OK, so this post is long.  But do you really want a right-wing Psychologist (or programs he set up after being, ah, er, deciding to resign) running some of the largest federal policies affecting day to day life for many Americans?

http://nafcj.net/fathers_rights_and_judges.htm

Big Brother the MatchMaker:

(and some of the costs…  and some of the organizations that got in on the action)…

Here’s the OFFICIAL point of view — from one of my older Blogroll Links:

DO NOT PASS GO unless you can DIGEST & COMPREHEND THIS (and some of its significance)…This is 2006, like, OLD, folks….  And still going strong.  This is one administration ago.  This is BEFORE we elected a President raised by a single mother.  Excuse me, I uttered the “M” word! good gracious me…I mean,  by a “father-absent” household —

 OFA Healthy Marriage and Promoting Responsible Fatherhood Initiatives

In February 2006, President George W. Bush signed the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, which reauthorized the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program administered by HHS’ Administration for Children and Families (ACF). The DRA reauthorization also included $150 million to support programs designed to help couples form and sustain healthy marriages. Up to $50 million of this amount may be used for programs designed to encourage responsible fatherhood. In its welfare reform law of 1996, Congress stipulated three of the four purposes of the TANF block grant to states be related to promoting healthy marriages.

“A key component of welfare reform is supporting healthy marriages and responsible fatherhood,” Dr. Horn added. “Approval of these funds will help to achieve welfare reform’s ultimate goal: improving the well-being of children.”

The Healthy Marriage Initiative, administered by ACF, was created in 2002 by President Bush to help couples who have chosen marriage gain greater access to marriage education services, on a voluntary basis, where they can acquire the skills and knowledge necessary to form and sustain a healthy marriage. Funding for responsible fatherhood includes initiatives to help men be more committed, involved and responsible fathers, and the development of a national media campaign to promote responsible fatherhood.

On September 30, 2006, the Office of Family Assistance announced grant awards to 226 organizations to promote healthy marriage and responsible fatherhood as authorized by the Deficit Reduction Act.
“These programs will help couples form and sustain healthy marriages, and equip men to be involved, committed and responsible fathers in the lives of their children,” said HHS Assistant Secretary for Children and Families Wade F. Horn, Ph.D.

[[That he was former President & Founder of the National Fatherhood Initiative I suppose was just coincidence…]]

These grants, overseen by ACF’s Office of Family Assistance, must have procedures in place to address issues of domestic violence and ensure that program participation is voluntary. Grant funds may be used for the following purposes:

• Competitive research and demonstration projects to test promising approaches to encourage healthy marriages and promote involved, committed and responsible fatherhood;
• Technical assistance to states and tribes;
• Marriage education, marriage skills training, public advertising campaigns, high school education on the value of marriage and marriage mentoring programs; and
• Promoting responsible fatherhood through counseling, mentoring, marriage education, enhancing relationship skills, parenting and activities to foster economic stability.

Every statement and program (including the strange concept that PROGRAMS can, or even SHOULD fix MARRIAGES, which are between individuals…)

WIKIPEDIA ON Dr. Horn, the Psychologist:

Wade F. Horn is an American psychologist who received unanimous confirmation (under President George W. Bush) in 2001 as the Assistant Secretary for Children and Families. Before his resignation on April 1, 2007, he oversaw the function of the Administration For Children and Families, an agency within the United States Department of Health and Human Services. He also served under President George H. W. Bush as Commissioner of Children, Youth, and Families within the Administration For Children and Families.

Horn represents a key advocate for the re-envisioning and re-vising of the Federal Head Start program. A key proponent for family involvement in education, Horn served as president of the National Fatherhood Initiative. Horn is also a strong advocate for “abstinence education.”

He received his Ph.D. in 1981 from Southern Illinois University. He served as an assistant professor of psychology at Michigan State University and was an affiliate scholar at the right-wing think tank, The Hudson Institute.

Secretary Leavitt praised Wade Horn for his leadership, citing his actions to “significantly improved the lives of vulnerable children and strengthened the American family as he led the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) for the past six years.”

