The House Ways and Means Committee should quit funding Welfare Diversions (or child support demonstration programs) to promote “marriage and fatherhood” as an antidote to poverty, when we by now know that’s not its real purpose — at all.

(In my opinion) it is a federally franchised distribution network whose central product, apparently, is trademarked curricula, and those who pay the entrance fees (certifications) can get in on the networking. The fun corresponding part is that, regardless of whether or not this actually helps fathers, children, or reduces poverty, abuse, or is in the public best interest — or not — no one, but almost no one — is ever going to consistently follow through and find out which of the nonprofit grantee corporations, formed precisely to get these grants, stay incorporated or not.

(That’s a link to the CRS [Congressional Research Service) Feb. 2012 on “Fatherhood Initiatives:  Connecting Fathers to their Children.”  (RL31025)

ALL people should be aware of this House Committee (House Ways and Means means the “Means” to fund things…) and certain Subcommittees. You can subscribe to their alerts (which will reflect partisan ideas from whoever controls Congress at the time, i.e. right now, it’s anti-Obama in flavor) — but more important, I would stay aware of hearings on THESE matters, which reflect HUGE appropriations of funds extracted from the public through taxes, and acculated over the years through investments, ROI, interest on savings accounts, etc.:

Quote/Links Added July 2013:

A similar report written Dec. 2012 (RL31025) shows just how many Congresses were debating this, and where the funding came from.

It also shows that while a Republican  President, G.W. Bush supported it, thoroughly, a Democratic President, our current B.H. Obama, not only supported, but asked for $500 million additional funding.

Does this make it good? Well, that depends on how much one believes in representative government, at the local level, versus regionalized government set indirectly with the very heavy hand — the hand that feeds, i.e., State economies hooked into the centrally controlled federal grants system, which wealth has been accumulating and centralizing now (2013) for exactly one hundred years (Income Tax), and framed as Public Health and Welfare (Social Security Act) since 1934, “between the Wars.” 1996 welfare reform was a MAJOR overhaul, and it has inflicted major damages on the divorce industry, propelled certain people to nice public platforms, and marginalized those who didn’t have enough leisure time (or collective community wisdom) to keep a hawk eye on these events, or seek other sources of information about government than Mainstream media.

See next table, (which is basically the executive summary of the CRS reports, taken from the Dec. one), posted (why?) at FAS — Federation of American Scientists which is a nonprofit, since 1945,  dedicated mostly to preventing nuclear war!

[Added July 2013]
**Regarding Faith Based Solutions, LLC Mike Stickler, the Reno Gazette-Journal (RGJ) seems to have done a good series on this guy – – and on the federal agents who knew this man was a fraudster and unscrupulous BUT DID NOT REPORT HIM to the HHS/OIG which investigates such fraud. The group received $500,000 of a $1.5 million grant awarded to it. Did the people deceived ever get their money back?

This is actually a VERY good article by the RGJ; please read through it (the title is the URL). It appears that the grant workers knew what was going on, but did NOT report it to the OIG. It is a recipe (almost a diagram) for how grants fraud can occur, and more people should be aware of it, to stop this in the future. As I said, again, church groups tend to be a little more than gullible towards fraud by each other and their own leadership at times, and can get targeted for this. Scam artists know this. Also noted: while HHS apparently demanded its grant back, it didn’t demand or even tell this man to repay the organizations he defrauded, but deferred to Nevada for criminal prosecution, if any.

“If an agency felt the behavior was something that rose to the level of grant fraud and a misuse of taxpayer money, that is something we would investigate,” said Donald White, spokesman for the health and human services Office of Inspector General. “I have no idea why that information was not reported to us.”

Kenneth Wolfe, spokesman for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration of Children and Families, would not respond to repeated questions asking why no one reported Stickler to the Inspector General’s office.

Wolfe also declined to detail policies on reporting suspected fraud, and only sent an email with a website link to the Inspector General’s site for reporting fraud.

[See “Community Demonstration Programs” section here, detailing help to faith-based Technical Assistance intermediaries, probably where FBS came in. Who’s to know whether or not SOME of what Mike Stickler stuck the clients for did or did not end up in some HHS pockets, i.e., kickbacks? And why should taxpayers and average citizens, not equipped to screen and track for such things, have to be the follow-up artists and get journal articles published on lack of oversight of multi-million-dollar grant programs? )

I’ve been looking long enough at these grants systems I came to the conclusion the program had simply been set up for a slush fund operation. It’s riddled with loopholes, when audited, the offences don’t often result (that I can see) in deterrent activity (like jail time), and the same groups then are left free to disassemble, reassemble under new names (out of state) and continue, knowing the system, working the system.

