Posts Tagged ‘Anecdotal narrative’
Builders and their Blueprints: Who, Really, Designed the Family Courts, How, and Since When? (“The Evidence Speaks”) [Started Aug. 17, 2019, Published Sept. 15].
This post is:
One of my recent posts,
as you can see was in process since May 2, but only published nearly four months later. Why: for whatever reasons, some perhaps relating to my strong emotions dealing with the longstanding topic, it was just not coming together: Adding on wasn’t working. Off-ramping wasn’t working either. Finally I figured I should stick with the original idea, resist the temptation to elucidate so much, and let most of those extras go.
Sometimes obstructions to a smooth-flowing post may also relate to personal challenges which can impact the overall fluency of this type of writing, which requires undistracted focus. (See “Footnoted Feelings 9/13,” “Footnote: Anecdotal Narrative” and “ANECDOTAL INDIGNATION: also FOOTNOTED!” both of which came up earlier in the composition of this post). You will be able to see those footnotes better when I publish them. They are now officially evicted from THIS discussion (post)! to: ‘Anecdotal Narrative | Indignation (Aug. 2019) and Feelings (Sep. 2019) Footnoted (from Builders and Their Blueprints post) [started Sept. 14, 2019] (short-link ends “-b41” and the last character is a number).
As part of that “let it go” effort, I now have this post, which better explains a key theme of that one — common sense says, before choosing Reforms, Solutions, Enhancements** or Adjudication Improvements, ask, and find out who were the builders and show the blueprints which show purpose/design, intent.
**FAMILY COURT PERFORMANCE ENHANCEMENTS?
For a general idea and some search strings on existing family court reform movements (mostly but not all in the USA), see these tags from the first post in search results for “FCEP” on this blog That sticky post, near the top, deals with the topic of “Censorship” (although it begins “Welcome To My Blog… Let’s Talk!”).
FCEP seems to have followed up on (but not changed course much from) “The Greenbook Initiative” which was run about 2001-2008. Meanwhile, another joint Wingspread Conference was held on related topics around 2007/2008 (<=nearly a dozen years ago!). Given who was running this, what unspoken, unproven assumptions drive the last dozen years of reforms being promoted by those involved in for example, the “Collective Memo of Concern re: parental alienation” to WHO?” and similar task forces, legislative propositions in individual states in the USA?
LGH tags for post in top position on search results (on the blog only) for FCEP:
“How Freud Got Under Our Skin”, AFCC + IACP overlap, BWJP + CCI (Center for Court Innovation) + NCJFCJ ~~>FCEP Guidelines for Custody, Family Court Enhancement Project, Family Courts as a business model (and possible exit strategies for creators + profiteers from it), H.Con.Res.72 (House Concurrent Resolution #72 on Child Safety in Family Court Proceedings), IACP (Internat’l Assoc of Collaborative Professionals),
Current Family Court Reform Practice doesn’t even acknowledge blueprints or builders exist:
Why not? I can’t say for sure, but I can see why this might be a real problem to some:
- To acknowledge that builders exist would be to identify them, correctly, as nonprofits, a form many of the “family court reformists” also assume for handy references when quoting themselves and/or each other.
- To understand that builders exist and, correctly, identify them as nonprofits is to understand MUCH more about who each of them is, how (honestly or not) they fill out tax returns, where (by category at least) their revenues, if anything much, come from. Looking at organizations as nonprofits and business operations (micro, inactive, medium, or “mongo” — huge) speaks often louder than the graphics, logos, pictures, and repetitive mutual-back-slapping and footnoting (in academic publications on-line) ever does.
- To understand the above is en route to also better understanding our own government, which continues to deal with and heed the counsel of NON-representative NON-elected PRIVATE, purposes of the few who are so intent for application of their programs (developed through and run through, often tax-exempt organizations) on the many at the cost of, mostly, the many for the long-term profit of, mostly, the few. These “few” prefer to utilize tax-exempt format for organization — a format governments also operate within. Governments pay payroll taxes for their own employees BUT their profits aren’t taxed.
