This corresponds to a post on my other blog (now in draft) under “Unsafe for Human Consumption? The Leftovers of Government by the People. Meanwhile, this one itself got out of control and is 20,000 words — part quotes, part exhortation, and (true to style) I have about three different themes going at once.
I looked up details from Ms. Fitts, “The Myth of the Rule of Law,” and laid this as background to the passage of “PRWORA” (Welfare Reform, 1996) supposedly to end welfare (poverty), and its later metamorphoses.
Also, while there, another look at how this 1996 switchover from “AFDC” (Aid to Families with Dependent Children) became instead “TANF” (federal block grants to the states), not actually to reduce welfare or poverty, or particularly help children, but from what I can tell, to start doing to HHS (which administers food stamps, cash aid to families, Medicaid, gives out grants/incentives to foster care, adoptions, and in short is one of THE largest federal agencies — which the USA’s own “GAO” disclaimed to report on, but did take special time to comment upon, i.e., the HHS grants aren’t being well monitored.
1996 welfare reform’s background includes political problems a Democratic President (Clinton) had during a Republican Congress already prone to lecturing poor people about their poverty, wanted to add to this single mothers about marriage, and almost everyone about “abstinence,” meanwhile diverting billions into “Fees for Friends” programs in (on closer examination) amazing repetitive patterns of favoring groups that simply don’t stay incorporated, and later (see “Baltimore”) show up as suspiciously dishonest in their handling of these grants.
Another angle on this, which I believe IS relevant, is how President Clinton and his then-advisor Dick Morris, it turns out, had both? studied at Oxford, and (at least Clinton) were Rhodes scholars.
Which brings us also to the topic of the Rhodes Scholars, and the original purpose behind Cecil Rhodes — British Expansionism. The details of this information really do show the canvas on which the events of the last few decades have been painted by the same school of artists, trained essentially by the same masters, and in some cases descendants are involved. Combined with Catherine Austin Fitts’ quotations about “financial coups d’etat” and hearing that the decision had been made to let the USA go down financially, I think the British Imperialist/expansionist connection really does bear keeping in mind.
We need to know how this works and make up our minds where we stand regarding the matter.
It’s time to face the facts, when I also present more facts on who is buying up American real estate, selling its debt and sticking us — we are now the “indigenous people,” the lowly taxpayers — and doing this from tax-exempt foundations and PRIVATE equity. While the people in power may be Americans, their heart, mindset, and trainers are not. As such, when we talk about law, we have to look at who laid down the law — and who is financing our own government.
Absent really having this conversation, there is simply not enough common logic to work with; people are operating on myths and not willing to lay down their idols yet.
Let me start here with Rhodes. I already have posts on another blog, “from Transvaal to TANF” and “Rhodes Scholars in the US: Sir John Templeton.”
It’s a lot of material, and I cannot invest much more formatting time. Anyone of moderate intelligence, and who is willing to make some time to keep paying attention, over time, will eventually be able to connect the dots. I am simply waving a few red flags here.
There will be some heavy lifting (mentally) required in this field, to get any substance. There’s also delayed gratification before an “Aha.” (suggestion, skip the text, read what’s in the tables, perhaps).
I’m sorry, but that’s just how it goes. In life, we need to sort and select information, and validate or reject it, but (trust me) the brain works better when exercised — not tickled but actually used to make important decisions and think beyond one’s lifetime. To make halfway intelligent decisions about the future, for your kids (if there are some), or beyond one’s lifetime — then you are going to have to do some mental and HEART work, and face your unpleasant emotional responses to things you unearth. Just working a job or a profession (trust me) is more fun, and often more financially rewarding — in the short term.
This diagram works for me …. seems to hold some water, from “the Paper Empire: Unwinding the global fiat money experiment.” Some of this history only goes back to the 1800s or so — that’s not too hard to summarize, or at least count the wars. We are still within 100 years (as of 2013) of the creation of the Federal Reserve, the passage of the income tax, followed by World War I (it only got its numbering to distinguish it from World War II), followed by enough people deciding that it was “good” to keep the USA on emergency status (since 1933) — makes governance simpler.
Then these are described on the site (please look for definitions). In brief,
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What can you say? I am the daughter of a scientist, I am an artist (not visual arts), and I think.
I have ALWAYS been intensely curious about truth; I came out this way, and never fit in right as a kid. When I got to college, I didn’t just attend college — I wanted to know why my classmates had come also, and went about interviewing them. For years, I was constantly interviewing people about how they lived and what motivated them (actually I still do this conversationally). This had nothing to do with an interest in psychology and desire to label, file, and manipulate others. I simply wanted to know.
I slept through a good deal of K-12 school, came out on top anyhow, and woke up for things that engaged my full attention, and studied them further afterwards. For some reason, I had no respect for teachers that didn’t require me to work hard, which most didn’t — and that was in a well-respected public school.
As a parent of more than one child, I have seen them come out differently — that’s from a very early age. Both very smart, but they processed information differently, as I do from my own siblings, one of who I’d call a sociopath, the other, who married one. I also appear to have married one, but eventually managed to throw him out, at serious risk (and requiring courage and resourcefulness to figure out HOW).
I have sampled all kinds of bureaucracies, and managed small, medium, and a few times, sectors of large businesses for others, run a few (small) myself. If I were in your business right now, your bottom line would be helped, because I’m creative, and diligent, and pretty quick at picking up where the roadblocks are — regardless of the field. I’m a problemsolver. I ENJOY thinking, I can tolerate all kinds of people, but I HATE liars. Wasting my time and boredom are a form of torture, along with the various forms that are legitimately called “domestic violence.”
When there’s the right support system, people of this type (creative, diligent, professionals — leave me alone, let me practice in my field, or create a new field if necessary) are contributing to society.
The problem comes is that the happy-in-their-profession professionals have a moral duty (by and large, they have forsaken it, no offence meant) to keep the sociopaths who fund them in place — but by and large they simply won’t. Sociopaths are always waging some kind of war, they always have some kind of “game” they are playing, and they work through and in government, which has the capacity to collect huge wealth and the means to absolutely dominate any population through force. Some of these come up from hardship, others from wealth. As I am not God, or an expert in genetics, I can’t say whether it’s spiritual or genetic in origin — nor is it my place in a blog like this to say so. However, I experience dealing with the different types as a spiritual issue.
I have at least two sociopaths in my extended family. You do not reason, negotiate, or cut a deal with a sociopath without becoming more like them. They are going to suck up all the air in any relational space; either you breathe that foul air, or you break loose. I don’t think chances of shutting them up are very good.
Sooner or later you will be compromised. Like parasites, they are in the business of destroying other things and people, particularly independent good things not under their control — and if you cannot stomach ejecting this from any system; but still love the paycheck, you WILL be sooner or later a who to worse and worse treatment (of yourself, a relative, your neighbors). You will be used. Any technology or neat inventions you may help create, will also be used, to wage war, usually on the innocent. [Come to think of it, Ms. Fitts also speaks of “economic tapeworm” in American society. The real problem is the comfort zone.
I am saying this with all that I have inside right now — I know what I’m talking about here. Any people are only ‘marginally’ sheep, who are not comfortable in that function, and are willing to, perhaps change — now is your time! Get educated, and get an action plan, do not sit still and be sucked dry and lied to, if possible. If nothing else, tell people to read their CAFRS, read a few sites that make sense (I’m recommending Fitts, Burien, and realitybloger.wordpress.com for starters; or you can plow through my stuff). You have to TOTALLY lose your taste for falsehood and go seek the bottom-line truth of the largest possible scope, and then come to a decision on it.
