A Savior Is Born?

*The posts made in this blog are of our opinion only* Without Prejudice UCC 1-207

Judge OKs $18M settlement in 'kids for cash' case

Philly.com

Judge OKs $18M settlement in 'kids for cash' case.

The Associated Press 

Posted: Saturday, December 15, 2012, 10:08 AM

SCRANTON, Pa. - A federal judge in Pennsylvania has given final approval to a settlement that will pay out nearly $18 million to juveniles who allege they were wrongly jailed by corrupt judges.

The approval granted Friday in Scranton allows attorneys to begin distributing money to about 1,600 teens and their parents.
The funds come from developer Robert K. Mericle (MEHR'-ih-kuhl), who built a pair of for-profit youth detention centers.
Two Luzerne County judges accepted payments from Mericle and routinely jailed teens at the facilities. The judges are now serving lengthy prison terms.
Mericle pleaded guilty to failing to report a felony. He awaits sentencing in the so-called "kids for cash" scandal.
Affected youths will receive between $500 and $5,000. Some will get more based on the circumstances of their incarceration.



*The posts made in this blog are of our opinion only* Without Prejudice UCC 1-207

Organized Crime in Child Protective Services

Organized Crime in Child Protective Services
(90 minutes)

Listen to internet radio with Marti Oakley on Blog Talk Radio

James Roger Brown from The Sociology Center joins the show this evening to discuss the organized crime rings operating in Child Protective Services.  Federal funding dependent on a quota system plays a large role in the abduction and kidnapping of children from their homes to then be placed in foster care for profit.
We will also cover Mr. Brown's "The Family Defense Manual", a book he has published with essential tools for protecting you and your family from state actors and agencies in complete violation of the law.
http://www.thesociologycenter.com/
1. Services that detect and document pseudoscience, science fraud, structural corruption and organized crime in government agencies and programs; 2. Specialized knowledge publications such as THE ESSENTIAL SKILLS OF CRITICAL THINKING for Home Schooling parents and other parents who want to enhance their children's skills for college, and THE FAMILY DEFENSE MANUAL, the only publication that integrates corporate legal strategy and model legal forms designed to discourage false child abuse allegations being made or pursued by corrupt or extremist government employees; 3. Application of advanced intelligence collection and analysis methodology;
BIO: James Roger Brown, Sociologist, Intelligence Collection and Analysis Methodologist
Called by some “The most dangerous mind in North America,” Roger’s general field is sociology of knowledge with specializations in the sociology of intelligence operations, cultural reality models, and how cultures define and relate to the spiritual world.
THE SOCIOLOGY CENTER^TN
P.O. Box 101
Worthington, KY 41183-0101
(606) 836-7613

List of US Federal Government Funding Programs

Total Funding  $1,974,042,215,500

Programs   1607

Justin Heminger, Jaylene Day, judy ringstad, bruce downs, Kelly Anderson, Katie Dabney, Fairbanks office of childrens services.
*The posts made in this blog are of our opinion only* Without Prejudice UCC 1-207

Legislative committee tackles reducing kids in child welfare system

 Legislative committee tackles reducing kids in child welfare system

October 05, 2012 3:30 pm  •  By Joanne Young / Lincoln Journal Star

Too many kids find their way into Nebraska's child welfare system -- it's been said over and over in the past year.
On Friday, the Legislature's Health and Human Services Committee continued to gather testimony on how other states keep their numbers lower and how Nebraska can follow their lead.
Interim studies suggested by Lincoln Sens. Colby Coash and Kathy Campbell are examining screening, assessment and investigations of reports of child abuse and neglect, and how the current process contributes to a higher rate of out-of-home care.
The state spent the past two years focusing on how to support families once they are in the child welfare system, Coash said. Now it's time to look at how to keep families together and reduce the trauma for kids.
Caren Kaplan, an expert in child welfare policy and practice, endorsed a method of addressing child welfare cases called "differential response," which allows for more than the traditional investigation.
Nebraska's reliance on the traditional investigative response often results in families being shuffled to the courts, case workers and out-of-home care. With alternative approaches, families could get support to resolve issues putting kids at risk without bringing them into the system.
Differential responses can engage parents, the extended family and community service providers in a less adversarial manner, she said. And through assessment, rather than investigation, parents do not end up on the state's child abuse registry.
Kaplan told the committee, which included Coash from the Judiciary Committee, that since the 1970s, states have used the investigation approach for allegations of maltreatment of children, although only a small percentage involve serious abuse such as broken bones, concussions, deliberate burns, abandonment and starvation.
Over time, child neglect cases resulting from poverty-related issues of inadequate food and clothing, poor hygiene, unclean homes and improper supervision have become the largest proportion of cases.
In 2010, 96.5 percent of Nebraska child welfare cases involved neglect, she said. The national average is 75 percent. Kaplan said she had never seen a percentage of neglect cases higher than Nebraska's.
Kaplan said families that come to the attention of the state have unique histories, circumstances, strengths, needs and challenges. Differential response allows child protection systems to respond in diverse ways, she said.
"What is most important is that safety is not compromised through this approach," she said.
Thomas Pristow, director of the division of children and family services in the Department of Health and Human Services, told the committee he expects to implement differential response in the summer of 2013.
That response would be used for a targeted and clearly defined population of families when there's no indication an investigative response is needed, he said.
The Legislature is looking at putting the differentiated response method into state law, Coash said.
The number of state wards as of Oct. 1 stood at 5,812, down 309 from the 6,121 of six months ago.
Pristow said in the past six months, the state has reduced the number of children in the child welfare system in part by focusing on children who have been in their homes as state wards for more than 60 days.
When the department began to look at this, about 1,800 state wards were living safely at home, some for hundreds of days, some for thousands of days, Pristow said. The state was able to vacate custody in a number of those cases.
"We're not done with that yet. We're going to continue to focus on that," he said. "There is no reason for us to maintain that type of long-term relationship if there is no safety issue."

*The posts made in this blog are of our opinion only* Without Prejudice UCC 1-207

Couple accuses county of playing politics with baby

 Couple accuses county of playing politics with baby

By Michael Barrett

Published: Thursday, November 15, 2012 at 18:56 PM.

 http://www.gastongazette.com/couple-accuses-county-of-playing-politics-with-baby-1.50452

