QUE SERA’ SERA’
As I keep saying in this space , Long Island never lets you down. No matter how smooth everything appears on the surface of its daily life, in a corner somewhere some hugger-mugger is going on that would make the angels weep if only they knew about it. The latest secret scandal involves none other than New York’s senior Senator, the honorable Charles Schumer.
The senator’s little intrigue blew up on him this week when ten Filipino contract nurses were upheld in a lawsuit filed against them by their former employer for walking off their jobs in Smithtown in April 2006. In addition to the lawsuit the District Attorney had filed a criminal case against them for supposedly endangering the patients in the nursing home involved.
The nurses charged that all this came from their employer, SentosaCare, using its influence with Schumer and the D.A. to stack the deck against them for rebelling against illegal working conditions imposed on them in violation of the contracts they had made with Sentosa in the Philippines prior to being shipped to Long Island to work.
The case is now over with the nurses being fully vindicated civilly and criminally by the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court. The court ordered the sitting judge and the district attorney to terminate their connection with the case and close it down. The court found that no patients were endangered by the walk-off, since other care providers were on the spot and also that prosecution of their lawyer for his part in it was a violation of the First Amendment and the whole system of American justice.
The abuse of the nurses is not exactly a surprise on Long Island, where there have been a number of incidents of workers imported from Asia and in some cases used literally as slaves for the people who arranged their immigration. The nurses weren’t that badly off, but they were still victimized and probably would have continued to be if it were left to Senator Schumer, the alleged friend of the working man. He wrote no less than four letters to the president of the Philippines to get him to lift his government’s suspension of Ventosa’s license to recruit nurses there. Eventually it was lifted. What part Schumer played in getting D.A. Spota of Suffolk County to pile on with criminal charges against the nurses is not known.
What is known is that Schumer, the chairman of the Democrats’ Senatorial election committee, collected $75,000 in campaign contributions from people associated with Sentosa. The newspaper reports don’t mention anything about anyone suing Sentosa, Spota or Schumer for their actions in the case, but no one would be surprised if it happened. Especially President-elect Obama wouldn’t be surprised. He’s getting used to his party comrades getting themselves into trouble. His choice for Treasury secretary is a chap who admits he underpaid his taxes for several years, but it was all just an “honest mistake.” It’s certainly a relief to hear that. I mean, suppose he had said it was a “dishonest mistake.” Maybe the nominee for Health and Human Services Secretary will astonish the world by saying this. He’s got tax troubles too. Unlike Mr. Geithner, the Treasury hopeful, he doesn’t appear to have nanny-tax problems as well.
After them we come to the name of Gov. Richardson of New Mexico who was to be nominated for Commerce Secretary but has now disqualified himself because of an investigation into his relations with financial companies doing business with his state. The only remaining controversy is over the nominee for Attorney General, Mr. Eric Holder, who was key in the last-minute pardon given to Marc Rich, the international swindler, and Democratic contributor, by the Clinton White House when leaving office in 2001.
That’s four Cabinet jobs out of a possible fourteen where the nominees are jammed up for one reason or another.