This is, (FYI), what Jesus Christ basically demanded of people, prophets basically do that; probably why they were always getting thrown out, or stuck up to their necks in dung (Jeremiah), or being hunted down. They disrupt the status quo, BUT they are the white blood cells of human society. People that don’t want to, or can’t function like this, can do something to make at least a little space for those that are, to exist, or risk taking a few in from time to time.
One thing, I know personally, that brought out my fighting spirit and willingness to take some real hardships (and take on these tasks) was being a mother. I also was, as an artist and thinker, incensed at the stupidity and cruelty I saw in these court systems. It’s outrageous that people who have gone through near-death experiences should be sat down and lectured by their own government, made to deal personally with people who have assaulted them, and in short, treated like animals for the crime of acting like real human beings. As an artist (and obviously writing AIN’T my longsuit) I am willing to undergo a transformation to speak to these issues so that, perhaps at some other time, it may be safe for future artists or creative sorts to exist, and not be used by sociopaths to destroy others.
I kept noticing, over time, that of the hundreds (literally) of people who knew what was going on in my home, or who afterwards were wonderfully supportive during major trauma (associated with custody) — only a very, very few actually expressed outrage — they got f for my sake. But every one of these were also dependent upon the system for their lives, and for their housing. I had no right to ask them to sacrifice more than they already did.
But just for the record, standing by me at least morally — only a very small handful (actually, at this time, it’s really only ONE person) actually got indignant. Said person, I also noticed, is, #1 an atheist (I’m not, but this seems significant); #2 a long-term leader in (her) own field, #3, creative, very very smart and self-assured, and does not appear to give a damn what people think of (her); and #4, as it happens suffered horrible beatings throughout her childhood (confirmed by her sister), from their father (only one child was attacked), into and a bit beyond even being married. In one of them, she was almost killed. I know a few women in this category (some, it was their mother who abused). All of them seem to be fiercely independent, smart, and make breakthroughs in various fields.
I don’t know how to say this much plainer, about the three types (call them what you will. It’s not meant to be condescending, it’s not an appeal to the “elitist” to say, oh, I am a truthseeker because I spend a lot of time looking.
I really think that society cannot survive (it will implode and/or explode) unless the proportions of truth-seekers increase, and the “sheep” start calling upon what’s left of them, and examine their own leadership. WHILE HERE, let me explain, no question about it, several major religious call their flocks “sheep” and themselves “shepherds.” there is a reason people like to assemble themselves under sociopath leaders who enable abuse and set up codependent relationships. These people tend to not deal well with conflict, and are (to put it plainly) just not independent thinkers. They may not like attention focused on them, but they like the social grouping. Such groups are often ripe picking for the stray abuser, which is why this keeps hitting the press, and why I steer clear, particularly being female.
There are differences; I’ve recently heard a PhD geneticist confirm as well). Again, I haven’t heard the youtube here yet, but sometimes George Carlin nails a situation; he’s right about this one:
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In looking at what C.A. Fitts discovered, and acted on, within HUD and FHA, I have to ask, how is it that no one did, before her? Was this her calling for her time?
Anyhow, the Rhodes Scholarships are picking the cream of the crop, inviting them to Oxford to study, and training them up in the way they should “go forth and conquer,” regardless of national origin, according to the British expansionist version of the world. Bill Clinton was one of these. And being President, he’s the one that signed Welfare Reform, 1996. He also sent out a “fatherhood memo” in 1995.
Rhodes Scholarships to Americans began in 1904 and I understand there have been over 300 of them.
Point in Case: England had lost the colonies physically but for us paying attention to finances, the economic war hasn’t ceased. Governments must be transformed to centralized control in the British order, or else. I will make this a separate post….
Ms. Fitts’ publication (The Myth of the Rule of Law) (if not all its additions or updates) is now over a decade OLD. I’m posting the contents, because (herein) I’m looking in particular about parts of the RTC — the “Resolution Trust Corporation” — which was “The RTC was a mechanism by which the American taxpayers underwrote approximately $500 billion of waste, tax shelters and fraud in a manner that allowed the investors to buy the assets at a discount . . . “I think a lot of us don’t really understand how “the borrower is servant to the lender” in contemporary terms, or think (in the course of daily life) about language that would be familiar to people working in the field.And how the US (federal) government, which obviously knows this, has been buying up real estate and debt, alongside also (it would seem) creating fraudulent mortgage paperwork, and selling assets to friends and sticking the public with the liabilities, while all the time promoting debt, debt, debt, (guilt), debt & disaster, cut services — blame the poor, blame someone else, etc. We have to start thinking in terms of sales: buying and selling, markups, and middlemen.
But somehow even people who are in sales, or even run others’ businesses for a paycheck, even people who are accountants, do not think strategically about the larger, and largest scope of the landscape we work in.I have come to the conclusion that the large-scale scope of this ignorance is as hazardous to the average family as the perpetrators.
Fraud happens when people have previously consented, usually, en masse, to let someone else mind their business, and failed to oversee it properly. When this reaches exponential proportions, as it has, we have a completely dangerous situation, and there is no solution other than shipwreck without a mass change of conscience (a change of heart, really) about the ship. Of state. People have to be willing and able to handle conflict.
If I’m just living in my own home, paying its mortgage through working a job, and trying to have enough net income to keep food on the table, I am not likely to be contemplating, or be fluent in concepts like “securities” or “pooled mortgage defaults” or perhaps even in “investment” in theory, let alone in practice.
I probably am not thinking about how debt is bundled and then put on the auction block and understand WTF* this same government feels free to lecture the poor unemployed or underemployed about their work ethic (“the lazy bums, welfare queens, and frauds hitchhiking on the honest working class”), and the middle class about its responsibility to pay off the collected trillion-$$ US Debt (part of the game of which is keeping the working middle classed focused on the lazy bum low-income population).