Leon and Chrissy Smith thought they had finally completed their two-year-long journey to parenthood when they adopted a 22-month-old boy in late August.
Yet five weeks after the toddler was brought to the Smiths and stole their hearts, the Gaston County Department of Social Services took him back. He was returned to a Gaston County couple that had fostered him from birth, after a public and political outcry here about why the child had been removed from that home in the first place.
Since the Smiths had registered directly with an adoption agency, instead of first serving as foster parents, they had no reason to believe the placement wouldn’t be final. But because the adoption process technically takes 90 days to become official, they had no legal recourse.
Still bitter about their treatment by Gaston County DSS, however, the couple is not letting the matter rest. They are talking with an attorney about filing a civil lawsuit against that agency, as well as a custody suit to get the child back.
“I want people to know there’s another side to this story,” said Chrissy Smith. “Our world got turned upside down for no reason.
“I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t get involved in this to be a baby sitter for five weeks.”
The decision to return the child to original foster parents David and Michelle Buchanan, who are now proceeding with plans to adopt him, was made by Gaston County DSS Director Keith Moon. It is believed to be the first time a director here has made such a unilateral move, overruling the Adoptions Committee that typically decides where to place children in foster care.
Moon has declined to comment specifically about the case, citing Social Services confidentiality laws. But he said he is sorry for the angst that recent events have caused.
“Your heart always goes out to the people in these situations,” he said.
A child of their own
Leon Smith has a 7-year-old son from a previous relationship. He and Chrissy hoped to have a child together once they were married, but after she suffered seven miscarriages in the last few years, they realized adoption was their only option.
Because they are a biracial couple, they sought to adopt a black or biracial child of any age. The Smiths went through the Children’s Home Society of North Carolina because they wanted to adopt immediately, rather than foster.
“I was not going to put a child in my home to give us more heartache,” Chrissy Smith said.
In August, after months of reviewing profiles of children, the Smiths were told about a biracial, 22-month-old toddler who was being moved out of a foster home in Gaston County, where he had been raised from birth by the Buchanans. They said they would be interested in adopting, as long as there were no unresolved issues with the boy.
After an extended meeting Aug. 29 with the DSS Adoptions Committee, the Smiths were approved to become the child’s adoptive parents. Two days later, two social workers arrived with the toddler.
“We were so excited,” Chrissy Smith said.
Public uproar
By most accounts, the Buchanans are highly regarded foster parents. They said they grew to love the newborn boy they began fostering in November 2010 and were on what they believed was a path to adoption. But the 22-month-old was suddenly taken from them and placed in the Smiths’ home Aug. 31, and the Buchanans were offered no explanation why.
The Adoptions Committee that made that decision was largely made up of DSS officials. Despite the child’s relocation, DSS had only recently renewed the Buchanans’ foster care license.
After the Buchanans’ story was documented in a Gazette article Sept. 27, they pleaded for help during a Gaston County commissioners meeting. A number of their friends and fellow foster parents also spoke on their behalf and testified to their character.
Behind the scenes, county commissioners and state legislators began to question the decision to take the child from the couple.
The public pressure prompted Moon to call in an outside attorney to review the Adoptions Committee’s decision. That attorney cited legal concerns  about the committee’s rationale and suggested it needed to reconvene, according to a Gazette source with knowledge of the discussions.
Revisiting the decision
It was soon revealed that the child had been removed from the Buchanans’ home for permanent placement elsewhere in part because they are white, and the child is biracial, according to the Gazette’s source. At least one social worker involved in the case had also accused the Buchanans of Munchausen by proxy syndrome. The term pertains to a form of child abuse that involves the exaggeration or fabrication of illnesses or symptoms by a primary caretaker.
But two physicians who had cared for the toddler stood up for the Buchanans. Both wrote letters testifying that the child’s medical issues were valid, and in no way due to the Buchanans’ actions.
The idea that social workers could make such claims in an Adoptions Committee meeting, without medical justification, prompted concerns about the procedures in place.
More than one DSS employee who was involved in the Buchanans’ case was also found to have made threatening comments on Facebook as the story gained publicity. Those included postings that the Buchanans should “watch what you do, or things will come back to bite you,” according to several Gazette sources.
Moon has since reassigned at least one social worker with ties to that case to a new job.
Decision overturned
In early October, Moon convened the Adoptions Committee again to review the case of the foster child in question. Several committee members still refuted the idea of returning the child to the Buchanans, but Moon overrode them.
“After consultation with legal counsel, I have decided to overrule the decision of the Adoptions Committee,” Moon wrote in an Oct. 5 email to county leaders. “The child will be placed in foster care with the Buchanan family and we will move quickly to review our adoption process and reconstitute the committee.”
Since then, Moon has changed the committee’s makeup, condensed its size and given the DSS attorney more oversight in guiding each meeting. In the future, he said foster parents will be allowed to offer their perspective to the Adoptions Committee before placement decisions are made.
After the child was returned to the Buchanans, they were asked to no longer speak with the media about their case.
When the child was taken back from the Smiths on Oct. 5, they were also advised not to speak about the case. But after a meeting with Moon and other DSS officials in late October, they decided to go public with their complaints.
Taken back
Chrissy Smith said she bonded with her adopted son from their first day together.
She said she had been told – and read in his medical records – that he had numerous issues, such as trouble talking, urinating, swallowing and eating certain foods. But she said she noticed no such problems in the five weeks she had him. He also became more expressive and talkative in that time, she said.
The Smiths had been reading Gazette articles about the uproar regarding their adopted child for a week, when they received a phone call on Oct. 5. They were told that new evidence had been presented in the case, and that DSS would be coming to take the child back that day.
“I fell completely to the floor,” said Chrissy Smith. “I was crying.”
Late last month, the Smiths were finally allowed to meet with Moon and other DSS officials. They were immediately asked to sign papers agreeing to never again discuss the case publicly, but they declined.
The Smiths secretly recorded the meeting, and they pressed Moon about his decision to remove the child from their home, despite never having met them before.
“I told him, ‘You’re not a social worker and you had never even met this child before making this decision, but you’ve ripped my life apart,” Chrissy Smith said.
Custody battle possible
Cheryl Harris, the DSS program administrator for Family and Children’s Services, was also in attendance during the meeting with the Smiths. Like Moon, she declined to speak about the case specifically. But she alluded to the events that have transpired.
“I can tell you I did not get into this role to cause people pain,” said Harris. “I don’t think anyone in this agency would intentionally make decisions that would cause someone pain. It’s very, very difficult, I think, for everybody.”
But the apologies have given the Smiths no comfort. They believe Moon made his decision because of pressure from county commissioners, who were under fire from the public, and that Moon feared he would lose his job if he didn’t act.
“I don’t think DSS wants this to go to court,” said Chrissy Smith. “But honestly, I would like it to all come to light, because this man played with my life.”

*The posts made in this blog are of our opinion only* Without Prejudice UCC 1-207

A reporters moral struggle over Child Protective Services

 A reporters moral struggle over Child Protective Services

 Posted: November 25, 2012 | Author: donnellyjustice | Filed under: CPS corruption

 http://donnellyjustice.me/2012/11/25/a-reporters-struggle-moral-struggle-over-child-protective-services/

