Romney Associates Color His World

[Ursus]

With all the latest hubbub re. Romney Aide Jay Garrity predilection's for police paraphernalia, not to mention the questionable character of some of Romney's other associates, it is clear that Romney needs his own thread.

See also here for link to Romney fundraiser Robert Lichfield's antics.
http://wwf.fornits.com/viewtopic.php?t=21918

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http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,286152,00.html
Romney Aide Takes Leave Amid Allegations He Impersonated a Law Enforcement Officer
Friday , June 22, 2007
AP

BOSTON —  An ever-present aide to Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney took a leave of absence Friday after he became the subject of investigations in two states for allegedly impersonating a law enforcement officer.

His attorney denied the charges.

Jay Garrity, who serves as director of operations and is constantly at the side of the former Massachusetts governor, is accused of leaving a lengthy message with the answering service of a plumbing company on Mother's Day, identifying himself as "Trooper Garrity" of the Massachusetts State Police and complaining about erratic driving by a company driver.

Click to Hear Romney Aide's Call from MyFoxBoston.com.

The district attorney in Boston is investigating the call, which was tape recorded by an after-hours operator. Impersonating an officer is a misdemeanor charge carrying a fine of up to $400 and one year imprisonment.

"Listening to the message, it sounded like he was calling control and speaking back and forth to people," said Dot Barme, whose Burlington company, Wayne's Drains, received the call. "I had my husband listen to it and he said, 'He's not talking to anybody; he's talking back and forth to himself," Barme told The Associated Press.

Stephen Jones, an attorney representing Garrity, said his client did not make the May 13 call, first reported by The Boston Globe, and has no connection with the cell phone to which it was traced.

"He has insisted since he's heard about this to have a voice analysis done to exonerate him or prove he did not do this," Jones said.

Jake Wark, spokesman for Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley, confirmed the investigation.

"We're looking into a phone call placed to an area business by an individual who represented himself as a state trooper," Wark said. "We do not believe the person who made that call is a state trooper and we are working to determine his identity."

Meanwhile, Garrity also has been accused of telling a New York Times reporter who had been following Romney's motorcade in New Hampshire last month that he had run the license plate of the reporter's rental car, and that he should break away from the caravan.

The New Hampshire attorney general's office is investigating that incident after the reporter, Mark Leibovich, recounted the May 29 events in a story about Romney last weekend. New Hampshire law prohibits citizens from accessing the state's license plate database.

"Jay has taken a leave of absence from the campaign to address these complaints," said Romney spokesman Kevin Madden.

Jones, the Garrity attorney, disputed the sequence of events. Leibovich has stood by his version of the story.

In 2004, Garrity was cited and fined by Massachusetts officials after a Ford Crown Victoria registered to him was found to have lights, a siren, radios and other law enforcement equipment — including a baton — after it was parked illegally in Boston's North End. At the time, Garrity was paid $75,000 annually as Romney's gubernatorial chief of operations.

[Ursus]

LINK to Boston.com Article
Romney aide is the focus of probe
Allegedly acted as State Police trooper
By Stephanie Ebbert and Scott Helman, Globe Staff  |  June 22, 2007

State Police are investigating one of Mitt Romney's top campaign aides for allegedly impersonating a trooper by calling a Wilmington company and threatening to cite the driver of a company van for erratic driving, according to two law enforcement sources familiar with the probe.

Jay Garrity, who is director of operations on Romney's presidential campaign and a constant presence at his side, became the primary target of the investigation, according to one of the sources, after authorities traced the cellphone used to make the call back to him. The investigation comes three years after Garrity, while working for Romney in the State House, was cited for having flashing lights and other police equipment in his car without proper permits.

The New Hampshire attorney general, according to the Associated Press, has also opened an investigation into a report that a Romney aide, later identified as Garrity, pulled over a New York Times reporter in New Hampshire and said he had run his license plate.

New Hampshire law prohibits private citizens from accessing license plate databases or pulling over fellow citizens.

In the phone call to the Wilmington company, which was recorded by an answering service and obtained by the Globe, a man who identifies himself as "Trooper Garrity with the Massachusetts State Police" complains about the driving of a van owned by Wayne's Drains Middlesex Sewers of Wilmington. The caller repeatedly says he is a trooper and questions when the driver will return to the office.

"I'm going to get the address of your company," the caller says during the May 13 call. "I'm going to come down to your company. I'm going to personally issue this driver a citation for both speeding, driving erratic, cutting across."

