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

Post updated (for clarity and to add title link and a few borders, not much more) 8/2/2022…

[About 9,500 words.  Like most of my posts, that includes many quotations…  Because I’m also discussing a federal database, it also includes blocks of text (tables) which show definitions of various fields or pieces of data in it.

What I have to say, the “tell” in “Show and Tell,” isn’t the largest part of this post.  Look at what’s shown, much of it become self-evident, (I believe!)

I’m showing (and telling) how HHS, the US agency in place to help Humans be Healthy, isn’t Helping us Track its Grants well enough. [“TAGGS.HHS.gov” ]

Data elements that the users should be able to sort on aren’t even menu choices... and of the fields they CAN sort on, those aren’t always even entered filled in.

I pick on a few examples, including an abstinence/healthy marriage grantee, of course]

Post Title:

HHS Grants Database (TAGGS.HHS.gov) isn’t “Close enough for Jazz.” [Publ. Sept. 30, 2012; Formatted Aug. 2, 2022] (short-link ends “-19Y”)

HHS Data Quality in the TAGGS Database

Accessible Data for the Public

The matters in blue remind us that spending isn’t supposed to happen without authorization and appropriation.  Yet look at the “Advanced Search” page and see if you can find those fields.

There’s one link to “Advanced Search” (explore on your own time), and several shortcuts to other menu items, and some pre-planned reports. Yet I found in a general search, there are plenty of grants missing codes — DUNS code, some missing a CFDA Code (plenty missing a principal investigator; do not yet know if these are specifically block grants only).  Of the principal investigators there really ought to be a first name, last name designation [as a separate field] and no title entered unless there’s a designated field “Title.”  that’s BASIC data design, omitted here..

Therefore Principal Investigator’s given names who happen to be M.D. or Ph.D. and could be called “Doctor” properly, would show up alphabetized under “D” not their names. In addition, that could be entered before or after a given name.
http://taggs.hhs.gov/AdvancedSearch.cfm
Any feedback on how someone may get to this data via the public access site?

I see many fields described which do not show up on “Advanced Search” options — please let me know.  For example, nothing should be paid out which Congress, Executive Order, or some other authority has no

TAGGS ADVANCED SEARCH (the most sophisticated, but still problemmatic)

TAGGS REPORTS
TAGGS Summary Reports
HHS Grants By OPDIV
HHS Grants By Recipient Class
Grants By Major Activity Type
State Summary Reports

TAGGS Recovery Act Reports
Search By Location
Search By CFDA Programs
Search By Keyword

CFDA Program Summary Report
Search by CFDA Summary Report

RE: CFDA 93086 is Healthy Marriage AND Responsible Fatherhood (just one category)

For another, (one example) in the coding of “Categories of Federal Domestic Assistance” (“CFDA”):

Readers cannot SORT on one CFDA for Marriage, or another for Fatherhood. So public discussions of this grant as a type of grant can only refer to application (who is served) and are not measurable with any fields the public can view or select or sort on, at TAGGS.HHS.Gov.  That, I cannot and do not believe is by accident. [[Comment added 8/1/2022  LGH]]

In the press, in advertising, a big deal is made out of some money is for promoting Marriage, others for promoting Fatherhood.  While grant series numbers may differ, and the programs may differ (although they’re not really that different!  The marriage movement is primarily also a fatherhood movement as designed) readers cannot SORT on one CFDA for Marriage, or another for Fatherhood.

Also, in the “CFDA” field — which has many many listed numerically, with tiny print showing the program name** — this is practically the most important field.  Visually it is hard to read, and one cannot simply “CTRL-ALL” and copy & paste the CFDA titles for looking at it separately.  YET, this money comes from the US Treasury by way of the House Ways & Means Appropriation Committee, right? (or executive order, etc.) — and if We can’t look at it, then how can we talk to our legislators about its use, locally?

[[**I believe I was referring to, within the Sort and Select Filter options under “Advanced Search.”//LGH 2022]

Corporations often change their names (or get dissolved). [It seems] TAGGS has no way to update these, so if a person has a corporation (local) in their area to check out its HHS grants history (through this database), this person would almost literally have to know the corporations’ name-change history!  And in the field I’m most interested in, and this blog (i.e., marriage promotion, abstinence, access/visitation, court improvement programs through child support enforcement, things that affect families in other words, including adoption & foster care incentives….) – — there are  LOT of shape-shifting organizations around.