I read a story of the couple whose two young children were removed from them because social workers thought their son’s bone fractures must have been caused by physical abuse. 
Only after a nightmarish 18-month ordeal, which drove the couple apart, were they finally able to produce medical evidence to indicate that the boy’s injuries were caused naturally, by brittle bone disease. 
The court dropped the case, and Amy Garland and her children are now happily reunited. 
When I spoke to her last night she told me how lucky she’d been to be put in touch with a medical expert who established the truth when Doctor’s for CPS were so wiling to say what they were told to say. 
I listened to her story with particular interest because it is only one more example in a very dark area of our national life I have long been investigating, and which I have come to see as one of the greatest scandals unfolding today — as shocking as anything I have come across in all my five decades as a journalist. 
In the past two years, the number of children being taken away from their parents by social workers has soared by almost 50 per cent to an all-time record level of nearly 10,000 a month shown by billing records.
And having followed scores of such cases in detail, it is abundantly clear to me that in far too many of them there is absolutely no reason why the families should be torn apart in this way. 
Forcibly separating happy, well-cared for children from loving, responsible parents creates a tragedy which will last for the rest of the lives of all those involved — even if they are eventually reunited. The emotional agony if the children who are permanently removed is the worst crime imaginable and should be punishable for life, the same punishment the family receives when a child is lost to these NAZI criminals. If I was to decide the fate of a social worker found guilty of stealing my child, with out ever giving it another thought, the sentence would be life behind bars with no possibility of parole.
Of course there is no objection to social workers removing children from parents who have genuinely abused them. As we know from many notorious examples, social workers have failed to take into care children who died as a result.  It is so hard to consider any statements made by CPS today, so many statements have turned out to be false and after some digging were just pleas for public sympathy and increase funding. I will say this children have been sent into the lions den many times to get increases in funding.
But a key reason for the rise in the number of children now being seized from their parents is that, precisely to avoid such scandals like, the child porn ring Senator Nancy Schaefer brought to public attention, social workers were caught head deep in corruption.
With the press silenced on a national level CPS is confident the pubic has not heard of the scandals and staggering numbers of children being removed for no good reason and that by going to the extreme, becoming trigger-happy, snatching children for possible crimes that may or may not happen is the way to prevent abuse, these people are so far removed from the American belief system that the day has come CPS must end. 
What is most shocking about this is that the families then find themselves in the grip of a system which seems horribly rigged against them. Too often these cases will begin on the flimsiest of grounds, as when the social workers are tipped off by a malicious neighbour or an over-zealous teacher. 
One mother I know, who holds down a responsible job, lost her two children when her only mistake was to tap her daughter’s arm with a roll of cling wrap. 
The next day this was twisted by a foolish teacher into a charge that the girl had been ‘hit with an implement’, and the court paid a psychiatrist for a 235-page report arguing that the mother suffered from ‘a borderline personality disorder’, one of the vague, unprovable claims they love to use. 
Another lost her three children after she had tripped up on a charity walk, pulling the daughter holding her hand to the ground. When a health visitor reported the bruises the child suffered as a result to social workers, without asking how these had arisen, they sent the mother to one psychiatrist after another until they also found one prepared to say she had a ‘borderline personality disorder’. 
One of the sanest and brightest mothers I have come across had her baby removed after the woman had accidentally fallen from a window, because the social workers alleged that she had tried to commit suicide. 
They phoned to tell her they were taking her baby while she lay temporarily paralyzed in the hospital. 
On such dubious grounds, the social workers may arrive to snatch children from their beds, all too often accompanied by a gang of four or more policemen, who seem only too willing to comply with any demands the social workers make. It has become a all out war to keep your children protected from government.
One mother was breastfeeding her three-hour-old baby on a hospital bed when two social workers and four policemen burst into the room to take the child forcibly from her arms, after a series of false allegations were made against her only because she herself was taken from her parents years earlier. How does that make her guilty of any crime? It may make her inexperienced but not a bad mom.  
The parents in such cases often find themselves treated like criminals, held for hours in police cells before being released without charge. But worse is to come when they arrive in a CPS court, where all the normal rules of justice don’t apply and the parent doesn’t have any idea what they have done but they already have found guilty by the unlicensed social worker.
The social workers can produce hearsay evidence which are guaranteed 85 % of the time, to be lies, but which the parents are not allowed to question, and the documents to the judge the parents are not even allowed to read, all for the best interest of the child. When did kidnapping the child away from family become in the child’s best interest. 
If they are represented by court appointed lawyers, in most cases forced on them by the council, they often find that their lawyers refuse to oppose the council’s application for a care order — which allows the children to be removed for a longer period — and accept every allegation CPS makes. 
The system hides itself away behind an impenetrable wall of secrecy 
Most family judges are as much part of this broken system as the social workers themselves — one rare exception being the senior family judge who last year castigated the behavior of Devon social workers as ‘more like Stalin’s Russia or Mao’s China.
Meanwhile the children, generally ambushed and distraught at what is happening to them, are placed with foster caregivers, who receive on average 400.00 a week or 20,000 a year for each child from the federal government .  
The biological parents and children may be allowed to meet for only a few hours a week of rigorously ‘supervised contact’, in CPS office ‘ this limited amount of time allows the court to use the excuse that all bonds have been severed.
Any expression of affection or mention of the court case is strictly forbidden and can be punished by suspension of the contact, possibly permanently. 
It may sound hard to believe, but I know of cases where children have been groomed by the social workers and their foster caregivers  to believe that their parents no longer love or want them. In several cases I have followed, it is clear that children in foster care are being maltreated or even sexually abused. 
Finally, this travesty of justice may wind to its conclusion when, after anything up to two years, a judge agrees that a child can be sent for adoption — although in recent years our adoption rate has markedly fallen, leaving ever more thousands of these children as fodder for a ‘fostering industry’ which is now costing taxpayers more than 3  billion a year for California alone and this is paid by social security.  
Obviously there are happier exceptions to this dreadful picture. Some children are rightly saved by social workers from genuine abuse, and there are many good and caring foster homes. But in far more cases, the other, more tragic scenario has become the norm to kidnap children to balance other state budgets
So, if things have gone so terribly wrong with our child protection system, why has this happened — and why have we not heard more about it? It is difficult for outsiders to realize just how corrupted it has become until they experience it at first hand — because the entire system has managed to hide itself away behind an impenetrable wall of secrecy and a press gag order. 
It is time this astonishing national scandal was recognized for what it is, nothing but a child theft ring leading to prison, pornography, and hardships placed on innocent people that can never be forgiven. The suicide rate of parents that have lost their children is around 36% according to CPS this just proves how bad the home was. I say, it just may be how important the child is and the utter destruction our family leading such depression. CPS doesn’t understand how important the family is to parent. Do we really want a government agency looking out for our children that doesn’t have a clue how much our family’s mean to us? For myself life just wouldn’t be good if I lost my children and anyone taking them will be risking his or her life.  
Supposedly designed to ‘protect the interests of the children’ by ensuring that they cannot be identified, this secrecy had been used by the system to conceal its workings from public view, by threatening parents with prison for talking about their case to outsiders, and even journalists like me for trying to report what goes on. 
It is this cloak of secrecy which more than anything has allowed the system to go so far off the rails. Too many social workers are in the grip of a self-righteous, politically correct ideology which drives them to abuse the power the Government has given them over other people’s lives, in the conviction that they are doing good in the world.  These people do know what they are really doing is harming people for life
The secrecy which surrounds the way they wield that power means they are hardly ever called to account. 
Nothing did more to distort the system in this way than President Clinton’s personal crusade to drive up the number of adoptions by setting adoption targets for the number of children they place with new families. 
They were given huge cash incentives to fulfill their quotas thanks to a government policy and adoption week fast track adoption destroying as many people as they can in the process which has left a terrible legacy in convincing both social workers and the courts that one of their prime duties is to seize children from their parents, even when there is no good reason for it. 
It is time this astonishing national scandal was recognized for what it is, and for the trail of horrors it is perpetrating to be dragged into the light. This reporter is putting my life a risk by breaking the silence.
I have had it. With the terrorism by Social Services, call me whistle blower something I can be proud of for a change.
Daily Vall

