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

This post sprang (so to speak, actually it was extracted by me and didn’t move on its own) out of one dated May 2, 2016 and which I eventually posted as “Red Herring Alert’s “Conversation with Dakota County Commissioner/HMRF funds,” and about those funds…

Post-publication post update:  Based on some of these findings, I added a PAGE (to right sidebar) on May 14, 2016, called HHS Grantees, Just Georgia, Just HMRF (CFDA 93086), May 13, 2016, Report Run.  Take a look! Will also be posting to publicize that page later today.  The Page displays grants tables; they take long to compile and have a lot to say, I didn’t want this information disappearing beneath a succession of posts, but to be visible on the sidebar. Georgia is “Below the Bible Belt” and “Faith-Based” goes over well, obviously.  It also has among the larger Violence-Prevention grantees, a “Criminal Justice Coordinating Council” which I believe bears more looking into.

The Page also demonstrates beyond argument the relative size of HMRF versus “Violence Prevention” grants — and that State agencies are getting both types (!!).  While the Page doesn’t discuss this (due to size limits), I also noticed again “University of Georgia Research Foundation” who I’d noticed years earlier running the social science R&D programming, including targeting African-American families, and using “PREP,” i.e., a curriculum developed by professors at the University of Denver and also heavily promoted within the “Oklahoma Marriage Initiative” which, famously around the turn of this century, and under a Catholic Governor (Frank Keating) and religious protestant evangelical high up in the state-level “HHS” responsibility, “Jerry Regier.”  In that scenario, a public relations firm received a real helping-hand for managing the resulting “Healthy Marriage Resource Center” (also propped up by HHS grants).

As a sample, obviously “FBO” (“Faith-based Organization,”), I took a look at this organization, as it says below, and could only say,

Oh my goodness, this organization (website “WWW.MTCIGA.ORG” per the 2014 return, …) is “something else…”

This draft began on May 2, 2016.  I’ve published three others since, and am currently studying and about to continue posting on some of the Focus on the Family Statewide Policy (501©4) and Family (501©3) organizations.  This MTCIGA has shown up to be either part of this circle, or closely associated with it.

That is a large topic.  There will be more than one post, I have not finished getting some outstanding questions answered, and may not, but what I do have to show is enough to raise red flags on WHY groups which fill out tax returns in some crazy-ass ways, and then have executive directors forming some of the curricula they are promoting — but said curriculum nonprofit doesn’t stay incorporated — and a number of other simply “funky” behaviors should say, WHERE’s HHS Accountability in all this?  Do they give a damn?

• Check out TAGGS.hhs.gov report of “93010” CBAE (Community Based Abstinence Education) Grantees in Georgia; this is one.  Any column title can be sorted by clicking on it, active links are also clickable; which for any organization should show what other types of grants they may have gotten.  Only 25 results per page show — suggest try different sorts, including the Sum of Awards ($$, rightmost) column to see largest versus smallest amounts.   Notice the variety of types of organizations which obtained abstinence education grants. For example, in addition to what would appear to be other FBOs (“Crowned for Victory,” “Metro Atlanta Youth for Christ, Inc.” — looks like several million dollars, etc.) there is a Housing Authority, a Board of Education, a “Wholistic (sic) Stress Control Institute” called a “Research Institution, Foundation and Laboratory” (also drawing funds for Teenage Pregnancy Prevention, Drug-Free Communities, Preventing HIV/SA, etc.)

Wholistic Stress Control Institute (not the topic of this post) I notice in passing and is also “something else” in similar ways…although rather more on the “new age” spirituality than conservative Christian side, Apparently.

[“Wholistic Stress Institute” section marked by light-blue background and “Arial Narrow” font. Below that, more discussion on the “Faith-Based Organization” referenced in post title.]