BUT there’s a little satisfaction in making up ridiculous post titles.  If you can’t stop it, mock it, take its pants down and show it in all the ridiculous posture it takes — apart from the hearings in the actual courtrooms… This marriage promotion movement needs to be disrobed.

Here’s a post I slapped together in September 2009.  It’s not politically correct, I’m sure.

For a reminder:

The State of the (Marital) Unions in California  gets a Governmental Boost (while social services of other kinds, get cut):

THIS FEDERAL REGISTER NOTICE OF AVAILALBILITY OF FUNDS (2004) GOT SNAPPED UP BY AT LEAST ONE MAJOR RECIPIENT.  RECOMMEND WE REVIEW.

ACF Programs Funding the Healthy Marriage Resource Center:  (It tells you how many diff’t Program offices (or, subdivions if ACF if I have the term wrong) fund this..  There are several, including this one:  CHild SUpport agency (“OCSE”)

OCSE also funds demonstration projects that seek to integrate supports for healthy marriages and family formation into the existing array of child support enforcement activities. Statutory Authority: Section 452(j) of the Social Security Act.  {{For somen leaving violence, this is kind of like building the boat after the ship sank…}}

Recipient:	California Healthy Marriages Coalition
Address:	1045 PASSIFLORA AVE LEUCADIA, CA 92024-2215
Country Name:	United States of America
County Name:	SAN DIEGO
DHHS Region:	9
Type:	Other Social Services Organization
Class:	Non-Profit Private Non-Government Organizations

Award Actions

FY	Award Number	Budget Year of Support	Award Code	Agency	Action Issue Date	Amount This Action
2010	90FE0104	4	02	ACF	03-10-2010	$ 0
2010	90FE0104	5	00	ACF	09-24-2010	$ 2,400,000
Fiscal Year 2010 Total:						$ 2,400,000

You got to watch those ones that start small, then reproduce….This one did.

FY	Award Number	Budget Year of Support	Award Code	Agency	Action Issue Date	Amount This Action
2005	90EJ0064	1	0	ACF	09-13-2005	$ 583,475
Fiscal Year 2005 Total:						$ 583,475

Total of all awards:

$ 12,525,555

For a sample of what some of that Grant 90FE104 is going to, see this PDF (a typical Executive Summary);

In googling the term California Healthy Marriages Coalition, Priority area 1 (and this grant#) I find the oNLY references to it are at their site, and my blog.  I find that unusual……

I searched this 60-page pdf for the word “domestic violence” (as is my “wont”) and found ONE occurrence only.  Again, this is summarizing (and titled):

THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA’S UNIONS:  MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE IN THE GOLDEN STATE:

THE RESEARCH TEAM

Compiled by:

Sophia Gomez, Gomez Research

Developed and Edited by:

K. Jason Krafsky, California Healthy Marriages Coalition Dennis Stoica, California Healthy Marriages Coalition Patty Howell, California Healthy Marriages Coalition

Consultation by:

Dawn Wilson, Wilson Research Consulting

ABOUT CALIFORNIA HEALTHY MARRIAGES COALITION

The California Healthy Marriages Coalition (CHMC) is a pioneering non-profit organization that works throughout California to improve the well-being of children by strengthening the relationship of parents through Marriage Education and Relationship Skills classes.

In 2006, CHMC received a five-year, $11.9 Million grant from Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families (HHS/ACF), the largest grant ever awarded by HHS/ACF in support of Healthy Marriages.

Through this funding, CHMC partners with a network of 23 faith- and community-based organizations (FBCOs) throughout California. Each of CHMC’s funded partner organizations is a coalition consisting of many other FBCOs through which they deliver Marriage Education and Relationship Skills classes, enabling CHMC to reach California’s diverse population by traversing the key demographic dimensions of geography, ethnic/cultural differences, and agency-type FBCOs.