*The posts made in this blog are of our opinion only* Without Prejudice UCC 1-207

Medicating Children: A “Whistleblower’s” Lawsuit Raises a Novel Legal Question

 Published on Psychology Today (http://www.psychologytoday.com)

 Medicating Children: A “Whistleblower’s” Lawsuit Raises a Novel Legal Question

By Robert Whitaker

Created Jun 2 2010 - 12:08pm

In the past few years, a number of pharmaceutical companies have admitted to federal charges that they illegally marketed psychiatric medications for non-approved uses, with the companies paying large sums to settle the cases. Now, a legal complaint filed by the Law Project for Psychiatric Rights in an Alaskan federal court is raising a related question. When healthcare providers bill Medicaid for prescriptions of psychiatric drugs to children for non-approved uses, are they committing Medicaid fraud?
The case, United States ex-rel Law Project for Psychiatric Rights v. Matsutani, was unsealed earlier this year, and legal papers were recently filed that have brought this novel question -- which obviously has profound implications for the prescribing of psychiatric medications to poor children and adolescents -- into sharp focus.
The Law Project for Psychiatric Rights (PsychRights), which is headed by Alaskan attorney James Gottstein, filed its whistleblower complaint in April 2009. Known as a qui tam lawsuit, PsychRights sued on behalf of the federal government under the False Claims Act, which allows private individuals to pursue legal complaints against individuals or companies that are allegedly defrauding the government. In December, the federal government declined to join PsychRights in the case.
PsychRights named Alaskan state officials, hospitals, mental health agencies, psychiatrists, and pharmacies as defendants. In its complaint, PsychRights argues that the federal government has agreed to provide Medicaid reimbursement only for those outpatient drugs that are prescribed for an FDA-approved use or for a use supported by a medical compendium (such as the DRUGDEX Information System.) PsychRights maintains that the defendants defrauded the federal government when they billed Medicaid (or the federal Children's Health Insurance Program) for outpatient drugs that didn't meet this standard.
As part of its complaint, PsychRights identified 16 commonly prescribed psychiatric medications that have no "medically accepted indication" for youth under 18 years old, and it also identified the limited number of "medically accepted indications" that exist for 32 other psychiatric drugs. PsychRights compiled this list of "approved" uses by methodically going through the drug compendiums, and it serves as the evidential heart of the complaint, for it reveals that psychiatric medications are regularly prescribed to poor children for non-approved uses. PsychRights is asking the federal court to stop this practice (which it argues is harmful), and to pay hefty financial penalties for the fraudulent claims made to date.
In early April, the defendants petitioned the court to dismiss the complaint, arguing that it was "fatally flawed" for a number of reasons, including several technical ones. For example, the defendants maintain that PsychRights has not "disclosed" private information that is required of "whistleblowers" in qui tam suits. But the defendants also argued --and this goes to the core legal issue of interest to healthcare providers -- that PsychRights has misinterpreted the applicable Medicaid law. Medicaid is a joint state-federal program, with each state establishing a Medicaid plan that must be approved by the federal government, and the defendants argue that a state may in fact choose to provide Medicaid reimbursement for outpatient drugs that are not FDA approved or "medically indicated" by drug compendia. The defendants argue that Alaska implicitly made that choice in regard to off-label use of psychiatric medications in children, and thus no fraud was committed.
The U.S. District Court in Alaska will likely take months to rule on the defendants' motions to dismiss the complaints. If the court rules on the central issue, it will help define whether Medicaid law supports off-label, non-compendia-approved use of psychiatric medications in children, or deems this commonplace practice to be medically unjustified.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/mad-in-america/201006/medicating-children-whistleblower-s-lawsuit-raises-novel-legal-question

*The posts made in this blog are of our opinion only* Without Prejudice UCC 1-207

FRAUD UPON THE COURT PSYCHOLOGY WHISTLE BLOWER

 FRAUD UPON THE COURT PSYCHOLOGY WHISTLE BLOWER

This video describes the fraudulent use of indicators in psychology for the prosecution in government trafficking of children to strangers for Title IV and medicaid. From Jan Smith.

*The posts made in this blog are of our opinion only* Without Prejudice UCC 1-207

OCS Is Scrutinized

 OCS Is Scrutinized

Fairbanks Daily News Miner

Letters to the editor

by Christy Lawton

12.02.12 - 12:00 am

Nov. 30, 2012

To the editor:

Having spent the last 15 years working in child protective services, one of the hardest lessons learned early in my career was that no matter what, there will always be folks who will say the Office of Children’s Services didn’t do enough to protect a child or that we did too much. Opinions go one way or the other most of the time because the work is complex and confidential, and the stories you’ll likely hear about via the media are extreme and elicit strong emotional responses. However, the truth lies as with most things in life, somewhere in the middle.

OCS is neither perfect nor broken. We are a system comprised of people committed to child safety and strengthening families. We face the realities of abuse, addiction and much more every day because of that commitment and desire to help families.

We don’t decide who gets reported; those decisions are made by the public, by those with concerns for a child’s safety and/or are required to report by law. Of the thousands of investigations that are completed annually, approximately only 10 percent of those will open for ongoing services which then initiate legal proceedings to ensure due process.

While OCS has a great degree of authority, it comes with a great deal of accountability and intense scrutiny. Once the legal system is engaged, it provides an infrastructure to ensure compliance with state and federal laws. Public defenders, guardians ad litem, court appointed special advocates, tribal representatives, assistant attorneys general, judges and OCS staff have the collective responsibility to ensure families are served and treated appropriately.

In addition, we also conduct regular quality assurance reviews on cases statewide to monitor practice and policy implementation. We are subject to regular federal audits and scrutiny by other organizations, such as the Ombudsman’s Office and the volunteer based Citizen’s Review Panel.

Everyone at OCS regards our role as public servants with the utmost reverence. While we’ll never be perfect, every day we do our best to ensure Alaska’s children are safe and to serve the public in a manner that is respectful and appropriate.

Christy Lawton

Office of Children’s Services

 Be sure to visit The Daily News Miners Letters To The Editor and read the comments from readers. Perhaps... make some of your own.

Update: If you visit the link above, you will get this:

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Sorry, the page you requested could not be found. Try searching the site:

Coincidence?


*The posts made in this blog are of our opinion only* Without Prejudice UCC 1-207

LEGAL ABUSE SYNDROME

Karin Huffer has discovered why many people leave a courtroom frustrated and sick. On Wednesday April 2, 2008 we presented a new program called FAMILY COURT - Part 2 - Dennis Grover and Michael Nance are joined on the phone by Stephen Baskerville author of TAKEN INTO CUSTODY and Karin Huffer author of LEGAL ABUSE SYNDROME. Stephen shares his research into the atrocities of Family Court, where it came from and questionable tactics and implementations of its own rules that affect mostly children. Karin Huffer explores the foundation of Legal Abuse Syndrome and has proven that a constant negative result from any courtroom experience produces Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome in litigants. Before you go to any court, understand that Justice is not a part of the equation and prepare yourself for the possibilities of being in a situation that is based in judge and attorney created rules rather than common sense. The full program is available at http://www.libertyandjusticeforall.tv/family_court2.htm $10.75 ppd. copying and sharing is encouraged.

