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

FYI: This post has several sections, and puts the post title in a larger framework, which  means some of those sections have a lot of quotes.  This post is also: conversational (more than “developmentally edited”), informative, and almost 15,800 words (not including this “FYI”), which seemed like a good place to put a lid on it!

Feedback pro/con welcome (Comments available at bottom of post.  Comments with links to other relevant information are particularly welcome. If you are sharing experientially and it’s OK, a geography (at least what state if it’s re: a custody experience) might be helpful to reference.  Feel also free to argue (=/= namecall; bring something to the table to argue with!) — I may argue back (that’s my style, and it’s also a process), but if I’ve got my facts wrong, I do want to be corrected — with links, quotes, or cites on what basis.  Also, feel free to use those “DONATE” buttons on the sidebar — this blog is a one-woman operation!   Thanks…//LGH

POST TITLE:
Still Caught up in DV/Custody Drama? For 2016, What about Catching up on OVW Discretionary Grants (2013) and these SIX, ah, “Groups”? (Publ. March 2, 2016). (case-sensitive short-link ends “-2SM”)(This post is nearly 17,000 words long. That includes many quotes and my responses to them, and some repetition (because it’s so long!)) //LGH this labeling added Apr. 24, 2022. I’m planning to republish ALL March, 2016 posts soon, on a single new one (with links and titles).

“DV” in this context, of course, means simply “domestic violence,” which alternately goes by any other number of names, depending on the speakers and the speakers’ intentions, whether to highlight the violence or frame it as a relationship disease.

• My next intended post (split off this one for length!), through multiple quotations, treats the rest of us to collegial discussions on Batterer Typology with a view towards future research on screening instruments to bring low-income, situationally-violent couples into psycho-educational interventions, with of course a heavy sprinkling of impressive (or what ought to impress) terms such as multi-variate, bi-modal, and implications for — of course — “future research.” In at least a few of the speakers’ cases, I have already posted some cheating on tax-returns and falsifying how much federal money actually came their way (OR, HHS falsifed it — but the reports don’t match, so both cannot be concurrently true!)  and seeking “fees for friends” while being employed by the state.  As well as a few more overtly AFCC professionals and professors.

I wrote this post as part of an ongoing, I hope, dialogue about some of the groups which I already know, but bet most blog readers don’t, are serving to standardize and internationally align common practice in the courts whether or not it conflicts with the U.S. Constitution or state law, or citizens’ individual rights as residents in a specific state.

• “Dialogue” — There are always comments fields, and I will be re-posting a feedback form soon. But more important than individual discussing this with just me, I hope this information will continue to inject some startling, but significant truths into other discussions already taking places about distressing realities, or outrageous injustice when it comes to handling of parents and children in the courts.

Rather than violent, revolutionary overthrow (of government), around the time of the World Wars and particularly World War II, a progression of paradigm switches, systems changes and plans to undermine jurisdictional boundaries, including national sovereignty, was set up to take place incrementally, by stages:  “plan the work, work the plan” for decades (at least) now.  Principles were involved, some of which include regionalization, privatization / functionalism, and within the USA at least the Congressional authorization of “Reorganization Act” special procedures for the President.  (See also two pages I have on this, on sidebar).

In addition, setting up networks among universities, and at times privately funded “centers,” within them.  Such centers are not bad “per se” but as parts of an otherwise coordinated system with the intent to change justice systems — and doing this below the radar for anyone who doesn’t happen to be tracking the universities and their various centers — it’s not exactly open, transparent, and, well, “American.”

Over all of this, a system of taxation which while promising a levelling of the field, in fact does the opposite. This system also tends to “separate the men from the boys,” meaning, those who know accounting –including government accounting — from those who do not, and those who comprehend the scope and operations of government, conceptually — from those who are clueless.

This system of taxation/tax-exemption also separates those who clearly understand the power of the tax-exempt foundation, not just to reduce taxes paid, but to cloud influence distributed, whether through donations, through subcontracting (i.e., directing business to certain groups), by investment platforms, and at times by using the nonprofit as a cover for multiple “related organizations”* — or, through simply having so much money to distribute** to multiple organizations which depend on it —   from those who wouldn’t even think of using a philanthropic organization to undermine government and hide influence, let alone launder money through it.   Other relationships occur when the large philanthropy directs business to specific subcontractors, and through other means.

*…”related” as defined by the IRS having board membership, sometimes offices and other qualities in common (for a Form 990, current version in use, these would show on a Schedule R).  Nonprofit organization in fact, can own, buy & sell, lease, or develop significant real estate and are very much profiting (drastically increasing both assets and revenues) — just not being taxed on those parts of revenues related to their exempt-purpose.

** In other words, once the financial clout of the major tax-exempts moving “in synch” with each other is understood, what may seem like policy based on actual merit can be, in fact, simply “pre-paid public policy promotion.”  Good example:  MacArthur Foundation’s “Models for Change,” which I (gave) a taste of on a blog after this one — donates to smaller nonprofits which are donation-dependent and frequently use the word “Justice” in their titles — as well as to government, as well as, some, to universities — promoting ITS concepts. The Foundation picks one lead entity (nonprofit) in a state with a view towards changing the policy statewide to match its Models — along a variety of spheres, not just “justice” but also housing, education, and others. It seems like consensus, common sense, or just “what’s right.”  Whether or not it is — one thing we can determine, it was pushed through by a major tax-exempt foundation, with some help from others, a type of leverage most Americans do not have, and organizationally are not likely to have.  

Large tax-exempt foundations (often but not always called “philanthropies”) networked with each other as to purpose, and leaning on/working with government as a formidable source of revenues (i.e., government entities have the power to tax, particularly the federal government through its income and corporate taxes and enforce contributions to social security), i.e., Public/Private Partnerships have been redefining what is actually “public” for a long time.

Just one example of networked philanthropies, (search for; my “add-link” function currently dysfunctional!) the  “Funders’ Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities” Coral Gables, FL (formed only in 1999, coordinates with, it says, 150 philanthropies).  Overall, the purpose is to strengthen and expand the non-profit sector.  There is hardly an ongoing, serious public discussion on the characteristics and dangers of government literally controlled by this sector in association with elected officials in government positions, determining national, and international, policy.  Why Not?  Start Now!

Of the six “entities” I reference in the title which actually are 501©3 nonprofits (not all are) are not the largest nonprofits around; it is their positioning,  membership, and intent to function as a coordinated unity affecting the nation’s justice system (including laws) which count heavily towards their policy clout.

For example, of the first two, one is NOT a nonprofit, but is backed by a powerful Fund for the City of New York (backed by a powerful foundation), and its website references two offices in New York — and one in London.  It is a significant partnership affecting the entire court system of New York State, which is itself already characterized as “Unified.”  The other in San Francisco, is a nonprofit of over $40M assets which controls a real estate entity and takes responsibility for having pushed into being the Violence Against Women Act.  It runs glorious conferences and PR campaigns, but can also be viewed through its tax returns, and the company it keeps, i.e., being portrayed as a woman’s or feminist organization (despite the original word “family”), while actually running such things as “fatherhood institutes.”

• Center for Court Innovation
• Futures Without Violence (formerly the Family Violence Prevention Fund)

All these are factors in the larger economic picture, and many of them are not going to be on the evening news, or Facebook, Twitter, or your typical email group mailing focused on reforming a single sector of the entire system…

WHAT ABOUT CONSENT?

The public’s consent is not sought at every stage, in fact the public is not supposed to notice it, really, which is one way to overcome the lack of consent that the public just might have, if it was in fact aware of what’s taking place.

Within the USA, I’d also like to say from personal observation (and this is my opinion), that after the 1960s (“civil rights” and major cultural change, with women’s rights hard on its heels in the 1970s), it seems that those in positions of power, which they’d been in for a while (including members of Congress AND at least one President) saw that they might not win LEGAL battles to restore racism, sexism and a permanent underclass of, well, servants (or indentured servants and workers) in the country.

The discrimination was moved somewhat OUT of the legal sphere into the Social Services sector.  [1965, Daniel Moynihan, at the US Dept of Labor;”The Negro Family: A Case for National Action” complete with Part IV, “The Tangle of Pathology” characterizing “matriarchy” (single-mother households) as “pathology” in our male-dominant culture. He wrote the situation is getting worse, not better, and “the fundamental problem is family structure.”

Moynihan quoted (male) sociologists but was speaking from a personal (grew up poor and fatherless — his father abandoned mother and their three children) and religious (Catholic) world view.

We just passed the 50th anniversary of this report in 2015. Its programming has still been “bred into” the social services structure today.

Acceptance at that time (and since) of Moynihan’s worldview has affected my household for years after I said “no” to domestic assault-battery-intimidation-violence, and among THE primary impacts it had was to reduce and eradicate existing income — through the family court litigation with its disregard for the severity of abuse, and misleading presentation to litigants at the courthouse doors that they might have been entering premises where facts of the case, and a pattern of criminal activity by one parent in front of the children, mattered.

