Caesar and Jimmy were talking when Bill returned with the espressos. Caesar was standing in the entryway, Jimmy still sitting down on his seat.
Bill said, “Excuse me” to Caesar’s back. He said it loud enough for Caesar to hear him, but Caesar didn’t move.
“Excuse me,” he said again.
When Caesar still didn’t move, Jimmy G prompted him so that he finally stepped aside.
Bill thought about accidentally-on-purpose bumping Caesar, maybe spilling some coffee on his tuxedo. It was a good idea, but of course not such a good idea. Anyway, Caesar stepped aside so Bill could pass into the kitchen. He heard Caesar say “We’ll talk later,” as he handed Jimmy his coffee.
“Ya,” Jimmy said. He smiled at Bill, sipped his coffee. “We start soon as we finish the espresso.”
It was almost 10:45 when they actually did start cleaning. Jimmy reminded Bill that he didn’t have to clean anything. All he/they had to do was wrap the leftovers, put away here in the Falstaff Room kitchen what stayed here and drop off everything that went back to the main kitchen in its proper place there.
It was simple and easy.
The most important thing Jimmy G told Bill was to hang on to any knives he really liked. He told Bill if there were particular ones he especially cared for he should lock them overnight in his locker. That way he would be assured to always have them.
Here, in the Sheraton Cleveland, a cleaning crew came in every night. Every night this crew steam-cleaned all the kitchens and all the equipment. This meant that they gathered up all utensils, brought them to a central cleaning area and steam-cleaned them under pressure.
Cool!
But when they were done, all kitchen utensils, which included knives, were stored in a central area. In the morning and every day it was first-come, first-served.
Jimmy warned Bill that since they started late in the day all the good knives and utensils that were cleaned were gone, claimed and being used. So it was important that when he came upon knives he really liked to hold onto them.
He also told Bill that knives got sharpened once a week on Thursdays. This meant any knives he was holding had to go to get sharpened. The fix was for Bill to give them to him, Jimmy G, and he, Jimmy G, would leave them for Jimmy the banquet chef. Jimmy the banquet chef would return them to Jimmy G, his cousin, Bill’s Falstaff Room partner, and Bill would have them back.
And so it went.
No two knives are the same. Plain and simple. You may have twenty of the same knives, same knife, same model, same maker. But sure enough if you used them all, tried them all, there would be one or two, maybe several, that you liked better than all the others, that felt better in your hand and worked better for you. These were the ones to hold onto so that eventually you held a set of knives, a carving knife, a chef’s knife, two different-sized paring knives and two different-sized boning knives. The sharpening steel didn’t matter much.
By Peter Weiss
I did stay with my lawyer. The whole thing was a crap-shoot any way you sliced it. I was already a ton of money in the hole, I’d borrowed a fortune from my father literally messing up his retirement calculations. As a result of DCF, not for anything I’d done, I was going to have to sell my house and most probably move in with my parents who were mortgaging their paid-off house to pay off my lawyer.
Well, their mostly paid-off house, anyway, because my father told me there was still some left to pay off.
My lawyer said he was glad I was staying with him. He said, and to this day I believe this, that it was not about money. The money, he said, mostly went into his costs. He said he felt that he could best negotiate a good ending of the situation for me and that with his connections and reputation he was hoping that he could do it sooner than later.
Sooner than later. Yeah right. Turns out it was another six weeks to the next hearing date. In that six weeks I saw my kids only three times. I was supposed to see them every week, but DCF managed to make sure to cancel the visits at the last minute. Since the visits were there, at their office, and after school, I had to take the afternoon of the visits off work in order to get there in time. So on top of not seeing my kids three times out of the six, I still lost six afternoons’ work.
Each time they missed a visit, they made no apology. Each time I tried to reschedule, they made excuse after excuse such that accomplishing a visit became impossible.
But they knew all this. They knew exactly, precisely, what they were doing and they, of course, were doing it on purpose. They knew my funds were limited so they were purposefully costing me as much as they could so they could break me.
