California is the Torch and the Powder Keg…
Opinion by Consumer Advocate Tim Bolen
After my last article called “Strike Two,” I was bombarded with comments, only one of which was negative – and that, of course, was from one of the California Coalition for Health Choice (CCHC) drolls – those that LOST the campaign in the California legislature so grandiosely. And that person was too embarrassed to send it to me directly. I had to have it forwarded by an ally who thought I could use a laugh.
But let’s move on. Almost everyone in the “No on SB277” campaign wants to come up with a winning strategy. The conversations about my article I viewed on the Awake California FaceBook page were energized, and these people “get” where I was trying to send them. I watched days of conversations between very intelligent people figuring out the details of a statewide (perhaps worldwide) foundation based on a simple “proposed” organizational premise. Read, just below, what guide they were using:
A “Victory” supposition – Suppose, for the moment, that “Victory” could be defined as “Educating the public, and the government, so that they understood why Exemptions are necessary for vaccines.” Where would we start? In an ORGANIZED CAMPAIGN we’d put a statewide program to make the REAL dangers of vaccines known to as many people as possible, and we’d have a consistent message, a delivery system, goals and objectives, and ways to monitor progress. We’d know who was going to do what. Everybody involved would perform the role they chose. Meetings would be held to monitor progress and ongoing problems.
Honest to God – the hair stood up on the back of my neck because the thinking, and planning, was so good. Of course I have to give credit to Karri Lewis and her admins for the way they set up, and maintain, the Awake California Facebook discussions. But, the responses were superb.
Awake California – unlike the group that LOST the original fight in the California legislature over passage of SB277, CCHC’s FaceBook page, welcomes original subjects, commentary, and questions. CCHC would not, and did not, allow any new material – only THEY could start a discussion. Then, if someone, in their restrictive view, asked the wrong question, or made a comment they didn’t like, they BANNED them immediate, and permanently. Then they wondered why more people didn’t show up at the State Capitol. My guess – these CCHC dummies lost 75% of the available volunteers.
Health Freedom people – In a Way, It Is Our Fault That The New Activists Don’t Have Campaign Organizational Skills..
Here in California, we, in the Health Freedom Movement, won all of our battles so long ago, and there were no new issues to fight, we all went home and got old. I walk by a store window these days, see a reflection, and say “who the hell is THAT?”
I had a conversation, the other day, with Washington DC attorney, and fellow Health Freedom Activist, Jim Turner, and said “Jim, we’re the old people now… There is no generation older than us.” To put Jim Turner into perspective, Jim is one of the original “Nader’s Raiders…” I’ll bet there are young people reading this, who have no idea who Ralph Nader, and what he, and his raiders, did. Call your grandmother. She knows…
Rather than re-write an explanation of the war in California to get what’s called “Alternative Medicine” protected, I am going to just below, place an excerpt from an earlier article. Here is what is important – WE, the California Health Freedom movement ground away at the establishment for EIGHT YEARS before we finally won – and got everything we needed. We started organizing in 1996, and finally got our protective bills all passed by 2004… But, what we did is now the law of the land. And, what happened in California travelled all across the country.
Our battle surrounded the effort by Big Pharma to stamp out “Alternative Medicine” (non-drug practitioners) by using State licensing boards to harass them, remove their licenses to practice, imprison them, or what-ever. We took them on in, virtually every State, and to be very BLUNT, we whipped their asses. Thoroughly. Then we went and drank some wine with dinner.
The organized group that coordinated the anti-alternative medicine campaign for Big Pharma called itself “the Quackbusters,” stealing the title from the “Ghostbusters” movie fame. These days the “Quackbusters” are pretty much gone. They were stomped into the ground. The last remnant, Stephen Barrett (I call him “Captain Screwloose”), and his sleazy “Quackwatch” website offerings, are being sued into oblivion in Federal Court, right now, by my friends over at Doctor’s Data Laboratories. I wrote almost sixty articles, so far, over that lawsuit. Why? There a lot of health professionals, still around, that suffered greatly at Barrett’s hand. They make up a significant part of my readership – and enjoy, very much, reading about the systematic grinding-up of Barrett and his cronies in that federal court case. If you were to click here, you’d go to one of the latest articles about the case – on the right, in that article, is a box of links to all of the articles. Here is the excerpt…
How We Did It in California…
Any problem, large or small, can be handled with simple crisis management techniques: Identify Problems, Identify Possible Solutions, Make Plans, Execute Plans, Review Situation. First, of course, Goals and Objectives need to be set in place.