Faith communities are NOTORIOUS for being gullible to “affinity fraud” which may also relate to why the push for faith-based organizations, other than for political reasons.

The grant this group got was “90EJ0108,” 2008 and 2009, total $1,000,000 is showing (DUNS 145755851). An advanced search on “faith based” grantees (all years) would show that this includes some “governor’s offices of” including in Ohio (a very large one, later caught in fraud; has two DUNS#, one is for healthy marriage demos), New Jersey, Alabama, and Michigan. Michigan is one of those “national responsible fatherhood month” states…

I just (Jul. 2013 rev) checked California Corporation Search for any group named “faith based.” All seem to be, naturally, post 2001 (when then President George W. Bush, by Executive Order, said, “Let there be an Office of Faith based Initiatives” and Lo and behold, there were Offices of Faith Based initiatives in the White House and related government agencies. Then they went forth and multiplied, in the States, as Governor’s Offices of Faith-Based. Others came behind, auditing and cleaning up the fraud along the way (particularly in Ohio)…

Please see Wikipedia (or other sources) on “Hein v. Freedom From Religion Foundation”

Hein v. Freedom From Religion Foundation, 551 U.S. 587 (2007), was a decision by the United States Supreme Court which ruled that taxpayers do not have the right to challenge the constitutionality of expenditures by the executive branch of the government.**

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At question was whether taxpayers have the right to challenge the existence of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.[1] The case centered on three Supreme Court precedents: Flast v. Cohen, 392 U.S. 83 (1968), Bowen v. Kendrick, 487 U.S. 589 (1988), and Valley Forge Christian College v. Americans United for Separation of Church & State, 454 U.S. 464 (1982).

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In a 5-4 vote the Supreme Court ruled that the Foundation did not have standing to sue and ordered the Appeals court finding reversed.

In part, the Foundation was (by definition — it’s a foundation!) tax-exempt. However, on the other hand, the Executive Office is not operating its budget under “Congressional mandate.” Which brings up the point that it’s in the Executive Offices or Branches (of Federal or State governments) that those IN those office know a lot of discretion, and with it, some immunity for abuse of discretion, exists and where aggressive system change programs are going to be targeted. Particularly when it comes to this field, in HHS departments or the HHS branch.

Of about 24 organizations, only a hand-ful aren’t Suspended or Dissolved. I just checked a 2011 “Society for Faith Based Initiatives, Inc.” (incorporated 2011) which business address coincides with an Advertising agency (Jperez.com). I see they have also registered with the Attorney General’s Office as Religious Exempt. Hopefully they won’t be going for federal grants… FYI Corporate #C3374909, in Santa Fe Springs, California. The person running it shows no (nada) college education, and is an advertising account executive (Peter Beath). Another one I looked up a while back (which is still active) in Oceanside, California — coincides with a group which has received HUD grants, if I’m not mistaken.

Seriously now — some in the blog there is hindsight, but most is ongoing research, after I realized the federal/state betrayal of the entire family court system — and the advocacy groups’ collective silence on it, preferring to talk about the problems, the stories, and appeal to the emotions, and set up panel after panel of so-called experts to talk about these problems.

I know VERY few woman bloggers (that is mothers facing custody challenges, or who lost them and now have no contact with their kids, while are paying their exes/the children’s father child support, etc.) who will, as I have, actually expose the betrayal of the advocacy groups in covering up the federal funding of fathers’ rights groups, and just how much the mainstream domestic violence nonprofits have been centralized and (“defanged?”) to collaborate with mens’ (meaning fatherhood-type) groups, both fed off the same troughs.

If you are hearing SOMETHING about it in the last approximately two years, I am at least in part probably why; I began with simply blogging the first site the even gave me a CLUE about these things, and simply continued investigating — but also, blogging; and it’ll become obvious here which of those two skills I’m better at: finding and comprehending the relevant information — or technical mastery of the social media to get it out.

How many people would actually pore over the public HHS database and look things up, look things  up, look things up (for free) in other states, not just their own, as I have?  And then write up their conclusions (or I should say, cut, paste and comment on their conclusions).

Yet why didn’t more others do this earlier?

This is a sample from October 2012 — it’s like a thousand-piece puzzle, but certain sectors have certain patterns, and once you start looking, the picture becomes more clear.  Check this one out.  This is one place where the lights went on — the welfare system is being used for a distribution network for marketing interests.  The marketing interests were initially funded, often, by the US Government (which is to say, unwittingly by the public).

My relationship to government will never be the same, as the relationships among our family members cannot be either — not while there is this extent of denial, collusion, coverups, and determination to “just pretend.”  Just pretending is a short-term fix for short-term solutions.  It is not a building tool for anything worthwhile.

