Michael Schiavo: Where Are You?
Posted on Sunday, 18 of October , 2009 at 12:03 pm
COMMENTARY
© By June Maxam
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
CLEARWATER, FLA—Do you and your friends ever get together to reminisce, talk about old times and acquaintances?
Do you discuss current events like the health care reform bill, aka HR3200 or the Health Choices Act and the issue of governmental involvement in health care and end of life issues, the right to life or the right to die?
Do you ever discuss people who used to be in the news?
Remember Michael Schiavo, the Florida man who fought his in-laws for nearly 10 years for court permission to kill his disabled wife by dehydrating her to death while the whole world watched, claiming that he was protecting her privacy?
Schiavo was irate that anyone should try to save the life of a disabled human being despite the controversial nature of the case and his role in it, and he claimed that it was governmental inference in HIS business.
He changed political parties, registering as a Democrat, mad at the Republicans because he said they interfered in his personal life for voting to send the Schiavo case to the federal courts, voting to reinsert Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube in the meantime.
Now it’s his party and President Obama that is usurping the Constitution, that has government with its nose in the private business sector, in Wall Street, in Detroit, in insurance, in our personal business and now in health care including end of life issues.
So where’s Michael Schiavo now?
Why isn’t he speaking out against Obama’s plan? Why isn’t he speaking out against government intrusion into health care issues and excessive government intrusion into the healthcare system, especially considering his employment in the health care system as a registered nurse at the Pinellas County Jail?
How come he’s not on the speaking circuit, railing about privacy in family health care, about end of life issues, about the right to die? Just when was his last speaking engagement anyway? Apparently no one cares what he has to say.
Terri Schindler Schiavo died on March 31, 2005, at age 41, a victim of judicial homicide after an agonizing 13 days without food and water, intentionally killed by her estranged husband Michael Schiavo. He had succeeded in killing his disabled wife by judicial order, claiming that it would been her wish to die in such a manner while the whole world watched, while he continued to shack up with his concubine of nearly a decade and their two illegitimate children.
He was playing the control game, just as he had done during their marriage prior to Terri’s sudden and mysterious collapse after a day of arguing on Feb. 25, 1990. He simply did not want her parents to “win”, he wanted Terri out of his life, permanently.
Politicians in both Florida and Washington tried to keep Terri alive until another court, a more impartial judge or panel of judges, could review the case. Congress, led by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tennessee) passed a bill on Palm Sunday 2005, ordering a de novo review of the case in the federal courts. President Bush cut his Easter vacation short to sign legislation passed by Congress designed to force the reinsertion of her feeding tubes while an impartial review of the matter ensued.
However, the U.S. District Court of James Whittemore refused to grant an injunction to stop Greer’s death order and the family did not receive the full review of the case in the court as Congress and the President intended.
Schiavo angrily denounced the Republicans, especially President Bush and his brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, for attempting to save Terri’s life. Not one Democratic Senator voted against giving her case a new look. Only five Republicans in the House voted against reinserting the tube while attorneys for her parents sought the de novo review of the case in the federal court.
But while Schiavo and others tried to politicize the issue and claimed that Congress and the White House were invading the privacy rights of families and personal lives, Rep. Eric I. Cantor (R-Virginia) the chief deputy whip, put the whole issue into its proper perspective.
“It was not a partisan issue. It was one of conscience”, Cantor said. “People will remember that the majority attempted to address a very difficult situation and did it with a real seriousness of purpose”.
Schiavo was outraged, ranting that government had invaded the personal privacy of his “family” and that the “sanctity” of his marriage had been violated.
But on March 18, 2005, when his wife’s feeding tube was removed for the last time which would lead to her barbaric death while the whole world watched in an ultimate invasion of privacy caused by Michael Schiavo who avowed when the cameras were watching how much he loved his wife, he wasn’t even present. Instead, he appeared on the Larry King Live show with his euthanasia attorney George Felos to rant about how incensed he was that political efforts had been made to save the life of his disabled wife, how he felt the politicians had disrespected him. That’s all it was ever about was Michael Schiavo, the narcissitic and selfish man.
“You know something, Larry, I feel like the government. What I’m here for tonight is I’m going to tell you — I feel like the government has just trampled all over my personal life”, Schiavo told King. “It is uncomprehensible (sic) that a government can walk all over somebody’s private judicial matter, because of their own personal feelings.