"The whole thing was just hinky," said Wayne Barme, owner of the Wilmington drain and sewer cleaning company, whose wife, Dot, contacted State Police after receiving the complaint.

Romney campaign spokesman Kevin Madden said that he was unaware of any investigation and that he could not comment further because Garrity was not working for the campaign the day of the call.

"It's not related to any actions or duties that were performed as a campaign employee," Madden said.

Messages left for Garrity through the campaign were not immediately returned.

Jake Wark, a spokesman for Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley, confirmed that there is an "open and active" investigation into the phone call.

"I can confirm that there is an investigation into a phone call made by an individual representing himself as a state trooper," Wark said. "At this time, and in light of the evidence we have reviewed, we do not believe that that individual was a state trooper."

A State Police spokesman would not confirm that there is an investigation. He said no one by Garrity's name had been arrested or received a summons.

Another spokesman said that there is no Trooper Garrity at the E4 Tunnel Barracks, the barracks the caller named when speaking to Wayne's Drains.

The charge of impersonating an officer, a misdemeanor, carries a penalty of a fine of up to $400 or up to one year in prison.

As he did in the State House when Romney was governor, Garrity plays the role of gatekeeper on the presidential campaign. Frequently seen in a pressed suit with a coiled earpiece in his ear and a microphone tucked into his sleeve, he shadows Romney at his public campaign appearances, shuttles him from event to event, and carefully monitors Romney's dealings with the public and the media trailing the campaign.

This week, Romney's campaign denied that the Times reporter's license had been checked or that his vehicle was pulled over. The reporter, Mark Leibovich, is sticking by his report.

In the Massachusetts incident, the purported trooper says in the call that he was driving through the Ted Williams Tunnel and was unable to pull over the driver who was cutting off cars.

Later, he adds: "Unfortunately, I could not catch up with him, but I did witness him driving like a maniac through the tunnel, cutting off vehicles, and I just had the Mass. Pike department of video surveillance go through the video so I could pull the license plate number and the company name off this vehicle."

Barme's wife contacted the State Police and provided the caller's cellphone number, which has since been disconnected.

In 2004, the Globe reported, Garrity was cited and fined for driving a Crown Victoria with red and blue lights mounted in the grill, a siren, a PA system, and strobe lights; and for having a nightstick and identification showing a State Police patch that read "Official Business."

Garrity was also cited for having windows that were more deeply tinted than state law permits.

Suzanne Smalley, Andrea Estes, and Jonathan Saltzman of the Globe staff contributed to this report.


© Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company.

[Ursus]

LINK to Concord Monitor Article
Campaign 2008
 
Romney staffer faces inquiries in two states
Reporter says man stopped his vehicle
By LAUREN R. DORGAN
Monitor staff
June 23. 2007 8:00AM

As the Attorney General's office investigates whether a staffer for presidential candidate Mitt Romney made an illegal traffic stop in New Hampshire, the aide at the center of the case took a paid leave of absence from the campaign yesterday, according to his lawyer.

The staffer, Jay Garrity, faces legal troubles in Massachusetts. The Boston Globe reported yesterday that an investigation into a phone call to a private company in which a man falsely identified himself as "Trooper Garrity" has zeroed in on the Romney aide.

Garrity's lawyer, Stephen Jones, denied his client did anything wrong in either the New Hampshire or the Massachusetts cases.

"Nothing occurred that would leave anybody with a belief that he did anything wrong," Jones said.

Garrity, who serves as director of operations for the Romney campaign, is often seen standing beside Romney, a Republican former governor of Massachusetts. In his campaign blog, Romney's son, Tagg, has identified him as "the ever-present Jay Garrity in the background," adding "he deserves his own post some day." Yesterday at midday, a Romney spokeswoman said the campaign had not heard from the New Hampshire attorney general's office.

"Jay Garrity has taken a leave of absence from the campaign to address these complaints," said spokeswoman Sarah Pompei.

In New Hampshire, the attorney general's office has assigned an investigator to look into the traffic stop, said Jane Young, the criminal bureau chief who is overseeing this case.

"We are in the early stages of the investigation," Young said.

In an interview yesterday, New York Times reporter Mark Leibovich - the man who said he was stopped by the Romney campaign - said he had been contacted by the attorney general's office and had referred their questions to the Times's legal department.

This isn't the first time Garrity's run into trouble after allegations that he behaved like a police officer. Back in 2004, Garrity, an aide to then-Massachusetts governor Romney, was cited by the Boston police for having a Crown Victoria illegally outfitted with flashing red and blue lights, according to the Boston Herald. According to the Globe, his car also had a siren, a PA system and strobe lights. It contained a nightstick and an identification emblazoned with a state police patch that read "Official Business."

