Posts Tagged ‘NAFCJ.net’
About Holidays, Speaking Personally (Personal Backdrop to Post-PRWORA Social Policy towards Women Who ~Just Say No!~ to Abuse and Proceed in Misplaced Belief They can actually Exit it) [started Sept. 18, Publ. Oct. 9, 2017, see also Collaborative Justice post/page].
I might as well get this over with, and am taking the opportunity at the same time to say I finally published a related PAGE, How and When Problem-Solving (make that ‘Collaborative Justice’) Courts were Institutionalized and other Consolidate/Coordinate/Standardize/ PRIVATIZE Stories at Courts.CA.Gov (Page started 8/29/2017, published Mon 9/18 evening. With case-sensitive shortlink ending “-7w9″).
Together, that page, another post introducing that page (full title soon, just below) and this post About Holidays, Speaking Personally (Personal Backdrop to Post-PRWORA Social Policy towards Women Who ~Just Say No!~ to Abuse and Proceed in Misplaced Belief They can actually Exit it) [started Sept. 18, Publ. Oct. 9, 2017, see also Collaborative Justice post/page](case-sensitive shortlink ends “-7AD“) are “good stuff” and history on some major program-propagation vehicles in New York and in California, with more in their middles on Minnesota-related events, people, and even a few nonprofits.
What’s here below was originally an insert or aside. At the bottom here, I again provide the link to both the page and my post introducing the page. I hope readers will go back and read both if they haven’t yet.
There are reasons we are continuing to have “family court fiascoes” and destructions of household wealth generation after generation by way of prolonged litigation IN these courts.
Why not take a closer look at how they were assembled, systematically, in recent decades (generation or so) and the pieces from which the parts comprise the whole, or the engine, chassis, fuel, guidance system, [I’m no auto mechanic, but consider the essential parts — and the roads as part of the infrastructure too] and ensuring a constant stream of passengers, with “no stone left unturned” and no child, or life, left unscathed….?] That’s what I tend to do, when not speaking personally..take closer looks. Lots of them.
“ABOUT HOLIDAYS, SPEAKING PERSONALLY:”
About Holidays, Speaking Personally (Personal Backdrop to Post-PRWORA Social Policy towards Women who Say No! to Abuse and Proceed to Exit it) (WordPress-generated, case-sensitive shortlink ends “-7AD.”)
This post, while written (except this foreword) around Sept. 4, Labor Day Weekend 2017, was taken from another post then still waiting publication; its full title (and basic background-color) is “Introducing A New Page, How and When Problem-Solving (make that ‘Collaborative Justice’) Courts were Institutionalized and other Consolidate/Coordinate/Standardize/PRIVATIZE Stories at Courts.CA.Gov. AND Some of the Backdrop (Personal Experience of Turn-of-Century Social Policy towards Women Reporting Abuse and Their Efforts to Exit It… ).”(case-sensitive short-link ends “-7xs“)
Exactly one week later, in fact another historic (but not “holy”!) day in recent history, I was still working on both post and page, as I was over Labor Day weekend, a major US holiday from September 2, 3, and (Monday) Sept. 4, 2017,* through to that day, Sept. 11, 2017…
{*The aside added for international visitors to the blog. I don’t know all their national holidays, and they might not know all ours, either. While this blog covers some international issues because it covers private associations dealing with US courts — many of which make sure to advertise that they have an international membership— FamilyCourtMatters still primarily addressed to people dealing with Life In The USA… because the courts here are tax-supported and public institutions in every state, and in territories, of the USA. We pay plenty for them, while we also through our system here (as to the income tax, corporate taxes, and tax-exemptions) sponsor, incubate, and overall, encourage the formation of tax-exempt corporations to fix whatever national, state, or local governments omit, forgot, or “got wrong..”}
BELOW HERE (within this blue box) is “Soap Box” talk on public vs. private. If you “get this,” skip it this time. If you don’t, please consider the stakes are high in blurring one with another, which is a known practice and agenda now commonplace in the country (and not USA only).