(*scatalogical acronym, alternate version “WTH.” It works for me, might be too old for your basic teenager)
As a mother I’m particularly sensitive to the “lazy bum” treatment after a few years of sleep deprivation while working full-time nights married, repeated work sabotage, credit destruction, and personally witnessed it work in exact reverse from its original stated purpose, and its label: “Child Support Enforcement.” This post (towards bottom) documents some of the metamorphosis from actually reducing poverty to marriage promotion. I also have personal experience with attempting to work with a local child support agency before and immediately after an overnight custody-switch, before I knew to look at who was funding it. (NOTE: CAFRs often show Child Trust and Child Support Funds, and they should be noticed). In other words, I saw it in action — letting the arrears build up to unacceptable (crisis) levels, refusing to take action, then when it finally commandeered my ex’s license, someone obviously cut a deal along the way — because he simply snatched our children, immediately terminating the responsibility (current), suspending ANY payments on arrears for a long time, getting arrears compromised retroactively (by about one-third) and in the process wiping out my offspring’s chance of EVER getting child support from at least their one working parent, as the drawn-out process destroyed my own income.Our children were then essentially “sold” to third parties, and no doubt someone is billing their social security#s to a program they’re not in. It is ALL gamesmanship, not just part of it.What I learned from watching this process spin out over several years is, how gangs of crooks actually work as enabled by local (county, state, federal) government. The pattern of fraud, lying, deceit, absolute and utter lack of accountability (more than even a veneer). While this is valuable knowledge, it sure is unpleasant and has changed me into a less gullible, but also less trusting person — but probably a lot more useful one to the rest of society then when I was coasting along as an innocently happy employee or private contractor in my settled profession.In discussion the PRWORA aspect, I also bring up (again) how this basically ignores domestic violence as a real source of post-separation poverty. “DV coalitions are brought in as the icing on the cake, and if they try to function in substance to counter post-separation violence in the family law venue, they would lose their funding. Again, patronizing attitudes towards “low-income” people are completely inappropriate from Administrations that knowingly did not publicize the net worth of government (CAFRs), and which have overseen the levels of dysfunction Ms. Fitts and friends found within HUD. Weighed in the balance, it can’t, won’t, and has no real intention, to balance its own books. When actions have been taken to do so, the ship doesn’t change direction, but the whistleblowers have been targeted, as the Hamilton Securities story appears to show.In draft, this is a 17,000 word post (it has lots of quotes). I will either split it again, or leave it long and expect people to read in installments. It takes talent and time to write short pithy, but documented, exposes. I don’t have the time. Learn to scan for relevant data — that’s what I had to do! Professional publishers pay developmental editors, copyeditors, proof-readers, abstractors, and indexers. I am writing “on the fly,” here, but do have a nose for information that speaks to the big picture, with supporting detail. Please tweet or publicize the blog to taxpayers, people struggling with foreclosures, or people who are standing beside others dealing with domestic violence or loss of contact with their children thereafter.Please review my last [on a different blog] post (“Government: Same Turkey Outside, but Who Changed the Stuffing?” It’s not that long), quoting from Ms. Fitts and Mr. Burien, and the evidence from the Massachusetts League of Women Voters that Massachusetts did indeed, as Mr. Burien noted, actually abolish several of its counties (leaving the shell geo-political designation, but governmentally up to the “commonwealth” (state, for most of us) level. And notice that this happened AFTER 1996 welfare reform. I cited Fitts saying:I tend to like “show and tell,” not just “tell.” Perhaps I’ve heard too much “that’s just what YOU say” talk from the deny/rationalize/desensitize quarters, and tend towards over-documentation. In fact, I know I do.But I know will that also loses readers….So, I’m moving part of that “show” over here. As I said up front, to get the whole picture, rotate from blog to blog (see “what it’s about” and two other opening pages under blog title here).Who is this woman and why should anyone listen to such radical, unpleasant statements? Is she making it up? Where’s the documentation? How plausible is it?Well, here’s just part of one segment from a table of contents (links) on”The Myth of the Rule of Law” (2001), stating her job reference: Assistant Secretary of Housing in the Bush (Sr.) Administration. I know elsewhere that she had worked for an investment firm, and was FHA Commissioner. Her mother was an economist with the Philadelphia Federal Reserve system (who retired to raise children) and her father a trauma surgeon. Her motivation for learning “How Money Works” was watching the destruction of a neighborhood. Mine was watching the destruction of lives through the court systems, while religion stands by and/or enables. I am very familiar with the concept of economic AND social control systems, which is why I want them changed.So, please read several paragraphs here to get a grasp of the terms, and the economic scope. This is our federal government’s behavior, having control of multi-billions of $$ collected from wage-earners, invested around the globe, and not accounted for right.Referencing the timespan 1989-1990:If you follow my first Lets Get Honest family law blog (since 2009), (or the shorter, neater, but still perceptive version, “Read My Links”), just about every other post I have something to say about welfare reform, diversions of funding to federal (and other) contractors, block grants to the states, and how the family court was set up to dispense therapy; as a literal mental health Archipelago, decked out and robed as if a court of law ruled by facts, and concerned with the kids.By now, there should be, for its followers, and somewhere between the first one’s 500+ posts, a basic understanding of how radical this was, and why and how it happened. Unknown to me at the time (I was in an abusive marriage and experience as part of the control factor repeated sabotage of work and economic options that might allow me accumulate enough resources to leave, rent my own place, and support our kids in safety. Unfortunately, such paranoid/controlling/abusive persons (AND institutions) have a keen sense of when someone is about to break loose, and have a kazillion ways to prevent it. The primary means is often simply economic — in order to flee, and stay separate, one needs to live somewhere, obviously. Many people under such control have already been isolated from support systems — or such support systems simply ignore the abuse and danger which are routine, if you’re in it.That’s the bad news; but the GOOD news is that we have learned from the experience, and have a valuable lesson for the rest of the country.The only problem is, the government has sunk its funding into various rhetoric-based information “clearinghouses” (fatherhood.gov, healthymarriage.org, etc.) for the same sorts of propaganda that abusers use to continue their sick relationships, to continue the same sick premise that everyone should support it, while it continues to lie, steal, cheat, abuse and hurt people it’s supposed to be serving, protecting, and (as implied in a marriage vow) nurturing, cherishing, etc..And as of about the mid-1990s, while the domestic violence crowd was allowed to exist, it too took government funding (a lot of it) and had to either be put on a leash, restrict themselves as to venue, or countered. And so we get major support towards any and all nonprofits which will speak out (as loud as you want doesn’t matter) about domestic violence and abuse, or even violence towards women — so long as they don’t truly defame the institutions of marriage and family, and do NOT report on how the “conciliation courts” commonly known as domestic relations, custody, or “family” courts.AND so long as they do not blow the whistle on how the propagandists live (which isn’t by the standard, often low-wage, employment they are pushing on everyone else who is separated).When AFDC went to TANF under President Clinton, in 1996, it was major transformation of the distribution of federal grants to the states, and a major policy change. It was at several levels a response to feminism, and as such, many religious groups were quite favorable to it. In my opinion, it appealed to the basest human instincts to negatively (or, patronizingly, which is hardly much different) others, lie to them, and profit from it — indefinitely. In other words, it appealed to sexism, racism, elitism, and pride. No one could get away with, I’d like to think, talking about certain ethnic groups directly in the 1990s (as had been in the 1960s and earlier), but it was still acceptable throughout society to talk about women in this manner, and particularly single mothers, and — let’s get down to business — particularly single mothers of color on welfare. Accordingly, promote marriage, and abstinence, and reward those willing to lecture on fatherhood as well. Here’s a 2001 paper, posted online at “ku.edu” (presumably Kentucky University):- – – – -it goes on, and on – – –nowhere in there will it recognize that sometimes poverty is caused by domestic violence. The bottom line of recognizing that is that it may NOT relate to incompetence, laziness, lack of training (sometimes, it’s the opposite), and as such, families affected by this need justice, or at least protection, far more than they need. For any entity as dishonest and extortionist as this government is turning out