The case in New Hampshire started with a parenthetical reference in the Times. Leibovich wrote that when he "found himself" following the Romney caravan on a back road, he was "led to the shoulder and instructed to 'veer off' by a man wearing an earpiece who emerged from Mr. Romney's car." Leibovich wrote that the man told him: "We ran your license plate."

Then the Associated Press wrote its own story, pointing out that it's illegal in New Hampshire for a private citizen to pull over another or for campaigns to tap into license plate databases. A campaign spokesman, Matt Rhoades, denied Leibovich's claims, saying "at no time was the reporter's license plate run through a check or was his vehicle pulled over."

Romney's campaign explained the group became lost on back roads after a May 29 stop at Harvey's Bakery in Dover. They stopped for construction, the campaign told the AP, and an aide went back to check with an unknown car.

When Paul Nagy read that, he said, he decided to get involved. Nagy, a longtime conservative activist from East Andover, read the AP story and said he became incensed at "the injustice that was done to the New York Times reporter."

Nagy said he hasn't picked a presidential candidate and ticks off reasons he doesn't like any of the top three Republicans in the field: "I can't support (Arizona Sen. John) McCain because of his position on illegal immigration. I can't support Romney because of his positions on gay marriage and abortion and he flip-flops all over the place, and Mr. (Rudy) Giuliani, that speaks for itself. He is a liberal's liberal."

On Thursday, Nagy faxed a letter to Attorney General Kelly Ayotte, asking her to open an investigation into the case. Young said she could not say when that investigation would finish.

Jones, Garrity's lawyer, said that if Leibovich was following the Romney caravan, it would have been impossible for Garrity to pull the reporter over.

"It's a little difficult to be forced to pull over when you're following the cars in front of you," he said.

But Leibovich points out that he wrote he was "led to the curb," and never said he was "pulled over."

"Romney's SUV pulled to the side of the road. It obstructed my passage, so I had to stop," he said yesterday. "And as soon as I stopped, Garrity emerged from the SUV and came right up to the window and said he ran my plates . . . The whole thing took all of 15 seconds."

In the Massachusetts case, according to the Globe, a man who identified himself as "Trooper Garrity with the Massachusetts State Police" called Wayne's Drains Middlesex Sewers in Wilmington to complain about the driving of a van, saying in a message: "I'm going to come down to your company. I'm going to personally issue this driver a citation for both speeding, driving erratic, cutting across."

The police have traced the cell phone used in the call to Garrity, the Globe reported.

Jones categorically denied that his client had anything to do with that call.

"He did not make any call like that. The phone the call was apparently made from - he has no connection to that phone whatsoever," Jones said. "And he has volunteered - in fact insisted on - having a voice analysis done which will show that he didn't make the phone call."

As for Leibovich, he's in the odd spot of being at the center of a story about someone he writes about for his newspaper. He said he had no intention of kicking up a storm when he included the bit about being pulled over.

"I thought it was peculiar enough and illustrative enough about Mitt Romney's campaign that I thought readers might be interested in it," he said.

Material from the Associated Press was used in this article.

[Ursus]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/16/us/po ... omney.html
Polished and Upbeat, Romney Tries to Connect
By MARK LEIBOVICH
Published: June 16, 2007

WEST DES MOINES, Iowa — Mitt Romney loves the word "great." As in, "Have a great day," "Things are going great," "I'm feeling great." Mr. Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, also looks great, sounds great and smells great, like shaving cream. Everyone who asks him something gets a "Thanks, great question."


Mitt Romney at a lunch in Des Moines. Some people who have seen him close up at events describe him as impressive but somewhat detached.

That includes Steven Faux of Clive, Iowa, who attended a recent "Ask Mitt Anything" event. In a halting cadence, Mr. Faux (pronounced "Fox") explained that his 26-year-old son, an Army National Guardsman, was about to leave for Iraq.

"What is your plan to fix this problem?" Mr. Faux asked, his voice breaking slightly.

If Mr. Romney was feeling the man's pain, he was not inclined to say so. Instead, he gave the requisite thanks for the son's service, and then jumped into a rat-a-tat-tat litany of his Iraq talking points: He hails the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. He acknowledges that the United States was "underprepared" for its aftermath. He attacks Senator Harry Reid, the Democratic leader, for saying the war was "lost."

After eight minutes, Mr. Romney concluded, "Thanks, great question," and moved on.