This philosophy affected both my daughters, I am as offended by this report as when I first discovered it some years ago.  Unbelievably, people still buy into this “logic” from a bygone age, which is perpetuated as “gospel truth” (sociology apparently being the new gospel) through executive-branch governmental departments and agencies.. And further exacerbated in 1996 welfare reform.

Racism is wrong, but exists.  So is and does sexism.  Attacking, degrading (individually or as a whole) women because they are women, in the United States, which occurs routinely, and characterizing even killing women who get “out of line,” I am talking, honor killings in the USA, characterized (see Phyllis Chesler for extended reporting on this, or pay attention to headlines) as “domestic violence” is still not even a hate crime per the FBI.

For the reluctant backing off from the most overt racism (1960s) to then take expression in essentially refusing to acknowledge the abilities AND rights as citizens of women; this need to stigmatize unmarried mothers, has become part of our national character — not a good part — to this day.  As it was no longer politically AS correct to express and act on outright racism, another outlet and target was justified through social science — the unmarried “Negro” mother.  What was unjustifiable in human terms, or consistent with the ideals of the Constitution, was slipped in through the social services sector, passed by Congress, financed, and became mainstream policy to this day, even after the passage of the Violence Against Women Act in 1994.

Among the things I learned about this report (this time around) was that it was written in only three months!

As can be seen in the “call to action” and in hindsight, he is sounding the call for new national unity based in a crisis which he has declared, in light of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Now that “Negroes” had the Civil Rights Act, let us come together and focus on restructuring their family life.. in essence, lest these civil rights descend also upon Negro women and mothers as well as men and fathers.

The United States is approaching a new crisis in race relations.

In the decade that began with the school desegregation decision of the Supreme Court, and ended with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the demand of Negro Americans for full recognition of their civil rights was finally met.

The effort, no matter how savage and brutal, of some State and local governments to thwart the exercise of those rights is doomed. The nation will not put up with it — least of all the Negroes. The present moment will pass. In the meantime, a new period is beginning.

In this new period the expectations of the Negro Americans will go beyond civil rights. Being Americans, they will now expect that in the near future equal opportunities for them as a group will produce roughly equal results, as compared with other groups. This is not going to happen. Nor will it happen for generations to come unless a new and special effort is made.

There are two reasons. First, the racist virus in the American blood stream still afflicts us: Negroes will encounter serious personal prejudice for at least another generation….(details of the problem)… The most difficult fact for white Americans to understand is that in these terms the circumstances of the Negro American community in recent years has probably been getting worse, not better.

Indices of dollars of income, standards of living, and years of education deceive. The gap between the Negro and most other groups in American society is widening.

The fundamental problem, in which this is most clearly the case, is that of family structure. The evidence — not final, but powerfully persuasive — is that the Negro family in the urban ghettos is crumbling. A middle class group has managed to save itself, but for vast numbers of the unskilled, poorly educated city working class the fabric of conventional social relationships has all but disintegrated. There are indications that the situation may have been arrested in the past few years, but the general post war trend is unmistakable. So long as this situation persists, the cycle of poverty and disadvantage will continue to repeat itself.

It sounds like the crumbling family was the cause — if correcting it is the solution.

The thesis of this paper is that these events, in combination, confront the nation with a new kind of problem. Measures that have worked in the past, or would work for most groups in the present, will not work here. A national effort is required that will give a unity of purpose to the many activities of the Federal government in this area, directed to a new kind of national goal: the establishment of a stable Negro family structure.

This would be a new departure for Federal policy. And a difficult one. But it almost certainly offers the only possibility of resolving in our time what is, after all, the nation’s oldest, and most intransigent, and now its most dangerous social problem. What Gunnar Myrdal said in An American Dilemma remains true today: “America is free to chose whether the Negro shall remain her liability or become her opportunity.”

[SECTION REMOVED FOR POSTING SEPARATELY, AS I BEGIN REVIEWING THE PROMINENCE THIS REPORT — AND ITS AUTHOR — HAS HAD, EVEN ON ITS 40TH AND RECENTLY, 50TH ANNIVERSARY, AND IN LIGHT OF WELFARE REFORM OF 1996’s IMPACT ON THE SECTOR IT TARGETED — WOMAN-DOMINATED (SINGLE-MOTHER) HOUSEHOLDS.  THERE ARE SEVERAL REFERENCES TO REVIEW..EVEN as it turns out MOYNIHAN HIMSELF MADE QUITE GOOD (“FULBRIGHT SCHOLARSHIP, RETURNING IN 1953, AND RIGHT INTO GOVERNMENT OFFICE IN TIME FOR THE WAR ON POVERTY] ONCE HIS FATHER ABANDONED THE FAMILY AT AGE 6, DESPITE UNSTABLE HOUSING AND SCHOOLING AND MORE.

This July 31, 1966 New York Times Books “Moynihan of the Moynihan Report” shows how once (Moynihan) was “in” he stated prominently in and active.  It also relates some of the significant opposition to this report at the time (including by Martin Luther King, Jr., and by the National Council of Churches), protesting that middle class values did not have to represent all American values, and denigrating African-Americans….  I learned also that part of the theme was that without a father in the home, young males WILL run wild because they have no stable relationship to a male authority figure……  Notice the affiliations and social connections he, a “fatherless” but still self-made man (most of his childhood) growing up dirt poor in NYC (Harlem).  If his success is to be believed, apparently his mother did something right.  Perhaps she deserves some positive mention?

July 31, 1966  Moynihan of the Moynihan Report By THOMAS MEEHAN

ith the notable exception of President Lyndon B. Johnson, whose rise to fame from humble beginnings by the banks of the Pedernales is in the standard pattern of the American rags-to-riches story, increasingly few of those who achieve national prominence in the United States these days–e.g., Governor Rockefeller, Mayor Lindsay, Governor Scranton, Secretary Rusk and the myriad Kennedys– are likely models for an inspirational novel by some contemporary Horatio Alger Jr. Alger himself, however, could scarcely have concocted a more classic up-from-poverty story than that of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the 39-year-old New York scholar-politician who earlier this month took over as director of the Joint Center for Urban Studies of Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and who, as recently as 1942, was a shoeshine boy on the northeast corner of Broadway and West 43rd Street, across from Toffenetti’s.

Admittedly, Moynihan is somewhat less celebrated than either president Johnson or any of the others mentioned above, but, at the same time, it has become more and more apparent in the past year or so that Moynihan has been one of Washington’s most influential behind-the-scenes figures in the creation of the President’s Great Society programs. Indeed, until he resigned his post as Assistant Secretary of Labor a little more than a year ago to run unsuccessfully against Frank O’Connor for President of the City Council in this city’s Democratic primary, Moynihan was one of the Administration’s three or four leading in-residence thinkers engaged in the attempt to solve such major domestic problems as unemployment, poverty, urban renewal and civil rights. And, though he’s now officially out of the Administration, living in Cambridge, Mass., after having spent most of the past year at Wesleyan University’s center for Advanced Studies writing a book on the problems of the American Negro family, Moynihan still frequently shuttles to Washington to advise the President and others on critical domestic matters.

Meanwhile, having until recently been all but unknown outside of Washington and academic circles, Moynihan has lately, for the first time, been getting considerable public recognition–he picked up no fewer than three honorary degrees this past spring, for instance, and in May, embraced by the Establishment, he was elected to the National Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is also now listed in “Who’s Who in America,” and though he has yet to make “Celebrity Register,” one suspects that he’ll be in the next edition, slotted in alphabetically between Robert Motherwell and Gerry Mulligan.

The degree of fame that Moynihan has attained recently stems mainly from the fact that he is the author of a much-discussed Government paper entitled “The Negro Family: The Case For National Action,” now commonly referred to as the Moynihan Report, in which he urged that the Federal Government adopt a national policy for the reconstruction of the Negro family, arguing that the real cause of the American Negro’s troubles is not so much segregation, or a lack of voting power, but the circumstance that the structure of the Negro family is highly “unstable and in many urban centers. . .approaching complete breakdown.”This is so, stated Moynihan, because of the increasingly matriarchal character of American Negro society, a society in which a husband is absent from nearly 2 million of the nation’s 5 million Negro families and in which, too, some 25 per cent of all births are illegitimate. Moreover, Moynihan pointed out, children, especially boys, who grow up in fatherless homes tend not to adjust to this country’s essentially patriarchal society, particularly when their problems are complicated by poverty and racial prejudice.

Right there is a stated concern:  lack of adjustment to this country’s “essentially patriarchal society.”  The year is 1966….

“From the wild Irish slums of the 19th-century Eastern seaboard, to the riot-torn suburbs of Los Angeles,” wrote Moynihan a few months ago, enlarging on his report for the Jesuit magazine, America, “there is one unmistakable lesson in American history: a community that allows large numbers of young men to grow up in broken families, dominated by women, never acquiring any stable relationship to male authority, never acquiring any set of rational expectations about the future–that community asks for and gets chaos. Crime, violence, unrest, disorder. . .are not only to be expected, they are very near to inevitable. And they are richly deserved.”

