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

I have been referring to this post for a month now, including in interim posts published May 6 and May 12, and am glad to publish Part 1 today, and to schedule Parts 2 & 3 tomorrow and the day after:

A Closer Look at and Alternate Interpretation of Who’s Funding Poverty Research || PART 1 of 3. 

A Closer Look At — and Alternate Interpretation of — Who’s Funding Poverty Research (Hint: The Poor….) In New York (Columbia Univ. SSW), Wisconsin (University of Wisconsin’s IRP), and let’s not forget New Jersey (Princeton University’s Welfare-Reform-Focused “…Center for Research on Child Well-Being”). (Pt. 1 of 3=”-9LJ”)(Written mid-April, Split in 3 mid-May, 2019]  (Case-sensitive shortlink ends “-9LJ.” Started about April 17, 2019. Before split, 14,606 words; Part 1 is about 4,200 words.

OTHER POSTS IN THIS “SERIES”* Written ca. April 17-18, Split Three Ways May 13, 2019.

A Closer Look At … (Pt. 2 of 3=”9Tx”)       &      A Closer Look At … (Pt. 3 of 3=”9TC”)

*By “series” I mean one post written in mostly one sitting around April 17, 2019, which now, a month later, wanting to publish, I think is relevant enough to split into three parts…for easier reading (or at least much shorter posts! The original was about 14,600 words; this one, about 4,200.  Those short-link references are  an essential administrative help I decided, this time (“Life is Short!”), to leave in the actual post titles.

“This material was extracted, with a little overlap, from the intro to a new index I’m producing and will (I hope) publish today, April 18, 2019.”  [Update: It was published April 19, short-link ends “-9Aj.” Here are two screenprints from the top of that originating post/ Click image to enlarge]:

Now made “sticky” as important enough to this blog to be kept “in your face,” alongside a few others. Having completed most of THAT project, my attention has been drawn to recent developments in some familiar circles (university centers) I’ve been aware of over time, featured in this post.

QUICK NOTES ON THE (QUICKLY EXECUTED) SPLIT:

[Minor copyediting for clarity done after the split, Part 1.  More on Part 3. I say this because with “post-partum” copyediting, not all overlapping sections will be exact duplicates].

I believe that the most important part of obtaining “solutions” to major problems is understanding what questions to ask and from there, where to look for potential answers — for all elements possibly contributing to the problem situation. It’s also important to realize and admit to oneself that what outcomes may be for some a “problem” for others is not just an opportunity, but, to put it bluntly, an ongoing profit, benefit, and desirable state of affairs, even for situations when admitting this isn’t politically correct.

Wildly speculating about this is not enough to support any conclusions as to cause..  Looking far enough to either rule out, or see one canNOT rule out a potential cause of planned harm, even to the point of fatalities, may be viewed as an ongoing “benefit.”

This post illustrates, again, why you JUST might want to pay enough attention to public/private finances to realize how often accomplishing the task (even viewing them) is just about impossible… and what happens when it stays and continues developing out of sight and out of control.

Just start somewhere (I’m looking at these centers in this series) and see where accountability drops off, or never even surfaces.  Once you start noticing its presence or absence, that awareness spills over into other consciousness of just how much we “take it on faith” when it comes to usage of public resources, and motives of those in public office — except of course, those of the opposing party….

To broadly summarize,: domestically, there’s ongoing flow of resources throughout a larger collectively organized landscape.  Symptoms of the organization are everywhere, but what about roadmaps (explored/unexplored; accountable/un-accountable)?

But in an example I have below labeled “Tangential,” on reading about it, I found a major enterprise which became the largest producer of “polypropylene” in the US through acquisition — polypropylene (since you asked) being a form of plastic developed in the 1950s and used in almost everything we encounter in daily life — whether food packaging, insulation, indoor/outdoor carpenting, seemingly some kinds of plastic furniture, medical uses (internal and external), piping, insulation of electrical cable — you name it.  The material is versatile. I’m not sure yet whether some form of it is represented by the famous food-film (“Saran wrap”) but provide enough links below to find out.

The word “petrochemical” is also involved (oil and gas exploration, development and distribution).  Below, I show the major parts of the conglomerate as described at least in Wikipedia (because it’s interesting), some of which relates to nationalization of the oil industry, and giving an involved firm a major monopoly within Brazil.