Mr. Faux sat with his arms folded. "Sort of a stock response," he complained later in an interview.

By any measure, Mr. Romney, who is seeking the Republican presidential nomination, is a master pitchman and presenter, bred in politics (his father, George, was the governor of Michigan), enriched in business and battle-tested in the Republican pariah colony of Massachusetts. He is relentlessly upbeat ("I'm feeling incredibly optimistic about our future," he says at campaign events.) His polished "presidential bearing" has been marveled upon, a package of great hair, sleek suits and dreamy smiles well matched to podiums and magazine covers.

But can he connect with voters? While he is climbing in the polls, some people who have seen him close up at recent events describe him as impressive but somewhat detached. He struggles at times to convey a sense that he is an accessible mortal — that he can be spontaneous, that he bears scars and can appreciate at gut-level the struggles of ordinary Americans.

"He doesn't really seem to be like the rest of us," said Denis Joyal, a machinist from Belmont, N. H., who heard Mr. Romney at an American Legion hall in Alton, N.H. He called the candidate "sort of high-class" and "a little too perfect."

Mr. Romney, a 60-year-old Harvard law and business school graduate, former venture capitalist worth nearly $350 million and clean-living teetotaler with a weakness for Vanilla Coke, is operating in a political environment in which candidates are expected to prove they are "regular" people, fit to be neighbors as well as presidents. It is not enough for a candidate to have command of issues, or a stage, or a camera — he must give voters a sense of everyday kinship.

This is something of a challenge for Mr. Romney, derided in some unfriendly circles as "Governor Perfect," a term he chuckles at and flatly rejects. "That's not something that people who know me well would suggest is the right handle," he said in an interview. "I have plenty of weaknesses, plenty of failings."

His supporters say that the impression that Mr. Romney does not connect with voters is a temporary problem, if it is one at all. "I have heard those comments from people," said Tom Rath, a former New Hampshire attorney general and longtime Republican supporter in the state who is serving as a senior adviser to Mr. Romney’s campaign.

"Of all the problems for a candidate to have, it's not a bad one," said Mr. Rath, adding that as Mr. Romney becomes better known, he will become more accessible, and likable, to voters. "I don't think this is a problem we won't be able to overcome."

Mr. Romney's campaign enterprise somewhat resembles the "roadshow" that precedes an initial public stock offering. That is the intense period in which a chief executive and his top people barnstorm the country pitching their soon-to-be-public company and its stock to exclusive groups of big institutional investors. As a general rule, the roadshow is not a time for the head of a company or would-be head of a country to volunteer vulnerabilities.

Unlike some other politicians, Mr. Romney is not prone to unburdening himself of his life's travails on the stump.

At a speech to an insurance company in Dover, N.H., Mr. Romney was asked about stem-cell research by Karen Olivier, of Epping, who like Ann Romney suffers from multiple sclerosis. "I have a personal interest in this, as does your wife," Mrs. Olivier added.

Mr. Romney ignored the opening about his wife and gave a lengthy version of his standard stem-cell speech. "Thanks, great question," he said, wrapping up.

Mr. Romney does not like to digress. He talks fast, walks fast through a crowd and moves fast from one question to another. He is loath to get off point or behind schedule. There is a definite "master of the universe" flavor to his campaign.

He travels with an entourage that includes two or three "operations" guys who serve as advance men and a security detail. (Between stops in New Hampshire, this reporter found himself trailing the former governor's S.U.V. on a back road, only to be led to the shoulder and instructed to "veer off" by a man wearing an earpiece who emerged from Mr. Romney's car. "We ran your license plate," he told the reporter, and explained that no one was permitted to follow Mr. Romney's vehicle.)

The operations guys are ready to assist with any unpleasantness, like the people who keep showing up at Mr. Romney's events dressed as a dolphin named Flipper to highlight the candidate's so-called flip-flops on issues. (Two Flippers stood outside Mr. Romney's event in West Des Moines. One held a "Señor Flipper" sign, presumably to appeal to Spanish-speaking voters or dolphins.) In Laconia, N. H., Flipper was accused of creating a disturbance and was ushered out of the hall by Mr. Romney's staff members during his speech.

At a high school in Alton, Mr. Romney addressed about 500 students who exhibited a most un-Romneylike assortment of hair colors and lip-piercings. He introduced Matt Lauer of NBC, who was trailing Mr. Romney with a "Today" show crew. As Mr. Lauer walked on stage to loud applause, Mr. Romney mentioned that he recently came across a magazine promoting Mr. Lauer as having "the best bod in a bathing suit" among morning TV hosts.

