| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"Harry Hope" |
| Date: |
27 Aug 2006 03:25:09 PM |
| Object: |
Faith-based pissing away of taxpayer money. |
From The Post and Courier, 8/27/06:
http://www.charleston.net/assets/webPages/departmental/news/Stories.aspx?section=localnews&tableId=104804&pubDate=8/27/2006
Heritage's conference spending questioned
Sessions focused on abstinence education
BY MICHAEL GARTLAND
Heritage Community Services, a North Charleston-based sex education
program, paid thousands of dollars in public money to send state
employees to Palm Springs in an attempt to "educate" them about
abstinence-only learning programs.
The trip was revealed by a former Heritage employee who kept documents
showing that the faith-based nonprofit used public funds to send state
officials who had influence over implementing state policy on sex
education to a conference in 2002.
Diane Chancey worked with Heritage for nearly a year, from August 2001
to July 2002.
She left her job soon after the nonprofit paid about $11,000 for
workers from two state agencies to attend a sex-education conference
in Southern California.
"I was responsible for making all of the arrangements," Chancey said
of the trip.
"Heritage did pay for them to go to the conference."
That conference, sponsored by the abstinence-based nonprofit Medical
Institute for Sexual Health, emphasized, as Heritage does, the failure
rate of condoms, abstinence education and sexually transmitted
diseases.
In the past 10 years Heritage Community Services has received more
than $8 million in federal and state money to convey an
abstinence-only philosophy, largely in public schools.
Heritage's money has come primarily from the Department of Social
Services and the Department of Health and Environmental Control, and
both of those agencies sent employees to California for the
conference.
Anne Badgley founded Heritage in 1995 and served as its president
until this past spring, when she stepped down due in part to questions
raised by a Post and Courier examination of the company's expenses and
teaching techniques.
Badgley still acts as the CEO of Heritage, and said there was nothing
wrong with using the nonprofit's money to pay for state employees'
travel.
"It was a pretty inexpensive trip," she said.
"It's very hard to get public officials to go to these things."
Badgley also noted that she wanted to ensure that state employees were
"educated" on abstinence-only education.
The officials who went had influence over implementing state policy on
sex education.
Carol Singletary was the Department of Social Services director for
youth programs when Heritage paid for her to attend the conference in
June 2002.
She described the entire experience as geared toward influencing her
and the several other state employees who also went on the trip.
"I was very disappointed in it," Singletary said of the conference
discussions and seminars.
"You were denigrated if you weren't married. ... It was all hell and
damnation. I just wasn't comfortable."
The executive director of the state Ethics Commission also expressed
discomfort over the arrangement.
Herbert Hayden said such exchanges create appearance issues.
"The only time it would be an ethical problem is if there's an
expectation of something in return," he said.
He added that the appearance of an expectation of getting something in
return would also be problematic.
"Normally, we advise against that," he said.
In addition, some of the Heritage employees and state workers skipped
part of the conference to play golf.
Badgley acknowledged that a few members hit the links one morning, but
said that Heritage did not pay the greens fees.
"They may have missed a workshop or two. I'm not sure," she said.
"Everybody misses one or two workshops at a conference."
Chancey, who also attended the conference, maintains that those who
went golfing missed seven of nine conference sessions that day.
Owens Goff was serving as the deputy director of DHEC's Bureau of
Community Health and Chronic Disease Prevention when he attended the
Medical Institute for Sexual Health conference in 2002.
He said he and three other attendees - including Badgley's husband,
Gordon - played golf while in California.
"I paid my own fees and club rental at the course," Goff said.
He described following department policy to the letter, and said he
documented the costs and justification for the trip.
He said he also received approval from his bureau's director.
Company time
Goff's actions and those of Heritage workers are not the only
practices former Heritage employees have called into question.
In the year she worked there, Chancey said she witnessed Badgley, her
husband, her daughter and her son-in-law use office time to campaign
for Republican political candidates as well as to shop online.
In her resignation letter, Chancey outlined behavior she viewed as
abusive of public money.
"On 7 June 2002, you and your husband drafted letters to solicit votes
for Chip Limehouse and Larry Kobrovsky for the Republican Primary.
These letters were accomplished on Heritage time using Heritage
equipment," Chancey wrote.