to be — to try and pull the “moral high ground” as part of public policy is ridiculous. One of the first things I picked up on, starting to read some of the rhetoric (including the Congressional testimony leading up to 1996 welfare reform, not to mention afterwards). It’s racist, condescending, patronizing, hypocritical, regards the other population as a substance to be worked on — and its operational system is not transparent. No person of spirit and with a backbone would voluntarily subject themselves to this type of treatment, and people are indeed resisting. However it’s difficult to resist without resources…More to the point, this whole welfare reform (which is, really a “federal budget/appropriations”) deal chronologically follows significant money-laundering operations being set up in the 1980s (The Franklin Coverup//Credit Union & Child Prostitution Ring (which definitely ties into drugs, narcotics trafficking, ie., the children were used as drug mules also: Google “Paul Bonacci”)). High-profile politicians and FBI were nailed/blackmailed because of their (nasty) private addictions. Eight people were murdered as part of the coverup. While this was centered in Nebraska, it is an object lesson in who, really, is running our national and state governments. Kids were flown all over.Note: children for the purpose of trafficking were some, provided from foster care families; some from Boys Town, and some of those, once forced into it, then used as bait to kidnap others. Children were murdered. Witnesses (Paul Bonacci, Alicia Owens) were prosecuted for slander, and some of them turned up dead. The material is sickening and vicariously traumatizing (one reason for the name blog: “Cold Hard Facts”) is my own attempt to avoid ongoing re-traumatization vicariously without abandoning the cause of speaking out against child-trafficking for financial profit. I do have PTSD! But financial fraud is only one form of abuse; generally speaking abuse is comprehensive, and comes as a cluster of characteristics — and this includes sexual and physical abuse of women, and boys and girls, and yes, men, as well. Not all abusers are white middle-aged males; the Larry King involved in this scandal certainly wasn’t!At this point, I pretty much believe that the money laund go together. Where there’s a certain amount of financial fraud and coverup, there are those other matters not acceptable to discuss in polite, moral, society, and certainly not fun to talk about, either. No one said truth was always pleasant — but it’s needed.Therefore I find that welfare reform of the 1996s in the perspective of the other matters which preceded it (1980s — around which time the battered women’s movement was developing but had already, from my research, been anticipated and derailed/outgunned, outfunded (looking here at Ellen Pence (d. recently)’s “Collective Community Response” movement, Duluth Abuse Intervention Programs, etc.” and diverted from confronting this matter, to compromising it: they would train judges and sell supervised visitation and intervention programs instead. The key word being “SELL” – and there is big bucks (incl. federal bucks) in this type of “technical assistance” programs.I am not done exposing this yet (on different site), but through simply being nosy, discovered the “blackbaud” trademark, and how this made a UK citizen a multi-milionaire. It’s a software platform that Technical Assistance and Training platform used by this MN group to sell it’s web-based programming material, and schedule seminars and conferences, etc.You can notice that this 2001 description of the changeover simply quotes other research, but there’s next to no reference to violence as a factor in poverty:- – – – -it goes on and on.How hypocritical — the system is actually driving families who (unlike it) actually depend on working jobs onto poverty after having been sold as reducing welfare, which was characterized (esp. by Republicans then in control of Congress, although the President was Democrat) as being caused not by, say, our own government defrauding Americans of many things — like a valid currency, or accountability in its use of our investments, while concealing the existence of CAFRs (by and large) from the public, and while not being able ITSELF to run programs like HUD as anything other than a slush fund,” or “fees for friends,” while in short itself engaged in criminal racketeering beyond the imagination of the ordinary individual even if such a person actually intended to somehow be a welfare queen and was innately “indigent” per the propaganda. This is also the same government involved in The Franklin Coverup, (child prostitution ring for the purpose of blackmailing politicians to enable the money-laundering, etc.); in fact, the more I look at these things, the more disgusting and revolting it becomes.However, PRWORA eventually morphed into classifying as many people as possible for “TANF” services, particularly when the matter of child support is taken into account. It was sold as poverty reduction, but within a very few years, changed its tune, which can be documented (and has been).From the Perspective of a Battered Woman who opted for Single-Motherhood as both fiscally and physically preferable. Not to mention in about every other way:While welfare reform was happening, I, and thousands of others (I DNK if hundreds of thousands, but suspect so) around the country, were trapped economically AND physically through threat in abusive (violent) relationships masquerading under the umbrella institution (many of them) of “marriage.” Some of these had additional religious rationalization added in for good measure, and were caught unawares.Therefore it’s clear what PRWORA overall doesn’t accept, or account for, is that many times women are targeted once they are landed specifically because of their education or independence; they may have even been selected for partners because of their earning capacity and apparently religious institutions are often likely to produce more submissive ones, too. Moreover, sometimes the abuse starts in earnest when they are pregnant and actually in a situation needing some help or support from their partners, or at least expecting some.It doesn’t make much policy sense to dump so many millions into programs based on false (if not, many of them, utterly ridiculous) premises, but welfare reform wasn’t actually (in my opinion) designed to make sense or actuallyreduce poverty and child abuse. Comparing Savings and Loan Scandal, HUD Loan Sales (Bank Bailouts), and THEN Welfare Reform (The Bush Sr. years, the Clinton Years, Bush Jr., now Obama) it is simply consistent conduct:
- Previous setup creates predictable crises
- Emergency Status (since 1933) enables “anything goes” solution
- The solution will ALWAYS lead to more centralized control and suspense of the rule of law.
- The solutions generally enable more “fees for friends.”
- Wealth flows away from the common person and taxpayers to the “amoral” and tax-exempt.
For these women (and I know a lot of them, have networked, looked at court dockets, researched local county situations, and national organizations as part of attempgint to understand “how can this be?” in my own country. So, during the 1990s, at least for me, and for most of such women, political reform or tracking government was the least of our day to day worries; we were in survival mode. When it comes to women (we know there are men) targets of partner violence (“IPV” as it’s called, “intimate partner violence.” When I finally learned that there were laws in place to help save my life, and my kids’ (and exes) of course, this was excellent. however, it was not enough — and the bill (presented a few years later) was essentially child sacrifice to the system, and being subjected to ongoing indoctrination, patronizing and condescending treatments, and being blamed for a single primary mistake: Not being prophetic, mind-reader, or simply smart enough to predict how the relationship was going to turn out.Some of these women are experiencing severe post-separation losses, and/or death, anyhow, through the insane ideology of the same courts. It’s become a real litany of tragedies, and we really do have to continue exerting major life energies while still single (or, even at times, after remarriage to a decent man this time) to stay alive. These are becoming, it seems, more and more violent and sometimes claiming bystander victims. No one who has come close to similar situation can afford to fall asleep at the wheel: Our courts are enabling familicides under the name of “family”– and this is directly related to welfare reform, which idolizes the same. It’s a national cognitive dissonance of epic proportions and (quite honestly)has me wondering where a real vision for a possible, sane future, might lie. I personally feel as though I am racing the clock for solutions that may involve any sort of collective action.For example, here’s a case that — fully 8 years after the father tried to kill his wife on a regular visitation pickup — is still in appeals. She was actually awarded $3.7 million damages (appropriate — see the details) and he still wants joint custody and to get out of the award. Obviously, someone is a sociopath — but the institution that said, “visitation for violent fathers, joint custody (etc.)” set this one up, and that institution is amoral. It’s a business outfit, not a personal protection outfit.Eventually I learned that our country defines “crime” not consistently as violations of basic humanity so much as economic competition with its own RICO business agenda. Knowing this sheds an entirely different light on the Penal Code, Family Code, Education Code and all the other “codes.” Essentially, they are there for show; they are the Emperor’s Robes, to encourage generally moral behavior among most people — but not necessarily for governmental leadership and its associates, who are more about:[[Whatever…. however in From Transvaal to TANF” I show how then-President Bill Clinton (i.e., he was Prez in 1996) was caught (Democrat President, Republican Congress) between a rock and a hard place on this matter of a budget, from which we got welfare reform. Around the same time he was also caught with his pants down (literally). His Administration, in short, needed to redeem itself. PBS Frontline narrates the process of introducing “Hegelian dialetic” to come up with “ending welfare as we knew it,” which it did. Not in a positive sense, but it did. I understand this triangulation having seen it in action locally and in my life also. Those employing this ALWAYS have another agenda (for Clinton, it was political), and it is definitely “amoral,” which is a serious problem.In February 2012 in “From the Transvaal to TANF (Welfare Reform) via Rhodes (and a Rhodes Scholar) I’m looking back from a 2011 perspective, quoting the Assistant Secretary of HHS addressing a “Fatherhood Conference” in San Francisco.First, I’ll excerpt the 2011 comments (and my response about general ignorance of TANF aka PRWORA, welfare reform), then the PBS outline of what led up to it politically, from Clinton’s Perspective. That he’s a Rhodes Scholar and a consultant (if I remember it right, an Oxford Scholar figures in, there is an identified agenda behind the original Rhodes Scholarship, part of which is to restore the British empire to its global domination…. One thing at a time, though!