In ADDITION to the shapeshifting organizations and HHS not updating their names (to spot-check, go search “Futures without Violence” (formerly Family Violence Prevention Fund) by the former name.  You won’t get anything. Could a person then search by DUNS# once they get it?  YEAH — BUT, some organizations have more than one DUNS# and too many database entries have NO DUNS#s.  Amazing what can be done with an electronic database.

Suppose you, the individual person, actually DID have the accurate name, and name history of a group?  TAGGS still doesn’t always enter it in right.

Recent example:

This is actually the Judith Wallerstein Center for the Family In Transition.  People know this — it’s a nationally known author in a field that HHS funds:

Judith S. Wallerstein, Ph.D., is an internationally recognized authority on the effects of divorce on children and their parents, and on marriage. She is the founder in 1980 of the Judith Wallerstein Center for the Family in Transition, in Marin County, California, a major center for research, education and counseling for families in separation, divorce and marriage. Findings from her groundbreaking investigations have been widely published in numerous books, scientific journals, and lay publications. The acknowledged standard reference work on divorcing families is her book, written with Dr. Joan Kelly, Surviving the Breakup: How Children and Parents Cope with Divorce (Basic Books, New York, 1980), which grew out of the original California Children of Divorce Study begun in 1971, for which Dr. Wallerstein was the principal investigator. Second Chances: Men, Women and Children a Decade After Divorce (Ticknor & Fields, New York, 1989, co-authored with Sandra Blakeslee), comprises her 10- and 15-year follow-up reports on that study and is a compendium of clinical observations on the nature of the divorce process. It has won wide acclaim and has been translated into ten foreign languages

Is it too much to ask for TAGGS to get at least the first few words of the organization’s name right?  (Note, she has since died, but helped spearhead this field, practically).

Or,

(Compare its one grant with the first grant to WAIT training, below.  It is the same Award (i.e., grant)#:  CCU823730)

Showing: 1 – 1 of 1 Award Actions

aka:

http://abstinencertc.homestead.com/***see description below, while I’m here:

(This organization had to change its name after it was associated, alas, with Uganda’s “kill-the-gay” movement; along with other conservative evangelical types, it had to issue a statement of dissociation!  Google “Throckmorton” who covered some of this.  I THINK I have the right organization, it might have been, however, the Arizona-based “NAME” National Association for Marriage Education.

“The Center for Relationship Training.”

The last several grants shows about when it started getting grants, and of what sort.  FYI, STILL getting money in 2012.  I should go form a nonprofit, right?

. . .

Grantee “ARTC” in Colorado still has website up, and “About Us” shows a Denver University/ Oklahoma (Georgia) connection to the field:

Mike and Sarah Worley have been married seven years and have been active participants in the abstinence until marriage education movement. Sarah is a stay at home mom to their two daughters, Raeghan 3 and Rachel 1. They currently live in Fort Smith, AR.

Mike began speaking and training on abstinence education strategies as a graduate student at the University of Denver. His experience as a collegiate athlete and 1993 National Junior College Athletic Association ” Male Athlete of-the-Year” opens various doors for the abstinence message. In 1997 he joined Friends First and was elevated to Executive Director in 1998. In 2000, Mike joined Choosing the Best in Atlanta, Georgia as their Executive Director. He spent two years in that post before launching the Abstinence & Relationship Training Center (ARTC) in the Spring, 2002.

In 2003 and 2004 Sarah oversaw a state-wide effort to implement abstinence education strategies in Oklahoma’s public and private schools, health departments, churches, youth groups, crisis pregnancy centers and other governmental agencies. The highly successful Oklahoma Abstinence Training Conferences (OATC)garnered national publicity and resulted in over 80% of Oklahoma public schools receiving at least one hour of abstinence education training and one abstinence education curriculum for use in various grade levels across the state.

Mike and Sarah are available to speak, train or help your organization with growth strategies.

~ ~ ~I’m sure they are.  “Mike” has a BA in communication and an MA in Management from Univ. of Denver.  Choosing the Best (CTB) is associated with WAIT training, etc. etc.  As it says...