“You know, I should be sitting with my wife right now. You know, her tube was removed and I should be with her. But you know, I felt the need to speak out, because it is just horrible the way that this government is acting with this case.“Governor Bush, he’s only doing this for votes. And I urge everybody out there, call your Congress, call your House legislators, call your House representatives in Washington and tell them to stay out of our personal business. They’re going to be running everybody’s life. Excerpt of CNN Larry King Live transcript
“I don’t think the Supreme Court is going to put a stay on it. And I hope and implore that everybody call their legislators. They have to stay out of people’s personal lives. There’s no place for government. Call them and tell them”.
All of this show by Michael Schiavo at the time of his wife’s judicial homicide makes it even more curious that he has disappeared from the limelight and is strangely silent about Obama’s government intrusion in health care decisions under the guise of health care reform. Has he changed his mind?
Michael Schiavo tried to take his new found fame down the yellow brick road of politics. This is the man who falsified his academic credentials, who can’t tell the same story twice, who has what some might call a convenient memory, who is exploiting the name and memory of his disabled wife to further himself and his own agenda. Hundreds and hundreds of times in depositions and court testimony, Michael Schiavo said he couldn’t remember, had a bad memory but yet in the days before the 2000 trial, he suddenly remembered with clarity an offhanded remark supposedly made by Terri Schiavo on a train trip in the mid-80s, 15 years previous as well as some comment allegedly made while watching a TV show back in the 80s. Was he even present, was he cognizant at the time or guzzling beer and stuffing his face with popcorn?
When Schiavo announced in December 2005 that he was forming a political action committee called TerriPac, capitalizing on his wife’s name, he claimed it’s purpose was to hold politicians accountable. But its main purpose seemed to be focused primarily on money once again.
The New York Times aptly portrayed Michael Schiavo as a man with a vendetta, fueled by anger, hate and bitterness, a need for revenge and focused on money, not the proceeds of a malpractice trial anymore but now pandering to the public to fund his campaign for revenge.
The Republicans didn’t exploit Terri Schiavo as Michael Schiavo crowed. He did.
In one 2006 interview during his political posturing in Colorado at the expense of Terri, Michael told one interviewer he was determined to have a political future but told another that he wasn’t a political person. He said that he’s forcing himself before the public “because I am angry. Those people drug (sic) my name through the mud.”
So where’d he go? How come he’s not on his political pulpit rallying about government intrusion in health care issues?
In 2006 interviews, he told reporters that he was planning a political career. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13844509/ He told reporters that he had a “new political identity.” RockyMountain News – Schiavo Blasts Musgrave
He told another reporter that he was “determined to develop his political career.”
Michael Schiavo was openly talking about his political ambitions to anyone and everyone that would listen after the death of Terri Schiavo but by September 2006 and the filing of a complaint against him for alleged violations of the Hatch Act, Schiavo was suddenly backtracking about any potential candidacy and then suddenly withdrew from the public eye and all political activity altogether.
In September 2007, after the Office of General Counsel of the Federal Election Commission notified Schiavo that the federal agency had opened an official inquiry into TerriPAC, focusing on alleged falsified reports filed with the FEC under affirmation by Brian Schiavo, Michael’s brother, Schiavo suddenly pulled the plug on the PAC, saying he was shutting it down due to money issues.
What the public didn’t know at that time was that Schiavo’s “political consultant” Derek Newton of Coral Gables, was at the time under investigation by the public corruption units of the Miami-Dade Police Department and the State Attorney’s Office for election fraud, for false swearing for allegedly creating a fictitious candidate in filings made with the Miami-Dade Elections Department and the elections division of the Florida Department of State when authorities say he tried to sabotage a candidate running against his client in the 2006 campaign for State Representative District 108.
In a deal in which no criminal charges will be lodged, a detective with the Miami Dade Police Department says Newton has admitted to a single count of false swearing. If the deal is accepted by the Florida Elections Commission, Newton must pay $1,000 to the Florida Elections Commission, $5,000 to the Public Corruption Unit for the cost of the investigation and $1,000 to the State Attorney’s Office, according to the detective.
The matter was supposed to be heard by the Florida Elections Commission at their August meeting but according to a detective in the Public Corruption Unit of the Miami-Dade Police Department, one of Newton’s attorneys failed to show at the session, claiming that he had “other matters” and could not attend.
It has now been rescheduled for the November session of the elections commission.
There’s also still the issue of Newton allegedly impersonating a law enforcement officer.
