OK, it’s my indignant rant, but I bet you’ll admit an informative one….
You have NO idea what’s up in the honorable and well-funded halls & courts (that’s regal, I’m talking, not legal) of social policy.
In-breeding in Federal Programs to Examine Fatherhood….
The courts are biased against fathers? Yeah, and what other religious myths are still circulating? ??? Poor dears…..
Fact is, rather, the bulk of the US populace is being used, wherever possible, for wide-scale, years-long, federally funded (and let’s look at which foundations are involved, not just non-profits whose money comes from foundations and the feds) social demonstration projects — often without informed consent — and questionable summaries of “findings” in order to justify more expenditures. And more. And more.
This apparatus could simply NOT be sustained if there were concerned, and NOT desperate for basic survival — individuals around in sufficient mass and with sufficient memory of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, what they were about to start with — who fought back about being “used” for elitist pyschologists (etc.) with what is too damn close to a dissociative Nazi mentality willing to run experiments on OPK (Other People’s Kids). And the parents. And report to each other (out of earshot).
Here’s (just one — just one) piece of evidence that fathers are NOT underrepresented (the opposite is true) in these circles, and that the LAST thing we need is more Warren Farrell’s to sell their wares to men objecting to the women they couldn’t keep actually getting free without being punished for it. And roping in plenty of (2nd wives, etc.) women to support their misogyny and need to continue access to young boys and girls “for their own good.”
February 2008
Prepared for:
Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE)
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)
Prepared By:
Karin Martinson and Demetra Nightingale
The Urban Institute
This report is available on the Internet at:
http://aspe.hhs.gov/hsp/07/PFF/KeyFindings/
This report is part of a larger project:
{{Did you GET that??}}
Partners for Fragile Families (PFF) Demonstration Projects
Printer Friendly version in PDF format (12 pages)
At the end of the report is, naturally, credits to the authors. Although they appear to come from two reputable institutions, The Urban Institute and Johns Hopkins, a quick Google search shows that one author (Ms. Nightengale) was formerly principal at The Urban Institute itself, i.e., professional referrals, apparently). cf. Wade Horn, formerly of HHS, but also of The National Fatherhood Institute (f. 1994)…. Real independent…
You can look at the report here — but these are the authors credited for it:
Karin Martinson is a senior research associate in the Urban Institute’s Center on Labor, Human Services, and Population. Her research interests include welfare reform, employment and training programs, service delivery systems, and work supports. She has worked on numerous program evaluations in these areas, with a focus on implementation studies of programs and services for low-income families.
Demetra Nightingale is a principal research scientist at Johns Hopkins University. An expert in social policy, she has focused for more than 30 years on issues related to employment, welfare, poverty, and the alleviation of poverty. She has written many reports, books, and articles.
SPOKE.com lists her as a principal researcher at The Urban Institute
Here (from The Urban Institute) is a list of 51 articles, some shared with Karen Martinson:
// And here’s the Google search on Dr.. Nightengale — obviously a social policy researcher…
And here is a bio blurb:\from where she is now:
Dr. Nightingale holds a Ph.D. in public policy from the George Washington University. She has directed numerous program evaluations and policy studies, publishes extensively, and sits on many advisory groups, boards, and task forces. Before joining Johns Hopkins, for over twenty-five years she was at the Urban Institute, most recently as a principal research associate and program director in the Labor and Social Policy Center.
Understand, I’m not PERSONALLY criticizing a person who obviously can write and research and has chosen social policy as a field. I’m sure there are reasons she and others in the field ended up in their fields, just as there are reasons why I, a former teacher and musician (and dual-degreed) ended up marrying a man who didn’t respect woman, and having a helluva a time just staying a live, let alone involved in that profession, during and after marriage. My research on this blog is in part of an intent to know WHY I shouldn’t be able to leave and get on with life, given that my only apparent crime was poor choice of spouse and giving that marriage “the old college try” before leaving, shortly before it got lethal, as opposed to merely dangerous.
I believe the answer lies in the fact that what we expect to be halls of justice and law (let alone expecting the soon to be nationalized school system, either, to be as involved in education as in behavioral conditioning) have become dispensers of pop psychology and use of the human populace as a research subjects, and doing so at public expense — ALL of the public who pays taxes…
On my last post, I posted writings from an attorney, and a Ph.D. The Ph.D. (Warren Farrell) probably gets more press, but I found her reasonings to be more sound. I think we are entering into an age in which the presence of “Ph.D.” in any social science field should be a contra-indicator, not a positive.
