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

Title: The Oppressive and Hypocritical PRWORA 1996 AND Previous (1960s forward) Section 1115 Waiver-Based Massive Social R&D continues under the Presiding Political Power Elite, with case-sensitive short-link ending “-6Wl” (last digit apparently lower-case “l” and not #1 or Capital I.)

I may stick this on the sidebar, once a shorter or better title comes to mind.  Right now the purpose is to off-ramp, outsource, and continue reviewing the Page from which this came, with some overlap: About My Blog Motto (moved from Vital/Sticky Links info May 26, 2017) (case-sensitive link ending -6TM).  Link will be repeated at the end although this page is unlike most of mine, short.

This page presents another link to an official (published at NIH.gov) Year 1998 summary (Welfare, The Family, And Reproductive Behavior: Research Perspectives) admitting that the attempt embodied in welfare reform of 1996 (and still continuing to expand both programming and infrastructure — meaning, employment within the infrastructures too) to alternately scapegoat then justify attempting to behaviorally modify the poor, attempting to adjust their marital, divorce, and fertility patterns (childbearing) were #1 occurring since the 1960s and escalating in pace and expanding in purpose by the 1980s, #2 were based on “economic and social theories” whose “empirical support” was more “suggestive than conclusive,” and #3, those content to let this continuation and infinite expansion and power consolidation stemming from welfare reform (which was a major ECONOMIC restructuring of the USA and States & Territories (& Tribal) budgets, reveal that there’s something missing in the underlying rationale.

You can judge what it does or doesn’t admit, but I felt it definitely had its quotable moments, and several other chapters (this being Chapter 6) to scan or review.  It seems symptomatic of the situation — those involved knew they didn’t have a solid basis for their economic and social theory, but managed to get the programming written into law anyhow, where it now remains, sponsoring, literally, career curves.

In one of the examples of how not staying married hasn’t exactly slowed down a career politician in California (Bill Lockyer), I learned that this past spring he was also hired to help reform the City of Industry’s cesspool practices, which brings up another interesting situation — the City of Industry itself. (search this blog for more posts referencing the issues with this tiny but influential section of real estate in Southern California) But, that was just a side-note.

For people not fully conscious of the purpose and mechanisms of “Welfare Reform” of the mid-1990s and that this was building up to full-momentum in the previous decades, this is another reference point.  I had initially been looking for a quick summary of the four purposes of PRWORA outside Wikipedia, or just quoting the law, but then decided the document found was worth posting.

For people who are seeking to mentally align, perhaps, themselves with the POTENTIAL justification of this type of social behavioral modification — massive — aimed at certain demographics, while administered by people who show no intention of slowing down their own “multiple partner fertility” and ongoing divorces — some also even (it’s said) abandoning their children, too, that is, by the politically positioned in the power structure… I wanted to put the two sets of behavior side by side.

(1) justifying massive social behavioral modification aimed at the poor as a justifiable use of public funds in the first place, and as somehow NOT really at its heart racist and sexist anyhow;

(2) those reporting on it knew from the start that the entire attempt wasn’t exactly based on any sound theory in the first place.

I say, it doesn’t take sound theory to ram through social programming any more.  It apparently takes persuasion.  And I believe it’s a “dog and pony show” which should be stopped as hypocritical (if it’s so great, let the rich practice what they preach at the poor, with the middle class as apparently the real intended audience — their wages probably produce more tax receipts….).  What was wanted, apparently, was the right to PRACTICE on the POPULATION and develop yet more economic and social theories of how to organize society.

….In other words, how to withdraw consent when INFORMED consent has been deliberately side-stepped, bypassed, over-ridden, or structurally set up so as to be irrelevant, AS ALREADY WAS ACCOMPLISHED re: the handling criminal matters being diverted into the family court systems, while the two parallel and unequal systems continue the contradictory paradigms (“we’re against abuse — but you should learn to deal with it by improving communication skills,” and “We by this act declare a national protest and intent to stop Violence Against Women  — but only to the extent it doesn’t interferes with the federal designer-family status quo, as expressed in 1996 PRWORA-forward (Welfare Reform) strategic purposes I, II, III and IV, for which interference with said status quo (on family composition) we blame poverty, dependency, not to mention, juvenile delinquency and other criminal behaviors.

