Let's Get Honest! Absolutely Uncommon Analysis of Family & Conciliation Courts' Operations, Practices, & History

TANF is up for reauthorization by the end of this month (and might already have been voted on).  It was only reauthorized last December 2011 through Sept. 30, 2012. This is a BIG DEAL….and an election year opportunity to get other voices heard on this one:

House Passes Bill Extending Aid for Families – But Blocking Access
12/16/2011

Yesterday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed House Resolution H.R. 3659 by voice vote that extends the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program through September 30, 2012. The state’s TANF block grant is used to fund the California Work Incentives and Responsibility to Kids (CalWORKs) program, which provides basic needs grants and work-training for very poor families with children.   {{will be different in every state what it funds}}

TANF = Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. = 1996 Welfare Reform signed by then President Clinton.   These are Federal Payments to the States and all the incentives, strings-attached, and conditions for receiving some the following year, attached.  What most of us have failed to assess (being conditioned not to fully investigate our government — too big a task, which is kind of like not paying attention to a plugged up sink, an invasive species of fish (or vegetation), or an epidemic, calling itself “largesse,” as monarchs and others tend to do…

For reference, Congress may pass legislation with an expiration date unless “reauthorized.” Scroll down to what’s to be reauthorized in 2012.

While “TANF” is many things, from a practical point of view, three points of reference (examples only, but key ones) will serve well, which is today’s post.  

• OKLAHOMA MARRIAGE INITIATIVE (PREP, Inc.) 
• SMARTMARRIAGES.com (and trademarked product set) 
• MAXIMUS.  

Understood as symptoms and symbols — in their basics, I think it communicates.

None of these could have prospered without someone rewriting the welfare laws from AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependent Children) into “TANF.”  That’s a major umbrella (cover) under which they operate.

If I can summarize — of course it’s not complete, it’s an outline as I now understand it (that is, after years of experience with the system, and over three years of studying it on-line and through networking.)

1.  TANF = Rewrite Welfare Laws to “Block Grants to States”

2.  Block Grants to States = Privatizing Welfare.

3.  Privatizing Welfare = Private Profits, Public Loss.

Literally, stealing (diverting direct aid) from Children and their caretaking parents to provide More Real Estate for (very religious) Marriage Mongers (and social science engineers).  Besides what people (with time) could figure out on their own, others such as the Center for Policy and Budget Priorities also have identified — less aid going TO the families, and more catering to federal favor (i.e., diversions)

4.  Centralized Control, whether fascist or socialist leads to:  hungry people, landless (rentals) & homeless people whose kids have been ripped out of their lives, or  (male AND female) are in prison for contempt of child support they can’t pay.

5.  Why should the public be supporting electronic, franchised information marketing to captive (literally) audiences themed around training, conditioning, behavioral science, and test-runs of how to get a certain relationship outcome?  Half this is propaganda, the other half simply thinly-disguised evangelism, and some of it just greed and egotism on the part of the social engineers.

6.  IF “the love of money is the root of all evil” (and it is), you’re in it.

At LEAST don’t drink so much Kool Aid so voluntarily; who knows what may happen if enough people (at once) say:  “I’m not buying it!”   

As we speak, the Chicago Teachers are on their first strike in 25 years, which set parents’ work life and other businesses scrambling to keep going as parents scrambled to keep their kids safe, which reveals clearly that school and most parents’ work lives are codependent.  

So,  who says collective action has no impact?  But the larger the collective cause is, the less detail and dynamic response to (real, changing) situations it has — the more conformist.  Like a very large truck going high-speed, with less than sensitive steering…

What we need most is TRUTH, and a simple, accurate way of figuring out which it is.  This is my attempt to outline (and demonstrate) some overlooked connections to the myth of “welfare.”  Read it before the end of September please, and also before the first Tuesday in November, 2012.

How States Have Spent TANF and MOE Funds

{{“MOE” just = “Maintenance of Effort.”  I’m simply putting this here for the visual and as a reminder of the 4 purposes of TANF.  Oklahoma Marriage Initiative began with the bright idea that purpose #4 (and not purpose #1) was the most important, based on some economist studies in 1998.}}

In general, states must spend TANF and MOE funds on activities that further one of TANF’s four purposes:

1. assisting needy families so children can be cared for in their own homes or the home of relatives;
2. reducing the dependency of needy parents by promoting job preparation, work, and marriage;
3. preventing out-of-wedlock pregnancies; and
4. encouraging the formation and maintenance of two-parent families.

States may also spend funds on activities that they supported with Emergency Assistance funds prior to 1996 even if the activities do not fall under one of these four TANF purposes.  Spending under this grandfathered authority is reported as “Authorized Under Prior Law” (AUPL).

Over time, states have shifted much of their TANF and MOE spending from basic assistance to other activities (see Figure 3).  This section examines some of those shifts, with particular emphasis on five key areas of spending:  1) basic assistance; 2) work activities and supports; 3) child care; 4) spending that is AUPL or “Other Nonassistance” spending; and 5) pregnancy prevention and support and maintenance of two-parent families.