In February 2000, Mike Worley, former Executive Director of Friends First, joined CTB as Executive Director. Also in 2000 CTB became the exclusive distributor of WAIT Training, a relationship-focused abstinence curriculum.Today CTB curricula, training and resources are being used in over 2,000 schools in 40 states.

Teen sex abstinence curriculum and training programs” (url is or was: http://www.choosingthebest.org/ when I first published this post (9/30/2012) but no redirects to a “Best Alternatives Review” on-line store in NY, in 2022..//LGH

How to get the Federal or a State Gov’t to pay someone to purchase the CtB training curriculum, per site under “funding & Grants”:

Overview

The following are potential sources of funding for Choosing the Best abstinence-centered education programs. Please select a specific grant to obtain complete information about that grant, including application details and deadlines.

• Competitive Abstinence Education Grant Program(Application Due Date 8/6/2012)
• Title V State Abstinence Education Grant Program
• Teen Pregnancy Prevention (TPP) and Personal Responsibility Education Program

For assistance in preparing grant proposals which utilize Choosing the Best,please reference our Grant Toolkit or call 1-800-774-BEST (2378).

http://www.choosingthebest.org/training/index.html

The cost of CTB Teacher Training Certification is $1,500 per day plus expenses. For more information and scheduling information contact our Training Coordinator, Roxanne Steely at 1-800-774-BEST (2378) or emailrsteely@ctbpublishing.com.

Choosing the Best:

the LLC was around 2001 through 2011: Coincidence? Smartmarriages.com conferences ran 2000 – 2010…

Pretty well registered right around welfare reform, eh?   They last filed a return a year ago. It looks like a one-person outfit (not Mike Worley).

ANYHOW, Here’s an Andy Kopsa (also follows grants) article on the topic, including this group “WAIT.”  You should read it — I showed you, the year 2012, grant applications still around, public funding, etc.!  And really — $1,500/day training + expenses for “Choosing the Best?”

“Girls’ brains are like spaghetti, boys’ brains are like waffles…boys tuck schoolbooks under their arms at the waist, girls cradle theirs like a baby…boys were made to pursue girls and girls were made to wait to be pursued by boys…we have an entire generation of girls looking for daddy love…you just have to get that viable sperm close to her vagina and she turns on the little Hoover vacuum, because girls are very, very fertile…”  — from a video of a 2009 WAIT Training assembly at Loveland High School

Maybe certain Joneen MacKenzie’s** brain is like spaghetti, based on the corporate history of this one organization, which I actually labored through a while back…

. . .abstinence-only programs come under fire for questionable instructional methods and curricula as well. The Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS) periodically releases in-depth reviews of abstinence-only programs and regularly finds that they often rely on messages of fear and shame to encourage abstinence and promote biased views of gender, marriage and pregnancy options.

Yet Americans have spent more than $1.5 billion on abstinence-only programs over the past fifteen years through Title V of the Social Security Actand other federal legislation. The programs really flourished under President George W. Bush, who created an injection of funding with his Community Based Abstinence Education grants. President Barack Obama did away with this funding stream, but during the fight in Congress over health-care reform, Republicans put $250 million for abstinence-only programs into the Affordable Healthcare Act.

The funds — now being distributed throughout the country — were made available on a non-competitive, state-by-state basis through Title V. All a governor had to do was say that he or she wanted abstinence funding, and a scaled dollar amount was provided to the state. Ritter declined the reported $3.2 million in abstinence-only funding available to Colorado, electing instead to seek funding for comprehensive sex education through the federal Personal Responsibility Education Program. Colorado was awarded approximately $793,000 in PREP funds each year from 2010 through 2014.

But a member of the State Board of Education, operating without board approval, decided to make an end run around the governor and bring the Title V funding to Colorado anyway.  {{HOW, I wonder?}}

That money is now paying for abstinence programs to go to public school auditoriums, training conferences, churches and community centers throughout Colorado, spreading the message that abstinence-only-until-marriage is the only way to have disease-free, worthwhile sex.