He continued, “Under Wade’s leadership, we passed and implemented the next chapter of welfare reform, launched the first-ever healthy marriage and responsible fatherhood grants, began outreach to victims of human trafficking, helped increase the number of adoptions in America, connected children of prisoners with mentors, and created a strong partnership with faith-based organizations.”

About that resignation in 2007:

•  

  • From “Media Transparency” (1/31/05)

• If you like the way Wade Horn is doing business with right wing pundits, in the words of Al Jolson, the popular singer of the 1920s, “You aint seen nothing yet!” In late-December 2004, the Washington Times reported that in addition to his hefty responsibilities as the Assistant Secretary for Children and Families in the Administration for Children and Families, at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Horn will now be in charge of drumming up support for, and doling out grants to, abstinence-only sexual education programs.

  Recent headlines about Horn’s work have focused on revelations that syndicated newspaper columnists Mike McManus and Maggie Gallagher had joined conservative commentator Armstrong Williams as part of a loose coalition of the shilling: right wing pundits who take government money to support Bush Administration policies.

  In early January, USA Today revealed that Williams, a prominent African American radio and television personality, had received $240,000 from the Department of Education – through a contract with the Ketchum public relations firm – for his support for the president’s No Child Left Behind project.

  Paid to promote marriage

  Wade Horn has been in the marriage promotion business for quite some time. He is a co-founder and former president of the National Fatherhood Initiative which, according to its Web site, made its national debut in March 1994 with Don Eberly – a former White House advisor and civil society scholar who served as Deputy Assistant to the President for the Office of Faith-based and Community Initiatives – serving as President, Horn as Director, and David Blankenhorn as Chairman of the Board of Directors.

  • From Feministing (04/07), “Party On, Wade“

• Horn has indeed been cozy with hardline social conservatives. His achievements include:

• overseeing multi-million-dollar funding increases for abstinence-only education programs and crisis-pregnancy centers
• promoting abstinence-only programs for not just teens, but for adults, too
• running the National Fatherhood Initiative before he became a government employee, and then funding his organization with millions of federal dollars

{{THIS IS A KEY CONCEPT …}}

• shunting federal dollars toward various other religious groups and right-wing organizations he is personally affiliated with, such as Marriage Savers
• deciding that low-income women need a husband more than they need job training, and funding “marriage promotion” programs with welfare dollars
• once arguing that Head Start programs should only admit children of married couples

(See Talk2Action for the complete lowdown.) Horn’s temporary replacement, Daniel Schneider, seems to be ideologically in step with him. At a recent congressional hearing, Democrat Barbara Lee questioned Schneider about why the only federal sex-ed funding goes to abstinence-only programs:

“It seems very unbalanced to me,” Lee told Daniel Schneider, deputy assistant secretary for the Administration for Children and Families, at the March 8 hearing.Schneider said states and local governments provide ample funding for “comprehensive” sex education and that “abstinence education has been ignored in the past, to some extent.” 

 

Yeah. Except for the fact that state and local governments don’t fund comprehensive sex ed, they put their money toward securing federal matching grants, which are strictly for abstinence-only. And I don’t think that pouring millions of federal dollars into abstinence-only programs is “ignoring” them, by any stretch of the imagination. 

Before joining ACF in 2006, Schneider was chief of staff for Rep. Jim Ryun (R-Kansas), one of the most conservative members of congress. While there, Schneider got cozy with Prison Fellowship Ministries, but I could find little else about his pre-ACF days. 

Horn is clearly confident in Schneider’s ability to carry the right-wing, anti-woman torch. As Horn told Focus on the Family, “The good news is that the people who did the work are still going to be here. The initiatives which have been launched will continue for the rest of the time that this president is in office.”