So far, Newton has avoided criminal charges in the matter although under Florida Statutes, Section 104.011 of the Election Code, false swearing is punishable as a third degree felony.
http://www.northcountrygazette.org/2009/06/24/political_shenanigans/
http://www.northcountrygazette.org/2009/09/03/schiavo_swearing/
During the pendency of his efforts to terminate the life of his wife in name only, Schiavo violated court orders, made provable false written statements including filing a falsified guardianship application with a fabricated college degree. He gave perjured testimony of material facts, defied guardianship law and refused to show for court-ordered depositions but no one would hold him accountable lest it derail their agenda.
There’s documented evidence that Michael Schiavo intentionally refused to cooperate with an investigation initiated by the Advocacy Center for Persons with Disabilities and Florida’s Department of Children and Families identified him as a suspect in the alleged abuse, neglect and exploitation in the Schiavo case.
While Schiavo has tossed aside his public political agenda, apparently because he has no audience, he hasn’t totally disappeared.
Schiavo himself has been the subject of several disciplinary actions in his employment as a registered nurse in the jail of the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office and became embroiled in the case of Diane Cross, a co-worker who was fired as a result of a complaint filed against her by Schiavo, yet another case of workplace retaliation.
Allegations swirled that Schiavo had fabricated an incident in his own workplace in order to get revenge and retaliate against a fellow co-worker who he thought was “out to get him”, had disrespected him, rejected his advances and had the audacity to tell him point blank that hadn’t agreed with his decision to kill his wife.
Schiavo has an apparent inability to get along with co-workers, suspended for eight hours in March 2007 for his failure to timely report an incident of alleged illegal dispensing of a prescription medication by a co-worker who claimed Schiavo filed a false complaint against her in retaliation and spite.
It’s been revealed that on March 31, 2005, that day that Terri Schiavo died, Michael Schiavo, the “loving” husband who had fought Terri’s parents for years for a court order to stop Terri’s assisted feeding and cause her death, called Diane Cross, his co-worker and former supervisor, from the hospice parking lot to tell her of his wife’s death. This was at the same time he was still living with Jodi Centonze.
Cross said she rejected his advances and disagreed with what Schiavo “did to his wife”. She said he later taunted her that she didn’t send him a sympathy card when Terri died and that she hadn’t sent him a congratulatory message when he remarried.
She said she tried to be friendly and professional. He apparently wanted more.
Rick Brennan, a male co-worker at the jail called Schiavo a slacker and a jackass.
In a fit of anger in September, 2006, six weeks after Cross and Brennan told the nursing supervisor that Schiavo wasn’t “pulling his weight” in performing nursing duties at the jail, Schiavo continued to exhibit his vindictive character, retaliating against his co-workers, filing a complaint against Cross about an incident which he said allegedly occurred in the nursing office last July, resulting in her termination and nearly causing her arrest and that of another nursing supervisor.
Schiavo also caused the demotion of another of his co-workers and the suspensions of two more, claiming that Cross had illegally dispensed a prescription medication to still another fellow registered nurse and clinical supervisor, David Richardson. Cross was ultimately terminated as a result of Schiavo’s complaint.
At least three other complaints that Schiavo filed against his co-workers were marked closed and unfounded. Documents obtained by The North Country Gazette from the sheriff’s office indicate that Schiavo has a history of filing unsubstantiated complaints such as unsuccessfully trying to have Diane Cross criminally charged as well as fired.
Schiavo’s co-workers are continuing to file complaints against him for his belligerent attitude, short temper and abusive behavior according to inter-office memos and reports obtained by The North Country Gazette. In that Michael Schiavo works for a public entity and is paid by taxpayer dollars, there’s no claim of right to privacy about his disciplinary and pay records.
Then, another co-worker uninvolved in the Cross incident turned the tables on Schiavo, accusing him of doing the same thing he accused Cross of doing—illegally dispensing prescription medication, but to a lieutenant in the inmate division who died a short time later in a Pinellas County hospice.
That complaint was dismissed as the primary witness was deceased, effectively blocking any meaningful investigation.
Bernie McCabe and the State Attorney’s office refused to prosecute anyone due to credibility issues involving Schiavo.
Cross appealed her February, 2007 termination, the result of the complaint filed against her by Schiavo, seeking reinstatement to her job at the jail which she had held since 1999, with payment of back wages.