In fact (in this “philosophy”) the real social scourge is the failure of “low-income people” to get and stay married,”*** that is to say, “fatherlessness.”

***Like their leaders (actually, often don’t, it turns out multiple wives of billionaire philanthropists with, say, oil connections, is common enough). How accustomed have we become to this double-standard, while welfare restructuring, it turns out, since the 1960s, and even moreso in the 1980s (through Section 1115 waivers) engaged in a massive social experimentation project involving, initially the poor, and as later expanded, all fathers, mothers, and children that were reachable through certain systems…

For example, as described here:

(J. Paul Getty — 5 wives in 35 yrs; Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom, about to turn 50 this October, and former SF: Supervisor, Mayor (and now California Lt. Governor), and whose father (retired Judge) managed Getty wealth — has had two marriages already within ten years (2001, 2008); his William Newsom, III retired U.S. Court of Appeals Judge (and manager of Getty wealth) also divorced without this particularly screwing up his son’s social, business, or political  future, apparently.

Career Politician Bill Lockyer (State Treasurer, State Attorney General) as married 3 times, the last one making local soap opera headlines (Wikipedia tactfully neglects to list former spouse), while the California “OAG.Ca.gov/history” listing simply skips spouses entirely and states, “He has a daughter, Lisa.”  Maybe it was by male parthenogenesis (yes, I know that’s an oxymoron — see basic meaning of “partheno,” (virgin) and biologically more common among females.  Guess I was just thinking about the mythical birth of Athena fully clothed and adult, from the head of Zeus).

Seriously — can we take justice systems seriously around this kind of personal major mess?

Lockyers Deal with new accusation of a sexual affair — Jan. 22, 2015, in The Mercury News, Josh Richman.

[Accusation by reconciled (see rest of article) wife Nadia was that Bill had engaged in an ongoing affair with]: Ortiz, 66, is now vice president of the AC Transit Board of Directors, on which she has represented Alameda and parts of Oakland and San Leandro since 2006. Before retiring in December, she was an attorney and policy consultant to state Senate presidents Darrell Steinberg and Don Perata. And before that, she worked for Bill Lockyer during his time as attorney general and in the state Senate.

Five years earlier, it was $1 million contribution to a political campign for his wife to become local county Supervisor (Bill Lockyer’s Million-Dollar Baby, in the East Bay Express).  Recently (May, 2016) Bill Lockyer (back in private practice with a law firm) was hired to oversee the (corrupt cesspool, looks like) City of Industry cleaning up its own act (May 29, 2016 article, but the May 20, 2016 , both “San Gabriel Valley Tribune,” article tells more about the basic problem.  The City of Industry is landlocked within the City of Los Angeles and has very few real residents; I posted on it  (searchable on the blog) years ago (2012?) as an example of government voting more forms of government into place).  Meanwhile, 2017, “cryptic comment” by wife# and mother of their (by now, three) children, Nadia, had friends worried for a while. (Santa Ana news, March, 2017, “Former SAUSD trustee Nadia is missing after posting cryptic message on facebook” (informal, but summarizes the mess in few words) (She was found safe at home later).

Et cetera!!  Talk about double and triple standards !!  Meanwhile, the policy is STILL “Healthy Marriage/Responsible Fatherhood” throughout the system, no matter what level of craziness exists among the personal lives (many of which disprove the theories) of those charged in various ways with administering the state and federal budgets, running the courts, in the case of (the latest Mrs. Lockyer) running “family justice centers,” and more.

For example, as described here:

***Check out a 1998 publication on this; Might be an interesting review, incl. the parts that show how scanty the research leading to the conclusions that welfare reform might work as a massive behavioral modification program for poor people, and thus save the massive drain on public dollars that their existence, apparently, represents. The opening paragraph at least references “block grants to states” and lists those 4 purposes (I pulled out #2 and #4 below):

Welfare, The Family, And Reproductive Behavior: Research Perspectives.