There’s a natural affinity between the two sectors and it’s natural to switch employment after terms of office may finish from one sector to the other sector. Former government employees with their developed contacts can be grrrreat for nonprofits who seek contracts and grants from the same.
The US government and from what I can tell the various state governments already operate, despite constant talks of BUDGET deficit, at profit, and holding those investment assets (Topic: CAFR, searchable on and off this blog). The ongoing taxation merely seems to front the long-term-debt on the front end by projecting it forward endlessly. That this goes places it can’t be tracked, ℅ chameleon, MIA, and merging/sub-merging in and out of existence nonprofit I’ve brought up repeatedly throughout this blog, and identified repeatedly in the “marriage/fatherhood” grants, but not only that funding stream.
Similar behaviors found within massive system change in public education (backing of major private tax-exempt foundations and involvement of university “center” or “Institute” for [A,B,C,or D…]” often involved: (AISR/CES** at Brown University<~on this blog, see esp. my April 11, 2017 (<~~Read!!)(shocked/indignant post) and not too long ago, an example in the “early childhood education” field involving a Warren Buffett (i.e., Berkshire Hathaway shares-backed) foundation (Alliance for Early Success) [**Annenberg Institute for School Reform/Coalition for Essential Schools].

Yes, story-telling with bright colors may distract from the fiscal outlines and behaviors of the foundations involved (see next image).
I noticed “Alliance for Early Success” through “Harvard Center on the Developing Child, which again has a lot of graphics, websites, personal profiles of involved people and lists of “investors” but when you go for the “Drill-down” by EIN# of what is registered, what isn’t, that’s an entirely different perspective: I’ve gone for this info., repeatedly, researching specific subject matter as it comes up).

Earlier in 2019 I have some posts on this topic, just referencing it again here, 9/15/2019. Look at the foundation names at “earlysuccess.org” (home page slide-show (with left sidebar stable) continues the story-telling and advertising. Notice “Buffett” is near the top, but Pritzker (Current Gov. of Illinois is a Pritzker), Gates, Casey (big in Foster care and responsible fatherhood also), Heising-Simons (I looked up, you can too); Packard obviously computer-related. etc.
This behavior is more than ‘normal,’ it’s become seemingly standard practice. USA schools (by recall, offhand) where I’ve noticed (in course of writing this blog) include: Harvard, MIT, Yale, Brown, Princeton, Columbia University (NYC), Cornell, SUNY, University of Pennsylvania (<~private) and Duke (<~EastCoast sampler), UC-Berkeley, Stanford, UCSF (public), USF (private, Jesuit), and so forth, West Coast, and plenty more in between.
See next image: screenprint from my 2017April 11 post after looking up/for financials in the school-reform centers backed by the Annenberg Foundation and involving Brown University in Rhode Island (admitted women first time, ca. 1969; immediately diluted the curriculum). My opening statement (not to mention, the title) mentions system parts. This post might be a good review and wake-up: Under this way of doing business (public, private, mass population going through basic government-funded institutions, whether as privatized or as kept under obvious government control), no person could possibly keep track of it all in their “spare time,” and it’s questionable whether people even paid full-time to do so would.

Top portion of my April 11, 2017 post (http://wp.me/psBXH-5gG), search result for “Brown University” looking for the AISR information for a Sept. 15, 2019 post insert..
Getting to this type of information, should doing so somehow cross someone’s mind in the first place between the story-telling, great causes, and brightly colored graphics and slideshows (i.e movement) requires overcoming some obstacles which seem less than accidentally strewn in the paths to that information, which situation increases personal time (which = expense) involved while decreasing prospects of even accuracy of such searches, i.e., discouraging the investment of that time and expense to start with.
Who knows whether existing databases that the public cannot access (due to power required) MIGHT, but I do know experientially that the basic public-access databases (whether state-level or via existing private nonprofits such as FoundationCenter aren’t accurate or functional enough to do so.