~ ~ ~The last segment was from 1989-1990. Here’s a retrospective of the $500 billion bank bailout (CitiCorps, etc.) and what it means for not even “the little guy” or individuals — but even small businesses.I am building layers of information here, to characterize what is taking place IN government, and what significance it has. When the discrepancy of treatment of government versus people is at the multi-billion and multi-trillion-dollar level, and was are still approaching this institution as if it’s benevolent and has our best interests in mind — instead of dedicating ALL we have (energy, time, purpose, networking, looking for a strategy to resist, and to become NOT so dependent for our own physical survival on this centralization of power in Washington, D.C. (in particular) and ITS network of influence and power) — we become progressively dumber and more docile with every generation, and as time passes. We become the acted upon, and not actORs.At all times, it’s in the government’s interest that we CONSENT to lack of accountability while continuing to fund its hunger. Take it from a domestic violence survivor — same is true of any kidnapping — the time to resist the hardest is before you are “taken,” and controlled. If that doesn’t happen, escape becomes harder, more dangerous, and more costly.As with an abusive marriage (sorry to keep raising the analogy), it is started with, generally, a public oath “Do you solemnly swear,” etc. It’s started under the umbrella of something good — voluntary liaisons, that is. Same deal with cults (they recruit) and same deal with expansionist central governments. They sell their purpose to counter some other social evil (like big business? Or anarchy? or the bad guys in the next neighborhood?).So, here’s another chapter in the same story, from the same author:You tell me why the federal government should have $1.2 trillion credit, about one-third of it in HUD mortgage insurance, and it was already known at the time that HUD was being run as a criminal enterprise? (Fitts was told this before taking the position, and found it out once in there).This segment then goes on to talk about how HUD finally got in there and started putting out bids to improve recoveries of loan losses. (“The auction block” of homes that residents could no longer afford to pay the mortgages on). This is where Fitt’s firm Hamilton Securities got involved. What I am showing is how our government sets up situations of huge debt, doesn’t track where it is, and then sells it to bidders.Let’s talk about 1989 again, and the Savings and Loan (S&L) crisis, and how government galloped in to “rescue” We, the People by creating another tool from which to steal from them some more, using public credit for private profits. To understand this, we have to understand at least the process of buying and selling, investing for profits.MOST OF AMERICA doesn’t even understand that beyond the local grocery stores or gas stations. We have been drilled and grilled to work for wages by the hour, giving HQ its cut and an implicit belief that this will be invested and saved for our collective benefit, by Big Brother. We essentially pay it to mind our personal business, while we work in ITS businesses. It’s as though, “out of sight, out of mind, leave it to the experts, money is too complicated for ME to understand; give me a decent job and leave me alone!” — even if you are an expert in something else, like your own work. I was also raised this way. If we are good citizens, good students, good boys and girl (though adults) and mind our business, and simply work, we will be OK.Wrong!!Basically these high-powered players are saying the same thing my pipsqueak research concluded — the money is not monitored; anything goes, literally, and as such, when money is given to this centralized power hub up front, regulated (??) by elected representatives, you might as well kiss it goodbye. One last quote from this site:Many people are, of course, too heavily invested in a system that basically (if not ideally) still works for them, for now. Others are employed by it. I cannot and do not expect to reach everyone.But I want to reach enough people who understand that, when dealing with extreme power, TRUTH COUNTS. People willing to discard bad analysis and propaganda, and replace it with the factually honest and historically reasonable.Governments are corporations who play by different rules, that they make. While not all public servants may understand they are working for an expansionist, lawless (except in reference to itself) beast, literally, and are taking a ride on parts of it — more people towards the top and policy-setting circles do than might be expected. People who GET the truth and SPEAK the truth in a certain manner will find out very quickly where individuals stand. Some of these people have been killed for doing so.A radical decision to “read thy CAFR, Know thy Government, Talk back to Taxes” CAN become a movement — and it will change society if it inspires enough. And guess what — there are SOME legal ways not to fund this beast, or to detox from it.
You may want to also check out (found while looking for The Myth of the Rule of Law and the Destruction of Hamilton. Let’s see where this serendipity (“found”) post fits in the mix:
More on an upcoming post:
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. .the members of the Administration have no way of guaranteeing their safety and the safety of their families if they defy orders of those who have the weaponry and power to enforce their will by any means necessary.
“Essentially there is no government as many of us think of it.”“… Since WWII, the American economy has been “fiscalized.” By that I mean that most households, state and municipal governments, and local economies have become highly dependent on federal government credit, contracts, subsidies, and other forms of income and are heavily regulated by federal agencies.This widespread dependency on the federal financial mechanism is the basis for extraordinary central control.” Catherine Austin Fitts, Quoted from:”Straight Talk with Catherine Fitts: We are Victims of a Financial Coup D’Etat” by Adam Taggart, posted January 30, 2011 |
((meaning, more mortgages being bought by the government?))
This is “only”the difference between the yearly budget and the net worth–between “regular” financial statements and the Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports that governments have required of each other – I thought — since 1972. This is on what Walter Burien is a major whistleblower. The United States of America can’t (or won’t) audit itself properly and can’t, last we heard, issue an opinion on whether its own financial statements are worth a spit in the wind, as I have posted, I believe this month. Consider: Nonprofits have to write accrual statements. Public-traded corporations have to, for their shareholders. But what was going on here: the USGovernment, ain’t — and who are the primary stakeholders in this government, if not people supporting it with their wage deductions, and lifetime of work? We deserve the same accountability as any shareholder (at least), but have been derailed and distracted from even knowing where to LOOK, let alone seeking to grasp HOW to get such an accounting. THAT has to change!
As I’m reading this, I’m looking at the resistance of the OMB (Office of Mgmt and Budget) to accountability, and the support of the GAO (General Accounting Office) for correcting the situation. Perhaps people should take this into account when seeking information on operations of the courts. Go to the businesses and accounting offices. Do not seek information on balance sheets from people or offices whose business it is to keep the funds coming in, and retain a large profit margin.
When it comes to the HHS grants-based marriage (etc.) promotion, anyone taking a look at the write-ups and with a little experiential awareness of reality, could talk back to them and realize the same thing. The data was irrelevant as presented The same is true (LGH chiming in here) no doubt when data is put out regarding the situation of “families” in America, children being at greater risk from single-family housholds, and pushing marriage counseling to help the country. What they don’t want out — is THIS type of information documenting fraud and waste. They want the focus on those least able to resist! THE QUESTION WE REALLY SHOULD BE ASKING — IN THIS CASE — IS WHY HADN’T OTHERS IN THIS POST ASKED THE SAME QUESTIONS, AND DETERMINED TO SOLVE THAT ISSUE? INTIMIDATION? PASSIVITY? CRONYISM? BEYOND THAT, WE HAVE TO HONESTLY ASK WHY MORE OF THE PUBLIC DOESN’T MAKE IT THEIR BUSINESS TO UNDERSTAND (OUR) OWN GOVERNMENT FROM A FINANCIAL POINT OF VIEW, AND NOT STOP UNTIL WE HAVE THAT UNDERSTANDING. PERHAPS BECAUSE RELEVANT AND REAL ECONOMIC LITERACY (LET ALONE MATH LITERACY!) is HARDLY A CORE FOCUS OF PUBLIC EDUCATION IN THE COUNTRY.
