The Sidebar

UPDATED JULY 12, 2017: Anti-choking device inventor claimed the president of Turkey relies on his invention -- but the product's Turkish distributor says that's "completely lies and fictions...we condemn this ugly news"

If Turkey's brutal president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan chokes on this chicken leg, he'll be treated with the Dechoker, according to the device's inventor

Last week I reported If the U.S. President has a choking emergency, will he be treated with this anti-choking plunger? about this page I found on the website of Dechoker Spain, based in Madrid.


According to Google Translate, here's the headline in English: The Secret Service of the United States protects The President with Dechoker both on land and aboard Air Force One. The identical text is on the photo of President Barack Obama next to Air Force One. On the top right corner is the badge logo of the U.S. Secret Service.

When it comes to accurate reporting, journalists would do well to heed this advice from President Ronald Reagan: Trust, but verify.

And who better to verify than Alan Carver, inventor of the device and CEO of Dechoker LLC in Concord, NC, near Charlotte?

In response to my inquiry, here's what I received from him yesterday. 

From: Alan Carver <acarver@dechoker.com>
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2017 20:37:40 -0400
Subject: Re: blogger inquiry
To: Peter M. Heimlich <peter.heimlich@gmail.com>

Peter,

We just spoke to the Director of Operations in Europe - our units are in the President's house and airplane for the President of Turkey, not the United States. We have asked Dechoker Spain to rectify the statements on their website.

Thank you for the notification.

Best,

Sent from my iPhone

If any members of the security force of Turkey's brutal president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan are reading this, if you're not busy instigating bloody brawls with peaceful protesters, here's a training video featuring Mr. Carver.

Last year The Sidebar was first to report Annabel Melongo's federal lawsuit against Cook County State's Attorneys, Sheriff Tom Dart, and other county officials.

Looks like I'm first again with the amended complaint filed yesterday by Melongo and her attorney Jennifer Bonjean which includes the complete timeline of the case, including the almost two years she spent in jail for posting recordings of benign phone conversations on the Internet, the result of being prosecuted under a statute that has been overturned as unconstitutional by the IL Supreme Court.

The 21-page document also details the roles of Carol J. Spizzirri and her Save-A-Life Foundation (SALF); the organization's relationships with current Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky, and former U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman; ABC7 reporter Chuck Goudie's SALF exposes; the $9 million in tax dollars awarded to SALF; and much more.

Page down to view. Click here to download a copy.

(Circa 2005) Front row: former SALF Director of Communications Ciprina Spizzirri and her mother, Carol J. Spizzirri; Back row: former Maywood, IL mayor Ralph Conner,* former Palatine, IL mayor Rita Mullins, former SALF Public Affairs Representative Dane Neal

The complaint also takes aim at the felony computer tampering charges filed by Spizzirri against Melongo on October 31, 2006. Almost eight years later, that case appears to be headed to court, according to the website tracking Melongo's cases (click and page down).

If/when that case goes to trial, presumably Spizzirri -- who reportedly now lives in a mobile home park in San Marcos, California -- will be obligated to testify.

Click here for a compilation of media reports about the Melongo case.

Click here for a compilation of media reports about Spizzirri and SALF.





* 7/4/14 update: A previous version of this item identified former SALF Operations Director Vince Davis as the cowboy wearing the duster coat in the photo. Yesterday I received an e-mail from Davis -- seen in the video clip below escorting Carol Spizzirri when she freaks out and flees the room mid-interview -- informing me that Mayor Conner (who died in 2010) dressed up as the cowboy. 

I regret the error and I appreciate Davis -- whose June 10, 2007 e-mail about U.S. Sen. Barack Obama helping to fund SALF (see below) -- was reported in a June 25, 2013 Dubuque Telegraph Herald article -- bringing it to my attention -- PMH

This a belated follow-up to my July item, Was Senator Barack Obama "close" to a Chicago nonprofit that's now under state & federal investigations? I've asked the White House.

The idea was to try and verify a thin claim published by the Save-A-Life Foundation (SALF) and by the Huffington Post that, when he served as an IL state senator and as a member of the US Senate, President Obama was a supporter of SALF.