And they were doing a great job of it.
So each time they missed a visit I called my lawyer (costing me more money) and he called them (costing me more money).
That’s how it works.
Oh, I know. Don’t think so? Well it is so.
Twice they actually did reschedule only to call me at the last minute (again) to tell me they’d made a mistake and the kids had other appointments. They told me they didn’t know this when they rescheduled and would they make sure it would work for the next week’s visit. They did make sure never to miss two weeks in a row. That, I would discover, missing two weeks in a row, is a no-no to the judges.
So we got to the next hearing. The lawyer asked me to get there early, at least an hour early, first because he wanted to speak with me and second because he wanted to have a meeting with them. He assured me that they would be willing to have a meeting and that we might be able to effect what he hoped we could in order to get my children home to me.
I was a little skeptical. Okay. I wasn’t a little skeptical, I was very skeptical. I hoped beyond hope that he really could do what he was saying he could do, which was get my kids home without me having to actually cop to anything. But I knew they were holding both my kids and my kids were surely of the type that was eminently adoptable. In their terms, from all that I had read by now, I knew that this meant they were prime candidates for adoption, that DCF would do its best to make sure that I could never get my kids back.
By Peter Weiss
Even though he didn’t have to, Bill took a leak. Then, kind of exploring, he found his way to the main kitchen and all around it making a mental map of where the stock pots were, where all the different rooms were: the dishwasher/pot washer areas, the big sink area where they defrosted the vegetables, and all around.
Bill took himself a good twenty minutes before he went back to the Falstaff Room. He checked out some of the walk-ins around the main kitchen seeing what was inside each. He found the deep-freezes too. One was filled with frozen vegetables of all kinds. Some had meats.
He tried to memorize what he could, tried to keep track of what was where. That was hard. It was hard to imagine that one day in the not-too-distant future he would know where everything was and know how to use all the equipment too.
Jimmy was sitting on his little make-shift seat when Bill came back. He did not seem at all concerned for the time Bill had spent away. In fact he did not seem concerned about anything. He sat reading a Greek newspaper.
“We start in a little while,” Jimmy said. “Ask my aunt for two espressos,” he said.
Kalista was busy cleaning up. Rosie and Edelgarde were both standing out there, off to the side and a bit down and out of the way along the wall leading to where the pantry’s walk-in was. Bill could see they were counting money.
“Jimmy asked me to get an espresso,” Bill said to Kalista.
“For you too?” She asked.
“Please. If you don’t mind.”
“I no mind. I get you anything any time.”
“Well thank you.”
“Two minutes,” she said.
Bill smiled at her, stepped off to the side, the same side where Rosie and Edelgarde were. He stood leaning against the same wall by which they were standing.
“Jo Ann thinks you’re a pretty good cook,” Edelgarde said. “We do too.”
“We like that Caesar doesn’t like you,” Rosie said. “That speaks well of you. He’s a pig.”
“I’m gonna have more trouble tomorrow,” Bill said. “We had a little moment inside the kitchen there.”
“We know all about it,” Rosie said. She smiled. “Caesar said something to Jimmy, Jimmy told Kalista, Kalista told us.”
“What you did is good,” Edelgarde said.
“I’m on probation,” Bill said.
“You’ll be fine. Guaranteed,” Rosie said.
“How’s that?” Bill asked.
“Well,” Edelgarde said, “in case you hadn’t noticed, almost the entire kitchen crew is Greek. Not only are they Greek, but a lot of them are related, you know, aunts and uncles and then all cousins. So Jimmy G and Jimmy the Banquet Chef are first cousins and Kalista is their aunt.”
“I’ve been getting the picture,” Bill said.
“So Kalista told me that she likes you,” Rosie said. “And she told me she told both Jimmys to make sure they take care of you.”
“So that means the chef won’t mess with you unless you really mess up,” Edelgarde said. “And since there is no love lost between the chef and Caesar, you’re on the winning side there, especially since you’re acting on behalf of the kitchen.”