 Wheee! Glad to have Horn out of the way, in the private sector at an accounting firm. But it looks like we’re going to have to wait for a new presidency to see real change at ACF

• From The Democratic Underground (05/07, Bill Berkowitz Article.  Suggest you finish this one, all of it:  “Wade’s Horn of Plenty“

In fact, I’m posting most of it right here:

 

Sent Friday, May 4, 2007 8:26 am
To xxxx……..com
Subject Berkowitz-Wade’s Horn of plenty:Friends & family get HHS millions

http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=2230…

 

 

Wade’s Horn of plenty
Former Department of Health and Human services official signs on as a consultant with Deloitte Consulting LLP after questions are raised about federal government grants and abstinence-only sex education programs

Bill Berkowitz
WorkingForChange
05.04.07

It’s difficult to know exactly what Wade Horn was thinking in the days prior to his resignation from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS): Perhaps he didn’t relish the thought of having to defend his pouring of millions of dollars in taxpayer money into abstinence-only sex education programs that have been thoroughly discredited; perhaps he was worried about being brought in front of a congressional committee and asked to account for some of his other grant-making decisions.

Perhaps he was concerned about being subjected to charges of cronyism — involving contracts to organizations he has been closely affiliated with — and/or nepotism — involving subcontracts attained by his wife’s company from organizations that received faith-based money. Perhaps he was thinking that the revelation “shortly before his resignation” that the nearly $1 million he gave to the National Fatherhood Initiative ( NFI ), where he was the president for at least three years until joining the Bush administration in 2001, was only the tip of the iceberg.

Perhaps it was all of the above.

Whatever the reasons, in early April, Wade Horn opted to resign from his post as the Assistant Secretary for Community Initiatives at HHS . During his tenure at HHS Horn was the Bush Administration’s point man for welfare reform, Head Start and abstinence-only education, and as such, he was a veritable faith-based slot machine for religious organizations, some of which he had longtime close relationships.

Despite charges by David Kuo, the former second-in-command at the White House Office on Faith-Based and Community Initiatives who, in his book “Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction” claimed that the Bush Administration short-changed Christian faith-based organizations, Horn was responsible for placing hundreds of millions of dollars in the religious right’s and conservative philanthropy recipients’ collective coffers.

On April 18, a little more than two weeks after his rather unexpected resignation, Horn joined Deloitte Consulting LLP as a director in the organization’s Public Sector practice. According to PR Newswire, Horn “will be a key advisor to health and human services clients of Deloitte Consulting’s state government practice”

Why did Horn suddenly resign?

In two recent postings at Talk to Action, Cynthia Cooper, a playwright and the author of several nonfiction books, carefully tracked some of Horn’s shenanigans. In a post called “Hand That Feeds” (March 3, 2007), Cooper wrote that Horn, who oversaw a budget of $47 billion, was “very kind to Religious Right organizations, including the one that he founded in 1994 with Religious Right money — the National Fatherhood Initiative (website) in Gaithersburg, Maryland.”

According to Cooper, Horn gave “the National Fatherhood Initiative a … ‘ Capacities Building ‘ grant in the amount of $999,534 from a program he started in his agency and called by the familiar-ringing name of the ‘Responsible Fatherhood Initiative.'”

Cooper also pointed out it was Horn who “approved the hiring of columnist Maggie Gallagher” — who also worked for the National Fatherhood Initiative — “to promote marriage”; and “gave money to writer Mike McManus to support marriage promotion, while also giving money to McManus’ organization, Marriage Savers (website) (‘a ministry that equips … local congregations to prepare for lifelong marriages …’).” Horn was also a founding board member of Marriage Savers.

In addition to the NFI grants, in 2006, the organization received a $2.279 million no-bid contract from the Assistant Secretary’s office, investigative reporter Mike Reynolds told Media Transparency. That money, according to OMB Watch, is part of a $12.382 million contract that runs through the year 2011, three years after the end of President Bush’s second term.

Before Horn resigned, Cooper notes that he had been “recently handed additional money to dispense — the $157 million in abstinence-only education. He has a nifty idea that abstinence programs could go beyond students, and become engaging programs for adults, as well.”

After Cooper’s story on Horn appeared in early March, several other commentators added to the conversation. In a posting titled “Blowing the Whistle on Wade Horn”, the revealer asked: “Why is Wade Horn invisible to the press? Is it because the media is part of a vast right-wing conspiracy? Is it because reporters hate women and queers? Not likely. Rather, it has more to do with a decades-long decline in press coverage of the federal government’s middle managers, who oftentimes have more influence over our everyday lives than the boldface names. Such stories don’t sell papers, but they do serve the public interest.”