As Sidebar readers know, SALF was a high-flying, politically-connected Chicago-area nonprofit whose wings got clipped in November 2006, when ABC Chicago aired the first of four exposes by I-Team reporter Chuck Goudie. Since then, SALF has been the subject of dozens more critical media reports.

Per The Hill and other news outlets, SALF is being investigated by the IL Attorney General. Per my blog, an executive at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) who moonlighted as SALF's Corporate Treasurer is under review by the CDC - and my congressman, Rob Woodall, is asking questions. There's about $9 million in IL state and federal dollars that may have gone bye-bye

Better yet, there's plenty of sordid human drama centering around SALF's founder/president, Carol J. Spizzirri, a special friend to plenty of politicos and, from the looks of this photo, a dear friend of my parents.

SALF's Carol J. Spizzirri, my father & my mother (sitting)

Back to President Obama, to my knowledge, here's the only published document that mentions him, a 2006 SALF press release:



Like I said, that's wafer-thin evidence, but I figured I'd toss a couple softball questions at the White House and see what happened. Even a denial would give me a cheap headline, à la:

"White House denies claims that President was 'close' to tainted nonprofit"

Truth be told, I assumed I'd simply be ignored. In hindsight, I think I'd have preferred that. 

White House Deputy Press Secretaries Jamie Smith and Josh Earnest (source: PotomacFlacks.com)

Per the correspondence posted below, White House Deputy Press Secretary Jamie Smith wasted hours of my time - and hers - by leading me on a four-month wild goose chase of endless back & forth e-mails. 

Her challenge? To field this pair of slow-motion grounders I tossed at her:

1) Per a Huffington Post article, is it accurate to say that "Barack Obama was close to the Save-A-Life Foundation"? If not, please explain.

2) According to a February 27, 2006 press release:

Save A Life Foundation (SALF) President and Founder Carol Spizzirri recently spoke with U.S. Senator Barack Obama...regarding SALF’s future lifesaving efforts....While in the Illinois legislature together, Obama and current Illinois Senate President Emil Jones were always supportive of SALF’s efforts to train Illinois schoolchildren in life-sustaining skills for free.

Are any parts of the above sentences inaccurate? If so, please explain.

It started off great. White House Deputy Press Secretary Smith promptly agreed to answer my questions.

Cheap headline, here I come!

For the next couple of months, I politely sent follow-up nudges and she promptly sent follow-up replies assuring me that she was working on getting my answers. (Look, I'm aware that I'm a cloutless blogger so I was willing to be patient.)

Then she pulled this 180:

I regret to inform you that we will not be able to accommodate your request.

WTF? Did a White House Deputy Press Secretary just broke what I consider to be Rule Three for every media rep?

Don't make promises you can't keep. 

Based on this memo from her boss Jay Carney (via Lynn Sweet's Chicago Sun-Times column), I'd assumed I was dealing with a pro:

Jamie Smith will join the White House Communications team as Special Assistant to the President and Deputy Press Secretary. In addition to serving as an on-the-record spokesperson for the White House, she will manage the day-to-day operations of our office. An experienced and well-regarded manager and communicator, Jamie is currently Director of Public Affairs for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). Before that, she was Communications Director for U.S. Senator John D. (Jay) Rockefeller IV when he was Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and then Chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee. Smith also served as Traveling Press Director for the Hillary Clinton for President Campaign, Communications Director for former Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright and The Albright Group, and Legislative Aide to Congresswoman Nita M. Lowey.

Those sounded like high-class gigs and quite a few for such a young woman to have held, so I kept my cool and played this hand:

On my blog this week, I intend to report this (more or less) as "White House refuses to answer questions about President Obama's past ties to tainted Illinois nonprofit under federal and state investigations."

If you wish to dispute that characterization, would you please get back to me by the end of today?

Less than an hour later, to my surprise, she put the ball back in play!

Thanks for your reply back. If you can give me a few more days on this, I would appreciate it.

Will respond by week's end.