Yes, anyone who seeks to alter the essentially patriarchal quality of the USA gets what they deserve.  (Notably, Jesuits are the largest male-only order of the Catholic Church, to this day….).  Listen to this talk about “what kids need is father figures and a stable family life” from a man whose family moved repeatedly, apparently was woman-dominated (his mother was a nurse) and ended up influential in Washington, and with a Fulbright Scholarship, etc.  And listen to him talking about a plan to upgrade the ghetto schools — starting with, replace “Negro women as teachers” (what about their jobs!  Suppose his mother had been a teacher?)

To upgrade the ghetto school, Moynihan has specifically suggested that Negro men be hired to replace white and Negro women as teachers in these schools. “We should be paying qualified Negro males $10,000 a year to teach in the ghetto schools, particularly to teach kindergarten and the first and second grades, for it is at this time when young Negro boys, many of whom have no father at home, most need a strong male figure in their lives,” he noted recently.

He has little concern, apparently, for “Negro girls” at this time, at least expressed.

But in offering ideas like this, Moynihan has more and more incurred the wrath of much of the liberal community, for whom integration comes far ahead of abstractions like family stability. To prove to his critics, however, that family stability is of more immediate importance than integration, Moynihan has cited the cases of the hundreds of thousands of Chinese and Japanese immigrants who came to this country in the late 19th century, hopelessly poor, unskilled and uneducated, whose descendants have nonetheless achieved astonishing success in spite of racial prejudice–and the fact that they have lived and, to a large degree, continue to live in ghettos.

Quoting Census Bureau college enrollment statistics, which sociologists consider a particularly important index of social and economic status, Moynihan has shown that some 44.1 per cent of all college-age Chinese-Americans and Japanese-Americans are today in college as against 21.4 per cent of all college-age whites and only 8.4 per cent of college-age Negroes. Similarly, according to a study made by the B’nai B’rith, nearly 80 per cent of all college-age Jews are enrolled in college. And what, asks Moynihan, do the Chinese, the Japanese and the Jews have in common? Answer: “A singularly stable, cohesive and enlightened family life.”

Moynihan frankly admits that he first became interested in the problems of the ethnic-minority family living fatherless in poverty because he himself grew up in such a family. He was born on March 16, 1927, in Tulsa, Okla., where his father, an Indiana-born, first-generation Irish-American, was working as a newspaper reporter, but before Moynihan was six months old his father landed a job on a New York paper and the family moved here. When Moynihan was 6, however, his father stepped permanently out of the scene, leaving his mother, a practical nurse, to support the family, which besides young Daniel Patrick, included a younger brother and sister.

So, that report was clearly a call to action to re-align priorities and focusing on family structure — especially for the urban Negro (in 1965 terms) family.  In the 1990s, similar talk, but expanded as we now see from just urban, African-American males and single-mother households, to the nation as a whole.  Now EVERYONE is at risk of this social plague and pathology.  Incrementally, targeting ALL divorcing women becoming single mother households (1970s, no-fault divorce) might not have sold as well; but similar programming framed as helping the impoverished urban family — was definitely bought and sold.

Why was this report so revered when it was also criticized at the time, reported by other sociologists as flawed, and admittedly reflected Moynihan’s own personal biases?

Remember the Moynihan Report?  Nov. 13, 2011 in The DuBois Review

Many say the 1965 report predicted the implosion of the black family. Sociologist Herbert Gans disagrees.

The oft-repeated tropes about the breakdown of the black family can be traced, in large part, to a 1965 Department of Labor report called The Negro Family: A Case for National Action, also known as the Moynihan Report. With then-Assistant Secretary of Labor Daniel Patrick Moynihan as the principal author, the report tied the decline of the nuclear family within the black community social pathology, increasing welfare dependency and chronic poverty. Sociologist Herbert Gans offers a critique of The Moynihan Report in the Fall 2011 issue of theDu Bois Review.

According to the abstract, “The Moynihan Report of 1965 will soon be fifty years old, and some social scientists now venerate it as a sterling application of social science data and analysis by the federal government. This author, who was directly involved in events connected with the release of the Report, does not agree; this article examines the shortcomings of the Report.”    (Hover Cursor over Link for more content)?

Read the entire article for free in the Du Bois Review on Cambridge Journals Online: “The Moynihan Report and its Aftermaths: A Critical Analysis“ by Herbert J. Gans Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race, Volume 8, Issue 02 (2011), pp. 315-327.  Copyright © 2011 W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research

Timewise, from 1953-1980 (as I recall), a Department of Health, Education and Welfare existed.  See, from the HHS/ASPE (Office of Assistant Secretary Planning and Evaluation) — A Brief History of the Federal Security Agency.<==A GOOD BOOKMARK TO REVIEW. This also dovetails with information on the Reorganization Act, which I mention in this post also;

The Federal Security Agency was established on July 1, 1939, under the Reorganization Act of 1939, P.L. 76-19.The objective was to bring together in one agency all Federal programs in the fields of health, education, and social security. The first Federal Security Administrator was Paul V. McNutt.

The new agency originally consisted of the following major components: the Office of the Administrator; the Public Health Service; the Civilian Conservation Corps; the Office of Education; and the Social Security Board. …

The Social Security Board started out independent in 1935, and within four years, was incorporated into a centralized agency, the FSA.  The FSA later became HEW, and HEW later became HHS.  WHEN YOU SEE “HHS” the associated concept is, the offspring of a federal agency created around the time of the social security act, and centralizing key public operations.  HHS is simply another name:

The Nation’s social security and public assistance programs also were born during the depression with approval of the Social Security Act on August 14, 1935. The initial Act of 1935 established the Social Security Board to administer Titles I, II, III, IV, and X of the Act, and it remained an independent organization until its transfer to FSA. The Social Security Act Amendments of 1939 revised and expanded basic provisions of the program and eligibility requirements and extended protection to aged wives, dependent children and certain survivors of insured workers.  …

Under a Reorganization Plan which became effective on June 30, 1940, the organization of the Federal Security Agency was enlarged: The Food and Drug Administration was transferred from the Department of Agriculture; and Saint Elizabeths Hospital, Freedmen’s Hospital, and Federal functions relating to Howard University and the Columbia Institution for the Deaf were transferred to FSA from the Department of the Interior. …

When the war ended, President Truman moved to “strengthen the arm of the Federal Government for better integration of services in the fields of health, education, and welfare.”

Reorganization Plan No. 2 of 1946, effective July 16, 1946, abolished the three-man Social Security Board, creating in its place, the Social Security Administration, headed by a Commissioner of Social Security. The plan transferred the Children’s Bureau (created in 1912), exclusive of its Industrial Division, from the Department of Labor to FSA, where it became part of the Social Security Administration; the U. S. Employees Compensation Commission, formerly an independent organization, to the Office of the Administrator of FSA; functions of the Department of Commerce regarding vital statistics to the FSA Administrator, who delegated them to the Surgeon General of the Public Health Service.

Legislation of major importance to the Agency also was passed in 1946: the National Mental Health Act; the Vocational Education Act; the Federal Employees Health Act; the 1946 Amendments to the Social Security Act; and the Hospital Survey and Construction Act. …

The Federal Property and Administrative Services Act of 1949 gave the Federal Security Administrator authority to dispose of surplus Federal propel property to tax-supported or nonprofit educational institutions for health or educational purposes.

During 1949, the Federal Security Agency began the establishment of 10 FSA regional offices to replace the 11 previously operated by the Social Security Administration and consolidated those being operated by other FSA constituents into one common regional office structure. Previous to the consolidation, constituent agencies were maintaining five and, in some cases, six independent regional offices in a single city. …

The year 1952 was a period of transition for FSA. Despite the contributions made by the Agency during and before the Korean War, most of the defense-related activities in FSA were being phased out. The Food and Drug Administration continued to study chemical and bacteriological warfare agents but other FSA components were mobilized to provide disaster relief and health care assistance to a number of foreign countries. Technical assistance, under the Federal “Point IV” and Mutual Security Agency programs, provided needed help to many underdeveloped countries. The Agency also furnished guidance for foreign representatives sent to this country to study American programs and methods in the fields of health and education. Later in the year, FSA accelerated its response to the Nation’s social needs

1953 was a key year as the FSAgency became a Department — the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, and the first Department created since the Department of Labor in 1913:

[“A Common Thread of Service” continued…]

By 1953, the Federal Security Agency’s programs in health, education, and social security had grown to such importance that its annual budget exceeded the combined budgets of the Departments of Commerce, Justice, Labor and Interior and affected the lives of millions of people.