*The posts made in this blog are of our opinion only* Without Prejudice UCC 1-207

OCS misconduct

  Fairbanks Daily Newsminer

 

by Karen VanReenan / Fairbanks

11.08.12 - 11:50 pm

Nov. 5, 2012

To the editor:

Why is it you cannot talk to five people in this town without encountering someone involved with the state Office of Children’s Services, either indirectly or who has had their children taken from them? Without divulging private information, I can say I’ve sat in on adjudication hearings and permanency hearings, and have seen OCS officials violate a judge’s order immediately after it was issued. I’ve known families who were excluded from meetings or not even notified of court hearings where it was ultimately decided to pursue custody of children by the state.

I’ve known parents and foster parents who cannot get phone calls returned by OCS. I myself once called a caseworker in January, only for the voicemail to inform me that said caseworker would not be returning to the office until November of the previous year. One caseworker even showed up for a home visit with a hickey visible on her neck. When I addressed a complaint to OCS personally, a complaint that was supposed to be addressed within three days, I didn’t get a call back for two weeks.

The OCS office in Fairbanks even ignores state laws that call for reasonable measures to place siblings together in foster care. It will not grant parents regularly scheduled visitation with their children. In one instance I know of, a veteran caseworker was caught misreading a urine analysis as positive — it was later proven negative by the accused party. Go ahead, ask five people you know, and you’re likely to find at least one who has had involvement with OCS.

Undoubtedly, there are cases of abuse and neglect that call for OCS intervention, but even in those cases all parties should be kept informed of and involved in the process. And then there are cases where OCS has undeniably overstepped its bounds, taking children from parents who had already placed their children safely with family. The way OCS performs its duty leaves you the impression that its objective is a sneaky one aimed at preserving the same bottom line corporations have to, and not its stated objective of reunifying families.

Karen VanReenan

Fairbanks

*The posts made in this blog are of our opinion only* Without Prejudice UCC 1-207

Dictatorship

Daily News Miner

by Susan Roatch

11.11.12 - 12:00 am

Nov. 8, 2012

To the editor:

Now that the election is over, it is time for real change in this country of we the people. There is a government force that has been destroying families for years with the help of the court system. The destructive force is called the Office of Children’s Services.

They go after people who cannot afford a high-priced attorney. They falsify information to make parents look bad, even though they do not charge the parent with a crime. In this way, they call it a civil case and do not allow parents to have jury trials, which should be a crime in itself.

They take children from their loving home and force them to live with strangers against their will or, worse yet, put them in a so-called behavior treatment center where they are severely traumatized. The parent is given a case plan that goes on basically forever. There is no end in sight, so many parents are forced to give up.

They go to court, lie on the stand and are not held accountable for their actions. They are given free rein by the court system. They do not present tangible evidence, and the judge goes along with whatever they say. Then the judge makes up his own garbage and slams the parent.

This is akin to a dictatorship. If the system thinks that we the parents have committed some crime against our children, then we should be charged with said crime and have the right to a jury trial. Let me also add that OCS does not take the time to listen to the children.

The yahoos in Juneau need to start paying attention and do a thorough investigation of the reality of what’s happening with this government organization. We the people deserve better from the government. The corruption needs to end. Our children are precious and not disposable. Making money from the suffering of others is appalling. Hold them accountable.

Susan Roatch

Fairbanks

 *The posts made in this blog are of our opinion only* Without Prejudice UCC 1-207

Surprise! Audit uncovers rampant fraud in fed program.

WND EXCLUSIVE

 by Bob Unruh

Millions suspected stolen under Medicaid plan to help disabled

A federal audit of one part of the Medicaid system has uncovered hundreds of millions of dollars in suspected fraud, including payments to caregivers to provide home-care services to the disabled even when they are hospitalized or in nursing homes.
“It would seem inconceivable – even for today’s bloated government – if it wasn’t laid out in a report … by the offending agency’s inspector general,” noted Judicial Watch, which reported on the systemic failure.
Judicial Watch said the issue centers on personal care services provided by the federal and state-funded health insurance Medicaid, which have been provided to the disabled since the Supreme Court ruled in the 1990s that such care is a civil right.
“The idea is to allow the sick, disabled and those with chronic or temporary conditions [to] stay home and, in turn, avoid sticking Uncle Sam with a hefty hospitalization bill,” Judicial Watch said.
“Instead, Medicaid’s personal care services program is rife with corruption that was first exposed more than five years ago and continues to be documented annually by the agency’s watchdog. The budget has ballooned to more than $12 billion a year, just to send what amounts to a nanny to provide supportive ‘nonmedical services’ like meal preparation, housework, help with bathing and getting dressed, transportation and even money management.”
The IG report on the troubling loss of federal taxpayer dollars said Obamacare provisions that already have kicked in have contributed to the increasing number of dollars in the program.
“The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010 removed barriers to providing home and community-based services by allowing additional state plan amendment options, increasing states’ timeframes to elect and renew PCS as a care option, and streamlining processes for accessing home and community-based services,” the report said. “The ACA also provided additional funding for programs supporting home care goals, such as the Money Follows the Person demonstration and the Community First Choice Option programs.”
But the program has significant troubles, including error rates on documentation of costs as high as 40 percent in New Jersey, where more than $145 million in costs were questioned.
“Since 2009, seven of the eight completed audits have identified over $582 million in questioned costs,” the report said.
Also revealed was the fact that states don’t monitor the programs and payment circumstances, leading some caregivers to be able to collect payments even when the disabled person for whom they are supposed to be providing services is hospitalized or in a nursing home.
“[An] evaluation examining PCS in 20 states over a one-year period found that 18 percent of paid claims for Medicaid PCS in a universe totaling $724 million were inappropriate because the required qualifications for PCS attendants were undocumented,” the report said.
And,” it continued, “an audit examining paid PCS claims over a 30-month period in Nebraska identified 464 instances in which PCS providers billed and were improperly paid for PCS during the beneficiaries’ inpatient hospital stays.”
In many cases, neither the time frame for the provided service nor the attendant’s identification was included on a bill.
John Alemoh Momoh, owner and operator of Hopecare Service Inc., was sentenced to two years in jail and ordered to repay more than $656,000 after it was discovered he submitted claims inflating the number of hours and claiming payments for services not provided, the report said.
It noted that most fraud cases come to the attention of authorities through someone who knows the person committing the fraud because there are few checks and cross-checks to identify problems.
Among the steps that need to be taken, the report said, is the standardization of PCS attendant qualifications, improved billing monitors and a cut in the rules and regulations.
“For example, PCS attendants and agencies that commit fraud often bill for impossibly or improbably large volumes of services; for services that conflict with one another (e.g. a PCS attendant purports to provide many hours of services to multiple beneficiaries on the same dates); or for services that could not have been performed as claimed because of geographical distances between beneficiaries purportedly served by the same PCS attendant on the same day. If claims contained more specific details, including the exact dates of service and the identity of the PCS attendants, such irregular billings could be more easily and systematically discovered through claims analysis by state program integrity units,” the report said.
Judicial Watch noted that the billings for home care have risen 35 percent since 2005, and fraud also is on the rise.
Right now, under the system, “Medicaid recipients can hire practically anyone to help them and collect the money and providers undergo virtually no scrutiny.”
In fact, auditors list examples of Medicaid recipients hiring juveniles, relatives and girlfriends to provide services. One man was in jail while his girlfriend collected money from the government to supposedly provide him with home care,” the report said.