People tend to hang together and speak the same language, and the groups are identifiable by certain phrases — and by omission of, basically, what this blog reports on — the money trail, who set up the family court system to start with (and why) and who is continuing to drive it.

Who FUNDs the drivers (what’s the gas in the tank, right?).  Although I’m not a mechanic, nor did I have the best tools, there are ways to look things up — which were maximized on this blog, and you can too.  Look at enough examples, and the pattern will become crystal clear.

Who Wants to Testify for the Next Round of Slush Fund Reauthorizations — Except This Time, Program Vendors get to be the Human Lab Rats, and Welfare Recipients are paid to Publish the Progress Reports of the Pilot Program Participants.

[I think this is a more direct route to ending poverty — instead of diverting money originally destined for the poor from the poor to STUDY the poor,** pay the poor to study the people that believe that was a good idea to start with.)

[[**This is literally how the Oklahoma Marriage Initiative  [[That link is actually a good sample of  my blogging]]– first state to implement the “Steal from our Stash allegedly destined for the poor, to study why the poor are poor:   Hypothetically (“Come, let us research you, for some crumbs off the master’s table”), based on the premise that being the fastest route to poverty doesn’t consist of being a single female in a below the Bible Belt state with a Roman Catholic governor and an evangelical protestant head of HHS, but rather, results in fatherlessness in a patriarchal society.   “Come, let us teach you relationship skills to add one low-income wage to another low-income wage.  Whether  this nudges the household wages a half-foot above survival level or not, it will certainly make OUR retirement plans (see “royalties,” etc.)”

No one, for the most part, wants to show up in, say, a Congressional Subcommittee Hearing on whether to authorize this year, again, another $150,000,000 to promote Responsible Fatherhood and Healthy Marriage** and say “This program, ALONG WITH THE CHILD SUPPORT ENFORCEMENT SYSTEM, (OCSE) needs to be shut down, because it’s simply a Fees for Friends operation, which I can prove with the corporate histories of XYZ grantees.”  Although no one really knows where all the money goes (but this blog will show you lots of “take the money and run” groups.)

(**Federal funding-wise, per TAGGS.hhs.gov, essentially the same thing, and are even listed under the same “CFDA” code, 93086.  Groups that promote marriage, also favor fatherhood.)

Or who? would show up and say to the assembled witnesses:

Good afternoon.  I would like to say nice things about these programs, to recommend continuing the status quo — especially I see how much of my tax money was already invested in setting up the infrastructure — but I cannot.  It’s either-or.  You-all, or my own conscience, that I have to live with.  And as you, generally, have proven:

inconsistent, dishonest, and impossible to appease even AFTER you got my kids AND my money, and after taking income taxes from the entire working American public, only to lose it throughout the system (that which isn’t misappropriated),

….I choose my conscience.  I have to live with that.

The systems change & centralization has been for the worse, not the better, and I can document the intent behind this change, and that no one knows where the missing money goes, officially.  It appears that this ENTIRE funding stream has been established as a slush fund.  Moreover, too much of it goes into religious hands with seriously bad attitudes about half the human race (the female half, or should I say about 51% in the USA); some believe in predestination, some in reincarnation, and some appear to just like the real estate to be acquired with the profits.

So gentlemen, and whatever % of you are ladies here, Here’s my report so far, starting with one of the primary pace-setting organizations determining the current American economic landscape, and not just for divorcing or separating parents:

Those who appear to be profiting the most from the “Marry (or politely co-parent) your way into an abuse-free and vibrant solvent lifestyle” [[Responsible Fatherhood/Healthy Marriage] programming, obviously aimed in part at people who opted out of the  “Abstinence” programming by breeding out of wedlock, or failing to stay wedlocked, or locking your violent partners out of the homes  — are the program operators and vendors.

The Association for Family and Conciliation Courts (AFCC)  since ca 1963 and a few related collaborating nonprofits from the 1970s & 1980s are basically functioning as for-profit trade organizations networked as a communal nationwide (international, actually) racketeering organization, in both intent and structure.  Their membership are already in and frequently exploit positions of power and influence as judges (up to the state supreme courts or, for example on Administrative Offices of the State supreme courts, or leaders in the related psychological organizations), attorneys, and evaluators/psychologists/therapists etc..  Together  they have literally set up a swamp of funding sinkholes AND a mental health Archipelago which can and has been used against any parent (no one is immune).  Many also sit on or form more nonprofits which take public money to promote their personal beliefs and theories.

