FBI Creates Whistleblower Opportunities For Youth

This is absolutely amazing.

The Sacramento FBI office has created a Teen Academy to give youth opportunity in law enforcement and to change the face of the FBI to become more inclusive.

I make this statement on inclusivity because we all know, poor kids grow up to be poor adults.

"It's a building prisons, bed count, thang."

Of course, this is not a blanketed truism, it is statistically sound when you review the data.

Domestic policies are increasing the rates of child poverty, stripping the resources of targeted populations, for the purposes of, basically, taking over the land.  Therefore, youth are not presented with very many opportunities as an adult.

Just take a look at foster care and what happens when you age out, it is not pretty.

The FBI does not only need to see the future through the eyes of youth, but so does DHHS, IRS, USDA, USPS, HUD, DOE (<== education) and any other federal law enforcement program.

When I worked for the Detroit Police Department, we had, or at least I tried to make it so, a similar youth program called the Detroit Police Junior Cadet Program.

Unfortunately, there were no data collected to demonstrate its effects (another story), but I am going to say that it was an amazing program for youth.

Instead of doling out these so-called community grants, why not partner with the youth and give them direct opportunities to bring back to their communities and families.

I also worked on U.S. DOJ Community Orientated Policing Services grant programs.  They sucked.

Now, allow me to tell you why these COPS grant programs sucked.

A group of "could-not-make-it-in-the-real-world" university Ph.D.s would get together and pump out some fancy pants Response For Proposal which ended up generating lots of pretty pictures called charts and graphs so they could:

#Superfan Whistleblower in training

1. Meet their quota of mandatory university publications so they could get tenure;
2. Pad a CV;
3. Cash that much needed supplemental income paycheck; 
4. Cosign on the RFP crap; and/or,
5. Suck up to get a federal administration or NGO job to keep the money rolling in for everyone except those for which the RFP was generated in the first place.

The time has come to depart from the pseudo-scientific RFP model and let the people tell us what needs to be examined.

Besides, technology is open source and instant.  

Let youth get paid for their research; it is practical and cost efficient, in many, many ways.

I am hoping that law enforcement, and I am not going to marginalize this to strictly federal, but also state local, and dare I say, international, collaboration to engage and train youth in the art of fraud detection.

We need to start our whistleblowers out young.

Whistleblowers are the original law enforcers.

Rock on, #Superfans, rock on.

"Qui tam pro domino rege quam pro se ipso in hac parte sequitur"

Sacramento FBI Teen Academy Applications Available Online

Class Offers Information, Experiences, and More to High School Juniors

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Sacramento Field Office is accepting applications for the Spring 2017 FBI Teen Academy. This unique opportunity is open to all high school juniors attending any school—public, private, and home school—in the 34-counties the field office serves.

The application package is available for download now.

Students selected to participate will spend an entire day at FBI Sacramento Field Office headquarters in Roseville on Friday, April 7, 2017. Applying and attending the FBI Teen Academy program is free; however, families are responsible for travel to and from the class.

The FBI Teen Academy is a unique opportunity for any student—regardless of career interest—who is curious about the FBI, what the FBI investigates, and how it serves the community. FBI Teen Academy participants engage in activities and discussions about what the FBI does and current topics relative to FBI investigations. Activities may include discussions about cyber safety, terrorism, active shooter situations, and color of law and civil rights investigations; participation in simulated evidence response team and bomb techs scenarios; and frank conversations about online communication and staying safe in an always-connected world.

After completing the class, participants better understand the FBI’s role in their communities, grasp the complexity of FBI investigations, can make lifestyle choices to be safer in their day-to-day lives, and what FBI career paths are available. FBI Teen Academy students often remain connected with the field office to facilitate presentations, mentorship, and more.

 Counties served by the FBI Sacramento Field Office:

• Alpine
• Amador
• Butte
• Calaveras
• Colusa
• El Dorado
• Fresno
• Glenn
• Inyo
• Kern
• Kings
• Lassen
• Madera
• Mariposa
• Merced
• Modoc
• Mono
• Nevada
• Placer
• Plumas
• Sacramento
• San Joaquin
• Shasta
• Sierra
• Siskiyou
• Solano
• Stanislaus
• Sutter
• Tehama
• Tulare
• Tuolumne
• Trinity
• Yuba
• Yolo

About the Sacramento FBI Teen Academy:

Each spring and fall, the FBI Sacramento Field Office hosts the FBI Teen Academy for 20-36 students who spend a day in FBI facilities to learn about the agency, what it investigates, how it serves its community, how students can make wise lifestyle choices to be safer in their day-to-day lives, and what FBI career paths are available. The opportunity is available to any high school junior in the region the field office serves and can create a lasting connection between the students and the FBI. More than 250 students have attended the FBI Teen Academy in Sacramento to date.