There were a lot of problems in California, but, in short, the quackbusters, literally, controlled health care thinking in the state. It was obvious that in order to get anywhere the quackbusters would have to be ripped from their influence positions. So we did that.
It was easier than we first thought, to do that, for the quackbusters played right into our hands. Their arrogance was legendary, and it worked very well for us. Once we solved the first problem, legislation to protect our cutting-edge people was easy. There were many pieces of legislation carried, but two bills passed – SB1691 (2004) for licensed practitioners and SB 577 (2002) for unlicensed practitioners, that pretty much solved the issues.
But, getting to the legislation, and making it sail through both houses and into the Governor’s hands took a lot of set-up, using a lot of dedicated, team-playing, people. Nice people.
The first step was to quietly, and sometimes not-so-quietly, point out to California legislative, and otherwise, leadership just exactly how sleazy, and downright rotten-at-the-core, the quackbuster operation actually was (and is). Probably the best example was the organized assault on the National Council Against Health Fraud’s (NCAHF) citadel at Loma Linda University. The California team simply attended, en-masse, one of then NCAHF President William Jarvis PhD’s anti-AltMed Cancer productions, provoked the nitwit into calling security to have them removed, and then complained loudly, in writing, to Loma Linda Administration. Loma Linda University then ousted the NCAHF from its campus – very publicly . Of course, key California legislators were made aware of this occurrence. And that was Strike One.
Then the California group began to attend the California Medical Board meetings – en masse, and we brought the media. TV cameras, and newspaper reporters, climbing over each other – and we choreographed all of it – as our speakers, as many as 300 at one time, assailed the Board over their prosecution of cutting-edge practitioners. The Board Staff was terrified and brought in bludgeon carrying cops to line the walls when we were there. More, we pointed out that REAL bad doctors were being ignored by the Board Staff, and two of the State’s major newspapers were fed a constant stream of horror stories – which they printed. Part of our group constantly besieged the Board Staff with questions like “How often do staff members confer with Stephen Barrett? Do you have a training manual to go after cutting-edge practitioners? Who wrote it? Of course, key California legislators were made aware of these occurrences. And that was Strike Two.
The California Medical Board v Robert Sinaiko MD case became our cause célèbre. It was interesting that Robert Sinaiko MD was not an Alt Med practitioner, and, in fact, had never heard of Alt Med practitioners, until he was accused of being one, and was prosecuted for it – and lost his license for being one. In an earlier article, back in 2003 I had written:
“Alfredo Terrazas was the State of California Attorney General prosecutor in the Sinaiko case. “T-Rex” as he was labeled by the Sinaiko strategy team, hissed in the courtrooms. His presentation was right out of the quackbuster playbook – all name calling, short on facts, long on falsehood and misrepresentation.
Sinaiko’s attorney, in an official complaint to California State authorities had pointed to Terrazas’s courtroom antics, where Terrazas had claimed that Sinaiko was “practicing junk science, voodoo medicine, pseudo-science — that is to say chronic fatigue syndrome is voodoo science — selling a bogus treatment, aggressive, loose cannon.” He diagnosed Dr. Sinaiko and says he suffers from delusions, paranoia, grandiosity, he has persecutory delusions; “if we are not careful, he will mutate his present form of medicine in some other form of quackery. He endangers the public. He is insidious, he uses junk science…” Typical quackbuster blatherings.
The Sinaiko case, of course, starting in 1996, had gone through the administrative hearing process, and on to the OLD appointed board – where of course, the quackbuster mentality had influence. They took his license…
But in California – we simply went on to the next step – appeal. Sinaiko supporters not only raised the money, but they raised public consciousness about the attack on Sinaiko. They made alliances with others groups. Bob Sinaiko has the support, in his case, from not only the California and North American Health Freedom movement, but from the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), the Union of American Physicians and Dentists (UAPD), the California Medical Association (CMA), the Center for Public Interest Law (CPIL), and his patients. Amicus briefs (friend of the court) have been filed by most of the organizations that support Sinaiko.