In her regular column for the National Organization of Women, Kim Gandy, president of NOW wrote “Right Wing ‘Father’land” in which she pointed out that Horn, “Opposing everything NOW stands for (from abortion rights to economic justice), … founded the National Organization of Fathers , and openly stated his belief that ‘the husband is the head of the wife just as Christ is the head of the church.’ He even advocated that federal benefits, such as Head Start and subsidized housing, should only be available to children of married couples, not single parents. So of course the Bush administration put him in charge of all the welfare and public assistance programs that primarily serve those very same single mothers he so detests. And did he find a way to derail the funding away from single moms? You bet he did.”

The National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association said in a statement that in his position, Horn “administer both the Abstinence Education Grants to States program (Title V) and the Community-Based Abstinence Education (CBAE) program. During Horn’s tenure, the CBAE program saw major funding increases, bringing the current total for federally funded abstinence-only-until-marriage education programs to $176 million per year. Horn also oversaw a dramatic tightening of HHS restrictions on how abstinence-only funds can be used, and promoted an increased emphasis on marriage and faith-based initiatives.”

In her follow-up post after his resignation titled “Wade Leaps” (April 3), Cooper pointed out that there were other troubling things going on during Horn’s reign: “Horn had stonewalled successfully for years. A legal action filed with the HHS Civil Rights division by Legal Momentum, pushed some buttons. It alleged sex discrimination in 34 of 100 programs funded under the ‘Responsible Fatherhood’ initiative, and cited the funding that went directly to Horn’s old program as running as high as $5 million.”

“As Democrats control the House and Senate and Henry Waxman is driving the House Oversight committee, Wade Horn had to know that he and his discredited faith-based abstinence-only programs and their funding were smack in Waxman’s crosshairs,” Mike Reynolds, author of a book on politics, money and the religious right to be published by St Martins Press in 2008, told Media Transparency in an e-mail exchange.

“Given the choice between answering subpoenas and facing the CSPAN cameras like the hapless Attorney General Alberto Gonzales or moving on to a more lucrative position at Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu seems like a no-brainer to me,” Reynolds added. “And it’s no surprise that he landed at Deloitte since his old boss at HHS , Tommy Thompson, heads the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions.”

All in the family

Reynold has also been keeping a sharp eye on Horn’s wife Claudia, who founded and heads Performance Results Inc. (PRI), which according to its website is “an organizational services and support firm specializing in evaluation, evaluation training, and data systems to support evaluations.” PRI has worked as subcontractor for the Institute for Youth Development (IYD) and its sister nonprofit, the Children’s Aids Fund (CAF).

Reynolds pointed out that IYD, which has received millions of dollars from HHS , provides technical assistance and training to abstinence-only groups, crisis pregnancy centers, “healthy marriage” programs and other Bible-based ministries regarding how to receive government grants and how to manage their respective operations.

Claudia Horn also provides ResultsOnline, “a customized, web-based program evaluation system that enables users to design their own program evaluation, create customized surveys, input participant information, and create powerful summary reports.”

In the course of his research, Reynolds found that “according to its GSA filing, PRI’s ‘sales to the general public/state or local government’ for 2005 was $1.1 million, with an additional $250,000 coming from federal contracts. As project director … Horn charges $1,551 per day for training. PRI’s client list posted on their web page includes the Department of Justice, Office of Personnel Management, HUD, the Institute for Youth Development and the National Fatherhood Initiative. …

With IYD and NFI — both so closely entwined with the Assistant Secretary — regularly pulling in millions of federal dollars from his CAF for their ‘faith-based’ outsourcing and then subcontracting to his wife’s company to service those federally-funded programs appears to be far less than six-degrees of separation.”

Claudia Horn is also the co-author, along with Patrick F. Fagan, Ph.D., Calvin W Edwards, Karen M Woods and Collette Caprara of a recent Heritage Foundation Special Report titled “Outcome-Based Evaluation: Faith-Based Social Service Organizations and Stewardship” (March 29, 2007).