Consequently, in accordance with the Reorganization Act of 1949, President Eisenhower submitted to the Congress on March 12, 1953, Reorganization Plan No. 1 of 1953, which called for the dissolution of the Federal Security Agency and elevation of the agency to Cabinet status as the  Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. All of the responsibilities of the Federal Security Administrator would be transferred to the Secretary of Health, Education, end Welfare and the components of FSA would be transferred to the Department. A major objective of the reorganization was to improve administration of the functions of the Federal Security Agency. The plan was approved April 1, 1953, and became effective on April 11, 1953.

The Department of Health, Education, and Welfare was created on April 11, 1953, when Reorganization Plan No. 1 of 1953 became effective. HEW thus became the first new Cabinet-level department since the Department of Labor was created in 1913. The Reorganization Plan abolished the Federal Security Agency and transferred all of its functions to the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare and all components of the Agency to the Department. The first Secretary of HEW was Oveta Culp Hobby, a native of Texas, who had served as Commander of the Women’s Army Corps in World War II and was editor and publisher of the Houston Post. Sworn in on April 11, 1953, as Secretary, she had been FSA Administrator since January 21, 1953.

In 1979 and 1980, under Carter Administration, these split and we got the presently named HHS and the Department of Education, separately.  From Allgov (the above document, which used to report more recent events, no longer does).

The late seventies saw the Carter administration remove education from the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (creating the Department of Education) and form the Department of Health and Human Services.

Historical Highlights of Health and Human Services

Just a few of these highlights relating to “Family Court Matters”:

 

1997  The State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) was created, enabling states to extend health coverage to more uninsured children.

1996 Welfare reform under the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act was enacted.

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) was enacted.

1995 The Social Security Administration became an independent agency.

1993 Vaccines for Children Program was established, providing free immunizations to all children in low-income families.

[Not on “highlights” but ACF (Administration for Children and Families) was created in 1991]

1981  Identification of AIDS – In 1984, the HIV virus was identified by the Public Health Service and French scientists. In 1985, a blood test to detect HIV was licensed.

1980 Federal funding was provided to states for foster care and adoption assistance.

1979 The Department of Education Organization Act was signed into law, providing for a separate Department of Education. The Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) became the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on May 4, 1980.

1977 The Health Care Financing Administration was created to manage Medicare and Medicaid separately from the Social Security Administration.  Worldwide eradication of smallpox, led by the U.S. Public Health Service.

1975 Child Support Enforcement and Paternity Establishment Program was established

(Misc. from HHS Organizational Chart)

HHS has 11 operating divisions, including eight agencies in the U.S. Public Health Service and three human services agencies. These divisions administer a wide variety of health and human services and conduct life-saving research for the nation, protecting and serving all Americans.

The Office of the Secretary (OS), HHS’s chief policy officer and general manager, administers and oversees the organization, its programs, and its activities. The Deputy Secretary and a number of Assistant Secretaries and Offices support OS.

The Administration for Children & Families (ACF) is a division of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS). ACF promotes the economic and social well-being of families, children, individuals and communities.

Each ACF office has its own director or commissioner ...ACF is comprised of 19 officesincluding the Office of Regional Operations, which represents 10 regional offices around the country.

ACF administers more than 60 programs with a budget of more than $53 billion, making it the second largest agency in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Other agencies created under “Reauthorization Act” before it expired included FEMA and the EPA.
(Do I have your attention yet?  Next two paragraphs, from my reading and as I recall, are a developing opinion.  They also contain searchable terms — and I’m bringing these terms up on purpose, for some timelines of system changes at the Executive Branch of the federal government, affecting of course federal grants to the states, and what happens within those states.)

Meanwhile HHS grew into the largest grantmaking agency around — and in 1996 as we know (on this blog, anyhow!), the USA got “PRWORA” welfare reform, including all it entailed, and the power-shift to the state level of government.  By the late 1990s, the governors already having been primed for this through other means (I refer to the National Governors’ Association, for example) figured out to set up Responsible Fatherhood Commissions at the state level or, for example, in Oklahoma, (Oklahoma Marriage Initiative) simply grab excess funds and start promoting marriage statewide, in some truly offensive (to women, and to the use of those grants) manners, resulting in private profits through the curricula promoters.

In 1981 the Presidential authority through “special parliamentary procedures” to radically re-arrange at the Executive Branch, a right which had existed since FDR or just before, meaning, the burden was on Congress to veto Presidential plans within 60 days, or they automatically passed …. expired.  I have heard that in 2012, President Obama sought to resurrect this re-arrangement parliamentary procedure.  It’s on my “to do list” to find out whether it went through (sure feels like it did — I see strategic combining of major federal agencies by projects, i.e., such things as Promise Neighborhoods, or others), but I don’t know).

We are decades along in the process (actually, more than a century, I’d say) and in my pointing out six groups involved with the US Department of Justice grants programs, and pointing out the types of programs offered under the USDOJ/OVW (Office of Violence Against Women, established to implement the VAWA (Violence Against Women Act) passed only in 1994) — I am pointing out that there is a coordinated, centralization of ONE primary issue, that of how to address the violent attacks by human beings, nationally, up on others, specifically, on women.

I am also pointing out, in the public interest, that we ought to take more interest in certain federal agencies’ operations, as part of being responsible citizens in the country.  “Leave it up to the experts” is not an acceptable attitude.  Who is monitoring the experts’ involvement in government?  All the various professional boards, and professional membership associations?

As a woman survivor of marital battering, and then being forced through the family court gauntlet — that “lack of consent” or attempt to “pull something off” affecting my future or my children’s (and by association, possibly their children’s) is a HUGE deal (a “BFD”), and to be protested and corrected. It is a source of constant concern, to be subjected to unfair and ongoing force in one’s own immediate and long-term future choices in a country where we are constantly drilled to believe that these choices indeed exist.

My Concerns about the Family Court as a Gauntlet and Communal, Quasi-Religious Scapegoating Ritual, now entrenched in our government and culture.

Religions, remember, require people to sacrifice (donate, give, volunteer, support, tolerate, associate) for them to exist as well as, often, engage in — for lack of a better word — human sacrifice, and/or child sacrifices, which are actually forbidden in the books of some of the same religions, as associated with paganism.  The victims become aware, eventually, of their status and are isolated and quarantined so as not to escape the fate.

Those that escape, or try to (case in point, read the recent case in Minnesota) are likely to be hauled back, handed over, and re-indoctrinated into their proper subservient roles within the family and within this system. To keep it going, entire castes of quasi-religious priesthoods must be initiated, trained, adept, and committed to engaging in the re-indoctrination practices as righteous and altruistic for the good of those they are “ministering” to and for the public at large.  This caste has its own specialized language, which the uncertified, and uninitiated are NOT encouraged to speak, and certainly not to publicize abroad.  Access to the specialized literature with the specialized languages is possible in part, but obstacles to access for the unaffiliated are multiple.  (I’m about to post some samples, after this).

That family court system, now an established cultural practice, a sort of communal “purging” of blame and shame stating that we are truly a fair and just country concerned for kids and family, absolutely is a gauntlet.

It punishes people, rewards others, and is staffed by those who preside over the systems of punishments and rewards.  Only the lucky, those with stamina or support, somehow the ability to make it all the way through, DO make it through.

Whatever you attribute surviving the gauntlet to, to this day, some — actually many — people (including children and adults both) die en route, or more accurately, are killed.  Others disappear, and some become fugitives, others homeless, and still more, I’ll bet, if they don’t be come immediate converts to taking the system apart for the next generation (such as, myself), they have got to continue to re-invent their lives, and do so in a culture which continues to pretend there is some sense, fairness, equity, or due process left in the courts of the land.

RE: Incremental Systems Change, Accelerating in this Century

Plenty of evidence on this (incremental moves, ongoing, towards one-world-government), but not the topic of this post. It’s also a continuing theme of this blog which at least puts some sense behind the erosion of rights, justice, and a sense of even a chance of fairness walking into a courtroom in this century.). I’m talking such things as the Fabian Society (which I learned is alive and well still), Tavistock Institute of Human Relations, and the manic drive to frame nearly every governmental policy decision into a social science, mental health, or behavioral intervention  or “attitude adjustment” question.

More posts coming.  I know this topic will have to be raised repeatedly (just one hearing is unlikely to convince), so here’s a brief (: reference I found recently:

One reference, an October 2015 Virtual Issue of “International Affairs” Journal, “The rise of the dual culture of world development and world government” by Giovanni Farese, references current events (he quotes the Pope and Kissinger) and reflects on the renewed interest in “world order” or how to govern the world. The article reviews papers given during a certain time period (right before and after World War II) at London’s Chatham House (RIIA — Royal Institute of International Affairs).

Some food for thought — but understand, it is my purpose to get your attention and motivate to pay attention to specific activity within the USA, and here, the USA Department of Justice and under the “OVW”….

I am talking about the larger framework.  Privatization of the handling of domestic violence (or, ‘Violence Against Women”) is a great example of “functionalism” (not quoted, but used in the document) in operation.