These tax-exempt and other corporations can legally register as domiciled in one place, but operate and influence operations across state and national lines. But the family courts regulating life within the states are subject to state legislatures for individuals once they obtain jurisdiction over a case — and through that, the family members involved — do not have innate jurisdiction over people outside the state except as related to something anchored in it. There’s a division, in other words, between jurisdictions within states, and federal. What I’m saying here – it seems to take corporations to overcome legal boundaries to representative government at the state level — and that seems to be the intent and purpose of a variety of such corporations who would rather “legislate” or at least influence, rule, and have power, over whole regions, or nations, at a time, and the streamlined ability to also influence legislation in multiple jurisdictions without having to fight it locally, place by place — and deal “face to face” with those who might, were they aware of the purposes — have cause to oppose them. (See “Big Seven Associations” and/or the variety of “Do You Know Your NGA, NCSC” etc. posts I’ve written within the last year, or maybe two.. for how this seems to work when those on the private corporations ALSO hold public office, either concurrently, or in revolving-door fashion, recently…
{{As I understand it, there ARE no “regional governments” under the US Constitution, that I’m aware of. Some people have a problem with that (search “functionalism” on this blog for more info), and want it changed. The more and more functions that can be “outsourced” to regionally organized private-sector organizations (or JPA’s — Joint Powers Authorities) — the less and less individually responsive less-than-regional governments become. They feel the pressure and appreciate the prestige of “belonging” as evidence of good governmental behavior.
Sure, federal government’s Executive Branch Departments (like HHS, which was formerly — taken together with the part that split off, the Dept. of Education and any other — “HEW”) organize operationally by regions (cross-state lines), as do Districts of the Federal Court system yes — but even those are not independent government entities.
To organize legally cross-jurisdiction WITHIN government here, one must either be anchored in some part which IS either federal OR state, i.e. be state government or something underneath it– or simply be a corporation, including tax-exempt ones. Joint Power Authorities such as I’ve been blogging, like WestED, SWRL, or FWL (Far West Labs, South West Regional Labs — subject matter, education) still must anchor with a state domicile. WestED’s state domicile, so far as I know, is in California, although other states are spanned in its OPERATIONS (shared programming).}}
That’s why, at a time when “Public/Private Partnerships” (or, strategic operating relationships in the forms of Memos of Understanding — one shown below here as to CENIC and California’s HighSpeedRail Authority) are MOST popular with those already in power — we really should be able to tell the difference between that which is public — and its LEGAL power over individuals, including the power to tax, incarcerate, seize assets, seize children, etc. — and that which is NOT public, over which when we are not consumers of the product or entering into conscious contracts with the corporations, we don’t have many real rights. So government uses corporate to cross jurisdictions, and to (as privatized) avoid full responsibility for its actions, and streamline (efficiency) and corporate uses government to encourage conditions it finds conducive to operations and bottom-line profits. This may or may not include the public interest or health; it depends on the situation. [[end of “SoapBox” commentary.]]
Personal timing & publication dates:
The weeks between Sept. 11 and now (early October, 2017), I was working again on some personal writing for an ongoing situation, which was because of its nature and, shall I say, “tenacity,” triggering PTSD and some deep, deep considerations about how far I should or dare take the push for justice in that situation and with these particular individuals who have gained a legal inroad into my life recently, caused damages, and then inflicted further distress through minimizing/dismissing the same. Classic gaslighting and strategy for controlling personalities and/or abusers.
In “About Holidays,” I also speak about some of the long-term tenacity of the prior personal situations, without naming names — because the names aren’t the point. The patterns are. I realize this type of communication is anecdotal, and speaking about it here is for general info.; expressive, not presented as a basis for policy.