*The posts made in this blog are of our opinion only* Without Prejudice UCC 1-207

DETROIT SOCIAL WORKERS PLEAD GUILTY TO MEDICARE FRAUD

On behalf of Burdick Law, P.C. posted in Federal crimes on Wednesday, September 5, 2012

There is no doubt that the federal government is cracking down on Medicare fraud. With the national debt steadily creeping upwards and some lawmakers looking for reasons to cut the program, the government has become more aggressive in its pursuit of charges related to healthcare fraud. Unfortunately, this sometimes results in innocent people getting caught in a widely thrown net and needing the help of attorneys to defend against federal charges.
Incidentally, since 2007 the Medicare Fraud Strike Force has pressed charges against a total of 1,330 people who were collectively accused of fraudulently billing Medicare for over $4 billion. Recently, three Detroit social workers fell into that category.
They pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud for perpetuating a scheme that attempted to defraud Medicare out of $3.1 million. The investigation was conducted by the FBI and the Department of Health and Human Services.
According to court records, the Detroit residents operated a company called New Century Adult Day Program Services LLC in Flint, Michigan. From November 2009 to April 2012, the three defendants apparently billed Medicare for services that were never rendered. The defendants were accused of attracting Medicare recipients to their business by promising patients medication.
Once in the office, the social workers allegedly told the patients they were required to sign up for psychotherapy services before they could see a doctor. The defendants would then use the patients' signatures on registration forms to create documents billing Medicare for the services.
Out of the amount billed, Medicare paid $740,394. All three Detroit residents face up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Two of the defendants are scheduled for sentencing on Jan. 8, 2013, while the third is scheduled for Jan. 29, 2013.

Source: FBI.gov, "Detroit-Area Resident Pleads Guilty to Participating in $3.1 Million Medicare Fraud Scheme," Aug. 22, 2012

*The posts made in this blog are of our opinion only* Without Prejudice UCC 1-207

NH Supreme Court: Parental Alienation Inimical to Child’s Best Interests

NH Supreme Court: Parental Alienation Inimical to Child’s Best Interests

April 4th, 2011 by Robert Franklin, Esq.
This case is excellent, not only because of its result, but mostly because of its sound analysis.  It should serve as a template for courts not only here in the U.S. but in other countries as well.
It comes to us from the Supreme Court of New Hampshire and analyzes a situation in which false allegations of child sexual abuse were used by a mother to deprive a father of contact with his children.  It’s a familiar pattern of facts and altogether too rare an outcome.
In 1999, James Miller met Janet Todd online.  They developed a relationship and, although they never married, had two daughters.  Laurel was born in 2002 and Lindsey in 2003.  Ultimately, a New Hampshire court awarded joint custody with Todd as primary custodian and Miller with visitation rights.
But early on, Todd’s mother claimed she had seen Miller sexually abusing Laurel.  Thus began a long series of allegations of child sexual abuse against Miller.  They were still going on as late as March, 2009, some five years after the first one.
Each and every claim was investigated; each and every claim was determined to be unfounded.  As part of the investigations, the girls were subjected to invasive pelvic examinations at least twice each.
False though the allegations were, they served a purpose; they caused the New Hampshire family court to suspend Miller’s parenting time with his children throughout the course of the proceedings.  That meant that, for over two years, he had no contact with his daughters and they none with him.
Eventually, in July, 2006, the court ordered psychologist Dr. Peggie Ward to thoroughly examine Miller, Todd, the girls and the family situation to determine issues of custody, alienation, sexual abuse, etc.  It took Ward 17 months to produce her 88-page report which the court found to be “extraordinarily thorough.”
What Ward concluded was that there was no reliable evidence of sexual abuse by Miller.  She also concluded that Todd had probably not set out to deliberately alienate the girls from their father; that probably originated with Todd’s mother.  The problem stemmed not only from the various claims of abuse, but from Todd’s almost total inability to accurately process everyday occurrences.

[p]sychological testing shows that Ms. Todd has a “serious
impairment in her ability to accurately process the information she takes in from her surroundings and the degree of misperception she demonstrates has major implications for her adaptive functioning. Ms. Todd’s level of distortion is substantial and predisposes her to misunderstanding and misconstruing intentions, motivations and actions of other people. This places her at great risk for faulty judgment, for errors in decision-making, and for behaving in ways that are based on inaccurate information.  These data indicate that Ms. Todd will not only fail to recognize or foresee the consequences of her actions at times, but that she will also become confused at times in separating fantasy from reality.”

In other words, Todd was unable to sort out false allegations from real ones.  Into the bargain, Todd failed to protect her daughters from her own feelings and fears about what she thought may be happening, thereby perpetuating the girls’ own confusion about the nature of what daddy had or had not done.
So, given years of false allegations against Miller and the manifest inability by Todd to (a) distinguish fantasy from reality and (b) promote a healthy relationship between Miller and his daughters, the trial court did what so many of them do; it gave custody to the children’s mother.
That violated New Hampshire law which requires parents to promote positive relationships between the opposite parent and the children.  It also ignored the rather startling fact that Todd’s emotional problems posed obvious risks for any child in her care.
So why did the court give her custody?  Because the kids had been with her for several years during which time they’d had no contact with Miller.  They’d developed friendships at school and so, according to the court, their “best interests” required them to see little or nothing of their father, depending on the decisions of their clearly unbalanced mother.
If that makes sense to you, please explain it to me.
The New Hampshire Supreme Court squashed that one like a bug.  Its opinion grasps what so many courts do not – that continuing, deep and rich relationships with both parents are in the child’s best interests.  The mother’s obstruction of  such relationships between the children and the father is per se not in their best interests.
Why that should be so difficult to understand is beyond me.  The statutes of New Hampshire make it clear as do the statutes and courts of other jurisdictions.  The court said:

“Across the country, the great weight of authority holds that conduct by one parent that tends to alienate the child’s affections from the other is so inimical to the child’s welfare as to be grounds for a denial of custody to, or a change of custody from, the parent guilty of such conduct.”