“Which you were,” Rosie said.
“Greek Mafia always prevails here,” Edelgarde said.
“Good to know,” Bill said.
“So,” Rosie said, “I’d like a steak for dinner tomorrow.”
“She’s kidding,” Edelgarde said.
Bill thought she was only half kidding. Bill knew waitresses and he knew that they would take almost anything they could get, especially regarding their dinners and eating special food, the forbidden fruits, the foods they were not allowed to eat. So even though Edelgarde said she was kidding, Bill took it as that she was only half kidding, and he knew that sooner or later both of them would be hitting him up for whatever he would give them.
And he would give them plenty. All three of them.
By Peter Weiss
Joe Biden. Bill and Hillary Clinton. Al Sharpton. The top three elected officials in Virginia. Bob Menendez. Harry Reid. AOC and her cohorts, the two anti-Semites. Nancy Pelosi. Charles Schumer.
I’m sure those of you on the other side could name as many and we could all name many, many more.
Those people who were our real moral leaders are long gone and we’ve come to the era of immorality, amorality and expedience.
So this one is non-partisan.
This one is about what happens when you ease God out of your life and presume to know better than Him.
God doesn’t have to be God. Nope. AA knows better than that and simply calls it a higher power. Without a higher power we tend to think we really are something. But we’re not. We all put our pants on the same way, one leg at a time.
We wonder why there are so many mass shootings. We wonder why there is so much corruption. We wonder and we wonder and we wonder.
And then we look at all external places, as if we might fight an answer there. Well, the French fought in Viet Nam for almost nine years. The Russians fought in Afghanistan for about ten years. In both places America thought it could do better and went on to make the same mistakes to the same end.
And that’s just two simple examples.
The point is that when you start to ease a higher power out and think you’re all that… Well, pride goeth before the fall.
The answers are not external, not out there like where you can touch them and take hold of them and make them work.
Nope. The answers are internal and when you stop teaching those internal lessons, those lessons of conscience and a fixed morality code like the Ten Commandments, like the Sermon on the Mount, like their counterparts in almost all religions.
When they are lost forever, erased, we will be lost forever, not just America, but the human race.
And so it goes.
In the video age, when one can present a video of what someone did ten years ago, we start to see how immoral and outright dishonest our political leaders are. We start to see their intent, their motivation.
In the sports world we only have to look at the NFL and now the NBA to see what is of importance to them.
It is very rarely the right thing that is of importance. It is mostly that thing which will enrich he/she who is advocating that thing.
And no, capitalism is not the problem Again that is looking at the externals.
Greed is the problem. Greed and power.
When we start to ease God out, to exert personal EGO, we are in real danger of losing our way, of losing our moral compass. And if you look at where our society is going and where our leaders on every front are taking us, we are in real peril.
By Peter Weiss
Jimmy came back just after Caesar left. He surveyed what was going on, watched Caesar’s back as he was walking away. He only came back to teach Bill how to clean up and his instructions were clear. Never start before the room closed, ten on weekdays and eleven on Saturdays. Always do it slowly so that it took an hour and a half. That way they could take another half-hour changing and punch out at midnight or one A.M.
This was good for Bill as he thought about it. His calculations told him he would regularly get ten hours overtime during the week and at least eleven hours, all overtime, on Saturdays. So… Saturdays were at least sixteen and a half hours’ pay. Weekdays were eleven. If the hourly wage wasn’t as good as he’d hoped for (and it was significantly better than the hourly wage he was getting in Columbus), he was working sixty-one hours and getting paid for seventy-one.
In the end, when all was settled, he would work more, much more. Jimmy G would push his cousin Jimmy the banquet chef to utilize Bill as much as he could on banquets and Bill would show everyone that not only did he know how to cook and carve, but that he could also learn new things and new routines quickly.
The chef would indeed learn that Bill was worth standing up for.