The Special Report deals with something the authors call “Outcome-based evaluation (OBE)” which they claim “is a tool … faith-based organizations to define specifically what success means for their programs and then measure the degree to which they achieve those goals. This discipline not only documents effectiveness, but also helps the organizations to refine the work they do and thereby begins a cycle of continuing improvement and greater success.”

• Last, but not least, from NAFCJ.net:

E-mails from the past implicate father rights leaders in organized case rigging with the HHS program system.

 

 

 

 

Fathers rights e-mail chatter from 2004-2005 discusses HHS officials “invitation only” meetings to work with them to ensure they received grant money and state agencies were “father-friendly” .  Government officials are not supposed to conduct “invitation only” meetings with special interest groups   Meanwhile, they have made excuses to mother’s leaders that they can’t meet with them, because that would violate “open meeting” requirements.

 Walter B.’s e-mail from February 2005 talks about how Wade Horn, (then HHS-ACF Secretary) used his influence to get more fatherhood grants for them and make state agencies more father friendly.  July 2004 message from an anonymous writer described what happened with Dick Woods money and how they got more for their programs and cases. The Aug 2004 is a forward from ACFC head, Stephen Baskerville, which describes how former OCSE {{Translation:  Office of Child Support Enforcement — get the connection?  Noncustodial fathers pay child support, or supposedly do…Many do, but under the FATHERHOOD (new state religion?) promotion, many are paying less, now that they are getting legal help for custody-switching, child support abatement, etc. activities that SISTAHS just don’t get!!}}  head ran a invitation only meeting for fathers rights activists.
FEB 2005       July  2004      AUG 2004More on Fathers Rights local groups:  
While they try to appear as independent people united at the grass roots to fight individual injustices – they are in reality cogs in a highly organization national scheme to recruit male litigants into the AFCC-CRC organized litigation racket.  The men are used to keep the case litigation as active as possible so each court hearing can be billed to federal HHS-ACF program funds.      

As to that last point in red:  “The men are used,” it’s true.  The real “scam” is simply a transfer of wealth operation, from the hands of WHOEVER is the custodial parent into someone who is going to help litigate issues, on and on, until the children age out, and possibly beyond. 

I have thought I should change the motto of this website from how the “family” “law” system hurts us all to a more honest representation — how it’s simply another business model.  It certainly doesn’t hurt court professionals.

I’m “so” reassured that a major player in the largest US Branch, the Executive Branch (not that they are all that separate any more), whose head is the President of the United States, has programs still in place from an American Psychologist, and a right-wing conservative one at that, who for sure sounds to me like misogynist, right-wing one as well.

DON’t THINK, however, that a person’s Democrat leanings make a major difference when it comes to bad attitudes towards women…

Which President wrote THIS, in 1995, and very likely in response to the 1994 NFI, which was a parallel backlash to the VAWA.?

 Back in 1995 president _____ directed all federal agencies to review their programs with an eye to strengthening fatherhood.

{{A link to this letter is on my blogroll to the right…}} 

 AND THIS on FATHER’s DAY 2000?  A REPUBLICAN”

The research and the results are clear: Supporting responsible fatherhood is good for children, good for families, good for our Nation. It’s why we propose building on our progress with a $255 million responsible fatherhood initiative called “Fathers Work/ Families Win.” The fact is, many fathers can’t provide financial and emotional support to their children, not because they’re deadbeat but because they’re dead-broke.

Our initiative would help at least 40,000 more low income fathers work and support their children. Unfortunately, in the spending bill passed in the House this week, the Congress turned its back on this challenge by not including any money for this important initiative. So I ask Congress to work with me across party lines to pass a budget that makes sure more fathers can live up to their responsibility. Working together, we can help fathers better fulfill the emotional, educational, and financial needs of their children.

As we prepare to celebrate the first Father’s Day of the new century, let’s do all we can to help more fathers live up to that title, not just through their financial support but also by becoming more active, loving participants in their children’s lives.

 

Now all of these are conferencing together, and drawing away tax dollars to STILL not stop the killing of families from, basically, insane court orders.