These particular regions overlap with strongholds of issues I address in Family Court Matters — Oklahoma Marriage Initiative (and friends) AND their strong ties to Colorado (University of Denver, PREP, Inc. Markman & Stanley and friends; and the nonprofit Center for Policy Research which has been influential in child support matters. Texas is a stronghold in fatherhood movements; Michael Hayes of the Office of Family Initiatives (OAG) is still there, for all I know. Not to mention, this is where the Bush Family hails from. We are talking below the Bible Belt and a major center of the Midwest.
WHY. WHY WAS THE FEDERAL LEVEL OF GOVERNMENT DOING THIS ? HHS TALKS FAMILY FORMATION, HUD TALKS HOUSING, AND WHO GETS RICH FROM THAT? THE CORPORATIONS CONTRACTING WITH THE GOV’T! Notes: This completely matches my understanding and experience, although I have not lived in public housing. I received temporary help shortly after leaving the abusive marriage, in which my credit had been first shut down, then destroyed. With diligence and I’m going to say resourcefulness (assessing the situation and needs), I made choices and BEFORE the restraining order was expired (3 yrs in our state) had moved, with some help, and gotten to financial independence, and, without further intervention, would’ve been quickly in a position to not even need child support payments. I had some control over my own infrastructure and was restored to a functional position in my community, parenting, taking care of the children, had worked out a temporary truce with the father (who was involved with their lives) and such. It took less than one year to reverse this trend through intervention, and there is no question that in this case, it was deliberate, strategically aimed at preventing ECONOMIC independence, and designed to keep me back in that box based on the profile: Single mother; and not on reality. CAFitts doesn’t talk (at all, that I can see) about this situation– I don’t believe she’s a mother — but you can easily see above how federal HUD policy is going to affect single mothers who need help with housing. |
The Impact of PRWORA on Recipients and Former Recipients of TANF
by Carol Merrifield (probably for a class in) Public Benefits/ Professor Levy/ Spring 2001
In an attempt to break the so-called “cycle of dependency,” President Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA)1 in 1996.
PRWORA replaced Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) with Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF). One of the dramatic differences between the previous welfare system and TANF is the emphasis placed on employment. While the previous welfare system encouraged education and training as the means to escape poverty in the future, the new “Work First” ideal embodied in TANF stressed work as the most important step towards immediate self-sufficiency.2STATUTORY SUMMARY
Congress specifically stated in the Act that is their intention that “each State that operates a program funded under this part is encouraged to assign the highest priority to requiring adults in 2-parent families and adults in single-parent families that include older preschool or school-age children to be engaged in work activities.”3
. . .In order to protect the rights of workers who are not participating in TANF, employers are not allowed to fill a position with a TANF worker if the vacancy is the result of a lay off from that, or a substantially equivalent job, or if an employee has been terminated or removed involuntarily from that position.12
. . . The reform of the welfare system to include work requirements for recipients has had a complex impact on the lives of the people the system is designed to assist. Many recipients are unprepared for the necessity of balancing work and family.*** The National Survey of America’s Families, conducted by the Urban Institute in 1997, reveals that many TANF recipients report significant barriers to successful employment. 41 percent of TANF recipients reported low education levels, while 43 percent reported lack of recent work experience.13
The emphasis on employment begins as soon as an individual or family applies for TANF benefits. A recipient must work once s/he has been receiving benefits for 24 months or the State determines that the recipient is ready for employment.4
In order to insure that the states implement TANF with the appropriate emphasis on the employment of recipients, the program requires that each state reach a certain minimum participation rate in order to receive block grant funding from the federal government.5 The minimum participation rate increases from 25% in 1997 to 50% for 2002 and after.6
The minimum participation rate describes the percentage of participants who are engaged in work for the minimum average number of hours per week.7 In order to qualify as “engaged in work” the recipient must be participating in “work activities” defined as: unsubsidized employment, subsidized private sector employment, subsidized public sector employment, work experience, on-the-job-training, job search and readiness assistance, community service programs, vocational educational training (not to exceed 12 months for any individual) or the provision of child care services to an individual who is participating in a community service program.8
While PRWORA allows individuals engaged in vocational education and teen parents attending school to be treated as “engaged in work,” a state cannot count such individuals for more than 20 percent of the individuals determined to be engaged in work for purposes of determining the minimum participation rate.9 Limiting the percentage that the state can claim toward the minimum participation rate acts as an incentive for the state to limit the use of such exceptions.
re: miscarriage: this wasn’t a single mother. She had remarried and was pregnant by her new husband. It appears that this (2004?) incident was a weekend visitation with their father. Young children were in his care during this incident, and they were ALSO driven in the pickup truck (with their mother trapped in the garbage can full of snow trying to escape or attract the attention of passing motorists! It was her mother-instinct, she related later, that kicked in the survival-instinct; it was a miracle that she was able to make THREE phone calls from this situation (from that garbage can), incl. two to 911, and one to her husband. They got lucky and found a business card with the address of the storage facility (in another state!!) in the home. As I recall the narrative, she also managed to struggle and get a hand out to wave to passing motorists; he stopped the car, beat her again, and stuffed her back in. Can you spell “sociopath” yet??)
Meanwhile (2011) she also testified on behalf of a bill preventing public officials from harassing crime victims (a bill inspired when a woman whose boyfriend had tried to strangle her, found the 50-yr-old prosecuting District Attorney (she was 26!) sexting her trying to start a relationship — at the same time The DA had a $105K public job, and avoided prosecution by resigning.
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This is an excerpt from another of my posts, the original subject matter was the family court system.
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(text to the right here excerpted from another, smaller, Let’s Get Honest blog, “the Family Court Franchise System.”) The topic is “triangulation” which started welfare reform, resulting in (@ 2011) this type of behavior: Federal Agency sucking up to private nonprofit which (as it so happens re: this one) is sponsored by, #1, a Chicago Fathers’ Rights Attorney (Jeffrey Leving, Esq.) with close connections also to the Obama Administration, and #2, a nonprofit called CJH Educational Services from North Carolina, which I can document received HHS help getting set up. It might also be of note that at least one of the leaders pushing for an aspect of welfare reform (Ron Haskins) also hailed from NC).
this country is still just over half female, and some of us are getting tired of the rhetoric, even though this female does understand it as a budgetary matter. Welfare being sold as a gender problem by the Republicans, however, the Democrats seem to have had little problem (since 2008) with getting elected and promoted on the same platform and, from there, expanding it (I’ talking, Obama-Jeffrey Leving-Illinois connections. Obama was the Senator from Illinois, we may recall. The HQ of the American Bar Association (our President, now isn his second term, having come into office as an attorney) is now (i believe) in Chicago also:
For example, in D.C. at least:
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REMARKS FOR DAVID HANSELL
2011 12TH ANNUAL
That’s just typical intro. Here’s the tantalizing promise, at a conference full of government employees and current fatherhood grants recipients, etc. — in SF!
[HHS/] ACF’s Current Commitment to {{spending public money, obtained from a population that is 51% female, for the purpose of }}Serving Fathers That’s why ACF has been involved in the responsible fatherhood business for a long time. Our body of work and our knowledge base are constantly growing.
The two main ACF components involved in fatherhood are the Office of Child Support Enforcement ((“OCSE”))and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families ((“TANF”)). OCSE’s able leader, Vicki Turetsky, will address you tomorrow and Dr Charles Sutton from OFA is on the panel today. In line with ACF’s great emphasis on interoperability among our programs, Child Support and TANF are working closely together to make sure fathers have every possible opportunity to contribute to their own and their families’ well-being
Basically, almost any custody case that has a child support order, almost. See how this is a FAMILY COURT MATTER? (and Franchise…) He’s just getting warmed up…. telling the conferences where HHS allegiance truly lies. Note: Women with open child support or welfare cases are NOT formally told by child support offices OR welfare offices, that this even exists. That’s on a “need-to-know” basis, I guess. let them ask their husbands at home, or fathers, I guess.