The same involved conglomerate or its subsidiary was accused of major criminal activity involving a man who, under such accusation, took his life by shooting himself several times in the neck yesterday, rather than be arrested.  When the police showed up.

He also happened to be an ex-President of a Latin American country involved in (though not home to) the major conglomerate this controlled most of USA’s production of polypropylene, and not the only such President or ex-President under scrutiny because of the size of this corrupt though also effective and infrastructure-providing conglomerate.

What intrigued me about this was that this passing headline I ran into on the way to writing this post, mentioned a single company name I’d already encountered because — and only because — I write this blog and as a practice ask questions about private companies influencing public policies that I run across.  Certain ones keep coming up, and among those that came up again recently in this “Poverty Research Center” context, was one whose sponsors really did have an odd connection to the aforesaid conglomerate producing polypropylene and caught in a major (international) money-laundering, bribery and kickback scheme.

That name wouldn’t normally be on my radar, and it got there only as part of an acronym (ZOPB) referencing a joint venture to build a highway in Texas. I remember when writing that post thinking, “OK, now you’ve really gone too far down… WHY are you posting this level of detail!!??”  That was in 2016, and 2017.  But, something about it was just odd: some aspects were “off, and some just symptomatic of what happens when the infrastructure projects  — and the financing to go with them — are just so huge.

Internet auction platforms were involved in dispensing with equipment after they were done using it.

And they were public/private in nature. AS is the long-term promotion of marriage and fatherhood as a solution, allegedly, to the problem of poverty.  Or child abuse, domestic violence, or “what ails you.”  It seems that, almost no matter what a social problem is, “add more Dads” (transform, saturate and train all systems towards this perspective) is the solution.  That this also happens to be scapegoating mothers who don’t feel that re-integrating abusive men into their households, or children’s lives, is smart seems not to matter any more.

My closer looks (this one, others in the blog) should provide a more concrete translation of what this means.  The profits and the career curves, it seems, are in the system transformation process.

Such policies are less about which the ideas being put forth than taking control of major institutions so as to be able to transform (steer) them at will in another direction in the name of public welfare.  Those at the leading edge of the transformation are likely to profit the most, and want to (for continuance of these benefits so long as they live and possibly for any offspring) ensure that new generations of white-collar professionals, ideally PhDs, have sufficient societies, titles, journals, and centers within universities, to perpetuate the power-shift.

Almost no part of this flow of resources, then, is exclusive to just one country (in this example, by “domestically” I mean the USA. a large developed country with international clout and involvement, which has taxed its population’s employee incomes “en masse” since 1913 (through Constitutional Amendment), controls the currency — also, while challenged, an international exchange currency — and whose federal state, and territorial (etc.) governments dispense services: Federal government, of certain kinds, state/territorial of other kinds (by subject matter).

By virtue of establishing near-universal taxation, it also embedded into the infrastructure and the economic landscape a place where major interests, especially the wealthiest ones, would like to store the amassed wealth with the least possible taxation.  That is to say, the nonprofit sector.

That government itself (federal) is untaxed should be obvious.

The federal government also regulates commerce between states and internationally, however individual states (and territories) are supposed to control domestic (registered in that state) business; and registrations of various sorts are coming and going constantly, “converting” from one form to another, merging out of existence, spinning off, sometimes getting suspended at the state or (whichever state entity, if any, regulates the tax-exempt entities within the state) level.  In other words, typically two sets of separate databases under separate agencies are involved at the state level.

Then there are all the state-based public entities (governments) — of which a very large chunk is going to be the state public university systems, although it’s obvious there are also many private universities too, which tend to be tax-exempt and acquire, manage, invest (as do the public) their endowments for long-term stability.

Another obvious major public institution in each state is going to be the prison systems (whether federal, located in the state, or state), not to mention all those courts and courthouses, social services buildings, and on and on.

If you think about the extent of institutions at any state which permeate our daily lives through simply existing — and which we are taxed to support — it’s a vast extensive, and unless we have clear understanding of their structures (which most people don’t), it may also seem “amorphous” panorama.

