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

More, Some Earlier, Sidebar Widgets Now Live Here (+ See Related July 9 post) [This one, Published July 19, 2019]* Published short (shortlink ends “-ahh”) Likely to be expanded or revised later. For any widget contents added later, I’ll also add a thumbnail image to the index.  Last updated 7/20 to add the final widget listed in the Index which’d missed inclusion when first published. With that and comments (marked clearly) on top, approximately 6,300 words.

*Many of My Sidebar Widgets, Some Mostly Text, Others Mostly Links, Now Live Here! [Published July 9, 2019] (shortlink ending “-abt”)

In a continued effort to be nicer to readers — not nice enough to shut up on the subject matter, but nice enough to continue to shorten and spruce up the front pages and sidebar — and Whether New to You or Just a Helpful Review, here’s a second post containing widget contents (with an Index/Image Thumbnail Gallery) laced with links and language providing an overview and some timeline of blog contents. (See the first one at the “*” just above. I included its Thumbnail Index, clearly labeled, on this post too).

I am blogging in an enormous gap/blindspot of source information on the nature and character of major causes and movements. I am not the first explorer here, but explorers are hard to hear, sometimes, over the din of sponsored/professionally-affiliated experts with a narrow, easier-to-sell agenda.  I don’t know what became of all previous explorers (many of them); I do know there is the burn-out factor AND the sell-out factor; and none of them are likely to live to be 100 and still reporting.  

I suggest you get this while at least some of us are still alive, because that gap continues to widen.  If only you could (or would dare to) see the connectivity in the underground caverns here, and knew first-hand through viewing it, how vastly different it is than surface reports are indicating.

Of this next batch of Sidebar Widgets whose contents are here (but may not stay on the sidebar for much longer):

One of them is from only four years into the blog; others, more recent.

One of them links to pages on another of my blogs (“Cold, Hard Facts”) which document my discovery of the CAFR factor and increasing interest in the larger history of major tax-exempt foundations (both of) which have driven international (and domestic) development for a century now.  The pages also reference the origins and beliefs behind the USA’s “TANF” (“Temporary Aid to Needy Families, a term applied only 1996ff) and welfare policies today.  There’s a connection by way of the former Arkansas Governor and U.S. President Bill Clinton to private influence beyond the reach of “White House Staffers” (as a consultant), to Rhodes Scholars. The Rhodes Trust (and Cecil Rhodes) is directly tied into colonization and exploitation of South Africa.

MINI-P/REVIEW of the “CAFR” ISSUE, in case it’s new territory — why you get to know that territory hands-on [your eyes on several types of ‘CAFRs’), not from second-hand summaries talking about them.  Each CAFR also has its own summary and Notes!

FOR MORE INFORMATION on CAFRs (basics, significance), see:  

One of the earlier widgets hits on the Welfare Reform issue** quoting from the Clinton Library (an era that is more important and has more signals as to restructuring of government itself (US federal forcing the change at the State level through the force field of Social Services (Social Security Act of 1934) than most realize, especially when it comes to family court and domestic violence/child-abuse-related issues.  Keywords from that short widget will lead to more source information (i.e., READ the documents available in that Presidential library to get a better understanding of some key people and organizations involved in it.).

**SPEAKING OF WHICH…. I am only in last few years realizing how parallel movements in this huge sector of US Government (when the former HEW split off its Education Department leaving “Health and Human Services” (HHS) administering “Welfare” now the largest grantmaking agency around), for the timing (1980s, 1990s) matches some major changes in the UK education system (Education Reform Act of 1988 was the first major one since 1944, and impacted higher education too, not just for the schooling of minors) and thereafter the Children’s Act of 1989.   Both acts deal with levels of government control and subsidy affecting people locally, and social mobility, etc.  Looking at how another country handles similar issues is helpful for an outsider’s view of our own — but only also taking into account key differences, too.