Voting is beautiful, be beautiful ~ vote.©

Community Based Policymakers Kickedout

Every so often, I come across an inspirational piece to put out there for thought.

Here is a small company that has come up with an extremely unique idea regarding marketing a product named Bidzuku.

It seems, as a microenterprise, business investment firms tend to keep with tradition when it comes to capital ventures.

Here is the relevant scheme of Bidzuku:

Individual shopping for autos submit their criteria in an online profile. Auto dealers compete with each other and submit bids to the individual meeting their posted requirements of a vehicle.

Basically what they did was to apply online dating to the car buying market. Brilliant. No more shopping around and it expands competition to a global level.

Bidzuku from Bidzuku on Vimeo.

What about applying this to the Request For Proposals (RFP) process?

As always, it's been the big non-profit corporations that are always the successful ones in securing the grants and contracts. And, as always, these big institutions are the ones who design the RFPs in the first place.

Allow me to provide a working example, Cornell University.  Here you have a Non Governmental Organization which maintains the databases of research while developing future policy for child welfare.

All the while, Cornell is strategically becoming the leader in policy development through their training reimbursement programs in child welfare, locking the little business man and innovation out of the public policy cycle.

What if, government took the concept of social networking to a new level.

Small businesses and microenterprises submit their proposals and funding criteria to profiles in an online new marketing network.  Foundations and government would not only search for its needs, but it also becomes a learning experience, directly bringing social issues to policymakers.

In essence, this is community-based policymaking.

This type of process, not asking for proposals to meet the criteria of the government, was thriving before the 1980's when it switched over to the RFP.

The time has come to stop telling us what you want and let us tell you what we need.

I was always told that democracy contained a component called dissent.  If there is no dissent, meaning a robust challenge to theory with the ability to withstand the test of time, then there is no democracy.

Now apply that to the area of child welfare.

There is no challenge because everything is a secret, kept hidden within a community of major institutions.

Let the community be policymakers once again.  We do not wish to be kickedout any more.

$100 Billion Investment in Science

It has taken many decades, but it finally looks like the death of psuedo-empirical science has arrived.

Sometime ago, the federal government took a major departure from the path of democracy. I do not speak of the political parties, I speak of scientific methodology. In order for a theory to be a theory, it must withstand robust challenge and the test of time.

In order to have a democracy, there must be dissension. There must be a logical and peaceful voice to stand up and challenge the status quo. In the scientific community of the United States, empirical queries has been silenced for far too long.

For the purposes of discussing child welfare, I will use the threshold of 1974, the inception of the Child Abuse Prevention Treatment Act. It was almost exactly this time when the Request For Proposal (RFP) format came into existence. Federal government "told" what was to be expected, and the states custom designed the proposals to tailor the request. There was no innovation. There was no inspiration. There was only a culture of psuedo-empirical science that was being bred, and a reverent class of people who were trained never to challenge authority.

Prior to this, there was the model of philanthropic investment in scientific research, where a scientist would develop a project and present it to his benefactor, who would in turn profit from the scientific speculation.

We "used" to invest in our children's dreams. Now, we tell them what how to think, in many shapes and forms of psychotropic and anti-psychotropic medications. We have drowned scientific determinism through the investments of fear and trembling with the RFP.

Now, the Administration is bringing back the spirit of discovery by investing in the profitable future of society by inspiring new thought, new challenges, new beliefs for the future and health of society.

This is how one stops the child abuse propaganda, horribly biased research and the imperialistic morality parade: by continuously searching for truth, truth from the people, not multi-billion dollar lobbying machines.

Let's recovery truth by reinvesting in discovery.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Friday, May 14, 2010

Contact: HHS Press Office (202) 690-6343

HHS Secretary Sebelius Announces $1 Billion in NIH Recovery Act Awards

Funds Used to Construct or Improve Biomedical Research Facilities

Grants expected to create or sustain jobs while advancing research nationwide

U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius today announced one billion dollars of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds have been awarded to construct, repair and renovate scientific research laboratories and related facilities across the country. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Center for Research Resources (NCRR) administered the grants, which are expected to create or sustain jobs nationwide and to help foster scientific advances that may lead to improved human health.