The students whooped.

Mr. Lauer took the microphone from Mr. Romney, turned to the audience and asked, "Did he connect with you today?"

The reaction was more subdued.

Before leaving, Mr. Romney reasserted his "enormous faith in the American people," in keeping with his determined optimism. While all candidates like to exude a sense of hope ("I'm pessimistic" is not something winning candidates typically say), Mr. Romney takes it up a notch, or 10. To inhabit his circuit is to visit something akin to a Political Oz, with "Beautiful Day" by U2 blaring over loudspeakers and a permasmiling candidate whose deep, cockpit-ready voice would reassure any cabin full of fliers during heavy turbulence.

"Isn't it a beautiful day?" Mr. Romney marveled in New Hampshire upon seeing a Boston television reporter, Jon Keller.

"Isn't every day like that in Romney World?" Mr. Keller wisecracked.

While buoyant, Mr. Romney is hardly freewheeling and leaves little to instinct. "Some people go with the gut feel, but that's not the school I come from," Mr. Romney said in an interview. "I believe in being highly analytical and deliberative in making decisions."

In Alton, a student asked him whom he considered to be his chief competition in the race for the Republican nomination.

"Me," Mr. Romney said. "I don't want to mess this up somehow, to knock myself off this stage." The remark conjures the experience of his father, whose 1968 presidential campaign imploded over an ill-considered comment that American generals had "brainwashed" him into supporting the war in Vietnam.

Mr. Romney says the self-destruction of his father’s campaign is "probably not that applicable to today." But he goes on to enumerate the importance of candidate discipline, now more than ever.

"Running for president in the YouTube era, you realize you have to be very judicious in what you say," Mr. Romney said. "You have to be careful with your humor. You have to recognize that anytime you're running for the presidency of the United States, you're on."

This is something of a notable admission from Mr. Romney, that he is "on" all the time and has no intention of letting down his fabulous hair in public. But the beauty of a long presidential campaign is that only so much can be scripted and controlled. Inevitably, some unwelcome reality will intrude, and the candidate may reveal himself in an unguarded moment. Or not.

On a perfect cloudless morning, the candidate stepped into a cafe and bakery in Dover, N.H., past an assortment of wedding cakes in the window, white as his teeth. He encountered an elderly man at the counter who promptly disparaged his Mormon religion.

"I am someone who will not vote for a Mormon," the man said.

"Can I shake your hand anyway?" Mr. Romney asked.

"No," the man said, turning back to his eggs. Mr. Romney, moving right along, urged him to "Have a great day anyway." He bought a bag of cinnamon buns on the way out.


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[Ursus]

http://reason.com/news/show/121088.html
Romney, Torture, and Teens
The former governor's connections to abusive "tough love" camps
Maia Szalavitz | June 27, 2007

When Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said he’d support doubling the size of the prison at Guantanamo Bay, he was trying to show voters that he’d be tough on terror. Two of his top fundraisers, however, have long supported using tactics that have been likened to torture for troubled teenagers.

As The Hill noted last week, 133 plaintiffs filed a civil suit against Romney’s Utah finance co-chair, Robert Lichfield, and his various business entities involved in residential treatment programs for adolescents. The umbrella group for his organization is the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools (WWASPS, sometimes known as WWASP) and Lichfield is its founder and is on its board of directors.

The suit alleges that teens were locked in outdoor dog cages, exercised to exhaustion, deprived of food and sleep, exposed to extreme temperatures without adequate clothing or water, severely beaten, emotionally brutalized, and sexually abused and humiliated. Some were even made to eat their own vomit.

But the link to teen abuse goes far higher up in the Romney campaign. Romney’s national finance co-chair is a man named Mel Sembler. A long time friend of the Bushes, Sembler was campaign finance chair for the Republican party during the first election of George W. Bush, and a major fundraiser for his father.

Like Lichfield, Sembler also founded a nationwide network of treatment programs for troubled youth. Known as Straight Inc., from 1976 to 1993, it variously operated nine programs in seven states. At all of Straight’s facilities, state investigators and/or civil lawsuits documented scores of abuses including teens being beaten, deprived of food and sleep for days, restrained by fellow youth for hours, bound, sexually humiliated, abused and spat upon.

According to the L.A. Times, California investigators said that at Straight teens were “subjected to unusual punishment, infliction of pain, humiliation, intimidation, ridicule, coercion, threats, mental abuse… and interference with daily living functions such as eating, sleeping and toileting.”