The idea of ‘world order’ is back in the public discourse.1 The publications cited in the footnotes of this introductory article provide a small but signi cant fragment of evidence from scholarly works.2 This renewed interest is due, to some extent, to the anniversaries of historical events: the outbreak of the First World War (1914) and the Bretton Woods Conference (1944) last year; the end of the Second World War, the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the birth of the United Nations (1945) this year. In particular, the post-Second World War grand design of an international collaborative framework for action continues to draw attention.3 Yet, this is not a subject purely of historical interest, or scholarly debate.

The consequences of the 2008 financial crisis, regional conflicts from Eastern Europe to the Mediterranean and the Middle East, the rise of the Islamic State and large-scale migrations to Europe are posing unprecedented challenges. These challenges, in turn, are kindling the debate on how to ‘govern the world’….

Articles, authors, affiliations: a generational and epistemic community

This virtual issue comprises 20 articles, written by 18 authors and published in International Affairs (IA) between 1931 and 1949. Eight were written before the Second World War, twelve after the war. Most of the articles stem directly from seminars held at Chatham House; the reader might find, at the end of some of them, the original transcript of the discussion following the speech (see the ‘summary of discussion’). Though Canada, the UK and the US take the lion’s share, authors are from nine different countries (Austria, Lithuania, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland and Romania, in addition the three mentioned), reflecting the transnational ethos of Chatham House.

Interesting that the sister institution universities were slow to admit women (Princeton, Yale, Harvard), that no women were on these planning committees, and that in the US, women had to fight — hard — to even vote…. Notice that except for New York University (which I would think is public, but haven’t checked), Harvard, Princeton and Yale, to this day, are still PRIVATE.

Here is one more reference — I want to bring up Columbia University; in fact it keeps coming up in the family law context.  I only recently learned about Richard N. Gardner, but he’s plenty famous and has had a decades-long career, only recently (2012?) retiring from professorship at Columbia University School of Law.

I’m quoting the New American (not usually a favorite source); there are plenty of other references to Richard N. Gardner; this one is short, and points out his Council of Foreign Relations connections.  Incidentally, no relation to the “parental alienation” man, who was Richard A. Gardner, and whose academic credentials, let alone scholarship, couldn’t hold a candle to this man’s….

New world order strategist: thirty years ago Richard N. Gardner proposed a “piecemeal” approach to world government. The internationalist insiders have followed his blueprint ever since (by Steve Bonta,  The Free Library. 2004 American Opinion Publishing, Inc., retrieved March 2, 2016)

…Even by the ratified (“rarified” meant, possibly?) standards of the American Eastern Establishment, Gardner’s resume is extraordinary. He holds a B.A. in economics from Harvard University, a J.D. from Yale Law School, and a Ph.D. in economics from Oxford, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar. His Oxford thesis is regarded as the “classic” study of Anglo-American diplomacy in the Bretton Woods conference of 1944 and in the creation of the GATT trade agreement. He is a member of both the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission. Gardner serves on the International Capital Markets Advisory Committee of the New York Stock Exchange and sits on the boards of two major international banking institutions.

Gardner has long been closely affiliated with the United Nations, including a six-year stint as a member of the U.S. delegation to the UN General Assembly in the 1960s. In 1992 he was a special adviser to the United Nations at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. More recently, he has been involved in a UN project involving dialogue with the Chinese Institute of international Studies, the Chinese counterpart of the Council on Foreign Relations.

No less impressive is Gardner’s record as an insider in domestic politics. Beginning in 1961, when Gardner left Columbia University to become President John F. Kennedy’s deputy assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs, Gardner has served in nearly every presidential administration up to the present day. He was a member of President Richard Nixon’s Commission on International Trade and Investment Policy, and served as President Jimmy Carter’s ambassador to Italy and President Bill Clinton’s ambassador to Spain. He is now a member of President George W. Bush’s Advisory Committee on Trade Policy and Negotiations as well as of the State Department’s Advisory Committee on International Economic Policy.

The House of World Order 

Richard Gardner began writing about world government in the early 1960s. His first book on the subject, In Pursuit of World Order, originally published in 1962, foreshadowed Gardner’s later program for world order. Wrote Harlan Cleveland, President Kennedy’s assistant secretary of state, in a laudatory foreword to a later edition of the book: “A decent world order will only be built brick by brick. Those who wish to help build it, and not merely to talk about building it, will concentrate on the next brick–on how it can be fashioned, where it belongs, how it will fit, when it should be added to the structure.… Richard Gardner … has helped fashion most of [these bricks] during the past four years as part of the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations. He understands the process of international institution-building as clearly and deeply as any American of our time.”

It was the “brick by brick” approach that obviously inspired Gardner to lay out, a decade later, a comprehensive strategy for world order in an influential article in Foreign Affairs entitled “The Hard Road to World Order.” The significance of this article cannot be overstated; it lays bare, in plain if somewhat academic prose, the strategy for global control that internationalist insiders have followed with slavish dedication ever since. Gardner’s article is both a strategic summary and a digest of recommended tactics, crucial reading for anyone wishing to make sense out of the multipronged and apparently haphazard internationalist assault on American sovereignty.

So, Let’s Bring this Back to the Matter of Domestic Violence and the USDOJ (and in relationship to programming in the Family Courts, nationwide).

People who do not or simply will not address the involvement of major corporate, and in “corporate” I often mean significant privately controlled wealth poured into vehicles called tax-exempt foundations which (like government institutional funds), are engaging in half-conversations when the topic is “seeking justice.”

I have had extended discussions with lawyers and ex-lawyers (i.e., ran afoul of the system and got disbarred), and other people filing class-action lawsuits or RICO, regarding the family courts, who simply WILL NOT take into account that the corporate involvement (public/private power base) devalues the representative factor, dilutes the fairness of the courts, and privatizes the entire system for control from outside the system in ways most people cannot access — although it involves federal funding. 

I have also written up (off-line, not uploaded or published, but communicated privately) extended documentation on the impact of ignoring the HHS grants when attempting to “correct course” in the family courts.   I am of the opinion that it might be useless in the context of family court reform (advocacy) to attempt to communicate this to a lawyer, or to a disbarred lawyer, many of whom seem to still be attempting to salvage the system by applying legal terms upon the relationship-therapy-problemsolving-based family court system.

It’s not that the lawyers completely don’t “get it,” it’s a matter of priority and values.  Perhaps what it takes to invest in the education and pass the bar, plus practice for several years, or many years, immunizes even the discarded or disbarred from admitting there is a different explanation for why the system doesn’t work — and that explanation MIGHT be “corruption” and that corruption “MIGHT” relate to the money flowing, uncharted, and some of it untraceable, through it.

Meanwhile, many existing lawyers are quite happy with and have bought into the psychologizing of the court systems, working alongside forensic clinical psychologists routinely, and working with them in custody cases.  (The “APA & ABA” combination of powerful professional organizations formed in the late 1800s, continuing to get along just fine….after all, power respects power, and prestige, prestige, not to mention the associated paychecks…)

This practice of ignoring the federal grants influence in effect ignores the private profiteering and an infrastructure which sets up, literally, professions connected with the operation of the courts.  It ignores the extent of “court-connected” corporations, and how the entire network is coordinated.  In essence, and with respect through the diligence, perseverance and intelligence of those climbing up the class-action ladder, ideally to the U.S. Supreme Court (!! recently down a Supreme Court Justice, too!)

FYI, fair government doesn’t happen by the public continually just trusting government to be altruistic and peopled by the honest at the controlling levels, I mean.

Now, about the six groups in my post title.  Groups, names, operations, “outfits” people should become aware of, study, and not forget (especially the first two and the last two, below)!

I had to put “groups” in quotes because the word “organizations” or “business entities” literally doesn’t even apply to all of them.

Here they are.  Where I got the list from — at the US Department of Justice, describing a grants stream that is now three years old (we are 2016; it was 2013).  The groups have been around for varying time (some longer than others), but one thing we ought to at least do is take names, and make a note of WHO, as to what kind of entity, they are.  Or, are not.

• Center for Court Innovation
• Futures Without Violence (formerly the Family Violence Prevention Fund)
• Institute on Domestic Violence in the African American Community
• Legal Momentum: National Judicial Education Program
• National Center for State Courts
• National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges [[“NCJFCJ” for short, although that’s also a trademark of one of this nonprofit’s, as I recall, 3 related entities]]

I am generally aware of all of these (least so of “Legal Momentum”) and of which is, and which is not, a nonprofit.  I am continuing to learn more about the last one, and increasingly interested in the non-business-entity of the third one as located in Minnesota at a University.  These ARE affecting / directing federal justice grants, and it only makes sense for voters, taxpayers, and US Citizens to become aware of each one, and of the tendency to compile bonafide nonprofits with “not quite a nonprofit OR a branch of government” as a signal and symptom of the times.

Search Again

(Tax returns added post-publication.  There are some credibility problems with the tax returns.  Take a look please….)