(Foundation Center (based in NY) again, just bought out Guidestar and rebranded as “Candid” but — I checked again last night, looking up several nonprofits related to this post via cell-phone), despite brighter colors (Black, white, BRIGHT yellow), more high-contrast user interface, what survived the merger includes the corrupted data practice of getting organizations’ names WRONG, whether by adding or subtracting a “the,” losing an “‘s”” or eliminating spaces between the words, or opting for different and unpredictable shortened versions of organization name in subsequent years.
Searchers won’t even know what they missed until they somehow repeat the search by EIN#, at which point it coughs up the tax returns pinned to mis-spelled organization names, not from the data source (which we’re told is the IRS), but by the database provider, “Candid.” (which is, the privately owned business, Foundation Center, Inc.)
Meanwhile, the one searchable field which is harder to get wrong — it’s only 9 digits and that’s “EIN#” — remains submerged in “other search options” not displayed on the top level of “990-finder” search page. To anyone simply aware that EIN#s are searchable, this is a not-very-subtle message: “GO ahead! But its’s an extra click each time” and those who, perhaps, may not think to or know to find an EIN# and use that only as the search condition, will not be alerted that even if THEIR data entry (search requests) has no typos in organization name, changes are, some are built into the database itself and may not know what they even missed. All this erects artificial barriers to getting what is really, very basic information on organizations.
Perhaps I should start a petition called “OVERCOMING BARRIERS” and show public support to demand tax-exempt organizations claiming tax-exempt status for promoting philanthropy (the tax-exempt field overall) adhere to common decency and minimal copyediting style sheets (how to abbreviate, proof-reading for spelling or spacing errors) in human data entry, or whatever automated software function produces those search result names in all FREE (non-subscription) data searches. I have done data entry, copyediting, and text-processing in professional fields and continue to be amazed by how bad the data results are here, and in some federal and other state government search sites.
If NASA, hospitals, the military, oil exploration and drilling, artificial intelligence, GENE therapy, or any large, hard infrastructure process dependent on accurate software information were that bad, there’d be even more massive failures, levee and dam failures, etc. PG&E was sued in California for failures relating to the wildfires. But somehow when it comes to tracking where government funds go — and they go to and through nonprofits, obviously — NOT even close enough for jazz it seems is just fine…
The contrast between entrancing, colorful graphics and the lack of financial details on the same websites (or, elsewhere where they should be) is often astounding. It’s clear they are learning from each other, and as of the appearance of “The Frameworks Institute” which I mentioned on this blog, receiving coaching in how to translate science into policy-making, user-friendly terms, focusing on conflating project or nonprofit names with parts of government (i.e., name-synchronization) to, probably, catch the public off-guard which sector in fact they are dealing with — and to provide a “unified front” under similar names: “Surrounded!!” Program saturation by sound byte, etc. Public relations/Advertising techniques….
[I’d show this, but I haven’t got laptop to talk to iCloud Photo properly yet. The images aren’t transferred here yet…][End, Sept. 16, 2019 post-publication insert commentary.//LGH]
More, regarding why, perhaps, current Family Court Reform Practice doesn’t even acknowledge blueprints or builders exist:
Business names (association with a university or medical/health system also seems to add to the credibility) of any reformers and alleged** paradigm-changers. Referencing them as nonprofits which have tax-filings (and showing them) might reveal just how many are filing Form 990-Ns or Form 990-EZs to camouflage just how small, really and historically, they have been and still are.
**The overarching paradigm remains public-private-partnerships, no matter what marketed in its various parts, here, as enhancements, solutions, or fixing flawed/unenlightened by the latest “science” (trauma, child development, domestic violence-related, father-engagement, etc.) practices. These PP partnerships can then, incrementally, steer change in the predetermined directions, once connected to “the grid” of decisionmaking on where public resources are spent. Personal associations, connections, and group loyalty are also developed through conferencing, publishing, etc. on each new field, or tweak to established fields…
Drawing attention to the builders organized as nonprofits and issuing “blueprints” reveals that the builders exist and organized (coordinate) as nonprofits; it also put names, dates, places, and potentially funding amount specifics, and how sources of that funding (where federal (the US) or lower-level (state, county, etc.) governments just might be part of the problem.
Read the rest of this entry »