Based on my close look at many “marriage” programs, they’re fatherhood programs anyhow. It’s a moot point — and the CFDA on the grants database doesn’t distinguish between “marriage” and “fatherhood” either — there is one CFA# (93.086) for both. It gets even better, as to $$ promised; again this was 3/2011:
Give a Republican (or a right-wing evangelist) an inch, he’ll complain it’s not a mile. this is EXACTLY what’s happening in the Presidential primaries right now. **The “you” being addressed is a nonprofit organization, Fathers and Families Coalition of America, with the top Executive listed being a JUDGE, plus of course some Revs. They have America divided up into 5 regions (see site), while HHS has it divided up into 10, for better management. Why are People so Ignorant of This, and 1996 TANF Reform’s place in it? Because we get our world views from Mainstream Media, and are too busy to figure out where our taxes go? While this conference with top HHS personnel courting the conferences was going on, a heated on-line debate for about two months was being held on-line (in SFWeekly.com) on California Family Courts Helping Batterers and Pedophiles Get Custody, which drew out both mothers’ and fathers’ rights advocates — and over 2,000 comments on two articles alone. Of all these, including several nonprofit advocacy groups for mothers losing their custody to batterers, etc. (topic of the article) I was the ONLY commenter who even mentioned this conference, held right during the debate! And very few (like one or two others) even mentioned the access/visitation funding. In retrospect, publication might have been a pre-planned press promotion (Good Cop/Bad Cop act) between a certain two nonprofit organizations, though I don’t know. I do know the article omitted the major elements and associations running the courts which these groups know of… |
From PBS.org “Chapter 4: the Clinton years” — this is relevant to budget, and to CAFRS. Click on each of the sub-links to the right, to get an idea. 
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 The Comeback Kid Redux  Finding His Voice – Oklahoma City Bombing Standing His Ground – 1995 Government Shutdown Under Fire – Starr Inquiry Welfare Reform Savoring Victory |
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Clinton turned to consultant Dick Morris to fashion a comeback following the Democrats’ devastating loss to the Republicans in the 1994 Congressional election. Morris, who had helped Clinton develop political strategy since his race for governor of Arkansas in 1978, aimed to help the president move more to the center politically. Clinton, fearing resistance from his staff, initially kept Morris’s assistance a secret.
(click on each of the links to the right for more background. Clinton had Morris on as advisor, but he wasn’t in the staff meetings. 1995- Oklahoma Bombings helped Clinton’s credibility in a crisis:
he Oklahoma City bombing provided Bill Clinton with an opportunity to stand out as a leader. Just at a time when Newt Gingrich and the Republican agenda dominated the political arena and Clinton felt the need to reaffirm his relevance, he was able to bring the country together as only a president could.
Backing up to 1995, there was a primetime press conference, April 18th, and the president is asked about this sort of feeling in the press in Washington that the Republicans seemed to be dominating the debate at this time. And the president in this press conference says, “The president is still relevant here.”
Stephanopoulos: Channeling Dick Morris. Dick Morris was telling him to buck up his confidence, “The president is still relevant, the president is still relevant.” Perfect example of the stage direction coming out of the actor’s mouth, as opposed to the script.
When that comment showed up on the front pages of all of the papers the next day, what were you thinking?
Stephanopoulos: There wasn’t a lot of time to think about it. I think late the next morning the Oklahoma City bombing happened, and the president was relevant.
Panetta: When the Oklahoma bombing came, his capacity to get out there and, first of all, speak to the American people in a calm way and reassure them, and ask them not to kind of prejudge what had happened here, and then what he did following up on that, in terms of dealing with the victims and what took place there, I think that, more than anything, brought out the human side of Bill Clinton. And people really, for the first time in a long time, connected with the president and what he was trying to be and who he was.
In 1995 (the same year Clinton wrote his “fatherhood memo”). Excerpts from the sidebar show the context of welfare reform, at least as portrayed by PBS here…
In a showdown over the budget in the fall of 1995 the president did not compromise. After vetoing the budget proposals sent to him by Republican Congressional leaders, the federal government shut down twice. To many in the White House, it was the decisive moment in his first term and helped him win reelection.
Going back to Morris, he is advocating certain things that are in the polls. You’re advocating other things. And here you have a Democratic president really putting in a very Republican proposal.
And I told Clinton that I felt no amount of rhetoric will convince people of that. You have to actually produce a balanced budget without cutting these programs. And the staff was opposed to that. They were liberals who I think for the most part really didn’t want the deficit to go away. They were having too good a time with the deficit. Because as long as there was a deficit, they could run against the Republican cuts.
You develop a theory that comes to be known as “triangulation” after the ’94 elections. Very briefly, what was your thinking?
Morris: Well, we were locked into a very sterile conflict between the left agenda and the right agenda. And it was like going into a restaurant and not being able to order a la carte. If you wanted to have pro-choice, you had to vote for the Democrats and accept high taxes. If you wanted to have pro-life, you had to also accept government-less environment. There was a coupling here on both sides that was inappropriate.
And I felt that what you should do is really take the best from each party’s agenda, and come to a solution somewhere above the positions of each party. So from the left, take the idea that we need day care and food supplements for people on welfare. From the right, take the idea that they have to work for a living, and that there are time limits. But discard the nonsense of the left, which is that there shouldn’t be work requirements and the nonsense of the right, which is you should punish single mothers. Get rid of the garbage of each position that the people didn’t believe in, take the best from each position, and move up to a third way. And that became a triangle, which was triangulation.
For those of your viewers who are into philosophy, it really is Hegelian in concept: the idea of a thesis, an antithesis, and a synthesis. And when we originally discussed it, we did so in terms of Hegel, which we had studied at Oxford.** But in American politics, we spoke of triangulation.
- {{I discuss on a home page to this blog, “See the Matrix” Overview. Whether it’s called Unfreeze/Change/Refreeze, or Thesis/Antithesis/Synthesis, or the Shock Doctrine (i.e., create the crisis, but have anticipated the outcome of this created crisis and already having a pre-planned solution for it; one good example being (in my opinion) “9/11/2001” which I believe was, indeed, an insurance-motivated, pre-planned demolition, for which it was deemed “OK” to sacrifice 3,000 Americans. Or, “problem-solving courts” and, in my observation, “language transformation” of the legal system into behavioral health language — these are part of a larger, planned scenario.}}
- ** Not to forget, Clinton was a Rhodes Scholar, right?
Stephanopoulos: Triangulation. Dick, whenever he was going to explain to those of us who were slower than him on staff, he would say, “This is triangulation,” and hold up his fingers like this. And it was basically to treat Democrats and Republicans in the House alike. Your adversaries were both of them. The president is supposed to push off either one in equal measure and appear to be above the political fray.
This was Dick Morris’s idea.
Stephanopoulos: Yeah, and, you know, it’s empty of substance. It’s amoral. But it makes some political sense at some level. And what the president was so skillful at, as frustrating as it could be at times, was taking parts of Dick’s theory, parts of the triangulation theory, but not going too far with it. And he got in more trouble when he accepted it whole.
Panetta: There were those of us on the staff who thought the president would be willing to do whatever was necessary to cut a deal. And we kept saying, “No. This is fundamental to everything that you have fought for. I mean, you have set priorities for this country. You’ve said what you want for education. You’ve said what you want for health care. You’ve said what you want to do for the environment. And everything, they’re putting into their plan is against everything you’re for.”
