Archive for May 9th, 2013
Tax-Exempt Institutes, Associations, and Foundations Influence the Courts (Pennsylvania)
[This intro is repeated on a DIFFERENT post; I’m splitting the Institutions/Associations/Foundations topic from the individual lookups of who helped rewrite (and publish a book to explain) the 2011 Revised Custody Act in Pennsylvania. The other post personalizes the networks among contributing attorneys (and a few other personnel — two psychologists, a mediator and a judge) who compiled the book.
INTRO 1
This post just again encourages us to understand how corporations, tax-exempt, act in order to promote or influence certain fields; what services they provide (including CLE and a lot of education, media campaigns, etc.) and how often, when attorneys, judges and people who cont1`ract with or are paid by the courts (which is, they are Indirectly and/or Directly funded by the public) this affects what’s said and done from the bench.
People who work jobs and obtain wages (or who simply run businesses) operate differently. The primary difference is social organization, and attracting funding to promote the desired viewpoints. It makes NO sense to go about wishing for, clamoring for, or rallying, marching, picketing, and “telling our stories” for court reform — while refusing (categorically) to take into account of who you are dealing with — at this level!
But that is exactly the nonsensical approach must people wanting to reform the courts take, especially parents — take. Tell their stories, talk about the judges, or the GALs, or the custody evaluators. Or about why facts don’t matter. Or about parental alienation (pro, or con). Or put billboards about the corruption — and then continue to refer to their stories, and maybe just a smattering of how the system works (and is funded). Or about almost anything BUT the system itself.
The next paragraph’s links are NOT random:
I am not the only person who chooses a different kind of ANALYSIS; but such people are often busy looking up the system and reporting on it — while a dramatic story always has press appeal, and as such, nonprofits and other professionals NOT themselves subject matter of the system, who are good talkers (the more degrees among them, the more they expect to be heard, and are likely to be published = income = “Credibility”) — and/or whose business is obtaining press coverage, or who have the financing to sponsor conferences [##]– encourage the storytelling MINUS the truth of how we got here, and significant elements of WHY we got here, i.e., to provide a great cover for money laundering, system change towards centralized power (government) and to USE people in a variety of ways as experimental subject matter, at their own expense, to better refine control of large sectors of the population.
[##@ 8-2-2014, the link shows as broken; “cummingsfoundation.org” no longer hosted. Try this *.com link instead.] Also note there are other “Cummings” foundations (Nathan Cummings, relates to Consolidated Foods, later Sara Lee fortunes, but I am referring to Nicholas and Dorothy Cummings foundation, whose background is in psychology, psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, former head of Kaiser mental health, active in the APA (American Psychological Association) which is so closely tied into the family court venues, and as it turned out, Dr. Cummings now wishing to reform the courts, in previous decades helped protect the professional futures of his colleagues (psychologists, specifically) by helping start the “California School of Professional Psychology” — which has close ties (I have learned since) with Alliant University and the Institute on? Violence, Abuse and Trauma (“IVAT”). See 6/29/2014 post on this blog). Many mergers take place, but in short, if you are talking this level of influence and funding — hooking up with the “Fix the Courts” in association with Domestic Violence leadership, you are talking an oxymoron. It’s a built-in contradiction! ]
Mutual Self-Interest, Not the Truth, drive the “Our Broken Courts” Conference==>Book==> Lobbying
Copying the (Bad, though Effective) Practices of the immensely profitable (to technical training and assistance providers) Gender Wars (VAWA vs. NFI; Domestic Violence versus Fatherhood industries) — the mutual self-interested membership of “Our Broken Courts Initiative” also engages in collective censorship in favor of a pre-determined solution to a problem that has been pre-framed to exclude (the financial analysis) and SPECIFICALLY designed to bypass genuine public feedback and input.
Broken Family Courts Initiative In honor of Domestic Violence Awareness Month, the Cummings Foundation for Behavioral Health has launched a national initiative and Congressional advocacy campaign to address systemic failures in the U.S. family courts that are placing tens-of-thousands of children in harm’s way each year.
The goal of the Cummings Foundation’s initiative is to develop policy solutions at the federal level that will address the crisis in a meaningful way. To ensure that our nation’s top elected officials are made aware of the deep, systemic flaws that are harming more than 58,000 children per year in America’s family courts, the Foundation has just mailed a comprehensive report about the crisis to all members of Congress, every state’s Governor and Chief Justice, and thousands of law schools and forensic psychologists around the country. The report highlights our analysis of the U.S. family courts’ systemic flaws as presented by several esteemed lawyers, judges, psychologists and other experts who participated at the Cummings Foundation’s “Our Broken Family Court System” conference in Phoenix, Arizona last March.
See below for more information about the Cummings Foundation’s Broken Family Courts Initiative.
Cummings Foundation Broken Family Courts Initiative Highlighted on Fox 11 News (Los Angeles)
Read the Press Release
Initiative FAQs
Learn more about The Cummings Foundation.
And learn my alternate analysis of the Broken Record mantra of ““Our Broken Family Courts” (and “58,000 children a year” claim). A colorful post takes it back to a California NOW 2002 critique, another even earlier metaphor, as a “Court Cancer” metastasizing, and if you want my final opinion — as of at least last October, on this particular paradigm, and those promoting it — scroll down to the bottom of that link..
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Let's Get Honest! Absolutely Uncommon Analysis of Family & Conciliation Courts' Operations, Practices, & History 