Romney gets "Anti-Endorsement"

[Patrick Degan]

Linky

Romney gets ‘anti-endorsement' from N.H. paper
Editorial says he lacks philosophical beliefs necessary in trustworthy leader
updated 12:45 p.m. CT, Sun., Dec. 23, 2007

MILFORD, N.H. - The Concord Monitor broke with political tradition Sunday, telling readers in the state with the first presidential primary why they should not vote for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney instead of whom they should support.

In a scathing anti-endorsement that called Romney a "disquieting figure," the New Hampshire newspaper's editorial board said he looks and acts like a presidential contender but "surely must be stopped" because he lacks the core philosophical beliefs to be a trustworthy president.

In particular, the newspaper noted the former Massachusetts governor's change of heart on such issues as abortion rights, stem-cell research and access to emergency contraception, as well as on signing an anti-tax pledge.

"When New Hampshire partisans are asked to defend the state's first-in-the-nation primary, we talk about our ability to see the candidates up close, ask tough questions and see through the baloney. If a candidate is a phony, we assure ourselves and the rest of the world, we'll know it," the newspaper said. "Mitt Romney is such a candidate. New Hampshire Republicans and independents must vote no."

Romney's campaign sloughed off the criticism and instead pointed to his endorsement Sunday by the Sioux City Journal in Iowa, the state whose Jan. 3 caucuses kick off the presidential nominating process. Romney also has been stumping hard in New Hampshire ahead of its Jan. 8 primary, including stops here and in two other communities on Sunday.

"The Monitor's editorial board is regarded as a liberal one on many issues, so it is not surprising that they would criticize Governor Romney for his conservative views and platform," said Romney spokesman Kevin Madden. "Governor Romney has taken firm positions that are at odds with the board's support for driver's licenses for illegal immigrants, their position against school choice and their advocacy for taking `Under God' out of the Pledge of Allegiance. The governor happens to disagree with the editorial board on all those issues."

In its endorsement, the Iowa newspaper said: "Romney combines an outsider's new face with a proven track record of success as an executive in both the private and public sectors. ... Personally, he is engaging, even charming, he has shown an ability to reach across partisan divides, and he is passionate on the campaign trail. In terms of leadership qualities, he possesses 'it,' and the importance of 'it' should not be diminished."



© 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

The responses were almost predictable: "Don't listen to them Libroolz" from the Romney flack, while the puppy-dog fishwrap in Iowa resorts to marketing cliches as to why Romney is qualified to have the White House as his very own.

[Zablorg]

Disgusting. Being gods personal cocksucker is a requirement for leadership now?

The world's governments are shot to hell.

[Spyder]

Disgusting. Being gods personal cocksucker is a requirement for leadership now?

The world's governments are shot to hell.

That's an interesting conclusion to draw from a single countries political race.

[Darth Wong]

Disgusting. Being gods personal cocksucker is a requirement for leadership now?

The world's governments are shot to hell.

That's an interesting conclusion to draw from a single countries political race.

Zablorg lives in Australia. I hear Australia's government isn't much better.

[Flagg]

Disgusting. Being gods personal cocksucker is a requirement for leadership now?

The world's governments are shot to hell.

That's an interesting conclusion to draw from a single countries political race.

Zablorg lives in Australia. I hear Australia's government isn't much better.

No shit. They just elected a guy that picked his ear and ate it on national TV, and that's considered a mjor improvement. Though it really is kinda pissant and not relevant to the guys qualifications. But still...

[Spyder]

Disgusting. Being gods personal cocksucker is a requirement for leadership now?

The world's governments are shot to hell.

That's an interesting conclusion to draw from a single countries political race.

Zablorg lives in Australia. I hear Australia's government isn't much better.

Makes sense, Spin said it best when she said "Australia seems to have moved from America light to America half'n'half." The first thing that caught my attention when I was over there were the ads for the Australia National Security Hotline "Keep the information flowing, keep Australia safe!"

[Metatwaddle]

Honestly? I don't know why Romney is any worse than any of the other Republicans. He's only started being dead wrong about everything recently; the others were always dead wrong about everything. Giuliani's pro-choice position is a little bit mitigating (I would never live in a place where abortion was illegal, and would move abroad if it were outlawed here), but he's so megalomaniacal and scary that he's no better than the others either. Huckabee is okayish on some economic issues, but he wants to outlaw abortion and gay marriage too, and his "I'm Baby Jesus and I approve this message" shtick is really pissing me off. Thompson is so very typical and nondescript, an empty suit, and he's also a semi-evangelical idiot. McCain might be the best one there is, just because he dislikes torture and occasionally goes against the wishes of the Bush Administration, but he spoke at the graduation of Liberty University.