As a result of these efforts, CHMC expects to see a decline in the marriage/divorce ratio, a reduction in child abuse, domestic violence, poverty, criminal behavior, and an improvement in physical, emotional, and mental health.

Funding for this project was provided by the United States Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Grant: 90FE0104. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families.

Little in this has changed — it’s expanded, and spread — like the flu….

For the heck of it, I looked up McManus (last name only) under the TAGGS database, and found 65 grants funded, many of them apparently to doctors, some in overlapping fields of study.  I have no idea of the relationships, but just found this interesting.  After all, we abstinent folk have to direct our excess creative (sic) energies somewhere, right?

I figure we must, at some level, be a society of dogs and masters, because it seems the USA can be divided up into Trainers, and Trainees, and whatever portion of the middle class (such as remains) that has found purpose and solvency and managed to keep their own kiddos and in-laws off the marriage savers healthy starts social improvement group radar.  Get this:

Explore space, explore the seas, develop nanotechnology; what is there left (as market niche) but to market the training of the human psyche (and reporting on it, as well).  Is there nothing that a click, a grant, and an curriculum cannot solve?    This is also how the field of “fatherhood” or “violence against women” is also turning out.  Get a grant and train the trainers, develop a software presence and run conferences.

EXCERPT FROM THEIR BIO (on the Marriage Savers site) shows they do indeed have some medical offspring in the family:

Media: Their work has attracted national media coverage,

(YEP, see that “hand in the till” article, above)….

most recently a profile of a Community Marriage Policy in suburban Portland Oregon on ABC World News with Charles Gibson on October 22, 2007. The Coral Ridge Hour broadcast an 11 minute segment about Marriage Savers on Father’s Day, 2005. The CBS Early Show broadcast a story June 2004 on Mike and Harriet mentoring their 50th couple. Focus on the Family interviewed them May 21, 2004. A Washington Post Magazine cover story Feb. 29, 2004 featured Mike and Harriet mentoring a Nigerian couple. They work has been reported on NBC Nightly News, ABC World News Tonight, and CBS “48 Hours”. He’s appeared on MS-NBC, Fox, BBC, CBC, Oprah, The O’Reilly Factor. TIME, Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today and hundreds of local papers have reported on their work.

Family: Mike and Harriet have been married 42 years and have three married sons and six grandchildren. Their sons are all achievers. Adam McManus hosts a daily radio talk show 3 hours a day in San Antonio, TX. John McManus was the staff director of the Ways & Means Health Subcommittee which added drug benefits to Medicare; he now runs The McManus Group, providing consulting and lobbying for the American Medical Association, various drug companies and equipment manufacturers. Tim McManus is CEO of a hospital in Gulfport, MS. 

Does kind of make the following list a little interesting, I think:

A little more on Maggie (Gallagher):

http://www.nafcj.net/

“In 2002, syndicated columnist Maggie Gallagher repeatedly defended President Bush’s push for a $300 million initiative encouraging marriage as a way of strengthening families.
[…]

“But Gallagher failed to mention that she had a $21,500 contract with the Department of Health and Human Services to help promote the president’s proposal. Her work under the contract, which ran from January through October 2002, included drafting a magazine article for the HHS official overseeing the initiative, writing brochures for the program and conducting a briefing for department officials.

From “SourceWatch” from the “Center for Media and Democracy.”

Maggie Gallagher is the president of the Washington DC-based Institute for Marriage and Public Policy, editor of MarriageDebate.com, a syndicated columnist, author, and frequent television commentator. She also serves as president of the National Organization for Marriage. ^[1] Her articles on marriage policy have appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Weekly Standard. [1] She’s a former editor at the National Review, former columnist at New York Newsday and a founding senior editor at the Manhattan Institute‘s City Journal. [2]

Gallagher also receieved a $20,000 Justice Department grant for a writing a report titled “Can Government Strengthen Marriage?” that was published by the private, non-profit National Fatherhood Intiative. Wade Horn, the Health and Human Services Department’s assistant secretary for children and families who defended Gallagher’s contracts as “not unusual,” founded the National Fatherhood Initiative before entering government. [4]

INTERESTING “CO-INCIDENCE,” that.  1995, NFI,  and then here’s Wade Horn from within government pushing through the initiative (not without some outside help).