“We don’t really have to clean anything,” Jimmy G said. Then, “Caesar bother you while I was gone?”
“We had a little thing,” Bill said. “He went to touch some food and I smacked the table with my tongs, told him not to touch anything.”
“Ay,” Jimmy said. “He get mad?”
“Pissed off is more like it.”
“I say good. But not so good for you.”
“Eighty-nine more days probation,” said Bill.
“Me and Jimmy and Victor make sure you’re all right. Don’t get too crazy.”
Bill wanted to ask what the deal was with the whole family thing in the kitchen. He thought about it, decided not yet. Instead he asked Jimmy about the cleanup.
Jimmy motioned with his hands and face, the gestures that signal “Easy.” Then he said, “We start in a little while. You take a little break. Have a smoke. Take a leak.”
Bill didn’t want to take a break. Bill didn’t work like that. He preferred knowing exactly what he had to do and getting it done. He preferred having everything done and then chilling out. But Jimmy clearly was into his taking a break, which he did as soon as Rosie’s order was gone and he was sure there would be no more orders.
First he went out by Kalista and took himself a Diet Coke. Right there by the soda fountains he drank a good part of it and lit himself a cigarette. Then he set down his glass and headed off on a stroll to the bathroom. He knew where the bathroom was because he’d gone there once before when Jimmy was still in the kitchen. He would learn, soon enough, that there were many other bathrooms and that some of them had walls that could tell stories.
Back in the kitchen, Jimmy, with a big smile on his face, told Bill that he didn’t really have to clean anything. Every night they had a cleaning crew that came in and scrubbed down everything. Mostly, Jimmy told him, all they had to do was wrap the food stuffs neatly, put away what they could in their own walk-in, which was situated right next to where Bill worked at the Garland, and then take the meat, fish, sauces and any other things that needed replenishing back to the main kitchen.
In effect, then, cleanup was a matter of reversing the steps they’d taken at set up without having to prepare anything.
A piece of cake.
By Peter Weiss
So the other day I wrote this piece, Soviet USA (link here). It describes how the USA today has become much like the Soviet Union of the Cold War era, specifically mentioning how the mainstream media/social media Consortium is like Pravda USA was/is and how our leaders are now a wealthy (way more than half of them are millionaires) political class much like the Politburo was/is.
That piece goes on to describe how our “free press” has become an extension of the Democrats, their lapdogs, biased, not truthful and filled with propaganda, and how the Despicable Democrats are now acting like a dictatorship does by attempting to overthrow (soft coup) a duly elected president.
It doesn’t even talk about the Despicable Democrat push toward socialism or why, and it doesn’t talk specifically about the Despicable Democrat push toward limiting our constitutional rights — you know, things like the thought police, the political correctness police (PCP), or how their liberal policies have destroyed our inner cities and our education system and is now after our guns, God-believers and “whites,” all the while pretending to be tolerant, for the rights for all, and non-racist/sexist.
And more. And worse!
So I also wrote a piece, Metaphor (link here) about how these Democrats treated Ellen after she sat with President Bush at a football game and how those of her Hollywood friends who twittered to support her were so pressured by that tolerant group of lefties, so intimidated by them (mostly about losing work, you know being blacklisted) that they quickly erased their tweets, rescinded their support.
“Is this America?” I asked in the Soviet USA piece.
Well, since then that comparison has been used in the media (no connection to what I wrote — I am small, unnoticed potatoes) so I must at the very least be “on to something.” And the very same day Soviet USA appeared on my blog someone very publicly in his/her circle on social media pronounced my opinion as dangerous and said “This random yours so off the wall and I believe dangerous. I choose to defriend you. Bye.”
Well, so, need I say more? Ellen is the metaphor and this person is the example.
Those despicable Democrats — the tolerant ones — it’s their way or the highway.
What it is.
