Saturday, January 21, 2017

Will President Trump's administration remove the perverse financial incentives for removal of children from families

For nearly 2 decades so far, I have been doing research about child neglect and abuse proceedings in the State of New York, and in the United States.

Many people may not know, but the atrocities of social services who:

  1. fabricate child neglect cases;
  2. remove children from homes based on those fabrications, using intimidation or coerced consent by parents who are told, falsely, that it will "look better for the judge" if they voluntarily allow the removal;
  3. if children under 1 year old are involved, put termination of parental rights and adoption out of foster care on a fast track;
  4. intimidate parents of all foster children, after the removal, that because of the removal, even without adjudication of child abuse or neglect, social services will put out the children for adoption within 15 months or putting them into foster care - so that frantic parents would agree to anything at all, including a settlement against their interests in Family Court, with attached intrusive "services" from social services - in order to keep the children
all of that has only ONE reason - federal money.

There are federal laws that require - by unconstitutionally

"commandeering" states on issues of exclusive state control under the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (health and safety of their residents) - that the States "must" put children in foster care up for adoption within 15 months of removal from home -

even if the court did not say at that time that parents did anything wrong, that the States "must" create certain investigative "teams" involving courts, social services and criminal investigators, and thus practically requiring that child protective cases MUST be fixed in an ex parte manner behind closed doors.

See a petition about federal government commandeering the regulatory power of the states currently litigated in the U.S. Supreme Court, where the U.S. Supreme Court currently asked the U.S. Attorney General's input on the subject


- and I hope that the new U.S. Attorney General, following President Trump's de-regulation policy and policy of conservation of federal funds where expenditures of federal money are not required by law, will take the side of New Jersey, that New Jersey has a right to decide which laws it has or does not have regarding the health and safety of their residents.

To see a very approximate picture of what federal money does in the situation of "child protective" cases that rip children out of their families for money, readers can review the "annual implementation plan" for 2015-2017, of New York State Office of Children and Family Services, NYS OCFS, and just skim the number of "trainers", "trainers of trainers", "consortiums", "councils", "associations" and other non-profit corporations feeding off of this federal money - grants provided by the federal government to fund the industry that helps rip children out of families, marinate, neglect and abuse them in foster care and then put them up for adoption within 15 months (applications are done 3 months earlier), without regard whether the court decided whether parents did something wrong or not.

The "plan" also describes the 3-level system of "cooperation" (ex parte communications) between the courts and social services in child protective cases, but both the court system, and the NYS OCFS refused to answer Freedom of Information requests about lists of members of such "teams", claiming that, while describing in meticulous detail, but for names, the system of the 3-tier "cooperation" between the courts and one party in litigation (which is NOT reflected in the Family Court Act governing such proceedings), the courts and NYS OCFS do not know who is participating in those teams.  Right.

"Co-incindentally", the New York State Office of Family and Children Services operates not only as an agency removing children from parents, but also as a "federal agency" passing through federal grants for distribution within the State of New York and financing that removal. 

Of course, federal grants do not cover the entire operation of social services, and all the crowd of "providers" who want a piece of the pie, to capitalize on splitting families.

For that reason, cases are fabricated and parents are coerced to accept unnecessary "services" - like mental health and alcohol and drug evaluations, pee-in-a-cup random "drug tests", even if drugs are not involved in allegations in the CPS case, visitation of children in foster care "supervised" by "parent aides" contracted by social services, but with parents having to sign approval of those contracts - in order for social services to get funds not only out of federal grants, but also out of County taxpayers, to inflate the County budget.

Recently, a series of scandals regarding such inflation of County budget erupted in Delaware County, New York, where high-ranking County officials started to resign one after another, where New York State Comptroller's office found that the County allowed its Department of Social Services to use County-assigned vehicles as their own and where the County, for years, put out multi-million public contracts to their pet non-profits, family and friends of County public officials without bidding.

My own follow-up FOIL requests with Delaware County, NY, revealed the following:

1) that the County does not have contracts that were bid out at all, at least they told me they don't know what I am talking about when I asked to provide copies of contracts that were handed out without public bidding for several years back;

2) that the County's monthly cell phone bill covers 321 pages - which means that, in a poor County of hardly 40,000 people, where there are more deer than people in the County, the County workers use not only taxpayer-owned cars as their own, but also the cell phones;

3) that the County Treasurer Beverly Shields and her subordinates are thieves (we knew that before, but the County officially confirmed it by answering the FOIL request they way they did), because, when the County tried to stone-wall my FOIL request about the cell phone bill, and when I asked the County to provide an inventory of its printing and scanning equipment, also by a separate FOIL request, the County stonewalled both FOIL requests by now claiming that the county DOES NOT HAVE AN INVENTORY of equipment it is buying with taxpayer money, while collecting taxes from County homeowners at the threat of foreclosure on their homes and casting them out of their homes.

The County blocked my inquiry into the inventory of equipment it is buying and selling (possibly, to relatives, at prices for scrap - as they did with perfectly good cars, which the NYS Comptroller caught) - but, I turned the case over to the New York State Comptroller, and now, reportedly, the FBI is investigating the use of funds in Delaware County and its Social Services department for pet non-profits of DSS officials.

Of course, the "courageous" local press only started to write about it after the FBI was full-speed on it, and only to the extent of writing about the already-shuttered pet non-profit, but not even trying to write about the wooly mammoth in the room - the Delaware Opportunities, Inc., employing hundreds of employees (it recently stonewalled my FOIL request for the list of employees that could reveal a lot of interesting connections).  Well, if the FBI is doing a good faith investigation, it has to cover Delaware Opportunities, too, so we will see what will happen.

I wrote about Delaware Opportunities, Inc., about its conflicts of interests, and about its role in improper removal of children into foster care, and adoption out of foster care.

Yet, all this sea of corruption can be stopped if the Trump administration blocks federal funds for foster care and child protective cases - as being entirely the concern of the states under the 10th Amendment.

That it will happen is very likely, since the Trump administration already announced that it is considering to cut federal grants handed out under the unconstitutional commandeering Violence against Women Act (currently $480,000,000 a year). 

While The Violence Against Women Act, its criminal part, was already struck as unconstitutional, it continues to exist as a basis of handing out money for "programs", "counselors", psychologists and the like.

Do I support violence against women?  Of course, not.

Do I support help to victims of such violence? Yes, I do.

But, it is a state court and state healthcare issue, not a federal grant issue.

Same as, child protective cases must be handled by state courts, under the state law and regulations, without in-pouring of a flood of federal money that "demands" that children be taken out of families and put up for adoption, in exchange for money given to Social Services Departments in federal grants, and that the states "must" make laws expediting adoption out of foster care, especially of the most sought-after children, newborns to 1 year olds, who do not remember their biological parents yet.

As soon as this flood of federal money stops, CPS will no longer have the incentive to do what they are doing now -  including ripping newborn babies off the breasts of their breast-feeding mothers, to prevent bonding between child and mother and to start the 15-month toll for purposes of adoption out of foster care as soon as possible.

I wonder whether that will happen - and I hope it will.  Soon.