The specific intent, shown in AFCC’s own “About Us” website program material, is to eliminate the language of criminal law — and along with it, the entire concept of “domestic violence” or “child abuse” as having any criminal meaning whatsoever, except under their self-appointed experts’ wide discretion.  Moreover presiding judges in business many times with therapists (KidsFirst, Kids in the Middle, Families in Transition,KidsTurn (an original), etc.) who force parents to consume their products, sometimes by re-writing rules of court to order (under threat of sanctions) participation in classes by their cronies.  At the classes, or websites for the classes, yet more books are marketed.

This is true in every state and territories, rehearsed in conferences often held in sometimes vacation locations parents could not afford to attend, then written up in journals they cannot afford to subscribe to — if they are even aware such conferences and journals even exist.  The programs they set up are often then funded from welfare diversions available since actually helping needy families was replaced by “Block Grants to States” (1996), meaning that whoever had the most influence with the state-level HHS, or Governor, could set policy for an entire state of separated parents.  What’s American, democratic or (more properly) republican representative government about that?

Taking money from needy families and divert it into specialized, downloadable programs that are neither needed, not necessarily wanted (recruitment is often an issue), turning the poor into lab rats for social scientists (constantly developing new, improved labels for them and theories about poverty), is a reverse-Robin Hood.

The presumption among this crowd that they are smarter, more competent, more diligent, and — particularly — more honest — than the crowds they run through their programs is, to me, personally offensive.  They are human beings, we are human beings.

I suggest we give those who have profited from this some of their own medicine, as follows:

• Run them through a strong, “Abstinence-Only” program – and that they for a period, abstain from taking money from needy children and their mothers specifically, and putting it into propaganda about what women really need, is a man in their children’s life, after they’ve just gotten a dangerous one out (or declined to keep one in).  Period!
• Deprive them entirely of federally-funded resources, captive audiences, and social status and professional memberships; let them start up from scratch, with zero capital, damaged credit and no guarantees of safety (as many women leaving abusive relationships had to) and see how they fare
• .
• If they are parents of minor children, make them hand their kids over to the foster care system, or another stranger –“just because” (judicial discretion/ in the best interests of the children).  Then they can try and ransom those kids back by taking “Children in the Middle” or “Kids First” or “Kids Turn” programs they used to run.  It won’t work, but they can hope, and try, and pay.  If they show backbone, slap ’em back into shape with sanctions, fines, or threats of jail time or gag orders.
• When they complain (as they will) remind them, they are just making false allegations to get their way in court, however, we have some nice eight-week psycho-educational programs ready if they cannot shut up and take it like, their former clients had to.

And by the way, because the cause you presented — fatherlessness, lack of wedded bliss, etc. — is so dire and so critical a cause of poverty (and because we needed to get it up and running so fast) we the people who are pissed at having this force-fed to us at our cost bypassing the legislature — have already learned from your example, pooled our funds with our own “kind” and formed tax-exempt foundations to fund nonprofits that we will completely control our own business, and boycott yours.

Oh by the way, this process has already begun and you can try and figure out which of the multitude of fake corporate names on the HHS and DOJ roster are actually owned by us and taking (and losing) some federal funding to fake giving a damn about others.  And how much of the real estate is already ours also.

Two can play at this game, and while you were so obsessed with your own wisdom, we picked up a few pointers through simple observation.

(NOW, OBVIOUSLY THAT’S JUST BACKROOM FANTASY — BUT MORE SERIOUSLY…)

Moreover, as the funding for these programs comes in part from people of all walks of life (including nonparents) through the IRS — and such programming insults fathers who don’t need to be “trained” to know what’s decent for their own children.  Besides which, the cat’s out of the bag — what’s collected often doesn’t get distributed anyhow. It gets conveniently “lost.”

to continue my hypothetical testimony to a Subcommittee Hearing on whether to turn that faucet on another year, and APPROPRIATE funding for Responsible F’Hood Healthy M’ge funding:

While AFCC writings boast of itself as “interdisciplinary” I call from the street level, and as a person wanting to stand before honest judges and have a case based on the facts of the case – not family, poverty, or conflict theories — I call it “conflict of interest.”  Judges–up to the level of State Supreme Courts — the attorneys and the mediators/evaluators/ psychologists – meet privately and decide how to sow their wild-oats (create and franchise more businesses) and become in effect a tax-exempt lobbying group — why should the public “take it on faith” this is altruistic?

My research and several others before me, whose voices are easily drowned out when millions of HHS $$ go to setting up clearinghouses and resources centers on the web, and now that the domestic violence organizations have been corralled into statewide Coalitions, which are then used (to quote Liz Richards of NAFCJ.net) as “heat shields” to rubberstamp fatherhood programs as being DV-sensitive, which they aren’t.