That panorama includes programming,  buildings, administrative staff, enforcers (i.e., police, sheriffs, detectives, probation officers, prison guards,… district attorneys, highway patrolmen — and some women — and so forth), first (emergency) responders, county hospitals and health districts, courthouses.

EACH PART of this system occupies some place on both the expenses and the revenues (cashflow) larger landscape map, and on the assets and liabilities map too. Parallel to, constantly intersecting with, but differently accounted for are all the private sector, including parts of the private sector servicing the major panorama of public entities.

Private Entities (Corporate/Business which includes the “nonprofit” better labeled as “tax-exempt” subset) and Public (government entities) sectors are always involved and in communication with each other.  The power pack is in that collaboration.  Individual people (versus businesses, including “corporate persons”) have defined rights mostly under the public sector (as limited by the various constitutions and laws for each jurisdiction), some under federal (with qualifications as to when those rights apply), but more-so under state law.

But individuals as individuals overall seem to have far fewer rights with the private sector, locally unless, in specific situations with specific corporations, individuals are directly contracting with them, enrolled in their programs for which they have paid, or rights as employees if working in the service of public (gov’t) entities.  The many places where we have fewer rights and harder to enforce ones includes when companies affecting our basic functions of: communication (radio, internet, electronic), movement (transportation infrastructure), shelter (where we live), water (that we drink or shower in), soils and ground the food is raised in, food we can and cannot eat, or even privately raise our selves to eat (plant or animal) etc. are government contractors entrenched in public/private ventures, formal or informal.

In other words and for example, in the post subject matter,

A Closer Look At — and Alternate Interpretation of — Who’s Funding Poverty Research (Hint: The Poor….) In New York (Columbia Univ.’s SSW), Wisconsin (Univ. Wisconsin-Madison’s IRP), and let’s not forget New Jersey (Princeton University’s Welfare-Reform-Focused “…Center for Research on Child Well-Being”)

I reference poverty centers at various universities in states where I (in case you’re interested) do not live and where my offspring as young adults or approaching majority age high schoolers, have not enrolled in or even applied to college. BUT collectively networked discussions, publications and historic positions of influence with government for many of the people involved, is affecting and affected — as it’s intended to — policies where I DO live and has been long-term impacting services I had to access by virtue of needing protection from abuse and legally separating my household and person from such abuser, with children involved.  

The effect has been overwhelmingly negative and damaging, and on exploring this I realized (year after year) that the major aspect of MY life (as representative demographically of a class they were dealing with) in a number of ways these people were concerned with was NOT my personal behavior, ethics, attainments, and position vis a vis compliance with local (state) laws, or even protection of my own children from becoming part of, or a witness to, a murder scene (given the danger level we were living with for so long) — but my gender and marital status.

It was also the primary major aspect of my children’s father they were concerned with too — in that he was a man, not a woman, and that he was for a period “noncustodial” and subject to a child support order.  That he had not completed college, and for about ten years engaged in wife-battering and other forms of violent control, or that he afterwards habitually disregarded and simply refused to comply with existing (family) court orders, was also somehow irrelevant in the equation too.

The social science-based equation says fatherlessness (whether or not my household was actually suffering from it — and it wasn’t; they saw him weekly unless he declined) is bad and therefore, single-mother households, per se, put children at risk, therefore court and legal rights must be tweaked (compromised) to obtain the desired adjustment in male-to-female headed households in a state.  This also tweaked the federal/state subject matter jurisdiction balance, undermining representative government.   It streamed incentives to do this throughout the system, thereby attracting, people and groups to take advantage (financially) of those offerings.

The places women most needed to know about those incentives would naturally be in the domestic violence service-providing entities, but that is precisely where they were not, have not been and from everything I can tell today, are still NOT being consistently informed that any such “beast” (literally, a sleeping dragon which wakes up later — in family court proceedings) exists. (I refer mostly to the access-visitation grants programming.  At the federal level, these are under Title IV-D, administered thus through the Office of Child Support Enforcement under HHS, although at any state they will go to a single agency (only, not several ones) which will vary by state, and can vary from year to year — but only one per state (or territory) per year).

These programs are now openly running father-engagement and marriage-counseling classes too (!).