But, nevertheless, inside of him, he always has this sense that “I know that rational people ultimately can come together and cut this deal.” So we had made several offers, as the discussions went on. And the Republicans had rejected them. They came back with some offers. We had rejected them. And there was a moment — in which the president — we made another offer. And Gingrich said, “I’m sorry. No. We can’t accept it.”
And the president looked at him and I think it’s one of those moments when you know that the president really got it. The president said to Gingrich, “I simply can’t do what you want me to do. I don’t believe in it and I don’t believe it’s right for the country. And even if it costs me the election, I am not going to do this.”
And I kind of sighed at that point and I thought, “He gets it. He gets it.” Because there’s always a point in politics when you do have to draw a line. And it tells you a lot about who you are. And I think at that moment, I knew he would win the election because, suddenly, what he was about was clear to him, but it also became clear to the country as to what Bill Clinton represented. So I think it was not only a terrible mistake on the part of the Republicans, in terms of their own politics, but it sure as hell helped us to find what the president was all about for the election.
Stephanopoulos: No one knew who would get blamed more for the shutdown, Democrats or Republicans. But there was more than the shutdown involved. First, there was also this threat that they would not extend the debt limit, that this was the big hammer that would force the president to accept whatever the Republicans wanted.
Our strategy was very simple. We couldn’t buckle, and we had to say that [Republicans] were blackmailing the country to get their way. In order to get their tax cut, they were willing to shut down the government, throw the country into default for the first time in its history and cut Medicare, Social Security, education and the environment just so they could get their way. And we were trying to say that they were basically terrorists, and it worked.
Morris: From the very beginning, Bill Clinton had two big problems — a third of the country thought he was immoral, and a third of the country thought he was weak. Now, we couldn’t solve the first problem, but we could solve the second one. And the budget fight was a way of solving the second problem. Because in the course of resisting those budget changes, in the course of taking two government shutdowns and not blinking he convinced people that he was strong, and it solved his most solvable problem. Still couldn’t solve the morality one, but we sure could solve the weakness one.
Stephanopoulos: We’d won. And you know, he didn’t know it then, but we’d won not only the shutdown, but by winning the shutdown, Bill Clinton won the ’96 election. Bob Dole was behind and never caught up.
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How the Money Works: HUD Loan Sales
They word “auctions” should have certain historic connotations, and not with high-end artwork. Think about it comprehend this auction block, only it’s web-based!..The internet really got up and running around this time, the 1980sff.. only what’s being sold now is simply debt. The person who buys the debt holds the SECURITY. In this case, right to the underlying real estate. They are, literally, buying up the land out from under its residents.
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In looking up the RTC (above) — (The instrument to bail out the S&L), I ran into “Namebase.org” which is a public source indexed database on, I guess, some of these matters, and this two-paragraph summary of the situation in deregulating S&L. The moral here, is the perils of trusting our own (here, federal) government on a tight leash, and not understanding that it’s high time to figure out a leash. Or, prepare for eternity, in the alternate (not a bad idea for having a good life, in general. Live like it counts, in other words. Develop a backbone and some ethics, which the present system does not have!) (This book apparently talks about the RTC, perhaps it’s in a library or available on-line).
Here’s another resource on the creation of the Resolution Trust Corporation. From ‘FDIC Banking Review, 2005, Vol. 17 No. 2,
This is hypocritical — it was Congress that voted to deregulate the S&L industry to start with, thereby causing the problem. Congress is the lawmaking arm of the US Government, and they screwed up. So, then we are going to allow them to figure out how to correct what they screwed up, allegedly to save us from worse harm? In order to solve any crisis (including avoidable ones, i.e., “setups”) government processes are usually laid aside, swift, severe action must be (always) taken.
{{I think this article should be read….}}
And we wonder why the USA is THE world’s largest owner of infrastructure on the planet. You’re looking at it!!! Pay the depositors, take over the real estate. But who voted the crisis into being to start with? Congress!, the 1982 law mentioned above, looks like.
And we’re supposed to believe that this wasn’t a foreseeable conclusion from the policy set earlier? Finally, I see in 2008 (a WSJ article) certain people, including Paul Volcker, were calling to resurrect the RTC, but have it hold onto the assets for longer and get a better price on it. They speak of “infected tissue” which brings up the question — who injected the virus initially?
I know in miniature that recommendations from abusive PEOPLE cooperating with each other and proposing solutions based on denial of prior abuse, are going to each and every time mess with income-generating capacities, and increase dependency, reduce accountability and transparency, and this PROCESS must be fought. If the battle is not fought right up front (failing to assess the resources on the opposing side, or perhaps not realizing until too late that is is virtually a war), the only option is to continue battling longer, and with increasingly depleted resources, energies, and TIME. I am STILL fighting the war that began when I first stood up to one person, who then found allies in the courts, in the extended families and in the religious sphere. It looks like it’s going to last more than the full generation it has already lasted — in my personal situation. There have been huge casualties — from my perspective. From the other perspective, they are not casualties, they are wins. The name of the game is pretending and talking cooperation and help, “rescue” when the fact there was no need for rescue prior to the interventions. To “GOVERN” is to “REGULATE,” having first obtained power to do so. Always the first attempt will be made to get people to simply give it over (because they are too busy for self-government, or too stupid to realize how important it is, to understand the temperature of the times). However, there is usually a backup-plan for the non-cooperative, and that is FORCE. We are talking economic force, and previously setting up situations where people stood to lose their real estate. As I read this WSJ 2008 article (at which time my own life was on the rocks from the courts’ repeated failures to do what they claimed they were there for; ditto the police; ditto the child support enforcement. When Ms. Fitts’ “The Myth of the Rule of Law” came to my attention, I had no problem understanding the concept, and thanks to clear explanation, drawing the parallel from my understanding and experience, to the larger scope.).. After the dramatic rhetoric (at top of the article), comparing the predictable and probably avoidable S&L crisis, it then goes into the proposed solutions. People who set up crises know plenty about them, and be assured, the solutions proposed in times of crises, have been strategized well before the eruption. Here it goes, same article, suggestions in the Wall Street Journal 2008 from By NICHOLAS F. BRADY, EUGENE A. LUDWIG and PAUL A. VOLCKER
Continuing with Ms. Fitts. She is going to explain why banks are allowed to buy low and sell high using PUBLIC credit, but you and I cannot obtain the same rates. There’s no competition, economically, who has the upper hand in this matter. That’s our government!
‘HEADS YOU WIN, TAILS, YOU STICK THE LOSSES TO THE TAXPAYERS (AND KEEP THEIR REAL ESTATE).
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The Myth of the Rule of Law and the Future of Repression (by Keith Preston, from “Alternative Right”):
I quote a lot of C.A. Fitts. She also talks about the role of slush funds/money laundering in re: Iran Contra — although I’m not blogging it… The thing is, when one has evidence of massive money missing in transit, the question is — what’s being done WITH that money? I mean, think about it …
(this appears to be a conservative on-line magazine and I’m simply excerpting the quote for my own purposes: States ARE maintained by MYTHS. And, money. First a few more paragraphs as this author describes forms of totalitarianism likely to develop (actually, they have, and are now operational) in “the West” and particularly, the USA/LGH)
{{many of us already know this isn’t threaten to remove, but actually remove, and the legal harassment isn’t short-term, either. Catherine Austin Fitts went through this also, and describes it in detail; it began AFTER developing a successful software showing, by geography, WHERE the money was being lost, i.e., “Hamilton.” That business was destroyed; she had to start over, after living for a fugitive for a while. I notice she chose to start over (corporation wise) outside the US…}}
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Cold,Hard.Fact$ 