Some of these groups consider themselves not only above the common law as to filing corporate and nonprofit returns — they are also sitting to administer and argue the law (as judges and attorneys) and literally making up law and creating courts (fathering courts, dependency courts, domestic violence courts, mental health courts, drug courts, and even “High-conflict Courts” (Connecticut & elsewhere), as they go, which I have documented.   having then spread so many overlapping labels around liberally, they come up with the bright idea of straightening out the resulting chaos in “Unified Family Courts,” headed up, ideally, by one of the franchise good at prescribing therapy for the entire family unit.

It seems fair to say as these do not respect the laws themselves, why should we be honoring and respecting (i.e., FUNDING) such a system?

Moreover, when confronted on the impact some of these “minimize criminal behavior as a family dispute or high-conflict relationship” policies are having upon flesh and blood individuals, including increased bloodshed (and job losses) surrounding custody  wars — the response has been to play Good Cop, Bad Cop and expect no one to notice.

What I mean is, when HHS funds both”family violence prevention” organizations, major funding streams — AND the contrary “responsible fatherhood/healthy marriage” organizations, neither one of them is going to be honest with their clientele about who’s paid for the rhetoric.  This is deceptive and misleading to battered women, specifically mothers, who are led to believe that people against violence in the home are not misogynists — or funded by misogynists.

Instead of reporting honestly, some of the premier DV groups instead (when not preaching to women how to talk about domestic violence) conference and collaborate with them, keeping a professional courtesy silence about their own collective silence on the family court disasters.  Among these are MPDI (Duluth Abuse Intervention Programs) and offspring, Futures without Violence (SF), and a few others.

NOW I DON’T EXPECT AN ORGANIZATION TO BITE THE HAND THAT FEEDS IT, HOWEVER, THE BUREAUCRACY AT THIS POINT IS SO COMPLEX FEW DISTRESSED PARENTS IN A CUSTODY BATTLE WOULD EVEN KNOW TO ATTEMPT TO NAVIGATE IT.

AND THOSE WHO DO, HAVE BEEN REBUFFED BECAUSE, ALLEGEDLY, WE ARE NOT THE “EXPERTS.”  ALWAYS, THIS CULT OF THE EXPERTS.

Anyone who seriously wants to stop the roadkill will take at a minimum the nonprofit trade associations AFCC, CRC & NACC  Off the panels of experts and in the center, ringed by their clients (including parents or relatives of deceased after court-appointed visitation compliance clients), their tax returns, and their corporate filings, and their respective private financiers — and hear testimony about where, exactly, the profits from welfare diversions are actually being diverted to.

That would be quite the testimony (with exhibits of course).

I’m not sure I’d have the courage to say this.  But I have, to report it, and if there are others willing to help collect this data — which is not impossible to do, just a large project — perhaps we can.  This is not anecdotal data– I’m talking actual accounting.

For one, witnesses (at the actual hearing) are selected, it’s not a free-for-all.  Testimony can be submitted on-line later.  Here’s an example of one: (I notice the testimony and witness list have now been taken off-line.  Several mothers were alerted shortly before the hearing and got some in.

But this material IS on-line:

That’s why for the past three years, President Obama has led the President’s Fatherhood and Mentoring Initiative, a multi-year effort to help dads connect to their families and to raise awareness about responsible fatherhood. We also recently released a Promoting Responsible Fatherhood report, which looks back on what we’ve accomplished to promote fatherhood, and looks forward on how we can build on that foundation.

In that spirit, President Obama’s Fatherhood & Mentoring Initiative and the National Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse are excited to kick off the “Fatherhood Buzz.” It’s an program that will work with barbershops to connect dads with local resources to help build stronger families. Every couple months, dads and their barbers participating in the initiative will get a different “buzz” topic to discuss at the barbershop.

In June 2010, the President Obama took a major step in his longstanding agenda on fatherhood by launching the Fatherhood and Mentoring Initiative. This Initiative is an ongoing national effort to promote responsible fatherhood and encourage positive role models through partnerships with fatherhood and family-serving groups around the country. While this effort aims to encourage dads to support their own children, it also recognizes the important role that mentors and role models can also play in supporting children and families. Finally, the President’s FY 2013 budget offers new investments to improve the Child Support Enforcement Program, sustain funding for Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood grants, and promote strong family relationships.

h ttp://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/fatherhood_report_6.13.12_final.pdf

Quit accepting RHETORIC from our leadership.   Who backed Obama into office; who backed Bush in 2000?  That’s who we have to deal with…

One can’t address “family court matters” without addressing this factor — yet people have been insisting on doing just that for years.  All I say, is WHY?

etc.

