FEDS PUSH NEW PLAN FOR HOME VISITS TO CHECK ON PARENTS

Paul Joseph Watson | Infowars | FEBRUARY 12, 2016

The federal government is seeking to create a new bureaucracy that would intervene in family life and could even see state-appointed monitors conduct routine home visits to assess a child’s well-being.

The U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has published a draft document which outlines a plan that will treat families as “equal partners” in the raising of children, opening the door for government intrusion at all levels.

The paper describes how government employees will intervene to provide, “monitoring goals for the children at home and the classroom,” and that if parents are failing to meet the standards set, “evidence-based parenting interventions” will be made to, “ensure that children’s social-emotional and behavioral needs are met.”

The document reveals how the state will help oversee, “constant monitoring and communication regarding children’s social-emotional and behavioral health.”

The program bears the hallmarks of a controversial scheme in Scotland, set to take effect later this year, under which a “shadow parent” appointed by the government would monitor the upbringing of every child until the age of 18.

“The document argues that Big Brother needs to know about essentially everything, for the supposed benefit of the child it wants to “partner” in caring for,” writes Alex Newman. “Citing “research,” the policy statement claims that “the institutions where children learn cannot ignore family wellness if they want to … fulfill their mission to prepare children for school and academic success.” In other words, every aspect of family life is now fair game under the pretext of checking “family wellness.”

The document also extends the understanding of the word “family,” to include, “all the people who play a role in the child’s life,” a definition that could include not only teachers but government monitors.

In a related development, the federal government is pushing for a task force to oversee a program under which pediatricians and doctors would, “screen all students over 12 years old regularly for depression and issue prescriptions or treatment as necessary.”

The program would increase the likelihood of teenagers being given dangerous antidepressant drugs such as Prozac and Lexapro.

The idea of children belonging not just to their parents but to a “community” that involves the state is a common theme of collectivist thinking.

That notion was promoted in the video below from 2013 featuring MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry, in which she asserted, “We have to break through our private idea that kids belong to their parents or kids belong to their families.”

Government Employees Spent Almost $1 Million in Taxpayer Money at Casinos

Daily Signal - FEBRUARY 9, 2016

IMAGE CREDITS: WIKI COMMONS.

The federal government is no stranger to waste—some examples are egregious. From July 2013 through June 2014, over 4,000 transactions, worth just short of $1 million, were conducted at casinos using the Department of Defense’s government travel cards.

Furthermore, nine hundred transactions, totaling $96,576, were made at “adult entertainment establishments.” As of May, 2015, only 41 percent of such actions went punished, with possible punishments including a “letter of reprimand.”

Originally adopted in 1998, the Travel and Transportation Reform Act sought to simplify the process of paying for the travel of federal employees by mandating usage of travel cards. These credit cards, managed by individual government agencies, have repeatedly proven to be a primary source of bureaucratic fraud against the American taxpayer.

Five short years after travel card implementation, reports of widespread misuse began to surface. Examples include unauthorized first-class trips to Hawaii funded by the Department of State and tens of thousands of dollars in “training” at golf and tennis resorts using funds meant to assist victims of Hurricane Katrina.

According to the Project on Government Oversight, a non-profit and non-partisan organization intent on exposing government misconduct, over $600,000 in funding allocated to Hurricane Katrina relief efforts was “considered unauthorized, lost, or stolen” through the abuse of government purchase cards.

Furthermore, the Internal Revenue Service has also reported instances of their government-issued credit cards being used to purchase everything from diet pills to alcohol and pornography.

Congress attempted to reform the clearly broken system in 2012, with the Government Charge Card Abuse Prevention Act of 2012, but this did little to actually quell such abuses. This legislation attempted to integrate control measures such as preventing double-reimbursement, requiring semi-annual reports and annual audits, and instituting outlined penalties for violating parties.

Unfortunately, it proved ineffective. The act’s policies did not implement systems capable of catching all (or even a majority of) fraud and were oftentimes poorly enforced.

These failures became apparent almost immediately after the act’s implementation. A recent report by the Department of Defense painted a fuller picture of particularly egregious abuse.

A second attempt at reform is currently underway.

In December, the Senate passed a bill with bipartisan support mandating the establishment of an Office of Federal Charge Card Analytics and Review. Intent on providing both analytical tools and human-driven oversight, Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., has called the bill “commonsense legislation.”

This abuse also raises the larger question of overall fiscal responsibility. With our nation’s debt at an all-time high, repeated abuse of taxpayer dollars demonstrates that agency budgets are not as lean as they could (and should) be.

Congress should not shy away from enforcing the discretionary cap reductions imposed by sequestration to reduce federal agency budgets. One blunt tool to encourage better internal controls by agencies of their travel cards is to increase the motivation of bureaucrats to better monitor how dollars are spent by tightening their budgets.

Taxpayers who’ve had to tighten their belts deserve no less from their government.