Within hours of the still inexplicable collapse of Terri Schindler Schiavo in 1990 at age 26, Largo criminal attorney Daniel Grieco had quickly steered all control of her care to her husband Michael Schiavo away from her parents at a time when they had no legal advice and were only focused on their daughter’s well being.
During the Cross affair, as accusatory fingers were again being pointed at Michael Schiavo amid allegations that he fabricated an incident in order to get revenge and retaliate against a fellow co-worker who he thinks was “out to get him”, had disrespected him and rejected his advances, he again turned to Grieco who practices criminal law, obviously feeling the need for legal counsel.
Grieco represented Schiavo at a sworn deposition on July 19, 2007, at the jail complex of the Pinellas County Jail where Schiavo is employed.
Less than five minutes into his July 19 deposition in the Cross case, although he’s the one who brought the complaint and had been part of criminal and internal affairs investigations in the matter and had given statements, he claimed he couldn’t remember the July 31, 2006 date, the date he claims Diane Cross allegedly dispensed Robaxin to co-worker David Richardson in a nursing office at the jail.
He had waited nearly two months to report the alleged incident of July 31, 2006, and only did so in a fit of anger directed at Diane Cross. When Cross’ attorney, Matthew Farmer, began to question him about the incident, Schiavo intoned his now infamous “Just to let you know up front, I’m not good with dates and times”.
The administrative hearing in the Cross case was held on Aug. 16, 2007 but Schiavo copped out on testifying in person under oath. Instead his deposition was submitted as his testimony, apparently to lessen the risk of being impeached as his versions of the incidents change virtually every time he recites them such as his versions of what happened the morning of Feb. 25, 1990, when Terri inexplicably sustained oxygen deprivation to her brain, resulting in incapacitating brain injury after a day of argument between them and after she had indicated to friends and family that she wanted to divorce Michael Schiavo.
Throughout the 15 years which preceded Terri Schiavo’s death by dehydration on March 31, 2005 at a Pinellas Park hospice after Schiavo obtained a court order to remove her feeding tube, he repeatedly tried to atone for his conflicting testimony and convenient memory by claiming he had a bad memory although he remembered with amazing clarity, albeit nearly 10 years after her collapse and after he stood to inherit more than a million dollars upon her death, an off-handed conversation which had occurred during a train trip in 1986, more than 13 years earlier.
Earlier this year, the Internal Affairs Division of the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office confirmed and substantiated that Michael Schiavo has been using taxpayer-owned sheriff’s department resources and taxpayer time to engage in public attacks on the Schindler family and others involved in the Schiavo case, to defraud the taxpayers of honest services.
In January, following an investigation of Schiavo, a “clinical supervisor” in the Detentions and Corrections Bureau of the jail, it was verified and confirmed that that Schiavo was improperly using a county owned computer during work hours in violation of sheriff’s department rules and regulations.
For over six months, Schiavo misused government-owned computers during work hours to engage in vicious, abusive public attack against the Schindler family and others involved in the case.
Schiavo certifiably wasted untold hours on the public dole—a prima facie example of waste and inefficiency in the government workplace.
Schiavo, posting under the screen names of “Tom of Saint Petersburg” and “Mike of Saint Petersburg”, has often engaged in a virtual tag team attack on the Schindler family and others with Walter Gay, 62, of Dunedin, Fla.
Gay’s wife, Cynthia, worked as a paralegal for Schiavo’s euthanasia attorney, George Felos, the man who, other than Michael Schiavo, benefited the most financially from the death of Terri Schiavo, both by promoting his ideological agenda and financially. The Gays also financially benefited, recipients of money from Terri’s trust fund that had been created from the proceeds of a malpractice award that was supposed to provide therapy and rehabilitation for the brain injured woman. Instead, Schiavo used the money for legal services to assist him in achieving his wife’s death.
http://www.northcountrygazette.org/2009/01/31/schiavo_dole/
As a licensed health care practitioner, Schiavo’s nursing license is subject to review by the Florida Department of Health for any alleged unprofessional conduct and failure to comply with Florida Statutes and alleged “deceit, dishonesty and misrepresentation”.
The Schiavo case also surfaced this summer during a trial in federal court in New York in a sexual harassment and wrongful termination case brought by a former employee of the New York law firm of Richards Kibbe & Orbe.
The Schiavo case became one of the key issues in the case although the defendants tried diligently to keep it out of court.