So, what this blog lacks in structure, it more than makes up in unique content and insight. Dig in somewhere and see what makes sense!

Prepare in advance for an even larger sense of betrayal (by our own government) than before, but “Let’s Get Honest,” it’s happened.

FYI, my tagging system is not consistent — the subject matter continued to evolve.  If you want to find something specific, use the “Search” field and then scroll down the tagged posts.  My posts are long, sometimes averaging 10,000 words.  Many of those words are cut & pasted (i.e., I like to Show and Tell), but it still makes for length.  You’ll need the scroll bar.  I reply to non-hostile (and some hostile) comments which aren’t spamming if there are questions.

VOTE November 6th, but be aware the welfare is up for reauthorization in March 2013.  Let’s change the conversation, and curtail some of these “block grants to states” for TANF Purpose IV (promoting two-parent families) this round, and ALL access/visitation funding, which helps one specific gender in a custody matter, as it was intended to, OK?   HHS is being run like HUD about now — like a criminal outfit.  This has to be stopped and won’t be easy without the data.  The data are in part in the “CAFRs” (see bottom of this post).

I know my work and sometimes paragraphs sound like a set of “proverbs” accumulated over years of experience and investigation and over the life of this blog (since 2009).  I am blogging as I find things, being mindful that life is short, and getting the information OUT is as important as getting it out PERFECT.

Moreover, the blog format can’t really expose the corporate networks properly.  The problem we face is not linear — but blogs by definition are.  I’m working o n a better medium for presenting this information (visually) without omitting critical elements.  However, I do see that the problems we face is how an opposing viewpoint have been expanded as the USGovernment + Corporations that formed Foundations (who fund nonprofits) has from the very start strategized to sink their investment money into:  resource centers (which I blog on) and train the trainer initiatives (which I also blog on).    So they obtain personal connections, not all known to the public, and from their indoctrinate, etc.  As many of these groups are already evangelistic in mindset, this is hardly a new skillset.

It is, however, a track record of many organizations and policies which are under-reported by anyone attempting to fix the so-called “Broken Family Courts” (Aw, they’re broken?  Poor courts! Call a doctor!! — ask an expert!  Quick, prescribe something to quell the symptoms, but retain the cause.  Go home and take this Rx).

That phrase has a built-in design flaw, like “No Child Left Behind.”  If you actually thought about the phrase, you’d realize it’s in(s)ane.

How It Got Started:

After traditional advice produced the usual results (escaped DV with everyone intact, got-reestablished with children in the household and regular visitation with their Dad, foolowed by consolidation of the RO renewal with custody challenge; running up of child support arrears, increased aggressions and stalking interfering seriously with both my parenting and work life; household moves (we were renters, it happens),  sudden custody switch, prolonged hovering on the verge of homelessness, ongoing grief and loss, and severe chronic PTSD),

. . . .this is probably familiar story to many mothers, right? . . . . .

I ran across an alternate — far more truthful and objective — analysis at http://NAFCJ.net, fact-checked, and stayed on it (blogging details and patterns).  And developed (because this is a blog, not a finite website; it grows, right?) into tracking grants, corporations, grantees, tax returns, and reading enough sexist, racist, patronizing, speculation on “low-income-people” and “multiple-fertility-females” (seriously — are we breeding stock, or what?), I determined to expose exactly how the professors (certain types) are using the poor, in cooperation with the well-endowed (that’s referring to income, FYI, as in federal government and foundations, i.e., “endowments”) to Publish, not Perish.

If welfare took the form of a % of the take for the materials published, that might do more to eliminate poverty than paying PhD’s to write about it!

This blog is NOT “my story” or primarily narrative (although it’s definitely got too much narrative).

I talk about patterns applied nationwide in the family courts, who promoted them to start with, who PAYS the promoters, and where this is heading. There is rarely a day I don’t cease to be further shocked and alarmed at policies, and the players — who I also name.

Like many people I left an abusive marriage the legal way (with a restraining order), and experienced full-frontal custody onslaught shortly afterwards, found myself fighting my family of origin, who apparently preferred me married and abused, than single and exercising initiative in my own (fully adult and competent) life.   I realized that misogyny is not only coming from religious sources — it’s very much culturally accepted.

Finally I had to accept that our country is so busy doing something else, they are unwilling to get the mirror out and admit our interior dialogue when faced with this:

My (tax) money has been used to destroy entire classes of people in this country (by profile), but I’m unwilling to quit feeding the system, because the laternatives is I might myself have to stand up to (for example) a wife-beater, or a child-molester, or a kidnapper.  I work hard at the office or factory, don’t beat women or abuse kids, raise my own (if there are some) and even (if the shoe fits, wear it) tithe.  Therefore my conscience is clean — it’s someone else’s job!