Through a spokesperson, Lichfield has dismissed the similar charges against WWASPS to The Hill as “ludicrous,” claiming that the teens who sued “have a long history of lying, fabricating and twisting the story around to their own benefit.”

Straight would use virtually identical language in its denials: In the 1990 L.A. Times article cited above, a Straight counselor downplayed the California investigators’ report by saying, “Some kids get very upset and lie and some parents believe them.” Both Straight and WWASPS have repeatedly called their teen participants “liars” and “manipulators” who oppose the programs because they want to continue taking drugs or engage in other bad behavior.

Curiously, however, both programs regularly admitted teens who did not actually have serious problems. In 1982, 18-year-old Fred Collins, a Virginia Tech student with excellent grades, went to visit his brother, who was in treatment for a drug problem at Straight in Orlando, Florida.

A counselor determined that he was high on marijuana because his eyes were red (this would later turn out to have been due to swimming in a pool with contacts on). He did admit to occasional marijuana use, but insisted he was not high at the time, nor was he an addict. Nonetheless, he was barraged with hours of humiliating questions, strip-searched, and held against his will for months until he managed to escape.

He won $220,000 in a lawsuit he filed against the program for false imprisonment, intentional infliction of emotional distress, assault, and battery. Ultimately, Straight would pay out millions in settlements before it finally closed. However, to this day, there are at least eight programs operating that use Straight’s methods, often in former Straight buildings operated by former Straight staff. They include: Alberta Adolescent Recovery Center (Canada), Pathway Family Center (Michigan, Indiana, Ohio), Growing Together (Florida), Possibilities Unlimited (Kentucky), SAFE (Florida), and Phoenix Institute for Adolescents (Georgia).

Sembler has never admitted to the problems with Straight's methods. In fact, when he recently served as Ambassador to Italy, he listed it among his accomplishments on his official State Department profile. Although all of the programs with the Straight name are closed, the nonprofit Straight Foundation that funded them still exists, though under a different name. It's now called the Drug Free America Foundation, and it lobbies for drug testing and in support of tougher policies in the war on drugs.

One of the plaintiffs in the current case against WWASPS, 21-year-old Chelsea Filer, spoke to me when I was researching a TV segment on the industry. She told me that she was forced to walk for miles on a track in scorching desert heat with a 35-pound sandbag on her back. “You were not allowed to scratch your face, move your fingers, lick your lips, move your eyes from the ground,” she said. When she asked for a chapstick, “They put a piece of wood in my mouth and I had to hold it there for two weeks. I was bleeding on my tongue.”

Why was Filer subject to such punishment? “I had less interest in school and more interest in boys and my mom was worried about me,” she says, explaining that her mother believed that the program was nothing more than a strict boarding school.

Because she has attention deficit disorder, Filer was unable to consistently follow the exacting rules, and repeated small violations were seen as ongoing defiance. “It broke my heart that my mom had no belief in me,” she says, describing how, because WWASPS had told her mother to dismiss complaints as “manipulation,” her mother ignored her pleas to come home.

“I’m not a bad kid,” she continued, “I never used drugs, I was never in trouble, I have no criminal record. I know my mom was worried about me—but so many times I told her that this is too much. I would gladly have gone to prison instead.”

WWASPS is linked with facilities Academy at Ivy Ridge (New York), Carolina Springs Academy (South Carolina), Cross Creek Programs (Utah), Darrington Academy (Georgia), Horizon Academy (Nevada), Majestic Ranch Academy (Utah), MidWest Academy (Iowa), Respect Camp (Mississippi), Royal Gorge Academy (Colorado), Spring Creek Lodge (Montana), and Tranquility Bay (Jamaica).

Although it has settled several lawsuits out of court, the organization has never publicly admitted wrong-doing. However, the U.S. State Department spurred Samoa to investigate its Paradise Cove program in 1998 after receiving “credible allegations of physical abuse,” including “beatings, isolation, food and water deprivation, choke-holds, kicking, punching, bondage, spraying with chemical agents, forced medication, verbal abuse and threats of further physical abuse.” Paradise Cove closed shortly thereafter. That same year, the Czech Republic forced the closure of WWASP-linked Morava Academy following employees’ allegations that teens were being abused.

The former director of the Dundee Ranch Academy Program in Costa Rica went to local authorities after seeing medical neglect and other severe abuse, although human rights abuse charges were ultimately dropped against the owner, Robert Lichfield’s brother Narvin. That program closed in 2003.