And think HARD about what this signifies as affecting court systems which are supposed to operate within certain jurisdictions, on certain subject matter — and not outside them… and which are supposed to be free from bias, or undue influence, and I am talking, monetary, fees for friends, or cronyism.

Even so, as to the 2013 Office of Violence Against Women Discretionary Grants Program (which is now discontinued, but not finished, apparently), no question that anyone applying for these grants is recommended to contact one of six named, again, “groups,” for technical assistance and training on the grants themselves.  The cover states who may apply — clearly they are aimed at public institutions (courts), but there’s a final phrase implying something not-a-court might actually get some.

“Applicants are limited to Federal, State, Tribal, Territorial or Local Courts or Court-based Programs.”

“Programs” are things that grantees (or organizations, or public entities, or people) run — not the grantees themselves.  We can probably assume that any such improvement grants going to “programs” will instead go to either the courts, or a court-connected entity, despite this labeling by none other than the USDOJ.

A project or a program is not a “person” (corporate, trust, or individual) and is inanimate.  It does not possess a legal right to do commerce any more than the direct object of a sentence can be held responsible for action taken by the subject of the sentence, in that sentence.  “I threw the ball over the fence.” — “Sam wrote a book.” “The child built a sand-castle.”  Are the ball, the book, or the sandcastle animate (alive, possessing will, exercising choice and functioning in the realm of human beings to engage in commerce and legislation?)  No, they were acted upon by human beings and in fact, all three created or designed at some point also by a human being or more than one (even that ball).

I understand there is a time and place for creative expression and “poetic license.”  However, in official, government publications about what’s being done with tax dollars — and in those on the receiving end describing the same — accuracy and honesty are important.

These more accurate labels will NOT be provided voluntarily, I have noticed, so if and when “the public” (commoners, those not involved in the policymakers but becoming aware of them) talks about groups A, B, C or D, E and F (separately or interacting with each other on the web, virtual digital, electronic communications especially), it is VITAL (V.I.T.A.L.!!) to distinguish between that which is real in terms of its registered identity (and all that goes with registration) and that which is NOT real in terms of its registered entity (and all that goes with faking legitimacy).

Language matters!  Without restraint exercised BY THE PUBLIC on government operations, there is no protection from abuse, dictatorship, or simply corruption of those already in power to protect position, above people.

Programs, or Projects, or “Initiatives” (as generic nouns, not proper nouns part of a business name** –which is the use of “court programs” in this OVW 2013 grants announcement) are that which is run by someone else — and not the someone else. For a clue, look at any nonprofit tax return.  The name of the entity is on page one, header.  The PROGRAMS the organization is running will show up, sometimes with specialized names, on page 2, under “Program Service Accomplishments.”

**Such as a business with the word “Initiative” in its legal title: Example, “National Fatherhood Initiative” has an EIN# and a business registration. It exists as a corporate “person” which in our system, can sue and be sued, own property or transfer it to others, buy and sell, and all that. It is also a nonprofit.

This difference matters if we are to understand what’s happening IN the courts, and WITH public revenues coming through federal agencies, and there is a significant attempt to portray that which does NOT exist as though it actually does, as an entity, when the actual sponsoring organization wishes to remain, ah, below-surface level.

A prominent example of this in my book, but not the only one, relates to the “BWJP” or Battered Women’s Justice Project.  I have studied the usage in the history of that name, and how it strategically, year after year, failed to mention — and others likewise failed to mention — that it was indeed a project, not an entity — run by a Duluth, Minnesota-based domestic violence (prevention) nonprofit closely associated with, among others, Ellen Pence.

A closer look at that organization as a tax-exempt entity, in earlier and developing years, would have quickly revealed that it was primarily a government-funded entity targeting, in large part, other government entities, and (eventually), OVW grantees, under its “BWJP” project, to be trained.   This was government funding its federalized transformation on more than one front, and the various other nonprofits (at least some of them real) which went along with the ruse –and it was indeed a ruse — did so for years.

So, among the six “Technical Assistance Providers” I wish to point out here, only a few are actual entities, as with the BWJP situation. It is so easy to actually file for a 501©3 if there is a little support going on, and particularly when there’s a LOT of support going on — there is no good reason, that I can see, other than an actual intent to deceive the public (seem like that which one is NOT) to fail to file.

Part of this deception as to a group’s seeming to have an identity as either a business OR an identifiable segment of a public entity, is our natural tendency to believe that anyone or anything which is running a business (i.e., is incorporated, has a budget and balances it enough to STAY in business somehow year after year, have employees, founding directors, executive directors, and spokespersons, present at conferences, etc.) is more credible than single individuals speaking up.

In fact, when the entity has NOT bothered to incorporate, you might just be hearing from just a few individuals with a common purpose, and strategic positioning (within university, or government).  So, for understanding, we (the public) MUST start getting anal-retentive accurate and no-holds-barred demanding, BEFORE engaging in prolonged debate, discussions (pro or con) about any supposed entity, to find out who, in fact, IS that entity and a few things about it.

I have (tried, at least) to practice this for YEARS, and in general, each time I made the extra effort to go, look for that definition, I have obtained valuable information even when no such entity existed to match the group name being used.

By now you do realize that a good portion of federal policy on almost anything involves major “technical assistance and training” by the resident expert organizations — and once these are established, the groove is set, and the continuing feedback from those not in that groove, is simply ignored — right?

I am a long-time observer of divorce/custody/domestic-violence/missing-children-through-parental-abduction-involved individual after individual after individual in this state, that state and yet another state  (of “the United States” of America), continuing to cry:  “If only we got more attention in the press, more coverage of THIS dramatic disastrous custody decision, the system could be improved...” while conditioned to ignore what becomes obvious (if the mind, heart, and attention could be dragged out of a certain political, gender, religious, or other groove)….

I’m getting old.  I have as much concern, I believe, as anyone for the fate of children, and their parents, whose custody cases result in devastating destruction and distress.  I’ve been there.  But what I’m doing about it is something different — I’m documenting who has motives to continue the status quo of “really bad custody decisions.”

NOTE: Regarding “specific geo/political areas” — these situations are not organized, as to the power structures, from within individual states upward.  They are organized from OUTSIDE government inward, and from Washington, D.C. (federally) inter/nationally — and the primary vehicle is privatized service providers contracting with, or funded by, government, breaking jurisdictional boundaries — which is by definition, weakening representative government itself. I’ve been blogging and reporting, commenting and privately conversing (with parents in distress, men and women both) about this, and demonstrating it on their various blogs, forums, group emails at times, and sometimes, responding to those, featuring a specific state on this blog.

In my experience, most people just will not hear it. It’s NOT just about the family court system — or the juvenile justice system — or the child protective system. It’s about THE Entire system. However, as to each of those functional subject matters which reflect things people expect government to do for them (protect society from crime, protect individuals from those who attack or molest them, or commit financial crimes) — they ARE being organized at a larger scope, and hard to see if you refuse to recognize it, but EASY to see once the pattern is grasped. The arena is NOT local, the arena is not even the courts — it’s the corporations and associations coordinating policy across jurisdictions, and through networked and privately AND public-financing, exerting influence to change to pre-determined (by those private individuals involved in setting up this process) outcome.

This has taken the public policy response into a quagmire of programming — not into freedom, or safety, or longstanding protection for those seeking it AFTER they first separate from the abuse.  This quagmire of programming works for those IN those professions (where careers can and are built), but does NOT work for the average person who becomes subject matter material for studies on how to improve the system.  What’s most offensive to me, personally, is that individual is a man, in fact a white, middle-aged male, with no known personal experience of domestic violence, and as to divorce, and/or custody, I cannot say, but none is being reported.  It’s unclear from the bio blurbs if he is, was, or has been married or a father, either.

All this takes some time and attention to see; and staying distracted by the chaos and disruption of families going on, year after year, is a great way to NOT see it — ever. I only saw this (my wake-up call) when my life had been emptied of both children and work, and I was forced to take a serious look at how that occurred, and the level of falsehoods that had been accepted in court despite evidence in court that they were simply not credible.

This emptying a life of work and any meaningful (in my case, practically any) children occurred in the family court system, which as you can see, I’ve been blogging about since 2009. Meanwhile, as I’m saying here — the system not being talked about continues to rapidly evolve, expand, and set in deep-set, well-traveled grooves how to process people like factories process interchangeable parts of a large operation.

ONE of those grooves, not immediately apparent, is the US DOJ’s “buy-in” to the social science definition of justice. ANOTHER is the setup of the HHS systems of, for lack of a less direct words, unlimited money-laundering through their grants systems and through inspiring generations of nonprofits to form up and line up for hand-outs for the privilege of preaching at the poor, and lecturing women, in particular, to go back from the rocks they’ve recently climbed out of, and work on their relationship skills — or become “ex-communicate.” Meanwhile, plenty of men become also “excommunicated” if they don’t play the systems’ “start a custody battle” games, if paying child support doesn’t provoke them enough already to do so.