These comments seem to contrast with statements that Gallager herself made in 1997, when she spoke at a conference organized by the Committee of Concerned Journalists at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. “The more a journalist views himself as a participant in the events and has a loyalty to sources, the less able he or she is to really consider himself a journalist,” she told the conference. “… [And as an opinion journalist, which is to say you are emotionally invested in the outcome of the events] it becomes [even more] important … to be open with the reader, to make it clear to the audience what your views are and what your biases are.”[6]

The National Organization for Marriage

The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) is a nonprofit organization with a mission to protect marriage and the faith communities that sustain it.

Founded in 2007 in response to the growing need for an organized opposition to same-sex marriage in state legislatures, NOM serves as a national resource for marriage-related initiatives at the state and local level. For decades, pro-family organizations have educated the public about the importance of marriage and the family, but have lacked the organized, national presence needed to impact state and local politics in a coordinated and sustained fashion. NOM seeks to fill that void, organizing as a 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization, giving it the flexibility to lobby and support marriage initiatives across the nation.

aggie Gallagher is President of the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy and a co-author of The Case for Marriage. Comments for Maggie? Email

File under:

“The $21,000 that Maggie Forgot.”

Michael McManus, a marriage advocate whose syndicated column, “Ethics & Religion,” appears in 50 newspapers, was hired as a subcontractor by the Department of Health and Human Services to foster a Bush-approved marriage initiative. McManus championed the plan in his columns without disclosing to readers he was being paid to help it succeed.

Responding to the latest revelation, Dr. Wade Horn, assistant secretary for children and families {{Translation:  “ACF” I believe}} at HHS, announced Thursday that HHS would institute a new policy that forbids the agency from hiring any outside expert or consultant who has any working affiliation with the media. “I needed to draw this bright line,” Horn tells Salon. “The policy is being implemented and we’re moving forward.”

Horn’s move came on the heels of Wednesday’s report in the Washington Post that HHS had paid syndicated columnist and marriage advocate Maggie Gallagher $21,000 to write brochures and essays and to brief government employees on the president’s marriage initiative. Gallagher later wrote in her column that she would have revealed the $21,000 payment to readers had she recalled receiving it.

I’d probably look up Grant #90EI0456, above (in purple).

(anything the ACF chooses to throw $1,000,000 at in the year 2007 might be worth a 2nd look).

A Brief History

The HELP – New Mexico, Inc. (HELP-NM) was created and incorporated as Home Education Livelihood Program, Inc. in 1965 by the interdenominational New Mexico Council of Churches and its successor, the New Mexico Conference of Churches and Church Women United. The founders included pastors, ranchers, farmworkers, housewives, businessmen, and government workers. The HELP-NM organization is governed by 18 Board of Directors representing sectors including public, business, low income, native American, parents, and other community members.

 

ver the past 42 years, HELP-New Mexico, Inc. (HELP-NM), has provided services to over 816,000 individuals and families including migrant families, self-employed farmers and ranchers, low-income families, abused and neglected children, senior citizens, people with disabilities, and disadvantaged youth. These services have included adult education, job training, early childhood development and education, youth development and care, self-help housing construction, rural health clinics, land development, job placement, literacy training, affordable housing, nutritious meals, and family counseling.