(Comments on the 8/2011 article)

**the linked article deals with Ugandan Ssempa and shows MacKenzie as citing Brookings Institution Data from 2006.

“The Center for Relationship Education is funded by a pair of grants — one for $233,000 a year for three years from Title V of the Social Security Act and another for $1.6 million a year over the same period as part of the federal Healthy Marriage Initiative.

As with the message, the funding has also generated controversy. So have Mackenzie’s ties to a Ugandan pastor

The story also questions her connection to a number of controversial individuals, including Maggie Gallagher, the chairwoman of the National Organization for Marriage, regarded by some as an anti-gay group, and Ugandan pastor Martin Ssempa.

Ssempa came under fire in his country for his support of a bill that called for the death penalty in cases of “aggravated homosexuality.”

Mackenzie said she met Ssempa, who’s married to an American woman, at a number of conferences in the U.S.

Calling him a “flipping amazing” speaker, she said she felt compelled to help Ssempa by giving him money for letterhead and business cards. She also added him to the center’s website as an available guest speaker.

“Then I found out he went off the deep end regarding the legislation in Uganda,” Mackenzie said. “I had to disassociate with him.

Read more:Joneen Mackenzie of Denver builds career on advocating abstinence for young people – The Denver Posthttp://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_20046472#ixzz27yyQSp9f

Along the lines of “May the Circle . .  . Be Unbroken . . . . By an’ by, Lord, by an’ by* (*Click to Hear it, with Johnny Cash & Carter family, or at least a crowd in concert)..”  Marriage promoters, abstinence promoters, and etc – hang out together, drink from similar troughs (conferences) and peddle often not only similar but also identical curricula.  There’s always a FOR_PROFIT associated.  Some like it for religious reasons (evangelization); some for sociological (human behavioral research – -and don’t kid yourself this ain’t part of why!), and I don’t see anyone having a problem with the profits:

Like other healthy marriage grantees, this one likes to hang out in conferences and form associations of grantees to better organize.  Most of this (as I keep pointing out) hooks into a “SmartMarketing.com” excuse me, “SmartMarriages.com”  “NARME” is such a nonprofit, formed in Florida, although as I recall it was formed by Dennis Stoica  who helped form the first California Healthy Marriages Coalition in San Diego Area.

Found at:

The National Association for Relationship & Marriage Education (NARME)

Julie Baumgardner, Chair

NARME exists to champion the wellbeing of children through [**] relationship and marriage education.  Our board directors are located across the United States with our corporate office in Tallahassee, FL.  Interested individuals or organizations can join NARME online at our website. Our 2012 “Champions for Children” Conference will be July 20-25, 2012 In Baltimore, MD.

http://www.narmeconference.com

Contact/Organizer: Maggie Russell, 2012 Conference Chair

Website: http://www.narme.org/

Email: mailto:Maggie@NARME.org

Phone: 832-434-5533

Program Types: Associations and Organizations Conferences Instructor TRAINING – in-person Training: become a Marriage, Relationship, or Parent Educator DVDs/CDs/Films

Under “about NARME” / Press Releases ” it has three (currently):

• TANF Reauthorization
• NARME Response to the PEW study
• BSF comments from Dr. Stanley and Dr. Fincham

They know exactly what they are doing, which is springboarding off TANF block grants to states which allow for the promotion of two-parent families.  “BSF” refers to “Building Strong Families” which means logistically in these terms: running seminars; training trainers; and marketing the media that promote the seminars (i.e., DVD/print etc. curricula) …   setting up nationwide networks based on a FEW basic centralized ideas, with a downline where the top of the pyramid (and profiting from it) is whoever designed the curriculum.

From top to bottom, this is supported by foundations (translation — foundation wealth comes from either personal family wealth, or business/corporate wealth or both. So let’s call it what it is — corporations, essentially) AND the US (etc.) federal government.  Who is supporting the U.S. (etc.) federal government? –> The people feeding both work, and income (wage withholding for taxation) into the system, and to the extent they invest in pension funds for some part of government (i.e., federal workers, etc.) investment dividends.

The members of NARME (Julie Baumgardner being a person running “First Things First” out of Tennessee) tend to be marriage educators, or the nonprofits they formed to get on this funding stream.