=======
This is an adequate living, apparently, all this research (note. None of mine produces a dime…)
“Evaluation of the Partners for Fragile Families Projects” (Acting Project Director 2003; key
senior analyst); 2001-2007 Contract with U.S. Department of Health and Human Services,
Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, Urban Institute contract.
“Evaluation of the Enhanced Services for the Hard-to-Employ Demonstration” (Senior
Evaluator, with MDRC prime contractor and Urban Institute); 2002-2009, Contract with U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services, Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation
HHS (translation: Your federal taxes, if you are in US and paying them…) is paying this salary. MDRC is another contractor I aim to report on one of these days, along with more on CPR (Center for Policy Research) and Thoennes/Pearson (both Ph.D.s I believe also), who show up in this featured report today:
So, let’s talk more abound the “independence” of this report, project, or others like it, in looking at its bibliography.
This brief was completed by the Urban Institute under contract to the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services as part of the Partners for Fragile Families evaluation, under contract number 100-01-0027. The authors gratefully acknowledge the guidance and comments provided by their project officer, Jennifer Burnszynski. Helpful comments were also provided by Linda Mellgren of ASPE and by Margot Bean, Eileen Brooks, and Myles Schlank of the Office of Child Support Enforcement in the Administration for Children and Families/HHS. The authors also benefited from comments by Burt Barnow and John Trutko and editing by Fiona Blackshaw.
From the Bibliography of the Reporters summarizing the programs they are paid to evaluate, and quoting some of the key contractors profiting from those programs, in the year 2008 in which (in my county) there were, I believe, 10 deaths (femicides) from domestic violence, and women attempting to leave such marriages, some of them tearing up businesses and claiming a police officer also, and a bystander or so…. Not to mention the 18-year imprisonment and repeated rapes and impregnation of Jaycee Dugard by an improperly monitored Phil Garrido, who had already been in jail for kidnapping in rape, there was contacted by a woman, married her, and with her, got that adolescent girl, and IMPRISONED her. Her childhood was stolen, while these studies marched on, and on, and on. She worked from a ramshackle set of tents and out-buildings, supporting her kidnappers own business in a professional manner and raising two children fathered by him.
Quite a different persepctive…
Anyhow, here is “CPR” footprint on this report, under the Bibliography.
Office of Child Support Enforcement, Responsible Fatherhood Programs
Pearson, Jessica, Nancy Theonnes, David Price, and Jane Venohr. 2000. OCSE Responsible Fatherhood Programs: Early Implementation Lessons. Denver, CO: Center for Policy Research and Policy Studies, Inc. http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cse/rpt/process.htm.
Pearson, Jessica, Nancy Theonnes, Lanae Davis, Jane Venohr, David Price, and Tracy Griffith. 2003. OCSE Responsible Fatherhood Programs: Client Characteristics and Program Outcomes. Denver, CO: Center for Policy Research and Policy Studies, Inc. http://fatherhood.hhs.gov/Stability/RespFaPgmsClientChar.pdf.
If you are comfortable with us becoming, instead of a republic with 50 states, a single nation carved up into regions on which demonstration projects about us will be run at our expense, and supporting a bureaucracy which would be jeopardized if this was stopped, then just stop reading, and thinking, and go on paying taxes without thinking, and demanding, accountability. Do NOT, I repeat, do NOT, teach your youngsters to use the internet to research nonprofits and look at their IRS forms, and connect the dots. Do not, in fact, teach them about economics, history, or money in any coherent manner.
Just keep showing up to be demonstrated upon, and believe (like a religion) that this is going to improve someone’s lot in the long run, or our society. Sure.
And make sure NOT to look at the conversation between a family rights lawyer (Kates, Esq.) and a man who provides expert testimony — for fathers — and help getting their attorneys to coach the mother’s attorney to cave in, or risk losing custody to him (Farrell, Ph.D.). Don’t read the decades earlier conversations between Kates & Farrell on the Positive qualities of Incest, and quoting the Penthouse article (by Farrell) on it.
If Incest is acceptable, then by all means, let’s change the laws. however, if the laws against this are still pertinent, then I suggest we get the Dept. of Health and Human Services 100% out of the courts, and defund anything resembling Farrell & friends! I for one, am opposed to the concept, as are, I trust, most underage girls, or boys, who have been subjected to it.
