Keefe and buddies pick up the trail or is it before this?

Clearly, this is a setup for Tony Perkins to declare outrage, which he does. To announce in his pre-event press release that he has a letter to hand deliver and then how he’s thwarted by the Senator’s cold-hearted irresponsibility.

“I will take one last letter to Senator Mary Landrieu asking her to reconsider her support for President Obama’s health care plan that will force every American to buy government approved health care insurance which will fund abortion.

and then to be thwarted by Landrieu’s “office closing” and declare outrage:

Baton Rouge, LA – At noon today, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins attempted to deliver a letter to Senator Mary Landrieu’s Baton Rouge office only to be told by federal security that her offices were “closed for the holidays.” Over 150 concerned citizens joined Perkins at a rally in front of Senator Landrieu’s office to urge the Senator to oppose the government takeover of health care.

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins made the following comments:

“We were stunned to learn why so many phone calls have been unanswered and met with continuous busy signals: As the Senate debates one of the most far reaching pieces of legislation in history, Senator Mary Landrieu has closed her office and her ears to Louisianans.

“Senator Landrieu sent press aides to offer the Senator’s spin on the health care bill but she did not make a staffer available to receive letters or answer phone calls. Senator Landrieu knows that almost two-thirds of Louisiana voters oppose the health care overhaul. However, refusing to take their phone calls is insulting and the height of arrogance. Americans are outraged at the conduct of the Majority in the United States Senate and they should be.

“If Senator Landrieu’s office had been open, she would have heard a clear message that Louisianans want her to stop this abominable health care bill that will force every American to support Planned Parenthood in the killing of unborn children, saddle families with higher insurance premiums, raise our taxes and deny our parents and grandparents the essential health care they need.”

This is just campaign politics; make the opponent look as bad as possible. It’s “ratfucking” that always includes making the person look worse than they are in reality and depends upon a clever deception.

From this FRCBlog.com post “Senator Landrieu Closes Office: Constituents Turned Away at the Door, Callers Reach Only Busy Signals” we see a child carrying a sign that says “Mary Answer you phone” A Google News search demonstrates no news article before Dec 22 makes note of constituents having trouble getting through by phone to her office. The first know reference is the FRC post-event press release and then picked up by wire services, foxbusiness and NPR. Talk about stenography. Does NPR have an ombuds(wo)man?

http://www.examiner.com/a-94487~Meet_the_whistle_blower.html



Meet the whistle-blower

(Greg Whitesell/Examiner)
Reginald Green, former driver for ex-American University President Ben Ladner, stands in front of Ladner’s residence.
Mike Rupert, The Examiner
2006-05-01 09:00:00.0
Current rank: Not ranked

WASHINGTON -
A Senate committee’s investigation into American University’s decision to give its embattled former president a $3.75 million departure package after he was accused of misappropriating university funds could lead to significant policy changes at colleges and universities across the country, sources say.

Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, is expected this week to call for sweeping reforms of the school’s governing board, including the removal of as many as four trustees.

The committee has oversight over nonprofit organizations — including institutions of higher education like AU. And it is using American University as a case study for national reform recommendations.

Although dozens of lawyers, accountants and investigators have pored over thousands of documents, receipts and pages of testimony in the ongoing investigation, it was a single anonymous letter sent to the school’s trustees in March 2005 that ignited the controversy over former AU President Ben Ladner.

Now Reginald Green, who was Ladner’s chauffeur from August to December 2004, wants to tell his story.

The Whistle-blower

Green had all but forgotten about the dozen copies of the anonymous letter he mailed to American University trustees early in March 2005.

So he was a little surprised when a colleague stopped him outside his office on a hot September afternoon.

“Did you see the paper today, Reggie?” he asked Green. “Your name is in it.”

The letters alleged Ladner and his wife had been using thousands of school dollars for what appeared to be personal expenses.

Green, 48, had no idea his letters ignited an internal audit of Ladner’s personal expenses. He had no idea he was responsible for the uproar that was splitting apart the university’s leadership and prompting a revolt from students on the quiet Northwest campus.

“Next thing I know, I’m being called in by the Senate investigators saying, ‘So, we hear you’re the whistle-blower,’ ” said the Fort Washington resident.

Former AU trustee Len Jaskol, who led the school’s investigation of Ladner, said he does not know who wrote the letter, but said, “The whistle-blower did the university a huge favor.”

“I thought, and I think all of us thought Ben Ladner was doing a good job,” Jaskol said. “No one had any idea of the extent of the lavish lifestyle he was leading.”