When that communication (or at least the initial stage of it) Sept.11 / end of Sept. was handled (or, at least, delivered) I worked again diligently to update this post’s Table of Contents page, a project I am finally, for the most part, satisfied with (for now) and which led to more fascinating subject matter to research, involving consolidation of telecommunications (broad-band-providing) companies servicing government entities (like schools, public and private universities and research institutes), and such.**
**[Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California, “CENIC.org”; its network “CalREN,” and as it’s a membership association, one of its Auxiliary Associate members (in fact the only one currently) “City of Hope” (hospital, institute, development corporation, foundation all inter-related) and dark-fiber network subcontractor, “Level 3 Communications” with its own fascinating history, intersecting with some of the giant telecommunications providers (esp. broadband) mergers of the turn of the century — and its predecessor entity “Kiewit Diversified Group,” which came out of Peter Kiewit & Sons (or similar name), the construction industry. This is basic communications history in the US, and fascinating. It also speaks to the access to high-quality internet capacity and speed of higher education institutions (membership to CENIC or groups like it) vs. the average person, who is the subject matter of so many of the programs, including the social science R&D, federal designer family, poverty research, behavioral mod etc. — while when working as employees, contributing to support the same infrastructure financially based on the trickle-down premise.
Californians are aware of longstanding plans, highly political in nature, for a high-speed physical, commuter (to carry human beings!) rail system connecting Northern Cal. to SoCal (take another look at the map of the USA and see — that’s a good distance!).
So, it looks like CalREN’s (CENIC’s network name) involvement with this high-speed rail project may result in communities along the intended route getting an upgrade to their free? Broadband service. Amazingly, the researchers figured out that poorer, less-educated people living in rural areas are less likely to have internet connections –aren’t they smart? Courtesy “California Emerging Technologies Fund” field research poll, I see.
CENIC article referencing Calif. HighSpeed Rail Authority (a gov’t entity) plans to make broadband communities. CENIC is private nonprofit, so that’s another Public/private partnership, assuming it goes through.
Announced at “Cenic.org” · PRIVATE UNIVERSITIES & NPS, RENS & NRENS
In general, the HSR will connect Los Angeles to San Francisco at 200mph or in about 3 hours by (2025? see info). Another phrase that comes up is “Silicon Valley to Central Valley” with Central Valley being an area where unemployment (and poverty) are high. I see from HSR website that ARRA funds were involved:
SACRAMENTO, Calif. –The California High-Speed Rail Authority today announced it has met federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009 requirements by fully investing the more than $2.55 billion granted to the State since 2009 to build the nation’s first high-speed rail system. These funds have helped to create thousands of new jobs and generated approximately $4 billion in economic activity in the Central Valley and across California. Read our News Release to see what Board Chair Dan Richard is saying about meeting the ARRA deadline. For more information, read the full Investing in California’s Future through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 report.
Wow. I remember where I was in high-employment area SF Bay Area in 2009, after child-stealing events, retroactive reduction of child support arrears owed, dramatic curtailment of my own work as I went repeatedly to court in an attempt to resolve the household who stole the kids’ reluctance to comply with court orders granting me: visitation, or even at its lowest point, weekly phone calls placed by the children (after my attempts to reach them weekly went unanswered time after time), and by 2009 I had not one job in the profession left. No one in the agencies or law enforcement seemed to care about enforcing any court orders which would mitigate the situation, and I was running out of the wherewithal to keep coming back to court (let alone even get TO the courthouse) time and again. During that time I had not yet “figured out” what I have since (on this blog) regarding potential financial DISincentives for continuing any government OR nonprofit advocacy group, i.e., the whole systems, to protecting maternal parenting time once it’d been eradicated without legal cause stated on the record, let alone proved on any record…
In other words, those “access and visitation” grants aimed at increasing non-custodial parenting time, apparently lost their motivational impact when that non-custodial FATHER time had been increased to 100% and mother’s to “0%.” I had never been offered or encouraged to do supervised visitation to prevent the stealing in the first place, and when it was brought up, a commissioner said “there’s no money for it here..” — AFTER which I realized, well, yes there was, in the form of those grants to the state of California for such supervised visitation and exchange — to protect the children from being stolen, and myself from injury or repeated forced dealings with traumatic situations absent support for them, in the context of known prior domestic violence…
That fall 2009, I also had learned my children had been abandoned by their father (physically and it appears financially) and was dealing with both stalking while attempting to extract information from ANYONE involved on WHEN this occurred (including what month/year) or in what manner (two conflicting versions were presented by the ex-girlfriend and my ex-batterer (husband) and father of two children by then both almost adults, with me. Abandonment is also a felony, so I was working through both shock and again attempting to speak with law enforcement on this (district attorney’s office, as I had when they were stolen the first time three years earlier). This went nowhere — other than that in my need to speak to their father for this information, he somehow decided again to claim me “before God” as his wife, resulting in the need to at this low point now deal (again) with the stalking issue — which was terrifying… especially without funds to leave the area even temporarily which was a need.