But those assurances led to - yeah, you guessed it - another two months of phony promises, a family sob story, and then White House Deputy Press Secretary Smith vanished.

I think I know why she's held so many jobs.

But just as bad as wasting my time, she broke Rule Two:

Protect the boss.

That is, now, thanks to her - along with Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin - that makes three prominent Democrats from Illinois who appear to hiding from questions about their relationships with SALF.

Which in my book constitutes a clear cut violation of Rule One:

Get in front of the problem.

Especially with election season just 'round the bend.

In June I reported about an inquiry from Michael P. Goldenberg of Ann Arbor, MI, to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. Goldenberg had questions about a $174,000 contract Duncan arranged when he ran the Chicago Public Schools (CPS).

The money was awarded to the Save-A-Life Foundation (SALF) a Chicago-area nonprofit. Now under investigation by federal and state agencies, SALF has been the subject of dozens of mainstream media exposes, starting with a November 2006 barnburner by ABC7 Chicago that included an interview with Duncan:

One of Illinois' highest profile charities teaches the Heimlich maneuver to children while maneuvering the truth to get money from government and big business.

It's called the Save-A-Life Foundation and is known across Illinois as an organization that teaches schoolchildren how to respond in emergencies. For the past few years, Save-A-Life has received millions of dollars in government funds and corporate donations. An ABC7 I-Team investigation has uncovered a series of misleading claims and deceptive credentials that raise doubts about Save-A-Life's integrity, funding and training.

Save-A-Life officials say they have taught the Heimlich maneuver and other first aid techniques to more than 1 million schoolchildren since 1995. They claim to have taught nearly 70,000 children how to save a life in the Chicago Public Schools this year alone.

On the Save-A-Life website, the organization promotes itself with a cartoon character of Schools' CEO Arne Duncan, who acts as an animated pitchman.

...Schools CEO Arne Duncan says it seems unlikely that (the) organization could have taught the number of students they claim.

With a developing mess that may involve President Obama - the Huffington Post reported that he was "close" to SALF, an allegation for which a White House press officer has promised me a response - you might think Duncan would provide a prompt and unequivocal denial.

But four months after Goldenberg's letter, the Ed Sec hasn't made a peep.

Gerald W. Bracey, 1940-2009

Instead, evasive, play-dumb e-mails from a Department of Education Communications Director seem to bolster concerns raised two years ago by the late education critic Jerry Bracey in his final column, The Skeleton in Arne Duncan's Closet.

Halloween season is an appropriate time to talk about rattling skeletons in the closet. US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan appears to have a noisy one dating from his years running the Chicago Public Schools.

Her name is Carol J. Spizzirri.

A little background. Spizzirri is a convicted shoplifter. According to a sworn affidavit by her ex-husband, a court ordered psychological evaluation diagnosed her as a paranoid schizophrenic and pathological liar. Spizzirri claimed to be a registered nurse and a renal specialist. Her alma mater, now defunct, denied giving her an RN and reportedly she has never been a registered nurse in either Wisconsin or Illinois, as she had claimed. One of her daughters filed a protective order against her because of alleged abuse.

From Where Did the Save-A-Life Money Go? by Don Bauder, San Diego Reader, November 17, 2010:

Arne Duncan, then the chief executive officer of the Chicago Public Schools, now United States Secretary of Education, had lauded what the foundation was doing for the schools and effused, "Carol [Spizzirri] is one of my heroes."

Here's his hero storming out mid-interview when ABC7 I-Team reporter Chuck Goudie challenged claims made in SALF's fundraising and promotional materials about the Labor Day 1992 death of her 18-year-old daughter, Christina Pratt:



Shortly before her death, the girl filed a protective order against her mother who she claimed had struck her "on several occasions and threatened her on many occasions."

Via the Chicago Tribune:

(SALF founder/president Carol) Spizzirri launched a nonprofit organization dedicated to teaching children emergency response techniques, raising at least $8.6 million in federal and state grants for her Save-A-Life Foundation...(Spizzirri) estimates 2 million children took the classes, many of them from the Chicago Public Schools.

However, in response to a federal court subpoena and public records requests, CPS can't produce any training records.