The quackbusters didn’t have a chance. They won the first battle, and died in the war”.
We played the Sinaiko case right at California legislators – and that tactic worked well. The top leaders in both houses began to carry our legislation. And that was Strike Three.
And, in California, the quackbusters were Out, Out, Out...
1996? I was a fresh, and sparkly, 53 year-old, back-packing the Sierras for a fun vacation with my wife. Ah, the good old days. What grey hair? The description of activities, above, was just a taste of what we were up to. We, the Health Freedom people in California, were everywhere – and we were fearsome. We won EVERY battle. And we had fun. And, there were groups in just about every State.
But, in California, and nationwide, we were, master strategists and tacticians. As a group, we came out of nowhere, huge and angry, and struck at Big Pharma’s structures, and burned them like General “Sherman’s March to the Sea” in the American Civil War. What made us that way? The earlier campaigners, now all in Heaven I’m sure, trained us to be brutal, but trained us…
So, the trouble in California is that we won too well, and got comfortable. We didn’t train the next generation how to street fight. Not a one of them knows what “campaign brass-knuckles” are, so-to-speak, and wouldn’t know how to put them on their hand, and where to hit their opponent with them, repeatedly.
Where’s Our Health Freedom Expo When We Need it?
Back in 2005 the first Health Freedom Expo was launched in a hotel by the Los Angeles Airport. Then it was moved to the Long Beach Convention Center. I remember having lunch with my friend Wendell Whitman who was planning the event months before. The whole thing was a success right from the start. The national Health Freedom groups used the Expo as a gathering place. The hallways were alive with people from the various State, and single issue groups, greeting each other with delight. It was, to me, almost like the Kennedy era of high energy and enthusiasm.
Julie Whitman Kline, who took over operation of the event after Wendell died, decided to postpone the event for a few years. Now, we need something like that again, here in California. Why? One three-day weekend meeting between our older, experienced, activists, and the newer, younger untrained warriors, and we’d have another forty years of trained, no-nonsense, campaign planners, figuring out how to change issues.
So, of course, I’m making phone calls. Yes, it is necessary to get the “No on SB277” leadership together very soon. But, I have to say, a three-day, high-energy, Health Freedom Expo, that already has twelve (12) to fifteen (15) thousand attendees would be a real eye opener for new California anti-mandatory-vaccine activists thinking morose thoughts right about now. And, the training classes on how to design whole campaigns, and perform campaign details…
An event like that could easily train 5,000 activists in three days. (Sigh).
So, What needs to Happen Next?
Let’s talk, for a moment, about how I learned to organize campaigns. I found out, long ago, that getting people together over emotional political issues, especially personal, or family member, involved health care issues, like Cancer, Lyme Disease, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, ALS, Autism, or an assault on health professionals that successfully deal with those issues not using drugs, involves the activities of self-starters, creatives, innovators, and people who, in a crisis, or on a daily basis, can, and do, think-outside-of the-box. Attorneys like that are dangerous. Activists like that learn to hide those tells when they meet with what is going to be opposition. Not predators, per se, but those that can, and do, hunt predators.
I don’t even have to look for them in a campaign, for when I walk in the door for the first meeting there are all those sharp eyes immediately appraising me, watching my body language, asking seemingly innocent questions, which those of us with perception, recognize, instantly, as anything but innocent… Campaigners who come to play to win and are, instantly, analyzing potential allies.
With those people you don’t set up an authoritarian structure, telling them what to do. You tell them what needs to be done, what allies you have found for them, and give them a rough idea when something needs to be done by. Then you give them your secret phone number in case they have a question. And, give them room.
The problem with FaceBook, as an organizing tool, is that you don’t get to see the look in someone’s eyes. Nor, that soft smile that appears, when one hunter recognizes another.
Literature speaks of King Arthur and the Roundtable without really delving into the sociological aspects of a roundtable type organization – where you have a table of self-reliant, fully competent, self-starters. In short, when you have an organization of these type of people you don’t have a president – you have a coordinator. And, you set up, for everything involved, a system using what’s called “Transformational Leadership.”
Then you step back, and go organize the next phase. This one is already moving quite well, thank you.