But that commentary is getting ahead of the subject matter of this section…. Just correlating the State-level developments with my personal timeline developments. Back to “HighSpeedRail”….
Read it from the HSR.CA.GOV (HSR=”High Speed Rail”) point of view — this is their MOU (Memo of Understanding) which, actually, clarifies that one is a 501©3 and the other a state agency, and that a partnership, this absolutely does not make!. The signatures of each party are shown — but not dated (so this is probably not an executed copy of any MOU, despite its title page):
MOU as shown (Nov. 2016) header.
REGARDING OTHER CENIC or “NATIONAL LAMBDARAIL, LLC” referring to a different kind of “rail” with different kind of cargo (the optic fiber kind) images I may include below — these are obviously another story waiting to be posted (here — it’s already posted elsewhere!), consider these footprints and reminders for now.//LGH 10/9/2017
This excerpt of a Form 990 shows Nat’l LambdaRail as a related entity of CENIC, though not the largest one… || … “NLR” has a major, and dramatic though short history, and was purchased in 2011 by a billionaire from its university (public/private) membership. Won’t fit in a single caption. Stay tuned (or look up yourself!)It is a 12,000 mile optic network and the first one to go transcontinental (See Wiki or Bloomberg.com for more; also IO.com)
just web page header.
CENIC corporation, California Registry of Charitable Trust (search results page)
These sprang from an unusually-named corporate (nonprofit) visitor to the blog, but in general reflect major themes and turning points in U.S. history, i.e., control of access to the internet, and characteristics of the organizations controlling this access. For the general outline, see my 2017 Table of Contents page, about half-way down, and the bottom section, and the second section of my Oct. 9, 2017 post talking about SIZE STILL MATTERS. …..
WOW: See that image on National LambdaRail, LLC, above? Well: from Wikipedia:
…National LambdaRail was founded in 2003 and in 2004 its national, advanced fiber optic network was completed. In addition to being the first transcontinental, production 10 Gigabit Ethernet network, National LambdaRail was also the first intelligently managed, nationwide peering and transit program focused on research applications.
In 2008, a company named Darkstrand purchased capacity on NLR for commercial use.[1] By the end of the year the Chicago-based company was having trouble raising funding due to the Great Recession.[2] On May 24, 2012 the NLR network operations center services were transferred to the Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California.[3] In October 2009 Glenn Ricart was named president and CEO.[4] On September 7, 2010 Ricart announced his resignation.[5]
In November 2011 the control of NLR was purchased from its university membership by a billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong for $100M, who indicated his intention to upgrade NLR infrastructure and repurpose portions of it to support an ambitious healthcare project through NantHealth.[6] The upgrade never took place. NLR ceased operations in March 2014.[7][8][9][10]
Bloomberg.com on National Lambda Rail. Bloomberg.com gets its data from S&P Global Marketing, part of S&P Global Group (S&P = Standard & Poors, probably)
http://internet2.edu/news/detail/3695. Not shown — this is a 2003 article. See Wiki for follow up info on NLR.
Please click link (or image to enlarge) and read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_LambdaRail#cite_note-5
At Bloomberg.com, but can’t read more w/o subscription to “Professional Services.”See more at NLR “Wiki” page.
Internet2® started in 1996 and has a timeline. See website for more info.
Internet2® doesn’t post its financials With offices in these states, perhaps they could be found. If “internet2” isn’t an entity, then some membership organization ENTITY does have financials somewhere…
Found at Internet2.edu home page, blog article Sept. 17, 2017.