One witness for the plaintiff testified that she was fired for allegedly sending a single e-mail to TerriPAC even though she denied sending it and her boss, Jon Kibbe, never produced the allegedly offensive e-mail to her nor provided any proof that the offending e-mail came from her office computer.
A 2006 email written to TerriPAC, Schiavo’s extinct political action committee, became a key in the Lauren Gabel lawsuit when the defendants at RKO tried to use the e-mail to discredit a witness for the plaintiff, another former female employee of the law firm who was fired for sending the e-mail because Kibbe and the firm deemed it violated company policy.
http://www.northcountrygazette.org/2009/07/16/terripac_schiavo/
Gabel, the former director of Finance and Administration at Richards Spears, Kibbe & Orbe LLP, now known as Richards Kibbe & Orbe (RKO), filed suit in U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, in December 2007 alleging that she was wrongfully terminated from her position at the firm in May 2005 after she became a whistleblower about alleged wrongdoing at the firm including a hostile work environment and gender discrimination.
Ten months after Gabel was fired, firm partner Kibbe discharged another RKO
employee who said she could corroborate Gabel’s allegations concerning the firm and its partners.
It what appears to have been a set-up at RKO, that employee was fired in February 2006 for allegedly sending a “threatening and profane” email from her work computer on Feb. 7, 2006, to TerriPAC, apparently in response to a solicitation for contributions to the PAC.
The “smoking” e-mail sent to info@terripac.com and allegedly received by Schiavo’s political consultant Derek Newton carried the subject, “WIMP ASS”.
“Not a f—ing dime would I give you as a killer or your ‘action’ committee”, the e-mail read. “You are a bunch of murdering thugs, and your present ‘wife’ should be frightened to be anywhere near you. You are a liar, cheater, and smegma. I continually hope that some day you will be incapacitated and your present ‘wife’ and ‘children’ will murder you.
“It was not enough to kill this girl, now you want to rape her in the grave. You are truly the lowest form of human debris.
“F–k you and your committee and I will make sure to financially support ONLY those who held and will hold you accountable.
“Once again, f–k you and yours”.
Pleadings in the Gabel case indicate that the email resulted in a complaint by a person from outside the firm who received the threatening and profane email. After what the firm’s general counsel deemed a “full investigation of the claim”, the eight-year employee was terminated based on her firm’s policies regarding the use of electronic mail.
But that employee was never told the name of the person from outside the firm that had filed the complaint although it was likely Newton or perhaps Schiavo himself. So just where is Michael Schiavo publicly, the arrogant narcissist that had pledged to be part of the 2008 election, taking to DailyKos in 2007 saying that he had decided to be part of the 2008 election and that he needed to raise “as much as $50,000 this year alone in order to get ready for 2008. Where’d he go?
Schiavo then disappeared from the campaign trail, disappeared from public view. During the entire 2008 presidential campaign, Schiavo was totally muzzled except for his rants on an internet forum using county owned computers on taxpayer time.
In December, 2007 Roth Talent Associates, now known as The Agency Group, announced the agency was offering Michael Schiavo for speaking engagements, the same agency which promotes George Felos who apparently hasn’t had a speaking engagement in nearly four years. Apparently no one wants to hear what either of them have to say.
Conversely, the Schindler family has a full booking of engagements, both Bobby Schindler and Suzanne Vitadamo, siblings of Terri Schiavo, speaking at events across the country and even in Europe and Mexico, representing the Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation.
It appears there were no takers to hire Michael Schiavo as there have been no speaking engagements publicized for him since he joined the Roth stable of speakers. Both Schiavo and Felos are still listed as being available for speaking engagements, but none have apparently been calendared for either of them.
The North Country Gazette has asked the agency for a list of speaking engagements in the past year for both Schiavo and Felos in addition to the fee they command but the agency failed to respond.
Strange, considering that they both had so much to say when their agenda was to kill a disabled woman. 10-18-09
http://www.northcountrygazette.org/2007/07/24/michael-the-truthschiavo%E2%80%99s-other-woman/
http://www.northcountrygazette.org/2007/10/03/fingers-of-accusation-fuel-schiavo-retaliation/
http://www.northcountrygazette.org/2007/08/25/michael-schiavothen-and-now/
http://www.northcountrygazette.org/2007/10/27/judge-upholds-nurse-termination-on-schiavo-complaint/
http://www.northcountrygazette.org/2009/02/07/schiavo_cyberbully/
http://www.northcountrygazette.org/2009/01/25/cyber_slacker/
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