[FSTargetDrone]

Huckabee is okayish on some economic issues, but he wants to outlaw abortion and gay marriage too, and his "I'm Baby Jesus and I approve this message" shtick is really pissing me off.

Not to mention that he apparently believes in a Young Earth (6000 years old) and doesn't understand that humans are primates. He doesn't believe in evolution. That alone, aside from his ghastly social positions on the things you mentioned above, should be enough to convince anyone that such a person is not fit to be president.

[Darth Wong]

"I believe there will be duck hunting in Heaven." - Mike Huckabee.

The man should not be elected to the presidency of the Idiot Ward at the mental hospital, never mind an entire country.

[Flagg]

I think every single one of the Republican contender has at least one thing that should automatically disqualify them.

Ghouliani: Pretty much everything he has ever said about anything.
But also placing the "emergency command bunker" in the World Trade Center after that site had already been attacked.
Vouching for Bernard Kerik as head of the DHS.
"It's not torture if we're the ones doing it!"
Facist.
There is a fuckton more, but I don't want to be up all night.
Oh, and 9/11.

Romney: Mormon. No, seriousely.
There's also the issue of reversing virtually every single position he has ever taken at least once.
Also his "Freedom requires religion" speech.
Wants to illegally imprison and torture even more arabs and double to size of Gitmo.
Plus, Mormon.

Thompson: Believes that the USSR is still around and is backing Iran.
Also ignored the latest NIE on Iran because of something "his momma" told him.
Worst DA on 'Law and Order' ever.

Huckabee: Theocrat of the highest order.
As governor of Arkansas helped reverse the conviction of a brutal rapist who went on to rape and murder another woman after his release. Why? because he had been convicted of raping the family member of a close friend of the Clintons and a popular rightwing conspiracy was that as governor of Arkansas Clinton got the guy railroaded.
Also, his name is "Huckabee".

McCain: After being smeared in the 2000 election by Bush, proceeded to chug his cock in the 2004 race when he should have been seeking the Republican nomination.
Continues to stand behind the Bush cartel despite the Administrations promotion and defense of torture.
Staunch Iraq war defender.
"Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran".

Paul: Libertarian. 'Nuff said.

Keyes: It's fucking Alan Keyes!

[Einhander Sn0m4n]

Now Romney has links to teenager torture-camps.


http://www.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).

This is really why Guantanamo exists. We've been torturing our own CHILDREN without a second thought, so no one feels remorse at torturing other countries' children and adults.

[mr friendly guy]

That's an interesting conclusion to draw from a single countries political race.

Zablorg lives in Australia. I hear Australia's government isn't much better.

No shit. They just elected a guy that picked his ear and ate it on national TV, and that's considered a mjor improvement. Though it really is kinda pissant and not relevant to the guys qualifications. But still...

Trust me, it is a major improvement over the last guy. Our current leader focusses a lot on his Christianity, although at this stage its hard to say how much is a strategy to draw Christian voters from the religious wrong which the previous government was only too happy to capitalise on.

[Patrick Degan]

"I believe there will be duck hunting in Heaven." - Mike Huckabee.

Damn. That was one country hick's vision of Heaven in an episode of The Twilight Zone and now we've got a presidential candidate saying it in all seriousness.

Why do I get this sudden vision of the main GOP contender for the nomination twenty years down the line having a distinct tendency to drool in public?

[alexholker]

Why do I get this sudden vision of the main GOP contender for the nomination twenty years down the line having a distinct tendency to drool in public?

Optimism?

[Alan Bolte]

Welcome to the board, Alex, you've managed to make me laugh.

I've never heard of Keyes, should I just Google him or did someone want to rant?

[Bounty]

Welcome to the board, Alex, you've managed to make me laugh.

I've never heard of Keyes, should I just Google him or did someone want to rant?

Cookie-cutter neocon hack; member of the American Enterprise Institute; kicked his daughter out and refused to pay for her education because she came out as a lesbian.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Welcome to the board, Alex, you've managed to make me laugh.

I've never heard of Keyes, should I just Google him or did someone want to rant?

He's a stereotypical member of the American Enterprise Institute, except that he's black. Because of this, however, he believes that no racism exists in America and that he has never been treated in a racist fashion in his life and that his life (as a fat conservative protestant male who just happens to be black instead of white) therefore disproves the experiences of all other blacks. He is therefore responsible for the Keyes Corollary to the DWB Law: It is not an offense to drive Black when wearing a 1982 business suit.

[Bounty]

protestant male

I think he's Catholic, strangely enough.