They turned us into Soviet USA. They are very consciously and conspicuously limiting our speech, filling our airwaves and print media with propaganda and shooting for our guns. And that’s not to mention abridging our rights, aiming for our money, indoctrinating our kids, giving more consideration to those who shouldn’t be here than the taxpaying citizens and attempting to block our ability to practice our belief in God.
So I asked, and ask again, is this America?
By Peter Weiss
He was shaking the grease from the fries when Rosie returned with the order. From her perspective, he thought, she was watching him shake the fries over the fryer, watching his body shake.
“Shake it, but don’t break it,” she said.
“You watching me?” He said this as he turned toward heading to plate the fries.
“You bet I am. Same as you were watching me. Like my ass?”
“How you know I was watching you?”
“Eddie and I share everything. And I mean everything.”
“So she told you I was…”
“Checking out my ass. Want to see it?”
“What you mean?”
“I mean want to see it?” Rosie looked directly at Bill, made sure their eyes made direct contact. “Put the steaks on.”
The order was simple, two T-bones medium. Bill reached into his little reach-in and came out with the two steaks. He placed them on the grill. Then he retrieved the basket of fries he left on the fryer’s hook and spilled the order on Edelgarde’s plate. He slid the plate up on the shelf under the warmer lights.
When he looked back to where Rosie had been, he saw she was gone, was now around by the kitchen entryway.
“That her dinner?”
“You really call her Eddie?”
“Eddie or Ed, all the time.” Rosie stood legs slightly apart. “Jimmy disappeared already, huh?”
“Been gone awhile.”
“Better get used to it.”
“I guess so.”
Bill tended to the two steaks. Just as he’d done with Edelgarde’s burger, he rotated them to diamond-stripe them. As he watched them, Edelgarde picked up her dinner.
“See you in a few,” she said.
“K,” Rosie said. Then, when Bill had flipped the steaks with his tongs, she asked him again if he wanted to see her ass. She quickly turned around and bent all the way over before he could even start telling her he was married.
What he saw was an eyeful.
He saw the whole of her sexy-cut uniform panties as the short mini-maid’s-skirt rode up. While she was leaned over, she reached behind her to ever-so-swiftly pull the panties aside so he could see everything.
He was saying, “I’m married,” as she did this. But that didn’t stop her a bit, didn’t hinder her in the slightest.
“Was it good for you?” she asked as she straightened up and put herself back in place.
“I’m married,” he said for a second time.
“I heard you the first time. I was married once.” She turned to face him. “And I was a good girl too, a good wife. So help me God.”
“Really?”
“Cross my heart and hope to die.”
Rosie did a little curtsy. She smiled as she bowed, said, “I have to get back to that table.” She leaned in until she was close enough and gave Bill a little kiss on the cheek. “Make those steaks nice,” she said. “I want a good tip. And by the way, I don’t care if you’re married.”
Caesar came by while he was cooking those two T-bones. He peeked in first from the service counter and seeing that Bill was all alone in the kitchen he came around to the entryway. He stepped inside and started looking around. He was about to touch something but Bill stopped him.
“None of this is for you to touch,” Bill said.
Caesar was taken aback. He looked at Bill and was about to still go on and touch something when Bill smacked his tongs down on the table close to Caesar’s hand.
“You don’t work in this kitchen,” said Bill. “So don’t be touching anything. If you want something, ask for it like anybody else does.”
“I’ll make sure that you’re not here long,” Caesar said.
By Peter Weiss
(Note: This is something I saw that I thought was interesting to consider. It has been in the news recently. It is a Daily Wire Article with the link to it directly below.)
Link to article in Daily Wire here
Jury Rules Against Texas Dad Fighting 7-Year-Old Son’s Gender Transition
By Amanda Prestigiacomo
On Monday, a jury ruled against a Texas father, Jeffrey Younger, attempting to stop his seven-year-old son from a gender transition being facilitated by Dr. Anne Georgulas, the boy’s mother and Younger’s ex-wife.