Such writing as sometimes shows up connecting parts of this system is often so flavored progressive (only) or conservative (only) it has to be rejected as hypocritical.  Who else will take the time to look at nonprofit entities as entities (regardless of political persuasions), looking at their fiscal behavior, and convert a few friends to this “taking a closer look” behavior?  It’s not the content — it’s the containers!!  

While on-line (blog or other social and mainstream media) coverage of such family court cases may go on for years, in one state, or another state, meanwhile, in ALL states, a frightening momentum, pace, and collective power continues to be demonstrated in the ongoing transformation of the justice system’s handling of anything “family,” “children” or remotely involving  “domestic violence.”

My investigations — I read, as I keep saying, tax returns, corporate filings, grant records, and these do identify key “systems change” organization sector by sector coordinated with their sources of revenues.  The coordination and centralization process, ongoing, is entrenched throughout government in this country.  

These are symptoms of a larger privatization of government, and undermining of national integrity itself into the hands of “where the sun don’t shine” tax-exempt or, often enough, tax-dodging entities. 

If we are going to talk “balance of power” we must talk “money.”  If we are going to talk money, we must talk about it as power conceptually in terms of “flow” FROM here TO there , in terms of their organization and functioning, corporations — which includes tax-exempt ones, “nonprofits” — and about taxation vs. tax-exemption itself.  We must talk accounting at some point, and take a look at those books, and be able to think in terms of certain basic concepts.

Also I want to call attention, this time not as HHS grantees, but as USDOJ/OVW-endorsed “Technical Assistance and Trainers” to five groups found on a discretionary grant program (1 out of 20 such USDOJ programs) which function to direct DV policy towards specific professional providers, and away from a “get-real” discussion of why the public should be supporting so many extra-judicial, extra-law enforcement service providers coordinated at the federal Executive Branch, by way of this particular federal agency:

• Center for Court Innovation
• Futures Without Violence (formerly the Family Violence Prevention Fund)
• Institute on Domestic Violence in the African American Community [“IDVAAC”]
• Legal Momentum: National Judicial Education Program
• National Center for State Courts
• National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges [[“NCJFCJ” for short, although that’s also a trademark of one of this nonprofit’s, as I recall, 3 related entities]]

I think all Americans should become aware of each one of these groups and get a solid, basic, and objective definition of them as “entities” functioning in the USA  — again, that is, assuming any center, institute, or any named group is actually a registered business entity, or a government entity.  I’m talking: age, size, state of incorporation, scope of activities, and if a nonprofit, its EIN#, tax returns, and corporate filings, basic definitions of board of directors (i.e., public servants or not, including primarily judicial or not), and what is the COLLECTIVE, MUTUAL agenda of these organizations as they interact with public agencies. (For more impromptu “prompts” on basic data to get, see below “Footnote Six Technical Assistance Coaches for OVW’s Discretionary FY 2013 Court Improvement Program“)

I continue to learn more about the role of the last one, sometimes from looking at the tax returns (involves three related organizations), sometimes looking at the donors, sometimes looking at them as a grantee. The one I’ve studied the least (so far) is Legal Momentum’s NJEP.   But all six are listed in a single USDOJ grant solicitation under “Court Improvement Program Fiscal Year 2013.”

Keep in mind that any or all of them might be drawing from both HHS and USDOJ — but my point is, to follow the financial  influences, one must have an actual business entity or government entity as official recipient of funds.  Often this might be an existing nonprofit corporation — but sometimes not.  Sometimes, it’s a “Center” at a university, or a fictional name representing a cooperative (public/private) project spoken of as if it were a business or government entity.

There seems to be no limit — CERTAINLY not under family law — for one party on any number of true but absent any legitimate cause of action, and/or false allegations to haul the other back in front of a judge, custody evaluator, parent coordinator, or for some, the quick-and-dirty-decisionmaker, simply a court-appointed mediator. Like many women, mothers and here I mean biological, by-birth mothers, when I say that across the country, no amount of utter, fastidious, and consistent compliance with state, family court, and lack of criminal or even abuse or risky behavior, is enough to protect us from being drained of resources, time, exhausted, and exposed to the threat of litigation (based on something, or nothing) as a lifestyle “from this day forward, until death do us part”).

Being on the obstructed end of parental access many years back — like MANY mothers these nationwide, I also have to question whether my policy of complete compliance with all court orders, and the intent to set those court orders AS a standard in the family relationship, when people prone and known to not give much of a __@p about them were involved already in the case.

NCJFCJ (a nonprofit judicial membership and training organization, based in Reno, Nevada (at the University of Nevada-Reno) is another.  I wonder how neutral as to the role of family courts in perpetuating intergenerational transmission of abuse by re-labeling it as a social science / outsourcing / treatment-training opportunity for multitudes of providers, could any nonprofit staffed and run in part by presiding judges in the family court system possibly be?  I’d say — not very..

In case you haven’t noticed this from the above paragraph, there is a tendency, coordinated from academic and nonprofit (nonprofit taking federal grants for their subsistence) circles to handle the criminal matter of “domestic violence” as a social science problem and a cause for ordering more and more treatment services.

USDOJ/ Training and Technical Assistance, “TA2TA.org”

From “JUSTICE.GOV”/Training and Technical Assistance — one paragraph refers people to a non-governmental link called — get this — “TA2TA.org” — which more overtly shows the NCJFCJ role:

TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE (for grantees): on link “http://www.justice.gov/ovw/training-and-technical-assistance”

OVW Technical Assistance Program provides direct technical assistance to existing and potential grantees and sub grantees to enhance and support their efforts to successfully implement projects supported by OVW grant funds. In addition, OVW is focused on building the capacity of criminal justice and victim services organizations to respond effectively to sexual assault, domestic violence, dating violence and stalking and fostering partnerships among organizations that have not traditionally worked together to address violence against women. 

VW website for Grantees and TA Providers. Please click here to access the latest information and updates:Training and Technical  Assistance[external link]

Bottom of the resulting site (after logo, large picture of happy, interracial family, Dad, Mom, beautiful young daughter, all hugging each other), with the message “REACH A BROAD AUDIENCE AT NO COST THROUGH CUTTING-EDGE WEBINAR SERVICES” then different graphics for each new message, 3 total) “EXPERT SUPPORT AND DEVELOPMENT TO FACILITATE AND ENHANCE YOUR NEXT MEETING..”  “HOLD A ROUNDTABLE TO THOROUGHLY DISCUSS, DEBATE, AND EXPLORE ISSUES.”

And at the bottom, the source of funding to develop this non-government TA2TA site and who holds the copyright:

Copyright 2012-2015 NCJFCJ. All rights reserved.

Project was supported by Grant No.  2011-TA-AX-K040  awarded by the Office on Violence Against Women, U.S. Department of Justice. The opinions, findings, conclusions, and recommendations expressed in this website/publication/program/exhibition are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Office on Violence Against Women, U.S. Department of Justice or the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges.

On the field, it acknowledges that NCJFCJ (which is a dba or trademark of the National Council of Family and Juvenile Court Judges, Inc.” (I believe it’s an “Inc.”) is the “comprehensive service provider” of this TA2TA which the public paid for — in advance — through appropriations to the United States Department of Justice:

The OVW TA Program plays a critical role in supporting the efforts of grantees and subgrantees to respond to domestic violence, sexual assault, dating violence, and stalking in communities throughout the country. As the number of OVW grant programs and grantees continues to rise, so do the challenges and opportunities faced by the OVW TA Program and its providers. To continue to meet the TA needs of this growing community, the OVW TA Program and its providers must work together to continually enhance the existing and changing landscape of TA.

As the comprehensive TA provider to the OVW TA Program, the NCJFCJ recognizes that the OVW TA community can bolster collective impact through common forums for discussion and change. Through activities such as all-TA provider meetings, webinar series, roundtables, and peer-to-peer meetings, TA providers are afforded the opportunity to connect and collaborate with other programs and organizations to develop a shared understanding of TA and practical strategies to improve delivery approaches to their unique and varied constituents

 

Good luck tracking individual DOJ grants under any of its various programs.

There are plenty of search results to “This project supported by Grant No. (fill in the blank) but can you go to the USDOJ website and locate a link to conduct a specific search and get a $$ amount, or a general search of similar TA grants, and come up with a total, or cross-check recipients?  I’m pretty good at looking, but the answer would appear to be “NO.”

That’s a comment on the state of affairs in federal government.  How many agencies publish databases of their grants free of charge to users? Of those that do, how many of such databases are (1) accurate (verifiable by at least one other source) and (2) halfway functional to allow the public to run reports and check projects, grants, or grantees independently, out of public interest, or specific concerns on particular grantees, or programs?

I do see  Grant No.  2011-TA-AX-K040 and similar ones listed on an NCJFCJ audit (i.e., their independently audited comprehensive financial statements, as required for tax-exempt organizations over a certain size, not an official investigation by any government source)..However it seems this type of TA grant has been going on since 1995– one year after the Violence Against Women Act (“VAWA”) first passed in 1994, resulting in the establishment of the OVW, under USDOJ  to implement it.