Because my leaving an abusive marriage and surviving afterwards (until income was better established beyond the level of basic expenses), this  required temporary use of a safety net and involved obtaining a moderate (actually minimum, rock-bottom level) child support order initially, my life as well as many single mothers — as the program clearly intends to effect — has been impacted by the federal to state social welfare system with its gender-based policies and that whole infrastructure.  The reality of influence on individuals where they live is that exactly how far away it comes from is so clouded, so convoluted and so obscured that they cannot defend themselves properly or efficiently.

To defend themselves from oppression, people need to at least see the operational systems of oppression and comprehend how it works. (While I am using third person, you can bet I am thinking also in first person plural:  “us,” “ourselves,” we.”)

Above, I talked about the public and private sectors (and how private has a subset of nonprofit, meaning tax-exempt entities, some — but not all — of which by law must register their existence and file tax returns, and state-level reports of continued existence, ownership, revenues, etc.)

I can understand the need for this: people living in any state deserve to know what businesses are operating within it.  For example, if they have interactions and buy services from (or donate to) some entity locally, in person or by phone or internet too, IF it’s showing up local, they have a right to know how legitimate is it — and those databases of registered entities are where to look (as well as with the IRS if it’s calling itself tax-exempt).

But, beyond those legitimately registered businesses (for-profit or not-for-profit), although we don’t like perhaps to think about it so much, it should be acknowledged that there IS the underground, unregistered commercial sector, i.e., which being underground includes the criminal sector (with this note: criminal enterprise often moves its money through and to legitimately registered businesses).  (Catherine Austin Fitts explained this, with a practical example, many years ago [2001] in an article  in “NarcoNews,” “The Economics of Production: Sam and Dave do boatloads of a white agricultural substance” (Sam’s legal substance was sugar.  Dave’s illegal agricultural substance was an illegal drug), and how, once the system is in place, the criminal overhead is FAR less than the noncriminal — and in competition with it for market share.  She asked several commonsense questions about the two situations.  (See “Footnote Sam and Dave” — I’ll repost two images from it at the bottom of this post).

(Catherine Austin Fitts has been an investment banker, was highly placed under the Bush, senior administration in the FHA (Federal Housing Authority) and is a Wharton School of Economics, University of Pennsylvania graduate. I began quoting her for a season (for the commonsense explanations) around 2012 on this blog. She had also developed software to track federal investments by location (specifically HUD) and found an intentional negative “ROI” in neighborhoods where drugs were also being run; i.e., the “fees for friends” phenomenon.) 

We might think typically of the criminal activity being in drugs.  It’s also in children, in people and it could be in almost anything with market value.  Unfortunately, for sexual and other exploitation, women and children (both boys and girls) are high-value commodities in the illegal sector.

When all three sectors (<>legitimate public, <>legitimate private (for-profit &/or not-for-profit) and <>criminal underground (operating illegally, which would be definition mean major profits to be moved — and potentially and it’s been known to happen — through otherwise legitimate businesses) are operating in synch, then WATCH OUT!

@@!!!!(**by “legitimate” I don’t meant the subjective definitions, but in reference to basic compliance with state & IRS filings, that is, operating legally.  I mean not flouting the applicable laws to jurisdictions and types of organizations (businesses, corporations, etc.) they operate in.

The question also arises, how much to regulate and enforce compliance comes up, but I didn’t deal with it here //LGH Oct. 26, 2021)

[[Sentence copyedited for clarity Oct. 26, 2021.  Thinking of Tweeting this 3-part series soon//LGH]]

The people as individuals?  We’re (“they’re” as it applies) just the workers, the fuel in the system, and the justification for it.  We occupy a different position on any food chain involving any the above two, or with criminal underground (i.e., untaxed = very low overhead commerce), make that three sectors.  Generally speaking, we (most people) either work for or in them such entities (or rotating inbetween sectors), or are subjected to policies arranged by them if not really working.

However, when it comes to the public/private funded university research centers forever studying the causes for and remedies of poverty, that’s apparently one just about guaranteed place on a well-fed table and job stability — for those in it. Just don’t rock the existing boats too much, and keep up the expert status by conferencing, publishing, peer-reviewing and where possible, get in on the evaluating too, market niche.

~|~|~|~|~  SPLITTING THE POST HERE.  SOME PARAGRAPHS OVERLAP, STARTING HERE… I’VE ALSO MARKED WHERE THE OVERLAP ENDS WITH ANOTHER “~|~|~|~

Why I keep doing this: tangential (sort of) example,

Doing the drill downs, even just a bit further, illuminates what later becomes news.