SALF's now under investigation by the Illinois Attorney General and by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC awarded SALF about $3.33 million, money that SALF told the CDC was used to train public school students in Chicago and Milwaukee. But the Milwaukee Schools don't have any records either.

According to a letter from the office of the Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services, the CDC is supposed to be looking into the role of Douglas R. Browne, a CDC Deputy Director who moonlighted as SALF's Corporate Treasurer according to an article in The Hill.

Duncan arranged a two-year contract with Spizzirri in which her organization was supposed to provide first aid training for 18,000 students during school years 2004/05 and 2005/06. Duncan signed off on $49,000 from the CPS coffers and Ronald McDonald House Charities kicked in another $125,000, a total of $174,000 handed to SALF.

Arne Duncan, Carol J. Spizzirri, and you-know-who (circa 2005)

But like I said, CPS has no records for the program. Further, in response to a public records request I filed for all training records associated with SALF's phantom CPS/McDonald's program, CPS handed the dirty diaper to Duncan:

The Chicago Public Schools does not have any responsive documents to your April 29, 2011 request. The schools who received training from the Save A Life Foundation were selected by members of the former CPS Chief Education Officer’s Office.

Which brings us back to Michael Goldenberg's inquiry.

Michael P. Goldenberg

Goldenberg, who's spent his career in public education, posted his letter to Arne on his blog and included a link to my web page, Did Arne Duncan unknowingly help a bogus nonprofit rip off $174,000 from the Chicago Schools & McDonald's Charities?

Goldenberg wanted to know if the former Chief Education Officer of the Chicago Schools thought the current Inspector General of the Chicago Schools should investigate the $174,000 contract Duncan arranged for SALF. In a follow-up, Goldenberg asked if Duncan had a financial relationship with SALF.

Answering those questions should be easy dunks for a White House cabinet member and a former basketball pro.

Apparently not. After months of promises and foot-dragging by Duncan's office, Goldenberg received this non-answer:

Date: Fri, 12 Aug 2011 15:35:49 -0500
From: "Dorfman, Cynthia" <Cynthia.Dorfman@ed.gov>
Subject: Your letter to Secretary Duncan
To: "mikegold@umich.edu" <mikegold@umich.edu>
 
Dear Mr. Goldenberg,
 
We received your letter to Secretary Duncan regarding the SALF program in Chicago Public Schools. Since the Secretary is no longer affiliated with the school system in Chicago, your best source of information is the school system itself. They would have all the records and data.
 
Sincerely,

Cynthia Dorfman
Director of Regional Communications and Outreach 

Goldenberg copied me on his correspondence and since he was being sandbagged, I thought I'd give it a go. From the e-mail I sent last week to Ms. Dorfman:

(On my blog) I intend to report that Mr. Duncan and you would not answer any of Mr. Goldenberg's questions including whether or not Mr. Duncan had a financial relationship with SALF. If you wish to dispute that characterization and/or provide further information or clarification, please get back to me no later than Wednesday, October 5.

It took a couple of phone messages and follow-up e-mails for her to finally send me this piffle:

Mr. Heimlich, I was (sic) responding to your emails and voice mail to let you know that I don't have any information about this issue.

But I don't fault Ms. Dorfman.

She's just stuck with the crummy task of having to cover for a boss who apparently doesn't want anyone going into his basement where - if you listen - you might hear a $174,000 skeleton moaning and rattling its chains.






"Dear Arne" letter from Carol Spizzirri + grant request for year 2 of SALF's CPS/McDonald's program

"Dear Carol" letter from Arne Duncan approving year 2 of SALF/Ronald McDonald House program

UPDATE: On August 7, I received an e-mail from Deputy White House Press Secretary Jamie Smith informing me that she was checking on my inquiry (copied below) and would get back to me ASAP.

Last month, the Huffington Post published Save A Life Foundation Connection Delays (Gery Chico's) Appointment To State Board Of Ed by staff reporter Will Guzzardi that included:

(Chico) wasn't the only one to support SALF: politicians as formidable as Barack Obama and Arne Duncan were close to the group.