Dr. Stanley is out of University of Denver, and helped put together the  curriculum PREP, Inc.  and at “Frank Fincham” is at “the Family Institute” in Florida.  I.e., we are talking University Level Connections:

SCOTT M. STANLEY, PH.D. RESEARCH PROFESSOR

CO-DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR MARITAL AND FAMILY STUDIES

DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY

FRONTIER HALL UNIVERSITY OF DENVER

DENVER, COLORADO 80208

PH:

FAX:

FRANK FINCHAM, PH.D.

EMINENT SCHOLAR, OXFORD UNIVERSITY, 1980

DIRECTOR OF THE FAMILY INSTITUTE

FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY

310 LONGMIRE

TALLAHASSEE, FL 32306-1491

PHONE: etc.

Who wants? to know what the US is spending our tax and other of its wealth on, re: HHS and spend daytimes (unpaid) looking this up with an inaccurate, incomplete, not that flexible, and not even really useable database that doesn’t ITSELF even show us how to look up its own Treasury Authorization codes to make sure the activities are authorized, the organizations are legit — and that they STAY legit if they keep getting funding?

Moreover these are simply centralizing indoctrination of the masses with the doctrines of the influential few — such as HHS personnel who then steered grants to their pet nonprofits (NFI,** in 1994, etc.) and IMMEDIATELY set to technical assistance, training, mentoring, and in short, setting up distribution units — nationwide — for the same programs.

[**The National Fatherhood Initiative, Inc.]

It doesn’t seem to matter when fraud is caught in one — or several.  For some reason, people (regular folk) are so distracted, stressed out, or perplexed in part from years in some of the same systems affected by these programs (I’m talking the courts!) no one is telling government exactly where to put their profit-making with a heavy dose of evangelism operations

I personally believe, having looked at this particular grants system intensely [for years now] is that it was intentionally set up to be untraceable and as a series of slush fund operations — i.e., help set up the shell corporations with compassion capital funding, then shove money their way (by the millions, sometimes) and set up operations through church, welfare, community grants, you name it!

What used to be said of HUD (see “run as a criminal organization”) in my opinion — at least this part of it, including the OCSE (Child Support Enforcement) — could just as well be said of HHS.     if it were clearly understood by MOST of the public that these programs are not there to HELP people — they are there to help the programmers and the social engineers, and then we have to answer the question WHY should anyone be given the tools, the power, and the funding — to ENGINEER a society, and accustom us to throwing our money away.

Just another reminder — This picked up serious pace when the faith-based outfits were let in.

I don’t know exactly where reform starts, but unless more people start showing an interest in this database, specifically — and then insisting to government officials it be run better — AND that the various Secretary of State websites (California’s is especially objectionable on the corporations side) start being more responsive AND free to the users — then we cannot take almost anything said by our own government seriously.

It’s not representative, it’s not accountable, it’s not transparent, and it IS basically accelerating the creation of an elite, and hordes of poor.

NOW — what, pray tell, lies ahead for the poor, the landless through all this, and the without legitimate means to hold “jobs”?

I am working on a way to demonstrate for others approximately what state the non-accountability is in.  After that, however, I am simply believing that the way to go is understanding our relationship to the Federal government (which is a matter of choice) as better explained by the fact that it’s a corporation – -not a representative government — and that as such, it sees us as shareholders, even though it may be called “Citizens.”  this has to do with Jurisdiction (Title 28) and again, with the matters of what, exactly IS money — (dollars are legal tender for corporate debt….).

And in that matter, we have to go to some rather patriot style sites (like afpn.org) and keep what makes sense, reject what doesn’t.

Being an adult means taking responsibility for one’s choices.  The push to MARRY is the push to get people to obtain a marriage LICENSE.  To get a marriage LICENSE (drivers’ license, EIN#, SS#, birth certificate, the whole nine yards) is to enter into a commercial relationship with The United States of America, meaning what’s centered in Washington, D.C. and which controls, Washington, D.C. — and the US Territories.

Citizenship can be stable despite geographic change, and it’s possible to (as I understand it so far), resign one’s status as free and having unalienable rights by entering into a CONtrACT (wise or unwise, informed or uninformed) with “the USA” in these various forms.

THink about it — the state taxes are called the ‘FRANCHISE” TAX BOARD — ever think about what kind of franchise is it?  Why would the organization taxing the residents and businesses (“persons”) in the states — and granting or removing their license to do business — becalled a “FRANCHISE” board?