From the beginning, Ben Ladner has denied any wrongdoing. He maintains that his contract with American University permitted him use his expense account as he saw fit. He has not been charged with any crime and did not comment for this story.

‘America’s Pride’

In early 2003, Green was working as security manager for Overseas Private Investment Corporation, a U.S. government agency that helps American businesses invest abroad, when the retired Army sergeant and Korean linguist’s health began deteriorating.

Green was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder during his Army service in the early 1980s, but said he thought he had recovered. Apparently he had not.

Green would soon undergo colon surgery to repair the stress-related damage. After his recovery, the married father of two young daughters found himself without a job, and cash was running short.

Through a special Department of Veterans Affairs program for disabled veterans called “America’s Pride,” Green was hired as a security escort at the White House. He quickly worked his way up to supervisor.

Green said he was making decent money and happy to have a good job, but knew his two young daughters’ college tuition would be out of his reach.

So when he saw an opening for a driver for American University’s president, he immediately sent in his resume. One of the benefits listed, he said, was that down the road, his daughters would be able to attend the school tuition-free.

Green was personally selected by the Ladner and his wife, Nancy, in July 2004 from among 100 applicants for the $40,000-a-year job — despite the fact Green had a broken leg from a recent motorcycle accident and his surgery had left him with an ailment that forced him to use the restroom often.

Ladner liked his “White House credentials,” Green said.

He started work on Aug. 16, 2004.

Behind the Wheel

Green had hoped to work both jobs, driving for Ladner by day and working at the White House at night. That arrangement worked at first, but the Ladners’ demands grew greater each week, according to a travel logbook Green was asked to keep in his university-issued BlackBerry.

“For the first couple weeks he liked to show me off a little,” he said. “Then they started treating me like a servant. He treated me like his slave.”

Green said he regularly hauled “expensive cases of booze and wine” and “huge trays” of food made by the Ladners’ personal chef, Rodney Scruggs, from their AU residence to their personal home on tony Gibson Island on the Chesapeake Bay. Nancy Ladner asked Green to purchase birthday gifts for her husband, including a rowing machine, using Green’s university-issued American Express credit card, he said.

Green was asked to run to the travel agency to adjust the departure date on two nonrefundable first-class airline tickets worth around $23,000 each, he said.

Despite the fact that Ladner earned $875,000 a year — among the nation’s highest salaries for college presidents — they appeared to spend little of their own cash, Green said.

According to Jaskol, the Ladners had an unlimited and unaudited expense account for their residence, just off campus in the expensive Spring Valley neighborhood, that was completely separate from the President’s Office budget.

Two former assistants said the couple did nothing to separate personal expenses and business expenses, according to documents now under review by Congress. And when he was questioned about the discrepancy, Ben Ladner’s “hot temper” would surface, according to the statements.

Green was fired a day after he told Ladner he had to use the restroom on a return trip from Philadelphia on the evening of Dec. 2, 2004.

According to a two-page memo given to Green after he was hired, Ladner wanted to “minimize bathroom stops on long trips … one is acceptable — zero is preferable.”

The Decision

Jaskol said he never expected anything to come from the investigation, and wanted to give the benefit of the doubt to Ladner, who had been at the university since 1994 and was credited with aiding its resurgence.

“I’m assuming that we won’t find anything,” Jaskol said. “But they came back just four or five weeks later and said, ‘This is real.’ Everything in that short letter was real.”

When Ladner was informed of the investigation, former trustee George Collins said Ladner simply said, “Oh, boy.”

Jaskol said he wishes someone had raised the issues to trustees earlier.

Green said he never raised questions over the Ladners’ requests during his employment because it wasn’t “his place,” and said he always went out of his way to “protect the privacy of his clients.”

Green said he didn’t write the nearly 300-word letter until several months after he was fired.

“I was messed up and confused and needed to vent,” said Green, who plans to file a wrongful termination suit against Ladner and the university. “That job was supposed to be my girls’ ticket to college and that was ruined over a stupid bathroom break.

“Somebody had to let people know what type of man he is.”

Green and a close friend wrote the letter over a few days in March and then dropped several copies — one to each member of the school’s Executive Committee — into a Silver Spring mailbox. The letter was signed “an employee.”

When asked why he wanted to remain anonymous, Green said that with millions of dollars on the line, he honestly feared for his family’s safety.

“I told everyone close to me that if something happened to me, my wife or my children, that they knew the first person to go looking for,” Green said. “The only difference between Ben Ladner and God is that God knows he’s God and Ben Ladner just thought he was.”

mrupert@dcexaminer.com