"You also enlisted the time of other Heritage employees to act as
proofreaders and compile address listings ... Is this misuse of public
funds?"
After two Freedom of Information Act requests, Heritage refused to
turn over any records related to the trip to Palm Springs, and Badgley
said any campaigning she did for political candidates was done on her
own time.
The attorney for the South Carolina Press Association, Jay Bender,
said that receiving money through a budget allocation and a grant,
which Heritage does, means that the nonprofit is a public entity, and
thus subject to the Freedom of Information Act.
"If you're a public body, under South Carolina law, you are subject to
the Freedom of Information Act," Bender said.
The Post and Courier is planning to pursue the issue.
Getting the facts
Diane Chancey sought an investigation through the state attorney
general's office with a written request in July 2002.
Mark Plowden, a spokesman for the attorney general, said the matter
would have been referred to either the Secretary of State or the State
Law Enforcement Division.
The Secretary of State has not conducted an investigation into
Heritage's finances, and the Law Enforcement Division has no record of
Heritage or a request for an investigation.
"I think it's about the money and not the children," Chancey said of
Heritage.
"That's our money. That's taxpayer money."
Badgley countered that she has devoted her life to the health and
protection of children.
"Most of my free time has been to find ways to help children avoid
risk," she said.
"I care deeply about the kids."
Spending the money
While Chancey wants a state investigation of Heritage's finances,
others wonder how Heritage was able to get into dozens of state public
schools in the first place.
This summer, Dorchester School District 2 began its first year without
Heritage instructors in its schools in over a decade.
The district's decision to end its relationship with Heritage came in
May, and Superintendent Joseph Pye attributed it to the desire to have
tighter control over sex education in the district.
"When you outsource anything, you give away control," he said.
"I should be able to defend something we're doing. When you're dealing
with an organization outside the school family, you're married to
their view of things. I felt we'd outgrown the need to have them."
Larry Barnfield agrees.
He supervises the district's health and wellness program, and said
district administrators had been talking about ending the relationship
with Heritage about a year before doing so.
Critics of Heritage had pushed for this for much more than a year, and
some still maintain that the program never received proper
district-wide approval in the first place.
Barnfield said the nonprofit must have gone through some sort of
acceptance process, but he was not sure what that entailed, whether it
meant getting approval from the district's comprehensive health
advisory committee or from individual principals.
He was also unsure of whether updated Heritage materials received any
approval at all.
"The records on that, I don't know where they are," he said.
"I'm not sure anyone knew the curriculum was changing. I just don't
think there was an awareness that there had to be continual approval."
Comprehensive health advisory committees are mandated by state law to
review sex education material that is used in public schools, and
although Heritage revised its curricula in the decade it operated in
Dorchester 2, there is no record of Barnfield receiving even one
recommendation from the advisory committee on such changes.
Lynn Hammond, the Department of Education's director of Healthy
Schools, described the committee's lack of review as not in compliance
with the law.
"We looked at the records that we had from them, and they couldn't
provide any evidence that they reviewed the curriculum," she said.
"We know there were revisions. Anytime there are revisions, we don't
just assume it's OK."
The approval process in the Charleston County School District is also
under review, Hammond said.
"Charleston has also - from our records - not reviewed this curriculum
since 1999," she said.
"That's according to the records Charleston sent us."
New findings
Being forced to leave Dorchester 2 was not the only setback Heritage
suffered in the past few months.
In late June, the New England Journal of Medicine published a study
that showed that consistent condom use protects against human
papillomavirus, or HPV.
The finding cast doubt on years of Heritage material that cited
condoms as a faulty method of disease prevention.
One curricula packet that Heritage used in schools states that:
"Condoms are virtually useless against Human Papilloma Virus."
When asked about how Heritage would adjust to the recent findings,
Anne Badgley said she had not yet read the study and was thus
uncertain on how she would proceed.
She welcomed the news in the hopes that it might prevent more people
from becoming sick, but questioned the study's authority.
"I don't know at what point people consider such information
conclusive," she said.
"I've written the same folks that put on the conference about whether
we need to adjust any information."
______________________________________________________
It's called faith-based *****.