Arne Duncan & Carol Spizzirri, 9/2/06 (source)

Per my web page, for years Duncan was indeed close to SALF.

Reportedly he even called SALF founder/president Carol J. Spizzirri "one of my heroes."

Based on the information published last November in the San Diego Reader, you'd think Duncan, now US Secretary of Education, might have set the bar higher.

Spizzirri was a darling of politicians and bureaucrats, although it was a matter of record that she had been convicted twice for shoplifting.

...(It) wasn’t until November of 2006 that ABC 7 News in Chicago, in the first of several broadcasts, exposed more of Spizzirri’s untruthful statements. She had told the station that she was a registered nurse. But the station reported that the institution from which she had claimed to receive her nursing degree had never given her one. A hospital in which she had claimed to be a transplant nurse said she had been a patient care assistant, which is akin to a candy striper.

After the announcer challenged her on the assertion that the accident was a hit-and-run, she walked out of the interview.

Here's that exit scene - take note of the man who leads her off camera.



What about Barack Obama? Was he "close" to SALF, which is reportedly under investigation by the Illinois Attorney General and apparently also by at least one federal agency?

To my knowledge, such a claim is unsupported by the record.

In the HuffPo article, clicking the link attached to his name takes you to this web page from SALF's now-defunct site.



Not much here except some hype about a phone call between Spizzirri and US Senator Obama, and this:

While in the Illinois legislature together, Obama and current Illinois Senate President Emil Jones were always supportive of SALF’s efforts to train Illinois schoolchildren in life-sustaining skills for free.

That's true about Sen. Jones (now retired), who's been called Obama's political "godfather."

For example, on its 2004 & 2005 IRS filings, SALF identified Jones as being on their board.

 
But that's Senator Jones, not his pupil.

Without question, the most intriguing (and potentially damning) allegation originates from Annabel Melongo, a former SALF employee who since April 2010 has been imprisoned in Cook County Jail on a $300,000 bond.

Annabel Melongo

The charge? Two counts of eavesdropping.

Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez - who, as reported by the NY Times, has a history of abusive prosecutions using the same dubious law - alleges Melongo committed the heinous act of uploading recordings of two mundane phone calls she had with a court clerk to her now-defunct website.


Tax watchdogs and political opponents may also start adding up the megabucks the spendthrift Alvarez and her co-operative judges are costing county taxpayers in pursuit of such pointless prosecutions.

To the discredit of Chicago media, Melongo's story has gone unreported except by a few bloggers, one of whom received a July 6, 2010 letter in which she wrote:

In my subpoenas, there was no direct email between Obama and Carol Spizzirri. However there’s a manager, Vince Davis, who told employees, through an email, about Obama sponsoring a bill to fuel $10 million or so, I don’t recall the exact amount, to the organization. That was the only and first time I ever saw Obama’s name mentioned in the SALF saga. The email in question was sent in response to employees panicking in the wake of the November 16, 2006 ABC investigative report.

If that turns to be true, then it’s a big story in itself.

Indeed. But I've twice asked Melongo to provide me with a copy of the alleged e-mail and twice she's refused.

In an attempt to separate fact from rumor, this week I tried to obtain some answers.

Kori Schulman

On Monday I phoned the White House switchboard, identified myself as a blogger and was steered to a woman named Kori Schulman. We had a pleasant chat during which she explained that my inquiry didn't fall into her job responsibility, but she courteously offered to forward my e-mail to an appropriate staffer in the White House press office.

My e-mail's copied below. In a future post, I'll let you know what happens.

Meanwhile, if anyone wants to ask Vince Davis for a copy of the alleged $10 million e-mail, here's his LinkedIn page.

Vince Davis

If Davis looks familiar, it may be because he's the guy who interrupted the ABC7 interview with Carol Spizzirri and escorted her off camera.

 
my 7/25/11 inquiry to the White House re: Barack Obama's relationship to the Save-A-Life Foundation

7/6/10 letter to blogger from inmate Annabel Melongo re: Save-A-Life Foundation, IL politicians, etc.