And yet time and again, courts ignore statute and case law and look only at the fact that the child has been separate from the father for a certain period of time.  They then conclude that the he cannot have future contact or that it must be limited, without ever noticing how his lack of contact came about.
The New Hampshire court specifically objected to the concept that Todd had “benefitted from her own misbehavior.”  That’s a concept I’ve waited many years to hear a court articulate.  For as long as I’ve been a student and advocate of fathers’ rights, I’ve been astonished at courts’ willingness to ignore mothers’ wrongdoing in order to grant them custody.  That happens as a matter of routine in adoption cases.
What Miller v. Todd does is to show that the requirement on the part of each parent to promote the child’s relationship with the other parent is necessary and beneficial to the child.  It also shows that courts will not reward the alienating behavior of parents.
And that, in a nutshell, is how courts should rule in these cases.  They should make it clear that false allegations of abuse are not acceptable and that they will not be used to benefit the alienating parent.
It’s a simple concept that more courts need to grasp.

*The posts made in this blog are of our opinion only* Without Prejudice UCC 1-207

Massive Dental Fraud Uncovered

 NORTH CAROLINA DENTAL SERVICES CHAIN PAYS $10 MILLION TO RESOLVE FALSE CLAIMS ALLEGATIONS
CHARLOTTE  – Medicaid Dental Center (MDC), a privately-owned chain of dental clinics in North Carolina previously known as Smile Starters and Carolina Dental Center, has reached a settlement with the United States and North Carolina to resolve False Claims Act allegations, the Justice Department announced today. Under the agreement, MDC agreed to pay
$10,050,000 to resolve allegations that it caused false or fraudulent claims for payment to be presented to the North Carolina Medicaid program by billing for medically unnecessary dental services performed on indigent children.

Massive Dental Fraud Uncovered

Part 1 -aired March 6, 2009. Report on dental treatment for the low income by FORBA/Small Smiles

*The posts made in this blog are of our opinion only* Without Prejudice UCC 1-207

UN May Recognize Sex Rights for Ten-Year Old Children

 Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute

Mar 29, 2012

UN May Recognize Sex Rights for Ten-Year Old Children

By Timothy Herrmann

NEW YORK, March 30 (C-FAM) The UN Commission on Population and Development is considering “sexual and reproductive health and rights” for children as young as ten. Even the Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon agrees. In a statement recently released he said, “Young people, as much as all people, share the human right to health, including sexual and reproductive health.”
Currently international law does not recognize a “right” to sexual and reproductive health and certainly does not recognize this right in the case of minors. But just last year, the UN Special Rapporteur for Health, Anand Grover, stirred up significant controversy when he not only claimed that a “right” of sexual and reproductive health existed but attempted to define that right as including access to abortion, contraception, and sexual education.
The association of this right with youth by the Secretary General and the Commission on Population and Development (CPD), especially children, is more controversial since the right could be defined as including access to abortion and contraception.
Organizations like International Planned Parenthood (IPPF) and IPAS, staunch advocates for the sexual and reproductive rights of minors internationally and at the United Nations, have already issued official reports to the conference bureau supportive of rights language including contraception and abortion. They are also using the conference as an opportunity to attack parental involvement in the sexual health of their children.
For organizations like IPPF, parents are the biggest obstacle to minors accessing services like abortion and contraception, and they hope to secure language at the conference that will marginalize their role.
In its official statement, IPPF asserts,  “laws that restrict young people’s access to sexual and reproductive health services, including parental or spousal consent laws” must either be removed or be refrained from being implemented. IPAS goes even further and argues that youth should be considered independent actors free of any obstacles that ignore their own “capacity to make informed decisions.” Their main goal at this conference will be to marginalize parental involvement and encourage countries supportive of their position to increase pressure for the kind of language that the Secretary General has already been proposing.
Given that the document that will be negotiated at the conference calls upon “governments…to give full attention to meeting the reproductive health, service, and education needs of young people with full respect for their privacy and confidentiality,” it seems their efforts may already have a head start.
The Commission members have started negotiating the document now and the final negotiating session will happen in April. It is sure to be among the most controversial in years.

*The posts made in this blog are of our opinion only* Without Prejudice UCC 1-207

PEOPLE or CITIZEN WHICH ONE ARE YOU?

PEOPLE

The Preamble does not specifically define the word "People." Nevertheless, the definition becomes apparent in the context of the other words and prior history.

HISTORY

Before the United States existed, there was no legal government. A group of representatives, acting "in the name and by the authority of the good people of these colonies," declared the independence of the colonies from the British Crown and the state of Great Britain.
From the beginning, in the 1776 Declaration of Independence, the people were acknowledged as the source of authority, i.e. the sovereignty which authorized the Declaration of Independence.
Next came the 1778 Articles of Confederation. The states that existed by the authority of the people, created those Articles while in Congress assembled. That didn't work as well as expected.
In 1787 the people themselves came forth "to ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America" [see Preamble]. On September 17th, 1787, the states held a convention and all those present unanimously joined in. [see last paragraph of U.S. Constitution]
So, in 1787, unanimous concurrence was achieved and the Constitution was born, later to be ratified.

PREAMBLE

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

STRUCTURE OF PREAMBLE

TRUSTOR: We the People [trustors]
VENUE: of the United States
PURPOSE: in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty
BENEFICIARY: to ourselves and our Posterity,
ENABLING ACTION 1: do ordain [declare the law]
ENABLING ACTION 2: and establish [bring into existence]
WHAT: this Constitution [articles of incorporation for trust]
TRUSTEE: for the United States of America. [trustee]

ANALYSIS OF PREAMBLE

The Preamble defines the context in which the remainder of the Constitution must be interpreted. Most of it is self explanatory. Here's an explanation that points to popular sovereignty:
After the Declaration of Independence, but before the ordainment and establishment of the Constitution, the people of the United States pretty much handled their own affairs using the common law. They were not subject to any higher authority other than the authority of the common law as administered by the people themselves (self governance). Although the states did exist, they only existed by the authority of the people. Every man was a king, and every woman a queen--and none had any subjects. Upon declaring our independence, we all became sovereigns and members of the peerage (nobility).
"The people of this State, as the successors of its former sovereign, are entitled to all the rights which formerly belonged to the King by his prerogative. Through the medium of their Legislature they may exercise all the powers which previous to the Revolution could have been exercised either by the King alone, or by him in conjunction with his Parliament; subject only to those restrictions which have been imposed by the Constitution of this State or of the U.S."

Lansing v. Smith, 21 D. 89., 4 Wendel 9 (1829) (New York)
"D." = Decennial Digest
Lansing v. Smith, 4 Wend. 9 (N.Y.) (1829), 21 Am.Dec. 89
10C Const. Law Sec. 298; 18 C Em.Dom. Sec. 3, 228;
37 C Nav.Wat. Sec. 219; Nuls Sec. 1`67; 48 C Wharves Sec. 3, 7.
NOTE: Am.Dec.=American Decision, Wend. = Wendell (N.Y.)