“With a consensus of 11 of the 12 jurors, the jury decided not to grant Mr. Younger Sole Managing Conservatorship over his two twin boys,” LifeSiteNews reported Monday. “They voted that the current Joint Managing Conservatorship should be replaced by a Sole Managing Conservatorship, but that Mr. Younger should not be that person.”
According to the LifeSiteNews, Georgulas has been granted authority to move forward with puberty blockers, which can cause chemical castration, and, potentially, hormones, if she so chooses.
According to reporting from The Texan, Georgulas’ lawyers Jessica Janicek and Laura Hayes said the mother does not plan on giving James hormone blockers at this time. However, “no one has stated that she (Georgulas) would not be open to using them when James begins puberty,” which would be around age 11 and a half for a boy, the report said.
Additionally, with the jury’s decision, Mr. Younger will likely be forced to “affirm” his son’s new gender identity: a girl named “Luna.”
”I want you to imagine having electronic communication with your son on FaceTime, and imagine that your ex-wife has dressed him as a drag queen to talk to you,” Younger told host Luke Macias during an episode of “The Luke Macias Show” podcast in January. “He has false eyelashes and makeup. His hair has got glitter in it. He’s wearing a dress.”
“Now imagine how you would feel seeing what I believe is actual sexual abuse — I believe this is not just emotional abuse but is the very, most fundamental form of sexual abuse, tampering with the sexual identity of a vulnerable boy,” the father continued.
As reported by The Daily Wire in November, court documents show that Younger’s son only dresses as a girl when he’s with his mother, who calls the boy by his trans name and has even enrolled James as “Luna” in school. According to Younger, however, James consistently chooses to wear boy’s clothes, “violently refuses to wear girl’s clothes at my home,” and identifies as a boy whenever he is around him.
James’ mother has accused Younger of child abuse in their divorce proceedings “for not affirming James as transgender” and is looking to strip the dad of his parental rights, reported The Federalist. Georgulas is also seeking to force Younger to foot the bill for James’ visits to a transgender-affirming therapist and transgender medical alterations, which may include “chemical castration” two years from now, when the child is just eight.
The boy, according to Younger, has already been fully “socially transitioned.”
“[James] wears a dress at her (his ex-wife’s) home; he has a new made-up name, Luna – it appears in the court filings. He goes to school; the teachers call him ‘Luna.’ He uses the girl’s bathroom at school. All of his authority figures – his mother, his teacher, the librarian at school, the police officer at school, the principal at school – tell him he’s a girl. I’m the only authority figure in his life that tells him the truth; that he’s actually a boy,” Younger noted during the podcast.
The father noted that, in his opinion, he witnessed that his wife “was only giving [James] love and affection when he was acting like a girl.” She used to lock James in his room and tell him monsters only eat boys, Younger added.
“Every. Single. Day. You have to see your son sexually abused, and you have to maintain your calm,” the Texas father continued, “because the courts are not going to be fair to you. And the only way you can survive this and get your son through this alive is to calmly allow your son to be tortured right before your eyes and outlast the opposition. That’s what it’s like.”
“They’re asking me to affirm a delusion,” he said.
By Peter Weiss
link to full printable NCCPR article here with all working links
National Coalition for Child Protection Reform / 53 Skyhill Road (Suite 202) / Alexandria, Va. 22314 (703) 212-2006 / info(at)nccpr(dot)info / http://www.nccpr.org
THE EVIDENCE IS IN Foster Care vs. Keeping Families Together: The Definitive Studies
NCCPR long has argued that many children now trapped in foster care would be far better off if they had remained with their own families and those families had been given the right kinds of help. Turns out that’s not quite right.
In fact, many children now trapped in foster care would be far better off if they remained with their own families even if those families got only the typical help (which tends to be little help, wrong help, or no help) commonly offered by child welfare agencies.
That’s the message from the largest studies ever undertaken to compare the impact on children of foster care versus keeping comparably maltreated children with their own families. The first study was the subject of a front-page story in USA Today. The full study is available here. child protection and outcome, the full study
The first study, published in 2007, looked at outcomes for more than 15,000 children. It compared foster children not to the general population but to comparably-maltreated children left in their own homes. The result: On measure after measure the children left in their own homes do better.