There are structural differences in education terminology, how government is run, the role of religion in state-sponsored education (i.e., see The Church of England), and, I think, transparency in financing, as well as it seems significantly, the way government obtains its tax revenues.

MOVING ON: BASIC BLOG NAVIGATION and STRUCTURAL TERMS

Pardon me for talking the medium (context: on-line platform/plural of “medium” is “media“;basic terms like “sidebar” or “widget”)  before the message (widgets’ content), but I know understanding this — the basic parts and function of the parts on any website — also helps navigate other, far more complex websites, and quickly detect intentional obfuscation — roadblocks to self-identification by the funding entity.

I maintain an awareness of this basic knowledge when I investigating what is presented and reported on-line. First, I want to know who owns a particular website (or who pays whom to run it), and, if it applies, as part of which conglomerate. This gives it a geographic (jurisdiction), age (new name of previous organization, spin-off organization, or collaboration housed at organization A, B, or C on a cause:

(There are two more “Read More” links like the one just above on this post…//LGH)

For Example:  though not reflected in the fairly recent website: “http://dvchildwelfare.org” is a fairly simple, colorful website leading with just a few links at top (woman — implying probably mother — and child) first, tugging at the heartstrings, then “INTRODUCING THE QUALITY IMPROVEMENT CENTER ON DOMESTIC VIOLENCE IN CHILD WELFARE next smaller photo of man (implying father) & baby (headshot), then a family cluster (man, woman, child) and finally, at the bottom, admission of Futures Without Violence (and a specific, single HHS grant by its Grant#) sponsorship, with of course, a disclaimer too: doesn’t reflect any federal view or policy.  (However, federal leadership, and probably HHS discretion, determined to fund it anyway):

Copyright © 2018 Futures Without Violence. This website was funded through the Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Children’s Bureau, Grant #90CA1850-01. The content of this website does not necessarily reflect the view or policies of the funder, nor does mention of trade names, commercial products or organizations imply endorsement by the US Department of Health and Human Services.

How easily might any link to TAGGS.HHS.Gov (to see that, and related grants — whether in similar categories, or to the same organization, “Futures”..) have been included on any footer Funder/Disclaimer page? I cannot recall having ever seen this from any footer page citing to an HHS (or any similar resource for any USDOJ) grant.

Viewers instead are encouraged to empathize and consume program materials (including videos) which will come with more rhetoric, consuming time perhaps better spent in looking at (not just FOR) the related financials.  Tinyurl link (ending y3me539y) to that specific grant (I selected which columns to display and that specific grant number) shows that as of now, the grants total $9.8M for 2016-2019 ($2.5M X 2, then $2.4M X 2) under “Child Abuse and Neglect / Discretionary” (CFDA #93670).

I then searched, somewhat wider, for HHS Grants ending ’90CA185‘ (<~HHS-generated tinyurl ends ‘/yyop8xr4’) to pick up anything 90CA1850 – 1859).  While that number range is a bit arbitrary, it’s a wider net, showing $30.155M total for the page, and already, a strange “anomaly” of a $3M grant TO a small, private, for-profit business (Sparta, Inc) retracted within three months, and granted to a nonprofit at the same street address with the same Principal Investigator (Nancy K. Young), and dealing with families affected by substance abuse.  Most grantees were in CA, TX, smaller ones in AZ, and a government unit (or part of one) in NH, and one marked “International,” based in Maryland, addressing QIC in Indian tribes.  I had previously flagged the Center for Family Futures’ somewhat tangled mess; it’s been sitting in draft format a long time. (See above link, sort by various columns; be aware all are CFDA #93670 (Child Abuse and Neglect Discretionary Activities) which come through “CB” (Children’s Bureau).  I’m going to quickly check back on California Secretary of State business filings for for the two entities I named in this paragraph.

When it comes to family court reform issues, or any key cause, it should be common knowledge.  For example, the more you know about available options (one of which is website layout), the more the design reflects intention to reveal, or hide, basic truths and accountability.  When paired with driving any public policy, this matters.

