I had a brief exchange with
John Gorenfeld the other day, and he mentioned his new
article for AlterNet about the "teen rehab industry" and its financial ties to the GOP. He was apparently "having the damndest time getting anyone to pay attention to the fact that GOP pols help export kids to gulags for profit. Literally."
As a teen at Tranquility Bay, you can't call home and are escorted between rooms by Jamaican "chaperones." Talk out of turn and your punishment might be that a trio of guards wrestles you to the ground. "They start twisting and pulling your limbs, grinding your ankles," a student told the British newspaper The Guardian. Not knowing when you'll go home, you might take cold showers and watch "emotional growth" videos. The promise is that you will return a respectful, happy teen. But many WWASPS alumni who've banded together at online survivor websites like Tranquility Bay Fight and Fornits say their lives haven't been saved, they've been devastated.
Several WWASPS schools have been shut down after abuse claims. Tranquility Bay's counterpart, High Impact, a WWASP affiliate in Mexico, closed in 2002 after dark stories emerged. Teens said they were kept in dog cages. Two parents, Chris Goodwin and Stephanie Hecker, told the Rocky Mountain News their children were made to lie in their underwear for three nights with fire ants roaming over them and were threatened with a cattle prod if they scratched.
In December, Rep. Miller asked Congress's nonpartisan General Accounting Office (GAO) to launch a fact-finding probe into similar schools, claiming the $1.2 billion teen rehabilitation clinic industry is shrouded in secrecy. Miller's office is awaiting word from the GAO on the investigation request. After a call to the GAO, AlterNet was told no decision had been made yet as to whether to launch the study, which would look into whether the industry was receiving special tax treatment or using fraudulent marketing techniques. Asked why he requested the probe, Rep. Miller explained, "Far too little is known about the so-called 'behavior modification' industry, even as it has surged in size since the 1990s, and that is why I have asked the GAO to review it... There is no excuse for allowing children to be placed in unlicensed programs where their physical or emotional health is jeopardized."
But company president Kay told AlterNet he questioned the congressman's motives. "I think that he must just want to be powerful, or seen as, 'oh, the guy that saved all these children from abuse,'" says Kay. "My fear is that he has a vendetta."
The WWASPS schools rake in about $80 million a year. Claiming to enlist about 1,250 students (the official number has dropped from 2,500 in 2003), the company schools are part of a wider industry, estimated to hold 10,000 teenagers, that is rarely covered by the news media.
Miller, senior Democrat on the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce, is pushing for a bill, H.R. 1738, to increase state licensing of the teen control trade and hold Americans who run foreign discipline schools accountable to U.S. laws. Company president Kay, however, suggested Miller may also have a partisan, anti-Republican motive against WWASPS.
It's true that WWASPS is generous to the GOP. The schools and "teen transport" company are run by a web of cell-like corporate entities that deny their interconnectedness -- but share family members, billing addresses and other obvious signs of affiliation. At the top is founder Bob Lichfield, who lives in Utah on a posh ranch, his lifestyle and political presence fueled by tuition payments. According to the Salt Lake City Tribune Bob Lichfield and his family and business associates have given given [sic] over $1 million to GOP politics at the local and national level. (More...)
That's just a taste of what's in this story, but there's very little public interest and the legacy media won't waste its beautiful mind on such things. I told John "this guy is a nobody until you tie him to Bush," and then proceeded to do so:
LICHFIELD, ROBERT B LA VERKIN,UT 84745 | | 6/5/2001 | $100,000 | 2001 President's Dinner/Non-Fed Indiv |
He donated $100K to a presidential fundraising event 3 months before 9/11, and only 33 other individuals donated to this thing. You can buy a video of the event here. If anyone knows what this Lichfield guy looks like, there might be some nice screenshots in there; maybe even one of Bush shaking Lichfield's hand in thanks for all that moolah.
On the Bush fund-raising scale, that $100,000 qualifies as a Pioneer-level donation. At $574,550, Ken Lay was also a Bush Pioneer. I couldn't find out for sure whether Lichfield was one or not. Even if not, that kind of cash would certainly get Bush & Rove's attention. But wait, that's not all! A couple years later, we see the maximum individual donation allowed by law to Guess Who:
LICHFIELD, ROBERT B MR LA VERKIN,UT 84745 | SELF-EMPLOYED/CONSULTANT | 8/7/2003 | $2,000 | Bush, George W |
For the kind of money Lichfield ponies up for the GOP, there's no way that Rove and Bush don't know about this guy. Those two were the donations that stood out for me, but don't forget the rest of that million he dropped on the GOP in Utah and elsewhere. Anyway, later in the article we see this interesting graf:
Instead of the state Department of Health, the new plan lets industry insiders watch over schools such as Spring Creek and others. And there will be exemptions for "faith-based" schools.So far, WWASPS hasn't chosen the God loophole, but its officials attach such religious zeal to teen control that the "faith-based" label would fit the company snugly. "Do I believe that God is finding a way for teens to get help? I do," Lichfield once told the Los Angeles Times. "Do I believe that Satan is interested in thwarting it? I do."
How original. Another religious loony toon claiming that barbarity is the height of piety. At first, I thought to look for some quid pro quo action in the Faith-Biased Iniquity and the Dept. of Ejumacashun, but there were no hits on grants and funding. Then I thought about it -- in June 2001, Lichfield dropped a lot of bling on a single meal where Bush was the main course. Why did this guy make a "Pioneer" sized donation to a widely-unpopular president, for a one-time event?
Remember, that dinner happened after 9/11, but Lichfield's donation happened before. That was in the days before the artificial "rally 'round the flag" effect -- when Bush's overall approval rating was somewhere between "ambulance-chaser" and "used car salesman." (Around 41% at the time IIRC)
The answer: fundraisers like that represent "access for sale" in its basest form. What do you want to bet he was there to talk to Bush about federal tuition vouchers for his "charter schools," maybe as part of Bush's push for school choice?
PBS FRONTLINE: What about running schools on a profit-making basis?
BUSH: Here's my question: are the children learning? So much of the debate is focused on process. I'm going to focus the debate on results and accountability. If the children are meeting standards, we ought to applaud the delivery mechanism. I welcome all kinds of innovation into the system, recognizing that one size doesn't fit all, and understanding that the best reforms are those that have been tried at the local level.
- Called for the creation of charter [schools] that would receive maximum flexibility with federal funds in return for meeting high performance measures in increasing student achievement
- Supports increasing choices for parents in the education of their children by allowing federal funds to be used for public and private school choice and innovative education programs
- Supports establishing a Charter School Homestead Fund to provide $3 billion of loan guarantees to help establish or improve 2,000 charter schools nationwide in two years
http://www.issues2000.org/George_W__Bush_School_Choice.htm
The key part is that this prison camp is not on American soil, so US law does not apply to what happens within its walls. Is your kid being a pain in the ass? Thanks to people like Lichfield, you can send him to Gitmo -- almost literally. This would explain why people didn't get very exercised about Abu Ghraib; after all, if we do it to our own kids, what are those terrists bitching about?
If Abramoff money is considered "tainted," why isn't this Lichfield guy's money "tainted," too? Because nobody knows about it. That needs to change.
(Modified cross-post from my site)