• (2) to end the dependency of needy parents on government support by promoting job preparation, employment, and marriage;
• (4) to encourage the formation and maintenance of two-parent families (U.S. House of Representatives, 1996b)

the link is to Chapter 6, “Changing Family Formation Behavior Through Welfare Reform, ” (authors) Rebecca Maynard, Elisabeth Boehnen, Tom Corbett, and Gary Sandefur, with Jane Mosley, from the book by “National Research Council (US), Commission on Population, RA Moffitt, editor.”

The social experimentation started in the 1960s, and increased in pace in the 1980s and 1990s; I’ve been reporting this over time (esp. regarding The Moynihan Report of 1965) and as in the context of recent Civil Rights acts being passed as shaking certain foundations, and now find it being acknowledged…

click image to read the pop-up message; it is from nearby posted link (1998 reference on PRWORA)

Near the bottom of the first section, this (1998) publication admits that it has been, throughout, a massive social experiment.  Because it is targeted towards those on federal aid, it’s fair to say that massive (as I keep saying!) “social science R&D” continues to be run upon “low-income” population — making careers, and for private in other sectors.  MY suggestion is that we start running some “to the contrary” R&D on the sectors that sought to privately profit in publishing — endlessly, and usually inconclusively (“research suggests….” …. “more research is needed”) which the poor have to help fund every time they draw a paycheck above poverty level (as do the middle class and plenty of others — the poor just can spare less of it!):

Same books — found on-line here https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK230338/— continued:

The nature of the waiver demonstration programs changed over the years. As the number of demonstrations expanded, the focus of reform initiatives also shifted. The early waiver reforms were directed primarily at enhancing the labor supply of AFDC adult caretakers through work-related policies and programs. More recently, other recipient behaviors have emerged as the focus of attention, including personal decisions about marriage and cohabitation, decisions affecting family stability (for example, divorce and other family composition changes), fertility decisions, and the quality of parenting. Reform activity increasingly was directed toward what were termed “strategies to promote responsible behavior”—in effect, a new strain of social engineering using welfare policies and rules to encourage socially desirable behaviors.

In theory, then, the explosion of waiver-based demonstrations, accompanied by federally mandated rigorous evaluations, promised a wealth of information by which states might make decisions in a postfederal world. This chapter examines those state waiver demonstrations that were designed specifically to influence fertility, family formation, and family maintenance behaviors. It seeks to identify what useful lessons were generated to guide states in their design of welfare programs under TANF. We then reflect on how one might better capitalize on the opportunities for knowledge development presented to us by the massive natural experiment that encompasses both the state welfare reform demonstrations of recent years and those reforms now being implemented under PRWORA.

There was nothing “natural” about this experiment — however it was definitely “national” taken as a whole (state waivers and federally mandated, plus subsequent states under TANF).  Perhaps the problem is conducting massive natural experiments in the first place.  Notice the writers see this as an opportunity for “knowledge development.”  Further down (i.e., hidden on the page) is an admission that…(see next excerpt, in the image).

Another admission that they know — “Empirical support is more suggestive than conclusive” (for the “ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL THEORIES” BEHIND WELFARE POLICIES & INITIATIVES!

I’ll bet that the write-ups of the state waiver AND post-PRWORA have NO relationship to my studies of some of these — that is, actually looking up those grantees, reading their tax returns, corporate filings, and making a notice of “MIA” money involved  — and posting it in the public interest. In other words, you can talk about outcomes and social behavioral change modification effects all you want — which will typically divert talk FROM diversion itself as a black hole, a “Bermuda Triangle” in the sea of accountability for the usage of tax receipts and public funds.

Back to originating page, here (it’ll repeat last image and paragraph):   About My Blog Motto (moved from Vital/Sticky Links info May 26, 2017) (case-sensitive link ending -6TM)