In fact, it’s not even close.
Children left in their own homes are far less likely to become pregnant as teenagers, far less likely to wind up in the juvenile justice system and far more likely to hold a job for at least three months than comparably maltreated children who were placed in foster care.
One year later, the same researcher published another study. This time the study included 23,000 cases. Again he compared foster children to comparably-maltreated children left in their own homes. This time he looked at which children were more likely to be arrested as adults. Once again, the children left in their own homes fared better than the foster children.
Implications
- The studies use the term “foster care” generically; they include children placed in any form of substitute care. That’s important because whenever information like this comes out, people who want to warehouse children in orphanages try to use it to justify their schemes. But these studies were not limited to family foster homes. And it takes three single-spaced pages just to list all the other studies documenting the harm of orphanages. (Those pages are available from NCCPR.)
- This does not mean that no child ever should be placed in foster care. But it means many fewer children should be placed in foster care.
The studies excluded the most severe cases of maltreatment, a very small proportion of any child protective worker’s caseload. That’s precisely because, horror stories that make the front page notwithstanding, these are cases where everyone with time to investigate would agree that removal from the home was the only alternative.
Rather, the studies focused on, by far, the largest group of cases any worker sees, those that can best be called the “in-between cases” where the parent is neither all victim nor all villain; cases where there are real problems in the home but wide disagreement over what should be done. As the first study itself notes: “These are the cases most likely to be affected by policy changes that alter the threshold for placement.” They also are, of course, the cases most likely to be affected by a foster-care panic – a huge, sudden upsurge in needless removals after the death of a child “known to the system” — which also alters the threshold for placement.
Even among these cases, the figures are averages. Certainly there are some individual cases among the thousands studied in which foster care was the less harmful alternative. But what the data make clear is that foster care is vastly overused, damaging large numbers of children who would do better in life had they remained in their own homes, even with the minimal help most child welfare agencies offer to families.
THE EVIDENCE IS IN/2
This says less about how well child protection agencies do in helping families than it does about how enormously toxic a foster care intervention is. Anything that toxic must be used very sparingly and in very small doses.
- Child welfare agencies have a disingenuous response to all this: “Why yes, of course,” they like to say. “This research just shows what we’ve always said ourselves: foster care only should be used as a last resort; of course we keep families together whenever possible.” But this research shows that agency actions belie their words. These studies found thousands of children already in foster care who would have done better had child protection agencies not taken them away in the first place.
- The USA Today story quotes one deservedly well-respected expert as saying that the 2007 study was the first to produce such results. But that is an error. Actually it was at least the second since 2006. A University of Minnesota study used a different methodology and measured different outcomes, but came to very similar conclusions. And now, of course, there is this third, largest study of all.
- Though the USA Today story says other “studies” go the other way, the one cited, with less than 1/100th the sample size of the new studies, a shorter duration and at least one other serious flaw (omitting foster children in care for less than six months) is the only one we know of. And that study focused on reunification, not on children never removed in the first place.
- And, of course, that study also compared foster care only to typical “help” for families in their own homes, which generally is little or nothing. Providing the kinds of real help NCCPR recommends (See our publication, Doing Child Welfare Right) would likely change the result and, in the case of the three more recent and more rigorous studies, create an even wider gap in outcomes favoring keeping families together. Perhaps most intriguing, these studies suggest it actually may be possible to quantify the harm of a foster-care-panic.
Thanks to these studies, we now have an estimate of how much worse foster children do on key outcomes compared with comparably-maltreated children left in their own homes. It’s also usually possible to calculate how many more children are taken away during a foster-care panic. So it should be possible to estimate how many more children will wind up under arrest, how many more will become pregnant and how many more will be jobless as a result of a foster-care panic.