Separately, which I know from email news alerts and family court reform advocacy groups’ social media sites, there are also pending “current events” in local (California) “family court reform” news making the rounds which I feel urgent to address in new posts. I have an idea of a better way to present the situation to people new to it (those familiar with it are welcome to watch from the sidelines, or inbetween rallies, re-blogging, or complaints about the overall injustices in the system, judge by judge or jurisdiction by jurisdiction, something I can’t remember the last time I EVER signed onto that approach as halfway sane, or effective, given the disparate resources….). Some of that way is blended into this otherwise more anecdotal, expressive post about the personal backdrop to our so-called problem-solving courts.
I keep hoping to squeeze enough blogging and activism in between my own ongoing, though more periodic, life events which have been incited by the systematic disruption of my household, work and relationships through the family court and now, probate court, systems and self-important, self-congratulating, and overlapping circles of well-endowed and court-AND social-service-systems-connected “fauna and flora.”
That is, just as in any domestically violent relationship, while there may be at times a “plateau” between incidents (events), during which not a whole lot can be done to push them forward (whether through availability, regulations, or simply personal stamina), and then, responding to moves the individual (here, me) might make to change the status quo or resolve the conflict — there’s an escalation, or other way in which “power-over” is communicated. This communication may be first made in private, but sooner or later can be gestured towards (by the abuser) should it go public, “we attempted to communicate with [____].” Communicate in that context is a euphemism. Something WAS communicated — message of intent to continue the dynamic was sent-and-received — but it’s not what witnesses or outsiders are, for lack of tangible substance, or facts in context, unable to do anything other than assume might be meant were both parties above-board and honest. [I don’t know how that last sentence in green may read to others, but I do know what I meant. There are just multiple layers of meaning, and a style of speaking — which I hate! in trying to actually get down to the facts and resolve the situations — which is more theatre than written communication of important truths. It’s for show, but only those closest to the situation and “in the know” about the overall pattern of the relationship in question, realize how fake it is.
So, again, stamina, or consequences, etc. I don’t know how much longer this can be kept up, either the personal fight, or the writing. It worries me, and may be prompting to get what’s done already in order, backed up, and on-line. And it’s no way to live… with constant risk management while resources are drained, year after year.
Moving on….
Blogging Context/Sequence:
“Introducing A New Page… Problem-Solving (‘Collaborative Justice’) Courts…,” (for short) has a case-sensitive short-link ending “-7xs” and is now published.
See next inset block:
[That] page (#28901) I have named: How and When Problem-Solving (make that ‘Collaborative Justice’) Courts were Institutionalized and other Consolidate/Coordinate/Standardize/ PRIVATIZE Stories at Courts.CA.Gov
I was talking on [the] post — NAATPN, Inc (2000ff, Total Current Assets, $0) and Caffee, Caffee and Associates PHF, Inc. (Hattiesburg MS, 2003ff, Total Assets $0, Tax Filings Questionable), and others trying to squeeze a California Race-Based Stop-Smoking Network (AATEN) into that recipe. .. [Published 8/28/2017 evening and as usual may be updated for clarity, basic copyediting, or length (splitting)//LGH] —— about how the 1996ff (PRWORA-related) events overlapped with my current blogging interest, the 1998 (Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement) events, and similarities (not to mention overlap) of involved networking nonprofits, along with the stories told the public omitting the details of Who’s Who and the gradual, (dare I say “progressive” in today’s political climate, but referencing the generic, not political, meaning of the word?) incremental erosion of local or even state-level accountability to citizens living within those state, as opposed to privatized special-interest nonprofits continually telling us all that the same are protecting against other privatized special-interest FOR profits as though these two were unrelated….
Again, the genealogy (so to speak) of that page, includes ITS originating post, on the NAATPN. So, the sequence is from NAAPTN {already published} ==> Page “How and When Problem-Solving..” ==>Post “Introducing New Page” + ===> before I publish either that Page (or the post introducing it), I sequestered my expressive/reflective section “About Holidays” which you are now reading.
The originating post (“Introducing a New Page…”) will contain some lead-in and concluding material from below for a “footprint,” as is my writing style.