HELP – New Mexico exists to create self-sufficiency and provide economic opportunities to strengthen families throughout New Mexico.   Initially organized as the “Bienvenidos (Welcome) Coalition”, in October 2007, HELP-NM, was awarded a grant from the Administration for Children and Families for a Compassion Capital Fund project. The goal is to support faith-based and community-based non-profit organizations in New Mexico in order to increase their capacity and their efforts to work with families and individuals in the providing community based social services. Target organizations provide social services to poor and low-income individuals and families, particularly families in poverty; prisoners re-entering the community; the children and families of prisoners; the homeless; elderly persons in need; families in transition from welfare to work; people in need of rehabilitation such as substance abuse; couples seeking information and support for forming and maintaining healthy marriages; and at risk youth. Included in  HELP-NM CCF project are a wide range of vulnerable populations  needing rehabilitation, including victims of domestic violence, the mentally ill, and victims of human trafficking. If you want to learn more about this program contact Gracie Gonzalez at 505-766-4921 or via e-mail atGracie@helpnm.com.   HELP-NM CCF includes a funding plan in which $250,000 of sub-awards are dispersed to applicant organizations, based upon developmental level of the organization. Training and workshops sessions are conducted statewide through the year. Consultants are then engaged to provide technical assistance to both sub-awardees and other eligible non-profit community organizations. For more information regarding the trainings & technical assistance please contact Gracie Gonzalez at 505-766-4921 or via e-mail atGracie@helpnm.com \

(This seems one of the better-explained sites, at least as to how the structure works).

A quick search of the TAGGS database shows that Help-Inc. 1995-2009 has received:

(MOST of it is Head Start, which appears to be a going concern.)

$8million 2007-2009 per USASPENDING.GOV, probably not too accurate

WELL,  the Garridos were married.  How healthy was that?  In fact, as far as I know (and even in separate cellblocks) they still are.  Or course clearly, he wasn’t very “abstinent” before, or during marriage.

Perhaps if the funds weren’t being funneled to telling people how to keep it zipped, the authorities would’ve had the intent and resources to find out what Mr. Garrido was keeping captive in his own back yard.

Since that article was sprung, we’ve had (in the news) a Yale graduate student (female) found dead in the wall of her lab, a few days before marriage.  She was going to get married.  Sounded like a dangerous proposition from her perspective.

Maggie Gallagher is from Yale (’82).

And recently we’ve had a young (about 28) married woman, with three children, from Hamilton, Ohio, end up in more than one garbage bag, after the father (and suspect) thereafter apparently took his 3 young kids to the store to get garbage bags and bleach.

She was MARRIED.  OK, dudes?

I too was married.  You know what it wasn’t? Healthy.  Partly because there are people on this earth who take some of these doctrines a little bit too much to heart, and get to expressing it with their hands, and weapons, too.

Anyhow, I just wanted to give a little flavor of the origins of a few initiatives.  In the pocketbook plus a gleam in the eye of the Bush Administration and others who worked HHS during this time.

Jaycee Dugard wasn’t married, how could she be?  Who would conduct the ceremony?  Her married kidnapper raper? But I heard her traumatized kids were still clean, relatively healthy and I haven’t read anything yet about academically backward.  She was a single mother.  According to statistics, her kids should be worse off.  They WERE, but it was at the hands of a firmly married (from prison, initially) couple.  So, personally, I think that I could tell where someone to shove this dogma that is being shoved off on the rest of us.

During my own marriage I had enough being shoved, ordered, slapped around, characterized and “trained” to last the nine lives of a circus cat.  Quite frankly, enough is enough.  Theoretically, I”m still in favor of both abstinence and marriage, however when PUSH comes to SHOVE, I’m MORE in favor of the Bill of Rights.

Part of Garrido’s credibility was that he had a woman, I’m guessing.  This was a factor in the attacks on me as a single mother for maintaining the concept that as a single mother WITHOUT an attacker, I was indeed better off (and our children) that way, than before, and that the removal of the violent person from our household was sufficient for now, thank you.  it was made abundantly clear, from some West Coast liberals, that a woman being beaten in the home was preferable to us having to worry about a woman without a man, any quality man, in the home, when children were involved.  This overly “rigid” world view, quite frankly well, _____s. And isn’t a great value to communicate to the next generation; gender matters more than character.

And look at the characters that were promoting it!

They were bribed to get the thing off the ground!