Anything else is pure Cognitive Dissonance, and part of the problem.
I realize the survival benefit of denial, but at some point, it reaches a point of no return. That point is directly related to the SIZE and WEIGHT of the institutions influencing our individual lives, and whether we are going to also farm out reflective, informative THINKING to experts who have run amok, like a pack of dogs running out of meat and without restraint.
Sorry, sort of, about that last analogy, but it sure seems appropriate, if you are not dazzled by 3-syllable words.
Did I mention that one of the founders of the Center for Policy Research is among the founders, also, of the humongous AFCC (that group of professionals that seems to hearken back to a tax-dodging group run under the Los Angeles County Courthouse, and under its EIN#, but consisting in effect of a slush fund for judges…)
When you have the same personnel PROPOSING projects, CONDUCTING projects, and REPORTING on/EVALUATING on those projects to each other (i.e., policy makers reporting on policy), when the words “demonstration” are used on PEOPLE, then, Houston (and Plano, TX, if you’re there) we indeed have a problem. The ship isn’t going to come in, ever, and that dog ain’t gonna hunt…. until it is recognized HUMANITY is not correlative to educational and $$ status.
Catch you later — — —
Meanwhile, check out this: If the Fatherhood Guys aren’t able YET to totally get the balance swung back in their favor, adn if women as a whole aren’t willing to boycott sex, parenting, marriage, and child support to make a point (perhaps for even just 3 months in a row), it is going this direction sooner than later, while you were, probably, waiting for a court hearing, or wondering (moms) where your kids were on that weekend or joint-custody visitation time….. or between paying to see the children you gave birth to, so your interactions could be further studied and reported on by social policy makers, like those above…..
The Artificial Womb
“If you didn’t see this coming, you haven’t been paying attention.”
Copyright © 2009, Paul Lutus —
ACTUALLY, I was going to link to the IS PSYCHOLOGY SCIENCE page..
To further motivate you to actually READ ‘Is Psychology Science?” (and a close reading will show he’s not particularly female-friendly, but poses some good question), here’s one:
- During the 2006 meeting of the American Psychological Association, psychiatrists admitted they have no scientific tests to prove mental illness and have no cures for these unproven mental illnesses (more here). I’ve always thought the first step to learning something new is to acknowledge one’s own ignorance. It seems the professionals are willing to take this first step.
Conclusion
At this point it must be clear to the intelligent reader that clinical psychology can make virtually any claim and offer any kind of therapy, because there is no practical likelihood of refutation – no clear criteria to invalidate a claim. This, in turn, is because human psychology is not a science, it is very largely a belief system similar to religion.
Like religion, human psychology has a dark secret at its core – it contains within it a model for correct behavior, although that model is never directly acknowledged. Buried within psychology is a nebulous concept that, if it were to be addressed at all, would be called “normal behavior.” But do try to avoid inquiring directly into this normal behavior among psychologists – nothing is so certain to get you diagnosed as having an obsessive disorder.
In the same way that everyone is a sinner in religion’s metaphysical playground, everyone is mentally ill in psychology’s long, dark hallway – no one is truly “normal.” This means everyone needs psychological treatment. This means psychologists and psychiatrists are guaranteed lifetime employment, although that must surely be a coincidence rather than a dark motive.
This article also raises the question of ethics, as does Liz Kates, Esq., in her “Therapeutic Jurisprudence” article. Unlike her, I don’t think that the family law venue can be cleaned up of the practices, because I believe that its originators and promoters (family law DOES have a history, it didn’t just pop out fully formed, like Venus (unclothed) on a clamshell, or Athena (?? fully clothed and armored) from the head of her male forebear divinity..
EVERY institution has a Daddy somewhere. The field of psychology and social science don’t have very honorable ones… a little too close to Hitler’s minions, for my comfort:
If society correctly evaluated human psychology as a loose grouping of subjective cults and fads, the above summary would not pose any kind of social problem. But in fact there are people who still think human psychology is based in science, all evidence to the contrary. The sad result is that society’s engine of legal and social authority is sometimes steered by psychology, sometimes with unjust and terrible consequences. Here is a brief list of historical examples in which psychology’s bogus status as a science has produced harm (it is by no means a comprehensive list):
- During World War I, psychologist R. M. Yerkes oversaw the testing of 1.7 million US Army draftees. His questionable conclusions were to have far-reaching consequences, leading to a 1924 law placing severe limitations on the immigration of those groups Yerkes and his followers believed to be mentally unfit – Jews and Eastern Europeans in particular. Yerkes later thoroughly recanted his methods and findings in an 800-page confession/tome that few bothered to read, and the policies he set in motion had the dreadful side effect of preventing the immigration of Jews trying to escape the predations of Hitler and his henchmen later on.The original test results happened to dovetail with Yerkes’ explicit eugenic beliefs, a fact lost on nearly everyone at the time.