_ _ _

Women (and men) leaving abuse need to focus our efforts on our personal bottom lines which includes an economic one.   How much emotional validation and peer support from inbred groups is enough — and how does that help a court case?

The Trojan Horse factor:  Many nonprofits or professionals have an ulterior agenda, and/or are directly (or indirectly) on the same grants circuit as the “oppressors” reframing the criminal matters as relationship matters.  The tools for looking behind this rhetoric are corporate, economic, and financial.

1996 welfare reform is a scandal — not a success as some portray it. There has been a feeding frenzy on the poor by the experts on poverty (many having PhDs in the field), and the vulnerable, and to stop this (or escape it) one needs to get a basic accounting / business mentality, and exercise it.

No human being can absorb endless emotional burdens of others (vicarious trauma). At some level, it’s just selfish of groups to handle advocacy in this anecdotal manner.  Moreover, when people are encouraged to constantly “tell your story” to some nonprofit — I’d think twice.  Demand an explanation of what they are going to do with the story.  Quit being so damn passive — if there’s an open court case, for Pete’s sake!  If you’re in litigation — you go GET information on the opposing side, you don’t blurt out yours!

Analyze the problem enough to decide where you stand on it, figure out what action to take, take it (if safe). Watch court-affiliated nonprofits, federal incentives, improper real estate transfers among judges, attorneys, GALs, etc. Do your own work!!

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(Click on the gravatar to read why Supervised Visitation should never have developed as a field, and its drawbacks were known upfront by those heavily promoting it anyhow).

Also see The Family Court Franchise (since 2011) for more organized links, historical background of TANF and wider scope on the expansion of the mental health system in the USA (from 1900s ff) , or a more recent blog encouraging the Average Citizen to look at — put in some Viewing Time on  — the thousands of governments (government entitities besides Federal, State, County, Local) — and how they are obtaining, and what they are doing — with accumulated assets.

Surprise, surprise — since about 1947, these have been available for viewing (if anyone knew to look!) — and shared among government entities — stating essentially the collective net worth of any group.   So I started “Cold,Hard.Fact$” (2012) to see who has the guts to start going through the CAFRs and assembling what, really, our government is doing to us and with our kids, assets, and so forth.

You see a “Comprehensive Annual Financial Report” shows gov’t net worth — not just annual budget, which can be easily fudged and ran up expenses (“advance forward liabilities”) and then ask for more money.

There have been footprints through the decades of how to get at the truth — it’s possible to walk through the swamp of information overload, if there is a destination and some kind of compass.  No government could function without its own reports — they just want too many people to know about them.  SO?  We should!   You cannot fight psychology with psychology and shouldn’t try to — it’s a specialized jargon.  Like fighting cooked spaghetti with cooked spaghetti.  There’s going to be a mess afterwards, but no decisive winner.  Also, it’s unwise to try to tangle logically with people in cults.  AND — I’ve shown this in recent posts, also — lots of people turn to psychology, marriage therapy, etc. — while retaining membership in some seriously fundamentalist religions and/or new age (cults, for lack of a better word).  It’s a fascinating history and lesson — and why we need to return to some sound thinking and force the psychologists to compete in an open (or more open) marketplace — and not just GIVE the business through endorsing institutions that literally create customers for them, as the institutions themselves have built-in cognitive dissonance.

EXAMPLE:  When is a crime not a crime?

ANSWER:  That depends on who it’s committed against and whether the person committing it was in his or her right mind.

APPLICATION:  Call in the diagnosticians.  Define “in one’s right mind.”

Some people literally are not.  I’m not trying to shut down an entire mental health or pharmaceutical industry — just the “conciliation court” industry which are its gatekeepers.  However, we need to start also acknowledging that, most likely, the largest organizations on the PLANET are pharmaceutical corporations, and that US Presidents (Bush, namely) have hooked up with both these to promote an agenda (PENNMap is one example, or see Maryanne Godboldo of Detroit Michigan, who faced down a SWAT team in her home (she lost that) over the matter of Risperdal.)   This cannot be ignored.
So, take the business/corporations/financing approach.  And to do this requires learning a little different vocabulary, looking different places (instead of repeating tired, and ineffective phrases, or reciting the name Richard Gardner like a mantra, year after year, etc.   And in case you were wondering, yes, I still am working with (and through) some chronic PTSD around these matters.