Police in Mexico have shut down three WWASP-linked facilities: Sunrise Beach (1996), Casa By The Sea (2004) and High Impact (where police videotaped the teens chained in dog cages).

In 2005, New York’s Eliot Spitzer forced WWASP to return over $1 million to the parents of Academy at Ivy Ridge students, because the school had fraudulently claimed to provide legitimate New York high school diplomas. He fined Ivy Ridge $250,000, plus $2000 in court costs. A civil suit has been filed for educational fraud in New York as well, by a different law firm.

Straight's Sembler currently heads the Scooter Libby Defense Fund, in addition to his work for Romney, and has worked tirelessly to keep the Vice President's former Chief of Staff out of prison, even after his conviction on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice. After all, if running programs that impose these kinds of "treatments" on American teenagers is not a prison-worthy offense, why should lying to a court be?

The Romney campaign is aware of the WWASP suits, and should be familiar with the Straight suits. If not, it's worth asking: Does Romney support these types of tactics for at-risk youth? Or does he take the line the organizations founded by his fundraisers take—that these dozens of lawsuits are merely from bad kids who make up lies?

Coming from the man who wants to double the size of Guantanamo, these aren't insignificant questions. If Romney doesn't believe the aggressive tactics he supports for use against enemy combatants ought to be used against troubled teens and youth drug users, he should say so, and show he means it by removing these men from his campaign.

Maia Szalavitz is author of Help At Any Cost: How the Troubled-Teen Industry Cons Parents and Hurts Kids (Riverhead, 2006) and a senior fellow at stats.org. Her latest book, co-written with Dr. Bruce D. Perry is The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog and Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist's Notebook. (Basic Books, 2007).

[Ursus]

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article ... 65,00.html
Romney's Cruel Canine Vacation
Wednesday, Jun. 27, 2007 By ANA MARIE COX

 
Chevy Chase in National Lampoon's Vacation; Mitt Romney
Warner Bros.; Jamie Rector / Getty

The reporter intended the anecdote that opened part four of the Boston Globe's profile of Mitt Romney to illustrate, as the story said, "emotion-free crisis management": Father deals with minor — but gross — incident during a 1983 family vacation, and saves the day. But the details of the event are more than unseemly — they may, in fact, be illegal.

The incident: dog excrement found on the roof and windows of the Romney station wagon. How it got there: Romney strapped a dog carrier — with the family dog Seamus, an Irish Setter, in it — to the roof of the family station wagon for a twelve hour drive from Boston to Ontario, which the family apparently completed, despite Seamus's rather visceral protest.

Massachusetts's animal cruelty laws specifically prohibit anyone from carrying an animal "in or upon a vehicle, or otherwise, in an unnecessarily cruel or inhuman manner or in a way and manner which might endanger the animal carried thereon." An officer for the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals responded to a description of the situation saying "it's definitely something I'd want to check out." The officer, Nadia Branca, declined to give a definitive opinion on whether Romney broke the law but did note that it's against state law to have a dog in an open bed of a pick-up truck, and "if the dog was being carried in a way that endangers it, that would be illegal." And while it appears that the statute of limitations has probably passed, Stacey Wolf, attorney and legislative director for the ASPCA, said "even if it turns out to not be against the law at the time, in the district, we'd hope that people would use common sense...Any manner of transporting a dog that places the animal in serious danger is something that we'd think is inappropriate...I can't speak to the accuracy of the case, but it raises concerns about the judgment used in this particular situation."

Ingrid Newkirk, president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, was less circumspect. PETA does not have a position on Romney's candidacy per se, but Newkirk called the incident "a lesson in cruelty that was ... wrong for [his children] to witness...Thinking of the wind, the weather, the speed, the vulnerability, the isolation on the roof, it is commonsense that any dog who's under extreme stress might show that stress by losing control of his bowels: that alone should have been sufficient indication that the dog was, basically, being tortured." Romney, of course, has expressed support for the use of "enhanced interrogation" techniques when it comes to terrorists; his campaign refused to comment about the treatment of his dog.

As organizer of the Salt Lake City Olympic Games, Romney came under fire from some animal welfare groups for including a rodeo exhibition as part of the Games' festivities. At the time, he told protesters, "We are working hard to make this as safe a rodeo for cowboys and animals as is humanly possible."

[Anonymous]

CAMPAIGN NOTEBOOK
Romney defends Bush on Libby
By Associated Press  |  July 4, 2007

COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa -- Presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who as Massachusetts governor refused to pardon an Iraq war veteran's conviction, yesterday called President Bush's commutation of I. Lewis " Scooter " Libby's prison sentence "reasonable."

