Religious conservatives at the faith-based feeding trough are getting rich controlling sex education

[marmar]

From The Nation:


The Abstinence Gluttons
Michael Reynolds



Research support was provided by the Investigative Fund of The Nation Institute.

Over the past six years George W. Bush's faith-based Administration and a conservative Republican Congress transformed the small-time abstinence-only business into a billion-dollar industry. These dangerously ineffective sexual health enterprises flourish not because they spread "family values" but because of generous helpings of the same pork-heavy gumbo Bush & Co. brought to war-blighted Iraq and Katrina-hammered New Orleans--a mix of back-scratching cronyism, hefty partisan campaign donations, high-dollar lobbyists, a revolving door for political appointees and a lack of concern for results.

One of the chief cooks is a media-shy 63-year-old Catholic multimillionaire, welfare privatizer and Republican donor named Raymond Ruddy. With close ties to the White House, federal health officials and Republican power brokers that date back to W.'s days as Texas governor, Ruddy has leveraged his generous wallet and insider muscle to push an ultraconservative social agenda, enrich a preferred network of abstinence-only and antiabortion groups, boost profits for his company and line the pockets of his cronies--all with taxpayer dollars.

Following the money swirling around Ruddy offers an eye-opening glimpse into the squalor at the heart of the abstinence-only project. One top Bush adviser left to take a job at Ruddy's charity, Gerard Health Foundation, and a senior officer at Ruddy's for-profit company, Maximus, left to take a top-level position at the Department of Health and Human Services. Leaders of Christian-right organizations that are Gerard grantees have gained advisory HHS positions--and their organizations have in turn received AIDS and abstinence grants to the tune of at least $25 million. Maximus itself has raked in more than $100 million in federal contracts during the Bush era.

As for Ruddy's abstinence-only policy, recent reports, including one contracted by Bush's HHS, show that after more than $1 billion has been poured into the enterprise, it simply doesn't work. Already nine states have opted out from federal funds for this faith-based boondoggle in favor of more comprehensive and effective programs of sex education for their youth.

...(snip)...

Raymond Ruddy sits on the board of Maximus, a giant government services provider in Reston, Virginia, that pioneered welfare privatization. As one securities analyst observed, "Maximus was in this segment before there was a segment." In 1995 Maximus was a $50 million-a-year enterprise. With passage of the Welfare Reform Act the following year, Maximus's earnings jumped to $105 million. Three years later its revenues tripled. Today it's a $700 million publicly traded global giant with more than 5,000 employees deployed across the nation and in Canada, Israel, Argentina and Egypt. It contracts with state governments to handle child-support collections, implement welfare-to-work and oversee managed care. For the Feds, Maximus handles collections on student loans and Medicaid appeals, manages the Social Security Ticket to Work program for the disabled and provides biometric "smart card" technology to the Secret Service, the Treasury, the IRS.

Ruddy joined Maximus in 1985 and went on to serve as its chairman of the board and as president of Maximus Consulting Group and its research division, the Center for Policy Studies and Surveys, which focuses on welfare and healthcare. Since 2001 he has also headed the Natick, Massachusetts-based Gerard Health Foundation, built on the $115 million retirement package he got from Maximus on resigning as chair in 2001 (he returned as vice chair in 2004) and still entirely funded by his and his wife Marilyn's charitable trust. Few outside the Bay State have heard of Gerard or Ruddy, even organizations that monitor the religious right. As Gerard secretary John Malloy put it in a phone conversation in which he refused an interview with Ruddy, "Ray's the man, but we like to keep him under the radar."

"There are three areas we're about," Malloy said. "We're promoting pro-life causes, abstinence and HIV/AIDS prevention in Africa and we're now moving with that into China." In addition to lavishly funding an army of antiabortion and abstinence-only groups nationwide, Gerard also pumps hundreds of thousands of dollars into the Federalist Society, Americans for Tax Reform, Concerned Women for America, the Family Research Council and other conservative causes. Through Gerard, Ruddy contracted Chuck Donovan, vice president of FRC, to write an "investigative" attack on Planned Parenthood, published in Crisis magazine. Gerard also underwrote a propaganda video touting Uganda's discredited abstinence-only HIV prevention program.

...(snip)...

With all this campaign largesse, Raymond Ruddy's sights were never set just on channeling government contracts to Maximus. He was also pulling strings to advance his ideological agenda--and the small circle of Christian-right groups he most trusted to deliver on it. The Virginia-based Institute for Youth Development and the Medical Institute for Sexual Health (MISH) in Texas have long been among his favorites: Between 2002 and 2005, Gerard put $716,148 into the Institute for Youth Development (IYD) and more than $1 million into MISH. The two organizations, not coincidentally, are also among the most well-connected Christian-right outfits within HHS.

...(snip)...

In many cases this federal money seemed to flow not just to conservative organizations but to line the pockets of social conservatives themselves. Claudia Horn, through her firm Performance Results Inc., collects $1,551 per day for training groups in program and curriculum evaluation. According to its federal filing, PRI's 2005 sales to state and local governments were $1.1 million, with an additional $250,000 coming from the Feds, including such clients as the Department of Justice, the Office of Personnel Management, and Housing and Urban Development. But Claudia Horn's indirect public receipts are likely even higher, as her-private sector clients include IYD and the National Fatherhood Initiative (once headed by her husband, Wade), each of which is heavily funded through federal grants. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070618/reynolds

[muntrv]

1. Skimming off the top, just like the mob used to do in the Las Vegas casinos.

[bliss_eternal]

2. When or if....

...one of their precious darlings impregnates someone or is impregnated--they wouldn't think twice about footing the bill for an abortion. Yet, they want everyone to do as they say, not necessarily as they do. :eyes:

[ChairmanAgnostic]

3. silly marmar. you miss the point.

they KNOW that their sex policies fail. that's not the point. For one thing, think of all those tax dollars they get for free. then, knowing that their abstinence policies will fail, they use that money to pay for all those new babies their daughters have. it is simple. Like a religious welfare program, but worse. In welfare, the fraud was rare, but unfortunate. With these folks, the whole system is based on fraud, and even more unfortunate.

[whistle]

4. This was the same crowd of fanatics who were bombing planned parenthood

....clinics and abortion clinics and assassinating medical staff and doctors at these centers. Now they are getting tax hand-outs