It’s not an insane system in the eyes of the people whose livelihood depends on a never ending supply of family conflicts!!

Even some men are saying Big Brother’s program is an insult to men, in punishing them for money they don’t have, and treating them as if they weren’t adults:  From:  

Playing Politics With The Federal Fatherhood Initiative

by Carey Roberts

© 2006 by Carey Roberts

Originally published on ifeminists.com

Reproduced with permission of the author.

June 14, 2006 — Last week the Pope issued a wake-up call to persons of all religious persuasions. Never before in history, the pontiff warned, has the family been so threatened as in today s culture. As the traditional defender and protector of the family, it’s no surprise that fathers and fatherhood have taken the brunt of the Leftist-feminist onslaught.

Fatherhood has come under attack on six fronts:

1. Smearing dads with the patriarchal epithet.

2. Claiming that fathers and mothers are socially interchangeable.

3. Removing fathers legal say in abortion decisions.

4. Encouraging moms to summarily evict their husbands under the pretext of domestic abuse.

5. Allowing inequities in child custody awards.

6. Enacting child support laws that send men to jail for not paying money that they don’t have in the first place.

No wonder American families are falling apart. And no surprise that so many eligible bachelors avow no interest in marriage.

Back in 1995 president Bill Clinton directed all federal agencies to review their programs with an eye to strengthening fatherhood. With the high-profile backing of vice president Al Gore, the federal Fatherhood Initiative sprang to life. Conferences were held, research agendas were developed, and fathers were on a roll. But the Lavender Ladies began to fret over the infiltration of fathers rights groups and plotted to throw a monkey-wrench into the operation. Finally someone had a stroke of genius: we’ll insert the adjective “responsible” before the word fatherhood. Who could ever oppose that?

So in his June 17, 2000 Father’s Day radio address, Bill Clinton gave his blessing to the catechism of Responsible Fatherhood, making it clear that responsible dads always make their child support payments on time.

Problem is, that high-sounding phrase is a demeaning affront to fathers. It’s like saying mothers need to be taught how to be nurturing, and of course we need a government program to take care of that. What mom in her right mind would ever go to a class called, Caring Motherhood? With the Fatherhood Initiative now under the ideological thumb of the child support zealots, the whole effort quickly lost its momentum.

A few months later George W. Bush was elected on a platform that included shoring up the traditional family. Bush tapped Wade Horn to head up the Administration for Children and Families, a gargantuan $49 billion welfare bureaucracy that covers everything from Head Start, child abuse, homeless youth, and child support enforcement.

A psychologist by training, Dr. Horn had served as president of the National Fatherhood Initiative for eight years. Horn seemed destined to be the go-to guy to re-focus and re-energize the Fatherhood Initiative.

In the religious tradition, confession must precede atonement. Unfortunately, the Administration for Children and Families has never admitted the heinous sin of Great Society welfare programs that made fathers redundant, thus decimating the traditional family in low-income communities. Wade Horn did not wish to do battle with his own Office for Child Support Enforcement. In fact, he became its vocal proponent. In 2003 Horn wrote in Crisis magazine, “In such cases, are we to simply turn our backs on negligent non-custodial parents who refuse to support their children financially?”

That stinks like a pile of fresh barnyard manure.

I happen to agree, however not with the next sentence, because it’s simply false.  I say that based on anecdotal evidence in some communities where I have worked.  Even the head of the OCSE one year, Nicholas Soppa, was himself behind on support and spending weekends in jail for this, while working weekly at the same administration that was charged with collecting support!  I’m sure he was not a low-income family. 

Again, re: this statement, Mr. Roberts apparently WOULD like the Fatherhood Initiative, if only that pesky child support factor weren’t so influential.  He has pegged the influence correctly, it is being used to restructure families, for sure, and from there, society.  He writes (this being 2006):

So in his June 17, 2000 Father’s Day radio address, Bill Clinton gave his blessing to the catechism of Responsible Fatherhood, making it clear that responsible dads always make their child support payments on time.

Problem is, that high-sounding phrase is a demeaning affront to fathers. It’s like saying mothers need to be taught how to be nurturing, and of course we need a government program to take care of that. What mom in her right mind would ever go to a class called, Caring Motherhood?