Defending Bush, Romney, a Republican, said at a campaign stop that "the president looked very carefully at the setting" before deciding to commute the 2 1/2-year sentence given the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney in the CIA leak case .

The prosecutor in the case "went after somebody even when he knew no crime had been committed," Romney said. "Given that fact, isn't it reasonable for a commutation of a portion of the sentence to be made?"

As governor, Romney twice rejected a pardon for Anthony Circosta, who at 13 was convicted of assault for shooting a boy in the arm with a BB gun -- a shot that didn't break the skin. Circosta worked his way through college, joined the Army National Guard, and led a platoon of 20 soldiers in Iraq's deadly Sunni triangle.

In 2005, as he was serving in Iraq, he sought a pardon so he could to fulfill his dream of becoming a police officer.

In his bid for the Republican presidential nomination, Romney often proudly points out that he was the first governor in modern Massachusetts history to deny every request for a pardon or commutation during his four years in office. He says he refused pardons because he didn't want to overturn a jury.

[Anonymous]

Romney will never get my vote!  No matter which party you vote for usually, voteing for him will be no end of gutlags.

[Anonymous]

Harvard Business School.  Who else do we know who went there?

[Anonymous]

Romney's association with the troubled teen industry (not to mention his cruelty to the family dog, and the desire to up Gitmo), is also discussed in the Something Awful forums... starts off with a reference to the Maia Szalavitz article above.
http://forums.somethingawful.com/showth ... id=2541597

[Anonymous]

Harvard Business School.  Who else do we know who went there?

I believe that Ken Grant got some kind of "certificate" from Harvard Business School but this is quite different from being a Harvard graduate as some might like to infer.

[Ursus]

A seemingly innocuous lil bit, 'till you learn of Crist's essentially lifelong association with the Semblers (of Straight, Inc.; see also Maia Szalavitz's article above)...

***  *****  ***

http://news.bostonherald.com/politics/v ... id=1010182
Florida's Crist dismisses Romney VP speculation as 'silly talk'
By Associated Press
Sunday, July 8, 2007 - Updated: 01:11 PM EST

HOLLYWOOD, Fla. - Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney stirred up speculation that Gov. Charlie Crist will be on his list of potential running mates, but Crist dismissed the idea Sunday as "silly talk."

Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, was asked during a West Palm Beach event Saturday if he was thinking about a running mate. Romney said it would be presumptuous to talk about that now, but he said Florida has great leaders, including the current governor, former governor and its Republican senator. That's Crist, Jeb Bush and Mel Martinez.

"People talk about things all the time, you know how politics are. I just consider it silly talk," Crist said Sunday. When asked if he would consider running for vice president if eventually asked, he said, "There's nothing to consider."

While Crist acknowledge there have been indirect discussions with Republican campaigns "through other people," he said he is not exploring the possibility of being on the presidential ticket.

"Nothing could be further from the truth," Crist said. "The only thing I'm exploring is Miami to Pensacola and Naples to Jacksonville and all parts in between."

Given that Florida is considered the largest swing state and Crist's approval rating has been above 70 percent in his first six months in office, it's not surprising that he's mentioned as a possible running mate.

Romney was happy to see Crist on Saturday before both spoke at the Young Republicans National Convention. Romney broke free from a circle of supporters and crossed the convention center lobby to say hello to the governor.

"We just look with awe at what you're doing here. You've done a great job. We're really proud of you, and it gives me confidence we can take Florida," Romney told Crist. "We've got to keep Florida in '08."

"It's done," Crist replied, and then joked, "I feel the responsibility. I feel the weight."

Copyright 2007 Associated Press.

[Ursus]

For all you William Shatner and Phil Hartman fans, here is another contender for your undivided affection!

And as to Romney's actual effective stance on the so-called "cesspool of pornography," please do see this WasingtonPost article.



A link for those who prefer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFyDWjATbok

I must say, I like the subtle color change of the ocean reflecting the intoned statements... MMmmm... very artsy!!  Hahaha!

[Froderik]

Damn, you posted this on two forums but not on Tacitus' realm where it belongs! LOL

My commentary: Same xtian-right bs, different century....

[Ursus]

...but not on Tacitus' realm where it belongs!

Ah... but there were Romney threads already started in both the TT and the Hyde forums and I wanted to continue them... You are right about Tacitus' Realm; however, I'm not sure how many Hyde readers travel there...