Follow the pretty colors, especially the consistently declining blue, ‘BASIC ASSISTANCE.”  Basically assisting families makes no money for marriage educators, social science theorists, and very little for attorneys.  It simply helps the families, absent the moralizing.   Also understand that the religious groups, in particular, are very interested in TANF purposes 2c, 3 (abstinence education) and 4.

WEALTH TRANSFER TO REAL ESTATE HOLDINGS & OTHER PROFITS

ALL of these are creating more high-income, rich people at the expense of the poor, wo are sold off into social engineering demonstration projects — WHICH I assure you, is the truth.  Contact me if you want links.  I was STUNNED.  This is BUSINESS  and to do BUSINESS, the profit comes from a better deal for one side than the other — or collaborations such that someone else (like middle and low-income America, honest working people) get stiffed and the two collaborating sides win.  That’s simple economics.

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 Then what?

~I’ve talked about Who is the USA (and who am I //are you // is there a we?) in relationship to that..

~I’ve also talked about how the nonprofit system creates a class system, and about how the family courts are not broken (but exist to mainstream mental health and behavior modification through the court system).

~I’ve been talking about why the OCSE (child support system) should be eliminated (ideally, so would the family court system, but hey, I’m a realist!) for the primary reason is its operations are corrupt, it invites corruption, it’s not possible to monitor properly (given all the privateering) and as a matter of fact, is getting too many innocent families killed, when killing someone is simply easier than swallowing pride and paying up.

Eventually, one comes to the conclusion that almost any words (or labels) of any government program being advertised can be easily interpreted:

Whatever they are, the exact OPPOSITE is much closer to the truth. And I can prove this in category after category, starting, if need be, with “child support enforcement.” The fact is, it’s resoundingly most successful when cases are never closed.

We just didn’t fully understand the paradigm that this government is not here to help us, but to extort AND plunder the ethical.  And the next thing is, what to do about it (which I seriously doubt a collective consensus could be had on — in part because who controls the media, and who controls the wealth, not to mention the education systems, and who’s also in control of the most wealth?

I like life — and I don’t like charging windmills (Don Quixote reference).  This is not about the drama for me, it never has been.  It’s about how to live with my own conscience if I do NOT report and attempt to change things; given that trying to ‘live and let live” and exhort anyone else to respect the law (in our case, or statewide) isn’t going to work –and that’s already been proved as well.

I was planning to blog from Maximus’ (Child support Medicare, etc. agency) own History Page, admitting that they are getting rich off privatized government and key turning points for this.  Guess it liked the Ross Perot Get Rich QUICK through government contracting scheme.  Maximus founder also (I should note) had an Air Force/Pentagon background and then went to the (former) US Dept. of Health Education and Welfare and tried to instill some military precision:

MAXIMUS, Inc. – Company Profile, Information, Business Description, History, Background…

(from “referenceforbusiness.com” — like an encyclopedia)

Turning to the Private Sector: Government in the 1960s 

The concept of a private company supporting a government agency was pioneered by Ross Perot and his Electronic Data Systems Corporation (EDS), which was originally created to take over the data processing operations of private businesses

. {{Perot had tried IBM salesman, but it wasn’t a personality fit..}}

When Congress passed Medicare legislation in 1965, resulting in an enormous amount of paperwork that needed to be processed, the concept was applied to the federal government

Medicare and Medicaid processing proved so lucrative for EDS that within three years it accounted for nearly 25 percent of the company’s revenues. By 1977 that amount grew to nearly 40 percent. As a result, Perot would become immensely wealthy and famous enough to twice run for the presidency of the United States.The founder of MAXIMUS, David V. Mastran, earned an undergraduate degree from West Point in 1965, followed a year later by a master’s degree in industrial engineering from Stanford University

CAN WE REVIEW THIS PLEASE?  Medicaid and Medicare is supposed to help the vulnerable, elderly, and poor.  I guess it still does.  BUT, not only is it rife with fraud at all ranks, often defrauding kids in foster care with false billings, and resulting in multi-million$$ settlements (which WHO gets?) — but being so gargantuan, it made a single man wealthy enough to run twice for President.  David V. Mastran perhaps thought this would be a great line of work to get in, too.  If the federal government is going into MASSIVE expansion, why not be a visionary and join?

To review again — these are truly service industries?   that’s the real purpose, and since it’s such a great service — and there are definitely going to be lawsuits for fraud with anything that large — why shouldn’t the CEO get $565K/year AND stock options, and the rest of the directors, similar??  And, the children whose child support is stuck in the District Attorneys’ office as “undistributable” (when it isn’t) — $130 a month?  And the honest fathers, screwed/extorted?  And the poor (not by indigence) fathers, incarcerated — and mothers?  And the shareholders, — like those of the CCA — a nice profit?
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