What is “Transformational Leadership?”
I really dislike quoting Wikipedia at all, for in everything health care, they formally have their community head stuffed up their own rectum. Nothing in their health care sections is usable. But here, their definition of “Transformational Leadership” is pretty close to what I learned to use, and modified for specific campaigns:
Transformational leadership is a style of leadership where the leader collaborates with employees to identify the needed change, creating a vision to guide the change through inspiration, and executing the change in tandem with committed members of the group.[1] It also serves to enhance the motivation, morale, and job performance of followers through a variety of mechanisms; these include connecting the follower’s sense of identity and self to the project and the collective identity of the organization; being a role model for followers in order to inspire them and raise their interest in the project; challenging followers to take greater ownership for their work, and understanding the strengths and weaknesses of followers, allowing the leader to align followers with tasks that enhance their performance.
If you were to adjust this definition to fit a campaign organization instead of a company with employees, you are 95% there. The members of the roundtable are the Transformational Leaders. Read this:
According to Bass,[6] transformational leadership encompasses several different aspects, including:
- Emphasizing intrinsic motivation and positive development of followers
- Raising awareness of moral standards
- Highlighting important priorities
- Fostering higher moral maturity in followers
- Creating an ethical climate (share values, high ethical standards)
- Encouraging followers to look beyond self-interests to the common good
- Promoting cooperation and harmony
- Using authentic, consistent means
- Using persuasive appeals based on reason
- Providing individual coaching and mentoring for followers
- Appealing to the ideals of followers
- Allowing freedom of choice for followers
As you can imagine I’ve been looking through the FaceBook pages for hunters, throwing out the occasional challenge, and observing reactions. What did I find? A whole State full… There are other ways than looking them in the eye, to find the natural leaders a campaign needs. Sometimes you throw out an idea. Sometimes you just ask a question.
A whole lot of people are getting phone calls, or messages, from me. What am I looking for? You saw the description above. California is a HUGE State in more ways then one. Besides being HUGE geographically, it is also a HUGE “state of mind.” We need, simply, to cover all those bases.
Did I say “simply?” Yes, I did… It’s called “organization.”
A Lot is Happening in the Background…
The big push by what I call the Vaccine Construction to make vaccines mandatory, silly as it sounds, took most of us, that operate on a national level, by surprise. No one thought they would be that stupid, because by waking up the sleeping giant of America, they were, in essence, setting up their own gallows. Groups like the mega-greedy, power mad, Vaccine Construction should have taken a history course that included what happened during the French Revolution from 1789 to 1799. There, the French people, rose up against the monarchy/royalty government that was oppressing them. The French citizenry, literally, put guillotines on carts, pulled those carts around, from town to town, dragged the Royals out of their homes, and, literally, chopped off their heads.
But, it took a long while for the French people to get that angry, and to get organized. But, when they did, they acted fast, and changed the course of history worldwide. We are due for that, perhaps in a less bloody way, perhaps not.
For sure it is time to go by State Health Department management locations, and drag all those bought off by a Lexus, Audi A6, Infiniti, Mercedes Benz, BMW reward system in to the light, and point out what, exactly, they got to sell out our children’s futures, by blatantly ignoring vaccine damage in their policy decisions.
There is a process going on in America right now. Vaccines are the catalyst. I think it resembles this below:
“The French Revolution (French: Révolution française [ʁevɔlysjɔ̃ fʁɑ̃sɛːz]) was a period of far-reaching social and political upheaval in France that lasted from 1789 until 1799, and was partially carried forward by Napoleon during the later expansion of the French Empire. The Revolution overthrew the monarchy, established a republic, experienced violent periods of political turmoil, and finally culminated in a dictatorship by Napoleon that rapidly brought many of its principles to Western Europe and beyond. Inspired by liberal and radical ideas, the Revolution profoundly altered the course of modern history, triggering the global decline of absolute monarchies while replacing them with republics. Through the Revolutionary Wars, it unleashed a wave of global conflicts that extended from the Caribbean to the Middle East. Historians widely regard the Revolution as one of the most important events in human history.[1][2][3]“
And, California is the torch, and the powder keg.
Stay tuned.
Tim Bolen – Consumer Advocate