- In an effort to answer the question of whether intelligence is primarily governed by environment or genes, psychologist Cyril Burt (1883-1971) performed a long-term study of twins that was later shown to be most likely a case of conscious or unconscious scientific fraud. His work, which purported to show that IQ is largely inherited, was used as a “scientific” basis by various racists and others, and, despite having been discredited, still is.
(photo, ABOVE)
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Walter Freeman performing a lobotomy
In the 1950s, at the height of psychology’s public acceptance, neurologist Walter Freeman created a surgical procedure known as “prefrontal lobotomy.” As though on a quest and based solely on his reputation and skills of persuasion, Freeman singlehandedly popularized lobotomy among U.S. psychologists, eventually performing about 3500 lobotomies, before the dreadful consequences of this practice became apparent.
At the height of Freeman’s personal campaign, he drove around the country in a van he called the “lobotomobile,” performing lobotomies as he traveled. There was plenty of evidence that prefrontal lobotomy was a catastrophic clinical practice, but no one noticed the evidence or acted on it. There was — and is — no reliable mechanism within clinical psychology to prevent this sort of abuse.
These examples are part of a long list of people who have tried to use psychology to give a scientific patina to their personal beliefs, perhaps beginning with Francis Galton (1822-1911), the founder and namer of eugenics. Galton tried (and failed) to design psychological tests meant to prove his eugenic beliefs. This practice of using psychology as a personal soapbox continues to the present, in fact, it seems to have become more popular.
What these accounts have in common is that no one was able (or willing) to use scientific standards of evidence to refute the claims at the time of their appearance, because psychology is only apparently a science. Only through enormous efforts and patience, including sometimes repeating an entire study using the original materials, can a rare, specific psychological claim be refuted. Such exceptions aside, there is ordinarily no recourse to the “testable, falsifiable claims” criterion that sets science apart from ordinary human behavior.
One might think that psychology might have learned from its past errors and evolved into a more strict and scientific enterprise. In fact the reverse seems to be the case. Here are two contemporary examples:
Facilitated Communication
Facilitated Communication to me is uncomfortably close to what gets termed (but isn’t) “mediation” in the courts. We are not adults able to speak for ourselves, neither are our children (regardless of their ages), therefore a Mediator must “intervene” and produce a “required outcome” of the “due process” which results in “increased noncustodial parenting time” (the A/V grants and fatherhood thesis, in application), thereby shattering the concept of facts, evidence, and law.
As this DOES produce endless income, no wonder the shattering of the legal process is not of primary concern among the social policy makers….
Perhaps if we can BOTH mock and boycott, something might change. But this won’t be easy… And it requires sustainable livelihood to do this, which is getting scarcer and scarcer, as the evaluations and declarations get “curiouser and curiouser.”
{The next subtitle in this article is about “Recovered Memories” and he discredits it. However, there is a factor where denial serves to protect the nervous system; I have experienced this in a (recent, not childhood) sense, and there IS a ‘dissociation” which seems to occur to preserve survival under extreme circumstances.
When society itself gets dissociative, then we have substantial problems. I think the desire to change society should be done like Jesus did it — with self-sacrifice, and on a case-by-case basis. When HE confronted the political-religo-combo, it was threatened, and (as the account goes in the Bible, at lesat) they crucified him. Wars are still being fought over that, so perhaps if we could cool it on the institutional SIZE, the RELIGIOUS aspects of any institution might be minimized and deflected.
As I write, my President is pushing the HEALTHCARE initiative, which I oppose on the basis of it’s going to end up, soon enough, in who merits living, and who merits dying, who can have babies and who can’t, and after producing them, whose kids ARE they? All the linguistics I’m hearing (press, TV, etc.) is that they are “OURS.” That simply defies the concept of biology, until a real artificial womb takes its proper place beside artificial insemination, fatherhood practitioners, and domestic violence advocates, CPS, Child Support agencies, and the rest of them.
What a “village” to raise all these kids…
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