Harry
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: Faith-based pissing away of taxpayer money. |
27 Aug 2006 05:49:34 PM |
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Harry Hope wrote:
From The Post and Courier, 8/27/06:
http://www.charleston.net/assets/webPages/departmental/news/Stories.aspx?section=localnews&tableId=104804&pubDate=8/27/2006
Heritage's conference spending questioned
Sessions focused on abstinence education
BY MICHAEL GARTLAND
Heritage Community Services, a North Charleston-based sex education
program, paid thousands of dollars in public money to send state
employees to Palm Springs in an attempt to "educate" them about
abstinence-only learning programs.
[...]
______________________________________________________
It's called faith-based *****.
Harry
...
Bullstuff on your part, that is..
Actually it looks more like the socialist left has its own red flags
that it grunts and charges after.. ridiculous red flag issues.
The article indicates a $800,000 per annum reception of public funds
for a faith based org's *total* efforts in public service (most of
which are not liested).
A small part of those funds were allegedly used to send representatives
to some conference in an effort to promote abstinence in public sex
education for little kids.
And this causes great angst to you?
This causes gnashing of teeth among the great social liberal left?
Ridiculous stance on you part:
"In late June, the New England Journal of Medicine published a study
that showed that consistent condom use protects against human
papillomavirus, or HPV.
The finding cast doubt on years of Heritage material that cited
condoms as a faulty method of disease prevention.
One curricula packet that Heritage used in schools states that:
"Condoms are virtually useless against Human Papilloma Virus."
...Leads one to the conclusion that the social left would rather
advocate teaching little kids how to don and handle bio-hazardous
devices in sexual encounters - rather than just being good and coming
home after school.
Since it is more likely that kids having sex - with or without
'protection' - are more likely to get life threatening diseases than
kids who don't have sex, it is also a illogical and potentially lethal
position to take.
...
If you truly want to see a truely egregious waste of money, check out
the *huge* amounts of public funds that are expended annually for
research into AIDS - which was a totally avoidable disease - if only if
its victims had practised abstinance.
It is much easier to teach children how to live by moral principles -
than it is to teach them how to handle bio-hazard devices in situations
that may be outside of their control.
Donchathink?
.
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| User: "Larry Hewitt" |
|
| Title: Re: Faith-based pissing away of taxpayer money. |
27 Aug 2006 06:40:58 PM |
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<lorad474@cs.com> wrote in message
news:1156718973.981298.81600@i3g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
Harry Hope wrote:
From The Post and Courier, 8/27/06:
http://www.charleston.net/assets/webPages/departmental/news/Stories.aspx?section=localnews&tableId=104804&pubDate=8/27/2006
Heritage's conference spending questioned
Sessions focused on abstinence education
BY MICHAEL GARTLAND
Heritage Community Services, a North Charleston-based sex education
program, paid thousands of dollars in public money to send state
employees to Palm Springs in an attempt to "educate" them about
abstinence-only learning programs.
[...]
______________________________________________________
It's called faith-based *****.
Harry
..
Bullstuff on your part, that is..
Actually it looks more like the socialist left has its own red flags
that it grunts and charges after.. ridiculous red flag issues.
The article indicates a $800,000 per annum reception of public funds
for a faith based org's *total* efforts in public service (most of
which are not liested).
A small part of those funds were allegedly used to send representatives
to some conference in an effort to promote abstinence in public sex
education for little kids.
And this causes great angst to you?
This causes gnashing of teeth among the great social liberal left?
Ridiculous stance on you part:
"In late June, the New England Journal of Medicine published a study
that showed that consistent condom use protects against human
papillomavirus, or HPV.
The finding cast doubt on years of Heritage material that cited
condoms as a faulty method of disease prevention.
One curricula packet that Heritage used in schools states that:
"Condoms are virtually useless against Human Papilloma Virus."
..Leads one to the conclusion that the social left would rather
advocate teaching little kids how to don and handle bio-hazardous
devices in sexual encounters - rather than just being good and coming
home after school.
Since it is more likely that kids having sex - with or without
'protection' - are more likely to get life threatening diseases than
kids who don't have sex, it is also a illogical and potentially lethal
position to take.
..
If you truly want to see a truely egregious waste of money, check out
the *huge* amounts of public funds that are expended annually for
research into AIDS - which was a totally avoidable disease - if only if
its victims had practised abstinance.
It is much easier to teach children how to live by moral principles -
than it is to teach them how to handle bio-hazard devices in situations
that may be outside of their control.
Donchathink?
Amazing.