Impediments / Other reasons for the delays:
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Wacko in Wisconsin — and no, I’m NOT talking about the Parents/Litigants (published 9/15/2010, updated 7/21/2017)
Nowadays (posts published = about 715 as of summer 2017), this is how I identify posts:
Types of updates: When you see quotes within solid borders (boxed), quotes with different background colors, the borders on the post itself, or comments with dates signed: “…//LGH 2017 (LGH= “Let’s Get Honest,” i.e., me). Also the added section in light-green showing several images for some of the links (I didn’t do screenprints, let alone annotated screenprints in 2010. In general, I’m trying to better distinguish actual quotes from my commentary on them, through formatting. Wordpress doesn’t naturally enable this, so each time you see it, I’m plowing through html “gibberish” for the specific codes, and tweaking them by “div” or “blockquote” or “span” or “Table.” This takes considerable time… For image display, the “WYSIWYG” (What You See is What You Get” function is imperfect, so there’s a lot of back and forth (edit, preview, adjust, preview again, etc.) on the layout.
There may be a more efficient way to do all this, but until then, and still being basically a self-taught amateur for blogging technology, and more to the point, still just one person (focused more on content than format), that’s how it works.)… I spent some time on this post also checking for and, where possible, replacing broken links. ….. some quotation / commentary notations towards the bottom are “best guess” where I no longer had valid links.
Why bother updating older posts? — Well, the other part of this one just got five more comments, so that’s why. The other reason is the types of people that are visiting the post, based on (html-based visitor ID software) some of the organization names. In 2016 and 2017 I’ve been hard-hitting at higher levels of organized networks (nonprofit and governmental as coordinated) on on following the money, and showing how to, also giving people again, permission to question any or all of the “experts” in any category, but with the platform and basis for doing so being objective, and on “operations” level. So, although they aren’t commenting much, visitors show up from various universities (incl. Harvard), or levels of government (esp. from California, where I live and on which blogs tend to focus), and overseas (London School of Economics at least a few times, Legislative Offices, President’s Offices at UC, and so forth). Sometimes these visitors seem to match what was being posted, sometimes, not.
And other times, I have to admit, it’s just to avoid humiliation in retrospect at the formatting/condition of the earlier posting.
There was a “Part 2” on this theme published 10/1/2010:
Picking up the narrative at Oct. 1, 2010…
I dare you to make some sense of this one: Actually, by now, there are about 4 cases below: Walkers (they squeaked in, in my intro), Archibalds, Stearns (thrown in for illustration), Katz, and that one’s a doozie. ALL of them are…What’s UP in Wisconsin?
Among the “parents” involved are <>the “Bodway” family who managed to get a daughter away from a mother after divorce, being nonrelatives; <>a mother who is caught, and on probation and medication for stealing her own daughters (and drugs and a gun involved– the drugs were antidepressants for her, and the gun, not fired, was for her safety, she said), and I’m going to presume that PROBABLY <>that prominent WI D.A. who was prosecuting a DV case and trying to make it (sexting was involved) with a woman half his age, while prosecuting her boyfriend for attempting to strangle her while still married (but divorcing) probably was a parent too.
SO . .
If you still think life as normal exists somewhere within our courts, then this blogger (who I suspect is the woman in question) will sound like a nutcase. And it’s easy to discredit someone whose allegations sound like a nutcase –unless one has spent some time looking up the court dockets, which I did here.
THE WALKER CASE IS A WALKING CASE OF CONFLICTS OF INTEREST– PARTIAL:, here.
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Responsible Fatherhood and (ir)Responsible Social Policy — MY informal findings…
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.”
Ten Key Findings from Responsible Fatherhood Initiatives
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 InstituteThis 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 ProjectsPrinter 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:
About the Authors
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:
View Research by Author – Demetra Smith Nightingale
// 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:
DEMETRA NIGHTINGALE, PH.D.
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.
ConclusionAt 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)
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 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…
Let's Get Honest! Absolutely Uncommon Analysis of Family & Conciliation Courts' Operations, Practices, & History 