Also, do we believe, really, that the wealth taking from us in this business relationship, which is pooled and invested by those who control it — is not profiting the owners (or holders) thereof more than those who contributed to setting up the amassment of assets, real estate, businesses, and cash flow? . .  . Do these asset-holders (these government entities) play by the same rules — are they subject to the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission?) and being taxed?  (Does government tax itself?  Or is that a silly question?).

So that’s where we go next.  To pay better attention to the language.

Is there, for example, any particular reason why the public face of TAGGS doesn’t display some of this information, for our use?

Common Accounting Number info (“CAN”):

or indicators which track who is responsible and what income is generated by the grantee through the award activity!

Or, the EIN (which can be searched on– but does not display during “Advanced Search” or in essentially ANY search result (that I can see) other than when one already has the DUNS# and can search on that under “DUNS & EIN search!”  this is a BIG DEAL, particularly when alleged nonprofits are not real nonprofits.  How much time on this post have I run around looking up the nonprofit forms on other databases?

Or:

Or ….in general things that would allow individuals, or groups of individuals freely assembling to look up certain projects — as local checks and balances on the programming — in general get as complete (or nearly as complete) a picture on WHERE and HOW certain appropriations are actually being used.

And to help reduce fraud — which certainly shouldn’t objectionable, now, should it?

Below here is the complete list of Data elements from TAGGS help page:

http://taggs.hhs.gov/HelpStatus/datadictionary.cfm

– – – To go back to the top of this post, click on its title link here:

Post Title:

HHS Grants Database (TAGGS.HHS.gov) isn’t “Close enough for Jazz.” [Publ. Sept. 30, 2012; Formatted Aug. 2, 2022] (short-link ends “-19Y”)

To go to previous or next post, I believe navigation arrows should show after the comments.  September, 2012 is also searchable on (top right) Blog sidebar under “Archives” and a drop-down calendar (reverse chrono by year and month.  Scroll down to the desired month to see active links to posts published (it doesn’t include PAGES published, but I don’t often publish pages…Those are listed in Tables of Contents (where I’ve created one) and a specific sticky post near the top of the blog should list most of them.

I see I published many posts that month, and am gradually re-publicizing them on Twitter, as their contents are still relevant.

Also, here’s a comment (that I had added to the post), for convenience sake, and proofread some while at it:

(I’m not sure of exactly when, but probably soon after posting)

OK, this is me (blog author), showing a prior (2011) and very detailed lookup of the Abstinence and Relaitionship group, WAIT training, Center for Relationship (etc.) in combination with its state of Colorado Corporate filings. There’s also more info there on NARME.

However, as I now see this pattern in other ongoing grantees (that continue to get HHS grants) I find it REAL odd how they feel it necessary to keep the chameleon incorporation filings hopping.

https://familycourtmatters.wordpress.com/2011-healthy-marriageresponsible-fatherhood-grantees-why-we-need-to-speed-date-all-the-grantee-sessions/

(scroll down some). Oh, by the way, you’ll see in there a neat little AFCC corporation filing showing Jessica Pearson (of CPR) and Margaret Little (street address the Los Angeles County Courthouse!) and in 1981 they dissolved the corporation. More of this history is available on a [the] “Family Court Report of 2002 (put out by California NOW, I believe) which has a chapter attempting to track the various corporate statuses of AFCC.

Looking at Joneen’s [[WAIT]] group — no matter how colorful her personality may or may not be over the topic of abstinence — the corporate filing history is downright erratic, strange, and possibly not accidentally so. I don’t know — check out the link and see what you think.

Think about this — why put three different EIN#s for, say, the Judith Wallerstein Center for the Family in Transition (all in California)? — they are all modeled after her work, they have groups who publish and conference together. Is [It should read “Are”..] the multiple EIN# there or the multiple incorporations HERE (WAIT, etc.) simply a neat way of tax evasion and concealing money?

Just posing the question. And posting the link where I was looking this up. Seriously — a group receiving millions [of dollars] of federal funding should be able to stay incorporated. It’s not HARD to stay incorporated — just a filing. One doesn’t have to actually be profitable — just to file!

//LGH  Aug. 2, 2022.