Below a (shorter) introduction, look for the heading

“Re-ALLOCATED SIDEBAR WIDGETS, a.k.a. MAIN CONTENT”

and below it, one image gallery — two rows of four images each, you can’t miss it – of what the July 9 post holds, then another other — also presenting in rows of four each, for contents on this post, which will read.

INDEX (IMAGE THUMBNAIL GALLERY) of this post’s contents.

= “More, Some Earlier, Sidebar Widgets Now Live Here (+ See Related July 9, 2019 post)“

Thumbnail Image Gallery of which widgets are on this post,  then the Straight Stuff: Sidebar Widget contents, copied in full onto this post.  The “thumbnail image” index simply keeps track of them by previous appearance on the sidebar, including any previously-assigned widget name.  They will then either stay up radically shortened or be entirely deleted.

Reminder:  This blog isn’t a newsletter or on-line media project, or trying to be one.  I’m not a “free-lance journalist,” but an investigative blogger.  The mindset is different.  I’m not trying to become ir-replaceable in order to keep driving business my way, but to instead replace myself and get more (and younger) people into some of this line of investigation.

So the post has some news, updates, or developments in the named fields, but I see it more as teaching the habit of observation, and some helpful vocabularies.  Like a field guide to the flora and fauna:  you need it, but that’s not a substitute for getting OFF the blog and ONTO databases and websites recognizing, for a change, what you’re reading about with respect to type entity (cf. “species”), its usual habitats, symbiotic relationships with other species, and food sources.  Footprints, scent, evidence of when certain species have been there will be recognized once identified enough times.  Camouflage too, pack-hunting, domestication of other food sources, and herding behaviors.  (I’m talking human behaviors towards other humans).

It’s going to be more didactic.  Definitions, examples, etc.  I’m not writing for academia or mainstream media. I’m writing for a “lay” audience about people who have staked out a “specialty” turf and aren’t telling even the most basic essentials about that, whether talking history, or current events.

But basic identification of operating units of government, an entity from a non-entity, and entities which keep changing names and legitimacy status (current, active, administratively dissolved, revoked, terminated, etc.) or projects which choose to avoid anything other than a “group” identification, should not be specialty turf.  Anyone who works and has wages garnished or taxes taken out (or pays them later) ought to understand where accountability ought to be, and different indicators of when it just doesn’t.

UPCOMING BLOG EVENTS. Next up after this project, expect some major changes on the giant Front Page (the one that typing “FamilyCourtMatters.org” and nothing else brings you to, not the “Current Posts, Most Recent on Top” page).  The page may start out similarly  but is going to end up a lot sooner (i.e., exporting major content and just deleting paragraph upon paragraph of (embarrassing for being there) “navigation explanation.”  The drill-downs will be linked to (not 100% gone), and I have some ideas for doing this efficiently.

Another short, upcoming blog spring (well, summer) cleaning task I also hope to complete soon is a simple table of contents for Calendar Year 2019 so far; right now contents only go through Dec. 2018, then readers have to go either to “most recent posts” widget for the last ten, archives, or just scroll down far enough to see what I’ve been up to in 2019.

Work too hard on this thing for it not to be easier to read.  I look forward to posting on the content have also been investigating last two-to-three weeks, not to mention, months, situations that are rapidly moving forward and deserve more public attention (scrutiny | accountability).  Some hints on some topics were dropped in recent posts.  As I read and observe (and do drill-downs), it’s second nature to have new ways to communicate, or see more linkages between organizations who have coordinated policies, but “dropped the ball” in identifying themselves, and often, in the financial reports.

ALL of this is still a topic for our times,no matter which generation you may belong to.

Comprehension may come quickly or slowly, but it must come.

If the term widget, i.e., “moveable thingie and placeholder” or “GUI” (Graphic User Interface) isn’t clear enough, see prior post which explains it more.