Before I get into those poverty centers and which foundations are backing them (but my prior drill down came out of those same contexts), …

Consider this tangential, but recent example of how my previous (annoying) attention to following and considering, writing about not only the money,[1] but also the platforms on which it’s solicited, and who owns & runs them [2]; not only the press releases and publicity on specific programs, centers, entities, but  also the platforms on which it’s delivered (and who owns &/or runs those, too).[3] illuminates even CNN headlines involving drama.

This one involved a former Latin American country’s recent President who just (so it says) committed suicide rather than be taken by police under accusations of multi-million-dollar bribery and kickback scheme while he was President — involving a company who’d come across my path while following up on a donor solicitation platform and named sponsor of a fatherhood nonprofit in Illinois (til suspended, after which it surfaced again in Wisconsin).

If I hadn’t done the previous work, I’d have no idea of what the company reference was, or how it might be actually involved in what it was accused of, major kickback and bribery schemes.  More to the point of this example — what’s to stop that (and has it) from taking place in the US too? However, increasing awareness of these business structures (even though I’m not personally involved as an employee or stockholder of any sort) helps better comprehend where the accounting loopholes might be, and patterns such as nationalization of major enterprises, and how public involvement can make fortunes for those involved. It exposes the principles involved.

No matter which aspect one is looking at, the factor of tax-exempt entities and major sponsorship usually surfaces quickly.

[1] particularly related to court-connected or court-mandated programs, but because that also comes from higher or more distant sources, those sources too (Examples: federal grants to states to promote increased noncustodial parenting time, and to saturate social services and other agencies with TANF-(Social Security Act Title IV-A, administered through HHS)-driven purposes, such as promotion of marriage and reduction of out-of-wedlock births), or FVPSA (℅ CAPTA, also administered through HHS)-driven prevention of family violence, or VAWA (separate act, administered through USDOJ.  (respectively passed in: 1996ff, 1984ff (CAPTA 1974 or 5), 1994ff… Although the 1996 legislation (Welfare Reform) was a restructuring of an existing (1934) Social Security Act. So looking only at individual court-connected organizations at the local level ignores their larger, funded context.

[2] Platforms mediating how the public gets information are important to notice and document because they DO provide spin at all times and at all levels, as well as gatekeeping, and selective presentation of any underlying truths.  Whether these platforms are literally a government entity website (or one contracted out to provide such information for a government entity), a nonprofit website or (specific type of some universities) a major, long-established university’s website or parts of it, or even the databases which show collections of charitable filings — ALL have their characteristics of omissions and selection on which fields are harder or impossible to search.

[3] Who owns/runs information platforms and is also helping sponsor content for them to run 24/7, developing new outlets, consolidating and merging, etc.  (I extended this footnote at the bottom of the post for recent interesting example of why I continue to look such things up:  See “Footnote [3] “Who owns/runs info platforms and sponsors their content, cont’d.“) 

In those cases funding starting at the federal level as Congressionally-(i.e., legislatively) authorized expenses goes out to in part to the states, but also in part to specific private organizations in various states too.  So the federal influence cannot be determined by looking only at state federal receipts.

TODAY’s (April 17, 2019) ON-LINE NEWS:

… CONTINUED ON “PART 2”

~|~|~You (I hope) just finished reading but for sure are looking at the bottom of “Part 1” ~|~|~|~|

A Closer Look At — and Alternate Interpretation of — Who’s Funding Poverty Research (Hint: The Poor….) In New York (Columbia Univ. SSW), Wisconsin (University of Wisconsin’s IRP), and let’s not forget New Jersey (Princeton University’s Welfare-Reform-Focused “…Center for Research on Child Well-Being”). (Pt. 1 of 3=”-9LJ”)(Written mid-April, Split in 3 mid-May, 2019]  (<~<~<~  CLICK TO GO TO TOP OF THIS POST)

CLICK HERE NEXT ~>~>~>~> A Closer Look At … (Pt. 2 of 3=”9Tx”)

Or skip to Part 3:  A Closer Look At … (Pt. 3 of 3=”9TC”)