Mr. Roberts, I hope you are not a conservative evangelical Christian.  You must not be, or you know that classes just about of this level, and an insult (at least I take it as one) are still going on throughout mainstream and nondemoninational churches, even in our “blue” California…

You are right, it is in essence a national religion, and frighteningly similar to “der Vaterland,” particularly from a feminine perspective.

With the Fatherhood Initiative now under the ideological thumb of the child support zealots, the whole effort quickly lost its momentum

SO, SINCE YOU are UNHAPPY WITH BIG BROTHER, and WE (I’m speaking for women missing their kids, women tired of being stuck in (and by) the family law venue, tired of being examined, categorized, labeled, and psychoanalyzed, when a brief review of the facts, in many cases, might suffice to tell who is, and who is not complying with existing relevant law, why don’t we ALL learn to settle our differences OUT OF COURT.

HOWEVER, my friend, that doesn’t include with the back of the hand, depriving a woman of her necessities or of making some decisions about her own life, lecturing her in private (since you don’t like federally funded public lectures on this topic) how to be a mother or a woman, threats, degrading talk, or any of the activities that prompted feminism to start with.  No, it did NOT just rain down out of the sky.

You guys went to war (REMEMBER?) .  We went to the factories to help make munitions and ships.  Then you came back, and wanted US back, and to forget what we’d just learned, including a thing or two about budgeting.

Some horses, once out of the barn, are simply not going back.  Like in the book of Esther in the Bible, there is always some politician trying to teach a woman — even a queen — that she is replaceable, lest women through out the land get some hairbrained idea that they have a right to say no to things that insult and degrade THEM!

We are not going back to rural America, it just ain’t going to happen.  So some things are going to have to change, and if you don’t like the FEDS getting into the Marriage business (I certainly don’t), then some adjustments to the Norman Rockwell version of reality have to be made.

ONE of them might be dismantling the dysfunctional educational system** and teaching your own kids.  THAT’D be an involved father, and if enough people did this, they might have a better sense of their purpose and meaning in life.  Including the ones who drive Lexuses and don’t have to enroll their kids in the local, caste-sorting public school.

Pardon my passion, but I happen to have some…

Here’s Diane Ravitch on that system (March 2nd article):

Dr. Ravitch is now caustically critical. She underwent an intellectual crisis, she says, discovering that these strategies, which she now calls faddish trends, were undermining public education. She resigned last year from the boards of two conservative research groups.“School reform today is like a freight train, and I’m out on the tracks saying, ‘You’re going the wrong way!’ ” Dr. Ravitch said in an interview.

Dr. Ravitch is one of the most influential education scholars of recent decades, and her turnaround has become the buzz of school policy circles.

. . .

In 1991, Lamar Alexander, the first President Bush’s secretary of education, made her an assistant secretary, a post she used to lead a federal effort to promote the creation of state and national academic standards.

Since leaving government in 1993, Dr. Ravitch has been a much-sought-after policy analyst and research scholar, quoted in hundreds of articles on American education. And she has written five books, including “Left Back: A Century of Battles Over School Reform” (2001) and “The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn” (2003), an influential examination of the censorship of school books by left- and right-wing pressure groups.

(BY THE WAY, I DON’T STAND IN EXACTLY THE SAME POSITION SHE DOES ON THIS TOPIC…)

or, EARLIER (I haven’t read this link yet):

Get Congress Out of the Classroom – New York Times
Oct 3, 2007 … Diane Ravitch, a professor of education at New York …
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/03/opinion/03ravitch.html

Women do the bulk of the world’s work, and we most certainly bear its babies.  Won’t hurt to treat us like full-status human beings, particularly in the land whose pledge of allegiance reads “with liberty and justice for all.”

You can’t have justice with out-come based courts, or for that matter SCHOOLS (Ravitch has been saying).  I’m a musician, and I know that it was the joy of the process that kept my attention, and will keep the attention of kids when they are given something that doesn’t insult THEIR intelligence to do, in their schools and with their lives.

The entity to give that to them is not the federal government, as far as I am conc