A total of 146 grants to institutions in 44 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico were awarded to upgrade and construct buildings, laboratory spaces and core facilities that are crucial to biomedical and behavioral investigators.

“This unprecedented Recovery Act investment in research facility construction will not only give our world-class scientists the modern facilities they need for impact research, it will also help create and maintain jobs in varied business sectors and in all regions of our country,” said Secretary Sebelius.

These awards are part of an overall $100 billion federal government investment in science, innovation and technology the Administration is making through the Recovery Act to spur domestic job creation in emerging industries and create a long-term foundation for economic growth.

"These Recovery Act dollars will provide state-of-the-art facilities for hundreds of researchers to conduct cutting-edge science with the latest technologies," said NIH Director Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D. "At the same time, they will create job opportunities nationwide."

Highlighted below are four examples that provide a snapshot of how institutions coast-to-coast will use these funds to help advance studies in disease areas such as cancer, HIV/AIDS, autism, pediatric illnesses and other health disorders.

• Renovation of Children’s Health Research and Evaluation Facility, Indianapolis.
  Nearly $8.5 million in grant funding will help to create a state-of-the-art facility for pediatric clinical research and to create a core facility of pediatric phenotyping laboratories and patient research resources at the Indiana University School of Medicine. Phenotyping is the use of epidemiologic, biological, molecular or computational methods to systematically select features of a disorder that might result from distinct genetic influences. The project will bring together a range of existing pediatrics laboratory programs into a single core to create collaborative, quantitative phenotyping of diseases and treatments.
• The Genome Data Center Initiative, St. Louis.
  The Washington University School of Medicine (WUSM) will use a $14.3 million award to build a world-class data center to support human genome research. WUSM has been involved in genome science since the inception of the field. Its genome center recently embarked on several ambitious projects to decode the genomics of hundreds of cancer patients and their tumors. The research has the potential to transform the diagnosis and treatment of cancer. The new 15,000 square-foot data center will support the computational power and storage needs that projects like these require.
• The San Francisco Office of AIDS Renovation (SOAR) Project.
  A grant of more than $9.5 million will allow three prominent United States-based HIV/AIDS prevention research units within the San Francisco Department of Public Health to increase their capacity to recruit, enroll and retain large, diverse populations of study participants efficiently and effectively, and to provide critical data on new HIV/AIDS cases to investigators worldwide. The SOAR project will provide researchers with the space and data needs required for large patient studies, improved security for records storage and space needed for training. The project also will have an impact on current and future biomedical HIV/AIDS research and training initiatives.
• Cell and DNA Repository Renovation, New Brunswick, N.J.
  Data sharing is essential for expedited translation of research results into knowledge, products and procedures to improve human health. Central storage units such as the Rutgers University Cell and DNA Repository (RUCDR) help investigators nationwide share data and biological specimens. To address space shortages and infrastructural needs and to broaden the scope of the molecular biology services, RUCDR has been awarded $9.5 million to renovate their biology laboratory. RUCDR’s services provide approximately 90 NIH-funded grantees with resources that aid research in disease areas, including autism, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and kidney diseases.

“These Recovery Act awards literally and figuratively are laying the groundwork to accelerate research in disorders that affect the health and productivity of so many families — both children and adults,” said NCRR Director Barbara Alving, M.D.
Environmental impact is a key component of the Recovery Act and was a prominent theme of the related NCRR construction application and awards process. The construction grants awarded through the Recovery Act encouraged, and in many cases required, grantees to implement several primary elements of sustainable technologies and design principles. These elements ensure energy efficiency, reduction of the environmental impact of building materials and minimized use of compounds that deplete the ozone.
More information about NCRR’s Recovery Act grants can be found at www.ncrr.nih.gov/recovery/construction.

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The activities described in this release are being funded through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). More information about NIH's ARRA grant funding opportunities can be found at http://grants.nih.gov/recovery/.
To track the progress of HHS activities funded through the ARRA, visit www.hhs.gov/recovery. To track all federal funds provided through the ARRA, visit www.recovery.gov.

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