The enabling actions in the Preamble are significant because there is simply nothing in the use of those words to imply that the People relinquished any of their own power and authority. The People declared the law (ordain) without taking away from themselves the authority to declare law again in the future. The People established the Constitution without taking away from themselves the authority to establish anything else in the future. In other words, the people gave birth to the Constitution without giving up any of their own power and authority.
What was before, continues to be so today.
From the context of the Preamble, one may conclude that the laws of the United States do not apply to People. The People, as ordainers and establishers of the country are sovereigns of the country, may not be involuntarily subjected to the laws of the United States.
Because of Amendment X ("The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people," the government has no authority, and cannot assume any authority over the People. Government powers may not reach beyond that which is constitutionally granted. In order for the government to subject People to its law it is necessary for the People to relinquish their sovereignty. Sovereignty is a natural right which cannot lawfully be relinquished involuntarily. Any removal of sovereignty must be accomplished voluntarily by the subject himself.

---

DEFINITION OF CITIZEN OF THE UNITED STATES 

HISTORY

Before ratification of the Amendment XIV , there was no legal definition of the term "citizen of the United States." The term was used, but only generally. After the Civil War the slaves were freed but there was no legal basis to recognize them as having any rights. Amendment XIV partially solved that problem.
"Free the slaves," was the rallying cry combined with the Civil War that resulted in Amendment XIV. Amendment XIV created a new class of person called "citizen of the United States." Any ex-slave could now claim citizenship, and, by the way, so could any of the People if they so chose to do. Amendment XIV made possible the voluntary relinquishment of personal sovereignty.
It was also during the mid 1800's that the various governments took control of the school systems. The curriculum shifted from civics (the study of natural rights and common law) to American government (the study of civil privileges and statutory law). Emphasis was also refocused on "good citizenship". To blunt the people's perception, the civil privileges were called civil rights. The transition from teaching "natural rights" to teaching "civil rights" took about 100 years (from the 1850's to the 1950's). During the 1950's the school systems changed the courses named from "Civics" to "American Government." Hardly anyone now is aware of the subject of civics as a school course.
The phrase, "citizens of the United States," is defined in the Constitution for the United States of America, Amendment XIV:

AMENDMENT XIV

Section 1. "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
Section 5. "The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article."

STRUCTURE OF AMENDMENT XIV

WHO: All persons
QUALIFICATION:
(A) born or naturalized in the United States, and
(B) subject to the jurisdiction thereof
PURPOSE: No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
ENFORCED BY: The Congress
ENFORCEMENT METHOD: Legislation

QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF AMENDMENT XIV

As discussed above, the People are sovereign. The People are not subject to the jurisdiction of the federal government, even though they are born in the United States.
Amendment XIV inverts the relationship. One of the qualifications to be a citizen of the United States is that one must be born or naturalized in the United States. Another qualification is that one must be, "subject to the jurisdiction thereof." It is not possible to be a citizen of the United States without being born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof. But, if you are born or naturalized, and if you are subject to the jurisdiction, then you automatically qualify as a citizen of the United States.
From the point of view of the federal enforcers, the qualifications are worked in reverse. They reverse-interpret Amendment XIV as saying that if you say you are a citizen of the United States, then that automatically means you are totally subject to its jurisdiction [and have been born or naturalized]. This opinion is not shared by the judicial branch. See 14 C.J.S. 426, 430:

The particular meaning of the word "citizen" is frequently dependent on the context in which it is found[25], and the word must always be taken in the sense which best harmonizes with the subject matter in which it is used[26]. "One may be considered a citizen for some purposes and not a citizen for other purposes, as, for instance, for commercial purposes, and not for political purposes[27]. So, a person may be a citizen in the sense that as such he is entitled to the protection of his life, liberty, and property, even though he is not vested with the suffrage or other political rights[28].
"[25] Cal.--Prowd v. Gore, 2 Dist. 207 P. 490. 57 C.A. 458.
[26] Cal.--Prowd v. Gore. 2 Dist. 207 P. 490. 57 C.A. 458.
      La.--Lepenser v Griffin, 83 So. 839, 146 La. 584
      N.Y.--Union Hotel Co. v. Hersee, 79 N.Y. 454
[27] U.S.--The Friendschaft, N.C., 16 U.S. 14, 3 Wheat. 14, 4 L.Ed. 322
      --Murray v. The Charming Betsy, 6 U.S. 64, 2 Cranch 64, 2 L.Ed. 208
      Md.--Risewick v. Davis, 19 Md. 82
      Mass.--Judd v. Lawrence, 1 Cush 531
      R.I.--Greeough v. Tiverton Police Com'rs, 74 A 785, 30 R.I. 212
[28] Mass.--Dillaway v. Burton, 153 N.E. 13, 256 Mass. 568"

In any case, if you fail to object to the government's view of citizenship, then you will most certainly be subjected to the laws of the government. That means no rights, only privileges. To see a list of privileges granted or denied to the citizens (there is no list for the People's natural rights because the People automatically have all rights), see People's rights vs citizen's rights
ONE OF THE PEOPLE OR ONE OF THE CITIZENS?
The first issue to be resolved in any court proceeding is that of jurisdiction. Does the one entity have jurisdiction over the other entity? One should never go into court without a clear understanding as to whether he is there as a citizen, or there as one of the people. If you claim you are a citizen of the United States, then it is strongly implied (though not necessarily true) that you are subject to the laws of the United States. On the other hand, if you are one of the People, then it is legally implied that you are a legal king, with a sovereignty superior to that of the United States, and subject only to the common law of the other kings (your peers). In short: the People are superior to the government, the government is superior to the citizens. That is the hierarchy.

PEOPLE ---> GOVERNMENT ---> CITIZENS As a king you "are entitled to all the rights which formerly belonged to the King by his prerogative." You can do what you want to do when you want to do it. You have your own property and your own courts. There is no limit as to what you may do other than the natural limits of the universe, and the sovereignty of a fellow sovereign. You should treat the other sovereign in accordance with the Golden Rule, and at the very least must never harm him. Your sovereignty stops where the other sovereignty begins. You are one of the owners of the American government, and it is their promise that they will support your sovereignty (i.e. they have promised to support the Constitution and protect it from all enemies). You have no allegiance to anyone. The government, your only [public] servant, has an allegiance to you. As a citizen, you are only entitled to whatever your sovereign grants to you. You have no rights. If you wish to do something that would be otherwise illegal, you must apply for a license giving you special permission. If there is no license available, and if there is no specific permission granted in the statutes, then you must apply for special permission or a waiver in order to do it. Your only allegiance is to your sovereign (the government), and that allegiance is mandated by your sovereign's law (the government, though not absolutely sovereign, is sovereign relative to you if you claim to be a citizen of the sovereign).
Here is a typical example:
As one of the People you have a right to travel, unrestricted, upon the public highways. You have right to carry guests with you in your automobile. You have a right to own a gun and that right shall not be impaired by your servant, the government. You have a right to a grand jury indictment and a trial by jury, that is a trial directly by the people, not the government.
As one of the citizens, you may not travel by automobile unless you are either a licensed motor vehicle driver, or you are a passenger with permission to be on board. Gun ownership is a privilege subject to definition and regulation. You do not have a right to a jury trial in all cases, and no right to grand jury indictment--a trial is a trial by the government, not the people.

 http://www.1215.org/lawnotes/lawnotes/pvc.htm

*The posts made in this blog are of our opinion only* Without Prejudice UCC 1-207