It also should be possible to estimate roughly how many children have been saved from these rotten outcomes in states and localities that have reformed their systems to emphasize safe, proven programs to keep families together.
These new studies and the Minnesota study are in addition to the comprehensive study of foster care alumni showing that only one in five could be said to be doing well as a young adult – in other words, foster care churns out walking wounded four times out of five. (See NCCPR’s publication, 80 Percent Failure for more on this study) and the mass of evidence showing that simply in terms of physical safety, real family preservation programs have a far better track record than foster care. (See NCCPR Issue Paper #1).
The current buzzword in child welfare is “evidence-based.” What that really means is: How dare proponents of any new, innovative approach to child welfare expect to get funding if they can’t dot every i and cross every t on evaluations proving the innovation’s efficacy beyond a shadow of a doubt? Old, non-innovative programs, however, are not held to this standard. If they were, child welfare would be turned upside down by the results of this new research.
Because now, more than ever, the evidence is in.
NB: This is an NCCPR Issue paper and the link to the paper with its full links is above.
By Peter Weiss
The last time anyone looked, this was still America, so the choice, at least for now, is yours. It’s a simple choice. Red pill or blue.
Either you want to wake up looking at the truth or you want to wake up believing the bull shit the left side of the government is trying to hand you.
There’s a simple caveat if you choose the latter: most certainly your days are limited for the ability to make a free choice.
And that’s where they’ve taken us.
It seems useless anymore to keep going over the details and over the details and over the details. Everyone who has done any looking at anything that’s been going on for the last three years and more knows all the details. Let it suffice to say that the Mueller report fizzled out, that this Ukrainian stuff is a Mueller report part two which will probably fizzle out as well. Or backfire similarly. If you are skeptical of this, simply ask yourself why it’s all being done behind closed doors where no one can see it and only the Democrats can leak things.
Gee, come to think of it, isn’t that how all this happened, how all this started?
It’s also useless to rehash all the details about how it goes back into the Obama administration. If you’re one of those who believe Obama’s statement that his is the only administration with absolutely no scandals, then you’re probably going to stop reading. If you can take such a statement at its face value simply because the mainstream media/social media consortium, Pravda USA, repeat it like obedient dogs, then whatever is about to happen if the Despicable Democrats get their way is what you deserve since you are so passively asking for it.
So let’s just take a look at where we are.
Whether you like President Trump or not isn’t an issue. What’s an issue is what the Despicable Democrats have done to our country and to him, beginning back with the FBI leaks and even before that with the CIA leaks and the dissemination of classified information to 17 intelligence agencies, all done before Trump was inaugurated.
I know. Either you believe it or you don’t, red pill or blue pill, your choice.
So what do we have now?
We have a soft coup going on, believe it or not, your choice. In America? Wow! Is this America? Anyone wondering?
We have a mainstream media/social media consortium that no longer even hides the facts of its bias. It has become, now blatantly so, an extension of the lefties, of the Despicable Democrats, of their socialist agenda. Make no mistake it is a socialist agenda.
Or, we have Pravda USA.
We have a Politburo, a political class, a class made up of mostly millionaires, who have done nothing more than enrich themselves over the last 30 or 40 years. They no longer care about the people they were elected to serve. They care about keeping their power. They have beomce a class unto themselves, the American Politburo.
We have a ruling class on the left side, the Despicable Democrats, who have spent all their time attempting to get rid of the president simply because they don’t like him. No, Trump is not perfect. But he was duly elected and if you’re interested, the call for impeachment began even before he was inaugurated.
This ruling class on the left side, the Despicable Democrats, have done nothing but investigate him from the start, and since they took over the House of Representatives, which they probably wouldn’t have taken over if not for the faux-Mueller investigation. It is literally all they have done, all they are interested in, except for attempting to block anything the President does even if it is what they believe in.
Yes, all the things we were told in the 50s and 60s that were the things of the dictatorships of the Soviet Union we now have in United States of America.
Soviet USA.
As always, you blue-pill-takers, be careful what you wish for.