The right runs on their integrity, fiscal responsibility, concern for the
taxpayer/. And when caught violating those ideals the response is "wee,
itwasnt _that_ ad!"
Larry
.
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: Faith-based pissing away of taxpayer money. |
28 Aug 2006 02:43:40 AM |
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Larry Hewitt wrote:
The right runs on their integrity, fiscal responsibility, concern for the
taxpayer/. And when caught violating those ideals the response is "wee,
itwasnt _that_ ad!"
Larry
What do you think you are saying?
You are not making sense.
.
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| User: "Larry Hewitt" |
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| Title: Re: Faith-based pissing away of taxpayer money. |
28 Aug 2006 05:07:25 PM |
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<lorad474@cs.com> wrote in message
news:1156751019.949334.32330@h48g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
Larry Hewitt wrote:
The right runs on their integrity, fiscal responsibility, concern for
the
taxpayer/. And when caught violating those ideals the response is "wee,
itwasnt _that_ ad!"
Larry
What do you think you are saying?
You are not making sense.
What I wrote makes perfect sense.
The fact that you deleted what I was talking about shows that you know what
I was saying and were embarrassed by it.
Larry
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| User: "ouroboros rex" |
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| Title: Re: Faith-based pissing away of taxpayer money. |
28 Aug 2006 03:47:24 PM |
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<lorad474@cs.com> wrote in message
news:1156718973.981298.81600@i3g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
Harry Hope wrote:
From The Post and Courier, 8/27/06:
http://www.charleston.net/assets/webPages/departmental/news/Stories.aspx?section=localnews&tableId=104804&pubDate=8/27/2006
Heritage's conference spending questioned
Sessions focused on abstinence education
BY MICHAEL GARTLAND
Heritage Community Services, a North Charleston-based sex education
program, paid thousands of dollars in public money to send state
employees to Palm Springs in an attempt to "educate" them about
abstinence-only learning programs.
[...]
______________________________________________________
It's called faith-based *****.
Harry
..
Bullstuff on your part, that is..
Actually it looks more like the socialist left
k00k-a-d00dle-d00!
.
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: Faith-based pissing away of taxpayer money. |
28 Aug 2006 05:46:11 PM |
|
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ouroboros rex wrote:
<lorad474@cs.com> wrote in message
news:1156718973.981298.81600@i3g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
Harry Hope wrote:
From The Post and Courier, 8/27/06:
http://www.charleston.net/assets/webPages/departmental/news/Stories.aspx?section=localnews&tableId=104804&pubDate=8/27/2006
Heritage's conference spending questioned
Sessions focused on abstinence education
BY MICHAEL GARTLAND
Heritage Community Services, a North Charleston-based sex education
program, paid thousands of dollars in public money to send state
employees to Palm Springs in an attempt to "educate" them about
abstinence-only learning programs.
[...]
______________________________________________________
It's called faith-based *****.
Harry
..
Bullstuff on your part, that is..
Actually it looks more like the socialist left
k00k-a-d00dle-d00!
I'm sorry you feel that way about yourself.
When did you first notice yourself making chicken noises?
.
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| User: "Larry Hewitt" |
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| Title: Re: Faith-based pissing away of taxpayer money. |
28 Aug 2006 06:50:07 PM |
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<lorad474@cs.com> wrote in message
news:1156805171.358016.109660@h48g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
ouroboros rex wrote:
<lorad474@cs.com> wrote in message
news:1156718973.981298.81600@i3g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
Harry Hope wrote:
From The Post and Courier, 8/27/06:
http://www.charleston.net/assets/webPages/departmental/news/Stories.aspx?section=localnews&tableId=104804&pubDate=8/27/2006
Heritage's conference spending questioned
Sessions focused on abstinence education
BY MICHAEL GARTLAND
Heritage Community Services, a North Charleston-based sex education
program, paid thousands of dollars in public money to send state
employees to Palm Springs in an attempt to "educate" them about
abstinence-only learning programs.
[...]
______________________________________________________
It's called faith-based *****.
Harry
..
Bullstuff on your part, that is..
Actually it looks more like the socialist left
k00k-a-d00dle-d00!
I'm sorry you feel that way about yourself.
When did you first notice yourself making chicken noises?
Run, loser , run.
Ya got nothing but spin and lies.
Larry
.
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