If you follow this blog, you are following my learning curve; it’s the determintion to learn which seems to matter most.  I would appreciate feedback or dialogue on this matter.  I cannot handle reading too much more of the “fix our broken courts” dialogue.  There is a saying in the Bible, He that walketh with wise men shall be wise, but a companion of fools shall be ashamed.   . . . . .    It’s true . . . . . . LANGUAGE counts!   Language applies labels, and the labels applied reveal where a person or group stands.  Rather than crying a language that one group believes and has endorsed (louder and louder over time) and others have rejected, why not learn the language of the “to the contrary” side’s actual operating system  and which has the most universal application?  Right now, in this country, that is the language of economics and business; it is the language of cash flow and marketing, of sales.

And in sales, there are two balance sheets — buyers and sellers.  Cash or value moves from one to the other. It’s the movement (and in which direction) that counts, and if it’s consistently moving TO one side and AWAY from the other side over time, then it’s time to cease the transactions, and sound the alarm.

While there’s no question I have feelings and sentiments (and beliefs, etc.) about men v. women, or religious vs. spiritual vs. atheist (it shouldn’t matter in a just society, for one!) — at this point I find the most useful way to separate the balance sheets are those who are profiting from the existence of the present tax system and the caste system that goes with it (i.e., who know how to incorporate, form nonprofits, acquire and raise capital etc.) – — and those who are still buying into “the Myth of the Rule of Law” and paying taxes into it, being unaware of how these things work.

Not said very well, but here’s another way to say it.  Being forced as a competent (degreed, employed etc.) mother, law abiding, who did NOT gravitate towards breaking court orders, or public laws, and who did NOT prevent the father at any time from seeing the children when a court order said he could (past-separation), who was not “out for blood,” but out to prevent further bloodshed (and there had been some in the marriage) – – – I was forced to choose between employment — and defending/protecting my children and myself, and our physical/economic futures, by appealing to law enforcement and the courts after reason, “live and let live” and all other appeals failed.

And in this matter, by being a good, ethical, etc. person — I lost EVERYTHING of primary value in life.  So, logically speaking, what does this say? Something’s off when a system rewards the criminal element; either that or there are two definitions of criminal involved here.

The talk about single mothers being such a hard row to hoe doesn’t really apply uniformly.  It is contextual — and single mothers able to handle their own lives reasonably well (balancing income to expenses to their kids’ educational and physical needs) should be allowed to.  However, if ALL single motehrs are to be forced into the same 9 to 5 model, which implies an 8 to 3 (or so) model for the children, which implies child care (federally financed, right?) and a host of other supports — then something is wrong with the system.  Not the state of being unmarried.  (Not to mention, many of us  —  male and female — do remarry later, anyhow).

I had to look at this seriously, and have had to restructure the rest of my life to accommodate the significant chunk of the middle of it (and a full generation of my children’s lives) was wasted over this SINGLE issue of society not being really willing to face its own shortcomings, and function without disenfranchised communities, and moreover, treating women past child-bearing age as expired commodities when they aren’t.

Again, economic matters are survival matters, and dependency matters.  If we cannot safely produce our own income without constant interruption — not by children (having children is not the problem!) — but by having to go repeatedly to court, and all that entails — then we are being told, it’s someone else’s problem.  That message is more unacceptable the closer I look at this system.  It is my goal to change significant aspects of it in my lifetime.  I hope others will help, but you HAVE to face what you previously bought into (without guilt, but honestly) first.

Please tweet/share (there is a “SHARE” button with multiple options) the posts that make sense to you, and make some time to read what’s linked to.  Generally speaking, that will convince anyone more than my piecing of the links together.

What convinced me was the data I looked at and the patterns found.

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** extended expression from the “What Women Want” section, near the top:

…”

plus [I’ll speak for myself] for great men in power to quit starting wars and using this place — and our children — for “cannon fodder,” or medical experimentation, or testing behavioral modification techniques on, etc.  Moreover, you need to quit performing stupid experiments on us for profit, also, quit trafficking our children into foster care — where they are often lost and mistreated, too, and sometimes die.

Quit insisting MOST of our kids attend schools where they get sometimes raped, murdered, are treated like a number, and are sorted by economic caste (wealth) anyhow — and insisting that everyone (parent or nonparent) financially support this model, and all other ways of raising or educating a generation of children are suspect, and then when it gets our kids mistreated, or killed, insist on a yet tighter police state based on less believable reasons.}}

It’s no wonder that welfare reform was privatized to make sure single mothers are scapegoated and have their children removed, or spend the rest of their (productive work) lives fighting for this NOT to happen.  If we were allowed to handle this properly, some (more) of those kids might end up being a President, or a State Senator, and indeed, might actually re-balance the equation”

By the way, the times are urgent!