The OVAW (for some reason abbreviated OVW and not OVAW) seems to be organizationally parallel to  the Office of Justice Programs <=link shows organizational chart) and COPS (Community Oriented Policing Services Office), but I’m not sure about that.   The brief blurb about the OVW on “JUSTICE.gov” shows the function of administering 19 grants programs to help victims.

USDOJ/OVW as a Grants Administrator

The Office on Violence Against Women administers 19 grant programs to help provide victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, dating violence, and stalking with the protection and services they need to pursue safe and healthy lives and enable communities [my italics]  to hold offenders accountable for their violence.

However, if you click through, that now reads “24 grants programs.” (Link is in para. above):

The Office on Violence Against Women (OVW) currently administers 24 grant programs authorized by the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) of 1994 and subsequent legislation. Four programs are “formula,” meaning the enacting legislation specifies how the funds are to be distributed. The remaining 20 programs, including six formerly authorized programs that still have open and/or active grants, are “discretionary,” meaning OVW is responsible for creating program parameters, qualifications, eligibility, and deliverables in accordance with authorizing legislation. These grant programs are designed to develop the nation’s capacity to reduce domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking by strengthening services to victims and holding offenders accountable.

To repeat, only FOUR programs are formula grants specifying how the funds are to be distributed, and the other TWENTY are discretionary.  That’s

Download the List of OVW Grant Programs (PDF)

Discretionary Grant Programs

• Consolidated Grant Program to Address Children and Youth Experiencing Domestic and Sexual Assault and Engage Men and Boys as Allies

Formerly Authorized Grant Programs

• Court Training and Improvements Program^[[See IDVAAC link as TA provider, below]]
• Engaging Men in Preventing Sexual Assault, Domestic Violence, Dating Violence, and Stalking Program+
• Grants to Assist Children and Youth Exposed to Violence Program+
• Safe Havens: Supervised Visitation and Safe Exchange Grant Program^ [[see next paragraph]]

So, I had mentioned UMN’s School of Social Work located (and NOT a separate business or legal entity, such as a 501(c)3), “Institute on Domestic Violence in the African American Community” (IDVAAC) Technical Service Provider to OVW-administered grants.  I’m not finding the USDOJ place I first saw this, but here is a request for technical assistance form on the IDVAAC website, specifying for which grants they provide it.  The form suggest what time of personnel might be interested in seeking this assistance and summarizes:

The Institute on Domestic Violence in the African American Community (IDVAAC) provides technical assistance to Safe Havens: Supervised Visitation and Safe Exchange (Supervised Visitation Program) grantees to enhance communities’ work with culturally diverse groups using supervised visitation and safe exchange services in cases involving domestic violence.

IDVAAC will work with your community and OVW program specialist to develop its technical assistance approach. Please complete this form and fax to (216) 925-4180 or email to llitton@ispconsults.com. A technical assistance provider will contact you shortly.

Here also on the IDVAAC site is a page talking about their OVW connection with this grant series.

Here’s the link I’d been looking for — under “Justice.gov” (the USDOJ website), for the OVW Fiscal Year 2013 Court Training and Improvements [<== a link] site, notice that only courts themselves, or court-based programs are eligible.  I.e., the federal agency is funding // funneling change elements based on OVW standards on this DISCRETIONARY grants program, not to outside entities but only programs ALREADY based in the courts…

Eligibility

Applicants are limited to limited to Federal, State, Tribal, Territorial, or local courts or court-based programs. (See “Eligibility,” pages 5-7)

Notice, a short turnaround time from announcement to deadline.

{{OVW (OMB Number- 1122-0020 Expiration Date- 6:30:2013, Grants’gov # OVW-2013-3395) (at the link, it’s 52pp viewed 1-19-2016)}}

For people who pay attention to court-connected corps and court-driving associations (such as AFCC, above), AND the domestic violence organizations’ increasing centralized control through state-level networks, this language will speak loud and clear as to the OVW’s intent here:

About the OVW Court Training and Improvements Program

The Court Training and Improvements Program (Courts Program), created by the Violence Against Women Act of 2005 (VAWA 2005)1, recognizes that judicial education and specialized court processes play an integral role in creating an effective response to the crimes of sexual assault, domestic violence, dating violence, and stalking.

They are into training judges and setting up specialized court processes.

2 As knowledge about violence against women has grown, it has become clear that the most effective response is created when all parts of the justice system must coordinate and collaborate to respond to these crimes.

In addition to “CCR” (Coordinated Community Response) to DV pushed by the Minnesota group “Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs” (cf. Ellen Pence et al.) as well as by other, related and networked organizations, there’s the coordination/collaboration of “all parts of the justice system” to the tune one primary theme and set of assumptions — including “judicial training” and “specialized court processes.”
This is the desired outcome — centralized, coordinated control of the courts themselves, that seems to include the criminal and the civil (family) courts, the child welfare dependence, the arresting officers, the DA’s offices — “the WHOLE NINE YARDS.”  That is essentially centralized governmental control — whether or not it is dealing with the noble cause of stopping and preventing domestic violence, something as of yet, it doesn’t seem to have…

3 Jurisdictions where courts have consolidated domestic violence calendars, developed specialized domestic violence courts, and increased both pre- and post-conviction supervision of defendants result in an increase in successful prosecution of domestic violence.4 All parts of the justice system should work together to examine the system’s response to sexual and domestic violence and promote cooperation between the courts, other criminal justice agencies, and community programs through coordinated community response initiatives.5

CCR (coordinated community response) This is where the material “blew their cover” as originating out of the Duluth, Minnesota based “Domestic Abus intervention Programs” (DAIP) model — because that’s its codeword.  That was an “Ellen Pence” thing and it also happens to be an “internationally align the justice systems of the world” model too.  GO visit their site and read about the UN-related congratulations on the Duluth Model as a great social policy. Only, the cover hasn’t been really taken off when who bothers to read these descriptive programs?

In addition, courts that have adopted a specialized approach in the handling of domestic violence cases are seeing significant improvements in victim safety and offender accountability, decreases in re-offenses and re-abuse, and more efficient case-flow processing.6 OVW recognizes that there are several types of domestic violence court models and considers the Unified Family Court, model, the Coordinated Court model8 and the Integrated Court model9 as examples of ways courts can address the complicated issues that families face, such as visitation and custody, in a more comprehensive manner.  (footnotes provided right below are:)

7.Unified Family Court model – all civil matters involving the same family are assigned to a single judge. Criminal matters are assigned separately. 8 Coordinated Court model – both criminal domestic violence and related civil matters are assigned to the same court division but not to the same judge. 9 Integrated Domestic Violence Court model – one judge handles criminal domestic violence cases and the accompanying civil matters.

Notice the first mentioned (Freudian slip?) was the family court model.  They want control to be CENTRALIZED

Anything which doesn’t unify, coordinate, integrate, and consolidate is not worthy of OVW’s blessing.  In fact, I have blogged considerably (in 2014, check  recent posts dealing with Baltimore’s CFCC and its leadership) the “UNIFIED FAMILY COURT” is uniquely pushed by AFCC itself, and pushed as you may see there not openly towards the public at large, but specifically through a center at a law schools, the UBaltimore School of Law.  Baltimore is unique in being both a city and a county, a port city on the East Coast, and a good deal more.

This document also (following the list of “Technical Assistance Providers” pp. 44-46) has a Glossary of terms.  From that glossary: (bold titles theirs; any other font-changes, mine):

Domestic Violence Courts with Related Caseload – This model merges civil proceedings related to divorce/custody cases and protection orders with related criminal proceedings such as domestic assault.** This model has at least three separate forms:

Unified Family Court – In the Unified Family Court model, the court handles matters that are in civil court involving the same family, including domestic violence cases. With this model, domestic violence does not have to be the central case or an issue at all.

Coordinated Court – A Coordinated Court handles both criminal domestic violence cases and related civil matters within the same court division. With this model, different judges hear various cases regarding the same parties.

Integrated Domestic Violence Court30 – Based on the one-family one-judge concept, the Integrated Domestic Violence Court model handles both criminal domestic violence cases and related civil matters involving the same parties.31

**Word choices here in definitions can hardly be considered “accidental.”  So “such as domestic assault” clearly does not mention “…and battery” (assault it the rush to attack, whether or not impact is made; battery requires actual contact, and may produce serious injury) — not to mention “or child abuse” was omitted, although it remains a serious issue.It should go without saying that if ONE judge controls both custody and criminal matters, the conflicts of interest could be rampant, as the family courts involve such a tendency to order services for adults (and children), to private professionals or other nonprofits, as part of the family court model.  The criminal code (i.e., the penal code) sets apart from the family code, which differs, by design and intention.  Blending them seems like it’s the standards of the criminal code most likely to be compromised — family courts themselves already ARE such a compromise with the penal code when it comes to abuse.